More Tax and Spend But Where Are The Jobs?

So the news these days is that the stock market is rallying after the passage of healthcare and the stimulus bill is finally bringing us out of the recession. Newsweek (or is it News Weak? I never can remember) ran a story recently that America is back; claiming the recession is over. Well, if we are actually recovering from the recession, where are the jobs? The increase we see in the Dow has nothing to do with the stimulus bill and while it is on the rise, it is not because companies are hopeful about healthcare savings but because they are trying to mitigate the negative effects the tax increases will bring in the future.

There are massive new taxes on the way because of the healthcare bill in addition to the increases business will see after the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. Corporations operate under different tax rules than private citizens and are able to shift their losses around to offset earnings where it will provide the most benefit. In fact, corporations can amend previous returns and move losses back three years or use them as far as twenty years into the future to offset future income. That is what we are seeing this year in the Dow. Companies know their taxes will be substantially higher in 2011 and are posting their income in 2010 when the taxes aren’t great, but they aren’t as insane as they will be next year. Once the tax cuts disappear and the new tax impositions from the healthcare bill are in place, the losses and expenses from this year will be used to offset the tax liabilities in 2011 and that will have a drastic effect on the Dow Jones.

Reagan made the same mistake when he took office. He promised tax cuts to rouse the economy but rather than make them immediate, he phased the cuts in, which allowed companies to post losses during the years of higher taxes; biding their time until the tax cuts took affect. Once the tax cuts were in place, the economy soared, ushering in one of the largest peace-time expansions of the GDP in history but before those cuts were actually made, the economy lagged and jobs suffered. Conversely, businesses are now taking advantage of the temporarily lower tax rates knowing that those rates are guaranteed to rise sharply in 2011. Furthermore, business is counting on the November 2010 elections to restore some sanity to government. While the Republicans cannot secure enough seats to repeal healthcare, they can certainly block the funding needed to implement it; stalling the healthcare legislation until 2012 can bring in a new Congress and a new President.

The President can try to put a happy face on the prospects Democrats are facing this election but he knows that a vote for the healthcare bill was a vote for their own retirement. Going into the healthcare vote, Republicans were no more liked than Democrats were but the scandalous way this legislation was forced through Congress against the will of the people has severely damaged the Democrats. While people are not quite sure they can trust Republicans right now, Republicans do have the distinct advantage in not being Democrats. The President has been trying to label Republicans as “the Party of no” but the Democrats have labeled themselves “the Party of sit down and be quiet you silly people”. In the whole grand scheme of things there is an awful lot you can do to Americans before they get truly angry but ignoring them just isn’t an option.

The frightening part about the President’s predicament is that it has fostered another sense of urgency in the White House and now every program and policy the President really wants is going to be desperately rushed in much the same way that TARP, the Stimulus and Healthcare was. Don’t forget that TARP had to be done right then and there or banks were going to fail, throwing America into a new depression. Well, TARP passed and Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and the President claimed credit for averting financial disaster but isn’t it funny that as soon as executive salaries were capped in the companies that accepted TARP money, those silly companies discovered that they actually did have liquidity and paid the TARP money back as fast as humanly possible. Well, most of them did. Curiously, the only ones that couldn’t pay the taxpayers back, and in fact, still needed more money, were the government’s own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Imagine that!

Then there was the Stimulus Bill. We had to pass that one without thinking about it because joblessness was on the rise and without this critical infusion of money, the unemployment rate would get as high as 8%. Well, we passed that without thinking about it and unemployment climbed above 10% before stagnating at a miserable 9.7%. Recovery.gov still has no idea how much of your money was wasted on frivolous projects like amphibian underpasses so that frogs and salamanders can safely cross the road or funding studies about the drinking habits of Indonesian transgender prostitutes. Billions are listed as being given to Congressional districts that do not exist and since the government cannot say with any accuracy how many (if any) jobs were actually created, the White House has had to claim that the Stimulus Bill saved two million jobs knowing full well there is no way to substantiate a “saved job”.

