Tag Archives: Democrat

February 26, 2010

Health Care Summit Video Replay

By The Move Right

Morning Session

Afternoon Session

CSPAN’s coverage of the GOP’s press breifing

CSPAN’s coverage of the Dem’s press breifing

Opinions pieces:

http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2064

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/02/26/summit-strategems/

Obama Shows Testy Side at Health Care Summit fox news

Who Won the Health Care Summit – Politics – The Atlantic

Why This Health-Care Summit Won‘t Be a Game Changer – The Gaggle …

Echoing GOP, conservative media declare GOP the winner of health …‎ -

The Summit that Wasn?t?An Opportunity Squandered‎ -

Health care summit underscores divisions



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February 1, 2010

Do Republicans have a bigger problem than the Tea Party?

By The Move Right

By Tony from Tony’s Rants

As much as the old guard in the GOP would like to dismiss it, the Tea Party movement is real and is gaining strength.  These conservative voters have shown that they aren’t beholden to the Republican Party and won’t back down ‘for the greater good’ as many think they should. The Republicans are quickly coming to a realization that they must tread carefully or they risk drawing the fire of a growing voice in the nation and in Colorado.

Read Entire Article at tonysrants.com

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June 18, 2009

Making Sense of Stimulus Spending by Factcheck.org

By The Move Right

Making Sense of Stimulus Spending

June 16, 2009
How accurate is Obama’s claim of 150,000 jobs “saved or created”?

Summary

With the economy continuing to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, Republicans are stepping up attacks on President Obama. They claim that the massive “stimulus” spending isn’t working very well.

A Republican Party Web site classifies as “fiction” the president’s repeated claim that the spending already has “saved or created” a total of 150,000 jobs, and accuses him of “fuzzy math.”

The GOP has a point here. The fact is the economy has lost more jobs, and the unemployment rate is significantly higher, than the administration originally predicted would be the case if Washington did nothing. In fact, the original projections of Obama’s economic aides have turned out to be off by a very wide margin.

The administration counters by saying the economy was worse than it realized at the time it was making its projections, and that the present jobs picture would be darker yet without the stimulus spending. In the analysis that follows, we lay out the facts and figures.

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Analysis

President Obama has said that “the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved or created nearly 150,000 jobs.” That’s always been a soft statistic, as we explained on the FactCheck Wire in May. The President’s Council of Economic Advisers hasn’t actually counted those 150,000 jobs. It’s a rough projection based on calculations made before Obama even took office.

There’s a lot of educated guesswork in the original document, dated Jan. 9. It was produced by Christina Romer, who is now chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, who holds the title of “chief economist” to Vice President Joe Biden. The Romer-Bernstein study assumed (among other things) a “rule of thumb” that a 1 percent increase in economic output (measured by gross domestic product or GDP) roughly equals 1 million jobs. Those are pretty round figures. As the authors stated: “Our estimates of economic relationships and rules of thumb are derived from historical experience and so will not apply exactly in any given episode.”

Not “Exactly”

They can say that again. As it has turned out so far, those estimates sure haven’t applied “exactly,” or even very closely.


The Obama team originally estimated, for example, that unless a stimulus plan was enacted, the unemployment rate would reach nearly 9 percent sometime in the first three months of next year, as shown by this chart, which we copied from the original Romer-Bernstein study:


But as things have turned out, even with the big spending package in place, the jobless rate shot up to 9.4 percent in May, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here’s how the real, monthly jobless figures look when plotted on the Obama team’s own chart, with the red dots indicating the actual rates:

The second chart was created by “Geoff” at the Web site Innocent Bystanders. We’ve checked it and can vouch for its accuracy. The Obama team did not give the precise figures that lie behind their chart, and the chart is based on quarterly figures while the BLS figures are monthly. Nevertheless, this chart gives a reasonably good picture of how far off the Obama team’s projections have turned out to be, at least so far.

Update, June 17: We contacted “Geoff” and can now report that he is Geoff Campbell, a research and development engineer living in Colorado. “I made this particular chart because the news media rarely provides decent historical perspective on today’s news, so you can’t easily tell where we were and how we got to where we are,” he said in an exchange of e-mails. Thanks, Geoff.

Not surprisingly, Republicans are pouncing on this. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California and five other GOP members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform signed a June 11 letter complaining that the administration had used murky methods to support its claims. They accused the Obama team of using “creative models to produce speculative macroeconomic forecasts” and asked for detailed explanations of the “factors and theories” behind the administration’s projections.

A  Republican Party Web page calls the 150,000 figure “fiction” and accuses the president of using “fuzzy math.” House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia said during an interview on MSNBC June 11: “[W]e were told that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent if we passed the stimulus bill. … Well, now what we’re seeing, obviously, is over 9 percent.”


