August Unemployment

Here's the chart showing unemployment under the "stimulus" package...

and another graphic:

Congression Budget Office: Stimulus Hurts Growth

According to the CBO, Obama's "stimulus" hurts economic growth in America. Via Newsalert.

Obama Flip-Flops Again

In the summer of 2009, Mr. Obama clearly states that you don't raise taxex in economic down-turn. 



In 2011, with his new lazer-like focus on jobs, he's proposing $400 billion dollars in new taxes to off-set his $447 billion dollars spending spree which he wants to bolster SEIU membership by giving huge sums to state and local governments, and maybe do a little construction on the side...Reuters is reporting that,

President Barack Obama is proposing a series of tax increases, mainly on the wealthy, to help cover the cost of a $447 billion economic stimulus proposal, budget chief Jack Lew said on Monday.  Lew said Obama's plan would raise $400 billion over 10 years by placing new limits on itemized deductions for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and families earning more than $250,000.  The rest of the $467 billion in savings would come from raising a smattering of other taxes, including those on corporate jet owners and the oil and gas industry. [emphasis is mine, Ed.]

The definition of insanity is continuing to do an action while expecting the get a different reaction.  The "Stimulus Package" was basically configured much the say way as this "jobs plan" yet was a dismal failure, except to SEIU.  Yet, here Mr. Obama is proposing to do pretty much exactly the same thing.  Keynesian economics has failed in every instance it's been used to "jump start" an economy...why does he think it'll be different this time around?

HT:  GatewayPundit

SEC Exempt From FOI Requests

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood ."--James Madison

Congress recently passed another 2000+ page bill to "reform" (actually it institutionalized "too big to fail" companies) Wall Street.  But the very same bill specifically exempts the Securities and Exchange Commission from Freedom of Information Act requests.  Patrick Leahy (D) the senior senator from Vermont vigorously pushed for passage of this bill...but never read, much less understood what it would do, just as most Congressmen and Senators didn't read the provisions of ObamaCare.  Now he's whining that it wasn't intended to exempt the SEC from FOI requests. 

The Freedom of Information Act is our nation’s premier open government law, and a powerful guardian of the public’s right to know. The Wall Street reform bill that has now become law makes great strides toward enhancing transparency in our financial system. However, I am concerned that an overly broad Freedom of Information Act exemption, originally drafted in the House of Representatives and which was included in the final law, is contrary to the very important goals of the Wall Street Reform bill – restoring accountability and transparency to our financial markets. The SEC should immediately issue guidance narrowly interpreting this FOIA exemption in a manner that is both consistent with the President’s policy of government transparency and with Congressional intent. I will work with the Obama administration and others in Congress to ensure that the SEC remains subject to FOIA and accountable to the American people.

Just as Nancy Pelosi said about ObamaCare: 

You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.


But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. [emphasis added]

Yet, once more, we have a huge piece of legislation that will fundamentally change how things are done in this country, yet none of the legislators actually understand what is in the bill, but more importantly JUST DONT UNDERSTAND it's ramifications.  Not even the bills sponsors understand the bill,

"No one will know until this is actually in place how it works," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., of the Senate's slapdash financial reform bill. He ought to know: He co-sponsored the bill along with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

 I would say that if you don't understand the damn thing, or don't understand what it will do, DONT PASS IT YOU MORONS!!! Congress just doesn't understand what it has done, what it is doing.   They no longer have the support of voters yet continue to pass legislation they neither understand nor have read. 

The Stimulus Has Failed

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Stimulus Funds At Work For You

What do you say when a politician...swallows his foot? This is priceless:

Now, no plan is perfect. And I can't stand here and promise you that not one single dollar will slip through the cracks. But what I can promise you is that we will do everything in our power to prevent that from happening, which is why we're building on the provisions in the Recovery Act to forbid the use of these funds to build things like dog parks.

Kathrine Mangu reports that this was built just down the street from her house...with stimulus funds: You guessed it...a dog park.

US Unemployment Rate Passes that of Europe

So much for "Hope & Change". The US unemployment rate is now well beyond that of Europe. Our rate is 10.2%, or, as the NY Times is reporting:

A “broader measure of U.S. unemployment,” including discouraged workers, puts U.S. unemployment at 17.5 percent, reports the New York Times.

