This was sent to me, and I'm passing it on to you. Interesting facts when considering reasons to vote against Barack Obama:
In the first three years of the Obama administration, the government imposed nearly four times the major regulations (those imposing a burden of $100 million or more to implement) on the American public than the first three years of the Bush administration.
Those regulations have been estimated to impose a regulatory burden of nearly six times the equivalent period of the Bush administration.
In January 2011, President Obama issued a “get-tough” executive order on over-regulation.
As a Heritage Foundation analysis shows, the administration passed 32 major regulations since that time, imposing a one-time fee of $6.6 billion on taxpayers, and an additional $10 billion annually.
The best the list lauding Obama’s “fiscal responsibility” accomplishments could come up with was the formation of more government commissions and the appointment of more bureaucrats to office. (Needless to say, these actions cannot be shown to have had any real effect in practice.)
The list did cite the slashing of defense by $43 billion, leaving $662 billion to fund the same military whose responsibilities Obama has expanded.
The president also planned to cut our troop levels by a half-million. The Chinese army is the world’s largest at approximately 2.8 million strong. As of January 2012, the total manpower of the U.S. armed forces was 1.45 million. This would thus be a cut of nearly 33%.
By 2020, the interest payments on the national debt will be larger than the U.S. military budget.
Although one needs to know the background and context of the infamous DHS “right-wing extremist” memo to appreciate its significance, it nonetheless slurs conservatives, patriots, and veterans as potential terrorists without any serious attempt at specificity or context in the broader “war on terror.”
By the time of the Occupy protests on May Day 2012, the fizzling “movement” had led to over 5,000 arrests and had caused nearly $30 million in damages. The numerous, widespread, and robust tea party rallies themselves have been cited as responsible for exactly zero arrests.
While millions of Americans organized “Patriot Day” to memorialize the dead of the September 11th attacks, the Obama campaign arm Organizing for America remarked the following in an email dispatch: “All 50 States are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders.”
President Obama’s selected vice president Joe Biden once alluded to tea party Republicans as being like terrorists. “They have acted like terrorists,” he said.
Obama once claimed that the Republican Party was “holding the recovery hostage.” As pointed out above, the president passed nearly all of the initiatives he desired in his first two years in office.
The 2010 mid-term elections, in some ways a referendum on the president’s policies, were abysmal for the Democrat Party at every level. The Republicans picked up a whopping 63 seats in the House, 5 in the Senate, and 6 governorships.The losses were the most for either major party since 1938.
Although the world’s pre-eminent superpower spends the most on defense overall in total capital, it ranks tenth in the world in this category as a percentage of GDP at 4.7%.
The U.S.’ projected defense spending as a percentage of GDP is slated to be 3.0% in 2019. The historic average in this country is 5.3%.
The U.S. is already estimated to spend 23.4% of GDP on net social expenditures. This ranks it in this category at #11 in the world, just behind the Netherlands. The highest in the world is Sweden at 30.6% of GDP.
As a percentage of the federal budget, health care costs alone are projected to be up in FY2012 to 24%, surpassing defense spending at 23%.
An insurance executive testified to Congress that ObamaCare mandates have bent the cost curve up and not down, increasing costs for clients by between 2% and 3% on average.
The federal budget projection for FY 2013 shows the percentages combined of health care, pensions, and welfare to be 58% of the slated $3.7 trillion in spending. (See the USA Today article showing real government spending dwarfs official figures.)
Real median household income is down $4,300 since President Obama took office. $2,900 of this decline occurred during the so called “recovery” since January 2009.
Although Obama blamed the middle class decline of the last decade on his predecessor, real media household income went down only $2,000 under President Bush.
According to Bloomberg, 95% of net jobs lost during the recession were middle-skilled jobs. In addition, 3.2 million fewer Americans hold office and sales jobs now than 5 years ago.
There are 1.2 million fewer jobs in transportation than five years ago.
Unemployment has been officially above 8% for a record-breaking 39 straight months.
Although there is no statistically significant correlation worldwide between income disparity and median per capita income, the top 1% of income earners received 93% of per capita real income gains in 2010. (Obviously, much of these gains were not honestly attained in a free market.)
Just 19% of registered voters say the president’s policies benefit the middle class, while 25% say they favor the rich. (Ideally, the government should favor neither.)
President Obama, a member of the so-called “1%,” has between 500,000 and $1,000,000 in JP Morgan Chase, a bank that received billions in taxpayer bailouts.
Trading losses incurred by JP Morgan recently was projected to surpass $7 billion. JP Morgan had close ties with and was a major creditor of MF Global, a financial firm that used customer accounts to cover margin calls. MF Global is currently about $1.6 billion short on its accounts. No one has been charged with any wrongdoing, including former MF Global CEO and former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.
One man protecting Jon Corzine from potential charges is Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan Chase, who is a close friend of Barack Obama’s who works on Wall Street.
As the Eurozone is flailing with average 11% unemployment, and Spain is following Greece into the economic abyss, Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has pressured European banks to buy up increasing amounts of government debt. There is no evidence that this maneuver would solve the root problem of government spending and economic production imbalances, as opposed to worsening them through neglect.
The proportion of Americans in their prime working years or 25-54 is just 75.7%, the lowest in twenty three years.
The Misery Index for Barack Obama has gone up 2.57 points since he took office. A combination of (official) unemployment and inflation, it is a gross measure of the mood of the country.
Obama has averaged 10.78 on the Misery Index during his term. For context, George W. Bush’s averaged 8.11, although he ended at 7.39.
At a 2012 press conference, President Obama stated that the business that private equity firms do was just fine, only what Mitt Romney did at Bain Capital was wrong.
Those regulations have been estimated to impose a regulatory burden of nearly six times the equivalent period of the Bush administration.
In January 2011, President Obama issued a “get-tough” executive order on over-regulation.
As a Heritage Foundation analysis shows, the administration passed 32 major regulations since that time, imposing a one-time fee of $6.6 billion on taxpayers, and an additional $10 billion annually.
The best the list lauding Obama’s “fiscal responsibility” accomplishments could come up with was the formation of more government commissions and the appointment of more bureaucrats to office. (Needless to say, these actions cannot be shown to have had any real effect in practice.)
The list did cite the slashing of defense by $43 billion, leaving $662 billion to fund the same military whose responsibilities Obama has expanded.
The president also planned to cut our troop levels by a half-million. The Chinese army is the world’s largest at approximately 2.8 million strong. As of January 2012, the total manpower of the U.S. armed forces was 1.45 million. This would thus be a cut of nearly 33%.
By 2020, the interest payments on the national debt will be larger than the U.S. military budget.
