How liberals define the word ‘Investment’

I swear Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is nothing more than an automaton. Her only, ahem, skill is to take the Administration's talking points concerning the economy and regurgitate them ad nauseum. Her economic expertise is not even one question deep. For your reading pleasure I give you her statement in an interview yesterday on Fox News as she tries to push the President's American Jobs Plan porkulus II (emphasis mine):

"At the end of the day, we have to make sure that we don't continue to deepen our problems by laying off more teachers, firefighters and police officers. We have to make sure we put construction workers back to work like the American Jobs Plan would do by investing in the infrastructure we need, and we have to make sure that this is paid for by folks who are not paying their fair share now, making sure that the wealthy and more fortunate step up to the plate, and that's how we're going to get this done."

Ok, just for giggles let's take a look at what the definition of the word investment is:

in·vest·ment [in-vest-muhnt]

noun

1. the investing  of money or capital in order to gain profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value.

2. a particular instance or mode of investing.

3. a thing invested  in, as a business, a quantity of shares of stock, etc.

4. something that is invested;  sum invested.

5. the act or fact of investing  or state of being invested,  as with a garment.

 
Okay, deconstruction time. First of all it is NOT the federal government's responsibility to maintain state and local public servants (i.e. teachers, police, firefighters etc.). This notion of investing in these 'jobs' is absurd in the extreme. Ultimately, what she is advocating here is to reward bad behavior at the expense of other communities who do balance their budgets.

But what just kills me is that she sees state and local bailouts as - wait for it - an investment. What she does not understand is these jobs, while necessary, are cost centers for the country NOT wealth generators. Her idea of 'investment' is to take capital away from those who have the ability to actually invest in wealth/job generating activities, and award it non-wealth generating activates.

I am certainly in favor of have safe roads, Police, teachers and firefighters, but these are necessary leakages from any economy. And these necessary entities should never, ever be confused with wealth generation. Roads in and of themselves do not generate wealth, only short-term jobs; there is no return on investment here. Whereas Wasserman-Schultz would have us believe the construction of roads will magically give the taxpayer a dividend once it is complete.

This brings us to how erroneously Wasserman-Schultz and her liberal friends view the U.S. economy. She is convinced that if she takes money away from the evil wealthy (those making $200,000 a year) and flush it down the Keynesian toilet we can lower unemployment. While public sector jobs are 'created', at the expense of the private sector, absolutely NO wealth or long-term INVESTMENT is crated. Debbie please, please, please do yourself a favor and dust off that old Econ 101 text book and see exactly what the role of the federal government is. Here is a hint, it is not to create jobs - it is to get the hell out of the way so those who know what they are doing can.

Labor Day - RIP

E. J. Dionne wrote a Labor Day piece that I meant to get to earlier but the day job kept getting in the way. In his article Dionne tries to make the case that Americans have given up on 'honoring' the worker as the real creators of wealth in the country. Dionne's premise seems to be that capital could not exist without the righteous and noble efforts of the entity called Labor. While I agree with the statement on the surface - that is that capital is reliant upon labor - one could just as easily say that capital, in a candy factory, is reliant on sugar. But oddly enough we do not celebrate Sugar Day.

This mythos surrounding the 'Labor' movement, and the levels that liberals go to canonize labor, is of course self-serving. We all know how it works. The liberals support the 'labor' (read Union) agenda and when election time comes around the Unions stuff the Democrat's campaign coffers from the dues they collect from their members.

But the point I want to make here is that for all their posturing and vitriolic language, labor will always be nothing more than a commodity. Always have been and always will. But Labor leaders have to keep up the myth that labor is something other than a commodity to keep the monetary merry-go-round funded. But lately, the mask has slipped a bit. The Unions overreached in Wisconsin, and the Boeing debacle in South Carolina rising to national attention has endeared them to no one. As the labor movement become more and more irrelevant, expect to see them self-destruct even further..

Labor Unions have waned since their heyday in the 50's and they have waned for a reason. They have, due largely to their own efforts, become irrelevant. They have gone from an advocate of their members to nothing more than extortionist. Making companies and taxpayers pay more than the market should bear for their commodity. This eventually creates a situation where they price themselves out of the market. But, rather than correcting this, they simply demand for more and more, effectively killing the company they work for (GM, Chrysler, local governments). Time after time, non-Union shops outperform Union shops. Right to work states outperform pro-Union states. The only option the Unions have left is to rely on entities like the NRLB to take up their cause, because they simply cannot compete in the marketplace anymore.

If a tree fell in the forest, and nobody was there, would it make any noise?

Ok, sometimes I am a bit put out with Speaker Boehner but this is just, well priceless. He has made his best decision in his tenure as speaker by choosing NOT to have an opposition response to the President's much anticipated (at least by him) 'jobs' speech on Thursday. I swear, if you don't know what being played like a fiddle feels like, just give a call to the White House and they will fill you in on the gory details.

