When certain Presidents talk about “the best economists around” I’d have more faith in just their words that defend their economic policies if I knew they were referring to great men like Milton Friedman and not an economist hack like Keynes.

So the next time somone is complaining about capitalism, corporate greed, the myth of the wealth gap or the failed 40-year war on poverty, just direct them to this clip and ask them to show you an example of an economy where their false utopia of fairness exists.

Anycrooks, Bobby Jindal, Republican Governor of Louisiana, announced that he is refusing the unemployment benefits from the $1 trillion stimulus porkulus plan because, SHOCK, he is representing the citizens of Louisiana and doesn’t want his citizens to get stuck with unnecessary bills down the road WHEN the federal ship of money is high and dry (via HotAir).

“The federal money in this bill will run out in less than three years for this benefit and our businesses would then be stuck paying the bill,” Jindal said. “We must be careful and thoughtful as we examine all the strings attached to the funding in this package. We cannot grow government in an unsustainable way.”

Other spotlight hogs in the media *cough*Arnold*cough* are trying to frame Jindal’s refusal as if he is being treacherous, but in fact neglect the fact that he plans to take money that will help infrastructure and roads. Jindal is only being selective in which funds to accept from the porkulus because he doesn’t want to trap his citizens into higher taxes down the road. He is also doing this because he realizes that businesses do not need the added hardship of paying the government more when they are serving the community better by having that freed up capital to create jobs.

NOLA says he’ll accept cash for transportation infrastructure and a modest increase in unemployment benefits but drew the line at unemployment insurance lest it mean a $12 million tax hike for Louisiana businesses three years from now.

See this is what happens when you have fiscally-responsible governors in place. The state runs itself more smooth in terms of budget and spending, and thus doesn’t go crying to the federal legislature to invoke billions upon billions of spending programs – California, are you listening??? Spending programs at the federal level should be reserved for interstate projects and national/international-level projects (military would be an example of this).  Private corporations and citizens on their own won’t fund infrastructure and military – that’s why it makes sense to accept the federal funding as a collective for these types of programs because who’s going to fund them if we don’t do it in this fashion. BUT to blindly accept other spending programs without looking at the fine print in the requirements of said accepting funds is not being a good legislature by the citizens who voted you into office. This is why Jindal is one of my favorite political leaders.

I wish more legislatures were like Jindal – a politician who actually reads the bills and then makes conscious, calculated decisions that weigh both the risks and benefits to the citizens they represent.

UPDATE: Here’s the video of Jinal on Meet The Press this past Sunday talking further about why he’s not accepting part of the porkulus.

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Obama’s stance prior to the stimulus porkulus vote  (Also, try to just bypass the fact that in his quote he’s getting an F- in economic history when he makes the argument with the 90s Japan debate point – and, uh, I thought this guy went to Harvard):

Obama defended the role of government in the recovery process, saying that “with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life.”  “I think that what I’ve said is what other economists have said across the political spectrum, which is that if you delay acting on an economy of this severity, then you potentially create a negative spiral that becomes much more difficult for us to get out of.” He compared the situation to that of Japan in the 1990s, saying the Japanese, failing to act quickly enough, suffered a “lost decade.”  “This is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill recession.”

Now Obama change in tune this week after signing away our future earnings:

Things are not as bad now as they were in the 1930s or even the early ’80s when, Obama reminded us, he was still in college. Young people — by which he did not seem to mean the columnists aboard — are simply unfamiliar with hardship, he said.  “So for a huge number of people out there, they’re just not accustomed to seeing a bad economy with really high unemployment and very bearish markets. . . . What we’re going through now is nothing compared to what our grandparents went through during the Great Depression.”

There, there, there…now everything is okay.

Oh, but wait a minute, Barry – I thought on the campaign trail it was that this was “the worst time in the U.S.’ economic history since the Great Depression.” Pleeeeeeeease – that was just “campaign rhetoric.” No shit sherlock.

Most conservatives out there already knew this was a recession but that it was not on the verge of needing $1 trillion shot of govt. pork straight to the heart. My husband would constantly comment “If we’re in such a depression, how come I still have to wait an hour to get seated at any restaurant on a Thursday night?”  Ain’t that the truuuuuuuuuuf! 

But here’s what is going to happen to our economy now that we’re full of pork and having to PAY for it the rest of our lives (and our children, and probably grandchildren). I’ve illustrated it with as a heart getting clogged with more and more cholesterol.  Hmmmm – PORK it’s what for dinner for the next 25 years!