Although one needs to know the background and context of the infamous DHS “right-wing extremist” memo to appreciate its significance, it nonetheless slurs conservatives, patriots, and veterans as potential terrorists without any serious attempt at specificity or context in the broader “war on terror.”
By the time of the Occupy protests on May Day 2012, the fizzling “movement” had led to over 5,000 arrests and had caused nearly $30 million in damages. The numerous, widespread, and robust tea party rallies themselves have been cited as responsible for exactly zero arrests.
While millions of Americans organized “Patriot Day” to memorialize the dead of the September 11th attacks, the Obama campaign arm Organizing for America remarked the following in an email dispatch: “All 50 States are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders.”
President Obama’s selected vice president Joe Biden once alluded to tea party Republicans as being like terrorists. “They have acted like terrorists,” he said.
Obama once claimed that the Republican Party was “holding the recovery hostage.” As pointed out above, the president passed nearly all of the initiatives he desired in his first two years in office.
The 2010 mid-term elections, in some ways a referendum on the president’s policies, were abysmal for the Democrat Party at every level. The Republicans picked up a whopping 63 seats in the House, 5 in the Senate, and 6 governorships.The losses were the most for either major party since 1938.
Although the world’s pre-eminent superpower spends the most on defense overall in total capital, it ranks tenth in the world in this category as a percentage of GDP at 4.7%.
The U.S.’ projected defense spending as a percentage of GDP is slated to be 3.0% in 2019. The historic average in this country is 5.3%.
The U.S. is already estimated to spend 23.4% of GDP on net social expenditures. This ranks it in this category at #11 in the world, just behind the Netherlands. The highest in the world is Sweden at 30.6% of GDP.
As a percentage of the federal budget, health care costs alone are projected to be up in FY2012 to 24%, surpassing defense spending at 23%.
An insurance executive testified to Congress that ObamaCare mandates have bent the cost curve up and not down, increasing costs for clients by between 2% and 3% on average.
The federal budget projection for FY 2013 shows the percentages combined of health care, pensions, and welfare to be 58% of the slated $3.7 trillion in spending. (See the USA Today article showing real government spending dwarfs official figures.)
Real median household income is down $4,300 since President Obama took office. $2,900 of this decline occurred during the so called “recovery” since January 2009.
Although Obama blamed the middle class decline of the last decade on his predecessor, real media household income went down only $2,000 under President Bush.
According to Bloomberg, 95% of net jobs lost during the recession were middle-skilled jobs. In addition, 3.2 million fewer Americans hold office and sales jobs now than 5 years ago.
There are 1.2 million fewer jobs in transportation than five years ago.
Unemployment has been officially above 8% for a record-breaking 39 straight months.
Although there is no statistically significant correlation worldwide between income disparity and median per capita income, the top 1% of income earners received 93% of per capita real income gains in 2010. (Obviously, much of these gains were not honestly attained in a free market.)
Just 19% of registered voters say the president’s policies benefit the middle class, while 25% say they favor the rich. (Ideally, the government should favor neither.)
President Obama, a member of the so-called “1%,” has between 500,000 and $1,000,000 in JP Morgan Chase, a bank that received billions in taxpayer bailouts.
Trading losses incurred by JP Morgan recently was projected to surpass $7 billion. JP Morgan had close ties with and was a major creditor of MF Global, a financial firm that used customer accounts to cover margin calls. MF Global is currently about $1.6 billion short on its accounts. No one has been charged with any wrongdoing, including former MF Global CEO and former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.
One man protecting Jon Corzine from potential charges is Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan Chase, who is a close friend of Barack Obama’s who works on Wall Street.
As the Eurozone is flailing with average 11% unemployment, and Spain is following Greece into the economic abyss, Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has pressured European banks to buy up increasing amounts of government debt. There is no evidence that this maneuver would solve the root problem of government spending and economic production imbalances, as opposed to worsening them through neglect.
The proportion of Americans in their prime working years or 25-54 is just 75.7%, the lowest in twenty three years.
The Misery Index for Barack Obama has gone up 2.57 points since he took office. A combination of (official) unemployment and inflation, it is a gross measure of the mood of the country.
Obama has averaged 10.78 on the Misery Index during his term. For context, George W. Bush’s averaged 8.11, although he ended at 7.39.
At a 2012 press conference, President Obama stated that the business that private equity firms do was just fine, only what Mitt Romney did at Bain Capital was wrong.
The president also stated that Mitt Romney’s private sector experience was not appropriate for someone in the White House. As reported: “There may be value for that kind of experience, but it’s not in the White House,” Obama said.
Showing a complete and utter disconnect on how a capitalist economy works, he said that Romney’s goal was creating wealth for himself and not others. Needless to say, the goal is irrelevant. When one seeks to make money “for himself” in a capitalist economy, one must produce goods and services that are demanded, hire others for labor and pay them wages, etc.
Despite the implosion of the “green” jobs-heavy Spanish economy, the president is doubling down on his disastrous green energy projects.
Evergreen Energy received $5.3 million in “stimulus” funds and subsequently went bankrupt.
In Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s state of Nevada, Amonix Inc. received $5.9 million in “stimulus” funds and laid off 200 employees after only seven months of operation.
Car battery manufacturer Ener1 Electric received a $118.5 million grant and filed for bankruptcy three years later.
Just one of Obama’s bundlers is the wife of a businessman who received a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to manufacture solar panels. The business, NRG, reported a first quarter 2012 loss of $206 million.
The Obama-influenced National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) blocked Boeing from opening a plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state. Boeing was going to spend a billion dollars and planned to hire for 1,000 jobs.
The NLRB’s general counsel then bullied Boeing not to “litigate this case in the media and public arena.” The NLRB also passed new regulations to make unionization easier. A Heritage Foundation analysis shows, logically enough, that the NLRB rules “harm workers” and stymie job creation.
Nine in ten non-union workers agree. Union membership in America still fell to a post-World War II low of 11.8% in 2011. Private sector union members dialed in at a paltry 6.9%, the lowest since FDR.
Speaking of bullying, the President once gave a self-serving thirty minute address on Cartoon Network to children on the subject of bullying, apparently aiming to couch himself as a champion of victims and to direct children towards authority figures.
After a child in North Carolina stated that according to Obama’s own autobiography Dreams from My Father he had bullied a girl while in school, the fanatically partisan teacher launched into a tirade and threatened the student for daring to criticize the president.
In May 2012, the president gave a speech at a high school commencement in Joplin, Missouri, where a tornado had recently obliterated the town. Obama spared no opportunity to preach his class warfare rhetoric and to rail against greed.
Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Dolores Huerta, an avowed member of the Democrat Socialists of America, and a close friend of Hugo Chavez.
A document uncovered shows Obama headlined a speech to the Chicago chapter of the Democrat Socialists of America in 1996, when he was a candidate for state senate.
An expert on narcissism, psychiatrist Dr. Sam Vaknin, has made the case that Obama is a malignant narcissist. Dr. Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist himself, said, “has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his achievements?” Obama’s ostensible penning of two autobiographies by the age of 45 seems to confirm this estimation.
A Politico analysis exposed Obama’s constant abuse of the word “unprecedented.”
Despite his feigned posture of selflessness, the president pronouncedly uses the word “I” in his speeches. One New Hampshire speech, for example, shows that he used it 45 times.
In that same speech, Obama claims that, “And we know that if we truly want to have long-term economic growth in this country, then we need to start addressing the struggles middle-class families have been grappling with for years, long before this recession ever hit.”
Love letters to his first girlfriend show Obama was an author who penned a florid sludge of self-absorbed gobbledygook. Obama’s “New York” girlfriend from Dreams from My Father was not real; she was a “composite girlfriend.”
A comparison of SAT scores between George W. Bush and the transferring class of Barack Obama has led to grounded speculation that Bush likely had a higher SAT score than Barack Obama.
President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address rated at an eight grade reading level, one of the lowest in recent times. This is two grades below George W. Bush’s average on the Flesch-Kincaid score, and Obama’s track record is about the historical average.
Obama served as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he was honorarily called “professor.” Regardless of all qualifications in the carefully couched university statement, he was not a tenured or full-time Professor, whether Assistant, Associate, Full or Emeritus.
A comparison of jobs under presidencies stretching back to 1948 shows that the so-called “recovery” under Obama is the weakest and follows upon a steep drop in job levels.
When President Obama took office in 2009, he said that he “will be held accountable.” He added that he would turn around the failing American economy within his first term and get the country back on track. Obama concluded, “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
Obama stated that he would not be a “tax-and-spend liberal” who would blow taxpayer money on “pork barrel” projects. The unbelievably pork-chocked “stimulus” bill had only an estimated $90 billion for priority projects, the rest being literally billions in wasteful pork.
The Obama administration repeatedly made the mind-boggling claim that it had “created or saved” thousands of jobs. But even the AP confessed that the created/saved numbers being put out were seriously “exaggerated.”
By mid-2012, the Obama administration projected unemployment to be well below 6% and approaching Bush norm levels (5.26%). The unemployment rate is 8.2% and if you factor in discouraged workers, it is more around 8.7%.
The General Solicitor argued before the Supreme Court that the individual mandate penalty is a tax. Of course, the argument was shot down.
Before the Democrats crammed Obamacare down the American public’s throats, Obama repeated the whopper, “We will keep this promise… let me be clear: If you like your doctor or healthcare provider, you an keep them. If you like your health care plan, you can keep that too.” As area expert Betty McCaughy, PhD. points out, most Americans (exempting the politicians, who opted out) will be forced into a one-size-fits-all plan to be dictated by the federal government in 2014.
Obama lied no less than eight times about his pledge to broadcast the healthcare bill negotiations on C-SPAN.
Obama once fibbed, “We’ve got to spend some money now to pull us out of this recession. But as soon as we’re out of this recession, we’ve got to get serious about starting to live within our means, instead of leaving debt for our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.” Haven’t we been in a “jobless recovery” since 2010?
Before Obama signed the stimulus bill into law, he claimed it would lead to 2.5 million “shovel-ready” jobs. Of course, he realized later that this was off-base.
As reported by Politico, the Obama administration promised that lobbyists “won’t find a job in my administration.” The article cited went on to list several major administration officials with lobbyist backgrounds, including Eric Holder, Tom Vilsack, Cecilia Munoz, and Patrick Gaspard.
While on the campaign trail, Obama said, “We need tougher border security, and a renewed focus on busting up gangs and traffickers crossing our border. . . . That begins at home, with comprehensive immigration reform. That means securing our border and passing tough employer enforcement laws.” Obama subsequently shut down the virtual fence program and attacked Arizona for attempting to implement immigration enforcement laws.
The president promised his housing plan would prevent between seven and nine million foreclosures. Yet only one in four mortgage holders saw their payments decrease under “HAMP” and the departing inspector general Neil Barofsky said the program fell far short of success.
The administration said that the stimulus plan would create good jobs and that they wouldn’t be shipped overseas. ABC News reported that eight of every ten “green stimulus” dollars went to foreign firms.
Promised that his plan to try to help struggling homeowners “will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans. It will not help speculators.” Yet that’s precisely what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did when it provided assistance to second home and investment property mortgage holders.
The president claimed that a Caterpillar plant would be able to rehire some of the 2,400 workers it laid off. Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar, denied the claim and asserted that there would be more layoffs before any rehires. Of any rehires Caterpillar has made since then, the Huffington Post admits that the company hires more abroad than it does in the U.S..
In January 2007, the Obama campaign issued a statement that said that Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago.
An LA Times article (original removed) later showed that he had spent time in a Muslim school and witnesses testify that he had participated in Friday prayers.
As Senator, Obama decried recess appointments as less credible than normal appointments. As he made recess appointments (when the Senate was not actually in recess), he implied that he was acting in the interest of the American people by going around the Constitution.
After the stimulus bill was passed, the administration made the following statement: “We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov.” As Jim Geraghty of NRO pointed out, the website doesn’t even have a search feature and cost taxpayers $84 million.
President Obama once registered his opposition to a Columbian free trade deal while posturing about the extra-juridical violence in the drug-ridden nation. Later, when signaling that his administration was interested in inking a free trade deal with Columbia, there was nary a word about the continuing violence there.
As Jim Geraghty also noted, the Obama administration said it had no plans to renegotiate NAFTA or to revise its labor and environmental provisions, as candidate Obama had assured future voters.
As Human Events relayed, during the debt ceiling debate President Obama claimed 80% of Americans supported including higher taxes as part of the deal. But a Rasmussen poll taken the same week showed only 34% believed a tax hike should be included in such an agreement.
The same article revealed another lie: “During his presidential campaign, Obama said that his mother died of cancer after being denied coverage for a preexisting condition. He used her image in a campaign ad, repeated the claim in debates, and used the same rhetoric as President when he tried to sell ObamaCare to the American people. But a new book by New York Times reporter Janny Scott says that Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, had health insurance through her employer and was only denied disability insurance.”
