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Obamanomics: The belief that government can create economic prosperity by spending money it doesn't have. See also, "tooth fairy" and "pipe dream."

President Obama's Tuesday evening speech was short on serious economic solutions and far too long on impossible promises, contradictions, and non-solutions delivered with all the fervor of a college pep rally.

Conspicuous by its absence was any talk of stopping the precipitous decline in stock values as indicated by the enormous market decline that has accelerated since Obama's election. Clearly, while political pundits and dogmatic Democrats may be buying into Obamanomics, the stock market is not. We're not just talking Wall Street, either. We're talking global markets. The reaction of the real economy is not being kind to President Obama. Then again, neither is Obama being kind to the markets with his socialist rhetoric and complete disregard for the decline in 401K values.

It isn't so much that Obama is a liar or incapable of understanding the enormous liabilities of the approach his administration is taking to dealing with our economic decline. The real concern is that Obama seriously believes his own speeches and really has no comprehension of the obvious impossibility of his proposed solutions to actually produce anything positive.

Fundamentally, Obama's economic plan ("Obamanomics") is to spend money the federal government doesn't have in order to "stimulate" the beginning of a sustained economic recovery. The problem with Obamanomics is that it's been tried many times before and failed every time.

Ever since the first "stimulus plan" last summer, Washington politicians have been complaining about how the money has been used while sternly wagging their collective finger at bankers, corporate executives, "Wall Street", and, of course, the forever favorite target "the Bush administration". In doing so they've had some success trying to deflect criticism where it really belongs -- directed squarely at an irresponsible Congress using economic downturn to feed their own favorite "pork" projects by piling thousands of "earmarks" for funding to their favorite donors and their own constituents (often two distinctly different groups).

Yet there are two elementary facts that should have the public wagging their finger right back at the politicians. In every one of the "stimulus" spending bills:

1. Congress included no strict guidelines controlling how funds were to be used, and,
    
2. Congress included no strict accountability procedures upon which receipt of funding would be conditional.

On top of this gross congressional incompetence, there is the huge matter of arrogant congressional "pork" spending and deceitful attempts to pass blame on to others!

Of course, all these spending sprees known as "stimulus plans" were approved by both Presidents Bush and Obama. This is "change"?

So last night's Obamanomics speech might have been a refreshing indicator of "change" if only Obama had wagged his finger at his audience, pointed out that their earmark pork spending was bankrupting this nation and that continuing to spend money we don't have with no hope of financing that debt was highly irresponsible. Instead, Obama had the audacity to claim that there has been no "earmark" spending under his watch (either he is grossly ignorant of what has just happened, or he is lying -- take your pick).

Instead, we witnessed a campaign stump speech, promising everything to everyone at no cost. Yes, we'll control emissions and we'll spend whatever it takes to bring about "green" energy and we'll see that everyone has access to health care, blah, blah, blah, and someone else will pay for it because we'll just raise taxes on "the rich." Pure Obamanomics. Pure, unadulterated nonsense.

Folks, if more federal spending produced greater prosperity and reduced federal deficits, we'd have no deficit by now and be in an economic boom the likes of which we've never seen. But reality has a habit of dashing even the most pleasing of political fantasies.

Some nasty little reality tidbits about Obamanomics:

• Who is going to finance the trillions in debt this nation is spending itself into by these succession of foolish "stimulus plans"? Put another way, where is the money going to come from? Don't expect the rest of the world to continue to finance US debt. They no longer have confidence that they'll be repaid and, in case you hadn't noticed, the global economy is also in a tailspin with many nations' economy worse off than ours! Obamanomics proposes to spend and burden the economy with trillions in additional costs to fund programs that are scientifically unsound, economically not feasible and create a huge expansion in the government bureaucracy Do you really believe this nation can survive that?
   
• If lowering taxes increases federal revenues (it has the last three times it was tried under Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush II), what do you expect will be the consequence of raising taxes? Before you answer, consider that when government raises taxes, it takes money out of the economy (taking away from both employers and employees). That makes the chances for salary increases and better benefits much less likely and the likelihood of layoffs much greater. How else is the business (employer) to remain competitive? And, of course, no salary increase for employees and layoffs mean less consumer spending. Obviously, the reverse is true when taxes are cut. Obamanomics raises taxes. Draw your own conclusions about what that will do.
   
• Energy innovation is a great idea. However, it's a terrible idea when politicians get involved. Remember the corn ethanol disaster? Turns out, the energy costs to produce corn ethanol are more than politicians realized and, in fact, offer no energy benefits over just plain gasoline -- but come with a performance penalty, including lowering the CAFE figures that politicians demand be higher! Obamanomics supports the least plausible energy alternatives, solar and wind power. While these are both viable for limited energy applications, they both come at very high cost and are not sustainable during calm weather or at night. There are far better green alternatives that private investment would generate if not for the meddling of politicians through Obamanomics.
   
• There is no scientifically sound basis for reducing CO2 emissions. The notion that human emissions of CO2 are sufficient to have any meaningful impact on global temperatures is a complete fabrication that cannot be sustained by sound scientific evidence. Not one study has ever linked human emissions of CO2 to any change in global temperature. The suggestion that global warming of the past was due to humans burning fossil fuels has always been a theory that the last decade of global cooling has thoroughly discredited. Serious scientific investigation and observation has provided ample supporting evidence to the discrediting of the humans-caused-global-warming theory espoused by NASA's James Hansen (not an atmospheric scientist and whose pronouncements have become so loony that he is no longer taken seriously by the serious scientific community) and politician Al Gore (whose movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" has been shown to be nothing less than a propaganda show designed to scare the population into making Al Gore very wealthy). By endorsing the Gore fantasy about global warming, Obamanomics will deliver what may be the mortal wound to an economy Obama's policies are continuing to cripple. And we thought Bush was a bad president?

There is little chance that Obamanomics will bring anything better than a return to Carter-era stagflation ... rapidly rising interest rates coupled with skyrocketing inflation.

Is this the "change" people wanted?

Bob Webster
WEBCommentary (Editor, Publisher)

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Biography - Bob Webster

Author of "Looking Out the Window", an evidence-based examination of the "climate change" issue, Bob Webster, is a 12th-generation descendent of both the Darte family (Connecticut, 1630s) and the Webster family (Massachusetts, 1630s). He is a descendant of Daniel Webster's father, Revolutionary War patriot Ebenezer Webster, who served with General Washington. Bob has always had a strong interest in early American history, our Constitution, U.S. politics, and law. Politically he is a constitutional republican with objectivist and libertarian roots. He has faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and reason over deception and emotion. He is a strong believer in our Constitution as written and views the abandonment of constitutional restraint by the regressive Progressive movement as a great danger to our Republic. His favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and believes it should be required reading for all high school students so they can appreciate the cost of tolerating the growth of unconstitutional crushingly powerful central government. He strongly believes, as our Constitution enshrines, that the interests of the individual should be held superior to the interests of the state.

A lifelong interest in meteorology and climatology spurred his strong interest in science. Bob earned his degree in Mathematics at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1964.

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