Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

Great comment by “venividivici” at my “‘Going Galt’ Got Going Last Summer” PJM column — “What I’ve noticed in the whole debate about ‘going Galt’ in the real world, as opposed to in Rand’s novel, is that the left seems to assume that ‘going Galt’ is some sort of binary decision, wherein one decides to work or not to work. It’s much more complex than that, as your analysis of the drop in tax revenues shows. Economic growth happens at the margins in a modern economy and in that context “going Galt” for a high earner can literally mean something as simple as billing five less hours a week or taking half a day off on Fridays. Of course the core of the economy remains, but even those small changes kill any growth.” Exactly. Well if they don’t understand the effect of changing marginal tax rates, how do you expect them to recognize the impact of other decisions at the margins? I also notice that the lefties who thought the previous column was the worst ever or some such nonsense aren’t laughing any more — and I know they’re paying attention.

Related — Rose commented here last week that “going Galt” is very relevant to many moms’ decisions to exit the workforce (“Many working moms are finding that their added income becomes a detriment after taxes and as such, it no longer pays to work…so they are staying home”). A couple of PJM column commenters (here and here) reinforce that point. There are lots of good reasons why a parent should consider staying home with younger kids, but punitive taxation stifling a person’s initiative shouldn’t be one of them.

Expect the leftist reaction to this to be muted, and thus hypocritical (HT Instapundit) — “The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule long-standing law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant’s lawyer is present, another stark example of the White House seeking to limit rather than expand rights” (Wow, the AP wrote this; is the love affair hitting a speed bump?). I happen to believe that if someone, uncoerced in any way, wants to own up to having committed a crime, they should a) be allowed to do so in an open-ended, not-directed statement (otherwise, you’re stifling THEIR right to be heard, right?), and b) whatever they say should be allowed to stand as admissible evidence. But the exact opposite is an article of faith with the trial bar and leftist “civil rights” advocates. There will be perfunctory whining about what Obama and Holder are doing, but that’s it. (Also: See Comment 1 for a clarifier.)

More evidence that April sales at the bailed-out auto companies are horrid — First, “U.S. Said to Seek a Chrysler Plan for Bankruptcy.” I may be wrong, but I thought the plan all along was for a Chrysler-Fiat deal to be done expressly to avoid a Chrysler bankruptcy filing. Second, “GM reportedly to close plants for up to 9 weeks.” The closures will start less than three weeks from now. (Update: It involves 13 of the company’s U.S. plants.) Both stories are telltale signs of rapidly decaying situations. It would appear that no one at Team Obama has considered the possibility that half the American people, if not more, won’t buy a car from a de facto nationalized company. Sadly, it looks like the administration is indeed going to protect UAW members’ pensions and retiree health care benefits to an extent that goes far beyond what is normally done at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. An ultimate price tag to taxpayers of $100 billion or more grows more likely.

Nancy Pelosi, waterboarding enabler. She denies it. But she was briefed, and “raised no substantial objections.” This is stunning hypocrisy, even for her. Of course, President ‘Prompter and Eric Holder will be sure to prosecute her as an accessory to “torture” along with Bush administration lawyers who wrote the rules (/sarc).

Meanwhile, in an extraordinarily resourceful use of journalists’ precious time, CBS’s ‘Early Show’ hosts evaluated the realism of manufactured paper dolls of President Obama and the First Lady. I’m not kidding.

In addition to his abuse of the word “exploration” and his false claim that he has “often said” that he supports additional drilling for oil and natural gas within the U.S. and off its shores, President ‘Prompter Barack Obama misstated the timing of his tale of a pioneering oil man by a “only” a century (picture at right is from “The Story of Oil in Pennsylvania“).

Beyond that, his fond recounting of the history of Pennsylvania’s first meaningful oil discovery ignores the likelihood that if the regulatory regime in place today had been around at the time, not a single drop of oil might have made it to any kind of marketplace.

Here, from a transcript of his speech Wednesday in Newton, Iowa, is Obama’s recitation of the story of Edwin Drake (bolds are mine):

Think about it: Roughly a century and a half ago, in the late 1950s, the Seneca Oil Co. hired an unemployed train conductor named Edwin Drake to investigate the oil springs of Titusville, Pa. Around this time, oil was literally bubbling up from the ground — but nobody knew what to do with it. It had limited economic value, and often all it did was ruin crops or pollute drinking water.