With the Healthcare Bill we all watched in horror as the legislative process was subverted into a corrupt and underhanded push to pass something nobody wanted. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama all blamed the Republicans for trying to stonewall the legislation when the bare fact is that the resistance that nearly derailed the bill was entirely on the other side of the aisle. Reluctant Democrats had to be bullied, threatened and bought off just to get the votes they needed to push this through. Once Scott Brown had been elected to the Senate, it was thought that the bill would finally die the death it deserved but the Senate Bill was taken behind closed doors once more where Pelosi and Obama abused House Democrats. They would use the same tactics Harry Reid used, forcing them to vote for the Senate Bill so they could ram it through under reconciliation; requiring only a simple majority in the Senate, effectively negating Scott Brown’s vote.

Now that the healthcare bill has passed all the nasty little details are emerging. The Medicare cuts, the tax increases and the admission by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, that the healthcare bill is designed to “correct a mal-distribution” of wealth in America. For those of us that warned about the redistributive goals of the bill, a healthy “told you so” might certainly be warranted but what good would that do now? Then there are the unintended consequences to deal with. America’s largest corporations are reporting that they will loose hundreds of millions in profits because of the healthcare bill; something that Henry Waxman fumed over, demanding that these companies appear before his committee and explain themselves. Waxman claimed that a report prepared prior to the passage of the bill said these companies would see a decrease in healthcare costs amounting to roughly three-thousand dollars per employee and he insisted upon knowing why they were not taking those savings into consideration. As it turns out, the report to which Henry Waxman was referring had nothing to do with the Senate healthcare bill and was based on a limited and incremental approach to healthcare reform similar to what the Republicans had proposed.

I suppose the funniest story came out last week when the Congress found out that the healthcare bill they all told us they read contained a little secret none of them knew about. Unless they act to correct the bill, Congress and their staff members are all going to lose their health insurance and will be forced into the exchange market. The only problem for them is that the way the law is written, they must lose the insurance now and the market they have to purchase from won’t even exist until 2014.

Despite the President’s promise that jobs are going to be his priority in the coming year his next race to get something past the Senate is on the financial reform bill. This bill places drastic and dangerous limits on American financial institutions placing them at a severe disadvantage when competing against foreign banks that are curiously not mentioned in this “much needed” reform bill. Even though Harry Reid said it may not be possible in an election year, the President insists that immigration reform is right behind his Financial Reform Bill. Also tucking into the White House fast track to destroy the country is the infamous Cap and Trade massive energy tax. The Senate is threatening to unveil their copy of that scam as early as the end of next week. So I have to ask the same question I started this article with….Where are the jobs?

Paul

New Budget - Same Old Story

One would have thought that after the recent Democratic losses in three States, two of which were staunch Democratic areas, that the President would have heard the message from the voters loud and clear. Well, apparently they still can’t hear you. Glenn Beck warned on one of his shows after the Massachusetts victory for Republican Scott Brown that one of two Presidents would emerge from the ashes. Either we would see a politician that would move to the center as Bill Clinton did after his 1994 midterm thrashing or we would see Obama the ideologue stomping on the gas to force his agenda through. For those that didn’t see a glimpse of the ideologue during the State of the Union address we have additional proof today in the President’s budget proposals for 2011.

The budget for FY 2011 announced today will top $3.8 trillion dollars and add another $1.56 trillion dollars to the national debt….if we are lucky. White House Budget Director Peter “Loverboy” Orszag claims that the President’s plans will trim over $1 trillion dollars from the Federal Budget within the next ten years but that is one of the oldest tricks in the books. All the President has to do to achieve that is to announce that they didn’t spend money they were planning to and Viola! $1 trillion dollars has been trimmed from the Federal Budget. It is a phantom trillion, a savings that is as hard to prove as all of the “jobs saved” under the last stimulus bill. Before the President could be able to claim such a savings with authority, he would have to be believable and that is equally as laughable.

President Obama's budget plans project $5.08 trillion in deficit spending over the next five years -- a 35 percent increase over what the administration projected a year ago. Even the current budget deficit is suspect as the revenue figures include income from Cap and Trade; a bill that has not yet passed Congress and if economic conditions do not vastly improve, will never pass. Just in case you have lost track of Cap and Trade, the administration is now trying to sell this massive energy tax under the heading of a “comprehensive energy bill”. Similar to the renaming of global warming to climate change now that the planet appears to be cooling….it still stinks no matter what it is calls.

