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Scott Walker: Obama’s Comments Reflect a Fundamental Misunderstanding of the Economy
The Weekly Standard ^ | 6-8-12 | Stephen Hayes

Posted on 06/09/2012 5:54:11 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic

Much has been made of Barack Obama’s comment Friday morning that the “private sector is doing fine.” The mockery is well-deserved.

The president's comment this morning has the potential to be one of those remarks that penetrates deeply into the electorate, well beyond those who keep track of the day-to-day contours of the presidential campaign. The private sector, of course, is not doing fine. GDP growth is 1.9 percent—and slowing. The private sector is adding jobs at a rate that barely outpaces population growth—and slowing. Major corporations are sitting on their cash rather than spending it, consumer confidence is down, so is productivity—no president should be satisfied with this private sector performance.

Pick your cliché—tone deaf, out of touch, etc—they all work.

Beyond that, the president lamented the end to the expansion of the public sector the same week voters in Wisconsin and, somewhat surprisingly, California made clear that they approve of efforts to reduce the size of that sector.

“Where we're seeing weakness in our economy have (sic) to do with the state and local government, often times cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government,” Obama said. “And who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.”

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Obama’s comments reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the economy.

“There are two very different views in the country,” Walker said. “The current administration seems to think that success is measured by how many people are dependent on the government. I think success is measured by how many are not.”

(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Politics/Elections; US: Wisconsin
KEYWORDS: economy; government; milwaukee; private; scottwalker; tombarrett; tonedeaf; wisconsin; wisconsinshowdown
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To: trebb
I believe the job and economic numbers in Wisconsin will be off the charts this next go-around, thanks to the influx of millions upon millions of union dollars to our "tourism" and advertising industries.

Hotels were packed with activists from around the country and every day they were filling up hundreds of vans for the daily push-pull-drag service to the polls (even on the weekends.) And those activists have to eat, you know. TV, radio stations, ad agencies and printers have been busy producing and running non-stop ads.

I'd say it's about time we got some of that WEAC money back - thanks!!

21 posted on 06/09/2012 7:31:32 AM PDT by Mygirlsmom (Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Ron Johnson, Reince Preibus. The Cheesehead Revolution to save America.)
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To: afraidfortherepublic
Much has been made of Barack Obama’s comment Friday morning that the “private sector is doing fine.” The mockery is well-deserved.


22 posted on 06/09/2012 7:32:42 AM PDT by VeniVidiVici (Congrats to Ted Kennedy! He's been sober for two years now!!)
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To: ConradofMontferrat

“Scott Walker’s comments reflect a fundamental misunderstand of who and what Obama is”

He has a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Democratic Party is; it is the political arm of the teachers’ unions. The Dems don’t “represent” the teachers; it IS the teachers. Listening to the token “president” talk about the economy, you have to be struck at how many times he refers to hiring/re-hiring teachers. He is the paid representative of their political party.

From now on I’ll replace “Democrat” with “teachers union party”; it is misleading to pretend they are anything else.


23 posted on 06/09/2012 7:34:51 AM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: Hoodat

That is, in one sentence, the essence of the “fight...”


24 posted on 06/09/2012 7:48:01 AM PDT by Shady (The undeniable truth of the Obama Administration...The numbers do not lie.)
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To: afraidfortherepublic
To win in November, Republicans need to stop this "in over his head," "doesn't understand how the economy works," excuse for the president, and begin identifying for voters the very real opposing ideas which are doing battle for their hearts and minds.

That battle is between the ideas of liberty and the ideas of tyranny, masked as a benevolent government which "takes care" of us. The president is the so-called "progressive" spokesman for the latter, and should be identified as such.

This is a time, much like 1776, when, if liberty is to survive, the "American mind" (Jefferson's description) must come together around the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the 1787 Constitution to limit government power, which was based on those principles.

It was freedom of individual enterprise, under "the influence" of a "benign" government (Madison) which brought economic wealth and growth for the nation and the so-called achievement of the "American Dream" for individuals.

America did not go from being a wilderness, whose occupants still used the tools of ancient Europe, to being the most free, most prosperous, and most admired nation on the earth in the eyes of oppressed individuals all over the globe by a belief that employment in various levels of a government which planned and regulated its citizens would produce wealth and opportunity.