Another tidbit: “During his 2010 State of the Union address, and again during the 2010 midterm elections, Obama railed against foreign money influencing U.S. elections.” Researchers have tied Obama to foreign campaign contributions, allegedly even from the Middle East. Regardless, Obama’s claims were not substantiated, let alone quantified.
When on the campaign trail, Obama promised to protect Medicare from cuts. Yet the Obamacare bill infamously implies $500 billion slashed from Medicare.
While selling the stimulus soap, Obama stated with a straight face that 90% of the jobs t0 be created by the stimulus would come from the private sector. And yet an October 2009 analysis showed that state public sectors benefited the most from the stimulus.
The newly elected Obama once laughably pitched that the “green energy economy” (whatever that is) could create five million jobs, even if that meant spending $150 billion.
Anecdotally, the above calculation would come to $30,000 a job. By comparison, estimates of the job creation of the stimulus program are in the range of half a million to $4.1 million a job.
The Obama administration once ridiculously claimed that unemployment payments create jobs. “The framework agreement extended unemployment benefits at their current level for 13 months, through the end of 2011. … According to the Council of Economic Advisers, passing this provision will create 600,000 jobs in 2011 alone.” Obviously, there is no “multiplier effect” if the first link in the economic chain is taking something out of the system for nothing.
Obama criticized Bush’s deficits and promised to stop deficit spending if elected. But he quadrupled the size of the deficit and there’s no sign in sight of him relenting on his unchecked spending.
When campaigning Obama criticized bills that were too long to read and promised to put a stop to it. But many of the bills he has been signing into law are monstrosities of up to 2000+ pages.
Obama told Congress that the health bill he supported (before the Stupak amendment) would not provide public funding for abortions. After “blue dog” Democrats threatened to revolt, language was included supposedly preventing public funding for abortions. The Senate bill would contain no explicit language against funding abortions, however.
On the campaign trail, Obama promised bipartisanship. But infamously, Obama’s Democrat allies shut Republicans out of all major meetings on the Obamacare law, with the result that the behemoth bill got not a single GOP vote.
As a candidate for president, Barack Obama promised to end taxation for seniors making less than $50,000. Even Politifact conceded this was a “promise broken.”
While campaigning, Obama criticized his opponent’s plan to tax employer-paid healthcare benefits, and promised he would not tax them. Of course, Obamacare does.
Barack Obama promised businesses a $3,000 refundable tax credit for each full-time employee hired. While Politifact rates this a “compromise,” the truth is that the business credits disbursed were not refundable.
The Obama administration pledged to allow people to withdraw between $10,000 and $15,000 without penalty. This pledge was eventually abandoned.
On the campaign trail, Obama promised college kids a $4,000 tax credit. It turns out that in 2012, the American Opportunity Credit is only $2,500.
Obama promised he would not sign a healthcare bill version that would add one dime to the federal deficit. Obviously, the passed Obamacare bill blows that claim out the water.
The president showed that his heated rhetoric about passing the stimulus bill to avoid an economic catastrophe was shameless guff when he took off on a swanky Valentine’s Day vacation in Chicago for the weekend instead of immediately signing the stimulus bill.
Obama did not condemn Congress for its secretive closed-door committee meetings when drafting the stimulus package despite promises of greater transparency in Washington.
He claimed, “If you actually took the number of Muslims [sic] Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” For a relatively populous nation, we still rank upwards of thirtieth in the world.
Despite saying “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that every country is going to say okay,” it was later discovered that Obama cranks the thermostat in the Oval Office.
As the American economy ground to a halt, in part due to “skyrocketing” gas prices, Obama once risibly suggested that one way to move off of foreign oil and to prevent drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf was to… properly inflate one’s car tires. An ABC News analysis shows that this may plausibly save about half the possible oil that could be extracted from the OCS if Americans’ cars ran ideally.
Obama once ostentatiously exhorted his Cabinet to trim $100 million from the federal budget. That’s 0.0032% of the $3.1 trillion budget in FY 2009.
Barack Obama once filled out a political survey showing he had relatively extreme views on everything from abortion to gun control. After he dissembled that an aide had filled it out for him, a handwriting analysis confirmed that it most certainly was Obama who filled it out.
Obama once claimed that his jobs bill was “paid for.” The AP showed not so much.
The president said that the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United “open[ed] the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.” But there are still restrictions on corporate contributions, including foreign contributions.
Obama says that because of his new CAFE standards for cars and trucks he would save a typical family about $8,000 a year in gas costs. Actually, this is mathematically impossible.
Obama claimed that the ‘border fence’ was basically complete when it was only 5% finished. Maybe what he meant was that was as much as was going to be completed?
President Obama shamelessly asserted that doctors are going around amputating people’s legs to turn a profit, and removing tonsils to turn a buck. Even ABC News couldn’t go along with that leftist bilge.
During his 2008 campaign, Obama said unconvicted and unrepentant terrorist William Ayers was “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” but “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” Not only did Ayers jokingly confirm he launched Obama’s political career from his living room, but evidence has surfaced that Obama attended a local BBQ with Ayers in July 2005. This is in addition to both of them sitting on the same boards.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama made an outright lie. On national television, Obama said that “100 percent” of McCain’s ads had been negative. Not even close. McCain’s ads were about 73% negative, and Obama’s were about 61%.
In 2010, Obama said before the mid-term elections, “”Some Republican leaders in Congress” are “pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall.” One guy, Paul Ryan, could be argued to have proposed partially privatizing Social Security, though he denied this is even an accurate way to put “personal retirement accounts” held by and managed through the government.
Obama once claimed segregation was “the law of the land” in the fifties in sixties, although it was law in only a minority of states.
The president said that if the Supreme Court throws out the federal health care law, it “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Since the Constitutional law lecturer should know that judicial review has been used before, even Politifact scored this one as “false.”
President Barack Obama said American manufacturers are creating new jobs for the first time since 1990. This was also rated untrue by the lenient Politifact.
Another claim: “Preventive care … saves money, for families, for businesses, for government, for everybody.” Also untrue.
In 2011, Obama said, “Thirty million Americans, including a lot of people in Florida, are going to be able to get healthcare next year because of that law.” The law was not even set to take effect in 2012.
At a late October fundraiser, President Obama claimed, “I made a bunch of these promises during the campaign. … We’ve got about 60 percent done in three years.” Politifact finds this ‘false‘ as well, because something that is in the works is not done.
President Barack Obama claimed the United States has “doubled our exports.” Again, not true.
The president claimed that his proposed budget “will help reduce the deficit by $400 billion over the next decade to the lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president.” Nu-uh. Not even close.
Obama claimed in 2011 that under the White House’s budget proposal, “we will not be adding more to the national debt” by the middle of the decade. Wrongo. (Again, according to the left-leaning Politifact.)
