More Shock Numbers That Don't Shock

We’ve spoken before about numbers that were meant to shock you, but which really don’t amount to much when you think about them. A couple more numbers like that were released last week, with predictable results.

● Lazy Bastards Surround Us!

The first number sounded horrible: 23.2% of adults between the ages of 25-54 are not working. That’s 28.9 million people!! This naturally brought calls of laziness and predictions that American competitiveness has come grinding to a halt. As you might expect, this is garbage.

For starters, only 6.1% of the public is unemployed. That works out to about 9.5 million people. But they aren’t all unemployed because they are lazy. Some genuinely can’t find work. Some are between jobs. Some are going back to school. Indeed, only 775,000 are classified as “discouraged” and another 2.1 million are considered “marginally attached to the labor market.” That works out to 2.8 million you could call lazy or defective in some way, which is only 0.9% of the population.

So who are the other 6.3 million unemployed? Well, they are a combination of people who just lost or quit their jobs or are new to the work force (e.g. recent graduates). They are around 4% of the population and those people being unemployed is considered natural for an economy as typical of labor market shuffling.

So who are the rest of these 28.9 million people? Well, another large group are stay-at-home mothers. According to Pew, 29% of mothers are stay-at-home mothers. That works out to around 24 million mothers. Add those people to the unemployed and you’ve got more people than the “28.9 adults” figure meant to scare you. Then you can add people who have returned to college and those who are wealthy already.

Obviously, these numbers are all rough estimates, but the point should be clear. When you realize that 6.3 million unemployed is considered a natural number for any strong economy, and when you factor in stay-at-home mothers, suddenly this claim about adults not working falls on its face. The real problem is the 2.1 million who are “marginally attached” to the labor market and the 775,000 who are “discouraged.” Those people need to change. Other problems include stagnant or falling wages, economic insecurity, and a lack of a career path. Those are legitimate criticisms. Pointing to some imagined 28.9 million adults who aren’t working and labeling them as slackers doesn’t help.

● Dirty Immigrants Are Everywhere!

The other shock number warned us that the immigrant population had reached “the highest point in 93 years” and that “41 million” people living in the US were born overseas! We have been invaded!

Oy.

Let’s blow a hole in this one right away: 41 million people is only 13% of the population. That’s hardly earth shattering. In fact, that’s rather near our historical average, so again, there is no reason to panic.

And while many used this as an opportunity to continue their anti-Mexican rhetoric, the truth is that the Mexican population in the US fell 1% since 2010 and Mexican immigration continues at net zero or below. Indeed, of the 1.4 million new foreign-born persons who moved to the US since 2010, most came from South Asia (373,000), India (250,000), China (217,000), and the Dominican Republic (112,000).

So not only are we not awash in immigrants, but they aren’t even Mexicans. And screaming “41 MILLION PEOPLE!” and “MOST IN 93 YEARS!” doesn’t change the fact it’s only one in ten people... which hardly warrants a panic.

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"Out-of-work Americans"

Here we go again. Do you remember when we debunked the 47% of Americans pay no taxes claim? SSDD. Drudge reported that 92,594,000 Americans “are not working!” This is a record apparently and the implication is that most of the country has gone onto welfare. That’s utterly false.

Here’s the thing... there are 310,000,000 Americans. Of those, about 84,630,000 million are under 20, meaning they are likely unemployed because they are children or students. Another 39,680,000 are over the age of 65 and should likely be retired. Combining those two groups gives you 124,310,000 million people who aren’t expected to work. Suddenly, the claim that 92,594,000 million Americans aren’t working doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Indeed, these numbers tell us that at least 31,716,000 people who probably shouldn’t be working are working.

So is the Drudge number meaningful? Nope. It’s meaningless because it’s too broad in that it doesn’t factor out those who won’t be working under any circumstances (like a 5 year old) and then it implies something that is false from the overall magnitude of the number: “Lots of people aren’t working!” Well yeah, but they aren’t expected to work, so what’s the problem? In any stable modern economy, about one of three persons will not be working because they are too, young, too old, or something else. In our case, the figure is a little less at 30%. So that's not really bad. In fact, the only way to reduce this number would be to put children to work or to go all Logan’s Run on your elders, and even our fringers can't be expecting that. Well, ok, but no one else would suggest such a thing.

So don't worry about this silly 94 million number.

Now, that’s not to say that the job market is very good. It’s not. According to official statistics, 9.8 million people are unemployed, another 7.5 million are underemployed in “forced” part-time jobs, and 783,000 workers have simply given up. That’s 18 million Americans who could be more productive if the economy was better. That's 18 million people who could be buying homes, buying consumer goods, paying taxes, and not draining benefits. That’s the real number to worry about, not this fake 92 million number. That’s the number that needs to be fixed... and Obama has no plan to fix it.


Unrelated Aside: As an aside, the headlines this weekend screamed about the Baby Boomers become "the roommate generation." Good grief. Reading three sentences into the article finds that the number of cohabiters aged 50 or older is 130,000 households... about 260,000 people. How many people are over 50? Not totally sure, honestly, but there are almost 40 million over 65. So the number is probably around 50 million. In any event, 260,000 out of 40 million people works out to... carry the one... 0.65%. Would you say that the actions of 0.65% of a group make them representative of that group? Apparently, our knee-jerk journalistic community does. "The roommate generation" indeed.

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Smoke and Mirrrors

One of the things that has troubled me throughout the past couple years is the seeming mixed messages from the economic indicators. Everything I see tells me that the economy stinks. Yet, there are some indicators that seem to be going the other way. Well, I figured out what is going on. Let's discuss.

● Unemployment: Let's start with the obvious one, which is unemployment. There just aren't many jobs out there right now. Nevertheless, we keep hearing that the unemployment number is falling slowly and isn't really that far out of line with most recessions. But here's the thing. The unemployment number can be massaged very easily and one of the ways they do it is to drop off the people who have given up looking for work. There are about three million of those and if you factor them back in, then unemployment rises from 6% to 11%. It goes even higher if you factor in underemployment, which is when people are forced to work at jobs below their level of qualification. Count those people and we're looking at around 16% of the workforce being in employment distress.

● Corporate Profits: Consumers are weak. Unemployment is high. So how in the world can corporate profits be up? Hmm. This was quite a poser. The stock market has been flying high on the basis that corporate America is doing great because their earnings and profits are at record levels. But the real economy suggests this can't be. What explains this? In a word: buybacks. Companies have been buying back their stock. The result is fewer shares to spread the profits over. Thus, even though actual profits are flat or lower, the company's balance sheets report higher and higher earnings/profits per share.

● Housing Recovery: For some time, we've heard that housing prices have stabilized and have been soaring. How can this be? Well, it turns out that a handful of companies decide that housing was a good investment. They basically assumed that either housing would recover or that someone would bail out the housing market, so they went out and bought more than a billion dollars worth of homes. They originally targeted the hardest hit areas like Phoenix, Vegas and California. When they ran out of homes to buy, they moved to other areas like Atlanta, Charlotte and Chicago.

What this did was place a floor under the market generally, because market numbers are an average across the country, and it caused the housing market in the cities where they went to rise basically by as much as they invested. In other words, they bailed out the places they went, and the result caused the average price of homes to appear to stabilize or even rise a bit. But there's a problem. No one else is playing this game. In effect, they've entered a poker game with themselves. And now they want out. First, they stopped buying more, which brought a "surprise" reduction in home sales in December -- with the markets in which they stopped buying being hit the hardest, e.g. prices fell 17% in Phoenix from a year ago. Now they plan to sell off their properties, which didn't rise as expected in value, over the course of the next 5-6 years. This will send the market back down in those cities right back to where it was in 2008. This is (1) why "the housing market" has been going up, nationally speaking, (2) why the housing market actually was only going up in some cities, (3) why it has suddenly stalled, and (4) why it's in danger of collapsing again.

● Inflation: Finally, everyone tells us that there is no inflation. Even government figures estimate inflation close to 0%. Yet, everyone seems to sense that inflation is out there and running wild. What's going on? Well, the obvious answer is that government inflation figures exclude the things that suffer from inflation. Specifically, government estimates exclude food and fuel... the two areas where inflation is occurring most rapidly. Further, the inflation has been hidden in many ways. One prime example involves reducing the amount of product in the containers. Product after product has been cutting the amount in each package by 10-20% and then increasing the price by 3-5%. This records as 5% inflation even though it's actually 25%. Other companies have done things like eliminate coupons, add service charges, eliminate things like free shipping, and substitute inferior quality parts. Amazon increased the amount you need to buy to get free shipping.

