Obama Top 50 accomplishments

[Riot]

I'm quite happy I voted for Obama over McCain in 2008, and I'll be very glad to vote for this quite accomplished President again over Romney. A slightly left-leaning centrist technocrat, the vision of him as a "dangerous marxist communist socialist" is ridiculous. He's a great candidate for an Eisenhower Republican.

RWNJ description of "Worse president ever" and "historically worse" is such a bunch of lying crap.

You can dislike the policies of this administration, in favor of different policies, but this president was elected by a historical majority of 53% for a Democratic president, and he's lived up to his promises.

To say this president is unaccomplished or a failure is readily disproven. In fact, this presidency has many aspects that will be quite significant in a historical context, the most significant being health care reform.

And consider that this was accomplished in the face of virtually complete historical obstruction and filibuster by the opposition party:

This list is from March-April 2012, so the financial accomplishments with the recovery have continued (more jobs)

1. Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of America’s long-term fiscal problems.

2. Passed the Stimulus: Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.

3. Passed Wall Street Reform: Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide “living wills” to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers’ money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.

4. Ended the War in Iraq: Ordered all U.S. military forces out of the country. Last troops left on December 18, 2011.

5. Began Drawdown of War in Afghanistan: From a peak of 101,000 troops in June 2011, U.S. forces are now down to 91,000, with 23,000 slated to leave by the end of summer 2012. According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the combat mission there will be over by next year.

6. Eliminated Osama bin laden: In 2011, ordered special forces raid of secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the terrorist leader was killed and a trove of al-Qaeda documents was discovered.

7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades. The government expects to lose $16 billion of its investment, less if the price of the GM stock it still owns increases.

8. Recapitalized Banks: In the midst of financial crisis, approved controversial Treasury Department plan to lure private capital into the country’s largest banks via “stress tests” of their balance sheets and a public-private fund to buy their “toxic” assets. Got banks back on their feet at essentially zero cost to the government.

9. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: Ended 1990s-era restriction and formalized new policy allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military for the first time.

10. Toppled Moammar Gaddafi: In March 2011, joined a coalition of European and Arab governments in military action, including air power and naval blockade, against Gaddafi regime to defend Libyan civilians and support rebel troops. Gaddafi’s forty-two-year rule ended when the dictator was overthrown and killed by rebels on October 20, 2011. No American lives were lost.

11. Told Mubarak to Go: On February 1, 2011, publicly called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to accept reform or step down, thus weakening the dictator’s position and putting America on the right side of the Arab Spring. Mubarak ended thirty-year rule when overthrown on February 11.

12. Reversed Bush Torture Policies: Two days after taking office, nullified Bush-era rulings that had allowed detainees in U.S. custody to undergo certain “enhanced” interrogation techniques considered inhumane under the Geneva Conventions. Also released the secret Bush legal rulings supporting the use of these techniques.

13. Improved America’s Image Abroad: With new policies, diplomacy, and rhetoric, reversed a sharp decline in world opinion toward the U.S. (and the corresponding loss of “soft power”) during the Bush years. From 2008 to 2011, favorable opinion toward the United States rose in ten of fifteen countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, with an average increase of 26 percent.

14. Kicked Banks Out of Federal Student Loan Program, Expanded Pell Grant Spending: As part of the 2010 health care reform bill, signed measure ending the wasteful decades-old practice of subsidizing banks to provide college loans. Starting July 2010 all students began getting their federal student loans directly from the federal government. Treasury will save $67 billion over ten years, $36 billion of which will go to expanding Pell Grants to lower-income students.

15. Created Race to the Top: With funds from stimulus, started $4.35 billion program of competitive grants to encourage and reward states for education reform.

16. Boosted Fuel Efficiency Standards: Released new fuel efficiency standards in 2011 that will nearly double the fuel economy for cars and trucks by 2025.

17. Coordinated International Response to Financial Crisis: To keep world economy out of recession in 2009 and 2010, helped secure from G-20 nations more than $500 billion for the IMF to provide lines of credit and other support to emerging market countries, which kept them liquid and avoided crises with their currencies.

