We can see the polemical tone, and the view they have of their opponents:
The Republican Party has turned its back on the middle class Americans who built this country. Our opponents believe we should go back to the top-down economic policies of the last decade. They think that if we simply eliminate protections for families and consumers, let Wall Street write its own rules again, and cut taxes for the wealthiest, the market will solve all our problems on its own. They argue that if we help corporations and wealthy investors maximize their profits by whatever means necessary, whether through layoffs or outsourcing, it will automatically translate into jobs and prosperity that benefits us all. They would repeal health reform, turn Medicare into a voucher program, and follow the same path of fiscal irresponsibility of the past administration—giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts weighted towards millionaires and billionaires while sticking the middle class with the bill. But we've tried their policies—and we've all suffered when they failed.
We can see its communitarian approach:
Democrats know that America prospers when we're all in it together. We see an America where everyone has a fair shot, does their fair share, and plays by the same rules.
Concerning the middle class, its polemical tone is present again:
The Republicans in Congress and Mitt Romney have a very different idea about where they want to take this country. To pay for their trillions in additional tax cuts weighted towards millionaires and billionaires, they'll raise taxes on the middle class and gut our investments in education, research and technology, and new roads, bridges, and airports. They'll end Medicare as we know it. They want to let Wall Street write its own rules again and allow insurance companies to once again deny health care to working families.
It celebrates Obamacare and the bail out of the auto industry.
On entitlements: Democrats adamantly oppose any efforts to privatize or voucherize Medicare, which is unfortunate.
On Deficits: Democrats took decisive steps to restore fiscal responsibility to Washington. - Is anyone laughing yet? Further, In order to reduce the deficit while still making the investments... In other words, to reduce the deficit, we will spend. Their view of the opposition: The Republican Party has a different vision—instead of asking everyone to do their fair share and making investments we need for an economy built to last, they would slash taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, let Wall Street once again write its own rules, and balance the budget on the backs of the middle class.
On Energy: We can move towards a sustainable energy-independent future if we harness all of America's great natural resources. That means an all-of-the-above approach to developing America's many energy resources, including wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, oil, clean coal, and natural gas. - We know from the past four years that this is not true.
On government accountability: Looking to make our government leaner, smarter, and more consumer-friendly, ... We are committed to the most open, efficient, and accountable government in history, and we believe that government is more accountable when it is transparent. - Anyone laughing yet?
Here is the prayer that the Greek Orthodox prelate Metropolitan Nicolaus of Detroit offered:
Oh God, most pure and author of all creation, as You spoke to us of old, speak to our hearts anew. You, who had fellowship with Abraham and Sarah, come and stay in our midst. As you led your people through the wilderness lead us now as the Democratic National Convention open its deliberations for the benefit of the people and the land of these United States. You have brought us here from every place on earth that Native Americans and immigrant Americans, people of color and of every tongue, might find not just hope but a land which seeks life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Grant to all here a deep and abiding respect for the task at hand so that our common efforts will perfect our desire that law and government be for and by and of the people. Assist us to set aside personal differences so that the unity of purpose that we have will rise above us all as an enduring symbol of freedom and let freedom so reign in our hearts that we would never fear to lead the oppressed to freedom, never fear to give shelter to the homeless and displaced, never fear to treat our neighbor as ourselves. To give dignity and opportunity, as in Detroit and elsewhere in America, to the struggling unemployed and less fortunate brothers and sisters in this great land, let us never be afraid!
While our prayers and assistance are with those affected by Hurricane Isaac, we trust in You Oh Lord, that Your gracious love will be with our President, Barack Obama, with our Vice President, Joseph Biden, with all of our public officials, and those who serve the good of this nation. We ask also that You preserve and protect those who stand in harm’s way as they defend and serve for the benefit of all. Come and be with us Almighty God, as fortress and deliverer, that through You, and by the faithful and strong leadership of our government, we shall rejoice knowing that our children and our children’s children will know peace and every blessing, to You be glory forever. Amen.
