Obama's parting gifts to the American people

My short view of the markets under Obama --
(1) The single biggest factor was Fed Policy. They created a lot of liquidity. Money chases yield. Every single day.

My short view of GDP under Obama --
(1) The "less then 3%" number, which he will go down in history for, was even worse than it appears. Mainly due to Obamacare. About 40-50% of what +GDP we did have was all healthcare. Almost all of which was driven by Government mandates and spending. It was not real growth. It was centralized government economy forced numbers. Which are always illusory.

 

Trump will initially be tapping the funding available from a 2006 law for border fencing. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 was supported by Democratic Senator Barack Obama (Ill)*

So, I guess this qualifies under the topic?


* also Joe Biden (Del), Hillary Clinton (NY), Dianne Feinstein (Cal) and Chuckles Schumer (NY)

 

You do realize that the $1.2 billion that was allocated by Congress was already spent building what wall we have, right? The original appropriation only covered a subset of the estimated (at the time) $4.1B cost. So, he's tapping what funding again?

 

That Act was never fully implemented. There additional funding provided via a separate homeland security spending bill (which Kay Bailey later screwed around with which, I think, is the main vehicle allowing for the SFA to never be fully implemented - she basically gave Chertoff an out). In any event, whatever additional funding is necessary will be added via the normal appropriations process, since the law was already enacted (at least arguably). This will force your people to shut the Govt down if they want to prevent it. And this is also why the liberal media switched its focus to the cost, versus simply opposing the wall.


Less than 40 miles built https://hunter.house.gov/fence-right-fix-nation’s-border-problems

 

"Obama administration spent billions to fix failing schools, and it didn’t work"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.9d51b1c04777

"One of the Obama administration’s signature efforts in education, which pumped billions of federal dollars into overhauling the nation’s worst schools, failed to produce meaningful results, according to a federal analysis.

Test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment were no different in schools that received money through the School Improvement Grants program — the largest federal investment ever targeted to failing schools — than in schools that did not....."

 

The nations worst schools are the worst because they are populated with the worst kids parented by the worst adults, thus whoever works there is faced with an impossible task of teaching young people who don't care to learn, with parent(s?) who don't care to help out in any meaningful way.

Throwing federal dollars at this kind of mess is also destined for failure, which any person even mildly vested with common sense could have told King Obama.

 

the last Obama Q

 

Democrats often make the mistake of assuming that optimism from the business community is partisan in nature. "Our guy is in office, so everything is great now!"

A good deal of that speculation is based on the very real growth in the regulatory state which has been hampering growth for eight years. The "speculation" is that a lot of those barriers are about to be taken away. So don't just pass this off as people being blindly optimistic - there is actually some reason behind the excitement. Now, will it hold up? I don't know. But to pass off the market boom as anything beyond an indictment of Obama's policy toward business would be pretty ridiculous.

 

Would not be shocking if it gets revised down later

 

Finance 101 - Bond markets and stock markets are negatively correlated. Low interest means low investment in bonds and capital projects, which means there's nothing for companies to do with their money except to reinvest it. As a result, stock market keeps going up.

If the Fed does decide to raise interest rates (which frankly they probably should), then some of that enthusiasm may disappear.

 

Main reason int rates are so low is bc the Fed flooded mkts with liquidity

 

Democrats are attending a seminar on how to talk to "real people"
lol

http://theweek.com/speedreads/67602...-virginias-senator-teach-how-talk-real-people

 

With the final Q in, we can now annualize
I know at least one of you did not like the available quarterlies averaged
But, the picture does not change

 

How do you fix the parents though? We'd have to violate nearly every freedom principle we have to do that. Absent that, the only option is to try to fix the kids in spite of their environment. Teachers are expected to be the parents in these schools.

 

The teachers CANNOT be the parent...and if you require them to be, especially after what we have seen since the election, then you essentially guarantee YET ANOTHER generation of snowflakes that have no respect for the governmental process.

Wasting money in grandiose efforts at education that are NOT going to reach the substantial majority of 'students' is doing nothing more than wasting money.

 

One of the prisoners set free by Obama in his last days in office, reportedly a former gang banger and drug dealer, should have stayed in prison. His old enemies were glad to see him get out. He was hunted down and murdered at a federal halfway house.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/man-whose-...paign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous&yptr=yahoo

 

What's the answer? Give up? I'm not advocating for Teachers to be the parent but rather recognizing that is what is happening today. I'd advocate smaller class sizes is the first place to start for low income schools.

 

Big if true

I wonder how they will respond to this?
My guess is with the old lefty standard - personal attack on Gabbard

 

If the little turds don't want an education, kick them the hell out of school.

 

lol


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ffortless-kitesurfing/?utm_term=.b53e3e03a63e

 

At least 121 homicides in the US between 2010 and 2014 were carried out by convicted immigrants who were not deported

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article131227599.html

 

don't know that I would go that far. Hell, my kids don't WANT an education. If not for mom and dad the homework wouldn't get done much of the time.

I think this is probably one of the biggest challenges we have as a nation. We need educated people to be high performing employees and business owners, but we have so many that are failing to perform even at the most remedial levels of public school.

Without a culture that values education kids will typically forego studying for TV, games, sports. We have allowed these things to garner too much clout in our country.

We treat NFL players that just barely graduated as though they have something important to add to public conversations. We treat TV personalities as though their opinions matter.

It's obvious that the communities surrounding these underperforming schools are the problem but it is just as obvious that the schools are not capable of righting the ship by themselves. I think the one thing that charter schools might have going for them, is that they can be smaller and more nimble in the education space.

I think smaller might be beneficial because the more tight knit nature might allow for the staff to be as much mentor and supporter as they are teacher.

Technology allows for the widecast of education content, so maybe the onsite folks can focus more on attitude and effort and less on the X's and O's of math and science.

 

Part of what is going on with the intel leaks is likely a direct result of dirty tricks by Obama. He, Lynch and Clapper somewhat quietly expanded the NSA’s ability to spy on regular Americans days before leaving office. Why do you suppose they did this, when they did it?

"In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed the new rules ......after the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., signed them ..... .​

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/...tude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html