To the contrary, "the wealth of nations," according to moral philosopher Adam Smith and America's Founders arises when individuals are free and government is limited by a written Constitution of laws securing their Creator-endowed rights.

No amount of top-down imposition of equality of results can achieve such results.

From the Liberty Fund Library is "A Plea for Liberty: An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation," edited by Thomas Mackay (1849 - 1912), Chapter 1, excerpted final paragraphs from Edward Stanley Robertson's essay:

"I have suggested that the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining the increase of population, which power is so unwelcome to Englishmen that the very mention of it seems to require an apology. I have showed that in France, where restraints on multiplication have been adopted into the popular code of morals, there is discontent on the one hand at the slow rate of increase, while on the other, there is still a 'proletariat,' and Socialism is still a power in politics.
I.44
"I have put the question, how Socialism would treat the residuum of the working class and of all classes—the class, not specially vicious, nor even necessarily idle, but below the average in power of will and in steadiness of purpose. I have intimated that such persons, if they belong to the upper or middle classes, are kept straight by the fear of falling out of class, and in the working class by positive fear of want. But since Socialism purposes to eliminate the fear of want, and since under Socialism the hierarchy of classes will either not exist at all or be wholly transformed, there remains for such persons no motive at all except physical coercion. Are we to imprison or flog all the 'ne'er-do-wells'?
I.45
"I began this paper by pointing out that there are inequalities and anomalies in the material world, some of which, like the obliquity of the ecliptic and the consequent inequality of the day's length, cannot be redressed at all. Others, like the caprices of sunshine and rainfall in different climates, can be mitigated, but must on the whole be endured. I am very far from asserting that the inequalities and anomalies of human society are strictly parallel with those of material nature. I fully admit that we are under an obligation to control nature so far as we can. But I think I have shown that the Socialist scheme cannot be relied upon to control nature, because it refuses to obey her. Socialism attempts to vanquish nature by a front attack. Individualism, on the contrary, is the recognition, in social politics, that nature has a beneficent as well as a malignant side. The struggle for life provides for the various wants of the human race, in somewhat the same way as the climatic struggle of the elements provides for vegetable and animal life—imperfectly, that is, and in a manner strongly marked by inequalities and anomalies. By taking advantage of prevalent tendencies, it is possible to mitigate these anomalies and inequalities, but all experience shows that it is impossible to do away with them. All history, moreover, is the record of the triumph of Individualism over something which was virtually Socialism or Collectivism, though not called by that name. In early days, and even at this day under archaic civilisations, the note of social life is the absence of freedom. But under every progressive civilisation, freedom has made decisive strides—broadened down, as the poet says, from precedent to precedent. And it has been rightly and naturally so.
I.46
"Freedom is the most valuable of all human possessions, next after life itself. It is more valuable, in a manner, than even health. No human agency can secure health; but good laws, justly administered, can and do secure freedom. Freedom, indeed, is almost the only thing that law can secure. Law cannot secure equality, nor can it secure prosperity. In the direction of equality, all that law can do is to secure fair play, which is equality of rights but is not equality of conditions. In the direction of prosperity, all that law can do is to keep the road open. That is the Quintessence of Individualism, and it may fairly challenge comparison with that Quintessence of Socialism we have been discussing. Socialism, disguise it how we may, is the negation of Freedom. That it is so, and that it is also a scheme not capable of producing even material comfort in exchange for the abnegations of Freedom, I think the foregoing considerations amply prove."
EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON

25 posted on 06/09/2012 7:52:05 AM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: afraidfortherepublic

“the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.”

The ‘flexibility’ of indenturing the children, grandchildren and unborn.


26 posted on 06/09/2012 8:03:33 AM PDT by mrsmith (Dumb sluts: Lifeblood of the Media, Backbone of the Democrat Party!)
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To: afraidfortherepublic
Gazpacho
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - June 8, AD 2012 6:54 PM MST

4. Obama during his press conference today stated "the private sector is doing fine."

How could he say such a thing?

Well, I'll explain it ONE MORE TIME, because people simply do not want to believe what has happened.

