Graphical History of the US Economy 1980 to 2012

(Click the Picture to Enlarge)

I made the illustration above because I thought it would be nice for everyone to see the history of some of the more understandable parts of the economy for the last 32 years.  Left of this chart was the Carter economy -- which was similar to the Obama economy except inflation was worse but the value of the dollar wasn't eroding in nearly the same rapid fashion that quantitative easing has brought us.  Reagan increased tax revenues by returning growth to robust levels, but he only had the senate for part of his two terms and never came close to having the house -- so spending outpaced the increased revenue.  Still, the GDP did better with even the big slow-down of his second term having a higher GDP growth rate than the vast majority of the next 32 years!!!!!!

Bush 41 had a lackluster 4 years -- Foreign Policy was his highlight with the Iraq war -- but he stopped short of capturing Saddam Hussein which came back to cost us a lot down the road.  Economically, he is most known for breaking his word to not raise taxes -- which lowered the GDP a bit and was moot anyway because spending outpaced the increases.

Clinton limped into his first term having won with the help of Perot who split Bush's vote.  His first two years he was quite unpopular.  After his unpopularity led to the Republicans sweeping into the House for the first time in decades with their "Contract with America", Clinton restored his image by appropriating the items in the contract as "achievements" of his own.  For example, after vetoing welfare reform twice -- he finally passed it and touted it as one of his greatest achievements.  While this would harm the American people down the road -- helping deceive them into thinking Obama has the right plan for them since "Clinton" had such a great plan, in the short term spending went down and we enjoyed a budget surplus for the first time in decades.  There were two bumps in the road (as Obama would say) at the end of the Clinton era.  The moderate bump was the tech stock bubble that burst after the hype of the new information age came back down to reality levels. The severe bump came in 1999, Clinton enacted regulation to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make unsecured loans to tens of millions of Americans.  After some gloriously fun years of everyone enjoying 3 story homes, the housing market would collapse and bring down some of the biggest names in the financial world in the process.  Tens of millions of new home owners became tens of millions of home owners fighting foreclosure.

Bush 43 would face all kinds of challenges during his two terms -- some he met quite well such as 9/11.  His dealing with the economy was less stellar.  He cut taxes early in his term which helped the economy recover from the depression at the end of the Clinton term which was triggered by the bursting of the tech bubble.  Bush created a new entitlement drug program and the Republican senate which had reigned in spending when the President was a Democrat began to act more like their Democratic predecessors spending money without much responsibility.  Despite that, after dealing with the wars in his first term, Bush's second term saw shrinking deficits, and we were on pace to a balanced budget by 2008 or 2009 (WITH the "Bush" tax cuts) when the housing crisis hit.  The housing crisis to be sure was primarily an outcome of the irresponsible lending practices that Clinton enacted -- but there is more blame to go around.  While it would have been suicide for his already waning popularity which was already damaged by relentless, daily mainstream media attacks, Bush could have stopped those lending practices (on a side note: the mainstream media should probably get a little of the blame come to think of it just like they will for the next four years of Obama).  Furthermore, Republicans failed to stop (though they may never have even known about) a practice of insuring risky assets rather than keeping actual assets to secure the risky loans.  This multiplied the effect of the housing crisis as financial institutions with hundreds of billions of dollars did not have enough to cover the utter breakdown of the housing market with tens of millions of loans failing at once.  While most of the blame rests squarely on Clinton's short-sighted shoulders, where Bush most deserves criticism is in his passage of TARP to spend hundreds of billions of dollars propping up financial institutions.  The thought at the time was that these institutions were too "big to fail" and needed to support the economy.  The reality was that these financial institutions ended up taking TARP and investing it the way they did their funds in general -- with the credit market having crashed along with the housing market, the TARP money generally never made it to consumers where it would have done the economy the most good.  Bush's spending combined with the media-manufactured "generic" unpopularity he suffered with led to his loss of both the house and the senate in 2006.