In instances like Obamacare, the Democrats and their fellow travelers in the media are picking false points of comparison. For example, rather than compare the cost of insurance from 2010 before the Obamacare mandates started to kick in, they compare today's rates to insurance from 2013, which already includes most of the additional costs added by Obamacare. Moreover, they make it impossible to do a direct comparison because the new policies include things the older ones didn't. It's like forcing a Honda owner to buy a Cadillac and then claiming that because the new car is better you can't compare how much more this cost the consumer.

This is what is going on. The economy isn't in doomsday mode, but unemployment is very high, corporate profits are falling (and the stock market should be), there is no housing recovery, and inflation is out of control. The above is how all of that is being hidden from you.

Thoughts?

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Obama's Economic Legacy

Obama’s popularity is below Bush’s popularity at this point in his presidency. I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Why didn’t you know it? For the same reason you aren’t hearing casualty counts in Afghanistan or how gas prices are so high or that people can’t find work... because the MSM doesn’t talk about it. But it’s true. Anyway, I read an interesting article about Obama’s economic failure.

The article started with the usual liberal routine of blaming Bush for Obama’s failure, crediting Obama with “steering us through” the Great Recession, and then assuring us that this time the economy really is finally working and growing and everything is going fine. Pro forma bullshill from the left. What interested me was that it then lamented the fact that despite all of that, Obama’s economic legacy is going to be crappy. Aww.

According to the Commerce Department, the economy grew at 3.2% in the final quarter of 2013. They are hoping for 4.1% growth through the summer. Yet, even if these numbers hold up, Obama’s numbers won’t be anywhere near as good as Clinton’s numbers or Bush W’s numbers... and forget Reagan’s numbers! Consider these:

● Up to now over the first five years of his presidency, the Obamaconomy has grown by an anemic 1.8%. Over Clinton’s first five years, the economy grew 3.6%. Bush’s first five years saw 2.5%.

● Disposable income, i.e. what you can spend after taking care of your needs, rose a pathetic 0.6% annually under Obama. Clinton and Bush both saw 2% growth each year.

● Unemployment is currently at a five year best at 6.7% (more on this in a moment). Obama's worst was 10.09% and he spent most of his term in the 9% range. By comparison, unemployment under Bush and Clinton was 4.7% at this point, and the worst Bush ever got was 6.5% in one month. In other words, Obama has yet to achieve a best that is better than Bush’s worst and he spent most of his time with an unemployment rate that is about 1.5 times the worst Bush ever had.

But hey, Wall Street doubled under Obama.

Indeed, let me point out this too. Obama is talking about income inequality, which is a much stronger issue than conservatives want to believe (we need to capture and define this issue), but income inequality has spiked under his reign to the worst since the 1920s. Black unemployment has been at or near all-time highs. Youth unemployment has been at or near all time highs. Etc.

And then there’s this...

While Obama is touting his amazing 6.7% unemployment rate... a rate that is still worse than the worst the evil Bush ever achieved, the primary reason this number has been falling is that people are dropping out of the workforce rather than getting jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, if you count the people who gave up looking and thus get excluded from the official unemployment figures, the true unemployment number would be more than 11%.

Nice.

There’s Obama’s legacy: twice as crappy as Bush.

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Minimum Wage Daze

If there's one issue on which liberals are almost always bound to get some public traction, it's an argument for raising the minimum wage. Even in my reddish neck of the woods, clear majorities support it at the polls. So it would be foolish for me to crap all over the idea of a minimum wage...but of course I'll do it anyway.

If you've followed the news lately, this issue has come up once again, as a number of states have raised their wage levels. One community around Seattle, in fact, now requires at least $15/hour pay from every business. And Democrats are only too happy to take this nationwide, demanding a hike in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. And of course there were all those protests recently by the fast-food workers, for whom, apparently, only making $7.25 an hour is the equivalent of having to stand in line at a soup kitchen. Sigh.

The minimum wage has always annoyed me, for mathematical and philosophical reasons. Firstly, having taken an economics course or two, I've been struck ever since by the public's ignorance that labor, like all commodities, follows the law of supply and demand: If you raise the price of it, buyers will demand less of it. In other words, the minimum wage tends to lead to higher unemployment. Proving this with economic data is tricky, because there are always so many factors at play, but consider this. States which have (or had) no minimum wage laws, such as Switzerland or Hong Kong, have historically had very low unemployment rates--around two to four percent. On the other end, there are the large European countries (France, Germany, the U.K.), which are famous for generous workers' benefits and chronic double-digit unemployment. These examples don't show causation, but they do suggest a very strong correlation between high minimum wage requirements and high unemployment.

Also, let's not overlook the fact that relatively, a very small number of people only earn minimum wage. The most recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics peg the number at less than 1.6 million out of a workforce of about 75 million, or barely two percent of the whole. And as is always the case, this small number is skewed toward the youth--the 16-19 age bracket alone makes up over 30 percent of that number. This makes the above argument even more compelling; a bunch of the people "suffering" from minimum wage are just teenagers in entry-level positions they'll quickly move out of anyway. Indeed, one could easily make the argument that an increase in the wage levels will make upward mobility more difficult, keeping employees at a lower average income during their career than they would have otherwise.

But hey. Let's throw all that out. Because no matter what, some liberal will inevitably come up with a case of some single mother with three or four kids who has to work two jobs, at night, has to eat off the Dollar Menu at McDonald's, and can't even afford a First-Aid kit, because the minimum wage is so terrible. Shouldn't we do something to help her? (By "something," of course, I'm referring to government aid, because that's what liberals are referring to. Private charity and other forms of voluntarism aren't at issue here.)

This is purely my observation, but it seems that all of our rational, statistical analyses don't really move people. It's not that the numbers are wrong, but the knee-jerk reaction seems to be "Well, at least the Democrats are trying to do something to help! Why do you have to be such naysayers?" The mindset on injustices and other social problems seems to be that anything, even a bad attempt at a fix, is better than the status quo. And that's a difficulty conservatives have not yet mastered.

The problem, in this as in so many other cases, lies with the failure to recognize that suffering is a part of human life. And it's not just liberals who have this problem; if it were, measures like this wouldn't be so widely popular. I don't think most people would disagree with the statement that mankind is not perfectable save by God (though I can think of a few who would), but in practice, we've all fallen into the trap of thinking that whenever some social ill raises its head, it must be legislated out of existence. Which is to say, in matters like the minimum wage we can see liberalism completely on display--the technocratic urge to tinker with society until everyone is fat and happy.

It's not good politics, and I'm not suggesting we make it our banner or something, but conservatives need to embrace the fact of suffering. Or rather, to embrace the notion that some forms of suffering are better than a random proposed panacea, which probably won't work anyway. And besides, in this case it's fairly certain that for a lot of people, a minimum wage of $10 or $12 will make things worse instead of better.

Conservatives shouldn't be falling into the trap of showing they want government to care about the right people, on this or other issues--especially when "showing you care" means throwing around lots of taxpayer money. Rather, they should focus on creating the conditions that will minimize these social ills as much as possible, while keeping it in mind that they will always be with us. That's why the minimum wage debate is so misguided.

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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

While we were away enjoying our holiday... and our cake, the government issued the June jobs report. According to the report, the economy created 195,000 jobs in June. This is being touted on the left as evidence that the economy is on the right track. Well, not so much. Here are some interesting things you should know about the jobs report:

● Few Jobs: A lot of people (particularly on the left) are pointing to the 195,000 number as proof of a big number, which must mean something good, right? But it’s not really. For one thing, the rolling average for the last six months has been 200,000 jobs created each month. That means the June number is slightly below the average we’ve had since January. Same as it ever was is not an improvement.

Further, it takes around 160,000 jobs a month just to keep up with the population growth. That means that only about 35,000 of those jobs are there to reduce the backlog of the unemployed.

If job creation remains unchanged from hereon forward (an impossibility), it will take until 2017 for the unemployment rate to reach 5%. That means it will take 10 years from the start of the recession to get employment back to the “normal” level. That’s actually longer than it took the US jobs market to recover from the Great Depression. That’s also a year after Obama’s term is up. It’s also no sure thing. Historically speaking, recoveries last 63 months on average, compared to 13 months for recessions. The most recent recession lasted 18 months and the “recovery” has been underway for 49 months. That means sometime next summer, the recovery likely will tip back over into recession. That means job growth will slow and then collapse again. That means, we’re not likely to get anywhere near 5% unemployment by 2017. Instead, we’re looking at 5% sometime in the 2020s. Nice.

