The Democrats Own The Jobs Numbers

Why America isn’t hiring:

America isn’t hiring precisely because of government policy. Small business owners, who are usually the first into and the first out of the job pool, are standing by the fence and watching. They are paralyzed by regulatory uncertainty. If they hire someone who ends up doing poorly, will they be able to fire that person? Will they have to pay their health care bills after they’ve been terminated? If so, for how long? Who will pay for all these stimulus checks? If it will turn out to be small business, why would they hire instead of keeping costs low to prepare for the big tax bill? Where will the market move? Are you in the right business or are your clients in a politically disfavored industry? Are your clients in health care (being nationalized), autos (already nationalized), banking (somewhat nationalized) or any energy production process which uses carbon (pulverized)? Until you know, you don’t grow, and until you grow your market, you don’t grow your payroll.

Jobs aren’t languishing despite the government’s best efforts. They’re languishing because of them.

They’re actually languishing because of the government’s worst efforts. Investors (and small business owners are investors) hate uncertainty, and will sit on the sidelines until it disappears. Right now, small business is going Galt. And I sure don’t blame them.

Unfortunately, it actually plays into the fascists’ strategy of moving more economic activity out of the private, and into the public sector.

39 thoughts on “The Democrats Own The Jobs Numbers”

  1. The OTHER reason America isn’t hiring, is that we’ve had such a crop of interviewees recently, that we don’t need anymore help.

    I run a small p/t concession business. I used to have to dig up help. I do Kettle Korn, it’s hot and heavy work. Sometimes, quite often in fact, people would work a few hours, or days even, take a break to go to the head or to get something to eat, and then never return, not even to get paid. (I quit chasing them to pay them, I donate that money to canver research) I never before had any luck hiring from the crowd, even though we tried many times.

    Since we started back up in May, we’ve been swamped by people, “..can we help you set up…are you hiring…will you need help loading out…need any help for next week”, it’s been crazy. All my vendor friends are seeing this too.

    My younger son is a GM for Dominos, he’s getting 10 or 15 people a day, weekends too, looking for a job. But he’s full. His last store was getting twice number that per day. His stores have used the influx to eliminate dead wood and “can-I-go-homers”. Locally the pizza delivery business is down about 20%, job hunters are up 90%.

    My business is down about 15%, job hunters are up WAY over 100%.

    America doesn’t hire, when all the jobs are already filled that XYZ Inc. or its subsidiaries needs to do whatever business it still has.

  2. Dear Folks,

    I’m rereading Atlas Shrugged for the third time. The first two times (a long time ago) I applied its lessons to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Now Ayn Rand’s work seems more pertinent than ever due the events unfolding in my homeland.

    The reason I say my homeland is because I’m an expatriate American English teacher living in South Korea. I’ve been living and working in the ROK for twelve years, but I still send in my absentee ballot for presidential elections every four years.

    What I’ve been seeing taking place in the USA since January 20 is making me more upset by the day. The mounting deficits, the growing and dangerous dependence on China (many South Koreans are very jittery about China) to finance those deficits, the talk of instituting new (VAT and a big one at that) taxes to help cover those very same deficits, the bailouts of GM, and particularly Chrysler, the attempt to remove choice and private enterprise from the U.S. health care system, the stimulus that went mostly to government drones rather things that would really stimulate, and above all, the despicable behavior of the mainstream media in covering up Obama’s real Chicago background. I had to go and find the red star at the top of William Ayers website all by myself!

    All these things have made me very alarmed concerning the future of my country. So I’ve reached one overriding conclusion: its time for Americans to revolt against royal authority for the second time in 234 years.

    I say this because I don’t believe the traditional legislative process can stop my country’s slide towards the comfortable euthanasia of West European-style socialism. With the idiocy of Bush to guide them, the Republicans have done a very creditable job of taking Dirty Harry’s 357. and pointing at least at their feet, if not their heads.

    So its time to revolt. This will be a difficult idea for many Americans to grasp. After all we are the product of a culture that has based on the rule of law from its very beginnings back in medieval England.