After eight years of Bush, the last 6 of which included a mainstream media creating Bush hatred as a strategy which they ramped up heavily after failing to swing the 2004 election to Kerry, the American people were sick of Bush often for random reasons or reasons they couldn't really put a finger on.  In comes the blank slate community organizer and junior senator whose very lack of achievement served him well to let him be whatever anybody wanted to imagine him being -- hope and change had arrived.  While the election of someone with more love of the third world than America and with an ideal view of the world as socialist is alarming, it was of greater concern due to the surprising super-majority he enjoyed in the senate where Republicans did not even have enough seats to filibuster.  This was achieved by a sweeping election combined with three cases of fraud ranging from probable to definite.  In Missouri, Claire McCaskill is quite unpopular, but a judge in St. Louis made a last-minute decision to keep the polls open in St. Louis and ONLY St. Louis for several extra hours on election night.  This was not to let people in line vote -- that's the case ANYWAY.  This was so at best people who didn't bother to go vote could change their mind -- and let's be real so people who had already gone through line could get back in it and vote again.  St. Louis is heavily Democratic by the way incase you just moved to this country.  Sadly, in 2012, Democrats would vote in the Republican primary so we would be stuck with Akin as a candidate -- not only did he lose the seat to the hated McCaskill, but he probably lost the Republican party a few more seats and possibly even the Presidency (remind me to slap Akin someday after Anne Coulter finishes beating him).  In Alaska, Ted Stevens was brought up on corruption charges by a Democratic District Attorney -- a shoe in for the senate, he had to step down and the charges conveniently came too late for another candidate to be placed on the ticket.  Later, it would come out that the charges were false and the District Attorney was the one in hot water-- nevertheless, the Democrats had yet another seat by fraud.  The third seat was Al Franken who lost his senate seat, but was the benefactor of some generous Democratic voting officials who "found" thousands of misplaced ballots in the break room -- probably under a peanut butter and communist sandwich.  So, with three underserved senate seats extra, and a super-majority -- Obama proceeded to let the economy continue to suffer like never before and passed Obamacare.  Obamacare isn't so much a bad law as it is an establishment of ranks of unelected bureaucrats who get to make up whatever horrid policy (might as well be law) that patients and companies have to deal with.  He promised costs would come down -- anyone with a brain KNEW that meant he would at least double costs -- but, horrifyingly, most of the pain in Obamacare is set to kick in after the 2012 election so 2013 is likely to be a very un-fun wild ride on a Rollercoaster with a missing section of track in one of the curves.  The stimulus money he spent, while actually doing some good, was all too often wasted on political allies.  When we see "green" company after green company going bankrupt -- it's not a sad day for Obama's allies but the happiest days of their lives.  The hundreds of millions of OUR money Obama loaned to them then helped them get rich as they sell of the pieces of the "green" company they never had much intention of doing much with anyway.  In turn, they donated millions to help reelect Obama and an entire crew of incompetent bastards.  I will leave greater detail for future blogs...  But take a look at the graph and prepare for it to become stunningly much worse – to the right of the graph will likely be the ugliest parts – and that’s where we are heading now thanks to our liberal robot friends who think they’re not bigots if they make sure they vote for whoever isn’t a white guy.  I'll post another graph in the future making the actual debt look as impressive as Obama has made it -- probably against the waning value of the dollar.

Why We Must Resist the Temptation to Let Obama Raise Taxes

Many of us have had the idea we should just let the Democrats tax all they want -- and let the 52% repent of their ways seeing the outcome...  If the majority of the youth in this country want to vote for a man who is running up debts that THEY will pay -- why not just let it happen.  I share that temptation -- I for one, think I can make money with Obama in power, but we MUST not give into it -- having failed to retake the House, it would probably be Plan B for Obama who will now face an incredible challenge -- avoiding the recrimination of a populace that will now face all of his policies that he delayed until after the election.  In a recent NY Times article, they talked of Obama's "mandate" in the second term -- quite ironically, their argument was that his victory was great because he won DESPITE a bad economy (psst... NY Times: that HE caused).  Think about the substance of THAT argument.

