Hat tip:TheNRSC

“Middle Class” Claire McCaskill had to sell her private jet for $1.9 million.

Related:

National journal: McCaskill’s Obama Approach

Comments

comments

AP: “To the dismay of consumer groups and the discomfort of Democrats, President Barack Obama wants Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to call the cellphones of consumers delinquent on student loans.”

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that, “President Barack Obama will announce a plan that would allow Americans to consolidate and reduce interest rates on their student loans, the latest in a string of narrowly tailored moves designed to jolt the economy. . . . The switch would help borrowers because the U.S. would essentially be refinancing the private loan at the lower government rate. . . . Wednesday will be the third day in a row Mr. Obama has announced an executive action aimed at bypassing Congress, including a housing refinancing plan and a proposal to train and hire veterans.” But CNBC greets the announcement with a skeptical headline, “White House Student Loan Measures Will Barely Dent Soaring Costs.”

It’s instructive, though, to recall what happened the last time Democrats intervened in the student loan industry. In 2010, Democrats attached a government takeover of student loans to their unpopular health care reform bill, (partly so they could use the reconciliation procedure in the Senate, which requires only a majority vote to pass something, instead of 60 votes) and President Obama signed it into law. Back in March of this year, The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote, “A year after President Obama signed a law eliminating bank-based student lending, the lenders and guarantors that formed the backbone of the old system have laid off thousands of workers, eliminated programs, and sought out new roles in the student-loan industry.” Barely a month after the health care spending bill was signed, the AP reported that 2,500 Sallie Mae employees across the country had lost their jobs. And thanks to the student loan takeover, layoffs were reported in Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Tennessee.

Amazingly even some Democrat senators warned of these potential consequences just weeks before the bill passed. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Sens. Jim Webb (D-VA), Mark Warner (D-VA), Tom Carper (D-DE), Ben Nelson (D-NE), and Bill Nelson (D-FL) wrote, “We write to make you aware of our concern with provisions of contemplated student lending reform that could put jobs at risk.”

Yet Democrats passed the bill anyway, with the predictable result described by The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The shift meant that the companies were significantly scaling back their student-lending programs, offering smaller loans to far fewer students. Sallie Mae, the largest lender under the FFEL program, is laying off 2,500 employees this year, a reduction of 30 percent of its work force. . . . At least two major national banks, Key Bank and Citibank, have stopped lending money for education altogether, with Key Bank’s education division remaining in place only to service existing loans. Citibank sold its portfolio to Discover Bank last year.”

Related:

Rasmussen Reports: 66% Oppose Forgiveness of Student Loans

Comments

comments

At a campaign event at the Bellagio in Las Vegas last night, President Obama attacked Republicans, blaming them for the failure of his state bailout bill, a piece of his $447 billion stimulus that the Senate voted down last week.

The president complained, “The question is, why, despite all the support — despite all the experts who say this jobs bill couldn’t come at a more important time, when so many people are hurting — why the Republicans in Washington have said no? They keep voting against it.”  Of course, the opposition to the president’s bill last week was bipartisan. And several Democrats went out to their way to make their opposition to the bill known. Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) said, [W]hen you look at the president’s jobs act, even if you break it down to bite-sized pieces, it’s spending money we don’t have, and you got to raise taxes to pay for it . . . .” Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) said, “If I didn’t think much of it on the one thing, you’ve got to assume that I won’t think much of it for something else … I don’t think you increase taxes for new spending.” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) lamented, “We have to be responsible, and basically if spending money would fix our problems in America, we’d have no problems.” And Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) said, “It’s a little philosophical in the sense that I’m not sure federal taxpayers should be paying for teachers and first responders. That’s traditionally a state and local matter . . . .”

