Obama and Small businesses

[Magox]

I'm having a hard time believing what Obama says when it comes to Small businesses.

 

He has said, "Over the past decade and a half, America's small businesses have created 65 percent of all new jobs in the country, "These companies are the engine of job growth in America," he said. "They fuel our prosperity. And that's why they have to be at the forefront of our recovery." yet his actions don't back any of this up.

 

I was against the way the TARP bailout was used, but since they went this route, they continued to support Banks such as BAC, GMAC and CITI, automakers GM and CHRYSLER and insurers such as AIG. But when it came to CIT, the largest lender to small businesses in the U.S, they decided to not support them any further. CIT has over a million customers in which many are small businesses and the fact that they decided to not give them another lifeline to me speaks volumes of where this administrations priorities are.

 

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle6898854.ece

 

The bank’s collapse will be a blow for its million small and medium-sized customers, many in the retail sector, for whom sources of debt are scarce. Experts believe that, even if CIT can emerge intact from Chapter 11, its lending capacity could fall by 20 per cent.

 

The entire $2.3 billion Tarp loan is expected to be wiped out by the bankruptcy process, but the bill could have been signficantly bigger. While the US Government helped other big non-bank lenders, including GMAC, General Motor’s finance arm, it rebuffed CIT’s subsequent bailout requests in July, concluding that its demise would not threaten the broad financial system.

 

Of course GMAC would get further assistance, it supports the automakers which of course supports the Unions.

 

Another example of supporting the Unions as opposed to businesses are the American Protectionist policies that BO has been implementing. Obviously the Weak dollar is the biggest form of American Protectionism there is, but G.W was just as bad as BO, so I won't delve any further into that for now. There was the Buy American Clause in the Stimulus Bill, the stalling of free trade agreements with other countries, the tire tarriffs against the chinese and imposing trade barriers to protect union jobs.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aNjg9RbPCS6Q

 

Death of Manufacturing Exaggerated as Trade Deferred

 

Manufacturing in the U.S. is alive and well. It just needs fewer workers.

Increasing factory productivity has kept America the world’s largest industrial economy, accounting for more than one-fifth of global output, almost twice as much as China, according to the United Nations

Rising productivity also means companies need fewer workers, a trend economists say will continue. The number of Americans employed in factories has fallen 40 percent since peaking in 1979, according to the Labor Department. In response, unions are pressuring President Barack Obama to protect jobs by pursuing policies that include erecting trade barriers.

“The U.S. is still a manufacturing giant,” said Marc Chandler, an international economist and global head of currency strategy for Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. “If you don’t understand that, you can make bad policies. And you can miss investment opportunities.”

Obama’s challenge is that “people tend to associate the strength of a sector with its employment level,” said Dave Huether, chief economist of the Washington-based National Association of Manufacturers.

Imposing trade barriers to protect employment misses the main reason manufacturing has stayed strong while employment has contracted, economists say.

 

“Because of productivity growth, we have been able to produce more output with fewer workers,” former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in an telephone interview from Washington. “That’s the source of higher standards of living. If employment was moving up exactly in line with output, it would mean that productivity and standards of living had stalled.”

“Growth rates are much higher in developing countries because they start from such a low base,” said Shyam Upadhyaya, the chief statistician at the Vienna-based organization. “But in absolute terms, the value of U.S. manufacturing continues growing.”

Still, the administration has put free-trade deals with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea on hold, partly because unions pushed for stiffer labor provisions.

 

“We’re frustrated,” said Bill Lane, director of government affairs for Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar Inc., the world’s biggest maker of construction equipment. “We need to start generating U.S. jobs. And the best way to do that is by promoting exports and opening foreign markets.”

 

At the same time, the U.S. must do more to retrain manufacturing workers who have lost their jobs and improve the education system to prepare workers for a more high-tech economy, Greenspan said.

 

“It is essential that we move workers from obsolescent industries into those with cutting-edge technologies,” he said.

 

Still, the idea that job losses mean U.S. manufacturing has hollowed out is a “myth,” said William Overholt, a senior research fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. All industrialized and industrializing countries go through the same process as their manufacturing becomes more sophisticated and productivity increases.

 

The U.S. lost 2.6 million factory jobs from 1994 to 2004, while China lost 25 million, according to a study Overholt did for the Santa Monica, California-based Rand Corp.

 

“The familiar views of the fate of U.S. manufacturing are basically a combination of paranoia and propaganda,” Overholt said. “The idea that America’s manufacturing economy is dying is the silliest nonsense.”