 I’m not saying there were not huge issues of credit and capital malpractice that needed to be fixed. But coercing, with fear tactics, support for the passage of a bill which will double our national debt only to provide a miniscule percentage of job growth makes you a manipulative politician praying onto people’s fears of the unknown, not a leader of the new bipartisan era. On the flipside, buying blindly into this politician’s facade makes you equally as guilty and possibly insane.

Then clips to the realists from today will be plastered on the front pages of the dailies, debating why the administration and Congress just didn’t listen to the public’s voice. If you’ve got the stomach for it, here’s video of the worst spending plan in history going into law. OINK! OINK! OINK!

Uhhh….shudders.  Quick question: It is ironic at all that I had planned on fixing PORK chops for dinner tonight???   Perhaps I am psychic after all…hmmmm.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Wish some of our representatives would get some instead of just relying on “the best economists around” according to Obama. Check the vid – love it that she interviews Obama supporters yet their ideal is different than the kool-aid man they voted into office.  Can anybody say – Told.You.So.??? 

But you know those Congressmen and women are too busy not reading the actual stimulus plan and showing real leadership by rushing votes so they can get back to planning trips to Italy.  Oh wait, at least one read the bill. Name that party – Republican. Heh, no big freakin’ surprise.  [Side rant: I'd be willing to be $1,000,000 (if I had it) that I read more of the stimulus bill than half of the people in Congress. And it's not even my job to do so - ridiculous.]

Also, TryingtoGrok had Tom Coburn hitting the nail on the head with some of this frivolous spending.

We are going to spend $448 million to build the Department of Homeland Security a new building. We have $1.3 trillion worth of empty buildings right now, and because it has been blocked in Congress we can’t sell them, we can’t raze them, we can’t do anything, but we are going to spend money on a new building here in Washington. We are going to spend another $248 million for new furniture for that building; a quarter of a billion dollars for new furniture. What about the furniture the Department of Homeland Security has now? These are tough times. Should we be buying new furniture? How about using what we have? That is what a family would do. They would use what they have. They wouldn’t go out and spend $248 million on furniture.

Bottom line – this porkulus plan is going to cost an average of $10,000 from each household in America. Do you have an extra $10,000 you’d like to just hand over to the govt. and never see any of the benefit of it? I find it hard to believe if any people would be happy with that scenario. And if you need a lesson in how govt. spending doesn’t cure economic woes, then take a look at Japan in the 1990s.

The recession that happened in 2001/2002 was helped by the 2003 Bush tax cuts, the roaring US economy in the late 90s was helped in part to the driving interest of dotcom stocks but also the 1997 Tax Reform bill. I don’t think tax cuts are the only answer but at least we should have temporary ones put in place to give immediate and direct relief to families as well as business to help them keep employees or create new jobs. Not spending $500 million on the National Endowment for the Arts or HIV testing.  If we’re going to have to spend money under this administration let’s make it about funding more manufacturing, infrastructure and technology. 95% of that bill should go toward those initatives – not just 5%!

Here’s Peter’s latest interview on Yahoo! Finance where he discusses the current proposal to get us out of this mess – the Porkulus.  Also with the article is a great video interview where he explains how pertinent for our economic policy to focus on freeing up capital and saving.

The problem, he says, is the government is trying to perpetuate a “phony economy” based on borrowing and spending. With the U.S. consumer tapped out, the government is “now taking on the mantle” of consumer of last resort, he continues, predicting the bond bubble will soon burst – if it hasn’t already – ultimately leading to a collapse of the dollar and an “inflationary depression worse than anything any of us have ever seen.”

If nothing else, Schiff is an nonpartisan critic of American policymakers, comparing President Bush to Herbert Hoover and President Obama to FDR, and neither in a favorable way.

The reason I listen to someone like Schiff is because if you see in the video he’s stuck to his guns for nearly 3 years even while everyone else in the room was demanding he was wrong and some even laughing at him. Well, look who has the last laugh I guess. This is why I think the most humble/confident guy, not the loudest or arrogant,  is usually the right guy. Why because he’s done his homework and he gives it to you straight. He’s not looking to sound super-smart or to get that zinger sound-bite. He’s just presenting it like “here are the facts, folks. It may not be pretty but it is what it is so we’ve got to own up to it and deal.”

But I think govt. is too busy looking at reality to understand we’ve just got to accept that we’re not going to get out of this right away and that spending like we have been the last decade is not the answer. It’s the American way though. I think Americans are too scared to go through “tough” times – you know times where they have to save their paycheck, not spend their entire income, take out multiple lines of credit to stay above water and keep debt at bay.  So instead of owning up to it and chinning up to go through a more fiscally responsible time, they vote in politicians who’s policy is “having a financial crisis – we’ll here’s the solution, let’s take more money out of the economy (or borrow an insane amount of debt that we’ll have to pay back for years and years through higher taxes) and spend even 10x the amount of money.”