At his campaign event, President Obama claimed, “we could have saved 400,000 jobs” by passing his bailout bill. But the nearly $1 trillion stimulus in 2009 and another $26 billion bill in 2010 were also supposed to “save” hundreds of thousands of jobs for the same group of people. The president claimed the stimulus would “help prevent our states and local communities from laying off firefighters, and teachers, and police.” Less than 4 months after Democrats passed his massive stimulus bill, Obama was claiming, “We’ve created and saved, as you said, Joe, at least 150,000 Jobs – jobs of teachers and nurses and firefighters and police officers. People who had been laid off are not being laid off . . . .” And yet the following year, the president and Democrats pushed through a multi-billion bill they claimed would save 300,000 jobs. Then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said it was “a very important proposal, particularly to ensure that 160,000-plus teachers didn’t get fired as a result of bad state budgets.” And Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) claimed, “There is no doubt about it, if we fail to pass this bill, hundreds of thousands of teachers and firefighters will lose their jobs.” Both bills passed, but now the president is saying another 400,000 jobs are at risk despite that? If the last two didn’t work, why would doing the same thing again change the outcome?

The president also claimed his bill was about “saving the jobs of teachers and cops and firefighters,” but Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) worried last week, “I’m all for individual states making smart choices with their own money, but giving them federal money and just hoping they’ll use it for education and teachers – well, that’s not good enough.” And in fact, news reports show the last couple of Democrat spending bills that were supposed to save education jobs resulted in school districts buying iPads, laptops, tickets for movies and water parks, and even had funds diverted to prisons.

Related:

Rasmussen Reports:Generic Congressional Ballot: Republicans 44%, Democrats 36%

Comments

comments

Lambert airport officials have no indication that the two events are connected or that any more flights will be cut, said airport spokesman Jeff Lea. “It appears there is just a downturn in China cargo across the board…

To date, two cargo jets have landed at Lambert. The first flight was greeted on Sept. 23 by dignitaries from throughout the St. Louis region, with visions of flights to follow. The second cargo flight landed at Lambert on Tuesday. Both were filled to capacity when they arrived. But the first flight back to Shanghai was 60 percent full and the second was 40 percent full, officials said. Read more…

Comments

comments

RedState.org founder and CNN contributor Erick Erickson is a little upset with eighth district Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson. Without saying it directly, Mr. Erickson accuses the congresswoman of being a RINO (Republican in name only) and urges that she should be ‘primaried’ next year:

She is an appropriator, and a “cardinal” who chairs a subcommittee. She opposed comprehensive reforms to improve a budget process geared to spend. She opposed the line-item veto. She opposed a cap on entitlement spending even though appropriators are notorious for arguing that discretionary spending isn’t the problem, just exploding entitlements. She supported none of the Hefley 1% cuts. She has never supported a budget offered by the conservative Republican Study Committee.

No boys and girls. She is not Carolyn Maloney from NYC, Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco or Jan Schakowsky from Illinois. She represents a +15 GOP district that voted for George Bush and John McCain for president by 63% and 62% respectively. She is now the chairman of the remaining Republican liberals in the House, the Tuesday Group. She is Jo Ann Emerson, and she represents Missouri’s 8th district. She needs to be primaried.

The Georgia blogger obviously knows nothing about Missouri politics or the district Emerson represents. Ronald Reagan had a saying that my 80% friend is not my 20% enemy. This excerpt from Wikipedia shows why the moderate congresswoman has been re-elected eight times:

Missouri’s 8th is a relatively diverse congressional district. Although it is fairly conservative and Republican-leaning at the federal level, Democrats often perform well here in local and state elections. Bill Clinton, a Democrat from neighboring Arkansas, managed to carry the 8th District both times in 1992 and 1996 by strong margins, but since then, the district solidly supported Republicans George W. Bush and John McCain in the past three presidential elections. The district did, however, back former Attorney General and now Governor Jay Nixon (D) over Republican Kenny Hulshof in Missouri’s gubernatorial election in 2008.

At the local level, Democrats control a majority of elected offices in Southeast Missouri. Republicans control more local offices in the more extreme-western portions of the district namely in Southwest Missouri. In presidential elections, Democratic candidates often run best in the Bootheel, which is the most impoverished region in the district (and the state, for that matter).

Comments

comments

Politico writes today, “President Barack Obama’s jobs agenda hit another roadblock in the Senate on Thursday night . . . . In their first attempt to advance individual pieces of the president’s sprawling American Jobs Act, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to move forward a $35 billion package for states and localities to hire and prevent the layoffs of teachers and first responders. A united GOP Conference, along with three members of the Senate Democratic Caucus — Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — voted 50-50 to block a debate on the package, which would have been funded by a 0.5 percent surtax on those earning more than $1 million. ‘It seems all we care about is scoring political points to be used in the next election,’ said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). ‘Shame on us if the blame game is the best thing that we can do.’