Now, people were starting to refine oil for use as fuel. Collecting oil remained time-consuming, though, and it was back- breaking, and it was costly. It wasn’t efficient, as workers harvested what they could find in the shallow ground. They had to literally scoop it up.

But Edwin Drake had a plan. He purchased a steam engine and he built a derrick and he began to drill.

And months passed. And progress was slow. The team managed to drill into the bedrock just a few feet each day — each day. And crowds gathered and they mocked Mr. Drake. They thought him and the other diggers were foolish.

The well that they were digging even earned the nickname, “Drake’s Folly.” But Drake wouldn’t give up. And he had an advantage: total desperation. It had to work. And then, one day, it finally did.

One morning, the team returned to the creek to see crude oil rising up from beneath the surface. And soon, Drake’s well was producing what was then an astonishing amount of oil, perhaps 10, 20 barrels every day.

And then speculators followed and they built similar rigs, as far as the eye could see. In the next decade, the area would produce tens of millions of barrels of oil.

And as the industry grew, so did the ingenuity of those who sought to profit from it, as competitors developed new techniques to drill and transport oil to drive down costs and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Now, our history is filled with such stories, stories of daring talent, of dedication to an idea even when the odds were great, of the unshakable belief that, in America, all things are possible.

Now of course, 1-1/2 centuries ago was the late 1850s, not 1950s. But I haven’t seen the establishment media call any attention to Obama’s latest teleprompter-driven error (someone who was thinking while speaking instead of simply reading from a script might have caught the error and corrected it on the fly), and I don’t expect them to.

But more importantly, if the regulatory regime built over the past 75-plus years had been around at the time, it would probably have prevented Mr. Drake from drilling in the first place. The EPA would have found a few puddles in the area, called them untouchable “navigable waters,” and prohibited any kind of development in a many square-mile area.

If he had somehow been allowed to continue, safety inspectors would have forced Drake to buy all kinds of safety equipment for the workers who were scooping up oil in shallow ground, and subjected him to harassing OSHA inspections.

Environmental and NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) purists would have forced him though noise-reduction regulations to use slower and less efficient drilling methods.

When the oil started bubbling up, the Justice Department, at EPA’s prodding, would have prosecuted Drake for ruining crops and polluting drinking water, and class-action lawyers would have sued him on behalf of all farmers and residents in the path of the related aquifer.

If they had by some miracle allowed him to continue, Congress and the Pennsylvania legislature would have demanded royalties, income and property taxes, forcing Drake to charge at least twice as much to make a profit, thereby slowing the acceptance of oil as a viable fuel for decades, and similarly holding back the country’s advancement into the Industrial Age.

Other readers can probably come up with other indignities Mr. Drake would have had to endure. Suffice it to say that it would not have been pretty. Obama’s contemporaries would more than likely have made Edwin Drake’s efforts impossible.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Straight from UPI’s transcript of Barack Obama’s Earth Day remarks in Newton, Iowa yesterday — in the midst of flights that reportedly expended 9,000 gallons of jet fuel — here is the President’s take on this country’s oil dependency (bold is mine

Twenty percent of what we spend on imports is the price of our oil imports. ….. It’s the cost we’ve known ever since the gas shortages of the 1970s.

And yet for more than 30 years, too little has been done about it. There’s a lot of talk of action when oil prices skyrocket like they did last summer, and everybody says we’ve got to do something about energy independence. But then it slips from the radar when oil prices start falling like they have recently. So we shift from shock to indifference, time and again, year after year.

We can’t afford that approach anymore, not when the costs for our economy, for our country and for our planet is so high.

So on this Earth Day, it is time for us to lay a new foundation for economic growth by beginning a new era of energy exploration in America.

Gosh, that sounds positively capitalist. You would think the guy is finally going to let the oil companies do what they do best.

Not a chance. Here, from later in the speech, is (I think, because he never used any variation of “explore” anywhere else in the speech) how President ‘Prompter defines “exploration” (bolds are mine):

As I’ve often said, in the short term, as we transition to renewable energy, we can and should increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas. We’re not going to transform our economy overnight. We still need more oil; we still need more gas. If we’ve got some here in the United States that we can use, we should find it, and do so in a environmentally sustainable way.

