Niall Ferguson: Obama’s Gotta Go

Aug 19, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope.

I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing.”

Despite having been—full disclosure—an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization.

Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.



In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.

In an unguarded moment earlier this year, the president commented that the private sector of the economy was “doing fine.” Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed.

In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first he presented—the president envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in 2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this year.

Unemployment was supposed to be 6 percent by now. It has averaged 8.2 percent this year so far. Meanwhile real median annual household income has dropped more than 5 percent since June 2009. Nearly 110 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food stamps.

Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.



Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/niall-ferguson-on-why-barack-obama-needs-to-go.html

I see Newsweek is again trying the Fox News approach to try and save the magazine.

Previous issue:

Proof Newsweek is impartial.

I guess so.

[youtube:1q94ynd9][/youtube:1q94ynd9]

A former advisor to McCain? Yeah, you should put a lot of stock in what he says...

Paul Krugman Bashes Niall Ferguson's Newsweek Cover Story As 'Unethical'

Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economics professor, wrote in a Sunday New York Times blog post titled "Unethical Commentary" that Ferguson misrepresented the costs of health care reform. Krugman wrote:

There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me. Ferguson says:

"The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period."

Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.

Krugman concluded: "We’re not talking about ideology or even economic analysis here — just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers. The Times would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through. Will Newsweek?"

Ferguson could not be reached immediately for comment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/2 ... f=business

Nothing new here, folks. Just the usual GOP process of using lies in place of fact-checking. "Facts? We don' need no steenkin' facts..."

Washington Post: Mitt Romney Tax Plan 'Garbage'

The Washington Post's editorial board mocked Mitt Romney's tax plan on Sunday.

"Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee for president, promises to lower everyone’s income tax rate without reducing revenue. This sounds terrific. Why didn’t we think of it sooner?"

The editorial, titled 'Mitt Romney's garbage', argued that Romney's plan to cut taxes and lower the deficit is unfeasible.

"It’s reasonable to assume that his cuts would, as did President Bush’s, worsen the nation’s deficit. Until he’s willing to explain how he would avoid such a result, he has little standing to criticize Mr. Obama’s fiscal shortcomings."

The piece also took issue with Romney's claim that his plan to cut taxes by 20% for everyone helps the middle class and not the rich.

A recent study found that Romney's plan would mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans. Romney called the findings "garbage."

"You can’t simultaneously lower tax rates, take in as much money as before and protect the middle class," the Post editorial board wrote.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/1 ... _ref=media

How's that Randriod "We got ours....Screw you" economics workin' out for ya?

Come'on down! Get your snake-oil while it's hot! Same snake-oil as last time, but in a new package!! (It's guaranteed to fail--because history shows that it doesn't work--but, hey, the teabaggers lap it up....)