Left Wing Propaganda Exposed

The right has Alex Jones and his conspiracy theories and on the left enters Dave Johnson telling his readers that Obama is a fiscal conservative. In his blog, “Three Charts to e-mail to Your Right-Wing Brother in Law”he arrived at his numbers in a very vulgar manner.

Left Wing Blogger Dave Johnson, will he be the lefts version of Alex Jones?

His first chart shows spending increased 88% under Bush and 7.2% under Obama. I wish this was so. As one would suspect with the federal government there are several ways and departments that calculate spending. Let us look at a few of them.

First is the White House numbers on spending. In the year 2000 (Clinton’s last year in office) the federal government spent $1.788950 trillion dollars and in 2008 Bush spent $2.982544 trillion. This represents a 66.7% increase in federal spending.

Using the 2008 spending number of $2.982544 trillion as a baseline Obama increased federal spending to a 2011 estimated number of $3.818819 trillion. A 28% increase in spending. Certainly not anywhere near the 7.2% Johnson claims.

I would speculate that Johnson is comparing the increase in budget from 2009 to 2011 or $3.517677 trillion to $3.818819 trillion, which yields an 8.6% increase in spending, certainly close to the 7.2% Johnson claims. The only problem with this analysis is 2009 was the beginning of the Obama/Keynesian massive stimulus programs pass into law under his watch.

Briefly there was the $787 billion “shovel ready” stimulus, cash for clinkers, cash for calking, mortgage refinancing, and other gimmicks designed to stimulate the economy. Johnson wants his readers to believe Obama had nothing to do with the jump in federal spending from $2.982544 trillion in 2008 to $3.517677 trillion in 2009. Really?

Spending increased 7.2% under Obama according to Johnson.

By moving the “base” year of comparison of the spending from 2008 to 2009 Johnson makes Obama’s massive spending increases seam less objectionable. I think we all would like to omit that $535 billion in additional spending.

Yes we would, but it serves no useful propose but propaganda.

Doing the same trick for Bush lowers his spending increase to 60.1%. Counting the Bush years as 2001 to 2009 yields the 88.8% figure Johnson reports.

Although 2009 was technically a 2008 FY budget the Obama stimulus was passed in February 2009 and partially spent in 2009. Obama, and Johnson, need to take ownership for the federal increase in spending from 2008 to 2009. “Shovel ready,” remember?

The next table is bizarre showing Obama is reducing the deficit out to 2015. Just a little bit of a stretch. The White House numbers show the deficit was 0.160701 trillion for 2007, 0.458533 trillion for 2008, 1.412688 trillion for 2009, 1.293489 trillion for 2010, and estimated $1.645119 trillion for 2011.

Breaking it down as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shows the deficit was 1.2% in 2007, 3.2% in 2008, 10.0% in 2009, 8.9% in 2010, and estimated 10.9% in 2011. This huge increases as a percentage of the GDP from the “traditional” deficit of 3% of the GDP or less, to more than 8.9% is what has Austrian economist predicting disaster. When a country moves from borrowing less than 3% of their GDP by the federal government to more than 10% that country risk serious financial instability and the possibility of a Argentina type financial collapse. Simply put the government should not grow faster than the private sector.

The White House projections for the budget deficit out to 2016. The same White House that missed the 2009 to 2010 budget deficit by $400 billion.

Johnson assumes the White House budget estimates of deficit reduction out to 2016 are accurate.

Is this reliable?

From 2009 to 2010 the White House missed the budget deficit estimate by $400 billion. If the White House staff cannot get closer than $400 billion in one-year why anyone would take seriously a rosy projection of 5% economic growth rates out to 2016? Your guess is as good as mine.

Finally Johnson claims that job growth under Obama is rosy. “Private employers added 1.8 million jobs in the last year.” While the other claims at least have a shred of credibility this one is a pure flat out lie. Here are a few sobering statistic from the St. Louis Federal Reserve website.

Since Obama was inaugurated the:

Labor force participation rate has declined from 65.7 to a 29-year low of 63.9%.

The civilian employment-population ration has declined from 60.6% to 58.1%.

The civilian labor force has declined from 154,185,000 to 153,288,000, -0.6%, while the population has increased from 306,208,000 to 311,256,000, 1.6%. This represents more mouths to feed and fewer people participating in the labor market.

Jobs, jobs, and more jobs according to Johnson. 1.8 million new jobs. And 1.9 million lost jobs?

Total nonfarm payrolls have declined from 131,555,000 to 130,920,000 or a decline of 0.5%.

I could continue but of the absurd claims Johnson makes this one is just plain cruel and mean in these harsh economic times.

The bottom line is while Johnson is quite playful with numbers they do not reflect any reality in Washington or Main Street and are useless.

The reality is Obama spent trillions artificially stimulating the economy and masking the damage done by the housing boom. We are going into a recession again because Obama ran up the credit card and the credit card is maxed out. The proper course of action would have been to liquidate the banks on Wall Street as well as letting the housing market bottom out.

Obama, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and the Democrats thought they had the Keynesian solution to fix the economy. They were wrong just like Bush and Greenspan were wrong to pump up the housing market.

Bernanke will almost certainly do QE III in September and that will create yet another damaging blow to the economy. QE III will give us liberal doses of inflation to go with our unemployment.

What Johnson, and Americans, need to understand is that this is not a “D” and “R” problem. The problem is our politicians, and Federal Reserve bankers, have leveraged themselves into a box with Ponzi schemes like Social Security and Medicare. The Federal Reserve is leveraged 56-1 with essentially billions worth of crap low interest junk on its portfolio.

Playing stupid 2008, 2009 base year games does utterly nothing to educate the public on the authentic economic problem facing America, bankruptcy.

The insolvency of the federal government and reorganization, or liquidation, is the real issue America will face in the coming decade. Those of us in the “Tea Party,” and even an occasional Libertarian, need to understand the real problems facing America and ignore the mindless riff raff noises coming from the left.

Note: For younger readers what Johnson does is typical propaganda. Dishonest writers start off with hard, plausible numbers that could be argued to be accurate, and then typically deviate into the surreal world of propaganda and lies. This technique has been around since the written language was developed. Hard facts, a little twisting of the facts, finally the propaganda and lies.