Tag Archives: unemployment

The CBO & Obamacare

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The best political snowball fight of the winter season broke out this week when the Congressional Budget Office (generally identified as the NONPARTISAN Congressional Budget Office) released numbers that infer Obamacare will cost jobs and, thus, slow economic growth.

You know that I am generally careful when I wade into these things and tend to take a “yes, but …” position. So much so that some of you have gone so far as to call me a Ceratotherium simum cottoni (Northern White Rhino).

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The Middle Class

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

“U.S. President Barack Obama is using his weekly address to promote a better bargain for the middle class.”

If that were the lead of an Associated Press report we might think it deserves a closer look, but it was the lead of a press release from the Voice of America, an arm of the U.S. State Department.

Let’s look at Politico.com’s lead: “President Barack Obama sharpened his focus on the economy Wednesday, looking to breathe new life into his second-term agenda with a fresh pivot back to the issue a majority of Americans feel most acutely in their daily lives.”

Ok. We can work with that. Continue reading →

On the President’s Remarks Last Week

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

In the same week that Detroit declared bankruptcy, the President opined on George Zimmerman and the state of race relations in this country.

The President should have spoken up on the Zimmerman verdict, which has become a festering national wound, although I thought his remarks were incomplete at best, needlessly adversarial at worst.

The fact that Barack Obama can stride up to the podium in the Brady Room, tell Jay Carney to take a seat, and start opining on race relations in front of the whole world tells you all you really need to know about the state of race relations in this country. Continue reading →

Politics Is Easy, Governing Is Hard

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This has to have been the longest, yet least relaxing Independence Day ever.

As you know, the 4th was on a Thursday so here, in Our Nation’s Capital, almost everyone I know pretended they had been sequestered out of having to work on Friday and made it a four day weekend.

While wondering why we choose to end 4th of July fireworks displays with the playing of The 1812 Overture by a Russian composer celebrating a victory over France this happened:

— The U.S. Government announced that the Employer Mandate part of ObamaCare could just wait until January 1, 2015 instead of its scheduled launch on January 1, 2014. It would have taken less time (3 years, 7 months) to defeat Japan in World War II than to implement ObamaCare (3 years, 9 months). And Obama will still miss it. Continue reading →

The Self-Service World

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

More than 2 million clerical jobs have been wiped out since 2007.

That’s according to the Financial Times, and it helps to explain why the median U.S. income has declined 5.6 percent despite the fact that the economy has largely recovered from the crash.

The top ten percent of American earners, according to FT, are doing quite nicely, because their jobs have not gone away. Continue reading →

Minimum Sense

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

There are two ways to look at the proposal to increase the minimum wage put out by the President in his State of the Union Address.

There is the way that economists and small business owners look at it:  Increasing the minimum wage makes it harder for businesses to hire workers.

Then there is the way that some on the left look at it:  Only by increasing the minimum wage will you entice people off of welfare and into the workforce. Continue reading →

The Gathering Fiscal Storm

BY STEVE BELL

We have written about the fiscal cliff and its possible economic consequences several times in recent months.  Other organizations have been more sanguine about the impact of the expiring tax cuts and large federal spending reductions that are set to occur at the beginning of January 2013.

A few days ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest assessment of the fiscal cliff and the analysis bolsters our argument: Going over the cliff inevitably leads to a serious recession.

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Hating Business Not Good Business

BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change (TCBMag.com)

“Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous to me, for all is vanity and vexation of the spirit.”—Ecclesiastes 2:17

“Corporations: an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.” Though Ambrose Bierce, a sensationalist writer working for William Randolph Hearst, said it a century ago, it could easily have shown up on any number of signs at rallies across the United States and Europe this year. If 2011 was the year of the Rabbit, 2012 is the year of Business Haters.

Jack Welch, outspoken and legendary former CEO of General Electric, is touring the country with his wife, which is nice. She’s Suzy, an author and former Harvard Business Review editor. Though General Electric has mostly abandoned Welch’s Continue reading →

Regulations Wipe-Out U.S. Productivity

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Americans produce more regulatory paperwork than manufacturered goods. You heard that ‘torectly as they say (sometimes) in the South.

Americans spent enough time and effort complying with government regulations to total $1.8 trillion of our roughly $15 trillion national GDP. (Source: Small Business Administration)

During the same year, the entire American manufacturing industry made $1.7 trillion worth of: airplanes, cars, furniture, clothes, upholstery, widgets, gadgets, wingnuts, and Sidewinder missiles. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Industry Economic Accounts (2009))

This is why the current ‘debate’ (mud-slinging) by the Obama Administration over ‘out-sourcing’ and ‘Bain Capital’ is so maddening, mind-numbing and quite honestly, ‘dishonest’. Continue reading →

Bain Gambit Takes Campaign to Gutter

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

A United States Senator who enjoys wide respect for his legislative skill and political insight predicted privately the other day that the 2012 Presidential campaign may become one of the most negative and brutal in our nation’s history, rivaling the 1800 Adams-Jefferson campaign.

