Whoops!

More unintended consequences from Liberal “help”.

SEATTLE, Wash. —

A Seattle-area nonprofit observed some workers recently asking for reduced hours, as they feared that their higher wages now put them at risk of losing housing subsidies.

Nora Gibson is the executive director of Full Life Care, a nonprofit that serves elderly people in various homes and nursing facilities. She is also on the board of the Seattle Housing Authority.

Gibson told KIRO 7 she saw a sudden reaction from workers when Seattle’s phased minimum-wage ordinance took effect in April, bringing minimum wage to $11 an hour. She said anecdotally, some people feared they would lose their subsidized units but still not be able to afford market-rate rents.

For example, she said last week, five employees at one of her organization’s 24-hour care facilities for Alzheimer’s patients asked to reduce their hours in order to remain eligible for subsidies. They now earn at least $13 an hour, after they increased wages at all levels in April, Gibson said.

“This has nothing to do with people’s willingness to work, or how hard people work. It has to do with being caught in a very complex situation where they have to balance everything they can pull together to pull together a stable, successful life,” Gibson said.
Gibson said she fully supports a minimum wage increase but was not surprised when her employees asked for fewer hours.

“The jump from subsidized housing to market rate in Seattle is huge,” she said.

Seattle Housing Authority told KIRO 7: “It’s important that the continuum of affordable housing options in our city and region allows for progression as people’s incomes increase. That needs to be addressed across the housing market so that people don’t feel they are in jeopardy of stable housing as they are able to earn enough to pay more of their housing costs.”

The amount of public assistance one receives depends on the income and size of the family. The scale is determined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the qualifications are based on area median income.

Justine Decker, who is a full-time student at Seattle Central College, said she works part-time so she can still get subsidies for rent and child care.

“A one-bedroom can cost upward of $1,200. And so imagine paying that, and paying child care which can be $900 something dollars,” Decker said.

She said she doesn’t want to work full time, or she wouldn’t be able to afford market-rate rents. Decker said she’s in school to become a teacher and hopes to eventually become a principal, to make well over minimum wage levels to be able to pay for everything on her own.

Mohamed Muktar drives an Uber and also receives public assistance for housing. He said he would love to work more hours.

“If you can get more hours, I think you need to work more hours, so you can take care of your bills,” Muktar said.

Seattle Councilmember Nick Licata said he hadn’t heard of purposeful reduction of hours before.

“We need more information, for one thing. This is anecdotal,” Licata said.

Still, he said people need more options, especially after breaking the threshold that pushes them out of public housing.

“We do not want this to be an improvement on one side of the scale, and then decrease in living conditions on another,” Licata said. “We should not be using this as an excuse not to address the overall problem.” (KIRO)

Opportunity

According to a major new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), net employment growth in the United States since 2000 has gone entirely to immigrants, legal and illegal. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CIS scholars Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that there were 127,000 fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.

The rapidity with which immigrants recovered from the Great Recession, as well as the fact that they held a disproportionate share of jobs relative to their share of population growth before the recession, help to explain their findings, the authors report. In addition, native-born Americans and immigrants were affected differently by the recession.

Other significant findings include:

• Because the native-born population grew significantly, but the number working actually fell, there were 17 million more working-age natives not working in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000.

• The share of natives working or looking for work, referred to as labor force participation, shows the same decline as the employment rate. In fact, labor force participation has continued to decline for working-age natives even after the jobs recovery began in 2010.

• Immigrants have made gains across the labor market, including lower-skilled jobs such as maintenance, construction, and food service; middle-skilled jobs like office support and health care support; and high­er-skilled jobs, including management, computers, and health care practitioners.

• The supply of potential workers is enormous: 8.7 million native college graduates are not working, as are 17 million with some college, and 25.3 million with no more than a high school education.

According to the study, 58 million working-age natives are not employed.

Camarota and Zeigler report three conclusions:

• First, the long-term decline in the employment for natives across age and education levels is a clear in­dication that there is no general labor shortage, which is a primary justification for the large increases in immigration (skilled and unskilled) in the Schumer-Rubio bill and similar House proposals.

• Second, the decline in work among the native-born over the last 14 years of high immigration is consis­tent with research showing that immigration reduces employment for natives.

• Third, the trends since 2000 challenge the argument that immigration on balance increases job oppor­tunities for natives. Over 17 million immigrants arrived in the country in the last 14 years, yet native employment has deteriorated significantly.

The Center for Immigration Studies is a non-profit research institute. Founded in 1985, the organization is regularly consulted by policymakers, the academic community, and the media on matters of immigration policy. (NRO)

War on Work

While 50 years ago the federal government declared war on poverty, I would submit that in recent years it has led an undeclared but real new war: a War on Work. The government increasingly is using its coercive powers to punish people who want to work, creating a vast class of able-bodied Americans dependent on the government — and politicians — for their daily bread.

The statistics are startling. A smaller proportion of working-age Americans works today than when the recession officially ended 4-1/2 years ago (June 2009).

But this trend is not just a failure of policies to encourage economic recovery, such as the stimulus package and the ineffective, highly expansionary Federal Reserve monetary policy. The decline in work has been going on since at least 2000, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Suppose today we had the same proportion of Americans working that we did in 2000 — the end of the Clinton administration. We would have 14.6 million more workers in America — 4 million more than the number of unemployed.

Making reasonable assumptions about the productivity of these lost workers, the annual national output today would be over $2,500 per person higher — over $10,000 for a family of four. The actual recent recorded decline in real median income per household almost certainly would not have occurred. Much of the 21st-century growth dearth — the fall in growth rates from above 3% to only 2% a year — would have been averted.