When Obama swept to power in 2008, he very vocally pointed out that there were no red states of America or blue states of America, but that he was President of the United States of America.  As with most of Obama's grand rhetoric, his emphasis usually rests most heavily in areas where he means exactly the opposite.  There is reason why Obama is the first President since Andrew Johnson to win reelection with fewer electoral votes than he took at his initial election -- which is such a rare occurrence we will likely not see it again in our lifetimes.  From the very beginning, Obama's strategy was to strengthen his hold over the blue states and hang on in the battleground states.  While many in the Red States who were responsible for the space program noted this when he took all the shuttles and moved them to SOLID blue states with no involvement in the space program -- this is an underlying theme in all of Obama's activities.  While New York and New Jersey may feel slighted realizing Obama only appeared there for a 90 minutes photo-op after the Sandy disaster... think of poor Red State Missouri that never got a visit after the Joplin disaster.  The moral of the story would have been that while Obama is President you damn well better not have a disaster outside of a battleground state -- but now that he doesn't have to demean himself to try and win over minions, that may not even help you much.
     His first effort was to raise the billion+ dollars it took to convince Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and Virginia to willingly take on economic enslavement to prop up the unproductive, overly unionized Blue State economies.  Fortunately for Obama, while his economic policy has led to exactly what any astute, independent thinker would expect, he actually succeeded by failing from the beginning of his term.  While most of the pain of Obamacare was delayed until 2013, there is enough job-killing already in the bill to keep up high unemployment in and of itself -- and this will soon become MUCH worse.  After killing the crux of job creation, Obama and his allies set to extend unemployment, then rollback welfare reforms, and encourage food stamps.  Ironically, these poor souls suffering most in the Obama economy overwhelmingly supported him -- Romney after all, just wanted their money (yeah, he has plenty but we're talking lib-logic here).  Yeah, it seems absurd -- but looking at Nov. 6th, we see it DID happen.  In any case, the "new normal" and lowered expectations were created that would allow Obama to survive his own record.  Another important factor in the Obama strategy was the Occupy Wall Street movement -- while we see Wall Street doing quite well with a thriving 1% under Obama, Occupy Wall Street gave Obama free advertisement for his class warfare strategy.
     Class warfare is a longtime strategy used by the Democrats -- but previous administrations were amateurs by comparison.  In Obama's first term, he continued to call the tax levels the "Bush" tax cuts so they could be rolled back with greater support in the future, but he opted to keep them in place.  This was to prevent a recession while his stimulus money went to work.  Why is Obama changing his mind now and calling for "investment" in America with higher tax rates?  Because the collapse of the capitalist system has slowed.  Let us first look at tax rates versus tax revenue; it is a non-linear curve between the two.  In a thriving economy growing at 4 to 5% as we have become accustomed to since Ronald Reagan, the thriving economy has extra money that can be siphoned off -- increasing tax rates generates a near linear increase in tax revenues.  However, taken too far, the tax rates slow the economy and the curve flattens and then goes the other way.  Increase the tax rates to 80% for an extreme example, and the economy will come to a standstill and generate less money than a 20% tax rate.  This curve is ignored completely in the rhetoric of class warfare for a reason -- Democrats have less interest in tax revenue than they do in increasing the government share of the economy.  If you truly want to help the poor, you cause economic abundance and then you could reasonably consider tax hikes if needed -- but they usually aren't because in thriving economies run by cold-hearted Republicans, poor people decrease in number.  No, the reason liberals love to raise tax RATES is that by raising tax rates and slowing the private sector, government becomes more powerful.  As job creators face drops in profit, they find themselves unable to maintain the same number of employees... who in turn become unemployed and statistically more likely to support the Democrat machine.  While this provides the Democrat party with power, it also hinders GDP which for the last 4 years have hovered just above recession levels.  For the past 40 years, we have had many recessions, but they were always followed by recoveries about as robust as the recession within a year or two.  Even when we had double-dip recessions, the recovery would be that much stronger when it finally came.  The benefit of a recession is that it culls out ineffective businesses and causes employees to retool by learning new skill sets and becoming more productive.  This pendulum has been short-circuited by the Obama administration.  By using stimulus money to prop up the failing automotive industry for example, he has kept in-place antiquated systems and ongoing payments to unions to keep them as loyal voters.  They also prevent GM from fielding competitive cars at similar prices to their competitors.  The latest redesign of the GM Malibu is the only car in its field of competitors to get worse scores from Consumer Reports than the previous design.  It has a shorter not longer wheelbase for example.  GM DID go through bankruptcy, but rather than going through the normal court process where it trimmed and release from the process more ready to do business -- GM was recreated into the fantasy image of Obama and his liberal think-tank friends... this is why we have exploding electric cars that nobody outside of the 1% can afford.  "Someday, I hope to get rich and drive an Impala!" said nobody EVER.
