Posted on 03/01/2017 3:36:57 AM PST by IBD editorial writer
In a curtain raiser for President Trump's address to Congress this week, the New York Times tried to compare Trump's bumpy start to President Obama's supposedly "impressive" one.
But in doing so, the Times wildly distorts what actually happened in Obama's first month in office.
"Despite his lament that he was handed 'a mess' by President Barack Obama," the article, written by three Times' reporters, says, "Trump inherited a low unemployment rate, a lack of international crises requiring immediate attention and majorities in both houses of Congress."
"By contrast," the story goes on, "when Mr. Obama took office, the country was losing 700,000 jobs a month, and the global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse. By the time he stepped up to the rostrum for his first joint congressional address on Feb. 24, 2009, he had already accrued an impressive string of accomplishments, including the passage of a massive stimulus bill through the Democratic-controlled Congress, a gender pay-parity act, a children's health insurance law and executive actions that would ultimately help stabilize the financial and automotive sectors. With the prospect of a second Great Depression still high, Mr. Obama sought to rally the country."
That's a nice bit of revisionist history.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
We have been around the block enough times to know that the NYT is a joke.
bkmk
Trump’s inheritance was much messier. Obama didn’t have a health-care monstrosity to repeal.
Re: tagline.
Press 3 to vote for a law that requires English proficiency for citizenship. Wait, what? We already have that?
1. 0vomitcare
2. the “low” unemployment rate is artificially low because of the way the democrats have manipulated statistics. In reality it is NOT low at all. One big factor is just that lots of people have given up looking for work, so they are no longer classified as “unemployed”.
3. “lack of international crises”. Hahahahaha! The entire world is in crisis. Remember, you can’t spell crisis without ISIS. muslims rampaging not only in the mideast, but in London, Sweden, etc.
4. “global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse” thanks to years of LIBERAL policies. Most notably, the Barney Frank-led housing fiasco. Congress/libs forcing banks to make loans to minorities who couldn’t afford them triggered a collapse in the housing market, which triggered a collapse in the mortgage-backed securities market and on and on it rippled outward. Fannie and Freddie were up to their ears in corruption. But no one cared so long as those at the top were making their huge salaries for doing little or nothing besides lining their own pockets - and what they did do had nearly 100% negative consequences.
Yep. Revisionist history from the NYT. Pure propaganda. None so blind as those who refuse to see.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Automakers GM and Chrysler were pressured to close hundreds of dealerships quickly by the Treasury department without regard for the job losses that would result, according to a government watchdog report out Sunday.
Treasury was charged with helping the car companies out of bankruptcy through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Together they've received over $80 billion in government funding.
“Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses ... potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls,” said the report, released by the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), Neil Barofsky.
GM and Chrysler were both required to submit restructuring plans to the Treasury's Auto Team in February of 2009, but the plans were rejected because Treasury deemed that the car makers weren't moving to close dealerships at a rate fast enough to keep their businesses viable.
So the auto manufacturers accelerated the process, with the help of bankruptcy laws that let them cancel dealer contracts. Chrysler terminated 789 dealerships last summer and General Motors announced plans to wind down 1,454 dealerships by October of 2010. . .
http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/18/smallbusiness/auto_dealership_report/
BREITBART 1/5/2013: Obama’s ‘Cash For Clunkers’ Unleashed ‘Environmental Nightmare’
In a classic tale illustrating the “law of unintended consequences,” a new report concludes that President Barack Obama’s $3 billion “Cash for Clunkers” taxpayer-funded boondoggle artificially drove car prices up, not down, and unleashed an “environmental nightmare” through shredding, not recycling, many of the 690,000 cars people traded in for an up to $4,500 car credit.
In 2009, Mr. Obama proudly declared that his Cash for Clunkers program, officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), was a stunning success. “There were skeptics who weren’t sure that this ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program would work,” said Mr. Obama. “But I’m happy to report that it has succeeded well beyond our expectations and all expectations, and we’re already seeing a dramatic increase in showroom traffic at local car dealers…So I’m very pleased with the progress that’s been made in the House today on the “Cash for Clunkers” program.”
But as Yahoo News notes, the program’s decision to shred, not recycle, many of the trade-in vehicles unleashed an “environmental nightmare”:
Shredding vehicles results in its own environmental nightmare. For each ton of metal produced by a shredding facility, roughly 500 pounds of “shredding residue” is also produced, which includes polyurethane foams, metal oxides, glass and dirt. All totaled, about 4.5 million tons of that residue is already produced on average every year. Where does it go? Right into a landfill.
E Magazine states recycling just the plastic and metal alone from the CARS scraps would have saved 24 million barrels of oil. While some of the “Clunkers” were truly old, many of the almost 700,000 cars were still in perfectly good condition. In fact, many that qualified for the program were relatively “young,” with fuel efficiencies that rivaled newer cars.
A study conducted by Resources for the Future further underscored the program’s failure economically and environmentally:
Approximately 45 percent of the spending went to consumers who would have purchased a new vehicle anyway. Our results suggest no gain in sales beyond 2009 and hence no meaningful stimulus to the economy. In addition, the program will reduce CO2 emissions by only 9 to 28.4 million tons, implying a cost per ton ranging from $91 to $288 even after accounting for reduced criteria pollutants.
As the Washington Post even conceded, Mr. Obama’s Cash for Clunkers scheme was an economic and environmental failure: “So were the naysayers right?” asked the Post. “It seems so.”As the Washington Post even conceded, Mr. Obama’s Cash for Clunkers scheme was an economic and environmental failure: “So were the naysayers right?” asked the Post. “It seems so.”
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