18. Passed Mini Stimuli: To help families hurt by the recession and spur the economy as stimulus spending declined, signed series of measures (July 22, 2010; December 17, 2010; December 23, 2011) to extend unemployment insurance and cut payroll taxes.

19. Began Asia “Pivot”: In 2011, reoriented American military and diplomatic priorities and focus from the Middle East and Europe to the Asian-Pacific region. Executed multipronged strategy of positively engaging China while reasserting U.S. leadership in the region by increasing American military presence and crafting new commercial, diplomatic, and military alliances with neighboring countries made uncomfortable by recent Chinese behavior.

20. Increased Support for Veterans: With so many soldiers coming home from Iraq and Iran with serious physical and mental health problems, yet facing long waits for services, increased 2010 Department of Veterans Affairs budget by 16 percent and 2011 budget by 10 percent. Also signed new GI bill offering $78 billion in tuition assistance over a decade, and provided multiple tax credits to encourage businesses to hire veterans.

21. Tightened Sanctions on Iran: In effort to deter Iran’s nuclear program, signed Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (2010) to punish firms and individuals who aid Iran’s petroleum sector. In late 2011 and early 2012, coordinated with other major Western powers to impose sanctions aimed at Iran’s banks and with Japan, South Korea, and China to shift their oil purchases away from Iran.

22. Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants: New EPA restrictions on mercury and toxic pollution, issued in December 2011, likely to lead to the closing of between sixty-eight and 231 of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. Estimated cost to utilities: at least $11 billion by 2016. Estimated health benefits: $59 billion to $140 billion. Will also significantly reduce carbon emissions and, with other regulations, comprises what’s been called Obama’s “stealth climate policy.”

23. Passed Credit Card Reforms: Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (2009), which prohibits credit card companies from raising rates without advance notification, mandates a grace period on interest rate increases, and strictly limits overdraft and other fees.

24. Eliminated Catch-22 in Pay Equality Laws: Signed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, giving women who are paid less than men for the same work the right to sue their employers after they find out about the discrimination, even if that discrimination happened years ago. Under previous law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the statute of limitations on such suits ran out 180 days after the alleged discrimination occurred, even if the victims never knew about it.

25. Protected Two Liberal Seats on the U.S. Supreme Court: Nominated and obtained confirmation for Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and third woman to serve, in 2009; and Elena Kagan, the fourth woman to serve, in 2010. They replaced David Souter and John Paul Stevens, respectively.

26. Improved Food Safety System: In 2011, signed FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which boosts the Food and Drug Administration’s budget by $1.4 billion and expands its regulatory responsibilities to include increasing number of food inspections, issuing direct food recalls, and reviewing the current food safety practices of countries importing products into America.

27. Achieved New START Treaty: Signed with Russia (2010) and won ratification in Congress (2011) of treaty that limits each country to 1,550 strategic warheads (down from 2,200) and 700 launchers (down from more than 1,400), and reestablished and strengthened a monitoring and transparency program that had lapsed in 2009, through which each country can monitor the other.

28. Expanded National Service: Signed Serve America Act in 2009, which authorized a tripling of the size of AmeriCorps. Program grew 13 percent to 85,000 members across the country by 2012, when new House GOP majority refused to appropriate more funds for further expansion.

29. Expanded Wilderness and Watershed Protection: Signed Omnibus Public Lands Management Act (2009), which designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, created thousands of miles of recreational and historic trails, and protected more than 1,000 miles of rivers.

30. Gave the FDA Power to Regulate Tobacco: Signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (2009). Nine years in the making and long resisted by the tobacco industry, the law mandates that tobacco manufacturers disclose all ingredients, obtain FDA approval for new tobacco products, and expand the size and prominence of cigarette warning labels, and bans the sale of misleadingly labeled “light” cigarette brands and tobacco sponsorship of entertainment events.

