Much of the mainstream media is giddy with the 'new' economic numbers touting the President's 'superb' leadership. [What about the President's job bill from late last year - the one that Congress had to pass immediately to avoid economic disaster...and never got passed. I guess that half trillion of stimulus spending wasn't really needed? Ed.] As with most of the giddiness from the mainstream media, and the designs of the President, there is far more behind the scenes that tell the real story of the propaganda we're being fed.
These numbers remain 'cooked' by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rather than looking at real statistics, the BLS modifies its numbers by trying to divine the psychology of workers - determining who is unemployed and actively looking for a job and those who are unemployed, not actively looking, and therefore are not counted. If you're unemployed from your primary career and take a lesser job to keep your head above water - why you are still one of the happily employed. It's laughable because it's a purely subjective measurement.
Here's an excellent case to be made that a far better, but still not entirely accurate measure, is the employment to population ration - how many of the total working population of the country are employed versus not employed. It still counts underemployed as employed - but is more realistic than the games being played by the Administration keeping it's own score.
Looking at the last year by this measurement, we see that while there is some improvement from the 2011 low - we're fundamentally at the same point as we were at the start of 2011 when we didn't have the re-election campaign of the President demanding skewed numbers.
Zero Hedge makes the case here, that despite the claims of the Administration, the labor force participation rate keeps dropping. Goldman Sachs tosses a dart at the '200,000' jobs created by noting that 42,000 of these jobs, nearly a quarter, are temporary 'courier' jobs for the Christmas holidays.
If we don't cook the books, and include the underemployed as fully employed, we are at a 10.9% real unemployment rate. If we consider those who are underemployed / survival mode as not fully employed, then we have a rate of 15.2% un or underemployed.
Then there is the effects on employment of the President's imperial decision to ignore the Constitution and Congress. The President 'recess' appointed 3 new members to the National Labor Relations Board, 2 of whom are hard core pro-union advocates. Late last year, the NLRB slammed through a regulation to facilitate the unionization of non-union businesses. This board will do even more to advocate this approach. That will have repercussions related to joblessness...
Unions make businesses less competitive and discourage investment. This reduces job growth. Studies show that jobs fall by 5-10 percent at newly organized firms. Going forward, employment grows by three to four percentage points more slowly at unionized businesses than at otherwise identical non-union companies.How well is the campaign to put lipstick on the economic pig created by the President? MSNBC's latest poll has 58% saying that the economy is not improving.
Another leg of the 'hat trick' was the President's announcement yesterday from the Pentagon of a 'new strategy' to answer the massive debt crisis (that he created) that the nation faces. This new strategy calls for the gutting of the US National Defense to the tune of $487 billion over the next decade - eliminating nearly half a million members of the Armed Forces, dramatically draw down US ground forces, and all of this is ON TOP OF THE $500 BILLION OF DoD SPENDING CUTS FROM LAST YEAR'S 'DEBT RESOLUTION BILL'.
While this Administration, and his progressive allies, refused to cut one penny of discretionary / entitlement spending, despite a 35% increase in spending since 2008, the President follows down the disastrous path of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Those massive cuts weakened the United States, damaged our international relations, and directly contributed to increased global crisis and conflicts. Yet, according to the President, doing the same thing again will deliver different results. [Einstein's theory...Ed]
This is nothing more than a suicidal defense trajectory that is part and parcel of the progressive ideology - in order to 'save the US, we first must destroy the US'. As has been argued before, decline is not something that comes from destiny - but something that results from irresponsible decisions being made. It's a choice. The President with this announcement has made his choice.
Decisions have ramifications...and in this case, it will cost lives. Many lives.
Iran wasted little time in their acknowledgement of the US intent to surrender...announcing that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, their zealots with their own navy, air force, army, and missile forces, will hold military exercises near the Straits of Hormuz just days after Iran's regular military finished exercises which included threatening to close the Straits and bar the US military from entry into the Persian Gulf.