    What I’m talking about is starving the Government Beast. Come next April 15 2010 don’t send in your tax forms. Refuse to pay! If you’re a small businessman don’t pay your state (If you live in California, New York, or New Jersey, this applies especially to you) or federal business taxes. Don’t pay your licensing fees! When the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011, don’t file! Simply don’t feed the Beast!

    If you’re worried about prosecution, there’s safety in numbers. If ten million Americans refuse to pay, the looters can’t possibly oppress more than a very small number of people. If ten million small business people refuse to knuckle under to the New Jealously Class, then the Beast will be truly crippled and will be forced to beg for mercy. View your refusal to pay blackmail to the looters as a civil rights along the lines of what inspired Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and the early 1960s. IT IS NOT YOUR PATRIOTIC DUTY TO PAY HIGHER TAXES!

    Anyway, this has happened before. What most Americans don’t remember or never learned is that in the run-up to the American Revolution the British backed down twice over the issue of taxes. Parliament repealed both the Stamp Act and the Townshend Act in the face of fierce colonial protests. Remember, the looters don’t have the mighty Royal Navy behind them or ranks of hard fighting British Grenadiers, all they have in their favor is the willingness to submit of a people who have been comfortable for far too long.

    Michael G. Gallagher, Ph.D.
    Seoul, Korea

  3. Investors (and small business owners are investors) hate uncertainty, and will sit on the sidelines until it disappears.

    Is there actual evidence for this, or is it just a theory that conveniently fits your political preferences?

    Economic downturns always trigger a search for scapegoats, and the designated scapegoats are usually people the searchers had a grudge against to start with. In the 30s it was socialists, Jews and bankers. The bankers are back for more this time around, and there’s a furious effort by the party that controlled the entire federal government until 11 months before the start of the recession to pin it on the Democrats.

    In January Obama said that that unemployment would peak later in 2009; the fact that it’s gone up since then should be a surprise to no one. The economy has a huge amount of inertia; it would have kept going down no matter who was running the government.

  4. Rand: “Investors (and small business owners are investors) hate uncertainty, and will sit on the sidelines until it disappears.”

    Jim: “Is there actual evidence for this, or is it just a theory that conveniently fits your political preferences?”

    Seriously? Jim, you acutally question that an investor, someone that puts money up front on the prospect of future returns, would dislike uncertainty?

    Really?

    You might as well question Rand’s adherence to a theory of gravity.
    Yeah I’m pretty sure Rand uses F = G m1*m2/r^2 because it fits his political preferences as a private space proponent.

    And Jim once again says “Well Obama SAID Y! See he’s not a liar.”
    The problem isn’t that people aren’t saying that “Obama never said the economy would get worse.”

    The question is of magnitude. People are angry that it’s getting worse then predicted. Obama said that unemployment would go up, but top off at 8% If his stimulus was passed.

    However we’re seeing it near 10%

    But Jim, since you don’t seem to get why an investor would dislike uncertainty, I kind of doubt you’d understand questioning a person’s predictive models when they don’t line up with reality.

    No wonder you’re such a Goreist.

  5. Jim, you acutally question that an investor, someone that puts money up front on the prospect of future returns, would dislike uncertainty?

    I don’t question that. But I question whether uncertainty about government action is a major factor in business uncertainty today (I know it isn’t in my business), and I question whether Obama’s and Congress’s actions have increased that uncertainty.

    The big question that I see businesspeople asking is: when will the customers start buying again? That’s the uncertainty that holds back investment. I have yet to meet someone who was thinking of hiring, but wants to first wait to see whether health care reform or cap-and-trade will pass, or whether GM will get bailed out. Those government actions don’t have much impact on whether an investment will pay off (except in a tiny minority of cases, e.g. investing in solar power).

    The government could do more to get consumers spending, e.g. declare a payroll tax holiday. But that would increase the deficit, so I don’t see it getting through Congress.

  6. “I don’t question that. But I question whether uncertainty about government action is a major factor in business uncertainty today (I know it isn’t in my business), and I question whether Obama’s and Congress’s actions have increased that uncertainty.”

    Talk to a secured bond holder. Ask them how secured they feel their investment was, and if they’d be willing to invest in a company that may fall under government control in the future?