31. Pushed Federal Agencies to Be Green Leaders: Issued executive order in 2009 requiring all federal agencies to make plans to soften their environmental impacts by 2020. Goals include 30 percent reduction in fleet gasoline use, 26 percent boost in water efficiency, and sustainability requirements for 95 percent of all federal contracts. Because federal government is the country’s single biggest purchaser of goods and services, likely to have ripple effects throughout the economy for years to come.

32. Passed Fair Sentencing Act: Signed 2010 legislation that reduces sentencing disparity between crack versus powder cocaine possessionfrom100 to1 to 18 to1.

33. Trimmed and Reoriented Missile Defense: Cut the Reagan-era “Star Wars” missile defense budget, saving $1.4 billion in 2010, and canceled plans to station antiballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of sea-based defense plan focused on Iran and North Korea.

34. Began Post-Post-9/11 Military Builddown: After winning agreement from congressional Republicans and Democrats in summer 2011 budget deal to reduce projected defense spending by $450 billion, proposed new DoD budget this year with cuts of that size and a new national defense strategy that would shrink ground forces from 570,000 to 490,000 over the next ten years while increasing programs in intelligence gathering and cyberwarfare.

35. Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission: Allowed the expensive ($1 billion per launch), badly designed, dangerous shuttle program to make its final launch on July 8, 2011. Cut off funding for even more bloated and problem-plagued Bush-era Constellation program to build moon base in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Mars’s potential to support life.

36. Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.

37. Crafting Next-Generation School Tests: Devoted $330 million in stimulus money to pay two consortia of states and universities to create competing versions of new K-12 student performance tests based on latest psychometric research. New tests could transform the learning environment in vast majority of public school classrooms beginning in 2014.

38. Cracked Down on Bad For-Profit Colleges: In effort to fight predatory practices of some for-profit colleges, Department of Education issued “gainful employment” regulations in 2011 cutting off commercially focused schools from federal student aid funding if more than 35 percent of former students aren’t paying off their loans and/or if the average former student spends more than 12 percent of his or her total earnings servicing student loans.

39. Improved School Nutrition: In coordination with Michelle Obama, signed Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 mandating $4.5 billion spending boost and higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. New rules based on the law, released in January, double the amount of fruits and vegetables and require only whole grains in food served to students.

40. Expanded Hate Crimes Protections: Signed Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009), which expands existing hate crime protections to include crimes based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender, or disability, in addition to race, color, religion, or national origin.

41. Avoided Scandal: As of November 2011, served longer than any president in decades without a scandal, as measured by the appearance of the word “scandal” (or lack thereof) on the front page of the Washington Post.

42. Brokered Agreement for Speedy Compensation to Victims of Gulf Oil Spill: Though lacking statutory power to compel British Petroleum to act, used moral authority of his office to convince oil company to agree in 2010 to a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; $6.5 billion already paid out without lawsuits. By comparison, it took nearly two decades for plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spill case to receive $1.3 billion.

43. Created Recovery.gov: Web site run by independent board of inspectors general looking for fraud and abuse in stimulus spending, provides public with detailed information on every contract funded by $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Thanks partly to this transparency, board has uncovered very little fraud, and Web site has become national model: “The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory,” reports Governing magazine.

44. Pushed Broadband Coverage: Proposed and obtained in 2011 Federal Communications Commission approval for a shift of $8 billion in subsidies away from landlines and toward broadband Internet for lower-income rural families.

45. Expanded Health Coverage for Children: Signed 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act, which allows the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover health care for 4 million more children, paid for by a tax increase on tobacco products.

46. Recognized the Dangers of Carbon Dioxide: In 2009, EPA declared carbon dioxide a pollutant, allowing the agency to regulate its production.

47. Expanded Stem Cell Research: In 2009, eliminated the Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, which shows promise in treating spinal injuries, among many other areas.

48. Provided Payment to Wronged Minority Farmers: In 2009, signed Claims Resolution Act, which provided $4.6 billion in funding for a legal settlement with black and Native American farmers who the government cheated out of loans and natural resource royalties in years past.

49. Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Appointed two envoys to Sudan and personally attended a special UN meeting on the area. Through U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, helped negotiate a peaceful split in 2011.