Openmarket.org is reporting that the average unemployment rate in Europe is 9.7%. That's 1/2 percentage point BELOW ours!

This is the highest rate in more than 26 years, and marks a huge change from the recent past, in which unemployment was double the American rate in much of Europe, such as in France. Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus package, and only 7.6 percent in Germany, which adopted a stimulus package that was smaller relative to its economy than ours was. (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated President Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.)

So much for the much vaunted "stimulus package". It did nothing for our economy except pay off all those long time Democratic backers. It should have been labeled a Porkulus Package, that's all it was, is, or ever will be. At most, it's saved a couple of thousand jobs at a rough cost of $2.5 million dollars per job. For this we added $1,000,000,000,000.00 to our national debt.

Confronted with the specter of new burdens under the health-care bills and global-warming bills backed by the Obama administration, many businesses with the money to do so are afraid to hire people and create jobs lest they be stuck with a large tab for things like health care benefits for newly-hired, less-skilled employees.

And that is all there is to be said.

Just How Many Jobs Did the Stimulus (Porkulus) Bill Save?

Someone is finally crunching the numbers. So far the stimulus package has saved, not the hundreds of thousands of jobs but only 30,083 jobs. For this the Democratic led Congress along strict party lines voted a $787 billion "economic stimulus" package. The information released was posted on Thursday, and was a direct result of the Administration's accounting for all the billions and billions of dollars that have, so far, been spent. That amounts to roughly $338 billion. For that, we get 30,083 jobs "saved". The administration claim's that if you "project out" the numbers...1.2 million jobs "have been saved" but the evidence discounts this.

Unfortunately, the early statistics show that the "stimulus package" has in fact failed. Thus the preliminary data that has inspired more stimulus criticism from GOP lawmakers. Mr. Obama claimed that by passing the stimulus, he would peak unemployment at 8%, unfortunately the current 9.8 percent unemployment rate is the highest in 26 years. This easily feeds the charge that the stimulus has been an abject failure.


The graph shows what the Obama administration projected unemployment with and without the stimulus. However, in October, 2009, unemployment "officially" reached 9.8%, but that doesn't count those who have given up looking for work, nor those, like my wife who are underemployed, or only able to obtain part-time work. If those figures are included, the unemployment rate is above 17%.

Aides to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted that nearly 3.4 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus was passed in February. They also dug up quotes by President Obama, Biden and their economists in which they predicted that the stimulus would save or create 3 to 4 million jobs. "Despite numerous promises from Congressional Democrats, there are still 15.1 million Americans out of work," said Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "After wasting taxpayer dollars to produce an unimpressive 397 jobs in Michigan, middle-class families are still asking one thing: Where are the jobs?"

Therein is the rub. Mr. Obama, you conned America into $787 billion boon-doggle, but where are the jobs?

UPDATE: From seekingalpha.com
http://seekingalpha.com/article/166903-job-losses-higher-than-reported-comstock

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently announced that they will be making downward benchmark revisions to past monthly nonfarm employment data that casts doubt on the validity of the recent figures as well. As we will explain, it is highly likely that substantially more jobs are now being lost than is currently reported.

Once more...where are those jobs you promised, Mr. Obama?

UPDATE II: From the blogprof.blogspot.com
http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2009/10/disaster-hard-stimulus-data-reveals.html

Disaster: Hard Stimulus Data Reveals That Michigan "Saved Or Created" Only 397 Jobs For 620 Million Stimulus Dollars, FAR Short Of 19,500 Claim
Michigan received $3.7 billion is stimulus money, of which $620 million was to be used to "create and save" jobs, while the remainder will be used by Granholm to backfill the budget deficit that she has created with her overspending so that she doesn't have to make any substantial cuts before she leaves office. When she walks away, she will have lost more than 1,000,000 jobs in a state with a population of only 10 million. A few days ago, Granholm claimed that stimulus money "created or saved" 19,500 jobs (Enron accounting: Stimulus saved or created 19,500 jobs in Michigan). Turns out, the number is an utter fabrication, as I suspected when I wrote that prior post. Fact is, that $620 million "created or saved" 397 jobs.