The best part? Oh I just love this.. Nancy Pelosi indicated that it is unpatriotic NOT to respond to the president's vaunted speech (and I guess, thereby giving it relevance):

"The Republicans' refusal to respond to the president's proposal on jobs is not only disrespectful to him, but to the American people,"

Tell you what Nancy, let's let the American people decide what is patriotic shall we. To be honest, I just love this decision. And to be fair, President Obama has no one to blame but himself here. He built this speech up by teasing the country that he had a plan; an outline of a plan; an outline of an outline of a plan to deliver after his Martha's Vineyard vacation. Then he chooses to dispense his incredibly, stupendously, same-ol-same-ol Keynesian nonsense IN A JOINT SESSION CONGRESS the same night the GOP debate is on.

Well first, the Speaker made the President move the day from the same night of the GOP debate TOOOOO the kickoff of the NFL season, ouch! And not just any game - the last two Super Bowl champions to boot. And then.. and then… get this, the Speaker has the unmitigated gall to… hehe, NOT EVEN RESPOND to the Presidents campaign speech. B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L.

And now the Dems are ticked that not even the opposition cares what the One has to say anymore.

Well played Mr. Speaker! Well played indeed.

What planet does Wasserman-Schultz live on?

Does she even listen to herself? This from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz on MSNBC's Morning Joe (emphasis mine):

"Well, the Republicans who think the Recovery Act (stimulus) didn't work are simply wrong. The Recovery Act, as of the beginning of this year, created an additional 3.6 million jobs. We have -- the Recovery Act had a direct impact on making sure the teachers, firefighters, police officers were able to remain in their jobs. It begun -- it helped begin to turn the economy around. 50% of it was tax breaks to small businesses and to the middle class. So every economist you would talk to that is worth their salt acknowledges that without the Recovery Act we would not be continuing on the upswing.

3.6 million jobs? Where? Oh, there it is teachers, firefighter and police. And what do all of these jobs have in common? Right, public sector jobs. Which by the way are NOT the responsibility of the Federal Government rather they are the responsibility of state and local governments? So she is arguing that the Orwellian named Recovery Act simply bailed out the unbelievably mismanaged local governments. Wow money well spent. And if said local governments don't right their fiscal ship (like Governor Walker did in Wisconsin) I suppose the taxpayers will simply bail them out again? Madness!

I also love her "it helped to turn the economy around" bit. Really, last month there were exactly zero jobs added, consumer confidence hasn't seen its current level since - well, since Obama took office. Wow what a turnaround Debbie!

Message from the DNC Chair: Don't believe you lying eyes.

Mad Max(ine) is at it again

The distinguished Maxine Waters (D-CA) had this to say on Meet the Press on Sunday (emphasis mine):

"I'm talking about a jobs program of a trillion dollars or more. We've got to put Americans to work. That's the only way to revitalize this economy. When people work they earn money, they spend that money, and that's what gets the economy up and going,"

I just.. I mean.. wha.. um, are you (fill in the bad word of your choice here) KIDDING ME? The only way to revitalize the economy is a $1,000,000,000,000 plus 'jobs' program? Is it just me or did we try this already and failed miserably?

I can only assume that the Honorable Congresswoman has never had an economic course in her life. Her degree is in Sociology after all, whatever the hell that is.

Okay, let's help her here, think back to Econ 101 and see if we can't enlighten her congressionalness:

You have businesses on one side - households on the other. Businesses need resources to create and sell their products. Households have recourses they willing sell to businesses (human recourses/rent etc). In this (bizarre) scenario, firms compete for resources to create products and services driving prices down and selling to consumers more efficiently.

Households get money in the form of wages and rent that they can then spend on goods and services of their choice. This generates more investment in businesses as they expand to meet consumer wants and needs in the market. Sweet! Everybody wins right? Well everyone but the big-government liberals.

For Maxi, this is evil free-market nonsense is just - well unacceptable. You see in her world, the unwashed masses just can't make the right decisions. Free-market is just not enough. According to her view of the world, we need to add another element to 'boost' the economy. And that of course is intervention by the federal government. The only answer (her words not mine).

So her solution is to take 1/14th of the entire U.S. Economy from those who are best suited to create jobs (and thus deliver us from our economic doldrums), and simply transfer it to non-market driven goods and services. So who wins here? Well the Feds of course. By circumventing market forces, she gets to pick the winners and losers. And I am sure that those winners will be disproportionately distributed to those entities (unions) who have consistently stuffed the democrat's coffers.

In her defense I am certain that she couldn't string two coherent sentences together defending Keynesian economics. So we might cut her a break here. That being said she was not even challenged on Meet the Press on this absurdity. Par for the course I guess.