     Back on November 6th, if Republicans had won the presidency but lost the senate -- they would have been in big trouble.  Unable to repeal Obamacare or even get Harry Reid to produce a budget, their weapons for creating recovery would have been limited.  While Romney could have likely improved the GDP with removal of Obama's executive orders and by reigning in a runaway EPA, it is unlikely that the economy would thrive with Obamacare still in place.  With the help of the liberal media, we would likely be heading for a future of incessant "Blame Romney" without any liberals being able to actually recall anything Romney did.  There is a chance that we would have won the senate in 2014 and been able to really generate a robust recovery -- but we'll focus on the bright-side of losing.  Obama now faces a similar though opposite problem by not having control of the House.  In the last several days, Obama has been further limiting energy development to mitigate the economic boom that might create while Obamacare is starting to become a layoff machine -- it is difficult to imagine a huge number of people having to keep 2 part-time jobs because of Obamacare NOT being a problem for the President.  In the past, Obama has avoided this in blue states by giving waivers to unions and other allies.  This may not be enough to avoid public outcry in the near future -- and may just anger more those not benefitting from the waivers, especially in the red states.  Obama does have control over the monetary system via the fed and will be printing money at a rapid pace -- which hurts the future of the country but makes short-term problems less apparent, but the monetary tools to prop up an economy have largely been exhausted during Obama's first term.  Interest has been 0% for a good while, and we can't pay people to borrow.  On top of that, the huge borrowing of stimulus money has not only lowered the nominal credit rating, but the actual credit security of the country -- it is harder for banks to loan when the financial system is leveraging itself beyond sane levels.  This will further retard economic growth.  The last resort would be to raise "taxes on the rich" which would both make Obama look like a hero to those suffering under his policies -- and further lead to increased unemployment and welfare use.  This would have in turn be blamed on rich people laying off employees because they are cold bastards -- we already see this with the flurry of companies that have had to lay out tens of thousands of employees as Obamacare is becoming the law (curse) of the land.  On a side note, I hope the medical device needed to save YOUR life was already invented before Obamacare or you may be @#$@ out of luck.  With an economy in utter failure and the populace in need of a savior, that would be the time for Obama to step in with government buying more and more of the failing private sector as was the case with GM.  That said, his power to do so is limited -- while Obama can use Sequestration as blackmail to get some of his way -- and may just as happily embrace Sequestration... it is unlikely that even John Boehner will cave enough to give Obama enough new wealth to continue his socialization strategy.
     While many, including myself, have had thoughts of letting the Democrats have their tax hikes so the 52% that supported Obama can feel the pain of their decision, I have had second thoughts based on the aforementioned process.  Considering the absurdity of the bias in most of the media, raising taxes and plunging the country into a recession will end up being blamed on the House, and if the government ends up "rescuing" more of the destroyed economy, it will be praised as "savior".  Looking at the electorate from 2012, we can no longer count on educated Americans to think far ahead and understand below-the-surface complexities in issues.  We see the Democrats enacting early voting and possibly even EMAIL voting so that an uninformed, unmotivated electorate can have just as much or even MORE power than those who understand the under-workings of policy.  Seeing an electorate vote itself into economic slavery while simple-mindedly and naively patting itself on the back, even praising itself for not being a "bigot" like the other side -- is the biggest alarm for this country since the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The most likely scenario where this trend reverses and the masses flock to the Republican tent -- is that which we saw in 1980.  Jimmy Carter had the same economic genius of Barack Obama and had the same results -- limited to one term, his damage was likely minimal to what we will see in the next four years.  The best hope for this country is that in 2016 we end up with a President who throws off the economic shackles as Reagan did in 1980.  We saw the youth surge to the Republican party after that event -- and a similar scenario is likely in the next 4 to 8 years... BUT, we cannot allow the further socialization of the country which would effectively innoculate the country from resurging again in the future.  In order to do that, we MUST hold the line with the House of Representatives.  This is no time for surrender -- the majority of the country may fail to appreciate it, but they now need us far more than ever.

