Hoping for Change

[JonStuck]

The following was written by one of the best men I have ever had the privilege to know.
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Hoping for Change
by Michael Marks

I am sickened by politics these days, the entire process has become grotesque. When faced with casting my vote, I must tell you I will look not much farther than my own family and what has happened to us in the last four years. In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on a message of "Hope & Change." He had no plan to offer, just a big, bright promise. Here is what Obama's Hope & Change meant to me.

On Nov 3, 2008 I could buy a gallon of gasoline for $1.72 with some gas stations running a 99-cent promotional deal. After 4 years of Barack Obama that same gallon now costs $3.81 with prices as high as $4.48 in California. Filling the tank on my truck now eats the better part of a hundred bucks.

According to the US Department of Labor, in 2008 the average unemployment rate was 5.8%. Today the official unemployment rate of 8.1% is widely criticized as ignoring millions of additional people who simply gave up trying to find work. We've just lost count. Things are even worse for those just getting started, the official unemployment rate for young adults is 16.8%

According to the FDIC, in the 8 years from 1 January 2000 through the end of 2008, a total of 24 banks failed in the United States. In the four years of the Obama Administration, 461 banks have failed.

Since 2008, millions of Americans have lost their home to foreclosure; every 90 days that number grows by over 250,000. According to the Mortgage Banker's Association, 1 out of every 200 homes will be foreclosed upon. 6 in 10 Americans are delinquent on their mortgage. I know people who have lost their home, and others who see it coming.

When Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 he said that the $4 Trillion debt increase under 8 years of George W. Bush was "Un-American." I had to agree with that one, so you can imagine how I felt when in less than half the time Barack Obama increased that debt to over $16 Trillion dollars. He has out-spent every President back to Roosevelt combined. Now I must confess that trillions of dollars is hard to get my head around so let me tell you what it means to you. If you are one of an estimated 200 million taxpayers in the United States, your personal share of that debt is over $80,000 and growing. Your kids will get their own installment, and your grandkids. To put it another way, under President Obama's stewardship the national debt has grown by more than $4 billion per day, $170 million per hour, $2.8 million per minute and more than $47,000 per second.

In 2008 the US had an estimated 12 million illegal aliens living inside our borders. The current estimate is now over 20 million. That is more than the combined total population of New York city, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia. The Obama Administration has uniformly sued or blocked any state attempt to enforce existing immigration law or any efforts to verify US citizenship in order to vote. Courts are terming this active obstruction of valid US law as unconstitutional. Following Obama's lead, California and New Mexico are actively pursuing legislation to give driver's licenses to known illegal aliens. This will invalidate the driver's license as valid proof of citizenship and force actual US citizens to obtain additional credentials.

In 2008 the average college tuition ran $6,600 a year. In 2012 that cost has risen to $21,400 for state college and $42,200 for private college. Following Obama's lead on immigration, schools such as the University of North Carolina are denying in-state tuition to veterans returning from service overseas citing the need to give that rate to illegal aliens.

Beginning in 2008, Barack Obama promised that his "Obamacare" law would cost less than one trillion dollars. As implementation moves forward, that cost has already expanded to over $2.6 Trillion dollars. At three times the advertised price and climbing, government officials are already acknowledging that additional taxes will have to be levied to cover the difference. In addition, bureaucrats administering Obamacare have drafted over 13,000 pages of new regulations that we and our doctors will have to sift through before we can receive care.

From 2003 to 2008, average 401K balances rose at a rate of 7.2% per year. Our savings were growing. Since that time the average 401K has lost over 30% of its total value and earnings are flat. As a result, financial giant AIG explained that for most Americans, retirement age which was at 66 in 2008 will rise to 70 and perhaps 80 as Americans are unable to save enough money to retire before that.