To spite the President’s call for development of American domestic energy resources during the State of the Union Address, including oil, coal and nuclear power, this budget cuts subsidies for fossil fuels netting a reduction of $31.5 trillion dollars over ten years. That will raise costs for American energy consumers, only adding to the additional costs for energy promised if the President’s energy bill is passed. Pass out the candles folks…the lights are going out if Obama get’s his way. The fact is that either we develop domestic resources as politician Obama promised during his speech or we tax the hell out of them as ideologue Obama promises in his budget. If I had to guess which one to bet on, all I have to do is look at his track record. His speeches have so far, meant nothing while the black and white, tax and spend ink on the pages of his budgets have seized the day. Perhaps I should have said red and white, tax and spend ink?

So where is the attention to the plight of unemployed Americans? Certainly, you won’t find it in this budget proposal. Ever since the inception of the personal income tax under Woodrow Wilson, the historical evidence proves over and over that increases in taxes reduce overall revenue to the treasury because of the negative effect they have on business. Even Obama said that small business provides more than half the jobs in the United States. Whether or not he actually believes that is up for debate but he did say it. They why does every major initiative the President is trying to get passed into law contain oppressive new regulations and massive new taxes that will strangle the number one job creator in the United States?

While the White House happily announces that the mediocre growth of the economy in the last quarter is proof that the recession is easing, much of that growth was brought on by government spending on pet projects that provided little or no relief to the unemployed. The hopeless ideologue and his “progressive friends” in Congress (his words, not mine) still fail to see that government does not create jobs. Only the private sector can create real and lasting employment and only during those odd years when government stops meddling in their affairs. Government can create jobs within their own bloated bureaucracies but those “support” jobs still rely on collecting taxes from income generated by real companies that pay real wages to real employees.

In a quick summary taken from business 101, companies basically have two kinds of employees beyond the owners; sales people that generate revenue for the company and support people that use a portion of that revenue to provide support for the sales people. When times are lean and cuts must be made, the first positions any company will eliminate are support staff because it makes no fiscal sense to eliminate the people that actually earn money for the company. What ideologues and Congressional Progressives still fail to understand is that the Federal government, in its entirety, is the support staff for the American people. We are the revenue generators and there isn’t a nickel they spend that does not come directly from our earnings. Contrary to every known law of fiscal responsibility, the Federal government under the Progressive banner is expanding the support staff of the nation at the expense of the people that actually earn the money. It cannot work.

Every time that the Federal government has cut taxes it has led directly to an expansion of the economy and to the growth of revenues to the treasury. The increases in debt have always come from a spendthrift Congress and their history is to spend every penny they can get their hands on, and more. The best possible ratio of taxes to GDP is 20%. That is when you can afford a reasonable level of government and still maintain decent measure of economic growth. Of course that has to be the real GDP; not one that has been inflated by the influence of government stimulus spending. The other segue is that the taxes collected cannot exclusively be taken from those that are the investors and creators of the businesses that actually create jobs. Only the demented views of the radical left see wealth as an evil worthy of punishment; the rest of us see it as a statement of opportunity and the rewards of hard work. The truth is that I don’t believe they really think wealth is evil. Most of them are wealthy in their own right. They do use the evil rich argument as a tool to gain the support of the average American when they pass tax plans that confiscate unconscionable amounts of that wealth.

There appears to be no recognition in Washington that we are in serious economic trouble and no one but the government has ever proposed that they can spend themselves out of debt. Just a few short years ago, China was purchasing 50% of the notes that fund our annual deficit. Now that the dollar has shrunk thanks to the runaway printing of money at the Federal Reserve, China has lost billions as the interest we paid them to service the debt has diminished over 17% this year alone. The net result is that China only purchased 4% of our deficit spending in 2009 and that is just a portend of things to come.

The balance of our deficit had to be financed elsewhere, with the American people picking up a large part of it. Don’t kid yourself; that is not an indication that the American people have faith in the solvency of the Federal government. That really speaks about the lack of faith in the nation’s banking system. Wary investors are asking the Fed to hold their money, even at zero interest as the last safe haven before they begin dumping dollars and buying gold. When that begins to happen it will signal that events are about to enter a new and dangerous territory….a territory last visited by the Weimar Republic after World War One.