His prediction was ever so prescient because the very next day a spokeswoman for President Obama accused Mitt Romney of being either a liar or a felon.

The American people need to put a stop to this nonsense before it gets any worse. The Republican mudslinging in the primary was disgusting, and now it is a cancer in the general election campaign.

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President Obama’s Fine Mess

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

My friend Meg’s mother likes to say, “Everything is fine until it’s not fine.” That pretty much sums up Barack Obama’s quest for reelection.

The President stepped in it last week when he reiterated his belief that the private sector is “doing fine.” The Romney campaign jumped on the statement and got plenty of traction framing the President as out-of-touch on what is really happening with our economy.

When unemployment is north of eight percent, obviously things are not fine with the private sector. It is easy to see why the White House believes everything is fine with the private sector, especially as compared to the public sector. Jobs have been created in the market place but have been lost in government, especially at the state and local level. The Obama team sees those statistics and assumes that the real problem with the unemployment numbers comes with severe cuts in government spending. Continue reading →

The Gaffe That Keeps On Giving

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Two weeks ago the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped a bomb on the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama when it released data showing only 66,000 jobs had been created in May – far below estimates – and that the top-line unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.2 percent.

This past Friday at a press conference, in response to a question about the GOP’s contention that it is his Administration’s policies that are strangling job growth, President Obama said, “the private sector is doing fine.”

He went on to explain that the rise in unemployment is largely due to budget difficulties at the state and local government level because mayors and governors are not getting the “kind of support they need from the federal government.” The federal government needs to send money to states and cities so those governments can hire more people. People who may do important work, but create nothing.

A few short hours after Obama had essentially proclaimed the return of prosperity for private industry, Bloomberg.com was running a piece by Chris Burritt headlined, “CEOs Losing Optimism as Job Slowdown Imperils U.S. Growth.” Continue reading →

US Issues: Iran, Nigeria, Global Energy, Security

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Like most people I have gotten so caught up in the rising and falling of GOP Presidential candidates’ fortunes that I more-or-less forgot about President Obama and what else is going on in the world.

What else is going on is that gasoline prices are on the rise.

Some people are following the so-called “Doc Fix” issue – that is to forestall a 27 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements to physicians. More people understand an extension of unemployment benefits. A lot of people would recognize whether or not payroll taxes (to pay for Social Security and Medicare) were being withheld from their paycheck. Continue reading →

EBT Card Abuses Abound

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from thefeeherytheory.com

The Electronic Benefits Transfer Card is the identification card for the SNAP/Food Stamps program. It works like a credit card with a magnetic strip on the back that slides through a machine at a grocery store and some restaurants (including some fast food places).

Meant as a way to help reform the Food Stamp system in 2004, the EBT card is used in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia. It has not been without some controversy.

In the State of Pennsylvania, for example, Democratic State Auditor Jack Wagner found wide-ranging fraud in the system, including one example where one EBT card holder withdrew close to $150,000 in $1,500 increments in one day. Who knows what he (or she) did with the money. Continue reading →

Krauthammer Wrong, Politics Dysfunctional

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

My daughter was in Canada recently and went into a gift shop to buy a souvenir.  She handed the clerk U.S. dollars and the clerk called the manager over to get the most recent exchange rate. “We don’t take American money anymore,” the manager said. “Things are so unpredictable down there, we never know what the dollar is worth.”

Early in August, 5,000 Federal Aviation workers were thrown out of work without pay, along with thousands of construction workers because Congress couldn’t get its act together and reauthorize the agency. Workers were left without income to pay mortgages, car payments and buy groceries. Continue reading →

Perry Gallops Out of the Gate

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

Rick Perry has been in this race for about 12 minutes and has been deemed the frontrunner; the man who has the best chance of knocking Mitt Romney out of his frontrunner status; the guy who will knock / has knocked Michelle Bachmann out of second place; the man who will force (pick one) Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, or Hopalong Cassidy to reconsider their previous decisions not to get into this race.

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Revisiting Humphrey Hawkins

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the Feehery.theory.com

On the eve of St. Patrick’s Day in 1978, the New York Times reported that the House approved by legislation, which established the official policy of the United States that the unemployment rate should be 4%. “The bill authorizes the use of fiscal and monetary policy, public service jobs, job training and counseling and all other means to achieve full employment…The legislation was supported by a coalition of labor, civil right, liberal, religious and women’s groups and was backed by President Carter.” Amendments offered by Republicans to require a balanced budget and achieve an inflation goal of 3% were rejected, and most GOPers voted against final passage of the bill, calling it an empty promise.

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Obama, Democrats Misjudged Mandate

BY DAVID WINSTON

Reprinted from Roll Call

 “I won.”

Those were President Barack Obama’s pointed words to Republican Congressional leaders when they challenged his proposed stimulus package in a White House meeting held just three days after his swearing-in. As he was to do for the next 20 months, Obama ignored GOP concerns and went on to cram a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package through Congress, promising unemployment would not go above 8 percent.

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