When talking about Obamacare, the president said, “Insurers delayed an Illinois man’s treatment, and he died because of it.” The insurer’s decision was reversed and the man lived three more years.
In an interview on Super Bowl Sunday 2011, he said, “I didn’t raise taxes once.” Um, yes you did.
In a truly ridiculous statement, he uttered that when FDR started Social Security… “it only affected widows and orphans,” and when Medicare began, “it was a small program.” Yeah, not exactly.
As Politifact reported, another false statement by Obama was that the Bush administration had been “giving (auto companies) billions of dollars and just asking nothing in return.”
A big-time lie from Obama was that “”The vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country.” Sorry, you were backed by Wall Street and a number of industries.
Obama also claimed there were “no earmarks” in the pork-bloated stimulus bill. Yes, there were.
He claimed that his healthcare bill will “give every American the same opportunity” to buy health insurance the way members of Congress do. Come on. Everyone knows Congress exempted itself from Obamacare.
“If we went back to the obesity rates that existed back in the 1980s, the Medicare system over several years could save as much as a trillion dollars.” Say, what?
In July 2009, Obama claimed that health insurance companies are “making record profits, right now.” They were not making “record profits.” In fact, profits tended to be down from 2006-7.
Also falsely stated that “We import more oil today than ever before.”
In 2008, Obama made the absurd statement, “”Oil companies …currently have 68-million acres that they’re not using.” Would that be because of the miles of green tape between them and working such land?
Said in 2008 that “The fact is that although we have had a president who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down.” But they have gone down.
Said that the U.S. government spends less on energy innovation “than the pet food industry invests in its own products.” You lie like a dog.
Also said, “”Our National Guard, as we saw in the Midwest flooding, can’t function as effectively as it could. I was talking to National Guard representatives. Fifteen of their 17 helicopters in this region were overseas during the flooding.” An audit shows there was no shortage of helicopters available.
Obama was caught in a fib that “I have never said that I don’t wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins.” Our assuredly patriotic president did say he won’t wear them, while criticizing some people who wore them and were “not acting very patriotic.” He also defined “true patriotism” as “speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.” How compelling.
Candidate Obama once claimed that strong Republican contenders in 2012 wanted to cut foreign aid to other countries, including Israel, to zero. Politifact rated this lie as “pants on fire” worthy.
Obama claimed in his infamous Osawatomie speech that “Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent.” This is also wrong.
President Obama pledged “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” From Obamacare to the GM bailouts to his recess appointments to his unconfirmed “czars” to countless other petty indiscretions, this president has routinely flaunted the Constitution..
In a recent report on the supposed 3 million “green jobs” manufactured under the Obama administration, all manner of positions, from garbageman to used clothing salesman to school bus driver were counted.
In an article that was published on the Huffington Post, Republican Darrell Issa cited that $100 billion had been spent on “green jobs,” leading to little more than mounting debt.
Issa provided the following dismal statistics regarding the green jobs training program: “Equipped with $500 million to fund ‘green’ worker training for 124,893 people, the IG [Inspector General] found they have only trained 52,762 (42 percent of the target), and only 8,035 actually got jobs (10 percent of the target). Of those, only 1,033 (two percent of the target) have kept their jobs longer than 6 months.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is also unilaterally changing the way jobs numbers are counted that will make it more difficult for journalists and economists to make timely assessments of their veracity, according to the transparency advocated Sunshine in Government.
The BLS is also forcing journalists to report on economic data using government-issued computers.
As noted in a Forbes article, a number of radicals have turned against Obama, calling him everything from a “psychopath” to a “megalomaniac” and arguing that he is little different than Bush.
Famous left-wing academic Noam Chomsky once said that Obama is worse than Bush.
Two of Obama’s close left-wing associates, Herb and Marion Sandler, were pioneers of the “option ARM” mortgage, which leads relatively poor people into mortgages whose interest payments they cannot ultimately afford.
In May 2012, apparently haven’t learn the key economics lesson of his term, Obama proposes another multi-billion dollar slush fund stimulus program.
As CBS reported, real inflation is not the modest 3.1% reported by the government, but a cumbersome 8%.
Gas prices were up 103.77% under Obama in just two years.
This is a bigger gas price increase than under Jimmy Carter.
Gas prices have soared despite Obama releasing 30 billion barrels from its strategic petroleum reserve.
Obama approved of $1.78 per gallon subsidy for corn ethanol fuel.
As Reuters reported, Obama blamed others for high gasoline prices.
When speaking on the economy, Obama made the revealing gaffe that he thought the economy was “doing just fine.”
Former Obama adviser Stever Rattner appeared on MSNBC and disputed the president’s comment that the economy was “doing just fine.” After the phrase blew up in his face, he walked the comment back. Just a month prior, Obama had made a similar gaffe in regards to the magnitude of the recession that “sometimes I forget” [about it].
President Obama once blamed the structural unemployment on the country’s level of automation… such as its ATM machines.
The U.S.’ Global Competitiveness ranking has fallen from first place to fifth place under Obama.
Obama lied frequently and egregiously about what he would do as president. The future president promised he would cut deficits, go line-by-line through wasteful legislation, bring more transparency to government, and end the wars in a timely fashion. Yet he has not been held accountable by the mainstream media for these lies.
Obama the candidate used soaring and empty rhetoric to woo a nation sick of partisanship. But he betrayed this lofty tone a number of times, such as by referring to Republicans as “enemies,” rhetorically saying he would bring a gun to a knife fight, and that he wanted supporters to “get in people’s faces.”
Obama has engaged in class warfare politics foreign to this country’s history. He has attempted to pit rich against poor, and middle class against both, instead of underlining the capitalist truth that we can all prosper together through hard work.
The future president promised he would work with the Republicans in a bi-partisan fashion. But along with the Democrat-led Congress, he would force legislation through with little or no consequential input from GOP representatives.
The economic crisis that put Obama over the top was caused by bad fiscal practices such as forcing banks to make loans to subprime borrowers and the government insuring mortgages. There is no serious way of avoiding the fact that the government created perverse incentives and moral hazard with its mortgage lending regulations and policies.
Barack Obama’s idea of “stimulus” is to blow hundreds of billions on an economic program that fails by its own measures. Mitt Romney’s idea of “stimulus” is to cut taxes and expenses for businesses so people can get back to work.
As head of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney advised struggling companies to lay off a few thousand workers to keep afloat. As head of the United States, Obama’s economic policies have seen through the loss of over 5 million jobs.