If you were a credit counselor and you had a client that was to the point of suicide because they couldn’t get a hold of their finances. To the point that what they made didn’t even cover the interest, let alone the principle, of their credit/debt lines. What would you advise them to do? Spend more? Yeah right.

It’s time for Americans to realize that we’re in a recession. It’s time to focus on saving  and paying down our debt. It’s time for the govt. to start giving temporary income tax cuts to taxpayers so that they have a chance to save that money. It’s time to give business temporary tax cuts to reinvest in their businesses or so that they don’t have to layoff more workers. The current porkulus does not equal production and will only make things 1,000x worse down the line. Buckle up I think it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Obama: We are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that for the last eight years have doubled the national debt.”

Fred 5676:  You mean OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING??  Yeah, let’s do some more of that.

No joke. Tax cuts would help give families and business immediate (key word here: IMMEDIATE) relief. What if a temporary income tax break of say 50% were enacted next week. And that tax break was only for a set time (end of 2009) so that it would truly serve its purpose in helping out in an emergency economic situation. Let’s look at my paycheck. I paid about $300 in just income taxes every paycheck. If I got a 50% break that means I’d have $150 more every week. I would turn around and either spend that money (which would increase the economy), invest that money in a banking account (which would increase the economy) or pay down some of my debt (which would help the economy with reducing debt). How then can you sit there arguing that tax breaks don’t provide economic growth. Honestly, WTF, Barry????  It’s not tax breaks that got us into this mess so quit trying to pin up all your problems on the Bush administration’s tax policies.

If you’re going to blame the last eight years on anything it’s spending! And you don’t seem to be opposed to that. In fact you seem to put on the earmuffs anytime somebody brings up questioning $1 trillion dollars in frivolous spending. Just because you now talk in a preacher’s voice doesn’t make the argument any more convincing.

And the other thing, I can’t stand it when politicians talk about the “best economists” out there. Just because you only surround yourself with Keynesian nutjob-economy theorists who tell you whatever you want to hear all the time (and nothing but) DOESN’T make them the best economists around.  The Keynesian-theory has been discredited by years of analysis. What makes me laugh the most is that its biggest supporters are critics of supply-side economics because they say “trick-down economics” don’t work. Ummm, riddle me this – what the FUCK do you think govt. spending is then – are you saying that’s NOT a form of trickle down?  Don’t be fooled. The Keynesian economics that Obama is peddling is taking money out of the economy (or from your pocket either by taxes or by your employer collecting taxes from your paycheck) and then using that revenue pool to then distribute money how they see fit – money from the top getting dispersed downward. If it was really a bottom-up policy you’d want to give the people at the bottom (taxpayers) directly more money in their pocket first, not take money from them and trickle it down through pork projects to your party’s biggest industry supporters/contributors. So, how do you implement a bottom-up impact immediately…drum roooooooooooll: a tax cut. Not a tax credit. A TAX CUT.

There’s a book I’m reading by Henry Hazlitt called Economics in One Lesson. It’s a great book. It doesn’t even talk about political parties. It just breaks things down to the simplest formula when it comes to economic policy. Perhaps I should send Barry my copy - I think he needs it more than me. Hazlitt states that good economists look looks beyond the immediate effect. Bad economists look just at the immediate effect. So when Barry is just preeeeachin’ away about the immediate affect, and refuses to answer questions about tax increases, lack of capital, and the weak prospectus of job creation as a result of the porkulus I think that would qualify his “best economists around” as bad economists according to Hazlitt. Hazlitt’s book is fascinating and a real eye-opener. If you’ve never heard of the broken window fallacy, click here for an excerpt- it’ll put in reality how the govt.’s “job creation” isn’t really creation of production at all. Hazlitt’s book helps break it down how truly govt. spending or “public works” actually mean taxes and taxes discourage production as well as capital growth. Here’s one excerpt from the book that I think rings true to this situation of crazy govt. spending (ie, using more taxpayer money):

It (they group proposing govt. spending programs) sees the people into whose hands the capital is put; it forgets those who would otherwise have it. It sees the project to which capital is granted; it forgets the projects from which capital is thereby withheld. It sees the immediate benefit to only one group; it overlooks the losses to the other group, and the net loss to the community as a whole.

If you don’t have time to read Hazlitt’s book, in the meantime the Cato Institute also breaks it down so that a teenager could understand it.  Watch it:

Ultimately, I’m loving this. It’s meltdown, finger wagging, and preacher-voicin’-mania this week.