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By Gregory Taggart, June 6, 2011 1:05 pm

In October last year, Obama granted McDonald’s and 28 other firms waivers from having to comply with his Affordable Care Act. With that in mind, consider the following.

Prior to the release of the May jobs report, Morgan Stanley, according to MarketWatch, estimated that McDonald’s would account for roughly half the jobs created in May 2011.

Morgan Stanley estimates McDonald’s hiring will boost the overall number by 25,000 to 30,000. The Labor Department won’t detail an exact McDonald’s figure — they won’t identify any company they survey — but there will be data in the report to give a rough estimate.

In fact, total private-sector employment grew by 83,000 in May. Thus IF Morgan Stanley was right, Mickey D’s was responsible for as much as 36% of the private sector jobs created last week. (If you use the total non-farm payroll, which includes government jobs, job growth was even weaker at just 54,000; thus, Mickey D’s could have accounted for up to 55% of new jobs.)

In any case, job growth was weak in May, and McDonald’s probably created a large number of those jobs; thus, logic compels the following question: Should Obama grant waivers to all businesses?

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By Gregory Taggart, May 25, 2011 10:58 am

The weasely, lying fear mongers?

Or the person who actually takes the time to lay out the facts?

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By Gregory Taggart, May 20, 2011 1:47 pm

Go here to read the actual press release. Simply amazing that a politician would let something like that see the light of day.

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By Gregory Taggart, May 9, 2011 9:26 am

This is beyond pathetic. Be sure to scroll down.

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By Gregory Taggart, April 17, 2011 6:07 pm

Barack Obama is back, and the press–in the person of Jonathan Alter–is carrying his water, again. In a column titled Republican Horror Movie Sequel Hits Theaters Alter breathlessly warns Republicans to

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

And why? Because of that speech BO gave last this week at George Washington University. You know, the one universally panned as not serious, awful, presidential politicking at its worst? Yeah, that one.

So why is Alter experiencing that special tingle? Well, for one, BO’ s a great story teller. I agree, but then I’m thinking of story in the sense that the man says whatever is to hand, whether it’s true or not. When his lips move, well, my antennae go up. I don’t think that’s what Alter meant.

The other think that’s ginned up the good columnist is that idea that

Most important, the president stressed the fundamental American values of fairness and compassion.

In other words, we’re back to Joe the Plumber talk–redistribution.

A highlight of Alter’s piece for me was his admission that Democrats are given to demagoguery. In taking his swipes at Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan, Alter writes,

Older, independent voters that Republicans won in 2010 will despise the Ryan plan once it filters down to them. A Democratic war cry of “They’re killing Medicare!” isn’t demagoguery this time. It’s true.

No, in fact it’s not true and Democratic talk like this continues to be demagoguery, especially given the fact that they refuse to offer a plan of their own with any specifics in it. Exactly how would they deal with Medicaid and Medicare, plans that Alter in one breathe says are “wildly popular” yet “must be reformed”?

As he admits, we’ll get no help from the Annointed One.

The president offered few specifics about how to save $4 trillion over 12 years beyond letting the tax cuts for wealthy expire in late 2012. That won’t be enough. But teeing up tax cuts for the rich as a campaign issue will clearly help the Democrats, as it did in 2008.

Yeah, that should scare Republicans. Drag out the hoary ghost of campaigns past, the “tax cuts for the wealthy” meme. If this is BO’s game, it brings to mind this game:

He’ll not win this time, not throwing like that. I’m not sure our fawning press will manage to carry that ball over the plate.

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By Gregory Taggart, April 11, 2011 8:28 am

Without any comment by me, though Ann Althouse has an interesting take:

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By Gregory Taggart, April 11, 2011 8:10 am

Or as Pogo might say,

Today in The Washington Post,
Robert Samuelson writes,

We in America have [elected a] suicidal [president]; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that [president] has promised more than [he] can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have.

Okay, so I changed a few things, the word president for the word government, for example. Or the word elected for the word created. But Samuelson could have written what I’ve posted and still have been right. Right?

Anyway, he actually says that our suicidal government is so in part because

[We] depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat.

Why is that? Surprise of surprises, because

The Census Bureau reports that in 2009 almost half (46.2 percent) of the 300 million Americans received at least one federal benefit: 46.5 million, Social Security; 42.6 million, Medicare; 42.4 million, Medicaid; 36.1 million, food stamps; 3.2 million, veterans’ benefits; 12.4 million, housing subsidies. The census list doesn’t include tax breaks. Counting those, perhaps three-quarters or more of Americans receive some sizable government benefit. For example, about 22 percent of taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction and 43 percent from the preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance, says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Kind of makes you lose hope that things are going to change.

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By Gregory Taggart, March 26, 2011 5:04 pm

Ten former chairmen and chairwomen of the Council of Economic Advisors have joined in a statement that calls on Congress and the President to step up and get to work on the important task of cutting our monstrous deficit.

There are many issues on which we don’t agree. Yet we find ourselves in remarkable unanimity about the long-run federal budget deficit: It is a severe threat that calls for serious and prompt attention.

You can read more here, but there is one thing missing from both their statement and the Bowles/Simpson report they refer to: What can Congress and the President do to regain the trust they’ll need to pull this trick out of a hat?

I’m all for deficit reduction. I’ll even sign on for tax increases. But I will not agree to those increases unless and until Congress and the President show me that they are serious about cutting spending and that they will use the tax increases to cut the deficit rather to spend.

I am not holding my breath.

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By Gregory Taggart, March 1, 2011 9:23 pm

This story about Professor Clayton Christensen in Forbes magazine is impressive in no small part because the world-renown professor so effortlessly, so guilelessly shares the story of his battles with diabetes, a heart attack, cancer, and a stroke, aided by a great family and the strong conviction that God has and has had a plan for him.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 28, 2011 11:50 am

The New York post has a column today about the prescience of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of my favorite people.

According to writer Bob McManus, Moynihan saw the future of public unions, and it was not rosey.

“[NYU economics professor William J.] Baumol started out by asking himself why the costs of the performing arts always seemed to be rising” Moynihan wrote. “I remarked that if you want a Dixieland band for a campaign rally today, you will need the same [number of] players you would have needed at the beginning of the century. Productivity just hasn’t changed much.”

But per-player costs — salaries and benefits — had risen dramatically, and the price of that Dixieland band along with them.

So, too, the price of health care, the senator argued. An already labor-intensive industry was becoming even more so with each technological advance — driving per-patient productivity ever lower and overall costs inexorably higher.

The same, he said, is true of what he termed the “stagnant [public-sector] services” — including “education high and low, welfare, the arts, legal services, the police. This means that the [costs] of the public sector will continue to grow.”

Moynihan had an eye for what seems obvious today. And he was not shy about telling others what he saw, a trait that served him well–and impressed me–when he served as the U.S.’s ambassador to the United Nations.

My cousin, then an aide to Senator Alan Simpson, once arranged a tour of the Capitol for me. The highlight was when a door swung open as I walked by, revealing Senator Moynihan, bow tie and all, talking to someone behind what had been closed doors.

The Democrats–hell, the Republicans–could use someone like him right now.