Barack Obama is a slack-jawed, mouth-breathing imbecile who doesn't have the brains God gave a goldfish. He is also a hard-core drug user. He smokes weed in "Choom Wagon One" to "mellow" and smokes crack, and probably does cocaine when he needs to be "up" for campaign appearances. He has no idea what he is saying most of the time, and is so stupid that he lacks the self-awareness to know when he has said something monumentally stupid, such as we saw this morning. He is not smart, hence his complete inability to speak extemporaneously and his mere passing familiarity with the English language. He is in no way competent on any level, hence his staggering lack of command on any topic except sports involving big, sweaty mens. He is not actually engaged in any meaningful policy discussion or formation. Obama himself is a puppet front kept entertained with drugs, golf, and gay sex, and the golf may only be a cover for the gay sex. People who play golf with any frequency tend to develop something that resembles a golf SWING. Barack Obama can not swing a golf club competently despite playing more golf than the avid, semi-retired, country club golfers I know.

The people running the White House per se are Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama, who are themselves profoundly unintelligent people who are getting their material and marching orders from people like Soros, Maurice Strong, Leo Gerard, and maybe even Vladimir Putin and Beijing by extension - the global Communist leaders.

Obama is simply a complete idiot. Stop trying to push a square peg into a round hole. Stop trying to process this using the assumption that Obama is in any way intelligent. Face reality. He isn't a Manchurian candidate. He isn't brainwashed. You have to actually have a BRAIN in order to be brainwashed. Obama is a mentally defective, drug-addled, sodomite psychopath that a cadre of Communist oligarchs are using as a theatrical facade.

27 posted on 06/09/2012 8:24:08 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Do I really need a "sarcasm" tag? Seriously? You're that dense?)
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To: loveliberty2
That battle is between the ideas of liberty and the ideas of tyranny, masked as a benevolent government which "takes care" of us. The president is the so-called "progressive" spokesman for the latter, and should be identified as such.

Yes, Yes, Yes.

28 posted on 06/09/2012 8:31:39 AM PDT by no-s (when democracy is displaced by tyranny, the armed citizen still gets to vote)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

So I gather you’re not on the “Obama on Mount Rushmore” committee.


29 posted on 06/09/2012 8:32:26 AM PDT by headsonpikes (Mass murder and cannibalism are the twin sacraments of socialism - "Who-whom?"-Lenin)
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To: headsonpikes
I would prefer that he be placed "Under Mount Rushmore."

Possibly even before he assumes room temperature.

30 posted on 06/09/2012 8:40:31 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Do I really need a "sarcasm" tag? Seriously? You're that dense?)
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To: afraidfortherepublic
“Where we're seeing weakness in our economy have (sic) to do with the state and local government, often times cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government,” Obama said. “And who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.”

The states must balance their budgets by law. The federal government borrows 42 cents of every federal dollar spent. Under Obmama, the size of the federal government has increased. Who pays for government? The taxpayers. More government means less money for the private sector.

31 posted on 06/09/2012 8:43:31 AM PDT by kabar
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To: kabar
The "weakness in the economy" he cited are not caused by governors and mayors cutting their programs and getting rid of government payroll. That would be a good thing. He knows that "big government" includes, by definition, "multitudes" of government employees, whose salaries, as well as the very taxes "progressives" claim they contribute to the treasury, are paid by workers in the "individual enterprise" section of the economy.

Government has no wealth (money), except what it "takes" from individuals or their enterprises, or what it "borrows," or what it "prints" out of thin air. When it borrows, the people, for generations, are responsible for repaying it. When it "takes," that removes creative capital from the economy. When it "prints," the inflation is just another form of taxation.

Reducing government payrolls, at every level, is a good thing--not a contributor to a "weak economy," as he claims.

One might be reminded of the line from the 1776 Declaration of Independence regarding the actions of King George which prompted the colonists to assert their Creator-endowed individual rights to freedom from coercive government:

"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." Would it have mattered that King George did that to provide "employment" and benevolent "services" to the colonists?

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39

"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322

"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23

"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40

"Is it now high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.” - Samuel Adams

And:

“The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.” - Samuel Adams

32 posted on 06/09/2012 9:17:33 AM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: 4Liberty
Jeeze, it's not like his picture isn't everywhere - the cartoonist could have at least created a resemblance.
33 posted on 06/11/2012 7:27:57 AM PDT by T. P. Pole
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