U.S. sugar policy - a job killer

The article goes on to discuss the loss of jobs to overseas in order for companies to escape the high sugar prices. As you know, sugar is in much of the food you consume, so you are paying premium prices every time you go to the supermarket. Again, a law that benefits only the chosen few and robs from the general population. We need a robust Sunset policy that will rid the government of their ability to continue rewarding special interest groups without the necessity of transparency. 


Excerpt: Sugar Subsidies: Bitter about paying artificially high prices for the non-artificial sweetener everyone uses just so a politically connected family can enjoy the sweet life? It's time lawmakers put a lid on the honey pot.


An Iowa State University study has found that the federal sugar program costs U.S. consumers roughly $3.5 billion a year and deprives the workforce of 20,000 jobs. This New Deal-era framework of barriers on sugar imports and of price supports for domestic sugar is a racket that benefits only a few, in particular the Fanjul family of Florida.


In a letter to House leaders, a group of lawmakers from both parties call U.S. sugar policy "the last of the command-and-control commodity programs that has yet to be reformed." The 22 representatives insist that Congress should "have a robust debate about sugar policy during consideration of the 2012 farm bill." 


They write: "No other farm program is deliberately designed to transfer income from American consumers and workers to a small, but 'special,' interest group of sugar processors and growers."

Read full Investors Business Daily article here.

Eagle Standing Guard

This picture was taken at the National Cemetery in Minneapolis , MN . on a June morning - and appeared in the Minneapolis Star/Tribune..

Election 2012 - a voice from the past

The full article can be read on Examiner.com.


Excerpt: Many years ago, a man many of you are too young to remember, ran a campaign for President based on the following beliefs: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests ", I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." 


Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democrats succeeded in painting Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater, as a reactionary, and in 1964, this resulted in the largest landslide victory ever, in a Presidential election. The leftist floodgates were opened and President Johnson ushered in his “great society”.

Read the rest of my article on Examiner.com here.

Obama venture capital successes - none

This article is from the Washington Post and cites a number of the taxpayers' "investments" in the business of clean energy. As a venture capitalist, Obama is a total failure. And he does it with our money. At least Romney and his partners had a stake in the outcomes of their investments. Nothing like the risk of losing your own money, to sharpen your wits and business acumen. Obama has neither wit nor business acumen to sharpen, nor is he using his own money. 


Excerpt: Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity — and that record is not pretty. 


Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures: 


Read article for examples of Obama's failed investments of taxpayer monies. 


All that cronyism and corruption is catching up with the administration. According to Politico, “The Energy Department’s inspector general has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” related to the department’s green-energy programs. 


Now the man who made Solyndra a household name says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital “is what this campaign is going to be about.” Good luck with that, Mr. President. If Obama wants to attack Romney’s alleged private equity failures as chief executive of Bain, he’d better be ready to defend his own massive public equity failures as chief executive of the United States. 

Read full Washington Post article here.

Who is Barack Obama?

Reading the full article gives you an idea of the deception Obama and the MSM used to elect the most far left President of our time. 

Excerpt: Who is Barack Obama? Obama the presidential candidate presents himself as a man who has loved America from his earliest childhood, a man proud of his mixed-race roots who comfortably transcends polarized racial politics, a man who eschews the ideologies of Left and Right, an optimistic healer. But in his critically acclaimed autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama is something else entirely.

Obama published his autobiography in 1995, when he was in his mid-thirties. Unlike most books by politicians, which are concoctions of clichés penned by ghostwriters, Dreams was clearly written by Obama himself. Unlike most politicians, Obama can write and loves language. (He was contemplating a career as a novelist at the time he wrote Dreams.) Most important, Obama wrote his autobiography after he had become a political activist but before he was a politician; the book is therefore candid in a way a conventional politician’s memoir would never be. 

Read full National Review article here.

Obama vs Mr. Uncommitted

General Motors is becoming China Motors

Black on black violence is the problem

Walter Williams has a unique perspective on the racist culture in the United States.  He is not afraid to point out the self serving rhetoric of the Sharptons and Jacksons as they go  about their business of throwing fuel on the fire of racial unrest.  White on black crime is not the problem unless you include the acts of the Democrat/Liberal establishment in their "cradle to grave" programs meant to keep blacks down on the plantation.  


Excerpt: Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. Coupled with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery. 


The magnitude of this tragic mayhem can be viewed in another light. According to a Tuskegee Institute study, between the years 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites. Black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and all wars since 1980 (8,197) come to 18,515, a number that pales in comparison with black loss of life at home. It's a tragic commentary to be able to say that young black males have a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities.  


Read full article here.