And though only 3 Senate Democrats voted against taking up this stimulus bill that the president and vice president spent all week promoting, a number of Democrats declared their opposition to the bill itself. Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said, “We’ve already had two rounds of stimulus funding. This is our third… We only created 33 new jobs the first round [of stimulus] with over $217 million… We have to be responsible, and basically if spending money would fix our problems in America, we’d have no problems.” Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) said, “I’m all for individual states making smart choices with their own money, but giving them federal money and just hoping they’ll use it for education and teachers — well, that’s not good enough.” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) also announced his opposition to the bill and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) “said she was not convinced that the overall bill was ‘the right way forward.’” As Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) told Fox News, “[W]hen you look at the president’s jobs act, even if you break it down to bite-sized pieces, it’s spending money we don’t have, and you got to raise taxes to pay for it, and to me, all that just makes the job of the debt reduction committee, the committee itself, even harder.” He added, “Our economy needs a jolt. Paying for more state jobs is not going to be that jolt.”

Meanwhile, Republicans tried to move forward with one of the few bipartisan proposals that could actually help job creators from President Obama’s stimulus bill. In a floor speech last night, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained, “[W]hat we’ve done is we’ve combed through the President’s latest stimulus bill looking for things we can actually support, for things that don’t punish the very people we’re counting on to create jobs. In other words, since the President never asked if there was anything in this legislation we could support, we’ve done it ourselves. And it turns out there’s a very sensible provision in there that would help businesses across the country. In fact, it’s identical to a bill Senator [Scott] Brown introduced with 30 co-sponsors earlier this year, many of them Democrats: Senator Begich, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Pryor, Senator Tester, Senator Franken and Senator McCaskill—they’re all co-sponsors of Senator Brown’s bill.”

“What this bill does,” Leader McConnell said, “is it repeals an existing requirement that government agencies at the state, local, and federal level withhold three percent of every payment to any contractor they do business with. This is money contractors may very well end up getting back from the IRS at some point long after the job is done, but in the meantime, the government gets to hold on to it instead of allowing the businesses to invest it in jobs and the economy. This is money these companies could be putting toward hiring workers and growing their businesses, but it’s going to the IRS instead, basically as a zero-interest loan to the federal government in Washington.”

And yet Senate Democrats filibustered the bill, even though White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said of the provisions in President Obama’s stimulus, “they’re all important, they’re all of equal value.” The AP noted, “The legislation failed to get the 60 votes needed to end a Democratic filibuster late Thursday. Many Democrats and President Barack Obama support the idea but opposed it Thursday because it would be paid for with $30 billion in cuts from domestic agency spending. The White House promised a veto.”

In sum, last night, Senate Democrat leaders filibustered one of the few provisions in President Obama’s proposal that has bipartisan support and would have removed a burdensome government requirement, and couldn’t get the votes for a partisan stimulus bill they were championing that spent even more federal money on local government workers. As Leader McConnell said yesterday, “[I]t’s become increasingly clear to many Americans that Democrats in Washington have lost all sense of balance when it comes to the size and the scope of the federal government in Washington.”

Comments

comments

Criticisms of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for his disconnect from reality have been mounting after he declared on the Senate floor yesterday, “It’s very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine, it’s the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about.”

Asked if he disagreed with Reid’s comments by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough this morning, former Obama administration economic advisor Austan Goolsbee said, “I guess I would disagree a little.”

Examining Reid’s comments in an editorial, The Wall Street Journal writes, “[I]t’s hard to see what Mr. Reid could possibly mean when he says it is ‘doing just fine.’ Private nonfarm employers added only 137,000 new jobs in September and 352,000 in the last three months. That’s why the overall jobless rate remains an unprecedented 9.1% two years into an ostensible economic recovery. Going back to 2008, the Labor Department reported 111.822 million employed private workers at the end of 2008. The number plunged during the recession, and as of September of this year overall private employment had climbed back to 109.349 million. But that’s still some 2.5 million fewer jobs than in 2008. If this is doing fine, we’d hate to see Mr. Reid’s definition of lousy. What these numbers show is that, contrary to Mr. Reid, the real U.S. jobs problem continues to be in the private economy. If private employers were hiring at the pace they normally do in an economic recovery, we might be doing fine.”

