USA Today/Gallup poll shows increasing despair over Obama’s economy

No hope here.  But lots of change, and for the worse, in a poll taken last week:

Eight of 10 say the economy is in a recession, and nearly as many say it hasn’t improved over the past year. Even more ominous: Six in 10 predict the economy a year from now will be the same or worse than today, a downturn from the public’s views last year and the year before.

[…]

In the USA TODAY survey, the public’s economic expectations were reversed from where they stood two years ago, soon after economists calculated the recession officially had ended. In September 2009, 65% predicted the economy would be better in a year; 35% said it would be about the same or worse.

Now, 37% say things will be better in a year; 61% say they will be the same or worse.

While a third of the respondents still attribute some of the blame to President Bush, that particular Democrat talking point is fading:

Twenty-four percent say Obama deserves a great deal of the blame, up 10 points since 2009. For the first time since he took office, a majority of Americans — including six in 10 independents — say he deserves a great deal or moderate amount of blame for the nation’s economic woes.

“The blame-it-on-my-predecessor line is of decreasing help to an incumbent,” says political scientist William Mayer of Northeastern University. “It was perfectly fine when he took office, and even reasonable a year or two in, but eventually, increasingly, it becomes Obama’s economy.

I think Obama pushed the blame-it-on-Bush string much too long.  About two years too long.  When you campaign on vague promises of hope and change, as the savior of an economy that was teetering on disaster, there had better be solid improvements in people’s economic well-being, relatively quickly.  Especially after you made it a point to tell everyone that your predecessor’s economic policies failed, with the implication being that yours are so much better.

So much for that.

Depsite Obama storytelling, the facts remain—the rich already pay more in taxes

So much for the “rich don’t pay taxes” meme:

The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That, however, was less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

[...]

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.

Facts are difficult for the left to embrace.

President to propose “millionaire’s tax” to help balance the budget

This is either scraping the bottom of the ideas barrel or the president is light years ahead of the rest of us, and knows something we don’t:

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

So for the second time in a month, President Transparency proposes a literal blank slate of legislation, and is encouragin its passage.  Kings have had harder times in mandating edicts.

What is this nonsense if it isn’t class warfare, and a desperate attempt to start discord among Republicans?   After a disastrous few weeks for Obama and the Democrats, this is most definitely be his desired goal.  The president knows that the proposed tax is dead on arrival in the House.  He knows this.  And anyone with a brain knows that this does nothing to create jobs, and is a drop in the bucket with regards to deficit reduction.

But Republicans will have to defend not endorsing it, and the administration, along with Democratic congressional leaders, will go on the offensive.  But as the weeks drag on, and the government continues to pump out report after dismal report on the state of the economy (the September NFP report is out in a little over two weeks), it might not make a difference for the administration.

And now, a message from the Obama campaign

I get e-mail from Obama 2012 headquarters:

Friend –

I love seeing 2008 bumper stickers on cars and bicycles when I travel across the country. But as we start to see Republican gear hit the streets, what about making sure people know you’re supporting the President in 2012?

You can do that with a 2012 campaign car magnet. Will you donate $10 or more and we’ll send you one?

An Obama 2012 car magnet? With a minimum $10 donation to the campaign? Clearly, the Obama campaign doesn’t realize there’s a recession going on right now.   Oh, well.  The e-mail continues:

Maybe you’re wondering how putting a magnet on your car will help re-elect the President. 

When people see us out in the neighborhood showing support with our clothing, our dog leashes, our cars, or our water bottles, it starts conversations. You might get a chance to tell someone why you’re supporting the President, and maybe even convince someone to sign up to volunteer.

At the very least, you’ll show everyone that you’re on the President’s team — and you’re proud of it.

Starting conversations is good.  Unfortunately for the Obama camp, I’m seeing some different sentiments on people’s cars these days.  I saw this down in Cape May this past July:

Talk about starting conversations.   And this one I saw on the way to work just last week:

 

These are all in New Jersey for pete’s sake.  

And from Virginia, a state that many leftist bloggers and pundits are claiming is turning deep blue, a friend sends this:

Maybe Americans are tired of having “conversations” with this president.  And maybe, just maybe, they’re about ready to move on.

The Solyndra scandal for dummies

For those who want a brief, succinct explanation of the stench of cronyism, the stench of political corruption that is the story of President Obama and Solyndra, here is a five-panel cartoon. 

First one in the series: 

[h/t: Instapundit]

August NFP report shows net zero growth in jobs, the “great goose-egg economy”

It’s a brutal print:

A dismal labor report Friday showed the economy added zero net workers in August, intensifying pressure on President Obama to unveil a major jobs initiative during his speech to Congress next week.

The Labor Department report showed the unemployment rate stuck at 9.1 percent. It was the weakest jobs report since September 2010.