Committee Investigation Outlines White House’s Role in Backroom Health Care Negotiations

The meaning of the word transparency seems to escape our President as do so many facts that don't make it to his teleprompter. This is a developing story that should prove interesting as the information is released. 


Excerpt: The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), today released new information that confirms the White House played a pivotal role in cutting a “deal” with the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the details of which have never been fully disclosed to the public. The latest revelations come as part of an ongoing investigation launched more than a year ago to allow Congress and the American public to understand the process that was used to write legislation that fundamentally transformed the nation's health care system. 


Today, a staff memo distributed to Republican members of the committee provided further information regarding the development of the “deal,” and the parties involved in negotiating specific policy outcomes to secure support for the legislation. Based on email exchanges and other primary source material, it appears the deal was reached not solely between PhRMA and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, but that top personnel in the White House were involved in negotiating and approving this deal. The committee’s investigation determined that the White House, specifically Office of Health Reform Director Nancy Ann DeParle, Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, actively engaged in these negotiations while the role of Congress was limited. Their involvement in these previously undisclosed negotiations is particularly noteworthy since it contradicts the president’s promises of transparency. 


And as the memo highlights, the important question to be answered is what the White House got in return. 

Read full House Committee memo here.

Stats - Occupy Wall Street-vs-Tea Party

President Obama - Our narcissist in charge

This is a great and telling article about our "narcissistic" President. You must read the full article to get the full impact of who Obama really is. This even makes my prior article "Martial Law by Executive Order – An Obama Dictatorship?" of more concern.


Excerpt: Reflecting on his two terms in office, President George W. Bush said in 2010, “You realize you’re not it. You’re a part of something bigger than yourself.”


This is a sentiment President Barack Obama did not inherit from his predecessor. Over the past month we have witnessed several displays of arrogant power emanating from our White House, emphasizing fealty to a person over the integrity of an American institution. Some are more serious than others.


First, this week it was discovered that White House staff had edited the biographies of many past presidents on whitehouse.gov to include a bullet point or two inserting President Obama into each historical narrative. 


For example, while President Calvin Coolidge had been the first president to make a public radio address, President Obama is on LinkedIn; and while Social Security was introduced by President Roosevelt, under President Obama it still exists. But in a far more egregious example, they incorrectly added to President Ronald Reagan’s biography: “In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.”


This is not only a complete fabrication of what President Reagan said (even The Washington Post‘s ‘fact checker’ gave this familiar line two Pinocchios) but it is also a glaring example of the President putting himself ahead of the sacred institution he is sworn to protect for the nation as well as his predecessors and successors.


Any person selected to the highest office in the land is bound to indulge a small degree of narcissism. But when it permeates the entire attitude and culture of the executive branch, it begins to become a problem. No president is larger than the presidency.

Read Heritage article here.

Martial Law by Executive Order - An Obama Dictatorship?

I have a hard time believing that anyone could establish a dictatorship here in the U.S., but, seeing how, with every breath, Obama believes that he knows best how to run our lives, it is not a far stretch to believe that he might try it. His usurpation of Congressional powers, his disdain for the Supreme Court and the Constitution, and the systematic enactment of the NDAA and this executive order gives us all reason to become more vigilant and aware of what could happen. Terrorism is the crisis that Obama and the far left may well take advantage of to solidify their control of the government and our lives.


Excerpt: President Obama's National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act did to the Constitution in particular -- completely eviscerates any due process or judicial oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of "national security." Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial law without the exigencies of a national emergency.


Finally, the 2012 NDAA was hurried through the House and Senate almost like a covert op with minimal public attention or debate. It was then signed by the president at 9:00 PM on New Year's Eve while virtually nobody was paying attention to much other than the approaching new year. This new Executive Order was written and signed in complete secret and then quietly released by the White House on its website without comment. All this was done under a president who studied constitutional law at Harvard.

Read full Huffington Post article here.

London property values benefit from Euro zone crisis

This report comes after an article in the Financial Times reported that, because of the election of the Socialist candidate as President of France, the wealthy French were contemplating moves to the UK. If the Socialist Obama is re-elected, where will our job creators go? Many have already moved out of NY and California to the South. That won't help them if Obama and the Democrats have their way on the Federal level. 


Excerpt: The number of Europeans buying property in London has grown steadily over the last year as the euro zone debt crisis has worsened but numbers spiked ahead of elections in Greece last weekend that failed to produce a government. 


"What we're seeing is another stage in the euro zone crisis gathering pace," said Liam Bailey, head of residential research at property agent Knight Frank. "It's ironic that the more instability you get in the euro zone the more the London property market benefits.