Paul

It's The Economy Stupid

The economy is in shambles, unemployment is at a twenty-six year high, the stock market fluctuates wildly with every new headline and Congressional approval is at its lowest point in decades. So why doesn’t the Federal government appear to “get it”? Since Barack Obama took office, there isn’t one thing that his administration or this Congress has done that makes sense in these difficult times. People are baffled as to why Democrats are still pressing for healthcare and climate legislation that would be difficult for a healthy economy to absorb and that is counterintuitive to any meaningful action that should be taken in a distressed economy.

The Republican’s claimed a victory in the recent gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia when if fact, they have no right to that claim. The latest polls indicate that neither Party has gained favor with the American people and the grass roots have adopted a “throw the bums out” attitude that will permeate the political landscape in 2010. Chris Christie and Robert McDonnell did not win because they were Republicans; they won because even though they had both held political jobs in the past, their most recent positions were as US Attorney for Chris Christie and as Virginia Attorney General for Robert McDonnell, which effectively distanced them from the body politic.

Neither the Bush nor the Obama Stimulus plans have yielded measurable results even though both had taken different directions. The Bush administration issued payments directly to taxpayers to stimulate the consumer market while the Obama plan targeted Cities and States to boost public work projects. While the payments were directed at different segments of the economy they both had the same result, or lack of results, because the private and public sectors have something sadly in common. They are both in debt up to their eyeballs. The stimulus money received by taxpayers had been used for the most part, to pay off old debt. Credit cards and other consumer debt was what was most on the mind of the recipients. Similarly, the Obama payments to States and Cities went largely to close budget gaps created by shrinking tax revenues. That is why the administration had to shift their measure of success from job creation to how many jobs were saved, something that no one believes because it is impossible to prove.

Worse yet, is that the Federal Reserve began printing money equal to the amount of the Stimulus bill in spite of promises that they would not monetize the debt. That has already caused a 17% devaluation of the dollar that has many of our foreign creditors deeply concerned as American debt continues to rise. Candidate Obama spoke harshly about the $460 billion dollar Bush budget deficit while President Obama, proposed and passed a $3.6 trillion dollar budget which has ballooned his budget deficit to a record breaking $1.4 trillion dollars. Americans are well aware that this insanity cannot continue yet that epiphany somehow has not yet reached the collective consciousness of the members of Congress.

The President and the Democrats in Congress continue to push legislation for both healthcare reform and the climate that will place incredible strains on an already suffering economy. The employer mandates and taxes threatened by these two bills has placed the job market in a stall as employers wait to see what they will have to face before they will commit to anything that may increase their liabilities. It is in fact, the Federal government that has created this recession. The collapse of the banking industry has its roots in the Clinton administration when banks were forced under penalty of law to make high risk loans to low income families to bring “fairness” to home ownership. These loans would eventually fail just as the banking industry warned they would and now the Fed is punishing banks for engaging in risky business practices.

The fact is that the government can only create jobs by reducing the tax burden on business and by getting out of the way of the people that actually create the jobs. The Federal government is charged with regulating interstate commerce however, the definition of “regulation” at the time of the drafting of our Constitution was not to license, tax or control business, it was to “make regular” the interaction so that business dealings were uniform across state lines. While none would argue the need to extend regulatory control to insure public safety, every other regulation and tax placed on business has been little more than an impediment to the economic engine that drives this nation.

Healthcare reform promises an 8% payroll tax and a millionaire’s tax of an additional 5% to pay for portions of this massive government takeover of the healthcare industry. This has had the net effect of a nation-wide hiring freeze until businesses are sure the bill is dead and they are safe. Ironically, just as the Fed created the banking crisis, they also created the healthcare crisis. It is Federal prohibitions that prevent healthcare insurers from competing across state lines and that his strangled competition. The Fed also prevents small business from enjoying the same tax breaks for providing healthcare that large companies do. Could that be because large companies are unionized and in many cases, it is the unions that create the healthcare group and are paid to administrate it? We know that unions pay an awful lot of money to political parties and candidates; the same parties and candidates that keep the restrictions on healthcare in place. Those restrictions keep the cost of insurance high and make unions and union healthcare plans look very attractive to non-union workers.

The cost of healthcare insurance is also deeply affected by the reimbursement rate of Medicare and Medicaid to healthcare providers. Medicare reimbursement for services is between 70% and 80% of the billed amount. Medicaid is even lower. As hospitals and doctors struggle with the government induced shortages, those costs are eventually shifted to patients with private insurance as their budget issues force prices even higher. As insurance sees higher costs, they must raise premiums. The insurance company profits Democrats quote only seem high because they represent the accumulated profits of a multitrillion dollar industry. The bottom line for healthcare insurance companies are actually around 3% which is hardly considered a windfall in anyone’s book.

