Obama's Jobs Bill: "An infernal mish-mash of taxes, subsidies, and regulations."
Richard Epstein, the distinguished legal scholar and former University of Chicago law school colleague of Barack Obama, is no fan of the president's recently proposed American Jobs Act:
What is so striking about Obama's shopworn rhetoric is its juvenile intellectual quality. His explanation for how the AJA will create jobs is a non-starter because he does not explain how we get from here to there. As in so many other cases, the president thinks that waving a wand over a problem will make his most ardent wishes come true, even when similar earlier efforts have proved to be dismal failures. This dreadful hodgepodge of a bill will likely be dead-on-arrival in Congress, but it remains a patriotic duty to explicate some of its worst provisions.
The most evident feature of the AJA is that it is a combination of ill-conceived, disparate measures. The wandering quality of the bill makes it impossible to cover all of its silliness, but it is possible to focus on some of the core job provisions, all of which kill the very jobs that the AJA is supposed to create.
Read the whole piece here. Watch Epstein discuss his former colleague with Reason.tv below:
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I used this yesterday, but really it pegs Obama:
Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!
But the kids love us!
Back off, man. I'm a scientist.
Mayor: Is this true?
Venkman: Yes, this man has no dick.
You guys do know that what Obama and the media refer to as the "American Jobs Act" doesn't even exist, right? There is no freaking bill!
What's this?
That is not a bill. It has not been introduced in Congress.
Sure there is... and we should pass it now! You can even read it before you vote on it.
What is so striking about Obama's shopworn rhetoric is its juvenile intellectual quality.
Whaat It's worked my whole life....why not now?
But the kids love us!
juvenile intellectual quality.
That sort of talk will earn you a trip to the principal's office, Buster.
Ah, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.
This bill, he said, will "put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working Americans. And it will do so without adding a dime to the deficit."
The DNC should adopt Do You Believe in Magic? as their theme song.
Of course you forget, Peter. I was present at an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration.
If they were only selling lemon scent Dash that would be fine.
Damn, they did one hell of a marketing job if I still associate those two things.
No rational employer will invest much in new jobs on the basis of short-term tax cuts. Employment will take place only when the gains from hiring exceed the transaction costs and taxes on the deal.
That's just crazy talk.
Second thoughts from an Obama voter:
"I thought (Obama) was going to be more Clinton-like in his economics and politics. I was caught by surprise by how far left the guy is and how much he's hung on to it.." Not just any embarrassed Obama voter: that quote if from Nobel-Prize winning economist Robert E. Lucas (see last Sat/Sun Wall Street Journal). Hey, if a Nobelist can be fooled, the rest of you messiah followers shoudn't feel embarrassed. Just don't get fooled again.
Nobel-Prize winning economist Robert E. Lucas
Just another yahoo waving his Swedish central bank prize around..stated bluntly I hoped he'd be more like Clinton....ya know with the chubby girl in the office.
FIFY
....color me unimpressed!
OOOPS
all right, I give up. how do y'all get italics, strikethroughs, etc in your comments?
Who's believing the stock market rally today?
Smells like a sucker's bet to me.
I'm thinking bear rally.
Gold, OTOH, I have just added a speculative long position in. With trepidation.
They're just shaking the tree on gold to see who'll fall out before it rises again. With the amount of money they have to print in order to save the banks, gold is as close to guaranteed as you can get.
My margin account sincerely hopes so.
Oh, so you finally noticed it, too!
In that regard, Obama acts exactly like Roosevelt: He is also indulging in creating a patchwork of solutions that stem from economic ignorance.
JOBZ:
"It's the same program that gave Tesla Motors ? electric car-maker to the stars ? up to $465 million. [...]
the loans had helped the company add over 1,000 jobs,.."
Let's see, carry the one, mumble... Yep, a cool $.5M per job! What a deal!
Oh, and:
"The company wants another loan."
Plus link:
http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/.....an-please/
And they've been in talks with Toyota (on and off for a few years) about being acquired. All these cheap loans can possibly do is make the company more valuable to be taken over so the officers can cash out.
As in so many other cases, the president thinks that waving a wand over a problem will make his most ardent wishes come true, even when similar earlier efforts have proved to be dismal failures.
"Waving a wand." Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two--
Something noble and wise and good,
Done by merely wishing we could.
-- Kipling
Hope is not a strategy.
"juvenile" ? But I thought Obama was the grown up in the room ?
His explanation for how the AJA will create jobs is a non-starter because he does not explain how we get from here to there.
What is so hard to understand?
1. Spend $450 billion.
2. ???
3. Profit.
Just once I'd like citizen in a town hall, a interviewer, or a press corps person to ask this guy if the content of the AJA is so great, why wasn't it done in all previous attempts to "stimulate" the economy?