Aviation Industry Assails Obama

[SubGod22]

Aviation Industry Assails Obama for 'Cynical' Call to End Corporate Jet Tax Break

General aviation employs 1.2 million Americans and generates $150 billion a year in revenue. President Obama praises it as one of America's industries that still maintains an advantage over other countries' manufacturers.

So it disappointed several in the aviation industry when the president on Wednesday held up an obscure tax break for corporate jet owners as an example of why Congress should close tax loopholes as part of any deficit reduction deal.

"While such talk may appear to some as good politics, the reality is that it hurts one of the leading manufacturing and exporting industries in the United States," wrote the General Aviation Manufacturers Association and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in a letter sent to the president.

In a lengthy press conference, Obama repeatedly cast the debate over the deficit as a choice between ending tax breaks for jet owners and jeopardizing children's education and safety.

Repealing such a tax break would add up to just $3 billion over 10 years, a tiny step toward the $4 trillion over 10 years that Obama and others are calling for in deficit reduction.

The kind of tax break Obama criticized was actually granted to corporate jet owners in the Democrats' stimulus package in early 2009. That provision let companies take bigger deductions earlier for depreciation.

Several organizations lambasted the president for his rhetoric.

"The president has inexplicably chosen to vilify and mischaracterize business aviation -- an industry that is critical for citizens, companies and communities across the U.S., and one that can play a central role in the economic recovery he says he wants to promote," National Business Aviation Association President Ed Bolen said in a statement.

He called on Congress to reject the call, describing the current tax structure for jet owners as a "proven formula for incentivizing the purchase of American products."

"Equally alarming, the president's disparaging remarks reflect a total lack of understanding -- or a complete disregard -- for general aviation in the U.S.," Bolen said, describing his proposal as "bad policy and cynical politics."

Ironically, Obama praised the U.S. aviation industry just minutes after describing its tax treatment as an example of what is wrong with the tax code.

"Obviously, the airplane industry is an area where we still have a huge advantage. I want to make sure that we keep it," Obama said, as he called on Boeing, union workers and the National Labor Relations Board to resolve a contentious dispute that's dragged on for weeks.

The president also plans to fly in the country's most famous personal jet -- Air Force One -- to get to Democratic National Committee fundraisers in Philadelphia Thursday night.

In their letter, the aviation manufacturers and machinists and aerospace workers groups warned that "the rhetoric" could cause economic hardship. They noted that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently visited the aviation industry hub of Wichita, Kansas, and lauded the industry's work.

[RoyalShock]

Two things about Obama and the Dems are made abundantly clear from this.

1. Class-warfare is alive and well.

2. Some jobs (like overseas electronics manufacturers who supposedly get a boost when we get "stimulus checks" from the feds) are more important to them than others (like U.S. aviation).

And I thought Democrats loved the unions? Sure doesn't sound like it.

[WuDrWu]

I'd like to spend a little time going over the President's speech yesterday when we have some time.


That was one of the worst cases of fear mongering I've ever seen from a person anywhere near his position.


I was embarrassed for the President yesterday.

[SubGod22]

Not related to the title, but related to the speech that was given...

MSNBC Suspends Analyst Mark Halperin for Calling President Obama a Name

An off-color remark about President Barack Obama on "Morning Joe" has led to the suspension of politician analyst Mark Halperin.

"I thought he was a dick yesterday," Halperin said Thursday during a discussion about Obama's news conference on Wednesday.

Halperin prefaced his remark by asking, "Are we on the seven-second delay?"

I find it funny that someone at NBC would actually call the president a name. Although if we dig, I bet Mathews has said worse about conservatives and/or Republicans. But that guys so crazy nobody takes him seriously. Maybe this Halperin cat has an actual decent reputation?

[Maggie]

This pretty much sums up my feelings:

“Call me naïve,” President Obama told reporters during his press conference yesterday, “but my expectation is that leaders are going to lead.”