    Or about any company that has to deal with increased environmental regulations in everything from manufacturing, to distribution, to officespace. Maybe the potential of new expenses and laws to deal with would count.

    Nahhh…..

    “But that would increase the deficit, so I don’t see it getting through Congress.”

    Hah!

    Oh that’s adorable.

    You really are in your own little world aren’t you?

  7. Talk to a secured bond holder. Ask them how secured they feel their investment was, and if they’d be willing to invest in a company that may fall under government control in the future?

    The government took over GM because it was going to fail otherwise. The idea that you shouldn’t invest in companies that are going to fail is nothing new; bondholders did not need the government to tell them that. If you’d bought GM bonds wouldn’t you be looking for someone to blame for your losses right about now?

    Or about any company that has to deal with increased environmental regulations in everything from manufacturing, to distribution, to officespace

    You honestly want me to believe that companies are laying off people because they’re worried that imagined future regulations will make their businesses unprofitable? Businesses deal with regulations every day. They’re a convenient whipping boy (they annoy me too), but if you can’t comply with the same regulations everyone else lives with and still make money you’re doing something else wrong.

    I’ve read that gun and ammo sales are way up, and dealers think it’s because people are sure that Obama will ban gun sales. I think that’s crazy — there is no way that Obama would propose a handgun ban much less a long gun ban, and even less chance that Congress would pass one — but evidently some people believe it. Or maybe they just needed an excuse to go gun shopping. Either way, it wouldn’t be fair to blame Obama for irrational fears whipped up by the NRA, and it isn’t fair to blame Obama if some businessman has listened to too much talk radio and concluded that the government is coming for his business. His economic niche will be quickly filled by someone else with a less paranoid world view.

    You really are in your own little world aren’t you?

    Do you think the Congress would approve a $1 trillion payroll tax holiday? I wish it were so.

  8. Jim, listen carefully.

    Congress is passing bills where even they don’t know what’s in them.

    Result: uncertainty.

    Why is that hard for you to understand?

  9. ” Either way, it wouldn’t be fair to blame Obama for irrational fears whipped up by the NRA”

    Jim, his voting record vis a vi firearms is as atrocious as any creature of the left has ever held. In what way is a highly-justified fear irrational?

    “Obama’s Record On Firearms Sucks
    Via Marketwatch:

    Fellow Sportsman,

    Hello, my name is Rich Pearson and I have been active in the firearm rights movement for over 40 years. For the past 15 years, I have served in the Illinois state capitol as the chief lobbyist for the Illinois State Rifle Association.

    I lobbied Barack Obama extensively while he was an Illinois State Senator. As a result of that experience, I know Obama’s attitudes toward guns and gun owners better than anyone. The truth be told, in all my years in the Capitol I have never met a legislator who harbors more contempt for the law-abiding firearm owner than does Barack Obama.

    Although Obama claims to be an advocate for the 2nd Amendment, his voting record in the Illinois Senate paints a very different picture. While a state senator, Obama voted for a bill that would ban nearly every hunting rifle, shotgun and target rifle owned by Illinois citizens. That same bill would authorize the state police to raid homes of gun owners to forcibly confiscate banned guns. Obama supported a bill that would shut down law-abiding firearm manufacturers including Springfield Armory, Armalite, Rock River Arms and Les Baer. Obama also voted for a bill that would prohibit law-abiding citizens from purchasing more than one gun per month.

    Without a doubt, Barack Obama has proven himself to be an enemy of the law abiding firearm owner. At the same time, Obama has proven himself to be a friend to the hardened criminal. While a state senator, Obama voted 4 times against legislation that would allow a homeowner to use a firearm in defense of home and family.
    Does Barack Obama still sound to you like a “friend” of the law-abiding gun owner?

    And speaking of friends, you can always tell a person by the company they keep. Obama counts among his friends the Rev. Michael Pfleger – a renegade Chicago priest who has openly called for the murder of gun shop owners and pro-gun legislators. Then there is his buddy Richard Daley, the mayor of Chicago who has declared that if it were up to him, nobody would be allowed to own a gun. And let’s not forget Obama’s pal George Soros – the guy who has pumped millions of dollars into the UN’s international effort to disarm law-abiding citizens.