The Obama Administration has openly held discussions with the United Nations to allow the UN to impose taxes on US citizens in order to "redistribute our wealth" to Third World nations. For those unfamiliar with that term, it is a lawyer's word for stealing; taking money under threat of force. We earn it, they get it. It is that simple. Proposed mechanisms for this include additional taxes on all financial transactions, on tobacco products and airline fares, as well as a tax on internet usage that will hit every minute you spend online. At the same time, Barack Obama has cut offshore oil drilling permits by 62%, greatly increasing our dependence on Muslim oil-producing nations.

Prior to Barack Obama, a Secret Service team had never been yanked from a foreign country under the weight of a prostitution scandal. His Government Services Administration, a watchdog to protect the American public, made history blowing millions of taxpayer dollars on lavish Las Vegas parties. The Obama Administration is the first in history to have a seated Attorney General held in contempt by Congress. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder has patently stonewalled a Congressional investigation into the Fast & Furious operation that put hundreds of automatic weapons in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilians, including school kids, as well as US law enforcement personnel. To date the White House has made every effort to look the other way as Holder continues to defy a direct order from Congress to explain what happened.

This pattern is consistent with Obama's default response to any difficult question. He retained lawyers to seal his records when asked about his birth certificate, social security number and his college records. This response seems an incomprehensible course of action if in fact he had valid answers. To date, nobody from the Obama administration has explained why he responds in this manner. The trend persists to this day; in a recent debate, Obama claimed to have stated that the Libya Embassy Massacre of 9-11 was an act of terrorism the morning after the attack. If we take that at face value, why did he, the Secretary of State and the US Ambassador to the UN say otherwise on public television for the next two weeks?

This election is not about fads or celebrity glitz, we can no longer afford the luxury of fashionable stupidity. Economists around the world warn that our country hangs on the edge of the same financial abyss that is devouring Greece and much of the EU; if the USA slides into that abyss it will drag our homes and futures with it. We are faced with a simple choice:

On one hand we have the guy with no real experience at anything outside politics who has pushed us into record-breaking debt and shown complete inability to estimate a cost or pick a working investment. Barack Obama has never launched a business; he did invest $535 million of taxpayer money into solar company Solyndra which promptly went bankrupt. He gave an additional $249 million to battery-maker A123 Systems, which also went bankrupt.

On the other hand we have Mitt Romney, a guy who helped launch many of the most successful businesses in the world, such as AMC Entertainment, Aspen Education Group, Brookstone, Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory, Clear Channel Communications, Domino's Pizza, DoubleClick, Dunkin' Donuts, D&M Holdings, Guitar Center, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), Sealy, The Sports Authority, Staples, Toys "R" Us, Warner Music Group and The Weather Channel. Nobody has ever challenged the fact that Mitt Romney has created untold thousands of jobs and built wealth at every turn.The worst allegation offered by the Obama camp is that Romney is smart enough to earn millions of dollars while paying very low taxes. I can tell you I wish I was that smart. Between the two, Romney is certainly the guy I want running things when my future is hanging by a thread. Let's get down to brass tacks, our personal fortunes are tied to the success of this nation - given the ugliest representations of both men put forth, I'd take a business shark empire-builder over an idealistic and untrustworthy socialist with an unblemished record of failure.

A sobering statistic caught my eye as I looked back at the last four years. According to the American Society for Suicide Prevention, the suicide rate at the end of 2008 stood at 11.8 percent. By 2012 that number had climbed to over 12.4 percent, a fifteen-year high. Apparently four years of Barack Obama brought lots of change, but left many of us with no hope at all.

On November 6th, put party aside and cast your vote for your future, for your family and home. Look at what the last for years has brought you -- or taken from you. Ask yourself if you can survive four more years on the same track.

I can tell you, this year I am hoping for change.

[Kreutz]

The POTUS has from nothing to little to do with the macroeconomic situations described.