● Low Quality Jobs: Even worse, the quality of the jobs produced during this “recovery” has been really poor. For example, 42% of the jobs created in June were in the leisure and hospitality sector, 52,000 of which came from food services. Retail jobs accounted for another 37,000. Those manufacturing jobs everyone covets fell by 6,000. Job quality was a long-time attack by the left against Republican Presidents, wanna bet they don’t mention this against Obama?

Moreover, the top-line number is always a little misleading. To really understand it, you need to look at what makes that number. In this case, when you look a little deeper, what you see is that the 195,000 jobs is the result of an increase of roughly 360,000 part-time jobs and a loss of 240,000 full-time jobs. In other words, not only was every job created a part-time job, but another 45,000 full-time jobs vanished. This is proof of what we already knew about Obamacare – people are firing their full-time employees and hiring part-timers and temps. It also calls into question whether or not the 195,000 is even real or if this is full-time jobs being split into multiple parts.

So basically, this number is not the end of the world, but it certain isn’t anything we should be trumpeting. The “recovery” is producing low paying, unstable, part-time jobs, and even then it’s not producing enough to end unemployment any time soon. Interesting isn’t it, that we are in the middle of an historically bad jobs market and yet the media doesn’t seem to notice. I don’t recall them being this disinterested in unemployment under Reagan. . . or Bush. . . or Bush.

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The Recovery That Wasn’t

There is something wrong with the stock market. The housing market too. I see no evidence that the economy is picking up. To the contrary, all the numbers are horrible. Yet, the stock market and the housing market seem to disagree. Why? Well, there are reasons.

● The Stock Market: Ug. The stock market. The stock market is my nemesis in rational times, but forget times like this. Since 2009, the stock market has been on one long, uninterrupted ride straight up. We’re up 117% from the lows of 2009 with no signs of stopping. Does that make sense? Well, consider this:

● Unemployment grew from 6% to 10% during that period and still remains around 7.5%. Is that good news?

● Corporate profits are weak. 80% of S&P 500 companies have issued negative guidance on corporate earnings growth, and 56% missed their revenue targets. As the market increased 5% in the first two months of this quarter, earnings actually dropped 3.4%. Should stocks really go up?

● Economic growth in the US has been anemic.

● The US government is paralyzed by debt and infighting.

● There have been repeated near-collapses of the Eurozone, which still has virtually no growth and no jobs.

● China’s economy has slowed to a crawl and is well below the level where the Chinese government fears a revolution.

So if things are this bad, then what justifies this long, steady rise? One thing: the Fed. The Fed is pumping money into the market each month. Right now it’s buying $85 billion in bonds each month to prop up the world’s biggest companies. Even a hint that the Fed might cut the heroin is enough to make the market lose 2% until someone at the Fed says, “Just kidding!”

In fact, we’ve reached a point where market watchers say that the worst thing that could happen to the market would be good economic news because it would mean the Fed might end its buying. Think about how sick that is that our stock market, which supposedly represents the value of American companies, wants bad news to maintain its drug habit. This is basically subsidy behavior. Buyer and sellers and profits no longer matter... government money matters.

● Jobs: And what has that government money gotten us? No jobs, that’s for sure. May’s jobs report showed that 175,000 jobs were added as compared to 149,000 in April. Sounds good, right? After all, it is higher than in April. Well, no. For one thing, this number of jobs is the average for the last 12 months. So this isn’t exactly a break out... it’s just more of the same. Moreover, 26,000 of those were temp jobs, meaning they aren’t real. Some number will also be summer jobs, which will end in August. So we’re looking at something less than 149,000 real jobs were created. Unfortunately, the economy needs to create around 180,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So all we did last month was increase the number of unemployed people.

Moreover, while the official unemployment rate fell to 7.6% the real number remains double that. And this is after five years of the Fed pumping 2-3 trillion dollars “into the economy.” So why didn’t this stimulus work? Well, the problem is that they didn’t put it “into the economy.” They gave it to rich banks, who sat on it. And as I point out in my book, just giving money to someone does nothing to make working more profitable nor does it make the cost of labor cheaper. In other words, it will never spur hiring.

● Housing: So what about housing? Strangely, over the past couple years, the housing market has started rising again. This makes little sense unless the economy is doing better and people have more confidence, right? Well, no, because it turns out that “people” aren’t buying the houses. According to a company that tracks mortgage financing, “first-time home buyers” are buying only 16% of homes at the moment. That is a surprisingly low number. So who is buying the rest? Well, it turns out that 69% of purchases are being made by “investors,” and these aren’t people who flip homes.

According to Fitch, “The housing price growth is being propelled by institutional money.” Companies like Blackstone are buying homes. (There are other companies too.) In the past couple years, Blackstone has spent nearly $4 billion to buy 24,000 homes with plans to rent them out. And they’re doing it in pockets, which is why the housing market has taken off in some cities but not others. For example, according to Bloomberg, Blackstone bought 1,400 properties in Atlanta in 2012 for a total value of $100 million. The result was that home prices increased 12.4% in Atlanta compared to 10% nationally.

But who cares, right? A buyer is a buyer, right? Well, no. For one thing, these companies are jacking up the price of homes in markets where the natural economy can’t support the price. That always happens when you get an influx of outside money. Basically, you get a price spike that is unrelated to the natural market value of a thing which distorts the market and makes it harder for the locals to buy homes. Moreover, when the outside money stops, the prices will crash. In fact, warned Fitch: “The question is how much the change in prices really reflects the market demand, rather than one-off market shifts that may not be around in a couple of years.”

Do I ultimately care that investors are doing this? No. But what bothers me about all of this, is that our economy is off-kilter because it no longer seems to be focused on helping average people. To the contrary, our government has decided that “the economy” means “Big Business” and it has set out to take care of them on the theory that this will make everyone’s lives better. This is called “socialism” and it doesn’t work any better when it’s done using a handful of big companies as agents than it does when it’s done directly by bureaucrats. We genuinely need to rethink our economy and open it up to the free market. The government needs to stop trying to prop up big companies and their stocks, it needs to stop giving tax breaks to investors to buy homes rather than home owners, and it needs to focus on eliminating the barriers to the creation of jobs. America is a country of people and their government should recognize that... it is time to think about the people and not the balance sheets of the incorporated. We are the United States of America, not America, Inc.

Free the free market!

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News Round Up

All right, we are in a very, very slow news period as we wait to see what immigration reform will look like and how Obama’s gun regulation scheme will prove to be a paper frosted tiger. So let’s do a news roundup and talk about a few random things.

● Moving to Texas: Rick Perry sent out letters to gun companies in states like Colorado and Connecticut where Democratic legislatures have passed anti-gun ownership laws. He’s apparently bagged his first prize: Colt Competition of Oregon, who make high-accuracy AR-15-type rifles for shooting competitions. Others may soon follow. Several gun equipment makers in Colorado have claimed they will leave as well, but we’ll see if they do. Let’s hope they do because it’s time to show people that legislative stupidity has consequences. And losing jobs is the best way to show that. Speaking of jobs...

● Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: The jobs report was ugly. The media tried half-heartedly to blame this on sequestration, but no one believes that because almost no one feels the effects of that. Others blame it on seasonal hiring, which is more likely the case. In the end though, bad economic performance falls on the president and his party. The media is trying to deflect this, but when the best they can say is, “both parties should be embarrassed by the latest depressing jobs report,” then you know they know they have problems.

Right now, people are worried that the next three years of Obama won’t be any better than the first four. And there’s really no reason they should be. None of the things holding back the economy have changed. Basically Obama tossed some money out the window of his car as drove through the streets, that didn’t work and now he’s begging for gas money to do it again. No one has considered finding ways to lower the cost of labor or to make working more profitable. Maybe it’s time for a change? Maybe it’s time for Hillary...

● Hillary Clinton: The leftist media is starting to go all fan-boy over the prospect of Hillary running for President in 2016. Indeed, many of the articles I’ve seen on this are practically orgasmic:

“It was another week in American politics highlighted by the overwhelming and deep yearning by Democrats that Hillary should run for president in 2016, and the overwhelming and powerful support she would receive from Americans if she does.”

Yeah, everyone would love our Goddess... unlike that black guy, that pretend-messiah who can’t solve our problems. In fact, this particular article said something that struck me as rather interesting on this very point:

“It would be spectacular if Bill and Hillary Clinton would work with the Clinton Global Initiative to devise major new jobs proposals.”