The White House Explanation


White House officials have a simple explanation for all this. They say President George Bush left them a worse mess than they realized when Romer and Bernstein came up with their predictions. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Bernstein laid this out in a press briefing on June 8. When asked about the discrepancy between his projections and the actual May unemployment figures, Bernstein said:

Bernstein:Well, first of all, let’s be very clear about this point. Our forecast at that time was right in the middle of every other forecast, and in fact, if we had had a forecast that was much worse than that, we would have been an outlier. We also would have been correct, it turned out. But the point is that the contraction of the economy in the fourth quarter – you should recall back then that was – the magnitude of that contraction was far larger than was expected. And so at the time our forecast seemed reasonable. Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic.

What I will say, though, and I don’t want to lose sight of this, is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, in our view, according to our analysis, will lead to an unemployment rate by the end of next year of 1.5 to 2 points lower than would otherwise be the case. And that is the direct result of the kinds of programs and projects we’re talking about today, putting literally millions of people back to work who in the absence of this program would not be getting fully employed.

So Bernstein is sticking to the prediction that unemployment will be substantially lower with the stimulus bill than without. On that point there’s good economic theory to support him. Last October, for example, Republican economist Martin Feldstein, who had been Ronald Reagan’s chief economic adviser, wrote in the Washington Post: “The only way to prevent a deepening recession will be a temporary program of increased government spending.” He argued for a package in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Later Feldstein wrote that the package Congress was considering was “a mistake” and said it should concentrate more on military spending and temporary tax credits for such things as home improvements and buying automobiles. But he added: “The problem with the current stimulus plan is not that it is too big.”

But this time Bernstein is wisely refraining from saying where the jobs figures would be without the stimulus package. Wherever the jobless rate peaks, he’s saying it would be 1.5 percent to 2 percent higher if the stimulus package had not been enacted.

Is that so? We know of no way to prove or disprove such a claim. What we can say is that in the three months after the stimulus bill was signed Feb. 18, the economy lost more than 1.5 million jobs, according to the BLS. So even if the president’s 150,000-jobs claim is correct, that’s about 10 percent of the total jobs lost.

Footnote: The Council of Economic Advisers is required to report periodically on “total job creation” produced by the stimulus spending, but that will also be a somewhat soft number. As noted in the first quarterly report issued under the stimulus act, “Total job creation includes direct, indirect, and induced jobs which are estimated using an econometric model.”

“Direct” jobs are those created in government-sponsored projects and can be counted up in a fairly straightforward fashion. “Indirect” jobs are those that suppliers may add as they make the materials used in the project. But “induced” jobs are those that economists assume show up elsewhere in the economy as workers and firms who benefit from stimulus money spend more to buy goods and services. These might include retail sales jobs. The number of those jobs can only be estimated.

– by Brooks Jackson, with Justin Bank and Andrew Karter

Correction, June 17: We originally misstated the dates of Rep. Issa’s letter and Rep. Cantor’s interview as Jan. 11.

Sources
Romer, Christina and Jared Bernstein. “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,” 9 Jan. 2009.

Executive Office of the President Council of Economic Advisers. “

Estimates of Job Creation from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.” Whitehouse.gov, May 2009.

“

Remarks by the President on Alternative Energy.” White House Press Office, 27 May 2009.

“

Press Briefing by the Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and the Vice President’s Chief Economis, Jared Bernstein.” White House Press Office, 8 June 2009.

“

Employment Situation News Release.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5 June 2009.

Feldstein, Martin. “

The Stimulus Plan We Need Now: The President-Elect Won’t Have to Wait Till January to Act.” Washington Post, 30 Oct. 2008.

Related Articles
Obama claims the stimulus legislation will do all sorts of things. But there are no guarantees.

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May 1, 2009

I’m Still Pissed Off & The Internal Turmoil in the GOP

By The Move Right
I’ve been warned not to post this. I was told that if I posted the article that I’d never get an interview from any politician in this state again. I don’t care. I’m pissed off and no body is listening. I’m about 2 straws away from having my Republican back broken. And I’m not alone in this. As hundreds of thousands attend Tea Parties, and 9-12 Project groups spring up all over the country. As frustrations grow, and more and more people become disenfranchised, I could no longer hold this back. 
I’ve got potential interviews with some very powerful GOP delegates, and apparently if I say what I’m about to say, those will fall through. 

Hear Me Now: I Don’t Flipping Care!

The Tea Parties were not about the GOP being pissed off with the Dems. It was about people being pissed off with ALL politicians. 
As Glenn Beck’s, 5/1/2009 show airs, I will post this. For me enough is enough. GOP & Democrats, your party first attitude is wrong. why in the hell are you so concerned about the party when you should be worried about RIGHT and WRONG. I’m just as pissed off at Bush as I am Obama. I’m just as pissed off at FDR and the new deal as I am at Barney Franks and blubbering lies. I’m just as pissed off at MSNBC and GE as I am at Fox News for being a Bush apologist for so many years. I’m just as pissed at the over reach of the patriot act as I am at the trillion of spending by the Bush and Obama administration. 
I am equally pissed off, no body is going to be able to call me a GOP appoligist. I am not about Party first, and as you’ll see, the GOP is in turmoil. And if they want to continue to say they champion conservative values, that had better get their heads out of their butts. 