" Savills data showed Spanish buyers grew 14 percent in April compared with the same six-month period and Knight Frank registered a 21 percent jump. Searches from Portugal last month were 153 percent up on April 2011 while Italian traffic jumped 46 percent, Knight Frank said. 


Growing interest from Greece in the last three weeks has been buoyed by buyers looking to rent out property as an investment, said Noel de Keyzer from Savills. 


"There seems to be an endless flow of wealthy Greek buyers, old Greek family money, coming to London both renting and buying."


In addition to countries afflicted by the euro zone crisis, the best London homes have attracted growing interest from Russia, the Middle East and Far East as buyers attempt to protect their assets amid the gyrations of the money markets. 

Read full Reuters report here.

Newt Gingrich and Bill O'Reilly Discuss Obama and Socalism

New rules authorize government to destroy Obama's draft records

Interesting! 


Excerpt: Changes in the wording of Selective Service System record-keeping requirements, made days after the opening of an investigation into the alleged forgery of President Barack Obama’s Selective Service registration form, raise serious questions about U.S. government intentions. ... 


The Selective Service System’s new privacy rules were published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, September 20, 2011, four days after the September 16 announcement by World Net Daily that the Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff’s Office “Cold Case Posse” was opening an inquiry with full subpoena power into alleged forgery of several documents concerning Obama’s birth and draft registration. ... 


Changing the wording of the privacy rules alters the status of federal records, like the requested draft registration records, from “record copies” to “nonrecord copies.” Nonrecord copies are subject to disposal.

Read Washington Times article here.

The Left’s National Vote Fraud Strategy Exposed

For a thorough analysis of the Left's strategy, please read the article at Accuracy In Media.

Obamacare - The Whole Truth

Obesity in the U.S., freedom at risk

Read my Examiner.com article here.

Barack Obama Part II - Infiltrate our institutions

Read my Examiner.com article here.

Ronald Reagan and religion in government

How far we have come in such a short time, from a man who unashamedly lived his religion, to public "servants" who, either don't believe in our Judeo/Christian heritage, or who are afraid of the non-believers who have co-opted our political system.

Random Thoughts by The Old Jarhead

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood

This is a sample of Random Thoughts from one of my favorite blogs. I would recommend that you go to his blog. He mixes wit and facts in a hilarious way.

 Sample: Progressives have failed in their dream to achieve equality of outcomes, as they always do, because as George Orwell pointed out, even in a communist utopia, "some animals are more equal than others." But their efforts have set back the conservatives' dream of equality of opportunity, mostly for minorities, especially blacks. The welfare-driven destruction of the black family, the created culture of victimization, the dismissing of education as "acting white," the tolerance for crime in the black community and black thugs brutalizing decent black folks because tough law enforcement is "racist," have all set far too many black people back worse than Jim Crow. But it garners power and money for the race baiters.


Lost history: A larger percentage of Republican House and Senate members than of Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Law of 1964. More Republicans than Democrats voted for woman's suffrage. Progressive President Woodrow Wilson originally opposed women’s suffrage. Gun control laws were originally designed to keep blacks from being able to protect themselves from the KKK. And Margaret Sanger was a big supported of the "settled science" of eugenics, which fueled the racist theories of the Nazis. She founded Planned Parenthood to keep more of the "unfit"—blacks, the retarded, and so on—from being born. Mission accomplished.


Democrats are incensed that Mitt Romney made a fortune working in private enterprise. Every respectable person marries his money like John Kerry did.

Read The Old Jarhead's full post here.

Paul Ryan: Obama's 'Julia' website 'creepy' and 'demeaning' to women

Obama can have all votes of the women who fall for this tactic. I have faith in the intelligence of the majority of women who will set this gender warfare aside and vote for Romney, the candidate who truly cares about them and the health of the country.

 Excerpt: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Friday that the Obama campaign's new website — which uses a fictionalized woman named Julia to illustrate how the president's policies help female voters — is "creepy" and "demeaning." 


“It suggests that this woman can’t go anywhere in life without Barack Obama’s government-centered society. It’s kind of demeaning to her,” Ryan said during a constituent meeting in Wisconsin, the National Review reports. “She must have him and his big government to depend on to go anywhere in life. It doesn’t say much about his faith in Julia.”


“Every one of those slides, I could go after their manipulation of statistics, and disentangle and unpack each of those talking points,” said Ryan. “It’s just the narrative that they’re trying to tell, that for this woman to succeed, she has to have a really big government. 


“It really shows the philosophical premise they operate from, which is — I think Romney coined it well — it’s a ‘government-centered society.’ You have to have government at every stage of your life to be there for you; otherwise, you’re going to fail. It’s promoting a cradle-to-grave welfare society,” said Ryan.