“If” we’ve got some? There’s literally trillions of dollars worth of oil and natural gas within US borders and off US shores — and hundreds of billion of dollars in royalties the cash-starved government could be collecting.

“If” we can use it? Words fail.

The idea that Obama “has often said” that we should increase exploration and production is a flat-out falsehood.

A Google News Archive search between April 1, 2007 and November 6, 2008 on “Obama opposes drilling” (in quotes) came back with 13 hits supported by over 900 related items. The dates of the results ranged from June 17, 2008 to November 4, 2008. The relevant phrases include these:

• “Obama opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska”
• “Obama opposes drilling in US coastal waters”
• “Barack Obama opposes drilling on and offshore to reduce gas and oil prices”
• “Mr. Obama opposes drilling. Opposes nuclear. Opposes coal. He and Harry Reid believe wind, solar and ethanol are the answers”
• “Like McCain, Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama opposes drilling in the ANWR, but he also reportedly supports maintaining the offshore moratorium”
• “Obama opposes drilling in US coastal waters, and says allowing exploration now wouldn’t affect gasoline prices for at least five years”
• “Barack Obama opposes drilling for oil, mining for coal, building nuclear power plants. If he’s elected president, gas prices will rise to $5 a gallon ….”
• “Third, Obama opposes drilling for oil in and around America itself.”
• “Obama opposes drilling off the US coasts, saying it won’t do anything to change the price or availability of oil for more than 10 years, and maybe more ….”

What was that about “As I’ve often said”?

The best that might be said is that Obama might have meekly flip-flopped last summer to appear open to the idea of increased exploration. But it was meaningless political posturing that, despite his speech Wednesday, has no apparent carryforward value. The meaningless of the summer flip-flop, to the extent that it occurred, is obvious, because at the same time Obama was championing a ridiculous windfall-profits tax on energy companies that, if ever enacted, would likely bring any thoughts of further domestic exploration and production to a screeching halt.

As usual, the establishment media is not challenging Obama’s ridiculous claim. In fact, right on cue, the Associated Press even risibly used the word “exploration” its story headline:

One thing is for sure: When anyone explores for reliable truth in AP dispatches, they all too often find a dry hole.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Of all the things for CNN to pick as an e-mail alert topic, AutoNation’s profitable first-quarter results seemed quite an odd selection. But there it was:

It appears that CNN wanted harried readers who wouldn’t dig deeper to think that the “auto industry” as a whole is recovering, or at least stabilizing, and that maybe there’s even a way out for General Motors and Chrysler that doesn’t involve a real bankruptcy.

Memo to CNN: Nice try, no sale. A desktop review of AutoNation’s situation indicates that it is holding its own precisely because is relatively less dependent on Detroit’s output than dealers as a whole, and less dependent domestically on Government, er, General Motors and Chrysler than it is on Ford.

CNN’s actual report on AutoNation’s results by Peter Valdes-Dapena told us how much sales declined in each of the company’s major segments, but failed to tell us how important each segment is:

AutoNation, the country’s largest car dealer chain, posted a profit for the first quarter of 2009 despite a 43% decline in new vehicle sales, and said it expects to see improved sales in the second half of the year.

Shares of AutoNation rose 7% in Thursday trading.

“We are very pleased with the performance of AutoNation (AN, Fortune 500) as we remained solidly profitable during the first quarter,” Autonation CEO Mike Jackson in a company statement.

….. Sales for the industry overall declined by about 46% compared to the same period last year, according to figures cited by AutoNation.

AutoNation’s income from domestic vehicle sales declined 47% in the first quarter compared to last year. Import vehicle sales declined 45% and premium luxury car sales declined 31%.

Auto dealers have been hit hard by declines in auto sales driven by a poor economy and tight credit. Sales of domestic vehicles, particularly those of General Motors and Chrysler, have been effected by concerns over the automakers business prospects.

Moving beyond Valdes-Dapena’s obvious writing errors (“income” and “sales” aren’t the same thing, and the correct verb in the final sentence should have been “affected”), the omission of the segment information presents an incomplete picture.

CNN’s failure to report this information has nothing to do its lack of availability. Today’s press release from AutoNation includes lots of relevant data. Let’s start with this (bolds are mine):

AutoNation has three operating segments: Domestic, Import, and Premium Luxury. The Domestic segment is comprised of stores that sell vehicles manufactured by General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler; the Import segment is comprised of stores that sell vehicles manufactured primarily by Toyota, Honda, and Nissan; and the Premium Luxury segment is comprised of stores that sell vehicles manufactured primarily by Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus.