When asked if he would grade himself on the first four years, President Obama gave himself an ‘incomplete’ grade. What that means, of course, is that he wants to give the country four more years of what he has given the country. Voters will need to decide if they want four more years. Consider the following:
- 42 – Consecutive months with (official) unemployment over 8%.
- 66,000 – Average number of jobs added per month since recovery started (Below level needed to keep up with population growth.)
- 63.7% – Labor force participation rate (30-year low.)
- 52% – Percentage of voters that say the nation is in worse condition.
- 54% – Percentage of voters that say Obama doesn’t deserve reelection based on his job performance
- 31% – Percentage of voters that say the nation is in better condition today than when Obama took office.
- $16,000,000,000,000 – National Debt will hit $16 trillion today.
- $1,311,000,000,000 – President Obama, on average, has added $1.311 trillion of debt per year.
The mayor also said - It’s a choice between a country where the middle class pays more so that millionaires can pay less—or a country where everybody pays their fair share, so we can reduce the deficit and create the jobs of the future. It’s a choice between a nation that slashes funding for our schools and guts Pell grants—or a nation that invests more in education. It’s a choice between a politician who rewards companies that ship American jobs overseas—or a leader who brings jobs back home.
Concerning the speech by Michelle Obama, I would offer two things. One is from Charles Krauthammer, who said he did not believe a word of it, because she painted him as if he were a Gahndi, when in reality, he has been ruthless in his governing and in his campaigning. She managed to drain her husband’s entire first term of any hint of ideological or personal motivation. He is driven by his caring, giving soul — not by a deeply felt ideology developed in youth: redistributionist, government-centered, disdainful of success, committed to his social-democratic view of social justice. Only a wife can turn a ruthlessly ambitious pol, who undid the Clintons four years ago and today relentlessly demonizes Romney, into a care bear. She pulled it off. Two is that I do not think anyone doubts that Barack Obama is a decent man. Most Americans find him likeable enough. The question before the voters is whether he deserves a second term based on his job performance. As already noted in the polls above, many Americans have already decided that question.
Concerning the much discussed GM bailout, a few facts from Michelle Malkin:
GM is once again flirting with bankruptcy despite massive government purchases propping up its sales figures. GM stock is rock-bottom. Losses continue to be revised in the wrong direction. According to The Detroit News, "The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That's 15 percent higher than its previous forecast."
The claims that GM paid back its taxpayer-funded loans "in full" -- a story peddled in campaign ads narrated by Hollywood actor Tom Hanks -- were debunked by the Treasury Department's TARP watchdog this summer. GM still owes nearly $30 billion of the $50 billion it received, and its lending arm still owes nearly $15 billion of the more than $17 billion it received. Bailout watchdog Mark Modica of the National Legal and Policy Center adds: "In addition to U.S. taxpayers anteing up, Canada put in over $10 billion, and GM was relieved of about $28 billion of bondholder obligations as UAW claims were protected. That's an improvement of almost $90 billion to the balance sheet, and the company still lags the competition."
Bill Clinton said that the Republican Party was wrong to say that Obama has gutted welfare reform. Heritage expert Robert Rector, who helped write the 1996 law, answered Clinton this morning in no uncertain terms:
The Obama Administration will put in mothballs the formal purpose of welfare reform—to reduce the number of people dependent on government benefits. The Administration will abandon the legislative performance goal that encourages states to reduce welfare caseloads. It will weaken the “work participation” standards that require some 30 percent of able-bodied Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients to engage in work activities for 20 to 30 hours per week.Larry Elder has identified what I think are the biggest reasons to give Obama 4 more years, and why each reason is wrong.
1) Obama "inherited" the worst set of economic conditions since World War II.