50. Killed the F-22: In 2009, ended further purchases of Lockheed Martin single-seat, twin-engine, fighter aircraft, which cost $358 million apiece. Though the military had 187 built, the plane has never flown a single combat mission. Eliminating it saved $4 billion.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/mag...755.php?page=3

[Rudeboyelvis]

Originally Posted by Riot

My daily dose of left wing propaganda full of half-truths and out right lies

Reality:

http://www.informationclearinghouse....xqBrCo.twitter

[bigrun]

And then there is this, an email sent to me from an impeccable source, my wingnut repuke bud...he knows the truth when he sees it...



Quit trashing President Obama's accomplishments. He has done more than any other President before him. He has an impressive list of accomplishments:

First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States
First President to violate the War Powers Act. .
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico .
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on 'shovel-ready' jobs when there was no such thing as 'shovel-ready' jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S. , including those with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign.
First President to terminate America 's ability to put a man in space.
First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.
First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.
First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 102 to date.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize while doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to go on multiple global “apology tours” and concurrent “insult our friends” tours.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense. this one ticks me off
First President to repeat the Holy Quran & tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.
First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they “volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences”. now i'm pissed!
Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion.OMG
First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs Arizona).

[my miss storm cat]

You do realize that any of us can write a list of 50 things like this and find some site that will accept it, right (?), or do you really think this is fact?

A couple of things... first off I'm curious if #6 would have happened without #12. I don't think so. Do you? Don't you?

Second, regarding number 13 I believe this is your / their source...

http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/13/...icies-faulted/

... which does't quite support it.

# 32... well thank God that is taken care of cause you know the big issue of crack as opposed to coke is something that has bothered the general populaton since I don't even know how long ago.

#33... You kinda left out the part where, in doing so, we gave the finger to our loyal friends in Poland (and the Czech Republic).

#35... don't even get me started.

#37... you don't have kids, do you? Do you know how much of the school year the LAUSD wastes drilling kids for these tests, practically giving them the answers? (They DO give the answers for "practice"). I mean it is criminal what these kids don't know cause so much time is spent "preparing". Truly, it is shocking. I realize it doesn't mean it's this way in other places.

I didn't actually read #39 as the beginning, the "In coordination with Michelle Obama" part made me have to stop and fix my mascara cause I was laughing so hard my eyes started to tear.

#41. Huh? You know you're in trouble when you start using things like avoiding scandal to try to make someone doing a very poor job look good. That's like saying he didn't get arrested for crack.

Or coke.

Now that we know the difference in terms of sentencing anyway.

#50. Didn't Lockheed Martin have to cut over 25,000 jobs cause of this?

So ummm yeah these were just a few I wanted to ask about or comment on.

I will leave the epic fail aka stimulus stuff to others who are better qualified.

Very surprising not to see anything on AIDS.I mean the last administration did a lot and the current one is dropping the ball but ummm yeah thought one of these would have been some lie about it.

Actually I shouldn't be too surprised. AIDS doesn't seem too impoirtant to him. After all we have school lunches to worry about.

[Dahoss]

Originally Posted by my miss storm cat

Very surprising not to see anything on AIDS.I mean the last administration did a lot and the current one is dropping the ball but ummm yeah thought one of these would have been some lie about it.

Actually I shouldn't be too surprised. AIDS doesn't seem too impoirtant to him. After all we have school lunches to worry about.

I'm not aware of what the previous administration did compared to this one in terms of AIDS. What are the differences?

[my miss storm cat]

Originally Posted by Dahoss

I'm not aware of what the previous administration did compared to this one in terms of AIDS. What are the differences?

Seriously?

Go ask Mr. Google about PEPFAR and then compare with the current administration.

[Dahoss]

Originally Posted by my miss storm cat

Seriously?

Go ask Mr. Google about PEPFAR and then compare with the current administration.

Yes, seriously. Keeping up on all things AIDS related isn't something I do, so I was asking sincerely.

I guess I'll go ask Mr. Google and remember to answer people that way when they ask me a question.

[Riot]

Yes, anybody can post lists of 50 things to any website. The thing is whether they are true or not.