The frightening part is that the top 1% of income earners that Obama keeps targeting are actually wealthy enough that they really don’t have to play the redistribution game if they don’t want to. Stocks sales are volatile but hardly robust as once again, potential investors are waiting to see how much of their money they will actually get to keep. They could easily retire very comfortably on what they have and move to a country where the weather is pleasant, the dollar is stronger and the political winds aren’t blowing at hurricane force against them. We are already seeing a “tax exodus” from New York, New Jersey and California as the rate of taxation rises on the “wealthy”. If they would leave a State, is it really inconceivable that they would leave the nation if our fiscal policies towards the wealthy continue to turn from pestilent to confiscatory? If they do, who would the “top 1%” be then?

We are at a crossroads in American culture. The so-called progressive tax structure has created a condition where 47% of the people in this country pay no taxes at all. A portion of that 47% actually receive an “earned income credit” which is nothing more than the forced payment of money from one group of Americans to another and many have no idea where this money comes from other than the government. The Democrats have spent nearly the last hundred years pitting the poor against the wealthy in this country and our immigration policies see to it that the poor in this nation continue to grow in number. Once the number of taxpayers drop below 50%, the poor will have the political might to keep those in power that will finish their work of emptying the treasury to subsidize ever growing portions of the population, eventually forcing our nation into socialism or worse.

Paul

The Healthcare - Frankenstein Connection

Like hundreds of other really bad horror films, the healthcare bill has been revived for yet another sequel. Just like the movies, most of the actors are the same; except of course, the ones that were killed off in the previous movies. The main character has been resurrected for each new film even though the end of the previous films seemed to suggest this ghoulish figure had met its demise.

In the original healthcare fright, Universal care was created by the evil doctor, Baron Von Clinton. That was more of a suggestive film since the horror remained hidden from view behind the closed doors of the conference room where it was created. It threatened the nation until it was eventually killed by common sense.

In the first sequel, “Son of Clinton”; Clinton’s protégé, Barack Obama, recreated the evil doctor’s work but this creature escaped the house and invaded the Senate. Then there was “The Curse of Clinton” featuring Max Baucus. The creature was altered by a committee of meddling scientists. Larger than ever, it left the Senate and returned to the house where it was created. This lead to the next film in the series; “The Bride of Clinton”. The Bride of Clinton” staring Nancy Pelosi, has reached monstrous proportions after an additional 900 pages had been added. This one threatens to challenge your senses as early as Thursday in a theater near you.

In the original Frankenstein movies, the real menace was not the monster, but the scientist that dabbled in the areas of life and death traditionally reserved for God. In his attempt to create life, this misguided doctor created a monster. While he could reanimate the dead, he could not give the beast something he had no knowledge of; a soul. Just as Frankenstein created his monster through ignorance, Congress has now created their own monstrosity. They may know legislative language but they have no idea of what it would take to actually create a soul for this document.

They are not doctors so they do not understand medicine. Most have been in public service their entire lives so they have no idea how business functions let alone how to run a business. There is only one Congress so competition is simply an exercise in theory to them. They are legislators and anytime legislators try to write laws that directly control the mission of business or that attempts to hamper personal choice, it is doomed to end in failure.

Frankenstein was so engrossed in his quest to discover the secret of life that he never bothered to consider if he should. Congress is now so obsessed with passing healthcare legislation that they have cobbled up this hideous 1900 page monster from the dissected pieces of all of the other dead bills and now they intend to breathe life into it before they know the full scope of what it will do once it has opened its eyes.

This bill is intended to eliminate private insurance despite the Presidents promises. Within the bill it is stated that in 2013, people with private or small group healthcare plans will be transitioned to the ”exchange” where they can then get a plan acceptable to the Federal Government. Similarly, the only employer provided healthcare plans that can be “grandfathered” in, are plans that meet the benefit descriptions required in the bill and that are in effect prior to the first year of this legislation. Of course we all know that healthcare plans are annual contracts and the benefit levels and deductibles change quite frequently when the contracts are renewed. It’s safe to say that even though you have a plan that qualifies under the grandfather clause, that plan will no longer qualify if it changes in any way during contract renewal. The few employer based plans that remain grandfathered will most likely be the so-called “Cadillac” plans that they intend to tax out of existence by tacking a 40% surcharge onto the premium to help fund the public option or that cease to exist when they are forced to compete against a heavily subsidized public plan.