Barack Obama switched to a Ford Hybrid from a Chrysler 300 C during his campaign (before his presidential ride became The Beast). Mitt Romney owns many cars, including a Ford Mustang and a number of SUVs, and he doesn’t apologize for them.
Mitt Romney supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Obama supports sky-high gas prices.
Barack Obama believes in manmade climate change and supported taxing the world economy via cap-and-trade. Mitt Romney opposes regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as ThinkProgress laments.
Mitt Romney concedes that liquid coal is a viable form of energy. Barack Obama’s approach to coal is to destroy the industry.
Romney withdrew Massachusetts from the carbon-regulatory regime RGGI. Obama’s science czar John Holdren would like to see such a scheme implemented on a “planetary” scale.
Obama collects Spiderman and Conan the Barbarian comics. Mitt Romney collects struggling businesses before turning them around.
President Obama would blame Bush for the situation on numerous occasions.
The president has spent more money than any president over four years, while racking up more debt than all previous presidents combined. This money has to be paid back at interest by us and our children, one way or another.
Obama has been one of the most corrupt presidents in history. Trillions in taxpayer money has been doled out by Obama in politically partisan fashion to unions, non-profit organizations, corporations, banks, and other campaign contributors.
Meanwhile, the spontaneously arising tea party, which objected to such shameless theft from hard-working producers and redistribution to the corrupt and non-working, were marginalized by the president, vilified by the Democrat Party without objection by Obama, and even called a foul-mouthed epithet by the president himself.
The president has used funding of the arts to engage in political propaganda.
The president has acted extremely incompetently at times; most visibly after the BP oil spill, which he let languish for forty days as he rhetorically used it as an issue to demonstrate the supposed wisdom of his environmental policies. Once he decided to act, the leak was stopped within a few days. The BP oil spillage then quickly resolved itself by dissipating into the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama would defy the rule of law repeatedly, acting more like he had been coronated Tsar than elected president. Disregarding a Louisiana judge’s ruling against the unilaterally imposed moratorium on offshore drilling is but one obvious example. Strong-arming BP to set up a victim’s fund in violation of due process rights is a related offense.
The president would then appoint numerous radical, virtually unconfirmable “czars” to head various executive posts and initiatives in violation of Senatorial advise and consent. Many of these czars, like Julius Genachowski at FCC, would operate in defiance of legislatively passed laws.
The president then ignored the Constitution on several other matters, such as by making a recess appointment when the Senate was not in recess, which is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution.
The president would then bully countless businesses and organizations, meanwhile touting a “bullying” campaign in our schools. A prominent example among many is the NLRB’s blocking of a Boeing plant to be built in right-to-work South Carolina.
President Obama pressured the CEO of GM to resign and then put a political hack in his place. It is not the proper role of the president to act like CEO of the country.
President Obama noticeably lacks patriotism when it comes to celebrating national holidays, showing reverence for the military, and touting American exceptionalism. He has skipped several veteran’s or patriotic events or has celebrated them in spurious, non-symbolic fashion.
The president has ideologically attacked the economic and political foundations of the country, referring to them in some cases as “failed theories.” He has stated that the Constitution is “deeply flawed,” for one example.
Obama does not openly and consistently endorse the Constitutional foundations of this country; namely, individual rights, liberty, and limited government. Instead, he emphasizes collectivist principles laudable in society and conflates them with the role of government.
President Obama has failed to articulate a clear vision for the country. This is presumably because he has a hidden agenda and is managing things on a day-to-day basis pragmatically as he gains power.
The president has imposed billions of dollars in regulatory burdens upon companies and small businesses.
He has done nothing about the U.S.’ highest corporate tax rates in the world, driving overseas much-needed jobs.
The president imposed a number of tax increases that impact the lower and middle class.
He also deceptively raised taxes after his next election year to pay for “Obamacare.”
President Obama defied Congress and effectively implemented the Dream Act by executive order. This runs contrary to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution granting Congress the authority: “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States.”
Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” plan, which no GOP in the House voted for, fails by its own measures. Unemployment still above 8%, economy continues to bleed jobs.
Obama stimulus gave $200,000 to teach Siberian lawmakers how to engage Russian policy makers in Moscow.
Stimulus funding of $250,000 went to bug storage for an insect museum at North Carolina State University that gets 44 visitors a year.
Gave $500,000 to put microchips in recycling bins to check up on the recycling efforts of senior citizens.
Gave $5 million to create a geothermal energy system for the Oak Ridge City Center shopping mall in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Gave $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.
Provided $712,000 spent on a project by researchers at Northwestern University to develop “machine-generated humor.”
Buses in Winter Haven, Florida that average two riders per hour got $2.4 million so that the two riders per hour would have brand new buses to ride on.
A Georgia Tech assistant music professor got $760,000 so he could jam with “world renowned musicians” to “create satisfying works of art.”
The California Academy of Sciences got $2 million dollars to send people to the Indian Ocean to photograph ants. “Everyone has run into ants … now we need to listen to them,” one ant photographer said.
The University of North Carolina received $762,000 to create a YouTube dance application.
Gave $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri.
Gave $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York.
Gave $3.4 million to create an underground turtle tunnel, or eco-passage, in Lake Jackson, Florida.
About a half-million dollars to give smartphones to people trying to quit smoking so they could “contact their quitting support groups by text message or phone calls to prevent relapses.”
Almost $300,000 to study how Yoga might reduce menopausal hot flashes.
Gave $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths.
Gave $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.
Gave $700,000 to Oregon crab fishermen to help recover lost crab pots
Gave $1.5 billion for a Carbon Capturing Contest.
Gave $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
SUNY Buffalo received $390,000 to study young adults who drink malt liquor and smoke marijuana.
Montana received $2.2 million to install skylights in their state-run liquor warehouse.
Gave $800,000 to John Murtha Airport to repave a back runway used by about 20 passengers a day. This was in addition to millions given to this airport over the decades.
Gave $1 million to a Chicago dinner cruise company to “combat terrorism.”
Gave $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
The Coast Guard gets $572 million to create 1,235 new jobs. This comes to $460,000 per job.
Gave $11 million to Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.
Gave $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Oklahoma.
Gave $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
Gave $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minnesota.
Millions spent on signs advertising the “American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.”
Barack Obama carries out much of the $700 billion TARP program. Obama forces banks to take money, and even refuses to accept repayment in some cases to wield control over them.
President Obama takes over two of three top U.S. automakers GM & Chrysler.
Obama essentially fires GM CEO Rick Wagoner.
Obama replaces the previous GM CEO with “Auto Czar” Steve Rattner, who had no experience in the automobile industry.
Steven Rattner was appointed (without Senate confirmation) while he was under SEC investigation in NY for illegal kickbacks in exchange for pensions fraud.