It's pretty easy to verify 100% of what a President of the United States and a Congress does. There is this amazing unrelenting 24-hour documentation process when we pass laws and executive orders and stuff.

[Riot]

And then there is this, an email sent to me from an impeccable source, my wingnut repuke bud...he knows the truth when he sees it...

Well rest assured that more than half that stuff - especially a lot of that "First President to" stuff is RWNJ crap proven false long ago ... check Politifact

Hell, I even remember all the dog trainers on previous retainer for various White Houses!'

It's amazing how some folks don't think there exists any way to actually fact check things.
Ah, the gullible ... a constant source of hilarity. I love how opinion and approval or disapproval is constantly conflated with "truth".

Things like that oft-repeated canard, "the stimulus was an epic fail". Nope. 99.9% of economists around the world say, not at all, it worked. Yes, suck on that, Obama-haters. You may not "believe" in stimulus. But the stimulus worked, and that's a measurable and proven economic fact, verified by virtually every single independent economist.

[my miss storm cat]

Originally Posted by Dahoss

Yes, seriously. Keeping up on all things AIDS related isn't something I do, so I was asking sincerely.

I guess I'll go ask Mr. Google and remember to answer people that way when they ask me a question.

Yeah sorry about that. Something came up and I had to leave so figured I shouldn't start posting links as I wouldn't be around once they were disputed.

[Rudeboyelvis]

Originally Posted by Riot

Things like that oft-repeated canard, "the stimulus was an epic fail". Nope. 99.9% of economists around the world say, not at all, it worked. Yes, suck on that, Obama-haters. You may not "believe" in stimulus. But the stimulus worked, and that's a measurable and proven economic fact, verified by virtually every single independent economist.

Wow. This unsubstantiated lie just won me over. How could I have been so blind??

[Rudeboyelvis]

Amazing how much bullsti.t she pulls out of her asz, and parades it as fact.

Now it's 4.6 million jobs? Gee, Obama only took credit for 4.5 million, and that was laughed away when proven by fact that when the dust settled, it was only 300K. Oh, that cost almost a trillion dollars.

Where did this latest flood of jobs come from? I'm guessing you had some accounting help by the 99.9% of economists that also supposedly believe the cool trillion was worth it. SMH.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Rudeboyelvis

Amazing how much bullsti.t she pulls out of her asz, and parades it as fact.

Now it's 4.6 million jobs? Gee, Obama only took credit for 4.5 million, and that was laughed away when proven by fact that when the dust settled, it was only 300K. Oh, that cost almost a trillion dollars.

Where did this latest flood of jobs come from? I'm guessing you had some accounting help by the 99.9% of economists that also supposedly believe the cool trillion was worth it. SMH.

you have to count 'saved' jobs too.

on the bolded, what?!

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/...timulus-worked

"But in a survey by the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, 80 percent of the 40 or so economists surveyed agreed with the Congressional Budget Office, known as the CBO, that the unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus law. The survey asked a second question about whether—accounting for future costs arising from financing the stimulus with debt—its benefits would end up exceeding its costs. Here, 46 percent thought that they would and another 27 percent were uncertain, leaving only a small percentage that did not."

.........so, less than half think it will turn out to have been beneficial long-term.

yeah, i haven't seen 99.9% anywhere. obviously a made up figure. that can't be!


and i found this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...bibJ_blog.html

"If you ask the Obama administration, economists are virtually united in thinking the 2009 stimulus package worked. “I’m absolutely convinced, and the vast majority of economists are convinced, that the steps we took in the Recovery Act saved millions of people their jobs or created a whole bunch of jobs,” Obama declared at a press conference last month. Or, to quote NEC chair Gene Sperling from an interview a few weeks ago, “There is no question that the evidence is showing that the type of things the president did to help state and local governments really mattered, were really helpful in pulling us from the brink of depression to a recovery.”

But the stimulus’ critics allege that this evidence isn’t reliable. The studies the administration is relying on depend on models that “substitute assumptions for identification,” Harvard economist Robert Barro writes today in the Wall Street Journal. “To figure out the economic effects of transfers one needs ‘experiments,’” Barro writes, “in which the government changes transfer in an unusual way—while other factors stay the same—but these events are rare.”