This is interesting because it suggests that our slobbering author has given up hope that Obama will solve the jobs crisis, doesn’t it? And if Hillary can come up with a jobs plan as this hack believes, then why doesn’t the hack want Hillary sharing this with Obama? Why hope that Hillary waits to unveil it in her own run? I’d say the media crush is shifting to Hillary.

In fact, in the past few weeks there have been a series of things that make me think the media is done with Obama. There’s been a ton of coverage of the failures of Obamacare. There’s been extensive coverage of Obama’s “gaffe” of complimenting a chick attorney general on her looks. There’s been coverage of how big business is raking in the cash from Obama’s programs. There’s been coverage about Obama’s gun push failing because he didn’t really plan it right. And there’s been a lot of anger about the jobs report directed at “both parties.” These aren’t things that would have been covered in the past and the fact they are now suggests that the media is ready to be harsher on him.

Back to Hillary, the only real question right now is whether or not rank and file leftist fruitcakes are on the same page as the limousine media leftists. I have my doubts. So while it looks like Hillary will be anointed the heiress apparent to the pretend messiah by the media, I’m not so sure she’s going to do all that well in the primaries.

At least there’s only one Clinton, right? Uh...

● Spawn of Clintons: As if this will surprise anyone, Chelsea is now dropping hints that she might one day very soon be interested in being handed an elective office. Shocker! I’d rather vote for a Kardashian.

Anything I missed?

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A Glimpse of the Future

Now that we’ve had a day to digest the election, let me tell you why Obama won and why his followers won’t be happy with him.

● Why He Won: A lot of people are giving a lot of reasons why this election went the way it did. And to a degree many of them are right at the margins. But at its core, this election turned out the way it did for one simple reason: “short-sighted self-interest.”

Our government is a ponzi scheme. A ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment where people are enticed into investing with promises of unsustainably high returns. Those returns are paid for with the money taken from new investors. Essentially A’s benefits are paid using the investment of B and C. B and C’s benefits are paid using the investments of D, E, and F. And so on. As long as enough new people keep entering the scheme, the benefits will flow. But the moment the new money slows down, the entire scheme collapses. That is how our government is structured, as a fraudulent investment that pays out way more than it can afford because it is stealing from the future to pay the present.

Many people don’t understand this. They only see the high benefits they get, so they want the scheme to keep going. To them, it is manna from Heaven and they don’t want it to stop. These are core Obama supporters – progressives, welfare cases, minorities. Others understand the nature of the scheme but still invest in the hopes that the system won’t fail until they have made more than they invested. These are suburbanite Obama supporters – soccer moms, professionals. Others know the system will collapse any day, but also realize that so long as everyone else will get these benefits, they might as well get them too until the system collapses. These are union workers and government workers.

Here’s the problem for Obama. He can’t keep the benefits flowing. Why? Consider these problems Obama now faces.

● The Deficit: In the past four years, Obama added more to the national debt than all prior presidents combined. Our debt ($16 trillion) now equals the size of our economy (102%), it was 51% in 1988. This means we can no longer spend money without risking a Greece-like meltdown. Moreover, we are still headed in the wrong direction. The deficit is now one trillion dollars per year. This means Obama cannot spend more because there is no more. But he has a problem. . .

● Interest: Because of the deficit, our credit rating was downgraded already and we are warned of worse to come. The cost of servicing the national debt is already $450 billion at 2.8% interest (historic lows). That’s 12% of the budget. If we continue on this course, we will be downgraded again and again and our interest costs will rise. Every 1% rise in rates adds $160 billion to the deficit each year.

● Military: Right now, the budget is balanced on the idea of taking about $200 billion a year from the military budget. This was always fake and will return to the budget. Moreover, war with Iran (or Syria) will add about $300 billion a year.

● Medicare: Obama faces two problems with regard to Medicare. First, he’s promised to steal $700 billion from it (about $150 billion a year). That is a fake accounting gimmick and will return to the budget. Secondly, Medicare is becoming a worthless benefit because doctors will no longer take it because it doesn’t pay enough. Fixing this will cost around $100 billion per year, increasing by 20% per year.

So if Obama does nothing else, the deficit will increase by between $350 billion a year to $750 billion a year, plus interest cost increases. We could be looking at $2 trillion a year in deficits by 2015. And that’s just the beginning.....

● Obamacare: If you assume a best case scenario, Obamacare is estimated to cost $1.76 trillion over ten years, or $176 billion a year. But you never get best case in government. The long-term reliable estimate for government spending is five times the initially estimated cost. That would be $880 billion a year. Moreover, this assumes most people will stay on private plans, but there’s no reason for employers to keep those plans. Also, health care costs, which were projected to go down, are going up 21% per year.

● Unemployment: There are 23 million unemployed after the prior jobless decade. Another 20 million jobs will be needed just to stay level with population growth. Obama’s policies kill jobs. Moreover, estimates are that if taxmaggedon happens, we are looking at another 6-10 million jobs lost. All of those unemployed people will need benefits. Even if we give only $10,000 a year to these people, you are looking at adding $480 billion a year in support payments, not to mention the lost tax revenue from them not working. Black unemployment will remain in the 20% range as will youth unemployment.

So now we’re looking at deficits of $3-$3.3 trillion a year. And it gets worse.

● Retirees: The federal government owes $2 trillion in unfunded retirement benefits to its workers. The state governments owe $5.2 trillion in unfunded retirement benefits to their workers. But that’s nothing compared to the coming Boomerpocalypse. The Boomers never bothered to save for retirement, choosing instead to rely on SSI. Over the next three decades, 81 million boomers will retire. That will create a $25 trillion unfunded liability in Medicare, plus another $21 trillion unfunded liability in Social Security. Moreover, these people will stop contributing to the tax base.

Further, there is strong evidence that all the economic bubbles we’ve experienced are actually the result of the boomer bubble itself. The boom of the 1990s appears to have been fueled with a massive spending binge by baby boomers. And now that the boomers have stopped spending, the economy may not recover. In fact, long term stock market trends predict that we are in a long term collapse nearly identical to the Great Depression. . . because of the boomers.

● State Bankruptcy: Several states, with California taking the lead, will go bankrupt in the next 2-4 years. They have committed to spending too much and cannot raise taxes enough to cover their debts. They are hoping for a Federal bailout, but that won’t come because there is no money to give them. Look for the shock of this to push the economy into depression and to result in court ordered (1) breaking of state employee union contracts, (2) massive across the board tax hikes, and (3) slashing of benefits, which will worsen the death spiral.

So this is what Obama faces, an economic and fiscal catastrophe caused by the actions of his party over the past twenty-plus years, actions his own policies made worse. He now faces stark choices: bankruptcy or letting Medicare die as an effective benefit, bankruptcy or killing Obamacare, bankruptcy or letting the unemployed starve. His supporters will now face (1) a likely depression or deep, jobless recession, (2) broken state budgets resulting in jobs cuts for union workers and benefit cuts for core Obama supporters, and (3) a federal government that has no power to spend money to save any of Obama’s supporters from the problems they will face. The ponzi scheme has run its course and his drones will not be happy when the money stops flowing.

Moreover, Obama will need to go to war with Iran or watch as London or New York goes up in smoke. He will need to turn his back on Eurozone requests for a handout to save them from their folly – not to mention, our economy still drives the world and our depression will drag down everyone else. He will need to spend vast sums on military preparations to face down a China made aggressive by their own economic malaise and by Obama’s perceived weakness. The falling dollar will crush Mexico, Germany and China, who rely on exports to us. His policies will make gas, food and electricity costs more expensive. And he can’t deliver on any of his legislative promises.

And all the while, his people will be wondering why the ponzi scheme has stopped paying out.

It’s going to be an ugly four years.


Also, let me stress... I am NOT predicting doomsday here. That is not what this is. Each of these issues can be overcome, but they can't be overcome with Obama's policies or in ways that will leave his supporters happy.

That is the real point here, Obama faces a dilema: let the country sink and outrage his followers when the money stops OR fix things and outrage his followers by taking away their benefits.

So don't read this as an end of the world prediction.... leave that to the Mayans.

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Obama II: The Wish List

Some of you may have heard there’s an election coming up in November. That’s on Tuesday November 6th for Republicans and Tuesday November 11th for any Democrats who may read this. And Wednesday night we will be covering the debate here with an open thread. Bring your friends! In the meantime, here’s something interesting: the Democratic Wish List for Obama’s second term.