False. Based on unemployment, inflation and interest rates, the recession of 1981-82 was worse. Unemployment during the early '80s reached 10.8 percent, inflation 13.5 percent, and prime interest rates reached 21.5 percent. During this so-called "Great Recession," the numbers peaked at 10.2 unemployment, 5.6 percent inflation and 7.25 percent for the prime interest rate.
2) Obama's economic policies "rescued the economy from falling off a cliff."
False. Nearly 350 economists, including several Nobel laureates, publicly urged Obama to following the path President Reagan pursued -- cutting taxes, slowing the growth of domestic spending and continuing deregulation.
Most business economists think Obama's "stimulus" plan accomplished little, if anything, with some academic economists, like Stanford's John Taylor, believing that stimulus actually made things worse: "I just don't think there's any evidence. When you look at the numbers, when you see what happened, when people reacted to the stimulus, it did very little good."
TARP, begun under President George W. Bush, supposedly prevented financial institutions from collapsing. But Neil Barofsky, in his new book called "Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street," argues that TARP completely failed in its mission: to increase liquidity to jumpstart lending.
The reason for intervention in the first place is that banks had become "too big too fail." Not only did the banks park the money and make risk-free profits off the spread, but banks became bigger than ever after TARP.
ObamaCare promises to provide health insurance to nearly 30 million Americans currently uninsured. Obama said it would bend the health care cost curve down, that it would decrease the deficit and that if you like your doctor or your current health insurance plan, you can keep it.
But Jonathan Gruber, the economist who designed both RomneyCare and ObamaCare, now admits some are going to pay more -- and some a lot more -- for their health insurance: "It is true that even after tax credits some individuals are 'losers,' in that they pay more than before (Obama's) reform." Rick Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, testified that it is "false, more so than true" that ObamaCare bends down the cost curve. He also said it is "not true in all cases" that if you like your plan you can keep your plan.
What about the "investments" in the green jobs of the future? At $529 million dollars of lost taxpayer money, Solyndra is one of many money-hemorrhaging "clean energy" flops. Other belly-flops backed by federal loans include Beacon Power and Abound Solar. A Washington Post investigation traced $3.9 billion in grants and financing to 21 companies that were backed by firms connected to five Obama administration staffers and advisors. Cronyism?
3) Bush's irresponsible tax cuts and "unpaid-for wars" of Afghanistan and Iraq caused the deficit.
False. Obama frequently bemoans the "cost" of $700 billion in tax cuts for "millionaires and billionaires." CNN's Fareed Zakaria blames the "Bush tax cuts" for the deficit. But the $700 billion Obama speaks of is spread over 10 years. This comes to a mere 5 percent of the deficit.
As to the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a study by Brown University estimates the costs at between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion. This, too, is over about 10 years (the approximate duration of the wars), or an average of $360 billion per year. This comes out to about 25 percent of the estimated $1.5 trillion deficit.
4) We are better off now than four years ago.
A new poll for the Washington paper The Hill found 52 percent of likely voters believe the country is now in "worse condition" than four years ago, while 31 percent believe it's in "better condition." After accounting for inflation, median household income dropped 2.6 percent during the 18-month recession. It fell another 4.8 percent from the start of the "recovery" through June 2012. Unemployment stood at 7.8 percent when Obama entered the White House. It is 8.3 percent right now. We've added over $6 trillion in new debt in the last four years -- and the deficit tripled since Bush's last full year in office.
5) The other guys -- former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan -- are worse: sexist, racist, homophobic and fascist.
The chairman of the California Democratic Party, John Burton, following the Republican convention, gave us this preview of coming attractions: "(Republicans) lie, and they don't care if people think they lie. As long as you lie, (Nazi propaganda minister) Joseph Goebbels -- the big lie -- you keep repeating it."
Clinton Speech:
CLINTON: "I know many Americans are still angry and frustrated with the economy. ... I experienced the same thing in 1994 and early 1995. Our policies were working but most people didn't feel it yet. By 1996, the economy was roaring, halfway through the longest peacetime expansion in American history."