This is important: The Domestic Segment includes all of GM, Ford, and Chrysler. Vehicles in the other two segments are entirely manufactured by foreign-based companies.

With that in mind, here were the income (i.e., profit) results in each segment during the first quarter, also in the press release:

Domestic – Domestic segment income for the first quarter of 2009 was $15 million compared to year-ago segment income of $38 million. First quarter Domestic retail new vehicle unit sales declined 47%.

Import – Import segment income for the first quarter of 2009 was $30 million compared to year-ago segment income of $56 million. First quarter Import retail new vehicle unit sales declined 45%.

Premium Luxury – Premium Luxury segment income for the first quarter of 2009 was $41 million compared to year-ago segment income of $51 million. First quarter Premium Luxury retail new vehicle unit sales declined 31%.

Thus, over 80% of the company’s quarterly segment income ([$41+$30] divided by [$41+$30+$15]) came from the non-Domestic segments.

As to unit sales, it’s obvious that AutoNation’s product mix was more heavily weighted to Import and Premium Luxury Vehicles than the market as a whole. Beyond that, in the Domestic segment, even though Ford is still a semi-distant runner-up to GM alone nationwide, AutoNation sold almost as many Ford vehicles as GM and Chrysler combined (again, all in the press release):

Sorry, CNN and Mr. Valdes-Dapena. You can’t push generalized mush into my e-mail box and expect to get away with it. AutoNation is well-positioned because:

• It relies more heavily on non-Detroit vehicles.
• The Detroit company it disproportionately depends  on the most compared to the market as a whole “just happens” to be the one that isn’t going through de facto nationalization.

Kindly drive those two points into your heads, plus this: AutoNation will, from all appearances, be among the survivors.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here. Instant thanks to Instapundit for linking to it.

I will post it here at BizzyBlog Saturday morning (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

The column expands on what I had to say in the latter portions of last week’s column, and explains how and why the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy that began in June of last year has caused tax collections to plummet to an extent that is far beyond what one would expect based on the not-annualized 1.74% contraction in the economy that occurred during 2008′s second half.

A reappearance of last week’s howls of outrage from Leftists allergic to fact-based presentations is likely.

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UPDATE: Totally related, from Rich Karlgaard at PJM — “Scared CEOs Hamper Economic Recovery.” Well of course:

Investors sense that the economy is at a crossroads. A political crossroads.

Here is what I mean. The U.S. economy has turned the corner. Not dramatically, but enough to notice that things are better than they were six weeks ago. Where do we go from here? If the president and Congress and regulators would just leave matters alone–go on a long vacation, say–the economy would show positive growth by the second half of this year. Call me nuts, but I think a second-quarter positive surprise would be possible.

….. Let me say this again. The yield curve predicts growth. Check. Consumer sentiment is ticking up. Check. But CEO confidence is lousy, and CEOs are (not) spending accordingly. Whoops. This begs the question: Why are CEOs in such a low mood?

….. This is (because of) the risk of Obama’s willingness to “do what it takes.” The words sound positive and action-oriented. But in practice, “do what it takes” really means “anything can happen.” Tearing up of legal contracts … that can happen. Limits to salary and travel … that can happen. Bullying by the Environmental Protection Agency … that can happen. Nationalization of General Motors and Citigroup … that can happen. Nobody knows for sure. Government is sorting it out, day by day.

The yield curve predicts good news. Consumers are bored with the recession and are ready to come back. But CEOs are nervous about deploying capital, and for good reason.

Thus the U.S. economy is not sharply turning the corner toward recovery, as it should be doing at this point in the cycle. It is turning, but very tentatively. That’s why the recovery will be modest, lumpy and disappointing.

Instapundit’s reax: “Or is it (CEOs’ caution) just a case of going ‘John Galt?’”

I’d say a lot are on the fence, and it wouldn’t take a lot to push them to the Galt side.

Also, a hospital CEO e-mailed Instapundit, saying that “I am doing exactly what he (Karlgaard) says here – hunkering down before the government take over of health care hits.”

By the way, health care was the jobs-adding star of the mid-2000s. What do you think it will be if P-O-R succeed in their attempt at de facto nationalization of health care?