Rattner estimated the cost to U.S. taxpayers for auto bailouts at $14 billion.
Obama deprives GM bondholders of their rightful compensation in order to maintain perquisites for United Auto Workers, which drove the company into bankruptcy to begin with. This is in violation of Article 1: Section 8 clause on uniform bankruptcies.
Despite being called a “success,” at least 16,500 jobs were lost due to GM and Chrysler plant closures.
Dealerships contracted with GM & Chrysler all over the country were shut down. Evidence suggests that Democrat-donating dealers were rescued from shutdowns.
Obama’s touted “cash for clunkers” program was a fiasco that led to program mismanagement, taxpayer subsidized waste, and a temporary boost leading to original purchase levels.
Thousands of cars were destroyed, harming the ability of the poor to have cheap transportation.
Evidence shows that the program led only to an increase in national fuel efficiency of 0.65 miles per gallon.
As part of the GM takeover, Obama authorized billions to be spent subsidizing the electric-powered Chevy Volt.
The car was alleged by many to be prone to spontaneous combustion. Every single Chevy Volt sold, all 8,000 of them, was recalled.
High campaign contributor General Electric received billions in subsidies, grants, and green energy tax breaks under Obama. In fact, GE paid zero taxes in 2010 on $14.2 billion in “profit.”
General Electric spent more than $65.7 million on lobbying during the Obama administration – more than any other company.
Former GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt was made Obama’s “Jobs Czar,” technically, the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Immelt once lamented that America was not more like Germany, where “business and government work… as a pack.” As writer Timothy Carney pointed out at the Washington Examiner, Germany is 49 of 57 countries ranked in terms of nascent entrepreneurship, and “the biggest German companies today – Allianz, Deutsche Bank, Daimler, Siemens, Volkswagen, Krupp – were the biggest companies 90 years ago.”
GE has sent tens of thousands of its jobs overseas under Obama.
GE spearheaded the commission that pushed through the ban on incandescent light bulbs. The company, along with Phillips, stood to make billions on toxic and overhyped compact fluorescent light bulbs. In the meantime, GE closed the last major incandescent plant in the country, meaning lost jobs here and thousands gained in China. The light bulb ban was later defunded by the Republican-led House, but not overturned.
GE’s previously owned company MSNBC was notorious on both right and left for showing indisputably favorable coverage to Barack Obama during the 2008 election campaign. MSNBC was later bought out by Comcast, which now has a 51% majority share.
Another major green energy supplier, Solyndra, was famously given at least $535 million in government loans to produce solar energy panels, but later had to file bankruptcy.
Solyndra was led by Tulsa Billionaire George Kaiser, a key Obama fundraiser who donated $53,500 to the president’s election campaign, and raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the same cause.
The Solyndra workers on unemployment received bonus payments of $13,000 each due to a trade law, in addition to their unemployment compensation.
As reported by CBS, Solyndra was recently caught on film destroying millions in parts.
Solyndra was a relatively minor recipient of green energy loans and subsidies. As reported by the NY Times, NRG Energy received nearly $1.6 billion to provide solar energy to about 100,000 homes. As the article points out, green energy companies can receive cash grants of up to 30% of a project up front instead of taking tax breaks in the future. This would mean NRG Energy can get a $430 million “bonus” after the project is completed.
According to the Department of Energy, “clean energy” loans total over $35 billion, producing just 62,500 jobs. That calculates to $565,000 per job.
The man Obama selected to oversee the Department of Energy, Steven Chu, once explicitly compared the American public to teenagers who need to be “educated” on the merits of “green energy.”
Admitted communist Van Jones, who once said on live radio that his intention was to overthrow capitalism through the means of “eco-capitalism,” was tapped as Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar.” A former White House aide provides a testimonial that everyone who works close to the president is thoroughly vetted.
Van Jones was later forced to resign, after months of major media stonewalling, only after it was discovered that the man was a verifiable 9/11 “Truther.”
Van Jones was selected for the position by Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett, a fellow-traveling radical whose father Vernon Davis was a card-carrying communist who knew Frank Marshall Davis. Valerie Jarrett’s mentor was Marilyn Katz, who worked security for Students for a Democratic Society, knows William Ayers intimately, and penned a book with famous communist Carl Davidson.
Former head of the Environmental Protect Agency Carol M. Browner, director of Obama’s Energy and Climate Change policy from 2009-2011, was reported by the Washington Times to have been a member of the Socialist Internationale’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society. (Note the number and variety of world leaders.)
Obama’s “Science Czar” John Holdren once co-wrote a book advocating forced abortions, and widespread sterilization. He also advocated centralizing world government control of all natural resources under a “Planetary Regime.”
Obama’s “Regulatory Czar” Cass Sunstein wrote a book on how to “nudge” people in government’s desired direction, while advocating methods such as using copyright laws to achieve an “optimum chilling effect” over free speech, and to eliminate “conspiracy theories,” such as manmade global warming theory being a fraud.
President Obama appointed former Bush adviser Howard Schmidt to be an unaccountable “Cyber Czar.” The announcement came as the Pentagon opened up its own cybercommand unit and the Department of Homeland Security hired 1,000 cybersecurity specialists.
FCC Chair Julius Genachowski implemented rules tantamount to “Net Neutrality,” despite a court order reprimanding the agency for lacking the authority to do so. The House voted to strike down the “Open Internet” regulations, but the Senate recently voted against nullifying them. The regulations are currently in force, but it is unclear how long they will last.
Lightsquared, a wireless technology firm, was given FCC exemptions to build out a 4G wireless network, allowing it to acquire bandwidth on the cheap. The owner of the company Phil Falcone was a campaign contributor to Obama to the tune of $30,400.
Thousands of emails acquired under FOIA request suggest that the Obama administration pressured Air Force General William Shelton to stifle criticism of a potential Lightsquared military contract that the company’s operations could interfere with the military’s GPS positioning system.
According to the Examiner, then-Senator Barack Obama was steered by financial advisor George Haywood into investing $90,000 in Lightsquared when it was called Skyterra. Billionaire investor George Soros, a well-known financier of radical causes, was also prominent as an investor.
The BP oil spill, the largest in U.S. history, was only slowed after action was taken by the administration 40 days into the spill. Former Clinton strategist James Carville took the president to task for his lack of leadership on the matter.
BP was strong-armed by the president into creating a $20 billion escrow account for damage claims, in violation of Fifth Amendment due process rights.