[dorminWS]

The POTUS has from nothing to little to do with the macroeconomic situations described.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Obviously, HE (Obama) doesn't know that. He keeps telling us HE's going to "get out economy going", "create 12 million new jobs", "build the economy from the middle up rather from the top down" and on and on - - ad nauseum. You're right about one thing: No POTUS and not the entire US government can (or is supposed to) control the economy. But Obama has written a primer on how one can foster conditions and an atmosphere that F**K IT UP WORSE THAN POLIO. In other words, he has proven that you don't have to know how to drive the bus to wreck it.

[Kreutz]

Obviously, HE (Obama) doesn't know that. He keeps telling us HE's going to "get out economy going", "create 12 million new jobs",

Romney is the one stating that ad nauseum. I'm curious how he will "create 12M jobs" since thats quite impossible outside Soviet style central planned economics. Ditto Obama claiming his administration created 3.3M (or whatever it was) jobs.

Only demand for a good/service and the provider of that good/service deciding its financially beneficial to hire on help to provide the good/service can create jobs.

I dunno, this election is so utterly full of crap and bold-faced lies its mind-numbing how this charade is continuing.

My inner cynic tells me this show is unusually freakish because the masses really need to be distracted as to what else is going on, as though if enough people notice the fabric is looking pretty shabby and pick at that one last thread holding it all together everything will unravel, just not sure what that thread is.

In other words, he has proven that you don't have to know how to drive the bus to wreck it.

Well, can't disagree there.

[zerodown1]

We all were brother. I feel your pain. But now its over. we lost. But look on the bright side, maybe coyboy T will give us all another one of his really cool lectures on civility.

[FiremanBob]

Kreutz seems to have temporarily relocated under the bridge this week. Actually Obama and his minions have done a great to affect the economic situations listed in the OP. I would hate to think that Kreutz is so economically illiterate as to believe that "only demand for a good/service and the provider of that good/service deciding its financially beneficial to hire on help to provide the good/service can create jobs," and leave it at that.

What makes it "financially beneficial" to grow one's business here? Taxes and regulations have a great deal to do with whether investing here or in another country, or investing at all, or even keeping an uneconomic operation running. Obama announced that he will regulate coal out of existence, and sure enough some 150 coal-fired power plants have since closed. Obama personally killed the Keystone Pipeline. Obama directed the flow of "stimulus" money to cronies in the "green energy" scam/industry. Obama's minions screwed over the secured bondholders and employee pension funds at GM. An enormous number of actions were taken by the Obama administration without Congressional involvement that have affected the economy and the number of jobs available to American workers.

[Kreutz]

Kreutz seems to have temporarily relocated under the bridge this week. Actually Obama and his minions have done a great to affect the economic situations listed in the OP. I would hate to think that Kreutz is so economically illiterate as to believe that "only demand for a good/service and the provider of that good/service deciding its financially beneficial to hire on help to provide the good/service can create jobs," and leave it at that.

What makes it "financially beneficial" to grow one's business here? Taxes and regulations have a great deal to do with whether investing here or in another country, or investing at all, or even keeping an uneconomic operation running. Obama announced that he will regulate coal out of existence, and sure enough some 150 coal-fired power plants have since closed. Obama personally killed the Keystone Pipeline. Obama directed the flow of "stimulus" money to cronies in the "green energy" scam/industry. Obama's minions screwed over the secured bondholders and employee pension funds at GM. An enormous number of actions were taken by the Obama administration without Congressional involvement that have affected the economy and the number of jobs available to American workers.

Yes, I can leave it at that, because its simply the truth. No one operates in a vacuum. From taxes to coal to the keystone (delayed not killed incidentally) the players in these decision have to be aware of their external environment, which includes taxes and regs to their competitors. Are you so simple to think business owners merrily traipse through life creating jobs at whim if only mean old Obama would get out of their way?

Corps and businesses are sitting on record amounts of cash, yet they aint hiring, why would they when they discovered they can automate, outsource, and overwork whoever is left? Its all about profits AKA being "financially beneficial".

Or just you know, blame Obama.

[ShotgunBlast]

I would hate to think that Kreutz is so economically illiterate as to believe that "only demand for a good/service and the provider of that good/service deciding its financially beneficial to hire on help to provide the good/service can create jobs," and leave it at that.

