President Obama- Please Be More Honest With The Public

The mainstream media is treating President Obama like the favored girl at a ball. Everyone wants a dance and they know holding his feet to the fire is not the way to get that dance.

Last night President Obama spoke to the Democrats in the House of Representatives, who are currently at an annual retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia. Here are parts of that speech that need scrutiny.

If we do not move swiftly to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, an economy that is in crisis will be faced with catastrophe. Millions more Americans will lose their jobs. Home will be lost. Families will go without health care. Our crippling dependence on foreign oil will continue. That is the price of inaction.

This isn’t some abstract debate. Last week, we learned that many of America’s largest corporations are planning to layoff tens off tens of thousands of workers. Today, we learned that last week, the number of new unemployment claims jumped to 626,000. And tomorrow, we’re expecting another dismal jobs report on top of the 2.6 million jobs we lost last year.


We can’t embrace the losing formula that offers more tax cuts as the only answer to every problem we face, while ignoring critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, the soaring cost of health care, failing schools and crumbling bridges, roads and levees. I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV – if you’re headed for a cliff, you have to change direction.

This plan will save or create over three million jobs – almost all of them in the private sector.

This plan will put people to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges; our dangerously deficient dams and levees.

This plan will put people to work modernizing our health care system, not only saving us billions of dollars, but countless lives.

This plan will put people to work renovating more than 10,000 schools, giving millions of children the chance to learn in 21st century classrooms, libraries, and labs – and to all the scientists in the room today, you know what that means for America’s future.

Read this analysis from Deej at The Motley Fool of Obama's Stimulus Package.

According to the CBO, 64% of the package will be spent in 2009 and 2010. Well, that's not terrible I guess...but wait, a significant chunk of that is the stupid $500 tax credits that people probably won't even spend.

After the tax credits are backed out, only half (52%) of the money in the plan will be put to work over the next two years, supposedly 15% in 2009 and 37% in 2010.

The CBO said that provisions to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy use would ultimately be spent within seven years. It also estimated that would take five years to spend 85% of the money dedicated to highway and other infrastructure projects

The stimulus package is based off of the same theory as TARP: spend the money, it doesn't matter where and it will work its way into the system. Its a nice theory but a solution in the billions wont fix a problem in the trillions. especially if its released slowly and in a money sucking, not moving fashion.

President Obama misleads us with these comments during his speech.

Finally, this plan will begin to end the tyranny of oil in our time. It doubles our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels in three years. It saves taxpayers billions of dollars by making federal buildings more energy efficient, and it saves the average working family hundreds on their energy bills. After decades of empty rhetoric, that is the down payment that we need on energy independence.

The American Wind Energy Association comes to a different conclusion.

In May, the U.S. Department of Energy reported that wind could provide 20% of U.S. electricity by 2030, supporting 500,000 jobs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as taking 140 million vehicles off the road, and saving 4 trillion gallons of water (a 40-year supply for the city of Phoenix).

That is 2030, not 2012.

"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will ensure that 10% of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012 and 25% by 2025." -- Obama-Biden New Energy for America Plan

The U.S. Department of Energy states 2030 while President Obama states 2025. President Obama claims he will double our capacity by 2012. By his own figures it will only add 5% to the energy equation. While it is a step in the right direction it is not the panacea he would like all of us to swallow.

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