The truth is, both studies of the type Barro prefers, and studies using models, which he criticizes, have been conducted to determine the effect of the stimulus on employment and output. Of the nine studies I’ve found, six find that the stimulus had a significant, positive effect on employment and growth, and three find that the effect was either quite small or impossible to detect."


not exactly 99.9%....

[geeker2]

Originally Posted by Rudeboyelvis

Wow. This unsubstantiated lie just won me over. How could I have been so blind??

I like this part too...

" verified by virtually every single independent economist"

Oh my !

[Rudeboyelvis]

Originally Posted by Danzig

you have to count 'saved' jobs too.

on the bolded, what?!

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/...timulus-worked

"But in a survey by the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, 80 percent of the 40 or so economists surveyed agreed with the Congressional Budget Office, known as the CBO, that the unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus law. The survey asked a second question about whether—accounting for future costs arising from financing the stimulus with debt—its benefits would end up exceeding its costs. Here, 46 percent thought that they would and another 27 percent were uncertain, leaving only a small percentage that did not."

.........so, less than half think it will turn out to have been beneficial long-term.

yeah, i haven't seen 99.9% anywhere. obviously a made up figure. that can't be!


and i found this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...bibJ_blog.html

"If you ask the Obama administration, economists are virtually united in thinking the 2009 stimulus package worked. “I’m absolutely convinced, and the vast majority of economists are convinced, that the steps we took in the Recovery Act saved millions of people their jobs or created a whole bunch of jobs,” Obama declared at a press conference last month. Or, to quote NEC chair Gene Sperling from an interview a few weeks ago, “There is no question that the evidence is showing that the type of things the president did to help state and local governments really mattered, were really helpful in pulling us from the brink of depression to a recovery.”

But the stimulus’ critics allege that this evidence isn’t reliable. The studies the administration is relying on depend on models that “substitute assumptions for identification,” Harvard economist Robert Barro writes today in the Wall Street Journal. “To figure out the economic effects of transfers one needs ‘experiments,’” Barro writes, “in which the government changes transfer in an unusual way—while other factors stay the same—but these events are rare.”

The truth is, both studies of the type Barro prefers, and studies using models, which he criticizes, have been conducted to determine the effect of the stimulus on employment and output. Of the nine studies I’ve found, six find that the stimulus had a significant, positive effect on employment and growth, and three find that the effect was either quite small or impossible to detect."


not exactly 99.9%....

Exactly, Ziggy... The entire farce is a joke. Everything from Romney's plan to "save the country", to how "wonderful everything is due to Obama mortgaging us into fiscal collapse" is based on assumptions that neither side would believe with a straight face.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Rudeboyelvis

Wow. This unsubstantiated lie just won me over. How could I have been so blind??

Assessments from major economists on the stimulus have been posted here in Derby Trail before, several times, in threads you have commented upon.

Sorry, I assume you read and remember the threads you have posted in?

But go ahead and post economists talking about how the stimulus has failed - please. I'll be happy to post - again, for the third time - the ones that verify it was a success.

[my miss storm cat]

Originally Posted by my miss storm cat

A couple of things... first off I'm curious if #6 would have happened without #12. I don't think so. Do you? Don't you?

Again, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on this...

[Riot]

Originally Posted by my miss storm cat

Again, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on this...

I've not heard of any information regarding the location of bin Laden that was obtained via torture by the Bush administration - I've only heard the answer was zero. You?

I'm in favor of following the Geneva Convention, and international agreements we have signed, regarding torture. Sorry to see you think torture is okay.

[OldDog]

Originally Posted by geeker2

I like this part too...

" verified by virtually every single independent economist"

Oh my !

"Literally!"
http://economistsforromney.com/

[Riot]

Originally Posted by OldDog

"Literally!"
http://economistsforromney.com/

I started another thread on the stimulus. You're free to please join that discussion, and quote economists stating how the stimulus didn't work.