Every where a hundred million...

President Obama is asking every department to cut $100 million from its budget. An article over at The Heritage Foundation has an excellent graphic of what $100 million looks like next to the porkulus bill and the even more enormous federal budget for 2010.

I just wanted to give some more comparisons to show how minute these cuts really are:

$100 Million is to $3.69 trillion as the population of Wyoming is to the population of China.



$100 million is to $3.69 trillion as Earth is to the sun...

...if the sun were 342 times as big as it is now.

$100 million is to $3.69 trillion as a sockeye salmon is to a blue whale.

Laid end to end, $3.69 trillion in thousand dollar bills would circle the earth 2.34 times.

Laid end to end, $100 million in thousand dollar bills would run for 9.46 miles roughly the distance from the White House to Falls Church, Virginia.

If the government found $100 million to cut every day, it would take them over thirty years to pay off the current national debt.

The current share of the national debt for every man, woman and child in the United States is $36,558.

The $3.69 trillion 2010 budget is equal to $12,056 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

A $100 million dollar cut would equal 32 cents for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

To paraphrase Heritage, asking the government to cut $100 million from its budget is like asking a family bringing in $100,000 to cut out one cup of Starbuck's coffee. Not per day, per year.

I attended the Richmond Area Tax Day Tea Party this week. I expected to come home and find coverage of the events on the news, and was disappointed to see that only Fox even bothered to cover the actual events. Not surprised, just disappointed. We had a good turnout - about 3,000 people. Richmond is a pretty staid community, with many of us preferring quiet evenings at home. So 3,000 Richmonders attending anything outside in the rain on a Wednesday is pretty good.

In the Richmond Times Dispatch the following day, the event earned a blah article below the fold on the front page. At the end of that article they ran the following quote from Hari Sevugan, press secretary for the Democratic National Committee:

"While we support the right of Americans to petition their government, what's clear is that the overwhelming majority of folks support President [Barack] Obama's plan to get the economy back on track and provide 95 percent of working families with tax relief, because they are no longer going to accept 'more of the same' as an answer."

Mr. Sevugan, what we have received is exactly that: the same government trying to spend their way out of out problems, only a whole lot more.

I culled the following lines from the Drive-By media as well:

CNN - Though financial-industry and automotive bailouts were launched at the end of George W. Bush's presidency, many demonstrators aimed their words and signs at the Obama administration, criticizing it in part for the recently passed stimulus package.

People at my event were blaming Bush and Obama for their reckless spending.

CBS - Of course, the tea party that seems to have inspired the comment - the Boston Tea Party, that iconic 1773 protest in which Massachusetts colonists dumped tea into Boston Harbor - was tied largely to taxation without representation by the British government. That’s no longer an issue for most Americans.

We, the folks, are not being represented by our elected officials. They are their representing themselves and their re-election interests. Show me the congressman or senator that will say, "I believe personally that I should vote for this huge spending bill, but the people of my district/state believe differently than I do, so I voted against it." That guy is destined for greatness.

The NY Times, in the middle of trying to not go bankrupt and swatting away the scandal of printing a phony letter from the mayor of Paris, has lately turned to launching attacks at Obama in order to regain some of its stature. It's not surprising. From 2000 to 2008, they found good business in bashing Bush. Now that he and any Republican control of Congress is gone, the Times once again is choosing to promote its own agenda rather than focusing on being any kind of fair and balanced.

Oh, the Op/Ed page included the usual schlock from Mo Dowd, but there was another op/ed piece taking potshots at conservatism even though it was disguised as a criticism of Obama:

In what his aides billed as a major economic speech on Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama said that 2009 would “mark a clean break from a troubled past and set a new course for our nation.”

The “clean break” part of the statement seems an apt description for the spending part of Mr. Obama’s emerging, roughly $800 billion recovery package. He has outlined some $500 billion for bolstered unemployment benefits, aid to states and investment in the nation’s crumbling and outdated infrastructure.
But the tax-cut components of the package are hardly a clean break with the Bush years, presuming that is what Mr. Obama meant by the troubled past. To win the support of Republican lawmakers, the package is shaping up to include roughly $150 billion in business tax breaks, even though such breaks are widely recognized as packing very little bang for the buck when it comes to economic stimulus.

The business tax cut talked about here is the $3000 tax credit that a business will receive for spending at least $50,000 to hire a new employee. The writer is correct here. That, coupled with the tax breaks that businesses will undoubtedly receive for green efforts, will have little bang, since businesses will not spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to receive a few measly thousands of dollars in tax breaks.

The big thing that I took from that section, though? "Wow, they are comparing Obama to Bush! The Messiah being likened to the anti-christ in the Op/ed page of the NY Slime!"

The article has one more attack on tax cuts, though:

The proposed tax break — up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families — makes good sense for low- and middle-income Americans, because the money is likely to be spent quickly, thus boosting demand in a contracting economy. But higher up the income ladder — a couple making $200,000 a year is in the top 9 percent of households — tax cuts are likelier to be saved than spent, providing relatively little stimulus.

Tax breaks for 138 million taxpayers in the amount of $500 is $69 billion. Nine percent of that is $6.2 billion. That means that the plan will put over $63 billion back in the pockets of the american people who make less than $200,000 a year. So sinking $700 billion into banks, the auto industry, and credit card companies is okay. Five hundred billion spent on roads is okay. But try to give the people $69 billion of their own money and that is where the Times draws the line.

BusinessWeek, on December 8, named Paul Nawrocki, aka the Sandwich Board Sign Man, the "Face of the Unemployed". In case you are new here, I called that one on December 6. Here is what I said:

"This guy is the anti-Joe the Plumber. His name is Paul Nawrocki, the Sandwich Board Man, and he is the face of Unemployed America."

And here is BusinessWeek on December 8th:

"I couldn’t help feeling a proprietorial sense of pride when BusinessWeek selected Nawrocki to illustrate its latest cover story, “Is the Jobs Panic Justified?” You can see a stark black-and-white photo of Nawrocki here. He has become the face of the unemployed."

Okay, so with that and my Black Friday call, I'm 2-2. Not bad for an amateur.

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shoppers lured by money-saving deals filled U.S. stores on Friday, but the annual kick-off to holiday shopping appeared weaker this year as worries about a deep recession kept purchases down.


Just to rebuke the drive by media, which has been saying that Black Friday sales were down today, I thought that I would tell you my experience.

I work at Wal-Mart, and every year for Black Friday I go out and help in Electronics. I work in the office, but my background is in Electronics. We beat our last year sales by 11 am. We sold out of all the televisions that were in the ad for the first time ever. Usually we have a couple dozen left over. After the sale merchandise was gone, the public just kept buying. By the time I got off work at 1:00, most of the regular merchandise televisions had also been sold. One couple bought two 32" Sharp televisions at $498 each, a Philips 19" at $298, and would have bought a $798 37" Sharp television as well if it were in stock.

You would think that an order like that would have gone on the credit card, but to my surprise, when we rang them up they processed the transaction as a debit, so they were actually spending real money.

Why did we do so well? Number one, NO UNION!! Number two, LOW PRICES!! Number three, an executive board that is smart enough to maintain about $7 billion in liquid assets so that credit is not a problem. If you noticed, Wal-Mart also had the foresight to pretty much revamp their business model a few months before the financial crisis really hit. Their message of "Save Money, Live Better" was rolled out at the perfect time to actually capitalize on the situation. (Oh great!! Now we sound like Rahm Emanuel!) I can't believe the company has done as well as it has considering the Secretary of 3am Phone Calls used to sit on the board.

See also:

More Black Friday News
So, who was right about Black Friday?