 

When I see that SEIU's labor Union Chief Stern has visited the White House more than anyone else with 22 visits, to me it is just pointing evidence that BO is in bed with the Unions. I mean we pretty much already knew that anyway, specially when they !@#$ed over the GM bondholders, then of course there was the Buy American Provision, then the tariffs against the chinese, the stalling of the FREE TRADE agreements we had with other countries, and now the heavy lobbying efforts from the Unions to include the Public Option. For Christs Sakes they put out a full page ad out on one of the major newspapers to Oppose the Baucus plan which would of taxed many union members benefits, and of course we can't have that . So what we will see is that the Unions most likely will be exempt as federal workers will as well from many of these taxes.

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/10/30/s...e-visitor-list/

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/di...visitor-records

 

Thats 22 visits to the White House, more than any other visitor, what do you think they were talking about? Of course White House officials were reassuring them that we won't cut their wages, do everything they can for them to keep their jobs in the U.S (even if that means being less productive as a country), won't tax their health benefits etc. etc. etc.

 

I just find it very hypocritical of BO on one hand say "Over the past decade and a half, America's small businesses have created 65 percent of all new jobs in the country," "These companies are the engine of job growth in America," he said. "They fuel our prosperity. And that's why they have to be at the forefront of our recovery." Then with his actions allows CIT to file for bankruptcy, which could affect 20% of lending for small businesses, picks a fight with the Chamber of Commerce (which represents small businesses), didn't do nearly enough to support Regional Banks, the major engine of lending to small businesses, but yet bends over backwards to support the Unions which in many cases have hurt this economy.

 

[IDBillzFan]

If this administration tanks, I think history will ultimately show that its biggest mistake was expecting the Recovery Act to save the economy and get companies hiring again. Because face it, exactly what else have they done specifically to help incent companies to create more jobs other than passing the Recovery Act, which everyone now knows was just a payoff to their donors? And it won't matter if he can make it rain unicorn piss, if unemployment keeps going up (as he promised it would this weekend), nothing else will matter.

 

While DeMint may feel that health care will be Obama's Waterloo, in my little opinion, the reality is Obama's lack of knowledge about what actually makes small businesses want to grow and expand will kill him faster. Obama somehow thinks the government needs to create the jobs, when what he really needs to do to provide tax cuts so people will spend again. And when people spend, small businesses thrive. When small businesses thrive, they grow and expand.

 

But I guess, y'know, the president would need some type of executive experience to understand that.

[keepthefaith]

If this administration tanks, I think history will ultimately show that its biggest mistake was expecting the Recovery Act to save the economy and get companies hiring again. Because face it, exactly what else have they done specifically to help incent companies to create more jobs other than passing the Recovery Act, which everyone now knows was just a payoff to their donors? And it won't matter if he can make it rain unicorn piss, if unemployment keeps going up (as he promised it would this weekend), nothing else will matter.

 

While DeMint may feel that health care will be Obama's Waterloo, in my little opinion, the reality is Obama's lack of knowledge about what actually makes small businesses want to grow and expand will kill him faster. Obama somehow thinks the government needs to create the jobs, when what he really needs to do to provide tax cuts so people will spend again. And when people spend, small businesses thrive. When small businesses thrive, they grow and expand.

 

But I guess, y'know, the president would need some type of executive experience to understand that.

 

We can only hope and pray he's a 1-term President. He sees small business as a tax revenue opportunity with strong evidence of this in the revised income tax brackets and other taxes in the latest health care bill. The recovery act contains almost no incentives for hiring. It does contain funding for hiring hundreds of thousands of government employees which will cost billions for years well beyond the life of the recovery act. Obama's a one-trick pony pushing an agenda for social and economic justice for the bottom of the economy which is really the only thing he knows. He's a typical liberal, passive intellectual with little hands-on experience. Frightening.

[Magox]

I read an article in the New York Times today that I believe echoes the sentiment of some on this board.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/us/polit...mp;_r=1&hpw

 

In Iowa, Second Thoughts on Obama

 

WILLIAMSBURG, Iowa — Pauline McAreavy voted for President Obama. From the moment she first saw him two years ago, she was smitten by his speeches and sold on his promise of change. She switched parties to support him in the Iowa caucuses, donated money and opened her home to a pair of young campaign workers.

 

“I really thought there would be immediate change,” said Pauline McAreavy, 76, a retired school nurse.

But by the time she received a fund-raising letter last month from the Democratic National Committee, a sense of disappointment had set in. She returned the solicitation with a handwritten note, saying, “Until I see some progress and he lives up to his promises in Iowa, we will not give one penny.”

 

“I’m afraid I wasn’t realistic,” Ms. McAreavy, 76, a retired school nurse, said on a recent morning on the deck of her home here in east-central Iowa.