This comes from an article in The Hill, wherein they spoke with numerous Democrats to find out what they think Obama will do if re-elected. . . or what they hope he will do. It is instructive:

● Jobs!!: The Democrats know they need to create jobs while “dealing with the debt.” For this, they cite Obama’s ideas last year of boosting infrastructure spending, promoting manufacturing and hiking taxes on corporations that outsource jobs. Forget that they already tried all of this and it all failed. But that’s liberal thinking for you, if at first you don’t succeed... just keep doing it with more money.

● Immigration: The Democrats think that if Hispanics vote overwhelming for Obama, then the Republicans will cave on immigration, but they think the “window” for this would close by the end of 2013. None of them say what they want in this regard, but presumably it would be a general amnesty and funding for the children of illegal immigrants to go to college (DREAM Act). But 70% of the population opposes their plan, including a majority of Democrats.

● Climate Change: The Democrats want to get back on the climate change/global warming short bus by “focusing on energy efficiency” to “create jobs” (read: green jobs) and reduce carbon emissions (read: cap and trade). It’s fascinating that they are so obsessed with this now that the science is disproving all the claims upon which their theory is based: record ice flows, falling temperatures for two decades, fewer hurricanes, and none of the claimed disasters have come to pass. The green jobs thing became a corruption fiasco and hasn’t worked for any country who tried it, so we’d be throwing good money after bad, and the big polluters are ignoring carbon entirely.

● Healthcare reform: The Democrats plan to push to “expand” state-based insurance exchanges by creating a “federal exchange.” Talk about doublespeak! In other words, they want to absorb healthcare to the federal level and create a Medicare-like organization to manage all private insurance. That’s a disaster and the next to final step toward socialization.

Man, it’s like Obama’s first term never happened, isn’t it? They passed several jobs bills, none of which created jobs, so now they want to do it all over again. They passed ObamaCare which was supposed to fix everything but now it needs a fundamental change to fix our still broken system. Not to mention, they could have done this when they had the filibuster-proof majority, but they lost their nerve. They also lost their nerve on immigration reform and cap and trade. What makes them think things will be different now?

That’s where this gets funny, actually. They claim that Obama winning will pressure Republicans to join them on these issues. Huh?

Basically, they claim that Obama has momentum, based on the fake polls we took apart last week, and that momentum means he will have a mandate and the Republicans will need to listen. Yeah right. That didn’t work for Clinton in 1996 or George W. Bush in 2004, and it didn’t really work for Reagan in 1984 either. And why would the Republicans agree to do things that the Democrats couldn’t even do themselves? On moderate things, sure, it’s possible Republicans will feel pressured, but not on the things that gave them an historic victory in 2010. . . things the Democrats won’t even touch themselves.

I find this list cynical. What this represents is an attempt to lie to the Democratic base, to make them believe the party will “fight” for things the party has proven they won’t touch with a ten-foot pole. If you’re a Democrat, I wouldn’t believe a word on this list. . . oh, and don’t forget to vote November 11th.

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Polls and Jobs

Folks, I’m still feeling a little sick, so this won’t be long. Here are some interesting poll numbers and a surprising story from CNN about the Democrats’ claim that Obama made 4.5 million jobs. Other than that, feel free to treat this like an open thread.

● No Second Term For You! The Hill just did an interesting poll asking a broad range of questions. Only 31% of respondents think the country is better off than it was when Obama took office, while 52% say it is in a worse condition. Fifty percent say they are “very unsatisfied” with Obama’s stewardship of the economy, with another 8% saying they are “somewhat unsatisfied.” And the most interesting number. . . 54% think Obama does not deserve to be re-elected. Those are not good numbers for Obama.

● Women Have Turned: Obama’s biggest strength, indeed the only thing which has kept him competitive, has been that women view him much more favorably than unfavorably. In April, women supported him 57% to 39%, according the ABC/Washington Post. Now that same poll has found that women view him unfavorable by 46% to 50%. This is consistent with The Hill poll, which found that 51% of women (57% of men) think he does not deserve to be re-elected. This is really bad for Obama, particularly as it will be hard for him to win women back as he has little to offer them. It’s also worth noting that his collapse among women has occurred during the “war on women” smear by the Democrats. Whoops.

● Yes, But: If you’ve been watching the convention, then you will have seen that the Democrats are claiming Obama created 4.5 million jobs. Each of them has been repeating this number like it’s magic. Well, CNN just debunked the claim.

To get the 4.5 million jobs, what you need to do is start in January 2010, the bottom of the jobs recession, and look only at private-sector jobs between then and now. If you do that, you will see that there are indeed 4.5 million more jobs than before. BUT, if you go back to the start of Obama’s administration, you will see that the economy has only produced 300,000 net jobs since January 2009. In other words, Obama is excluding all the jobs lost just to play up the number of jobs created. Moreover, this figure does not count the number of government jobs which disappeared over the same period. When you go from January 2009 to the present and look at the total jobs figure, the economy is down 1.4 million jobs.

Finally, CNN points out that according to the liberal-leaning National Employment Law Project, the jobs that have been created have been low-paying, low-stability jobs such as retail and food services, which have accounted for about 3/4 of all new jobs. These are exactly the kinds of jobs the Democrats claimed should not be counted when they appeared under Reagan or the Bushes.

It’s amazing CNN would point this out. Maybe there’s hope for them yet? In any event, the poll numbers certainly give me further hope that Obama is finished.

Thoughts?

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Romney's Great Speech At The NAACP

Let’s talk about Romney’s speech to the NAACP. He gave a great speech and I suspect it will serve him well. Interestingly, the race-baiters seemed to have nothing they could counter with, except calling Romney racist, and that’s not really going to work. As with his appeal to Hispanics, this speech was brave and correct.

● What He Said: Romney made several interesting points in his speech, each of which fit into the theme of his policies making the lives of blacks better. This is an interesting choice because it sidesteps all the race-baiting stuff for which Republicans normally fall. Observe.

First, Romney noted that Obama has been horrible to blacks. Specifically, black unemployment is 6.2% higher than white unemployment and the average income and median family income is lower for blacks than whites. He then promised that his goal as president would be the creation of jobs, but he intends to do so without trying to target things for specific racial groups:

"If I am president, job one for me will be creating jobs. I have no hidden agenda. If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him."

This actually got booed, which tells you something about the audience, doesn’t it? Then he said something fascinating. He essentially told the audience that capitalism isn’t their enemy. Check this out:

"I’ve never heard anyone look around an impoverished neighborhood and say, 'You know, there’s too much free enterprise around here. Too many shops, too many jobs, too many people putting money in the bank.'"

This is a brilliantly subtle point. What he’s doing is saying that no matter what other issues blacks may have vis-à-vis race in America, capitalism is not to blame. And subscribing to free enterprise, rather than the spoils system so popular in black circles, will make their lives better without them even having to give up the other issues which concern them. In other words, he’s trying to depoliticize capitalism and wealth.

Then he spoke about education, calling it the “civil rights issue of our era” and arguing that “mediocre schools” are setting black kids up to fail. To fix this, he pointed out that he supports school choice and won’t be beholden to the teachers unions, as Obama is. Here is how he sold this idea:

"If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, black families could send their sons and daughters to public schools that truly offer the hope of a better life. Instead, for generations, the African-American community has been waiting and waiting for that promise to be kept. Today, black children are 17 percent of students nationwide—but they are 42 percent of the students in our worst-performing schools."

Notice that again, he’s telling blacks that this is an issue which they should depoliticize and thus support his education policies, which have proven effective. He’s also tossing a wedge between blacks and the teacher’s unions.

Finally, he made a direct appeal for them to look past the ideology and take an honest look at him:

"I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president."

That’s a pretty solid appeal across the board.

● Smart Move: Romney was never going to win over the NAACP because those people have blinded themselves to anything they don’t want and nothing Romney could have said or done would have won him their vote or endorsement. So was it smart to give this speech to a hostile crowd? Well, yes. Winning over the NAACP wasn’t Romney’s goal. Instead, Romney was speaking to several other groups:

1. White Moderates. By speaking to the NAACP, Romney shows himself to be inclusive and willing to hear from everyone, not just his most loyal constituents. That makes moderates comfortable.

2. White Conservatives. By refusing to pander, Romney continues to show that he has strong conservative instincts -- though this point will be lost at some blogs.

3. Hispanics. By being seen appealing to blacks, Romney demonstrates to Hispanics that he’s not a white candidate speaking to white audiences. Following his speeches to Hispanics, this will help soften Hispanic fear that Romney wants to make them second class citizens.

4. Average Blacks. Obama will need every black vote he can get. Last time Obama got 96% of the black vote, and he still polls at 92% now. By speaking to the NAACP and speaking honestly, while making it clear he wants to help blacks, Romney could peel off a few percentage of blacks, which could make a key difference in some states. In other words, he doesn’t need to win them all to be successful, every percentage point counts.