Let's just do the math. $620 million divided by say 400 jobs = $1,550,000 per job! That is an outright waste of taxpayer dollars. Worse yet, the rest of the $3.7 billion is going to keep Michigan in perpetual deficit that will be even more painful to deal with since we have had an AWOL governor for 6 1/2 years running. From The Detroit Free Press: So far, stimulus contracts aren't big boost for Michigan jobs.

Once more, Mr. Obama, where are the 3 million jobs you said would be saved this year?

Sept's Unemployment Numbers Even Worse than 1st Thought

First of all, the loss of 263 thousand jobs was far worse than even the most skeptical forecast. Additionally, the Labour Dept may have under counted unemployment up to march of this year, raising the numbers by nearly one million further unemployed.

Bloomberg.com reports,

The Labor Department today also published its preliminary estimate for the annual benchmark revisions to payrolls that will be issued in February. They showed the economy may have lost an additional 824,000 jobs in the 12 months ended March 2009. The data currently show a 4.8 million drop in employment during that time.

The NYTimes reports something similar, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/business/economy/03jobs.html

The endurance of hard times seems likely to increase pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to consider another dose of spending aimed at stimulating the economy, even as the government grapples with deficits projected by some economists to exceed $10 trillion over the next decade.

Despite a $787 billion stimulus package adopted early this year and aimed in part at shoring up state and local coffers, government jobs slipped by 53,000 in September.

“That’s the budget crunch hitting,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “We’re still losing jobs at a very rapid pace. We’re still looking at an economy with a lot of weakness.”

With these bad numbers and October looks to be even worse as very few retailers are hiring seasonal employees for the coming Christmas buying season. Steven Ramires of the Corporatejusticeblog.blogspot.com comments that,

Fourth even those employed are working a record low number of hours. Given the levels of debt in our economy, we must be concerned that continued deterioration in labor income will trigger a second wave of defaults leading to huge financial losses with cascading job losses and plunging GDP. In other words, these levels of unemployment could trigger another vicious downward cycle, perhaps more serious than what we have seen so far.

More importantly, these bad numbers will be spun as a reason for another soaking of our grandchildren. "The economy needs more stimulus" so the Democratically lead Congress will steal from our grandchildren to pay off those constituencies that didn't get enough in the last "stimulus bill."

Hitler Was A Socialist

The following is reproduced, with premission, from an online paper by:

John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)

The Demand for Explanation

Now that more than 60 years have passed since the military defeat of Nazi Germany, one might have thought that the name of its leader would be all but forgotten. This is far from the case, however. Even in the popular press, references to Hitler are incessant and the trickle of TV documentaries on the Germany of his era would seem to be unceasing. Hitler even featured on the cover of a 1995 Time magazine.

This finds its counterpart in the academic literature too. Scholarly works on Hitler's deeds continue to emerge many years after his death (e.g. Feuchtwanger, 1995) and in a survey of the history of Western civilization, Lipson (1993) named Hitlerism and the nuclear bomb as the two great evils of the 20th century. Stalin's tyranny lasted longer, Pol Pot killed a higher proportion of his country's population and Hitler was not the first Fascist but the name of Hitler nonetheless hangs over the entire 20th century as something inescapably and inexplicably malign. It seems doubtful that even the whole of the 21st century will erase from the minds of thinking people the still largely unfulfilled need to understand how and why Hitler became so influential and wrought so much evil.

The fact that so many young Germans (particular from the formerly Communist East) today still salute his name and perpetuate much of his politics is also an amazement and a deep concern to many and what can only be called the resurgence of Nazism among many young Germans at the close of the 20th century and onwards would seem to generate a continuing and pressing need to understand the Hitler phenomenon.

So what was it that made Hitler so influential? What was it that made him (as pre-war histories such as Roberts, 1938, attest) the most popular man in the Germany of his day? Why does he still have many admirers now in the Germany on which he inflicted such disasters? What was (is?) his appeal? And why, of all things, are the young products of an East German Communist upbringing still so susceptible to his message?

Follow the link for a complete paper.

http://ray-dox.blogspot.com/2006/08/this-article-is-published-on-internet.html