THE FACTS: Clinton is counting on voters to recall the 1990s wistfully and to cast a vote for Obama in hopes of replicating those days in a second term. But Clinton leaves out the abrupt downward turn the economy took near the end of his own second term and the role his policies played in the setting the stage for the historic financial meltdown of 2008.
While the economy and markets experienced a record expansion for most of the rest of Clinton's two-term presidency, at the start of 2000, there were troubling signs. Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned in February 2000 that "we are entering a period of considerable turbulence in financial markets."
Sure enough, the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average both peaked in March 2000. The bursting of the high-tech bubble dragged down the economy and markets through the rest of the year. From September 2000 to January 2001 when Clinton left office, the Nasdaq dropped 46 percent. Even now, in 2012, the Nasdaq has not returned to its 2000 peak. By March 2001, the economy toppled into recession.
Also, as president, Clinton supported the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law dating back to the Great Depression that separated banking from high-risk financial speculation. Robert Rubin, who had been Clinton's first treasury secretary, helped broker the final deal on Capitol Hill that enabled the repeal legislation to pass. Some financial historians say the repeal of the law paved the way for banks to invest in risky investments like mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations that played a role in the 2008 financial meltdown.
Thomas Sowell offered the following:
Today, he appears in an Obama commercial -- in full “I feel your pain” mode -- saying that Obama “has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up.”
When someone claims anyone can rebuild a society from the ground up, I say he is arrogant and delusional.
Clinton then tries to scare viewers by telling them that Republicans want to “go back to deregulation. That’s what got us in trouble in the first place.”
Ah, the progressives’ George W. Bush deregulation myth: Bush’s anti-regulation crusade caused our problems. This is a lie that seems true because of constant media repetition. In fact, Bush talked deregulation but vastly increased the regulatory state. He hired an astounding 90,000 new regulators. Under Democrats and Republicans, regulation grows.
A rare exception was repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which forbade financial companies from offering both commercial and investment banking services. You know who signed that?
Bill Clinton.
He was right to sign it (backed by Treasury Secretary and later Obama adviser Larry Summers) because outlawing full-service banking put American banks at a competitive disadvantage.
Five years earlier, Clinton supported the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, which finally legalized interstate branch banking. Federal and state laws that forbade intrastate and interstate branch banking -- that is, diversification -- were one of the worst features of American finance. They made banks highly vulnerable to failure of specific business centers and farm communities, helping to make the Great Depression what it was. (By contrast, Canada had no such restrictions and no bank failures.)
So Clinton -- not Bush -- was the bank deregulator. Were those acts responsible for the financial debacle of 2008? No. Bear Stearns, Lehman, etc. were not affiliated with commercial banks.
Banks got in trouble because they filled their portfolios with securities built on shaky mortgages. And here is where Clinton does bear responsibility.
His secretary of housing and urban development was Andrew Cuomo, now governor of New York and apparent presidential wannabe.
Cuomo, as Wayne Barrett wrote in the Village Voice in 2008, made a series of decisions that “helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded ‘kickbacks’ to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why.”
Barrett goes on: “Perhaps the only domestic issue George Bush and Bill Clinton were in complete agreement about was maximizing home ownership, each trying to lay claim to a record percentage of homeowners, and both describing their efforts as a boon to blacks and Hispanics. HUD, Fannie and Freddie were their instruments, and as is now apparent, the more unsavory the means, the greater the growth. ... (Cuomo) did more to set these forces of unregulated expansion in motion than any other secretary and then boasted about it, presenting his initiatives as crusades for racial and social justice.”
Naturally, when Clinton’s HUD secretary became New York’s attorney general, he vowed to prosecute unscrupulous lenders. I’m waiting for him to prosecute himself.
President Clinton happily takes credit for reducing America’s budget deficit and presiding over a period of strong economic growth. But this happened not because of wise leadership. Clinton had the good fortune to reside in the White House just as the high-tech information revolution kicked in and a Republican Congress stopped him from spending what Democrats wanted to spend.