    Obama has shown that he is more than willing to use other people’s money to fund his campaign to take your guns away from you. While a board member of the leftist Joyce Foundation, Barack Obama wrote checks for tens of millions of dollars to extremist gun control organizations such as the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence and the Violence Policy Center.

    Does Barack Obama still sound to you like a “friend” of the law-abiding gun owner?

    By now, I’m sure that many of you have received mailings from an organization called “American Hunters and Shooters Association(AHSA)” talking about what a swell fellow Obama is and how he honors the 2nd Amendment and how you will never have to worry about Obama coming to take your guns. Let me make it perfectly clear – everything the AHSA says about Obama is pure hogwash. The AHSA is headed by a group of left-wing elitists who subscribe to the British view of hunting and shooting. That is, a state of affairs where hunting and shooting are reserved for the wealthy upper-crust who can afford guided hunts on exclusive private reserves. The AHSA is not your friend, never will be.

    In closing, I’d like to remind you that I’m a guy who has actually gone nose to nose with Obama on gun rights issues. The Obama I know cannot even begin to identify with this nation’s outdoor traditions. The Obama I know sees you, the law abiding gun owner, as nothing but a low-class lummox who is easily swayed by the flash of a smile and a ration of rosy rhetoric. The Obama I know is a stony-faced liar who has honed his skill at getting what he wants – so long as people are willing to give it to him.

    That’s the Barack Obama I know.

    The ISRA is the state’s leading advocate of safe, lawful and responsible firearms ownership. Founded in 1903, the ISRA has represented the interests of millions of law-abiding Illinois firearm owners.
    WEB SITE: http://www.isra.org
    SOURCE Illinois State Rifle Association”

  10. Congress is passing bills where even they don’t know what’s in them.

    Result: uncertainty.

    Why is that hard for you to understand?

    It isn’t hard to understand, it just isn’t at all persuasive as an explanation for today’s high unemployment. Passing bills without reading them did not start this year, or even this decade. Remember that only six Senators read the 2002 Iraq NIE before voting on the use of force authorization; and it was only 92 pages!

    If uncertainty caused by Congress passing bills without reading them caused high unemployment, we would have seen it long before now.

  11. Passing bills without reading them did not start this year, or even this decade.

    Passing bills that no human has time to read, and passing bills that don’t even exist, started this year.

  12. “Do you think the Congress would approve a $1 trillion payroll tax holiday? I wish it were so.”

    Ahhh… Strawman to the rescue! Nevermind my mockery was at this comment of Jim’s:

    “But that would increase the deficit, so I don’t see it getting through Congress.”

    Hmmm.

    “You honestly want me to believe that companies are laying off people because they’re worried that imagined future regulations will make their businesses unprofitable? Businesses deal with regulations every day. They’re a convenient whipping boy (they annoy me too), but if you can’t comply with the same regulations everyone else lives with and still make money you’re doing something else wrong.”

    Strawman! Not that I said that companies were laying off people, but sure makes your job easier.

    And yes they deal with regulations every day. But maybe, just maybe, different and more crippling regulations would hurt. I know crazy.

    Same regulations everyone else lives with. So it’s okay as long as the whole economy tanks? Fairness?

    As for Irrational fears. Whitehouse.gov used to mention renewing the Assault Weapons ban, until that went down the memory hole.

    Yeah… crazy.

    People should just trust Obama. Sure *sometimes* he says mutually exclusive things, but in the interest of trust, just go with what makes you feel better.

    Otherwise you’re just paranoid.

  13. Also… are you abandoning hope and change Jim?

    “Bush did it on Iraq!” should not be an excuse for the Dems and Obama to do the same thing.

    Right?

    Oh look, military tribunals, indefinite detention, rendition, and non-US prisons. Huh.

  14. Passing bills that no human has time to read

    The Medicare prescription drug act, a 415 page bill, came the House in its final form on November 21, 2003, and the vote was taken at 3 AM on November 22, 2003. I’m willing to wager that no representative read all 415 pages during that time.

