Welcome to the March Business Leaders issue of NorthBay biz magazine. This is a return to a theme that lets us spotlight different companies and individuals that are leaders within their industries. Also included is a special report on green business. Please enjoy these stories and all the special features and columns in the North Bay’s only locally owned, glossy business publication. And finally, a reminder to vote for your favorite businesses in our 26th annual BEST Of the North Bay Readers Poll. For your convenience, a ballot is included in this issue on page 14 or you can go online to vote at www.northbaybiz.com. Voting ends March 1.
If you spend enough time surfing the Web and have the patience to sort through all the extraneous crap, your persistence pays off and you find some eye-opening, thought-provoking or (sometimes) just plain disheartening stuff. Here’s what I found. You can decide which of the three adjectives fits best.
A few weeks ago, Congress, showing tremendous restraint, passed a federal budget that calls for $1.1 trillion in federal spending. Sarcasm aside, that’s a lot of cash—even in the age of Obama—considering the trillions of dollars of indebtedness already on the books. Let’s take a look at some numbers behind that figure.
The budget document is 1,582 pages long, containing 370,445 words. For a quick comparison, there are only 1,458 words in the Declaration of Independence and 4,543 words in the entire United States Constitution.
Here are the numbers that really caught my attention: When you do the math, those 1,582 pages will cost taxpayers $695 million per page or $2.9 million per word. When you consider the enormous financial commitment this budget undertakes, you’d expect sincere analysis, debate and reflection before putting it up for a vote. Here’s what we got: The Senate spent slightly more than 69 hours considering this bill, which allowed them less than two minutes per page to read it before they voted and passed it, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
I’ve one more number to share about this, but it has to wait until the end of this column.
In the increasingly Orwellian world in which we live, we’re bombarded with messages trumpeting that good is bad, left is right and down is up. Following are some items that back that notion.
In the president’s recent State of the Union address, he proclaimed that 8 million jobs have been created during his administration. If true, how does that square with the fact that 92 million Americans are not working and there are 9 million fewer jobs in the economy than when the president took office? How is it possible that the unemployment rate is officially sold as 6.7 percent when an all-in assessment would crank the number into the 30 percent range? How can the number of people on food stamps climb 70 percent (since the president’s inauguration) to nearly 50 million if job creation was actually increasing?
And as if these facts not being recognized as reality isn’t bad enough, let’s look at administration claims concerning Obamacare. In 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) determined that revamping the health care system would result in the loss of 800,000 jobs overall in the U.S. economy. At the time, California’s own Nancy Pelosi vigorously asserted that the exact opposite would be true, with Obamacare immediately creating 400,000 jobs—and 4 million jobs total—after full implementation.
Well, full implementation has begun, and the CBO has published revised numbers. It now says the Affordable Care Act (by the way, the name of the new health care law is a perfect example of my “down is up” rule) will reduce the full-time workforce by 2 million over the next few years, not the 800,000 it had previously estimated. Also interesting is the original Democratic estimate of a $900 billion price tag that the CBO now claims will hit more than $2 trillion over the first 10 years of the law.
Oh yeah, remember how the new health care system was going to be a boon, especially to the middle class? According to the Brookings Institute, even households in the $25,000-to-$40,000 income range will see their income reduced and redistributed as a direct result of Obamacare. This reduction is in addition to increased premiums and the new taxes embedded in the new law.
Here’s that last number I promised you earlier: This month’s column has 787 words. If I were being paid at the same rate per word as the budget, I’d be collecting a check from the taxpayers for $2.282 billion. Guess I’m in the wrong racket.
That’s it for now. Enjoy this month’s magazine.