UPDATE 2: Even if not exhibiting Galt-like behavior, the “hunkering down” just described, while wondering what the government is going to do to you and your business, indisputably holds back and/or mitigates a recovery.

I get a daily e-mail from SmartMoney.com, usually within an hour or two after the stock markets’ closing bell.

While its descriptions of daily trading have usually been in sync with reality, in two of the past three days days they have whitewashed pretty dour news.

Here’s how Monday’s capsule of the markets’ results read:

You might be surprised to learn how big Smart Money thought a mere “dip” was:

I’d say falling within a whisker of 2% below 8000 is more than just a mere “dip.” It was more accurately described in this e-mail I received from CNN, of all places, just after the close:

Any thoughts that Smart Money’s poor reporting might have been a one-off situation were dispelled when Wednesday’s e-mail arrived:

The problem is, the “fizzle” did far more than “erase all gains.” It turned the gains into an over 1% loss on the Dow:

What gives here?

This bears watching. While the financial press has exhibited its fair share of anti-capitalist bias over the years, it has more often than not played the daily reports from the floors of the exchanges pretty straight. If that changes significantly and consistently, New Media audits of what really happened each day in the markets may be in order.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Almost a year ago, I was posting on what I called the “Supply-Side Stunner” (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog).

In April 2008, the US Treasury collected an all-time record $407.3 billion ($403.75 billion after subtracting the first $3.35 billion wave of stimulus checks, which really should have been treated as outlays, that went out just before month-end). It was an indication that, as I said at the time, “many (entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and investors) are thinking, in the face of relentless media harping to the contrary, that 2008 will be at least as profitable (as 2007).”

This year, it’s shaping up to be the “Bailout Year Bummer.” Uncle Sam’s fiscal year began on October 1 of last year, mere days before Congress passed the legislation that has come to be known as TARP, and a bit more than three months after Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid promised to starve the economy of energy and punitively tax its highest producers, creating what I have since called the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy.

Through March, federal receipts were running 14% behind the previous year. Each month during the fiscal year has trailed the previous year, and degree of the difference has steadily increased.

Now look at what we’re facing in April:

My estimate of April’s final result is almost 40% lower than April 2008, and further ratchets down the trend of collections decay that goes back to last summer. The receipts shortfall is far more than one would expect from an economy that shrank only 1.74% in the final half of last year (without annualization, the economy shrank 0.125% in the third quarter, and 1.614% in the fourth). It is also probably far greater than the White House and the Congressional Budget Office are anticipating.

Here is where things stand as of the April 21 Daily Treasury Statement, which was just released at 4:00 p.m. today, and how it compares to April 22 of last year (a Tuesday-to-Tuesday comparison during a month is more meaningful in the context of how cash comes in within different categories):

It would appear that getting to $250 billion by month-end might be a stretch.

So when does the receipts crater become news?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

A grisly late 2007 quadruple-murder case in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville has apparently been solved with the arrest of Santiago Moreno.

Moreno apparently brutally stabbed his four other apartment mates with near-surgical precision.

It is horrible that these men died. It is great news that the monster who did it has apparently been caught.

What is hard to understand is why after nearly 1-1/2 years, it’s finally okay to use a certain “I-word” to describe the victims’ immigration status that was almost never used when the original stories broke:

• Three different stories at WLW-T Channel 5′s news site in December 2007 (Dec. 17; Dec. 19; Dec. 28) don’t use the word.
• A January 11, 2008 report from Cox News (“Immigrants came to Ohio to support families”) from the victims’ home city of El Zacaton, Mexico, used the politically correct alternative term “undocumented workers” twice, but not in direct reference to the victims.
• Cincinnati Enquirer stories I found from December 21 and December 28, 2007, didn’t use the word or its alternative.
• In a December 21, 2007 Associated Press story (“Robbery seen as slayings’ motive”), E. Eduardo Castillo called them “undocumented immigrants” in his second paragraph.

This makes it very odd indeed that in his story this morning about Moreno’s arrest, the AP’s Terry Kinney broke out the “I-word,” and quickly to boot (bold is mine):

A man was in custody in Mexico on Wednesday in the December 2007 killings of four Mexican construction workers who were beaten and methodically stabbed in the heart at the Ohio apartment they shared, the FBI said.

FBI spokesman Mike Brooks identified the suspect as Santiago Moreno, 34, a Mexican citizen who was arrested Monday. Exactly where in Mexico he was arrested was not immediately available.