    The idea that businesses aren’t hiring because Congressmen aren’t reading the fine print in every bill is ludicrous.

  15. Jim spewed, “In January Obama (PBUH) said that that unemployment would peak later in 2009; the fact that it’s gone up since then should be a surprise to no one. The economy has a huge amount of inertia; it would have kept going down no matter who was running the government.”

    Jim, here are the facts as opposed to your atomaton Barak speak…

    Barak The Magnificent (PBUH) said we had to spend nearly a Trillion doallars right away in stimulus to avoid unemployment exceeding 8%. Here is HIS graph showing what would happen without the Trillion dollar stimulus vs the relief with it.

    http://michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/stimulus-vs-unemployment-june-dots.gif

    Guess what, post stimulus reality (not rhetoric) has far exceeded his most dire non-stimulus predictions. The guy is an ampty suit neophyte. We spent nearly $800 million dollars and got a worse result than if we’d done nothing, according to Obama’s (PBUH) own figures.

    Epic Fail.

  16. “The idea that businesses aren’t hiring because Congressmen aren’t reading the fine print in every bill is ludicrous.”

    Well sure Jim. When you twist words to exactly that way.

    This is a basic example of the strawman argument.

    Let’s ignore the irresponsibility and problems of voting on something that one is uninformed on.

    And let’s ignore the risks and increasingly crippling regulations these bills are causing.

    And why not ignore the actual performance of one of these bills, the Stimulus. Can we compare actual unemployment with what they thought would happen? Can

    we use their inability to predict the effects of their bills as a justification to be wary even bigger and more intrusive legislation?

    Do you think Cap and Tax will do better than the Stimulus? If so why?

    But hey, discounting all those problems… You win!

  17. Obama’s Record On Firearms Sucks

    Even if everything in that article is true (considering the source, I’m doubtful), it doesn’t mean he’d propose a gun ban, and it certainly doesn’t mean that Congress would pass one.

    Whitehouse.gov used to mention renewing the Assault Weapons ban, until that went down the memory hole

    So Obama won’t even mention his support for renewing a lapsed gun control law, and that means he’s going to ban all guns? That’s quite a leap of logic. How about: he doesn’t mention it because he does not plan to spend any political capital on banning assault weapons, much less on banning handguns or hunting rifles. And yet the customers are lining up to buy handguns and hunting rifles….

    Also… are you abandoning hope and change Jim?

    No — try to keep up with the conversation. I was pointing out that legislators voting without reading is not something that started in 2009. The NIE is a handy example because it was classified, so we know how many Senators and Representatives checked it out. We don’t know how many actually read the budget bill every year from end to end; my guess is zero.

    Obama did run on change, but he didn’t run on “I’ll make Congress read bills before voting.”

  18. philw1776:

    The spending in the stimulus bill is $550 billion, not $800 billion or a trillion. Only a small fraction of it has been spent to date.

    The Council of Economic Adviser’s unemployment projections were wrong. That does not mean that we’d be better off if we hadn’t passed the stimulus. A forecast is not a promise.

  19. Let’s ignore the irresponsibility and problems of voting on something that one is uninformed on.

    Let’s only pay attention if they’re a significant source of our problems. I don’t see any reason to believe they are.

    And let’s ignore the risks and increasingly crippling regulations these bills are causing.

    No one in this thread has offered any evidence that regulations are a source of our unemployment woes. The logic seems to be: I don’t like regulations, and I don’t like Democrats, and unemployment is bad, therefore unemployment must be caused by Democrats and their regulations. Never mind that no major new regulations have taken effect since January.

    And why not ignore the actual performance of one of these bills, the Stimulus.

    ARRA has put lots of people to work, and is a very minor factor in the deficit (do the math). We don’t know what unemployment would be if ARRA had not passed, and we don’t know what it would be if ARRA had been much larger, but nothing that has happened since its passage has undermined the case that was made for it.

  20. Only on Planet Jim.

    Please name a prominent politician or economist who supported the ARRA, but now thinks it was a mistake, because facts that have come to light since this spring have undermined the rationale for its passage.