Here’s my original Rant:

I’m Still Pissed Off & The Internal Turmoil in the GOP

Listen. The Tea Party movement was, and still is, real. I was there and witnessed all the other people that are pissed off, too. I’m tired of the same old bull crap politics. Now I’m not naive, but I was really hoping things would be different.

For the first time in my life I’ve become involved with politics. I was so moved by the outcry of the people on April 15th, that I knew in my heart that I could and should do something. So Peter, the other contributor for this blog, and I set out to get involved. We wanted to do something to help move people in the direction of conservatism.

And not just on one issue, but the whole nine yards: fiscal responsibility, governmental transparency, pro-life legislature, health care reform, responsible reactions to emergencies, free-market capitalism… on and on the list goes. Peter gets us into local events and we’re excited, because we’re going to cover them and show the world that the GOP is on the move. That people can trust at least their local politicians. It’s just the fat cats in D.C. that are extremely selfish.

Now again, I’m not naive, but what I’ve started to see aside from a few well intentioned local politicians is that The Good Old Boys Club (I’ll call it TGOBC) is still in session. This was reiterated with the follow-up to my last post. The “outrage” from the TGOBC was that I didn’t have all warm and fuzzy things to say. I had nothing in the article that was false, but TGOBC was very disappointed about me printing the truth. TGOBC also corrected many grammatical errors.

Side note*** (I’m not a journalist, or an investigative reporter, I’ll write about what I saw, from my viewpoint. It’s my opinion. I’m not sure what the big deal is. I’m not here to please you or to spew propaganda for you. And why, by the way, are you so concerned about what I said in the blog? I have approximately 10 regular readers, and at most a couple hundred hits a day. So for the couple of people that thought I was “mean” in my review, I’m not sorry. But what I take offense to is your attempts to stifle me, my freedom of speech, and my opinion. Tell me I’m slanderous and factually inaccurate. All this criticism comes from people who feel, “really protective of the Republican Party”.

I say in my “about us” page, that if you’re an idiot I’ll call you out. If I’m not willing to do that from the start, then what the heck are we doing here? I want to be known for having integrity in what I write, I didn’t lie or fabricate anything in my post, so take your lumps and hush already. If you make a mistake, learn from it, move on. I made a few errors in my post, I fixed them.***

To be fair, there are those at these meetings that are not in TGOBC, yet they had nothing but praise for me. I’d like to mention specifically, Greg Burt, Brian T. Campbell and Dana West. Thanks for your support, constructive criticism and understanding what we’re trying to do here.

Then again this morning, I was able to catch the end of another local GOP event (the time on the internet was wrong so I wasn’t able to catch the whole thing).

What I saw and heard, didn’t surprise me, but utterly disappointed me. TGOBC was in full swing, they had a challenger. A young republican had the audacity and hope to question TGOBC’s motives, and promised to stick to solid Reagan-like, conservative morals and standards. The young man stood up and said, “I’m sick and tired of the same old game being played here. And the old guard has proven that they are out of touch. Your progressive ways are helping destroy our County, and I’m just plain sick of it. We need to be focused on this county’s overwhelming majority and to their values, which are ardently conservative. And the Old Guard, has for years, undermined those values.”

I love this guy’s rant. He went on, and I wanted to buy that guy a beer. But it was still 8:00 in the morning. To me the problem in our nation, our states, our counties and our cities is that for far too long we’ve allow The Good Old Boys Club to rule the roost unchecked, and unaccountable. This, ladies and gentlemen has got to stop.

I so want to help move the Conservative moral compass back in the right direction. I want to help make a difference. I want to help effective change. But from my observation so far, TGOBC has got a strangle hold. It’s time for us to get the progressive noose from around our necks, stand up to the Old Guard and say, “Enough”. The Constitution is not a living and breathing document. It is a resolute, amazing work of genius, rivaled only by the Bible. We need to hold to the standards of both in fact, and return this country to what it was intended to be: a place of Freedom, of Liberty and Justice.

Oh here’s one more thing, so when I start to press people how, just how do I get involved, there’s three responses that I get almost patently. 1. Go talk with…. 2. Go to the Website 3. I don’t know. This to me is really not responsible for the GOP. I’m calling on you guys to fix this. Know what to say to a potential volunteer or staffer. Know your stuff, don’t force me to scour the internet for the answers, if I take the time to go to you, seek you out specifically, you should know what I need to do. Or at least take my name down and get back with me.

Why waste my passion and others. Passion is contagious, if I’m not out there singing your praises, I’m either keeping it for myself or my passion will go to other things that are not your causes.

So I’m still Pissed Off. My questions to you are:

Why should or shouldn’t I stay a Republican?

Why should or shouldn’t I work for a GOP entity?

Why should or shouldn’t I make nice with The Good Old Boys Club?

Why should or shouldn’t I just accept the GOP as it is?

Why should or shouldn’t I just accept the Democrat?

Why should or shouldn’t I just accept the Libertarians?

P.S. If you don’t agree, I don’t care… but I’ll still listen to you. Post your comments below.

 

http://www.examiner.com/x-9202-Denver-Republican-Examiner~y2009m5d1-The-rise-of-conservative-blogs-in-Colorado

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