● He’s Racist: The moment Romney finished, the race baiters started whining. There was nothing in his speech they could attack so they turned him into an evil genius by claiming he designed his speech so he would be booed, with the intention of using that booing to win over racist whites. Clearly they don’t believe this, but they know that many of their followers are stupid enough and paranoid enough to think this is true. So it’s a decent strategy in that regard. In fact, the smears started yesterday when Romney was called "too white" to speak to the NAACP. But I think ultimately, this speech is the kind of speech which could shift the needle a couple percentage points over time. And if Romney’s message that blacks don’t need to fight us on all issues finds legs, then the race industry is in serious trouble.

● Final Thoughts: Romney continues to impress, quite frankly. I have no doubt that if Newt or Santorum were the nominee, they would have told this group about all the laws they passed to give blacks spoils. Santorum would have promised some piece of civil rights legislation -- Newt would have promise seats on the new moon base. And in the process, both would have strengthened the liberal meme that everything related to blacks needs to be seen through the prism of race.

What Romney did here is give a speech which basically laid out how a color-blind agenda will help blacks too, and he suggested to them that it was all right to agree with us on issues like economics and education because they didn’t need to surrender their beliefs on other issues to do that. That’s incredibly smart.

Thoughts?

(P.S. Obama sent Biden to the same conference. He said racist things, told a sex joke and insulted veterans.)

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Zombiconomy

Braaaaains. Braaaaains. Our leaders have no braaaaains, and that’s the problem. And the evidence is coming through loud and clear from the economy, which the scurrilous wags as CNBC have declared a Zombie Economy. This is gonna be ugly.

In normal times, an economic recovery following a recession will produce real economic growth of around 4-5% and will restore all the jobs lost plus add a few more. That’s not happening this time. Instead, growth has been an anemic 1-2%, and the economy has come close to dipping back into recession three times now. In effect, the economy is stumbling along at the edge of recession. How bad is it? Well, it’s the weakest recovery since 1948!

Moreover, the jobs numbers are horrid. Just to keep pace with population growth, our economy needs to produce 120,000-125,000 jobs each month. In June, this “recovery” produced only 80,000 jobs. In May, this was 77,000 jobs. In April it was 68,000. All told, only 2.6 million jobs have been created since June 2009, for an average of 72,200 per month. That means for the last three years, 50,000 people have joined the workforce each month without finding a job. And that is on top of the millions of people who lost their jobs when the recession began. Indeed, we still have about 5% fewer jobs than we had before the crash.

And it gets worse. As people are running out of unemployment benefits, they are trying to get onto permanent benefits like disability. Remember how the economy produced 80,000 jobs in June? Well, 85,000 workers left the economy that same month to go on disability. That’s right, and that wasn’t an unusual month. Since June 2009, the economy has produced 2.6 million jobs, but 3.1 million workers have gone on disability! That’s unsustainable.

These problems are going to get worse too. To get a genuine recovery, an economy must reach “escape velocity.” That’s the point where economic conditions become strong enough that the recovery sustains itself. In other words, the point where there is enough production that enough new workers must be hired that their incomes begin to spur demand, which requires more production and creates more jobs: a virtuous circle, where good things lead to more good things. If an economy can’t hit that point, then it will slip back into recession or stumble along at the edge of recession, like Japan has done for the past couple decades.

Right now, there are four things preventing the economy from reaching escape velocity:

1. There’s just not enough good news to make people believe the worst is over. Housing and factory orders are up, yes. BUT they are weak and consumer confidence is falling at the same time. The rental-market has hit an all time high in terms of number of people renting, meaning people aren’t buying. And China has slowed its buying.

2. Uncertainty more than anything keeps people from acting, and right now everything is uncertain. Right now no one knows how much of ObamaCare will ever kick in, and until that’s clarified, people won’t hire. Add in the fact that a business would be foolish to act before the election, and you have a recipe for inaction. Inaction means recession.

3. Business has gotten hooked on handouts from the Fed and the other central banks over the past four years, and they are waiting for their next hit of free junk. Ditto on the continuing “stimulus” bills. Why buy anything when Santa keeps coming back to your house?

4. Finally, those banks Obama fixed. . . the ones who now control so much of the economy. . . well, they aren’t fixed. Dozens of them are being caught up in an interest rate manipulation probe across several countries. JP Morgan lost $2 billion in bad trades. Many of them still hold debt that will never be paid. And Greece and Spain and Italy hang around their necks like an inflated albatross.

This is a recipe for stagnation and collapse before the election, not a recipe for growth and happiness. And that’s really bad for Obama. Now the Republicans need to work to make sure they know how to fix this once they take over. For that, I would recommend:

1. Stopping the continuous stream of handouts through stimulus bills and Fed “quantitative easing.”

2. Repealing unnecessary regulations. But this needs to be done in one shot so business won’t keep waiting for more.

3. Killing ObamaCare with any means possible as quickly as possible.

4. Breaking up the big banks into component parts and keeping people’s savings (the money taxpayers guarantee) from being used for speculation.

Thoughts?

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A Double Dose of Failure

Let’s cover two short issues today. First, we have economic data which confirms the middle class is getting crushed under Obama. Secondly, the NRA and Indiana seem determined to set back the cause of gun rights.

Issue One: The surest way to determine what chance a president has at being re-elected is to ask the question Reagan made famous: “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Obama desperately needs to hope no one asks that. Why? How about these numbers:

● Unemployment: At 8.2%, unemployment is at one of its highest points in decades. In May, 12.7 million Americans were officially unemployed, with another 24 million unofficially unemployed or underemployed. Five million people have been officially unemployed for more than two years now.

● Falling Incomes: Since 2007, the median income for all American families has fallen 7.7%.

● Inflation: Inflation is eating away at spending power. A dollar today is only worth 32 cents of what it was worth in 1979. That means inflation has eaten 68% of the value of the dollar in 33 years. When you factor in wage increases, the middle class already took a 28% pay cut between 1979 and when Obama took office (the poor took a 50% pay cut). Official inflation under Obama has been minor, but that’s a fake number. Gas prices are up 83% and meat is up 24%, and real inflation is estimated at around 12%. Factor in the falling wages of 7.7% with the pay-cut of inflation at 12%, and you have a huge pay cut being taken year after year.

● Falling Net Worth: Since 2007, the median net worth of American families has fallen by 38.8% from $126,400 to $77,300. This is largely (but not entirely) the result of falling housing prices. In the West, this decline was 55%.

This tells us that the American public is taking a beating. Their savings have been cut by a third, their incomes are falling (those that are even employed), and inflation is eating away at all of it. So much for being better off today than anyone was four years ago. The exception, of course, is Club Fed which increased its spending 714% since 1979 and 33% since Obama took office.

Issue Two: Indiana has passed a law at the behest of the National Rifle Association which allows residents to use deadly force against government employees, including law enforcement officers, who “unlawfully” enter their homes. Mitch Daniels signed this in March.

This is a HORRIBLE idea!

First of all, let me ask why we need this? Is there a problem with cops attacking people in their homes in Indiana? If not, then there’s no reason for this. Secondly, has anyone asked what this will cause? How do you decide if the police are there unlawfully? Doesn’t this give people a false belief that they have a right to shoot at the cops no matter why the police are there? This is a stupid bill which will get police (and civilians) killed. And there is no need for this bill because it doesn’t stop any real problem.

This is a classic example of the stupidity of activists. Some jerkoff at the NRA decided this would be a good idea for whatever reason and the other jerkoffs talked themselves into it without every stopping to ask someone with common sense if this was a good idea. By pushing this, the NRA has put the “responsible” gun lobby on the side of fringe politics and irresponsible laws. This is, in fact, the very type of law which turns people off the cause being promoted. This is Planned Parenthood defending partial-birth abortion or gay marriage activists suing churches to force them to perform gay marriages. This is stupid. This is the kind of bill guaranteed to bring a backlash. And this is yet another reason I won’t support the NRA despite firmly believing in the Second Amendment.

Thoughts?

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Obama Fails The Economy

Obama has been a failure all around. His foreign policy has been heavy on retreat and his domestic agenda sparked backlashes galore. But even worse has been his economic policies. His plan of high taxes, massive government spending, and corporate subsidies lengthened the recession and created a jobless recovery. Those “green jobs” he promised were all an illusion. And now it turns out, he’s made the biggest danger to the economy even worse.