GOP Rebuilding Strategies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-exit-polls/national-breakdown/
WaPo Exit Poll Stats:

Male: O 45% 52% R
Female: O 55% 44% R
Married Females: O 46% 53% R
Non-married Females: O 67% 31% R
White: O 39% 59% R
Black: O 93% 6% R
Hispanic: O 71% 27% R
People unhappy w/ economy: O 12% 85% R
People saying economy "not so good": O 55% 42% R
People who rate economy as excellent: O 90% 9% R
White Catholic: O 40% 59% R
White Evangelical: O 21% 78% R
No religion: O 70% 26% R

GOP Strategy Thoughts:
Encouraging that we made up ground on a sitting President -- first time since Andrew Johnson that was done without the President losing; yet also very discouraging to lose to a President without any achievements except government takeover of Health Care that will get less and less popular but harder to undo down the road.  Still, many areas where the party must improve or even retool completely.  With early voting, going to have to do better winning hearts and minds even with the low-interest low-info voters who are now more likely to vote as well as the high-information voters willing to go both ways depending on results.  I feel a strategy of getting more conservative but also being more pro-actively tolerant will turn things around.
     I disagree with the doom-sayers saying the takers are now the majority -- they are a growing percentage, but if we win hearts and minds of productive swing-voters and Democrats, we can win just fine with current level of the so-called "takers".  We aren't Venezuela YET.

[Areas we are doing well though could do even better]
Good news:
Economy: Brightest point for Republicans: Safe to say anyone rating economy as excellent NOW will almost NEVER be swayed no matter what -- but they are a small minority.  Still, this is the ONLY issue that will bring masses back to the party -- this is the most libertarian area of the party where those who adore freedom and opportunity will come.  The 'investment' in American lines sound good, but will hurt the poor and MANY smart Obama supporters are likely to come around on at least this issue.  This is where Republicans are the rebellious, cool, radical party that many come to love at some point in their lives.  Romney had great idea about focusing party on small not big business -- very powerful and should be embraced going forward.  Big business does very well under Democrat OR Republican control -- start focusing on small business and you'll win a lot of hearts and minds.  More so as a tax and subsidize system grows and begins to frustrate many people who for NOW support the idea.

[Areas we need to become more libertarian in]
Mildly bad news:
Women: Doing well with married women.  Difficult to win non-married women over without being in office improving their financial situation -- but culling out the politicians stupid enough to say anything that can be misconstrued in ANY fashion as pro-rape will help.  Vapid or not, the "war on women" meme worked.  Lot of women moving up into more and more powerful leadership positions in the party which will help fix this over time.  Strategy: cull out the Akin's / Murdoch's -- reasonable pro-life is fine with majority of women, but worrying them that they'll be serially raped and have to carry the baby... yeah, pretty @$@ stupid.  HAVE to have positions that they can respectfully disagree with at least, especially when dems are going to be spending $1 billion or more each election to demagogue and distract from real issues.  Continue letting smarter women take ever-growing roles will work well for this group that will pendulum back some and hopefully break 50% in next decade the other way.  I've even heard very BRIGHT women equating Republicans to pro-rape... possibly just because they wanted to promote Democrats -- but STILL.  *kicks Akin in the butt on his 'I'm not dropping out of this race' way HOME*

Ongoing bad news:
Blacks: 6% is actually encouraging to me with the historic first black President in office.  Some of the brightest minds I follow on twitter are black conservatives fighting the tide.  Sadly, Republicans Mia Love and Allen West were blocked by more money than a small nation's GDP to keep black dissenters out of office.  This group is tough to crack due to extensive peer pressure (EVERYONE gets called an Uncle Tom or house ______... sad), but we keep picking away bright minds from their ranks and let them rise in our party and think long term -- don't see any short term big win here.  Win or lose with them, stick to principle and keep door open for them, anyway.  Obviously, continue to quell anyone with bigotry while we point out and fight reverse-bigotry as well.  Reasonable near-term goal is to get this vote over 10% -- need to maximize outreach and support for idea people from the black (and other minority) communities.