I’m not sure “naïve” is right, but terms like “frivolous” and “vain” did come to mind again and again throughout the press conference. The President came before reporters without any news to make. He seemed to want to vent a kind of unfocused rage at Congress for something — criticizing congressional leaders at various points for taking too many breaks, for failing to take up patent reforms and free trade legislation, and generally ignoring the fiscal crisis (all of which, we can only assume, were criticisms of Democratic leaders). And when he turned to Republicans, he argued that they were not making serious proposals in the debt-limit talks. They were failing to lead, he said repeatedly.

It all had the feel of a childish tantrum by a person who desperately wishes he were living in a different reality — one in which he is the heroic man of action and his opponents are irresponsible and weak. But the fact is, the president and congressional Democrats have so far utterly failed to offer any path out of our fiscal problems — problems that they have greatly exacerbated. The president proposed a budget in February that would have increased the deficit, and then he retracted it in April and proposed nothing in particular in its place. Senate Democrats have not proposed a budget in two years; they now suggest they finally have one, though apparently it won’t really be brought to a vote. Republicans, meanwhile, have proposed a specific path out of our fiscal mess — averting a debt crisis and setting the budget on a course toward balance through discretionary cuts, budget-process reforms, and gradual but significant entitlement reforms. Rather than negotiate over that budget, the president has chosen to play the demagogue, simultaneously insisting that the budget offers nothing and that it goes too far in cutting government services (medical research, food inspectors, and the weather service are apparently in particular danger, he said yesterday, providing a kind of Salvador Dali map of postmodern lifestyle liberalism).

Now, having added about $5 trillion to the national debt since taking office (nearly doubling the debt), the president wants permission to add another $2 trillion, and he’s upset that rather than being given that permission together with a set of class-warfare tax hikes he is being asked to agree to some spending, budget, and entitlement reforms in return for that permission. Entitlements — the chief drivers of the even greater explosion of debt now coming at us — appear to be off the table altogether as far as he’s concerned. And while the president insists that failing to meet the August 2 debt-limit deadline would unleash a train of calamities not seen since the Book of Job, he seems to be willing to risk them all in order to enact a set of tax increases that would yield largely trivial sums of revenue and whose only plausible justification could be the political appeal of envy.

There were other characteristically disconcerting moments too. There was the familiar insistence that everything about his administration is unprecedented. The president said, for instance:

What I have done — and this is unprecedented, by the way; no administration has done this before — is I’ve said to each agency, “Don’t just look at current regulations or don’t just look at future regulations, regulations that we’re proposing. Let’s go backwards and look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don’t make sense, let’s get rid of them.”

But of course, lots of presidents have thought of this particularly easy way to appear to be fighting bureaucracy. As the GAO has noted, “Every president since President Carter has directed agencies to evaluate or reconsider existing regulations.”

There was the unwillingness to speak of victory in an ongoing war. There was the shamelessly cynical treatment of the gay-marriage question (“I’ll keep on giving you the same answer until I give you a different one, all right? And that won’t be today,” the president said.)

But overarching all of this there seemed to be a deep rage against the realities of the moment he has found himself in, and the part he has found himself playing in that moment. Like a lot of his erstwhile supporters, the president seems to have had higher hopes for Barack Obama, and seems unsure of how to vent his disappointment. Maybe he was naïve.

The President’s Peculiar Press Conference

The person that wins the GOP primary, needs to go right at Obama's policies - aggressively. Obama survives difficult questions by avoiding them and waiting for the world to move on. His Republican opponents must challenge him, early and often, and consistently.

[SubGod22]

Is it too late to still hope Ryan will run?

[Maggie]

Is it too late to still hope Ryan will run?

No, from what I have read - he is considering giving it a shot but don't get your hopes up.

I have already told my wife, if Ryan runs - I will, for the first time in my life, volunteer to work in a political campaign. I will burn vacation time, take time off from my job, etc. And she consented.