In a floor speech this morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell added, “For Democrats, the solution [to the jobs crisis], apparently, is to increase the number of people who work for the government. My good friend the Majority Leader made this pretty clear yesterday when he said the private sector ‘is doing just fine,’ and that the President’s latest stimulus is focused on government jobs instead. . . . [I]t’s become increasingly clear to many Americans that Democrats in Washington have lost all sense of balance when it comes to the size and the scope of the federal government in Washington.”

Indeed, as the WSJ editors point out, “Mr. Reid was trying to defend a new Democratic proposal to spend another $35 billion that the government doesn’t have to help states hire teachers and other public workers. He seems to be under the impression that private job creation is doing well, and that happy days would be here again if we could only gin up more government jobs. . . . Mr. Reid knows his proposal can’t pass the House, and perhaps not even the Senate, so his real agenda is to stage a vote that Republicans will oppose so President Obama can claim on the stump that Democrats are doing something to help create jobs and that Republicans stopped them. Instead, Mr. Reid’s comments yesterday reveal that he and his fellow Democrats inhabit an economic universe in which government is the main engine of job creation. That’s how you get a jobs crisis.”

Leader McConnell summed up the problem with Democrats’ view of the economy, saying, “I saw yesterday that the Washington, D.C. area now has the highest median income in the country — primarily because of the high salaries that so many government bureaucrats are making these days. And I have no doubt that many of these people do good work. But the point is, they’re weathering this economic downturn pretty well. Not only are they making big salaries relative to the private sector. They’re also holding onto their jobs. The unemployment rate for the country as a whole is 9.1 percent. For government workers it’s almost half that, at 4.7 percent. So with all due respect to my friends on the other side it’s the private sector that’s been begging for mercy. It’s the private sector that’s being crushed by regulators in Washington. So I don’t think the solution to this crisis is to make the federal government even bigger.”

Contrary to Democrats’ latest bill, which would raise taxes on job creators, Leader McConnell said, “When it comes to jobs, the primary role of government is to create an environment in which Americans and American businesses can grow and flourish without the heavy hand of government on their backs. We shouldn’t be making it harder for people to do business and prosper. We should be making it easier.”

Related:

Rasmussen Reports:15% Say U.S. Heading In Right Direction

Comments

comments

Missouri Democrats are having a tough time with Native Americans this fall. First, Sen. McCaskill is called a racist by them and now the Carnahan windfarm is being sued by the Osage nation in Oklahoma:

The tribe and the Osage Minerals Council claim in the lawsuit that the Osage Nation has discovered marketable amounts of oil and natural gas within the mineral estate it controls.

The lawsuit says developing and marketing the natural gas will require the construction of flow lines and transmission lines, and it alleges that construction and operation of the wind farm will interfere with those lines “to the detriment of the Osage mineral estate and Osage Nation.” Read more…

Sad. We can’t drill and use the abundant oil and gas resources in this country to put people back to work but we can invest hundreds of millions of dollars in this renewable energy boondoggle that enriches only a connected few and employs very few.

Related:

Carnahan Fundraising Email Rails on Oil Company Subsidies; Silent on Brother’s $100 Million Windfarm Earmark

Comments

comments

WTF???? What planet is this man living on? According to the Labor Department, 1,503,000 private sector jobs have been lost between February, 2009 – September, 2011. While the nation’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.1%, government workers unemployment rate is at a booming 4.7%! And to add insult to injury, the top income in the United States is, you guessed it, in the Washington D.C. area:

“The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046. … . The unemployment rate in the Washington metro area in August was 6.1 percent, compared with 10 percent in San Jose, according to Labor Department figures.” Read more…

Comments

comments

The Southeast Missouri Pachyderm Club will conduct a straw poll for the 2012 Republican Presidential campaign and US Senate primary. Each campaign present will be given the opportunity to make a statement starting at 7 p.m. Voting will begin immediately after. Read more…

Comments

comments