There is an intellectual and moral bankruptcy around the machinations to create a crisis and then use that created crisis as a rationale to invoke policy and agenda decisions that would otherwise be seen as uncredible and irresponsible. Victor Davis Hanson's latest essay looks at Barack Obama as Chauncey Gardiner (Being There)...
While Obama came to the Presidency as a cipher, on the wings of 'hope and change' which included and fit the projections of millions of voters, the President is not Chauncey Gardiner despite trying to continue to present himself as such. All of this is a mask to hide who he really is and what his agenda really is. While many were fooled in 2008 thinking he was a moderate - there are some of us who read his books, who looked at his friends, mentors, and partners, who considered his record as it was - and knew exactly what he was...and what was meant by his goal to 'fundamentally change' the country. The President, and his allies, have the goal to use smoke, mirrors, and the fact that the bulk of the media place ideology over responsibility to try to fool the American people once more in November.
Jon Huntsman, trailing badly in New Hampshire's primary race, received a back-handed compliment yesterday when the NY Times Corp owned Boston Globe endorsed him as their choice for the GOP Presidential nomination. This is being portrayed as a slap against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney - just as the Globe's 2008 endorsement of John McCain was a slap at Romney. The Globe's editorial board has zero interest in actually promoting the best candidate for the GOP. To consider otherwise is moronic.
Just as this endorsement will really do little to support Huntsman's candidacy for Republicans, the revelation that Huntsman is a Rachel Maddow Republican will do even less. There is a reason why Huntsman fails to gain traction with the GOP, even with the RINO's in the GOP - particularly when his top fund raiser announces that her media hero is MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.
Another bomb blast rocks Damascus today killing 25....and the regime has announced that al-Qaeda is behind this blast as well as the blasts less than two weeks ago.
Today the European Central Bank stepped in to purchase Italian and Spanish bonds as their yields soared. This is intervention that the ECB prefers not to make - but it is facing little choice as the crisis deepens. Greece remains on the edge of default - and the impasse on a new bailout and austerity measures remains unbroken.
.
EUcrats invited the CEO of Ryanair, the upstart European airliner, to their 2011 Innovation Conference hoping to hear about how the EUcrats are working towards facilitating innovation by their actions of more centralized government power...and got a schooling about innovation, freedom, and less government.
The EUcrats still aren't getting it.
The new draft treaty for the 'solution' as proposed by Merkozy is confirming the British suspicions about the massive power shift from sovereign states to central EU government bureaucrats. None of the British concerns were addressed. In fact, because British Prime Minister Cameron was so adamant in his concerns over the overreach of centralized control, the EUcrats are pushing forward as if Britain didn't exist.
Yes, the US is trying to be more like Europe in every possible way. How's it working out for Europe?
And that's not telling us something? Oh, yeah....Einstein again...
One last lesson of history....this warning comes from Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club....can you imagine a Middle East / Holy Land without Christians present? Or ultimately Jews? That's the path that the region is heading towards - facilitated by useless idiots like the Lebanese Christians who are allying with Hezbollah over the future of Lebanon.
This Day in History...
1066 - Harold was crowned King Harold II of England. William, Duke of Normandy was bypassed prompting William to invade England in late September - and at the Battle of Hastings defeated / killed Harold to gain the English crown.
1838 - In the Speedwell area of Morristown, NJ, Samuel Morse demonstrated the telegraph which revolutionized communication. The last telegram was delivered in January 2006.
1919 - Former President Theodore Roosevelt dies at the age of 60
1996 - The Blizzard of 1996 strikes the Eastern US seaboard - from Washington DC north. Philadelphia received 30 inches of snow and schools remained closed for 10 days because the city was unable to clear streets. Where I lived in Flanders, NJ, we got 32" and waited 3 days for plows.
2001 - Congress certified George W. Bush as the winner of the 2000 Presidential election.
No comments:
Post a Comment