Are you or have you ever been in the position to hire employees? I have people ask me all the time if I'm hiring, but my demand isn't at the point that I'm losing more business than it would cost bringing an employee on to help take care of my customers. You can think it's all about uncertainty of the future, taxes, or interest rates, but in the end demand trumps them all. Ask any retailer that brings on additional staff for holiday or back to school help, and then immediately drops employees or cuts hours as soon as the big rush is over.

In short, the average U.S. company is not hiring because it does not need the extra workers to meet demand. And American companies are making record profits without hiring workers — $1.66 trillion in 2010 with the S&P 500 expected to grow earnings 18% in 2011 and 14% more in 2012.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/ ... nies-hire/

I've seen this in my own business. I've found things that I can outsource or automate. Keeps my margins up and I'm able to do more without hiring.

[grumpyMSG]

Corps and businesses are sitting on record amounts of cash, yet they aint hiring, why would they when they discovered they can automate, outsource, and overwork whoever is left? Its all about profits AKA being "financially beneficial".

Kreutz, the plain an simple truth is, business' primary goal is to make money. If it weren't, it would be a non-profit organization. You don't go to work as a medical coder or whatever it is you do for free, you do it for money. You have stated your time in the Army was all about the benefits not patriotism. You as a sub-contractor for whatever doctors offices or insurance company are part of outsourcing, if they could do it cheaper in house they would. If they could have somebody do 2% more work than you or do the same work as you for 2% less than you they would hire that contractor.

You could look at it from a different perspective, if you needed a new furnace installed in your house. Would you call just one contractor or several and let them compete for the installation? Isn't that trying to get the most for the least amount of money?

Now to tackle the first part of the statement: Corps and businesses are sitting on record amounts of cash, yet they aint hiring, why would a business even consider putting that money in play with the great uncertainty in the tax code? For example, a single person who paid $5000 in taxes this year per the table will be paying $7500 next year if "taxmageddon" isn't fixed. That is only about $50 less a week in a person's pocket. I can't speak for you, but it would suck for me to loose $50 a week or $200 a month. If a family of 4 paid $5000 in taxes it would hurt them even worse. The $1000 per child tax credit goes back to $500, so for the two kids they loose $1000 in tax credits meaning now their tax bill would be $6000 at the 10% rate. Just like an infomercial, but wait it gets better, the rate is now 15% so their tax bill is now $9000. That family just lost $4000 in a year, that is more than $300 a month. What business would want to expand knowing that is going to happen to their customers?

I have a feeling you will blame the House of Representatives for not compromising and letting the highest earners pay more taxes. I would ask you, why doesn't the President and Senate compromise and allow all Americans to keep the same tax rates they have paid for more than 10 years? i would say all three have some of the blame to share.

[FiremanBob]

Kreutz is on a troll roll this week, and his response to me doubles down on stupid. I'm going to ignore him for a while. I only hope that his left-wing BS doesn't have an effect on the rest of the forum members.

[dorminWS]

Yes, I can leave it at that, because its simply the truth. No one operates in a vacuum. From taxes to coal to the keystone (delayed not killed incidentally) the players in these decision have to be aware of their external environment, which includes taxes and regs to their competitors. Are you so simple to think business owners merrily traipse through life creating jobs at whim if only mean old Obama would get out of their way?

Corps and businesses are sitting on record amounts of cash, yet they aint hiring, why would they when they discovered they can automate, outsource, and overwork whoever is left? Its all about profits AKA being "financially beneficial".

Or just you know, blame Obama.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In a world where cash earns one or two percent (pre-tax; I might add), no rational being (corporate or corporeal) will hold cash unless there is some motivation more compelling than the return that can be acheived on cash. That's why cash is always kept to the bare minimum balance required to meet liquidity requirements (thereby foregoing excess liquidity in preference for a higher return); cash is a crappy investment, generally speaking - unless you expect serious hard times when everything else's risk-adjusted return is worse thatn it is for cash.