  21. Please name a prominent politician or economist who supported the ARRA, but now thinks it was a mistake, because facts that have come to light since this spring have undermined the rationale for its passage.

    I’m not sure what the relevance of your question is. Any politician or economist who supported that bill in the first place is as out to lunch as you are.

  22. I’m not sure what the relevance of your question is.

    I said: events since its passage have not undermined the rationale for its passage.

    You said: Only on Planet Jim.

    But if in fact events had undermined its rationale, then you’d expect to find previous supporters (who accepted that rationale in the spring) turning against it. And you don’t. You only see people who opposed it originally saying that the unemployment rate proves it was a mistake. Of course they’d still think it was a mistake if unemployment had fallen.

    In summary: people who supported it still support it (or think it should have been bigger), people who opposed it still oppose it, nothing we’ve learned since its passage has changed the case for or against it one bit.

  23. “Let’s only pay attention if they’re a significant source of our problems. I don’t see any reason to believe they are.”

    More Peter-Pan governance. If we clap our hands and believe then we don’t need to actually read legislation.

    “ARRA has put lots of people to work, and is a very minor factor in the deficit (do the math). We don’t know what unemployment would be if ARRA had not passed, and we don’t know what it would be if ARRA had been much larger, but nothing that has happened since its passage has undermined the case that was made for it.”

    Oooo! Deficit strawman!

    Yup nothing to undermine its case. In fact, nothing can undermine its case. Unemployment ends up being worse than predicted without stimulus? Feh, who cares?

    Clearly it wasn’t BIG enough.

    It is amusing to see what Obama supporters are reduced to.

    They’re reduced to “Well, Bush did it!”, “Not reading bills isn’t a problem!”, “Given that unemployment has spiked without new regulations, therefore new Cap and Tax’s regulations won’t raise unemployment.”, and, of course, “Just TRUST Obama!”

    The mindless partisan screeching, parade of strawmen, and selective logic is astounding.

  24. But if in fact events had undermined its rationale, then you’d expect to find previous supporters (who accepted that rationale in the spring) turning against it.

    Again, no one sane accepted that rationale, ever. There is no reason to expect them to come to their senses now, since you can’t be argued out of a position you weren’t argued into. It was either emotion, or a hunger for raw political power.

  25. “Not really, considering the source.”

    True. Though kind of shows that its pointless to try to convince the likes of Jim. Given his emotional investment and sycophancy for those hungering power, the facts simply don’t matter to him.

    We’ve seen that in his eyes Obama and the other Statists can never be substantively wrong.

    Not that it isn’t darkly amusing to see the contortions Jim and his ilk will go through.

  26. ” Jim Says:

    July 3rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
    Obama’s Record On Firearms Sucks

    Even if everything in that article is true (considering the source, I’m doubtful), it doesn’t mean he’d propose a gun ban, and it certainly doesn’t mean that Congress would pass one.

    Whitehouse.gov used to mention renewing the Assault Weapons ban, until that went down the memory hole

    So Obama won’t even mention his support for renewing a lapsed gun control law, and that means he’s going to ban all guns? That’s quite a leap of logic. How about: he doesn’t mention it because he does not plan to spend any political capital on banning assault weapons, much less on banning handguns or hunting rifles. And yet the customers are lining up to buy handguns and hunting rifles….”

    So you arguemnt is Obama doesn’t suck on the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights becasue he can’t get his anti-gun wish-list trru congress?

  27. So you arguemnt is Obama doesn’t suck on the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights becasue he can’t get his anti-gun wish-list trru congress?

    No, my argument is that people don’t need to be in a hurry to stockpile guns, because there’s no chance that Obama is going to stop them from buying guns later.

  28. Again, no one sane accepted that rationale, ever.

    You really think that Christina Romer is insane? Larry Summers? Tim Geithner? Even Martin Feldstein argued for a Keynesian stimulus (though not the ARRA specifically) — is he insane for buying into the rationale?