The bodies of the four illegal immigrants he is accused of killing were found in their apartment in suburban Sharonville after they had not reported to work for several days.

Hmm. Why did these men only become “illegal” once their murders had been solved?

Separately, the case was used by subtle and not-so-subtle race-baiters as an opportunity to beat up on the larger community, as these paragraphs from the December 21, 2007 Enquirer story illustrate:

An organization of immigrants in Southwest Ohio on Thursday expressed its concern and sadness over the homicides.

“We are saddened, worried and disturbed by these murders,” said Sylvia Castellanos, a representative of Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Dignity.

“It is with much suffering that we leave our families and come to the United States looking for a better future,” said Castellanos. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the families of these men. The immigrant community at large is very concerned. There is both fear and sadness.”

Sister Alice Gerdeman of Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center noted how no one missed the men.

“This tragic act of violence is a call to the entire community to evaluate its attitude toward immigrants. How sad it is that people can be dead for days and no one misses them.”

Those concerns were also echoed by the Rev. Paula Jackson of the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour in Mount Auburn.

“These murders touch all of us, whether we are immigrants or were born in this country. No one is safe or secure in a society until we all are, especially those who are most vulnerable. Besides praying for the families who are bearing such an unthinkable loss, we must work to ensure that all lives are valued, regardless of race, language or immigration status.”

Strangely, that Enquirer article, appearing on the same day as Castillo’s AP report flagged robbery as the probable motive, claimed that robbery was “an unlikely motive.”

Today’s Enquirer report by Eileen Kelley says that the murders “sent fear through the Latino community and put the local Police Department and Mexican consulate into overdrive.” She also broke the “I-word” ice, reporting that during the investigation, the details of which had to be kept from the public, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters had to put up with accusations that “the crimes were not important because the men were Mexican and they were illegal.”

With Moreno’s arrest, I’m sure that Ms. Castellanos, Sister Gerdeman, the Rev. Jackson, and the Mexican consulate will publicly congratulate Deters for his time-consuming persistence (“Deters gave a binder, about the size of Greater Cincinnati’s Yellow and White Pages combined, to Mexican authorities”), and express their regret for implying that the larger community’s supposed hostility towards the Hispanic community or illegal immigrants had anything to do with these horrible deaths.

Yeah, right.

P.S. Do you think anyone will ever get around to asking officials at ABC Precision Masonry, where the men worked, a couple of them apparently for two or more years, how they either got onto the payroll, or were able to be sent 1099s?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

Perils of De Facto Nationalization, from Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal — “He (Obama) wants Chrysler’s secured lenders to give up their right to nearly full recovery in a bankruptcy in return for 15 cents on the dollar. They’d be crazy to do so, of course, except that these banks also happen to be beholden to the administration for TARP money.” So there’s at least one explanation for why the administration doesn’t want to to give TARP money back. The GM-Chrysler mess looks more and more like an example of Mussolini’s self-contradicting definition of “fascism” in action — “The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone.” Substitute “shareholders” for “individual” in Mussolini’s encyclopedia entry, and you’re basically there. In GM’s and Chrysler’s case, I believe that April’s sales results are likely to show that everyone is fighting over table scraps. If April was looking up compared to previous months, I think that news would have leaked by now.

This small portion of a larger spreadsheet from the Congressional Budget Office, which shows the White House’s and CBO’s fiscal 2009 deficit estimates, is worth re-presenting –

POR Economy architects Pelosi, Obama, and Reid, who hijacked economic expectations and crushed them beginning in June of last year, mostly own this. I’m still looking for their promise to make sure that fiscal 2009′s deficit would be $1.667 trillion, $1.845 trillion, or almost $2 trillion (where I’m estimating it will all end) in any of their statements during last year’s election campaigns. Funny, I’m not finding anything. If there really is nothing, it deligitimizes any claim that what the administration is doing is carrying out the voters’ wishes.

While on the topic, since it’s Earth Day, I thought it would be a good idea to show an earthly development that is really unsustainable –

I’m still looking for Team Obama’s promise to run deficits averaging almost a trillion dollars a year as far as the eye can see during last year’s presidential campaign. Funny, I’m not finding anything. If there really is nothing, it deligitimizes any claim that what the administration is doing is carrying out the voters’ wishes.

