To the Editors:

Look at President Obama’s vast economic deception. From his pronouncements that Obamacare will save money, with no mention that the total cost will be more than twice the $900 billion claimed, to our new improved Gross National Product numbers. When the facts do not support his claims, he changes the measuring stick.

Neal Asbury writing in Moneynews says, “It is like playing cards at the blackjack table and you have the ace of spades and the king of spades…(blackjack), but when you show your cards to the dealer he announces that he has changed the rules…and from now on…The winning hand will take 30 points to win, not 21.” So imagine how confusing it is for business advisors who use these numbers to help them determine the proper path to take going forward. The President also fails to explain publicly that his administration has changed the measuring stick.

Understand that throughout most of President Obama’s claimed recovery…our national GDP was running at just 1.8 percent versus a needed 4.5 percent. But the new number announced for July magically jumped to 3 percent, but with no real improvement in the economy.

How was this fiction managed? According to Mr Asbury, “The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) simply recalculates the GDP and announces it ‘Officially’ grew 3 percent due to a few additions to the statistics, but ignored the standard formula that economists have been using for years.”

The new additions no longer involve iron, steel, energy, or material production but will now add money earned from creative works, including movies, television shows, theater, and music. Money spent on research and development without concern about whether this R&D produced anything viable.

Most economists agree that…although the new additions will result in a higher GDP number….that it will not really change the result on main street nor help employ the 22 million out of work. Note, until now (for the last 100 years) the cost of R&D was considered overhead…the cost of doing business.

The irony of the new GDP numbers is the new additions mostly involve intellectual property, but they fail to account for intellectual property theft by countries like China, Russia, India. Some economic blogs estimate that IP-intensive industries employ about 18 million Americans, but IP theft costing upward of $300 billion each year results in the loss of 760,000 jobs which obviously have a significant negative loss on our economy. The facts regarding IP theft show it is naive and self-serving to claim the numbers as an increase the GDP if IP theft is not part of that equation.

This deception will not grow our economy nor help bankrupt towns like Detroit and fails to show leadership worthy of a president of the United States. It’s more like what you would expect from a Bernie Madoff. Thus we need to vote out of office any politician who carries Obama’s water or facilitates his extreme socialist agenda and deceiving the people.

Daniel Kormanik

178 Hanover Road, Newtown                                           July 24, 2013