Remember the grief Dick Cheney received in late 2000, and then President Bush in early 2001, when they were accused of “talking down the economy”? We already know from history that the economy had already slipped into negative growth during the third quarter of 2000; so it’s fair to say in hindsight that Cheney and Bush were actually observing reality.

Specifically, Cheney’s 2000 statement was that “we may well be on the front edge of a recession here,” while Bush’s 2001 claim was a milder “You know better than me that our economy is slowing down.”

So what will be the reaction be to the Sunday assertion by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama that there’s “little doubt” the country is in a recession, when no negative growth has occurred?

Here’s an excerpt (HT to Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion via e-mail) from the coverage of Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson:

Barack Obama said Saturday there is “little doubt we’ve moved into recession,” underscoring the country’s need for a second economic stimulus package, swift steps to shore up the housing market and a long-term energy policy to reduce reliance on foreign oil imports.

….. (Obama) delivered perhaps his most definitive judgment to date on the health of the U.S. economy, according to aides.

“I have little doubt that we’ve moved into recession at this point, and the sooner we can get money into people’s pockets, the sooner that we can stabilize the housing market, and the sooner that we can send a message to the markets that we’re serious about creating an energy policy that will create greater energy efficiency over the next decade or so, I think the sooner we’re going to get our fundamentals right,” he said.

Johnson conveniently “forgot” to tell us that $92 billion has already been put “into people’s pockets” in the form of economic stimulus payments during April, May, and June.

Anyway, concerning Obama’s remarks, we can expect a chorus of criticism from the politicians and the press that he is talking the economy down ….. right?

Of course, we’re not in a recession yet, because there hasn’t even been one official quarter of negative growth, let alone two. Additionally, Alexander Paris at Barron’s expresses the current rough consensus that “second-quarter growth will be no worse than the first quarter,” which came in at an annualized 1%.

But the Illinois senator may be “right,” in the sense that a downturn may have indeed begun. If so, he’s one of the major reasons why.

I believe there’s a good chance that the economy began heading into a downturn about 30 days ago. While the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM’s) Manufacturing Index went into expansion territory in June after four months of contraction, real (not seasonally adjusted) job growth was disappointing, leading to reported seasonally adjusted job losses for the sixth straight month.

But the real kick in the teeth came from ISM’s Non Manufacturing Index, which in June unexpectedly went from expansion to contraction in a serious way.

To me, the combined results just noted indicate that the three people who seem most determined to drive the economy into a downturn, and even a real recession, are finally achieving some “success.” Those three people would be Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid. Their actions, and their apparent control over our current destiny, are why on July 3 I began calling our economy the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy.

Pelosi and Reid are bound and determined to prevent any additional drilling for oil. This means that they’re not only perfectly comfortable with gas prices at their current $4-plus level; they’re okey-dokey if, as appears likely, prices go even higher. Obama clearly has no problem with Pelosi’s and Reid’s positions.

But Obama is going even further to tank the economy by staying with his proposals to enact massive tax increases in the neighborhood of $200 billion a year when he takes office. His proposals will negatively affect investor expectations as long as he is seen as having a reasonable chance of winning.

With static assumptions, inflicting the Clinton-Era tax rates on high-earners, closing so-called “loopholes” in partnerships and Sub-S corporations, and increasing capital-gains taxes would siphon about $160 billion out of the pockets of those who are, for the most part, the economy’s biggest contributors. Meanwhile Obama’s proposal to apply the 12.4% Social Security tax to all wage and self-employment income above $250,000 would, in theory, raise another $40 billion a year.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely that all of this revenue will be raised, because those confronted with these increases will attempt to adjust their compensation packages away from salaries and towards perks and stock options. Some will sell their businesses out to larger firms; others may vote with their feet and leave the country altogether. It doesn’t take a lot of behavior change to create a significant shortfall in collections.

Given what those who are inflicting the POR Economy on us are already doing, Obama’s latest “little doubt” statement is best seen as insurance — just in case the potentially ruinous items just noted aren’t sufficiently effective. Paris’s opinion expressed at Barron’s is that “there is good reason to expect a milder and shallower economic downturn.” I hope that growth is somehow able to stay positive, but we’re fighting seriously threatening headwinds fanned by Pelosi, Obama, and Reid.

Surely there are some in the business press who recognize what is at work here. When will anyone call the POR Economy’s perpetrators out for what they are doing, and saying?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Here’s an interesting story I found in the Chicago Tribune archives (obtained from ProQuest library database; for fair use and discussion purposes) that ties into a more recent story:

ENGLEWOOD IS EYED FOR BOTANICAL GARDEN
Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Jan 15, 2000. pg. 5

A group of politicians, school administrators and community activists unveiled a plan Friday for a $1.1 million botanical garden in the city’s Englewood neighborhood.