  29. In fact, nothing can undermine its case.

    I fear that this may be true, that both the pro-ARRA and anti-ARRA arguments are not falsifiable. Tyler Cowen wrote before the passage of ARRA that it would be the first test of a peacetime Keynesian stimulus (he opposed it for that reason). Since the ARRA did pass, it would be good for future policy makers to learn from this experience. But I have not heard anyone propose standards that both ARRA proponents and opponents would agree on as a fair way to evaluate ARRA’s success or failure.

    So I’m afraid that no matter what happens, pro-stimulus and anti-stimulus economists will only have their preferences confirmed, and we won’t learn anything.

  30. You really think that Christina Romer is insane? Larry Summers? Tim Geithner?

    If they thought that ARRA was a solution, yes. I don’t believe they did. I think they had political reasons to pretend they did.

    Even Martin Feldstein argued for a Keynesian stimulus (though not the ARRA specifically)

    Since no one argued that some sort of stimulus wasn’t necessary, you simply (as usual) beclown yourself.

  31. “’ve read that gun and ammo sales are way up, and dealers think it’s because people are sure that Obama will ban gun sales. I think that’s crazy — there is no way that Obama would propose a handgun ban much less a long gun ban, and even less chance that Congress would pass one — but evidently some people believe it. Or maybe they just needed an excuse to go gun shopping. Either way, it wouldn’t be fair to blame Obama for irrational fears whipped up by the NRA, and it isn’t fair to blame Obama if some businessman has listened to too much talk radio and concluded that the government is coming for his business.”

    Holy Crap! Okay Jimmie boy you completely blew any possible credibility you had with that amazingly ignorant analogy.

    Let me explain something to you. Right in the Democratic Party platform, and continuing in the hopey-changey .gov website is a promise to bring back a nastier version of the 1994 Clinton ban on so-called “assault-weapons”. And since you don’t seem to have even a tiny clue about guns and the gun market, I inform you that the leading item flying off the gun store shelves is the very kind of firearm which Obama still promises he will ban. Just because he is pursuing his higher priorities first doesn’t mean he intends to break his promise to renew that moronic Clinton gun ban.

    God man get a clue.

  32. Just because he is pursuing his higher priorities first doesn’t mean he intends to break his promise to renew that moronic Clinton gun ban.

    Even assuming he will, and assuming that Congress will go along (which I think is extremely unlikely, barring a rash of mass shootings), that still doesn’t explain why the gun shops around here are sold out of items that would never be affected by an “assault weapons” ban.

  33. that still doesn’t explain why the gun shops around here are sold out of items that would never be affected by an “assault weapons” ban.

    That depends on whether enough of the buyers believe that the Obama administration is going to stop with an assault weapons ban or go for more extensive firearm regulations. Remember even if you believe there’s nothing to the firearm rumors, the people buying the firearms probably as a whole have different opinions on the matter.

  34. To elaborate on my previous post, this is what you’d expect in an economy driven by guesses and rumors about what the federal government will do or not do. In other words, gun buyers don’t know what’s going to be banned or heavily regulated in the next few years. But I imagine they’re buying a lot of guns and other equipment just in case.

    In my view, the Obama administration has gravely erred by interfering too much in the economy, especially by combining dissimilar strategies of stimulus and regulation in the current economy. It makes no sense for example to speak about deficit reduction when they fail to reign in current spending (most which takes place in times when deficit reduction strategies are supposedly taking place). There’s a serious problem with mixed messages, deception, and a huge lack of trust in the Obama administration.

  35. >..gun buyers don’t know what’s going to be banned or
    > heavily regulated in the next few years. But I imagine
    > they’re buying a lot of guns and other equipment just in case.

    Partly that. Certainly a lot of high up dems talk about banning pretty much all guns. Hell the old Assault style weapons ban didn’t ban assault weapons, or in anyway impact their sale, but it did mean my 22 target pistol was classified as a assault style weapon.

    But beyond expecting bans, survey find folks are just scared. They see a economic collapse ahead, see cities and states cutting policy budgets and staffs to free up funds for nonsensical pork projects, etc. Crooked folk get nasty in bad economic times with weak police enforcement. So the gun buyers are afraid they will need to defend themselves

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