Tag Archives: Government

News

How good a job is Obama doing running car companies?

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Investors Business Daily explains.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s electric car vision is off to a hot start. First the heavily subsidized Chevy Volt started catching fire. Then government-backed Fisker Automotive had to recall all its cars due to a fire hazard.

Late last month, Fisker, the electric car startup that is busy spending its $529 million in Department of Energy loans, announced a recall of its entire fleet of luxury Karmas because of a faulty battery that posed a fire risk.

The battery maker at fault — A123 Systems — is another Obama grantee, having gotten $380 million in taxpayer support to make advanced car batteries.

Fisker says it’s already fixed the problem, but this is just the latest in a series of troubles plaguing the new car company.

Although it once promised to be profitably churning out 1,200 cars a month by now, Fisker has so far sold only about 240 — at a price almost 14% higher than promised. And the more moderately priced electric sedan it says it will build in an abandoned Delaware plant is still nowhere to be seen.

Bad as this is, Fisker’s troubles are just a taste of the expensive and dangerous mess in store for car buyers should Obama succeed in forcing the industry to bend to his green dreams.

In May, a Chevy Volt caught fire three weeks after a government crash test of the car. In follow-up tests in November, a second Volt caught fire after a test crash, and a third began to smoke and emit sparks.

[…]Volt sales came in about 30% below GM’s forecast for 2011 — in a year when overall retail car sales beat industry analyst forecasts by almost 12% — earning the Volt third place on 24/7 Wall Street’s list of worst product flops of 2011.

And that’s despite the substantial tax break to Volt buyers and the hundreds of millions in grant money to its suppliers.

Obama is spending a lot of taxpayer money on his Solyndra-style boondoggles. Taking money away from employers and families and just throwing it in the trash. We are now officially over 100% debt-to-GDP. We are entering a Greece-style debt situation and this dingbat is throwing our money away on Peter Pan energy policies.

News

The top 10 worst federal rules of 2011

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From the Heritage Foundation.

Here’s the one that I disliked the most:

6. The Bring on the Blackouts Rule. The EPA is proposing to force power plants to reduce mercury by 90 percent within three years—at an estimated cost of $11 billion annually. A significant number of coal-fired plants will actually exceed the standard—by shutting down altogether. Indeed, grid operators, along with 27 states, are warning that the overly stringent regulations will threaten the reliability of the electricity system and dramatically increase power costs. Just like candidate Obama promised.

Oh, one more:

9. The Chill the Economy Regulation. The EPA issued four interrelated rules governing emissions from some 200,000 boilers nationwide at an estimated capital cost of $9.5 billion. These boilers burn natural gas, fuel oil, coal, biomass (e.g., wood), refinery gas, or other gas to produce steam, which is used to generate electricity or provide heat for factories and other industrial and institutional facilities. Under the so-called Boiler MACT, factories, restaurants, schools, churches, and even farms would be required to conduct emissions testing and comply with standards of control that vary by boiler size, feedstock, and available technologies. The stringency and cost of the new regulations provoked an outpouring of protest, including 21 governors and more than 100 Members of Congress. On May 18, the EPA published a notice of postponement in the Federal Register, but the regulations remain on the books.

If I were President, then the first thing that I would do is abolish the EPA, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. We have too much government!

News

Obama will ask for $1.2 trillion dollar increase in the debt limit

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Obama Economic Record November 2011
Obama Economic Record November 2011

From Reuters.

Excerpt:

The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling… according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

The approval is expected to go through without a challenge, given that Congress is in recess until later in January and the request is in line with an agreement to keep the U.S. government funded into 2013.

The debt is projected to fall within $100 billion of the current cap by December 30, when the United States has $82 billion in interest on its debt and payments such as Social Security coming due. President Barack Obama is expected to ask for authority to increase the borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion, part of the spending authority that was negotiated between Congress and the White House this summer.

[…]The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.

And yet some people apparently think that he is doing a good job with the economy.

Perhaps this story provides a clue about why things have gone so badly:

After an hour of hiking, President Obama Monday got down to the serious business at hand, heading out to golf for the second day in his first three days of vacation. He was back on the course at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

With this one, Obama reaches a new milestone, having gone golfing 90 times in less than three years as president. That’s about three months of golf, given that the excursions generally take about five hours – much of the useful portion of the day.

What’s more, it’s the 32nd time he’s been on the links this year, a record for the president. His 32 outings eclipses the 2010 mark of 30 and is far ahead of his 2009 tally of 28 rounds as president.

And remember, there are still five days left in the year for Obama to pad his new record, which he almost certainly will.

Along for Monday’s round were three of Obama’s Hawaii friends, Mike Ramos, Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb. The latter, you may remember, was arrested in April in a prostitution sting.

It’s the children who are going to be paying for Obama’s spending spree. Remember, the last Republican budget was in 2007 – and the deficit then was $160 billion. Then the Democrats took over the House and the Senate and the deficit rose dramatically and is not going down in the near future.