Meanwhile:

In a nutshell, this is the great goose egg economy — a big zero, a big nothing — and this better be one hell of a speech next week.  There is a plethora of bad news. You have what is going on in Greece, you have lawsuits potentially coming today or Tuesday against the banks. You have the Fed in a Wall Street Journal article overnight asking Bank of America if they are going to be OK if things get really bad.  There are a lot of confidence issues in the marketplace, the jobs number only made things worse and people wonder about this jobs number and its correlation with Philly Fed.  That is scary.”

Yes, liberalism is racial politics.

Results be damned, it’s all about electing more and more liberals to positions of power, to keep blacks more and more suppressed:

[T]he bad policies that have always failed are the big government liberalism that has defined modern black politics.

With further thought, blacks might realize [...] that growing government and electing black politicians would make blacks better off — that explains why blacks have remained disproportionately “hurtin”.

Take the Congressional Black Caucus itself. The average poverty rate in Black Caucus districts is almost 50 percent higher than the national average. Yet, these black politicians have 100 percent re-election rates.

Maybe blacks will realize that they should blame Obama. Not because he is black, but because he is a liberal.

Or maybe it’s because of those racist, terrorist Tea Partiers.  Read the whole piece.

UPDATE.   Stacy McCain as usual, drives the point home:

Appealing to the credulous resentments of ignorant mobs has long been a political speciality of the Democratic Party, which habitually excites the fears and hatreds of its constituencies, even as it exploits their foolish hopes [...] 

Democrats execise power through such cynical manipulation of their supporters’ dreams and nightmares. The Democrats grow rich while the people who elect them grow poor and yet always — always — the blame for their failures is externalized onto [...] the Republicans.

[T]he fools who vote for Democrats certainly deserve no better than what they’ve gotten from Obama: Absolutely nothing.

 

Obamas fly into Martha’s Vineyard on two seperate jets

It’s almost as if they enjoy kicking the nation in the collective groin:

Mrs. Obama and her daughters arrived just before 2 pm Thursday on a U.S. government jet, according to the Martha’s Vineyard Times, which got its information from the local airport. The first lady’s office has been silent on her travel. President Obama arrived in the evening along with the family dog Bo.

The extra costs related to Mrs. Obama’s solo trip mainly include the flight on a specially designed military aircraft she took instead of Air Force One, as well as any extra staff and Secret Service that had to be enlisted to go with her. She would also have had her own motorcade from the airport to her vacation residence.

Mrs. Obama’s separate jet travel sends the wrong message on a host of issues, from global warming to the budget deficit to the economy – in which currently so many people can’t afford to take a vacation at all.

I know I’ve been dismissing criticism of the Obamas trip to MV in recent posts, but I’ve also acknowledged that the optics are tough.  Stories like this only add fuel to the fire.

[Hat Tip: Memeorandum]

 

 

 

Gallup: 40% approval for Obama, lowest of his administration to date

Notice the disapproval rating is up to 52% as well.

Here’s an interesting bit from Gallup’s write-up:

The crucial period for Obama will begin after Labor Day, given the relative quiet on the political front that should be the case before then. Obama will generate some news coverage this week with his bus tour through Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, but after that, he has a scheduled vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, during which he will be largely out of the news — barring some major crisis.

[...]

If the president is not able to turn around the negative momentum in his ratings during the fall months, it may be more and more difficult for him to do so as the presidential campaign begins in earnest next year.

The White House is getting the word out that a “jobs plan” is on the way.  Sometime in September, after his vacation.   There is no urgency here on the President’s part, as millions are without work.  And any plan he has will probably include more spending, useless targeted tax credits and the like.

This administration and its ideology are out of ideas, and it shows.

DWS: Ten year incumbent Governor Perry deserves no credit for job creation in Texas

Of course, that distinction belongs to President 39%, who deserves all the credit:

“There is a dramatic contrast with the governor of Texas” when it comes to his record versus the president’s on job creation,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Not the least of which is that it is extremely difficult for him to deserve credit for that job creation when you have rising gas prices that created oil jobs that he had nothing to do with, when you had military spending as a result of two wars that created military jobs that he had nothing to do with, when you have the Recovery Act championed by President Obama that created jobs in Texas that he had nothing to do with.”

[...] “So it is way overblown to suggest that the job creation in Texas is squarely on the shoulders of [Perry's] policies.”

Democrats, apparently, are born liars.  If the Democrat party wants to campaign on the stimulus bill to scream about all of the wonderful jobs they have created, then so be it.  Try selling that to the American people for the next 15 months.

Meanwhile here’s Ms. Shultz  in Iowa this past weekend, preaching to getting booed by the Democratic faithful:

Oof. 

If I was a Democrat, with unemployment over 9%, a historic downgrade of our country’s credit, a stalling economy with little or no growth, I wouldn’t exactly be too confident in my party’s outlook right about now.    And having this uninspiring moonbat representing the party wouldn’t be helping matters.

[H/T: Memeorandum]