Andrea Tantaros has the same-sex “marriage” question of the day — “Why is it acceptable for Obama and Biden to (oppose it) but not a conservative female?” Answer: The elite know that Obama and Biden, to the extent they have made such statements, don’t really mean it.

Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano told Larry King this past weekend that “crossing the border is not crime per se.” She is, of course, wrong (HT Michelle Malkin). Glenn Reynolds’s sardonic line that “the country is in the very best of hands” comes to mind.

Here’s a graph:

Here’s a chart:

And finally, here’s a graphic appropriate to the circumstances for the math-challenged:

(Sources: Monthly Treasury Statements – March 2009 and March 2008; yesterday’s related post)

___________________________________________

UPDATE: dscott asks and receives — I did this as part of the background work for the Pajamas Media column I just submitted, so it’s relatively light on the formatting (sources: Monthly Treasury Statements – September 2003, September 2001):

The quick answer to dscott’s question is that the receipt drops during the early 2000s were nothing compared to the past two months — not to mention what’s probably coming. May and June 2002′s combined 46.8% drop comes closest, but March and April 2008 are on track to be a combined 66.5%. Even under the most optimistic $280 billion collections scenario, the combined two-month total is still a combined 59%.

Gosh, I wonder why all this is happening?

UPDATE 2: The individual non-withheld numbers in the April 20 Daily Treasury Statement just released added up to $10.392 billion ($9.838 + $0.584). Ah, but that was a Monday, meaning it was two days’ worth of mail. The meaningful comparative would be Monday, April 21, 2008, when a combined 13.817 billion ($13.772 + $0.45), or 33% more, poured in.

In the next eight days, non-withheld receipts are going to have to average over $10 billion a day to reach my estimate of a $130 billion total at the end of the month. That is growing doubtful now, as is even reaching my estimate of $250 billion in total collections after refunds by the end of the month.

…. think again:

(Sources: April 17, 2009; April 30, 2008; April 17, 2008)

April thus far has been nothing short of horrible.

Based on how the items above behaved last year, how slow collections have been this year, and the fact that only 10 9 business days remain in the month (13 days are gone), you’d have to be a wild-eyed optimist to think that Uncle Sam will collect $280 billion by month’s end. My guess is that it will be closer to $250 billion (my guesses by line item: $135 + $26 + $130 + $10 – $90 + $30 in all other receipts = $251), and it could conceivably be at lot less than that. I’m not even sure if sub-$220 bil is out of the question.

Raise your hand if you think the Congressional Budget Office expects a $120 billion-plus shortfall in April compared to last year, let alone a possible $150 billion or worse decline.

Answer: No way –The top numbers represent the White House’s estimates, and the bottom is CBO’s (obtained at the “Budget Projections” link at this page):

If April somehow comes in at the (unlikely) high end of $280 billion, year-to-date receipts will be $1.27 trillion. To reach CBO’s full-year collection estimate, Uncle Sam will have to collect about $890 billion — or $178 billion a month. At $212 billion, average monthly collections in the last five months of fiscal 2008 (ignoring the “negative receipt” treatment of the stimulus checks) were barely half of April’s. For the CBO to hit its $178 billion average collections target for May – September 2009, receipts are going to have to average about 63% of April’s total. That would appear unlikely.

April receipts have to be way behind what CBO projected based on its static economic assumptions.

I wonder why?

$100 million. He thinks he’s serious.

But it is indeed “comically small.”

More tax dollars were spent while President ‘Prompter, his spokesman, and his speechwriters were talking about it and announcing it than the amount of savings promised. It would have been more effective to just “x” out any one of God knows how many stimulus package line items worth that amount or more.

Through six months, the federal government spent $1.947 trillion, or about $10.7 billion each and every calendar day. In a 10-hour day (seven days a week), that’s $1.07 billion per hour, or $107 million every six minutes. President ‘Prompter and apparatchiks spent far more than 6 person-minutes drafting the statement, loading it in the teleprompter (if applicable), delivering it, and taking questions about it.

This redefines fiddling while Rome burns.

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UPDATE: Context — Obama announced last week that he was ordering the government to buy 17,000-plus US-made cars ahead of schedule to help the auto companies to make GM’s and Chrysler’s business situations look better than they really are. The $285 million bill for that buying (and parking?) decision is almost three times what Obama’s cabinet is suposedly “saving.”