Progressives say that his increase of the top tax bracket did not prevent economic growth, but it never occurs to them that growth would have been even stronger had government not confiscated that money.
His rousing speech at the Democrats' convention told the delegates that Republicans "want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place."
That is world class brass. Bill Clinton's own administration, more than any other, promoted an unsustainable housing boom, which eventually and inevitably led to a housing bust that brought down the whole American economy.
Behind all the complex financial processes that reached to Wall Street and beyond, there is one fundamental fact: many people stopped making their mortgage payments.
Why did that happen? Because mortgage loans were made to people who did not meet the long-established qualification standards for getting a mortgage loan. And why did that happen? Because the Clinton administration threatened lawsuits against lenders who did not approve mortgage loans to minority applicants as often as to white applicants.
In other words, racial quotas replaced credit qualifications. A failure to have racial statistics on mortgage approvals that fit the government's preconceptions was equated with discrimination.
Attorney General Reno said that lenders who "closely examine their lending practices and make necessary changes to eliminate discrimination" would "fare better in this department's stepped-up enforcement effort than those who do not." She said: "Do not wait for the Justice Department to come knocking."
Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had similar racial quota policies, and began taking legal actions against banks that turned down more minority applicants than HUD thought they should.
HUD said that it was breaking down "racial and ethnic barriers" so as to create more "access" to home ownership. It established "goals" -- political Newspeak for quotas -- for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy mortgages that the original lenders had made to "the underserved population." In other words, the original lenders could pass on the increasingly risky mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- and, ultimately, to the taxpayers.
Other federal agencies warned mortgage lenders against having credit standards that these agencies considered too high. And these agencies had many powers to use against banks and other lenders who did not heed their warnings.
What was the evidence for all the lending discrimination that the government was supposedly trying to prevent? Statistics.
In the year 2000, for example, black applicants for conventional mortgage loans were turned down at twice the rate for white applicants. Case closed, as far as the media and the government were concerned. Had they bothered to look a little deeper, they would have found that whites were turned down at nearly twice the rate for Asian Americans.
Had they bothered to check out average credit scores, they would have discovered that whites had higher average credit scores than blacks, and Asian Americans had higher average credit scores than whites.
Such inconvenient facts would have undermined the whole moral melodrama, reducing it to a case of plain economics, with lenders more likely to lend to those who were more likely to pay them back. Once lending standards were lowered, in order to meet racial quotas, they were lowered for everybody. Deadbeats of any race could get mortgage loans, and most were probably not minorities.
Democrats like to blame the "greed" of business, rather than the policies of government, for problems. But lenders don't make money by lending to individuals who don't pay them back. That is what government forced lenders to do, beginning under the Clinton administration. And the eventual collapse took down the economy.
Obama Speech:
A fact check shows that under President Obama, the U.S. economy has created a net 415,000 private-sector jobs—less than 0.2 percent of the 155million-member American workforce. But even that statistic does not tell the full story, since the workforce itself has shrunk dramatically in size since Obama tookoffice. Labor force participation is at 63.5 percent, its lowest level since 1981. In other words, a large chunk of Americans have simply given uplooking for work. A significant number are collecting disability insurance instead. In fact, the share of the adult population with jobs has remained flat for the past two years. The only reason the unemployment rate edged downslightly in August was that fewer people looked for work and thus no longer count as unemployed. The percentage of people participating in the laborforce dropped by 0.2 percent—the same amount the unemployment rate dropped. As Sherk has explained, we are in the slowest recovery in 70 years, and jobcreation has not recovered since the recession began in 2007.
The Associated Press and others point out that statement is misleading because it counts jobs from the recession's lowest point to where employment began to grow again – excluding jobs lost earlier in Obama's term and masking that overall unemployment has increased over that period. "Overall, roughly 7.5 million jobs were lost during the recession that began in December 2007 and ended officially in June 2009," according to the wire service.
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