What that means is that businesses ("corps" and otherwise) currently perceive that they cannot achieve even a one or two percent pre-tax return on capital invested in a business OR that the risk does not justify whatever return they DO forecast over and above the 1 or 2 percent.

It isn't some evil conspiracy to withhold capital from the economy; it is cold fear of the unknown; of what will happen with energy costs, health care costs, taxation, regulation, labor relations, and all the other monkeywrenches Obama has indicated he plans to throw into the works while he was demonizing corporations and fomenting class warfare.
And by "unknown", I don't mean they don't know whether things are going to go to hell in a handbasket; I mean they don't know how bad it will get and if it will ever get any better.

Damn straight you can blame it on Obama.

[TheGodfather]

Kreutz is on a troll roll this week, and his response to me doubles down on stupid. I'm going to ignore him for a while. I only hope that his left-wing BS doesn't have an effect on the rest of the forum members.

He's always been a troll. I put him on my blocked list about six months ago.

[ShotgunBlast]

I guess Apple is the most irrational company then for keeping $110 billion in cash reserves with estimates of that number going up to $200 billion by the end of 2013. Or maybe they're waiting for demand to keep growing for their products overseas so they can easily throw up a new plant to satisfy that increased demand.

Apple is not the exception to the rule. Companies large and small are holding onto cash to use when demand for their product or service picks up. Those who do have minimum quantities of cash on hand will find them slow to expand when demand finally does pick up and will miss out on opportunities.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[Kreutz]

I guess Apple is the most irrational company then for keeping $110 billion in cash reserves with estimates of that number going up to $200 billion by the end of 2013. Or maybe they're waiting for demand to keep growing for their products overseas so they can easily throw up a new plant to satisfy that increased demand.

Apple is not the exception to the rule. Companies large and small are holding onto cash to use when demand for their product or service picks up. Those who do have minimum quantities of cash on hand will find them slow to expand when demand finally does pick up and will miss out on opportunities.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

Shhh...ignore the economic realities of the last 30 years.


Blame Obama.

[Kreutz]

Corps and businesses are sitting on record amounts of cash, yet they aint hiring, why would they when they discovered they can automate, outsource, and overwork whoever is left? Its all about profits AKA being "financially beneficial".

Kreutz, the plain an simple truth is, business' primary goal is to make money. If it weren't, it would be a non-profit organization. You don't go to work as a medical coder or whatever it is you do for free, you do it for money. You have stated your time in the Army was all about the benefits not patriotism. You as a sub-contractor for whatever doctors offices or insurance company are part of outsourcing, if they could do it cheaper in house they would. If they could have somebody do 2% more work than you or do the same work as you for 2% less than you they would hire that contractor.

You could look at it from a different perspective, if you needed a new furnace installed in your house. Would you call just one contractor or several and let them compete for the installation? Isn't that trying to get the most for the least amount of money?

Thats kind of what I said, I know I'm typing in English. ONLY DEMAND creates jobs when the demand can be met profitably. No one is hiring Joe at 30k/year if his position doesnt bring in at least 31k in value no?

Some may have taken the "job creator" crap too literally, but no, no one creates a job, need does. That need being for profits/ROI.

You can blame Obama or "uncertainty" (because until Obama came along we all knew every aspect of the future right? Curse him for taking away our crystal balls!) but the truth is much of the US labor force is not needed and redundant, ergo unemployment will remain high.

Heres a simple example, Turbotax cut into alot of accountants bottom lines come tax time and reduced the need for organizations to keep more than the bare minimum of accountants on hand.

Unemployment is huge among new lawyers. Blame Obama or blame law firms outsourcing the work junior lawyers used to do to go to India because its cheaper making it impossible for them to get a foot in the door? AKA they wnated more profits instead of creating jobs, who can blame them? But again, economic reality, not Obama.

Alas reality is trolling you all. I'm so so so sorry (not really).