Read full article here.

Liz Cheney eyes the political stage

I'm sure NOW will find something to try to derail Liz Cheney's entry into elective politics, but she is a strong willed and intelligent woman who has something to say and contribute. If it is in the cards, I say, run, baby run! 


Excerpt: Liz Cheney has been making the rounds at Wyoming political events this spring and her desire to move back to the state has Republicans from Cheyenne to Washington buzzing about a potential future campaign.


With little fanfare, Cheney, a former State Department official and the eldest daughter of the former vice president, has spoken at six events in different corners of the sprawling state this year. She has been especially busy on the GOP dinner circuit. Cheney has already hit four county Lincoln Day Dinners and keynoted the dinner following the Wyoming GOP convention last month. She also accompanied and appeared on stage with her father when he made his first public appearance following his heart transplant at the state convention. 


Cheney is currently a McLean, Va., resident and there has long been speculation among Republicans that she would eventually run for office there. But Cheney, a mother of five, is seeing her oldest child off to college this year and, along with her husband Philip, has long considered returning to the state that her father represented in the House. They hope to buy a house in Jackson Hole, where her parents also have a residence, but the move is not a sure thing. 


Still, Cheney’s schedule and some of her rhetoric suggests someone who is eyeing an eventual campaign.

Read full POLITICO article here.

Billions in fraudulent tax refunds going to illegal aliens

A Bush League President - And gee, it's not Bush

I would not bet that the 2012 election is simpler than we think, but, when you look at the accomplishments of the Obama administration, with his majorities in the House and Senate during his first two years, what he has done is show that he is an unrepentant ideologue with no love for capitalism or our Constitution.

Excerpt: It's interesting that the Obama campaign isn't using what incumbent presidents always sooner or later use, either straight out or subliminally. And that is "You know me. I've been president for almost four years, you don't know that other guy. In a high-stakes world do you really want someone new?


" You know why they're not using "You know me"? Because we know him, and it's not a plus.


There is a growing air of incompetence around Mr. Obama's White House. It was seen again this week in Supreme Court arguments over the administration's challenge to Arizona's attempted crackdown on illegal immigration. As Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News wrote, the court seemed to be disagreeing with the administration's understanding of federal power: "Solicitor General Donald Verrilli . . . met resistance across ideological lines. . . . Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's only Hispanic and an Obama appointee, told Verrilli his argument is 'not selling very well.'" This follows last month's embarrassing showing over the constitutionality of parts of ObamaCare.


All of this looks so bush league, so scattered. Add it to the General Services Administration, to Solyndra, to the other scandals, and you get a growing sense that no one's in charge, that the administration is paying attention to politics but not day-to-day governance. 


The two most public cabinet members are Eric Holder at Justice and Janet Napolitano at Homeland Security. He is overseeing the administration's Supreme Court cases. She is in charge of being unmoved by the daily stories of Transportation Security Administration incompetence and even cruelty at our airports. Those incidents and stories continue, but if you go to the Homeland Security website, there is no mention of them. It's as if they don't even exist.


***


Maybe the 2012 election is simpler than we think.

Read full WSJ article here.

Why does President Obama take so much credit for killing Bin Laden?

Bill Ayers to university students: America's ’game' is over and 'another world’ is coming

History tends to repeat itself, but only if the young are barred from the truth. I disliked history in school, but am glad to have absorbed what I could and lived through some tough times. Many of our young, who have grown up in an age where communication and learning opportunities are abundant, have developed social skills by communicating, but have sorely neglected the learning that is so necessary to identify those who would dazzle them with words. What Ayers and many others in our universities and schools are teaching, sounds great. Those of us who know the past, recognize that they are just words; words that when put in practice have, not only failed to produce the desired result, but have destroyed freedom, enslaved and ended millions of lives.


It is not too late, but we are in danger of losing generations of our young. 


 Excerpt: The great challenge for our generation [is] to find a way not just to live differently as individuals, but to find a way to think differently about what work means, to think differently about citizenship means, to think differently about what it means to be a ‘citizen of the world.’ One of the great dangers that we live in right now, is I don‘t think there’s any question, and I don’t think any of you would question, that the American Empire is in decline–that economically, and politically, and in some ways culturally, that we are in decline. And yet, the United States remains the most powerful, weaponized military system the Earth has ever known. 


That’s a treacherous combination. A declining economic power, and an expanding military power. And we are going to have to find ways to re-imagine what it means to live in this coun–in this world. And here we are 4% of the world’s population, 4.5% of the world’s population, consuming vast amounts of natural resources, consuming vast amounts of finished goods, and no politician will say that the empire is declining and that the game is over. 