The plan creates a healthcare benefits board that consists of the Surgeon General and twenty-six additional government and non-government people that are appointed directly by the President or appointed by other Presidential appointees. This board will determine the benefit levels in the plan, the rate at which doctors and hospitals will be reimbursed (for the public option) and yes, the allocation of resources. It is this board that will be the “death panel”; not the end of life counseling everyone was afraid of.

You see the real aim if this legislation is not to insure that all American’s have affordable healthcare. Independent studies have already concluded that private insurance costs will triple under this plan and the premium costs for the public option or “Consumer Option” as Nancy Pelosi wants to call it, will only be marginally lower than private plans unless you qualify for the redistribution of wealth (subsidy for low income families). It is not about insuring the uninsured as the CBO states that this bill will only cover 2% of people under the age of 65.

The CBO says it will cost 1.05 trillion dollars in the first ten years even though the actual benefits don’t fully kick in until year five. That means that if the government keeps its promise to make the required cuts (which they have never done in the past) and keeps its promise to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse (which they have never done in the past), this bill will actually cost close to 3 trillion dollars in year five through year fifteen. In fact, the bill’s “budget neutrality” is a myth of creative accounting unless private care is eliminated, everyone is forced into the public option, allowing the healthcare benefits board to mandate lower reimbursement rates for healthcare providers; which is exactly what I think this is designed to do.

This bill is not about care, your costs or the uninsured. It has everything to do with the Federal entitlement programs that already exist. Medicare and Medicaid were in serious trouble three years after they were created. In 1968, Congress raided the Social Security Trust to use those funds to shore up Medicare and Medicaid. They then placed Social Security as a line on the Federal Budget and stuffed it full of IOU’s. Now that the baby-boomers are retiring, people are living longer than ever and Medicare and Medicaid are still a financial train wreck, the government needed to find an innovative way to get more money from the public to keep the Ponzi scheme alive. The healthcare industry represents one sixth of the United States economy and having that money run through the government entitlement machine first would keep the gears of that machine greased for an awfully long time before it would be in crisis again; or so goes the logic.

The problem with that logic is that the government has never managed any public entitlement program effectively, efficiently or with even a modest degree of success. As I said before; they not businessmen nor are they doctors; they are legislators and truthfully, they aren’t very good at that either. If this is in fact a plan to restore solvency to the Federal Budget only one of two things can happen. It will fail miserable (as usual), bankrupt the Federal Government and collapse our economy or it will reduce the healthcare system in this country into the same bureaucratic nightmare that England has had since World War II, where hospitals have longer lines than airports, benefits are rationed and care is determined by placing a value on life.

So here we are, November 3, 2009 and today’s election may spell life or death for the healthcare debate as President Obama is, in essence, on trial in three east coast races. A loss for Democrats in the three most visible races, New York’s 23rd Congressional District and the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races will signify that the nation is not in support of massive spending bills and the cut-throat politics that are being employed to pass them.

To borrow a phrase from the Clinton campaign…”It’s the economy stupid!” People that are out of work want to see government action that provides incentives to businesses that actually create lasting jobs. A half-assed stimulus plan that provides a momentary bump in GDP is not being seen as meaningful. The lucky people that still have jobs live in fear of losing them as every piece of legislation currently under discussion threatens new restrictions and taxes on the people that employ them and they know that if these bills pass, their employers will have to make hard choices about who will stay, and who will go. The real engine of the economy is on hold. No one in business is expanding until they know what their liabilities will be. Investors are holding off as well; after all, why should anyone place capital at risk if the potential gain might be taxed until the profits resemble what can safely be acquired through T-bills?

The trend is definitely over and the sun is setting on the FDR Democrats. Massive spending legislation, omnibus bills, high taxes, new entitlement programs and especially non-accountability in government are all out of fashion now. If NY, NJ and VA all turn on Obama, look for a mudslide in 2010. I say mudslide only because that describes the people that will be displaced far more accurately than “landslide” ever could.

Paul