 

“I really thought there would be immediate change,” she said. “Sometimes the Republicans are just as bad as Democrats. But it’s politics as usual, and that’s what I voted against.”

 

“All my Republican friends — and independents — are sitting back saying, ‘Oh, what did we do?” Ms. McAreavy said. “I’m not to that point yet, but a lot of people are.”

 

But an erosion of support from independents and disapproval from Republicans suggests that the coalition Mr. Obama built to win the White House is frayed.

 

A social studies teacher who saw Mr. Obama on his maiden visit here wonders whether momentum from the election is gone forever. A retired electrical engineer who became a Democrat to support Mr. Obama believes that the president too often blames others for his troubles. And a teacher who voted for Mr. Obama because she was fed up with President George W. Bush does not trust this administration any more than the previous one.

 

As a candidate, Mr. Obama soared, several people said in interviews, but as a president, he often has come across as cautious, tentative and prone to blame his troubles on others.

 

“I think he was more presidential when he was running for office than he is now,” said Paul Johnson, 58, a student legal services lawyer at Iowa State University. “He seems more subdued, which is probably a result of having to actually deal with the issues on his plate as opposed to just rallying the troops to vote for him.”

 

“It’s overdue for him to actually take charge here,” said Ms. Johnson, 57, a social worker in the town of Nevada.

 

As Mr. Obama approaches the anniversary of his election, the sense of possibility and the dash of romance that moved many voters are no longer apparent. The challenges of governing have eaten away at the optimism. The pace of government intervention has also jarred many voters.

 

“He gave a fairly decent presentation, but that’s what it turned out to be — a presentation,” said Mr. Sager, 77. “I don’t think he should keep hiding behind the fact that he inherited all these problems.”

Kathy Shaffer, 60, a retired school teacher, did not tell her husband, Larry, a staunch Republican, that she had she voted for Mr. Obama until recently. She said she had been frustrated by the Iraq war, fed up with the Bush administration and eager for a change.

 

Now, Ms. Shaffer said she regretted her vote, largely because she disapproved of how the government had intervened to help failing financial institutions and car companies. She also fears that Mr. Obama will send more troops to Afghanistan.

[IDBillzFan]

I read an article in the New York Times today that I believe echoes the sentiment of some on this board.

The problem with the people from Iowa is that they're not seeing the big picture. You see, Obama is a "big picture" guy. These people need to understand that what he's doing may not be popular and may not seem very smart right now, but he's laying the foundation for a stronger future, built to handle a different world economy where green jobs are key to our success as we improve our infrastructure like China and grasp the next gold ring on our path toward fundamentally transforming the America we have always known into an America we have always expected it to be. Yes, we have more work to do. And it won't be easy. It'll take everyone working together as one united country -- with a transparent and bipartisan approach to the issues that threaten the very core of our existence for generations to come.

 

But we must first stop seeing each other as white Americans, or black Americans, or liberal Americans, or conservative Americans, but ONLY as Americans. When we see each other for our potential, we can reach that unreachable dream. And we can do it together...as one nation.

 

Except for those right-wing extremist neo-con astroturfing neaderthal brownshirt teabaggers like Fox News, and Hannity, and Rush, and Sarah Palin, and Glen Beck, and all those crazyass bitches from the town hall meetings. We need to kill them.

 

But AFTER that, we'll transform America together.

 

[/current administation's attempt to breath life into a campaign that's been over for a year]

[Magox]

The problem with the people from Iowa is that they're not seeing the big picture. You see, Obama is a "big picture" guy. These people need to understand that what he's doing may not be popular and may not seem very smart right now, but he's laying the foundation for a stronger future, built to handle a different world economy where green jobs are key to our success as we improve our infrastructure like China and grasp the next gold ring on our path toward fundamentally transforming the America we have always known into an America we have always expected it to be. Yes, we have more work to do. And it won't be easy. It'll take everyone working together as one united country -- with a transparent and bipartisan approach to the issues that threaten the very core of our existence for generations to come.

 

But we must first stop seeing each other as white Americans, or black Americans, or liberal Americans, or conservative Americans, but ONLY as Americans. When we see each other for our potential, we can reach that unreachable dream. And we can do it together...as one nation.

 

Except for those right-wing extremist neo-con astroturfing neaderthal brownshirt teabaggers like Fox News, and Hannity, and Rush, and Sarah Palin, and Glen Beck, and all those crazyass bitches from the town hall meetings. We need to kill them.

 

But AFTER that, we'll transform America together.

 

[/current administation's attempt to breath life into a campaign that's been over for a year]

Bravo