Short-term, surprisingly bad news:
Hispanics: This divide should shrink significantly.  There was a bandwagon effect and the billion $ ad blitz worked well with the non-hard-core dems to raise this percentage, but Hispanics aren't a bunch of sheep... plenty of room to reach them and more importantly let them lead.  Romney's comment that he'd have immigration reform in his first year was a sign to me he planned on fixing this divide early with reasonable immigration reform that Obama never delivered -- but without the platform of the Presidency that strategy is obviously moot.  Fortunately, some of our best people are hispanic -- Rubio is off the hook fabulous...  Republicans have to embrace reasonable immigration reform and fight for it.  Majority of Hispanics didn't experience the Reagan economy, they just saw Bush bleh -- but this group will continue to grow in the GOP and probably be some of the best leadership going forward.  Many of them will feel betrayed as the economy reaches the new "normal" more extensively.  Action plan: Come up with good, reasonable immigration reform (Romney actually had some great ideas here) and stop the we must lock down borders FIRST talk -- it's not really racist, but some of the people who repeat it most vocally ARE racist and should be culled from the party.  Let's promote legal work programs, reasonably secure borders, and continue to incorporate Hispanics into party leadership -- they don't face the same interior peer pressure black conservatives face and we should improve here dramatically.

Status Quo News: Evangelicals/Catholics/Atheists/Gays/Etc.
Religion: Obviously this overall works well for Republicans -- but we need a tent open for religious and non-religous.  It is the goodness of God that wins hearts, not the "you WILL do as I say" religious crowd.  In other words help out your community and preach God's word and stop being self-righteous about it.  The biggest contrast probably in the gay community.  There are a number of Christians who think homosexuality is wrong but respect homosexuals who work well with homosexuals -- who in turn work well with Christians who think the lifestyle is wrong but are still friends with them (I have good friends who are homosexuals).  This number has to grow.  Many of these homosexuals would LOVE to embrace economic liberty, but would rather have big government if they fear discrimination.  Don't need to cater to homosexuals nor promote homosexuality -- just have to respect them more openly and agree to disagree.  Gay marriage is a yawner for me -- let the states do whatever.. and tell your kids it's not God's plan for them any more than a lot of other legal activities.. but we can't politicize this with Chic-Fil-A marches -- I reject calls to ban Chic-Fil-A because they have their opinion, but I ALSO rejected getting a sandwich to snub it in the face of gay people.  Summary: I want evangelical, catholic, and every non-Christian including gay people in the party -- I can do without the small number of Christians who want to attack gay people at all costs... and I can do without the gay people who think you have to be proud of them SIMPLY because they're gay and support them 100% -- or you're a bigot.  Other than that, open tent.  After election day, we SHOULD NOT have many gay people (and other secular groups) thinking they won a battle against suppression -- when they are ACTUALLY voting in economic oppression... so there is CLEARLY some work to do here.

Getting better news:
Youth: Well, can sum it up with: bandwagon effect here -- for example, saw ad today saying Paul Ryan is "what dumb people think smart people sound like".  Most of us probably rest at ease knowing our IQ far exceeds anyone who makes such an ad or ascribes to it... but that doesn't win youth -- fortunately, the youth tend to form their opinion and change it back and forth -- so there is plenty of time to win them over.. in fact youth vote went towards 50% (low 40s) this year -- despite the non-idea based attacks that I mentioned before against the people who ACTUALLY put forth ideas -- we have to continue to advance ideas, ideas, ideas, IDEAS -- and encourage opposition to wage their war with their IDEAS.  Let the youth process them -- and go where the results of the presidency takes them.  If they enjoy the Democrat style economy so be it -- but just like youth swung to Republican after Carter / Reagan -- it's likely to happen again.  The biased media and Hollywood endorsements are having a disturbingly big effect with this group -- but expect that to boomerang.  Just keep focusing on ideas.  The Obama kids singing Hitler Youth style songs and the overwhelming media bias will eventually boomerang.  Eventually, most of the youth you WANT in the party realize celebrities don't live like them and aren't very qualified to make political opinions.  Once they see that economic conservatism is the radical rebellious side of things, things will get better here -- hopefully MUCH better.