Before we talk about how Obama “fixed” the “too big to fail” problem, you might be interested in a little data on those green jobs we’re all supposed to have now.

When Obama took office, he promised five million green jobs in the next ten years. He even spent $90 billion to make that happen. That works out to $18,000 per expected job. Of course, it’s actually higher because that $90 billion is just a baseline and will cause further federal spending, but still, that's not too bad.

So how has he done? According to the White House, rather than creating 5,000,000 jobs, this money now will create only “827,000 job years” over Obama’s four years in office. But a “job year” is not a job. It is instead the equivalent of one full-time position for one year. If we spread these job years out over the ten years Obama used for the five million claim, you come up with a total of 82,700 jobs. And that means the cost per job is $1.1 million. It also means, Obama still owes 4.9 million jobs.

And don’t forget that even beyond this, you have a variety of failures under the crony clean energy loan program out of the Department of Energy, such as Solyndra, Enerl, Beacon Power, Solar Trust for America, and others. Not to mention, the $2.4 billion flushed away on building fewer than 8,000 Chevy Volts no one wants.

Call me crazy, but Obama’s attempt to create a Mussolini-like industrial policy appears to have been a colossal failure.

Now we get word that Obama has made the “too big to fail” problem worse. Imagine that. When Obama came to power, he promised an end to “too big to fail” so that taxpayers would never again need to support failed banks. Then he signed the financial reform bill, Dodd-Frank, which supposedly did that. . . though Republicans claimed otherwise. Bloomberg News now reports that the five biggest banks, i.e. those that are too big to fail, increased their share of all banking assets from 43% in 2007 to 56% now. That’s right, those five banks absorbed an additional 13% of all the banking assets in the country under Obama. In total, these five banks (JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citicorp, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs) now control $8.5 trillion in assets. Moreover, the size of the banking sector compared to the rest of the economy has doubled in the past decade, making banks even more “too big to fail.” That means the problem is much, much worse than it was before the TARP bailouts.

Obama has flushed money down the toilet while squandering opportunity after opportunity to actually fix the economy and protect the country from another meltdown. His failure to act is shameful and dangerous. Let us hope the Republicans fix these problems when they finally gain control over the government.

As usual, don't forget it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site!

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More Trouble For Obama

Every week seems to bring more problems for Obama. Perhaps he should quit while he’s behind? Let’s add some more chapters to Obama’s tale of woe.

● Tally Me Banana: The most reliable predictor of a president’s chance of getting re-elected is real take- home pay, i.e. how much Americans earn after taxes and inflation. This is the statistic behind Reagan’s famous question: “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” According to a Vanderbilt University study based on elections between 1948 and 2000, a president needs at least 1% growth in the election year to be favored for re-election. So far this year, take-home pay has actually fallen -0.2% in January and -0.1% in February. Based on these numbers, Vanderbilt professor Larry Bartels says Obama is likely to get 45% of the vote. . . which just happens to coincide with Obama’s approval rating.

● Running On Empty: Under Jimmy “Malaise” Carter, the price of gas increased 103.77%. People went insane and Carter was tossed out on his rear. How does Obama compare? Gas prices have risen 103.79%. . . slightly worse than under Carter.

And here’s an interesting aside. It turns out that 65% of hybrid owner go back to regular cars with their next car. So if hybrids can’t sustain their popularity with the people most likely to buy one, then it’s hard to see how Obama’s anti-gas push won’t hurt him.

● Burning Down The House: After never actually recovering, the housing market has started slipping again. The left is stumped. They really thought that this time would be different from each of the prior “recoveries” in the housing market. This is a killer for Obama because most Americans use their homes as their retirement savings.

● Get A Job: Yeah, that whole jobs recovery thing didn’t happen either. After a brief uptick, things are looking bleak again. The economy added only 120,000 jobs in March even though it needs 360,000 just to stay level with population growth. Right now the real unemployment rate is estimated to be 18% (almost one in five).

● Party All the Time: As America enters its fifth year of belt-tightening, GSA (the General Services Administration) is showing the public that government employees continue to live high on the hog. In the past couple weeks, we’ve seen a lavish $822,751 GSA party in Vegas disguised as a “regional training event” (complete with taxpayer-funded clown and mind reader), and videos of GSA employees playing around instead of working. What’s worse, however, has been the response. Team Obama tried to blame Bush for this, which went down about as well as blaming original sin. Moreover, government apologists whine that these are “first-class public servants and patriotic Americans” and it’s unfair to criticize them! Talk about being out of touch!

Now we’ve learned that the government is handing out “incentives” like ipads and laptops to these hard(ly) working (un)patriotic Americans. Again, this is supposedly Bush’s fault.

● Taxman: The latest Obama attack on Romney is that he only wants to be president so he can cut his own taxes. If that’s the best Team Obama has, they should start moving now.

● History Repeating?: Interestingly, Obama said yesterday that this election provides the clearest contrast since the 1964 election between Barry Goldwater and LBJ. Hmm. Carter-Reagan beg to differ, but let’s consider the parallels:

In 1964, LBJ tried to destroy the United States by imposing the Ingrate Society. Obama tried to do the same with his Crony Society and ObamaCare. In 1964, Johnson set us up to lose the Vietnam War. Obama is doing the same throughout the Middle East. In 1964, race was a flashpoint throughout the country. Now, Obama/Holder are trying to generate a race riot. In 1964, LBJ used one of the most despicable ads of all time -- the daisy ad, which suggested Goldwater wanted to start a nuclear war. Now, the Democrats and Obama are whining about a Republican war on old people and women and blacks. LBJ was a corrupt bastard. Well, shuck my grits, so is Obama! In 1964, the federal government tried to stop illegal voting practices which kept blacks form voting. Now, Obama is letting the Black Panthers intimidate voters and is whining about voter-ID laws being a return to Jim Crow.

In any event, there is method in this racist’s madness. Obama is invoking 1964 and not FDR because 1964 has been associated with the Voting Rights Act. Basically, this is an attempt to fire up his black base without alerting whites to what he is doing. And speaking of his black base. . .

● Black or White?: Although the MSM has been quick to hide Obama’s name now in connection with the Trayvon Martin scandal, it seems to be coming up a lot. And where it comes up the most is in questions about why Obama doesn’t seem to care about white people? After commenting about Trayvon, he failed to condemn the Black Panther bounty on Zimmerman. Then he failed to address several other black-on-white hate crimes. Now he’s ignored the beating of a 27-year-old white man in Gainesville by a group of 5-8 blacks who jumped the man and shouted “Trayvon” before the attack began. Even the Gainesville P.D. has declared the crime “racially motivated.” Yet, Obama has not called for calm or demanded that people not seek racist revenge for Trayvon. . . as he did when Islamic terrorist Hassan shot several American soldiers. In fact, the only time crimes, wars, terrorist acts or natural disasters seem to move him are when blacks are the victims. Hmm.

I think the left is realizing this is a problem because the MSM has all but cut off Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, they’ve downplayed all other race-crimes, and they are trying to redefine the Trayvon shooting as something other than racially motivated. The new arguments are that it was the result of gun ownership or “vigilante culture” in movies. Of course, here are two facts to blow holes in that garbage: (1) there are 250,000,000 handguns in the US, but only 12,000 shootings a year, thus guns are not a motivator of any sort. (2) Almost every American has seen the films The Washington Post blamed for causing this “vigilante culture,” and yet Zimmerman was the only one to “get it” and become a vigilante? Thinking never was a liberal strong suit.

So there you have it, more woe for Team Obama. He is a sad clown now.

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The Bad News Keeps On Coming. . . For Obama

Yesterday, we talked about some of the problems Obama faces getting re-elected. That made me happy. So let’s do it again. Today, let’s talk about the economic problems Obama faces.

The economy is a mess. We’ve technically been out of recession since May 2009, but growth has been anemic (slightly below the long-term average) and job growth has been nonexistent. This will hurt Obama come re-election time. But “top line” economic numbers don’t bother people. What bothers people are the things that hit them personally. And that is where Obama is really hurting:

● Unemployment: The unemployment rate in February was 8.3%. That means 12.8 million people are unemployed. The actual rate is closer to 16%, which means 25 million people are unemployed. Talk all you want about growth, but as long as most people in the country know one or more of these 25 million people personally, they won’t believe things are getting better.

● Inflation: The official inflation rate is 2.9% in the US. But unofficially, people are recording a 12% rate. That means everyone is taking a 12% pay cut each year right now, and that’s the worst it’s been since Jimmy Carter’s era.