The proposal calls for a walk beneath the “L” tracks on Princeton Avenue, from 59th Place to 62nd Place. Backers said they hope it will help spur redevelopment in the impoverished area, boost neighborhood pride and soften the impact of traffic and pollution from the nearby Dan Ryan Expressway.

State Sen. Barack Obama (D-Chicago) said he planned to seek state funding for the effort and estimated that ground could be broken in early 2001.

The proposed garden also would include a gazebo, a parrot sanctuary and a walk of fame.

Gee, that sounds exciting. Let’s go visit:

(Google Maps image is more than likely from before the Sun-Times visit described below occurred, and before the related report and video were posted.)

Imagine that. No garden. No parrot sanctuary. No walk of fame.

How can that be? What happened? The Chicago Sun-Times tells us the answer, while revealing that “at least” there’s a gazebo — not much, if anything (video is at link; HT Jennifer Rubin via the TIB All-Stars July 12 collection at Weapons of Mass Discussion):

Obama’s $100,000 garden grant wasted
He vowed to ‘work tirelessly’ to build an oasis for Englewood. It never happened.

July 11, 2008

As a state senator, Barack Obama gave $100,000 in state money to a campaign volunteer who failed to deliver on a plan to create a botanic garden in one of Chicago’s most blighted neighborhoods.

….. what was supposed to be a six-block stretch of trees and paths is now a field of unfulfilled dreams, strewn with weeds, garbage and broken pavement.

Kenny B. Smith, whose nonprofit group got the money, said it was spent legitimately, mostly on underground site preparation. But he admitted Thursday that the garden is a lost cause because other government money never came through.

….. Smith — an early Obama supporter who gave $550 to his state and congressional campaigns — said he gave his paperwork documenting the work to a state agency and no longer has it.

….. a reporter walked the site last week with a landscape architect from the Illinois Green Industry Association who found no evidence of the work Smith cited. The only major changes since 2000: A gazebo was added, and some trees were cut down.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said through a spokesman he wasn’t responsible for monitoring the work; the staffs of Gov. Blagojevich and former Gov. George Ryan were.

….. In 2001, at Obama’s direction, a $100,000 Illinois FIRST grant went to Smith’s group. The garden site was part of Rosewood Estates, an affordable-housing development being built by the group, whose unpaid board chairman was Brian Washington, a Sun-Times security guard.

Plans called for more than 50 homes, but only a dozen were built, Smith said.

The remaining $1 million for the botanic garden was never raised.

Those legendary $400 hammers for the military have nothing on this $100,000 gazebo.

A trifling matter? I don’t think so. More like a revealing one:

• Obama feels no sense of responsibility for the results of money directed to someone HE chose. This isn’t “the buck stops here” of Harry Truman fame; this is “the buck went somewhere else.”
• Gubernatorial staffs aren’t responsible for monitoring projects like this. State agencies are. If the agency involved didn’t do their job (according to the article, it’s the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity), that’s one thing, but the blame-shifting to other pols is either hopelessly naive (a legitimate possibility, given the candidate’s seemingly endless well of ignorance) or irresponsible.
• If you look at the full text of the press release that announced the project, you’ll see that Kenny Smith was on hand, and that he made representations about how he was “work(ing) with a variety of governmental agencies and not-for-profit groups to secure funding this project including the Chicago Transit Authority, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the American Society of Landscape Architecture. We have made some progress ….” My bet: Smith had, at most, met with these orgs once or twice, and was blowing smoke about the realistic chances of getting money. For a nominal $550 in campaign contributions, Smith got 100 grand, which “somehow” has mostly gone bye-bye. Bottom line: Obama got hustled. Did he even look into how the rest of the “fund-raising” was going before directing the release of the grant funds?
• Perhaps that’s why Obama seems oddly indifferent to what ultimately happened. The response from his spokesman (and not the candidate) is tired boilerplate about “provid(ing) residents with a livable neighborhood.” Zzzzzz.

The larger point is this: The guy’s hopelessly gullible, can’t even get a $100,000 grant right, and now wants to have the final say in matters relating to a $3-plus trillion federal budget and a $14-trillion economy in a town chock full of con artists and tricksters.

Yikes.