President Obama enacted and extended an offshore drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico after the spill. Despite a federal court order over-ruling the moratorium, Obama continued it anyway. As ABC News reported, months after the BP oil spill leak was plugged, clean up crews could not find the oil spill, as the Gulf had apparently broken it up. The administration promised to lift the moratorium in late 2010, but rescinded it and instead established a seven-year moratorium.
The oil moratorium cost American workers at least 19,000 jobs and $1.1 billion in wages. The Gulf drilling company Seahawk was forced into bankruptcy.
The Export-Import Bank, whose chair was selected by Obama, guaranteed a loan of $2 billion to Brazilian oil company Petrobras SA for offshore oil drilling. A widely distributed, but obviously erroneous article filled with half-truths and distortions published by Forbes admits that Obama contributor and fundraiser George Soros indeed did profit from holding shares in Petrobras SA.
This is what President Obama said on his visit to Brazil in March 2011, “We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”
Since President Obama came to office the long-term unemployment rate has tripled from 9.5% to 29.5%.
Obama said that the economic collapse of 2008 “combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we’re still fighting to recover.” His solution? More government power, discretion, and action.
Barack Obama gave 1% to charity of $1.2 million earnings between 2000-2004, and then 5% of $2.6 million in 2005 and 2006. Mitt Romney, by comparison, gave 15% average of his multi-million dollar income in 2010 and 2011.
Half of new college graduates will not be able to find meaningful long-term work under the president at the current rate.
Although the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.1%, that is because so many able-bodied adults have given up looking for work. The labor force participation rate dropped to the lowest since 1981.
The U3 unemployment rate, which accounts for population growth, is actually at 11.3%.
When presented with the Keystone pipeline proposal, a multi-billion dollar project that would create thousands of jobs and eventually lead to lower energy prices by improving supply chain efficiencies, Obama refused to immediately approve it.
Future projections show a decline in U.S. production and an increase in imports. On March 8, 2011 the EIA published new projections that show a decline in total U.S. crude oil production of 110,000 barrels per day in 2011 and 130,000 barrels per day in 2012.
In 2011, the Obama administration claimed that domestic oil production had increased 10% under Obama. Environmentalists claimed that this proves that “Drill, baby, drill” doesn’t work (as if “supply and demand” is a theory up for debate). But according to 2007 projections, the production of oil under Obama was 16% less than forecast. Oil production under Obama can be shown to be less than what it would be under alternative regimes.
The slight increase in onshore production from federal lands is due to lease sales approved by previous Administrations—not the Obama Administration. Since taking office, the Obama Administration has slowed onshore energy development on public lands and issued fewer leases. The total onshore acreage leased under the Obama Administration are the lowest in over two decades, stretching back to at least 1984.
Gas prices have gone up 103.79% under Obama.
Among young adults 18-24, only 54.3% have a job.
From 2010 to 2011: “Public four-year universities charged residents an average of $8,244, up 8.3% from last year, while public two-year schools charged an average of $2,963, up 8.7%.”
The consolidation of student loans under Obama’s plan would provide monthly savings of less than $10 for the average student. “Using these values as the high and low bounds of average student debt over the last ten years, the monthly savings for the average student loan borrower would be between $4.50 and $7.75 per month. Clearly, this isn’t going to save the economy. While borrowers with bigger balances would save more, this is the average.”
According to the BLS: “The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.1 million in April. These individuals made up 41.3 percent of the unemployed.”
Also reported by the BLS, the unemployment rate for women was actually lower than men at 7.4% to 7.5%, respectively. This defies the “war on women” narrative.
The unemployment rate for Hispanics was flat at 10.3 percent in April 2012.
The unemployment rate for blacks was at 13.0 percent in that same month.
The civilian labor force participation rate declined in April to 63.6 percent. The rate has precipitously and steadily dropped since Obama took office with little abatement.
According to a study cited by the USA Today, 70 of a 100 of the most populous metropolitan areas saw significant declines in traffic due to “rising fuel prices; lackluster gains in employment and modest increases in highway capacity because of construction projects completed under the federal stimulus program.”
As pointed out by Human Events, Obama projected robust economic growth of 5.23 percent in 2011; although actual growth was a dismal 1.61 percent.
According to the same article, Obama “trumpeted a report by the then-chairman of his Counsel of Economic Advisors projecting that the unemployment rate would be down to 6 percent by now; it’s actually 8.1 percent, even higher than the 7.8 percent during the recession, when Obama was sworn in.”
Furthermore, “Obama promised to cut the deficit in half in four years; instead, this year’s deficit ($1.3 trillion) will be five times the CBO’s projection ($264 billion, including the Bush bail-outs).”
The same article points out that ten percent of Americans are involuntarily out-of-work, as 6.3 million not counted in the labor force “currently want a job.”
Additionally, real earnings have fallen by $10 a week under Obama, after adjusting for inflation.
Also, the average household’s yearly income has dropped by $4,300 during his administration.
More than 14 million Americans are on food stamps than when Obama took office. (Admittedly, some on the left would tout this as a huge success.) That is a 41% increase.
Although President Obama has focused on Romney’s track record of investing private equity while at Bain, writer Marc Thiessen has drawn attention to Obama’s miserable track record “investing” “public equity.”
Thiessen cites the case of Raser Technologies. As he put it, “In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.”
Just as shocking is the example of ECOtality (nice name), as Thiessen relates: “The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009… (and) even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”
Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP) received $98.5 million in loan guarantees and is on the verge of bankruptcy.
First Solar received $3 billion in loan guarantees and is suffering significant financial distress, leading the firm to propose firing 30% of its workforce.
Abound Solar received $400 million in loan guarantees and has stopped production.
Beacon Power received $43 million in loan guarantees and filed for bankruptcy.
Sun Power got $1.2 billion in such “taxpayer guarantees” and now owes more than its worth.
BrightSource was given $1.6 billion in guarantees and has lost $177 million. So far.
Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, Throw Them All Out, that an astounding 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.”
Thiessen notes in the above-cited article that, “Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion.”
As the USA Today showed, the actual federal deficit under Obama in just 2011 was $5 trillion, if one disregards the budgeting gimmick of discounting government pension programs, like Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs, which ran red ink of around $3.7 trillion.
According to this analysis, the government’s spending tallied around $42,054 by household. The median household income is $49,445.
As the nation’s top-selling newspaper noted, “The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit.”
Recently, Obama blasted the Republicans for running up “wild debts.” Surreally, this is what he said: “I don’t know how they’ve been bamboozling folks into thinking that they are the responsible, fiscally-disciplined party. They run up these wild debts and then when we take over we have to clean it up. And then they point and say, ‘Look how irresponsible they are.’ Look at facts, look at the numbers. And now I want to finish the job…”
Yes, he is a con man!