● Home Values: It may not be fair to blame Obama for the housing collapse, but he will still feel the heat because Americans have used their homes as a form of retirement savings. And that means people are hurting. According to Case-Shiller, which provides housing price data to the stock market, home values are at their lowest level since 2003 AND they now suspect that suburban home prices may not recover in our lifetimes. Shiller says the shift toward renting and city living could mean “that we will never in our lifetime see a rebound in these prices in the suburbs.” That’s disastrous for Obama because it means that until things change, people will feel insecure and will spend less, which depresses the economy.

● Gas Price: The biggie is gas prices. Gas currently sits at a national average of $3.90 and is expected to hit $4.25 by mid-May. Some analysts think this will go as high as $4.50 to $4.70 during the summer. Indeed, everyone is now warning that gas will keep going up until the summer is over. And while the MSM has studiously avoided letting anyone blame Obama for this, a Reuters poll shows that 68% of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of the issue.

What “handling” could they be upset about? Well, people overwhelmingly favor the Keystone Pipeline, they overwhelmingly favor offshore drilling, and they overwhelmingly favor fracking for natural gas. Obama has stood in the way of each.

● Utility Costs: Obama’s EPA just issued rules forcing power plants to cut their carbon emissions. This means energy costs are about to go up again, just in time for air conditioning season.

Beyond this, seniors are worried the pension system keeps getting closer and closer to bankruptcy and Medicare barely works anymore because it's broke, the budget is out of control which is crushing consumer purchasing power and causing massive inflation, and civil servants have transformed themselves into a permanent elite class of rich, protected jerks living high on the amounts stolen from poor and middle class taxpayers. . . who aren't happy about it.

All of this is disastrous for Obama. That’s the good news.

The better news is that all of this can be fixed. . . just not by Obama. Getting spending under control will solve the budget and inflation problems. Extending the retirement age and capping benefits or running them lower than the rate of inflation will fix the pensions and Medicare issue. Gas prices can be fixed by approving more drilling and switching to natural gas. Republican attempts to break public sector unions are changing the bureaucratic landscape, and Republicans are getting the credit for things like school reform -- an area that once belonged exclusively to Democrats in voter’s minds.

Moreover, one of the biggest imbalances in our economy, the “collapse” of manufacturing is starting to right itself. First, manufacturing never collapsed. The US is still the largest or second largest manufacturer in the world depending on how you count it. Secondly, with wage inflation in China, it is now more cost efficient to open a new plant in the United States than it is to open the plant in China. And with wage growth showing no signs of stopping in China, you will soon see manufacturing return to the US.

The moral here is simple. The Democrats are doing everything wrong and are causing people genuine pain. That will ruin their election chances. And the Republicans have a chance, after the election, to set all of this right and win over the American people probably permanently. Good times will be here again!

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Austerity?! You're Kidding, Right?

It drives me nuts that everyone keeps claiming we’ve entered an “austerity” period in government. You can’t read an article in The Economist without them whining about this supposed austerity “endangering the recovery.” Seriously, every. . . single. . . article. And they aren’t alone. Most journalists now whine that “austerity” has “sapped growth” and hurt the economy. Noted liar Paul Krugman recently claimed “the turn toward austerity is a major factor in our growth slowdown.” This is demonstrably false.

In April, the White House and Congress agreed to a “draconian” $38 billion cut in the 2011 budget -- a whopping 1% of the $3.82 trillion leviathan. Oh my! Then in August they agreed to cut $2.4 trillion over the next decade. . . which would be 6% assuming the budget doesn’t increase for ten years (RFLMAO).

So there is austerity, right? It’s slight, but it is there, right?

Well, no.

Data from the Treasury shows that federal spending in 2011 is actually $120 billion higher than it was in 2010. In other words, spending is 5% higher than it was in 2010 and the supposed $38 billion in cuts has somehow morphed into $120 billion in additional spending.

That doesn’t sound like austerity to me.

Ok, so maybe we’re looking in the wrong place? Maybe the problem is really at the state level? After all, we keep hearing about belt-tightening and layoffs at the state level. Could that be where this supposed austerity is happening?

Well, no.

State budgets in 2010 were 8% higher than they were in 2008. And in 2011, they are 5% higher than they were in 2010. And in 2012, they’re estimated to be 2.6% higher again.

So where is this austerity? It’s made up. Liberals have spent like drunken sailors for the past decade. Federal spending is up 93% in 10 years and state spending is up 72% in 10 years, and there are no signs this growth is slowing any time soon. But they don’t want you knowing that, so they whine about austerity. And supposedly reputable magazines like The Economist prove they are too incompetent to even look up the truth. It’s a sad world.

Finally, let me point something out vis-a-vis the Democratic belief in stimulus spending. Federal spending increased 93% in ten years, yet the economy produced ZERO new jobs this decade. What gives? Maybe federal spending doesn't create jobs after all. . .

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The Times They Are A Changing Back

Things aren’t going well for Obama’s economic policies, and people are starting to notice. In fact, things have gone so badly that a backlash has formed and a wholesale rejection of his policies is underway. But even more than that, there seems to be a serious attitude shift in the public.

How Bad Is The Obamaconomy?

After three years bankrupting the country with futile “stimulus” spending and give-aways to Obama’s supporters, our economy stinks. In fact, it’s the worst economy since the Great Depression. How bad is it? Theoretically, the recession ended in 2009 and the Obama recovery began at that point. Indeed, Team Obama twice now has heralded “the recovery summer.” And yet:

● Official unemployment remains at 9.1% in August.

● Unofficial unemployment remains around 17%.

● Official black unemployment remains at 16.7%.

● Median household income is down to $49,445, below 1996 levels. In other words, fifteen years of income growth are gone.

● Inflation is officially 3.2%, but it’s really closer to 12-15%.

● There are 46.2 million people living below the poverty line ($22,314 per family). This is a record since the statistic was first kept in 1959. The poverty rate of 15.1% is also a record.

● 13.7 million Americans receive unemployment.

● 16.3% of people still have no health insurance.

● Health insurance premiums are up 9% this year, following 2010’s rise of 14%. Thanks Barack!

About Face!

In 2008, when Obama came to power, the conventional wisdom assumed the public was ready to move left and accept more government control over their lives. But that didn't last. People now see the government as the problem. Indeed, not only has the public rejected Obama's agenda, but they've moved further right than ever. Consider these numbers from Gallup (which typically shades about 5% to the left):

● 57% of Americans say the federal government has too much power and only 8% think it needs more.

● 56% of Americans say the federal government “is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and business.” Only 39% believe the government should do more.

● 56% want lower taxes and fewer services and only 16% want more taxes and more services.

● 50% think the government regulates too much. 23% think it regulates about right and 23% want more regulation.

That means 60% of the public is ready to declare an end to the Pelosi/Obama Age of Big Government (Redux). But even beyond these numbers, something else has changed.

When Reagan came to power, there was a sense the government had gone too far. But there seemed little appetite for wholesale butchering of government functions and agencies. It was still a world of “the government should be smaller, but don’t cut any of it.” The left used this dualism for years to justify continued spending, by claiming that people don’t really want cuts because they can’t identify anything they are willing to give up. That’s changed. Suddenly, people want it all cut. Questions like “what agency would you wipe out,” are now common topics for discussion and were even asked by an MSM journalist at the last debate -- in the past, this would have been considered fringe stuff.

Also, Republican governors are slashing budgets, cutting taxes, demanding an end to regulation, and ending collective bargaining right, and House Republicans are in near revolt to make similar changes. . . yet this isn't hurting them with the public. In fact, many of their poll numbers are up (some Democratic pollster recently noted to their chagrin that the Democrats are doing even worse now than they did in 2010). Moreover, we just aren't seeing a popular backlash like we've seen in the past when sacred cows were touched. Where are the million old people who flooded the Capitol switchboard when Republicans first proposed changes to Social Security in the 1990s? They're silent. Instead, all we've seen is professional protestors, whose buffoonish efforts achieved nothing. Heck, this trend is so obvious that even Democrats are starting to adopt similar rhetoric, without the substance of course.

Obama wanted to be an historic President, and he has been in many ways: his deficits are historic, he lost our credit rating, he’s the least popular President ever, and he’s headed for an historic beat down landslide in 2012. But his most historic achievement may ultimately be that he brought to life a change in belief in the United States away from slowly expanding the welfare state to ending it. . . i.e. he may complete Reagan's legacy!

The only question now is will the public turn out in large enough numbers to overcome those with a vested interest in big government? Someone said the other day that this election will be between those who work for a living and those who vote for a living. Workers of the world unite! ;-)

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