It’s over. Now what? Perhaps we will transform into a Euro-style state, though that was not a peaceful transition for Europeans, Ayers noted.

Read full article here.

Barack Obama as President flexible

Federal court reinstates TX ban on abortion funding

It is a shame that politics is so embedded in the court system. Early on the Constitution, as written, was the guiding force of the judiciary. Now we have judges appointed by liberal/progressives that believe they have the right to "modernize" the sole document that protects our freedom. This trend is threatening our Republic and must be reversed before it is too late. Defeat of Obama and change in control of the Senate will slow the progressive movement, but it will take a concerted effort in future elections to return power to those who will respect and defend The Constitution of the United States of America.


Excerpt:A federal appeals court has blocked an order by a federal judge in Austin, Texas, to resume funding Planned Parenthood.

Texas' legislature voted last year to block use of tax dollars for medical services for poor women for any organization associated with abortion -- meaning Planned Parenthood lost funding. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, a George W. Bush appointee, ordered the state to resume funding Planned Parenthood, saying there is sufficient evidence that the law banning the abortion-provider from the state's Women's Health Program is unconstitutional.


But Joe Poyman of the Texas Alliance for Life tells OneNewsNow the state appealed that order and won.


"The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has just intervened and stayed that judge's order," he informs, "and the policy now will go into effect -- meaning that as of today, May 1, the Medicaid Women's Health Program dollars will not go to Planned Parenthood."


Judge Yaekel's order involved $17 million a year that had been going to the abortion provider for such services as mammograms. Planned Parenthood has no mammogram machines and only refers women to facilities that do.


"But this recent development from the Fifth Circuit is very encouraging and, I think, gives the state more time to present our arguments, which I think are strong and persuasive," states Poyman. "Basically our dollars should not be mixed with Planned Parenthood's advocacy and providing of abortions."


The Fifth Circuit's order remains in effect pending outcome of the case.

Read original post here.

Obama - If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck

Excerpt: Many questions have been raised about President Obama’s religious beliefs and have been vetted in many ways which have only led to confusion. Whether or not his father was a practicing Muslim and did he have any influence on such a young boy? Did his Muslim stepfather, his upbringing and four years of schooling in the Muslim country of Indonesia give him an affinity toward Islam in his later life? Did he join Reverend Wright’s United Church of Christ some 20+ years ago because he is truly a Christian, or because it would open up new avenues for political advancement? 


 Barrack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was an avowed atheist who introduced him to many religions so that he could choose for himself. Did he choose to be a Christian, Buddhist, Atheist or Muslim? Was it just a slip of the tongue when, on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, he referred to “my Muslim faith”? 

Read my full Examiner.com article here.

Sitting Out Obama

If Romney wins the election in November, watch the money come in and the expansion of business to begin.


Excerpt:  The only thing more discouraging to investors than class warfare generally is a certain type of class warfare: a hypocritical crusade that emanates from the upper classes and selectively targets enemies on the basis not of wealth, but of the degree to which they have failed to buy exemptions with their wealth. Meanwhile, on the other end, the message is more weeks of unemployment insurance, vastly more food-stamp recipients, and constant promises of mortgage-debt relief, credit-card-debt relief, and tuition-debt relief. If one were to dream up a perfect way to destroy incentives on both the top and bottom ends, one could do no better than what we have seen since 2009.

The net result is that those with capital, even if they are small businesses, do not believe that the Obama administration likes them. They feel that regulations will increase, that taxes will increase, that energy costs will increase, and that as they pay more to government and keep less, government will nevertheless become even more arrogant and inefficient — and they will become even more demonized. When people pay over 50 percent in payroll, federal, state, and local taxes and are still caricatured as “not paying their fair share,” a sort of collective shrug follows and bodes ill for the economy at large. One need not be liked to make money, but the constant presidential harangues finally take their toll in insidious ways.

Countless times each day, a contractor chooses to hire only a part-time electrician, a CEO hoards cash rather than opens a new plant, a renting family declines to buy a reasonably priced new house, an indebted graduate heads home to kick back and wait until “something turns up,” and an unemployed worker wonders whether it is not wiser to receive all two years of federal benefits before reentering the work force.

I don’t know whether Mitt Romney’s economic package will bring instant prosperity. But I suspect that the fact alone that it is not what we have seen and heard for the last four years will unleash a pent-up energy of the sort we have not seen in a long time. In short, President Obama has achieved the impossible — he has convinced millions of rational, profit-minded Americans eager to invest, buy, and hire that he doesn’t worry much whether they do.

Read full article here.