It would be cool if some enterprising photo-opster could make up a “Barack Obama $100,000 Gazebo” sign (or something more clever — use your imagination), take some pictures at the site, and post them. Until that happens, this will have to do:

_________________________________________

UPDATE: Why should we automatically assume that some of that missing 100 grand didn’t head back in Obama’s direction?

From Hoffman Estates, Illinois:

Published: 7/5/2008 12:33 AM

The sound of Taliban gunfire woke Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Ritenour on an early September morning that would change his life.

The Hoffman Estates High School graduate jumped out of bed and found his M4 rifle as he and his platoon armored their bodies and steeled their nerves for what was to come.

“Our platoon sergeant told us to get up and that we were under attack, which we already knew,” Ritenour recalled in a telephone interview from Germany.

According to the military’s account, 180 Taliban fighters surrounded the Army’s combat outpost in Baylough in southeastern Afghanistan, drastically outnumbering the 40 American troops inside.

During that battle, Taliban machine-gun fire found Ritenour, cutting through his Kevlar helmet and into his skull. The wound left him partially paralyzed, but he never lost consciousness and continued to help fend off insurgents until air support arrived.

Nine months later, Ritenour calmly tells the story as he slowly regains mobility. He’s still in the Army, now stationed in Germany and living with wife Nancy and their 4-year-old daughter, Natalie.

“I feel like I’m the same person, at least mentally,” he said.

He’s humble about his actions that day, but the Army isn’t. In May, on his 33rd birthday, Ritenour was awarded the Silver Star – one of the military’s highest honors for valor under fire.

His parents, Kathleen and John Ritenour of Hoffman Estates, were there when he received the medal in Germany.

Kathleen, a nurse at St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, she says it’s a miracle her son survived the attack.

“When you’re talking about the brain, it’s a matter of a millimeter here and millimeter there. It’s just amazing,” she said. “It’s hard to say you’re lucky, but I think we’re lucky, I think we’re very blessed.”

Ritenour has endured three surgeries and lost some hearing in his right ear. Doctors have placed a metal prosthetic in his head. His right ankle remains paralyzed and he lacks full range of motion in a shoulder.

Simple exercises like curling his toes and stretching leave him winded, but he said sharing his experiences also proves therapeutic.

“I think it helps to talk about it,” he said.

From the trenches

According to the military’s account of the battle that injured Ritenour, Taliban forces had scouted the post where his platoon – members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment – were stationed.

Ritenour called the Taliban’s early-morning attack last Sept. 4 well-coordinated.

“The Taliban had their game face on,” he said.

His platoon fought back from below a hill and behind some giant boulders known as the rock guard. The bullet struck his head as he tended to another wounded man.

Ritenour’s right side instantly went numb. He crumpled to the ground. Soldiers rushed in, trying to stop the bleeding as they dragged him to a safer spot.

But Ritenour was still focused on stopping the Taliban from taking the post. From the ground, he continued to bark orders, call for mortar fire and yell out to his soldiers to check their status.

They held their ground for 45 minutes before air support arrived, dropping 500-pound bombs on insurgent forces.

A medical helicopter rushed Ritenour to Kandahar, but his injuries were severe and his survival seemed a longshot.

But as luck would have it, a British neurosurgeon, normally stationed 90 minutes away, was at the Kandahar field hospital. He performed lifesaving surgery on Ritenour.

Days later, he was shipped back to Germany to be reunited with his wife and daughter.

Healing at home

Within a matter of weeks, Ritenour arrived at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where his parents met him and took him home to Hoffman Estates.

The family opted for private medical care, and his next destination would be the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Confined to a wheelchair and with a large scar running across his head, Ritenour couldn’t move the right side of his body except for his index finger. His wife had to help him with basic tasks like showering and shaving.

Surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital also inserted a titanium prosthesis in his head.

But among the harder things to deal with was that his daughter was frightened by his condition and all the hospital machinery.

“She’s young. She didn’t really understand. She was afraid of me at first,” he said. “But she kind of warmed to me over time. It’s been easy since then.”

In late November, he shipped off to the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where tests showed his short-term memory was intact, though his complex problem-solving skills had suffered.

In the months since, Ritenour has regained some mobility but not the partial hearing in one ear.

He now has three physical therapy sessions a week. The sessions leave him out of breath, but he said that’s more of a product of being out of shape after months of inactivity.

“I’m not going to get 100 percent movement back. I’ve pretty much been told that,” he said. “But considering where it was, that’s not too bad.”

He’s also walking again “in his own way,” his mother said, adding family lovingly calls him “Lurch” after the slow-walking butler from TV’s “The Addams Family.” …..

Go here for the rest of the story.