While a vast number of government policies cause a decline in work, let me mention just six:

• Extended unemployment benefits.

• Expansion of food stamps.

• Higher taxes on workers, especially the most productive ones.

• Increases in Social Security disability payments.

• Increases in Pell Grants and other forms of federal higher education aid.

• Increases in minimum wage laws at local, state and federal levels.

Extended Unemployment Benefits

For almost eight decades, the federal-state unemployment insurance system provided 26 weeks of benefits for unemployed workers, with occasionally a modest short-term extension of those benefits (to typically 39 weeks) during recessions. In 2013, those benefits were given for 73 weeks — four years after the recession ended.

You pay people not to work — and many respond accordingly. In the month with the highest unemployment (10.8%) since the Great Depression, December 1982, the average duration of unemployment was 18.0 weeks; in December 2013, it was 37.1 weeks.

The 73-week benefit provision ended recently, but President Obama and the Senate want it extended — preventing the creation of many jobs.

Food Stamps

If the government subsidizes the purchase of life’s most critical essential — food — it reduces the need to work. In 2000, 17.1 million Americans received food stamps; in October 2013, 47.6 million did.

Higher Taxes on Workers

A decade ago, in 2004, the top marginal federal income tax rate was 35%; today, it is about 43%, counting ObamaCare-related taxes. There is overwhelming empirical evidence that high income taxes impede economic growth. There has been a vast migration of Americans, for example, from the 41 states with state income taxes to the nine states that do not tax work income.

Social Security Disability

In 1990, about 4 million Americans and their dependents received Social Security disability payments — today 11 million do. At a time when health care is improving, and more Americans work in relatively less-risky nonindustrial settings, there has been an explosion in the number of people paid not to work because of alleged inability to do so.

Federal Student Financial Aid

In 2000, fewer than 4 million Americans received Pell Grants to attend college; by 2012, nearly 9 million did. From 2002 to 2012, total federal aid more than doubled, going from $83 billion to $170 billion. Yet large portions of those recipients never graduate, and many that do are truly underemployed — we increasingly have college-educated taxi drivers, janitors, bartenders and retail sales clerks.

Minimum Wage

Seven years ago today, the federal minimum wage was $5.15. By the end of this year, if Obama gets his way, it will be $9.25. Many cities and states have enacted huge minimum wage increases, at a time when the unemployment rate of black teenagers exceeds 35%.

Future Nobel laureate George Stigler noted in 1946 that minimum wage laws caused unemployment, and subsequent empirical evidence overwhelmingly shows that they kill jobs for the most vulnerable unskilled workers.

No nation ever achieved greatness when vast portions of its productive workforce were idle. America will not regain its economic vitality until it ends this war on work.

• Vedder is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, professor of economics at Ohio University and co-author of “Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in America.” (IBD)

But as long as they are dependent on the politicians and re-elect them what does the politician really care??

It’s fair. He gets what he wants, power. You get what you want, help.

The fact that’s it’s not what the country or you really NEED. That’s not relevant.

So everyone’s happy, right? 🙂

 

Your Government Family

Looking for a good paying job? Well, look no further.

No, really, stop looking. In 35 states, welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job, according to a new study by the libertarian Cato Institute, and in 13 states welfare pays more than $15 per hour.

http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/work-versus-welfare-trade

There are states in that study where if you play it right you can make more money than my college-educated, state licensed professional 10 hour a day 4 days a week job makes!

But if you cut welfare you want grandma thrown over a cliff and children to starve!

You evil heartless bastards!

“One of the single best ways to climb out of poverty is taking a job, but as long as welfare provides a better standard of living than an entry-level job, recipients will continue to choose it over work,” said Michael Tanner, senior policy analyst and co-author of the study.

The study is an updated version of one Tanner put out in 1995 that estimated the full value of welfare benefits packages across the states. The 1995 study found that such tax-free welfare benefits greatly exceeded the poverty level and “their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job.”

Despite efforts to curb welfare spending, many welfare programs and benefits have continued to outpace the income that many workers can receive for working an entry-level job, which disincentivizes work, according to the study.

“The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work,” reads the study. “Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour.”

According to the study, the federal government funds 126 separate programs designed to support low-income earners. Seventy-two of these programs provide cash or in-kind benefits to recipients. This is on top of additional welfare programs operated by state and local governments.

Welfare recipients in Hawaii get the most benefits, according to Tanner, at $29.13 per hour — or $60,590 pre-tax income annually. However, the state’s minimum wage is only $7.25 per hour, according to the Labor Department. Hawaiians on welfare also earn 167 percent of the median salary in the state, which is only $36,275.

The District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Connecticut have the next more generous welfare benefits.

D.C. welfare recipients can earn $24.43 per hour. In Massachusetts they can get $24.30 per hour. In Connecticut welfare recipients can receive $21.33 per hour.

“If Congress and state legislatures are serious about reducing welfare dependence and rewarding work, they should consider strengthening welfare work requirements, removing exemptions, and narrowing the definition of work,” says the study.

And Just like “family” they take care of you:

Fourth-grade students in Illinois are learning that “government is like a nation’s family” because it sets rules and takes care of needs such as health care and education.

So says a worksheet for social studies homework that was distributed to students at East Prairie School in Skokie, Ill, complete with a drawing of Uncle Same cradling a baby that represents the citizens.

Students are then prompted to answer 10 questions comparing government and families, including how their family provides for their health care needs and how the government does the same, and what rules families set and what rules government sets.

The worksheet it titled, “What is Government?” and then goes on to answer that question.

“Government is all of the agencies, departments, organizations, groups, individuals in a nation who make, carry out, enforce, and manage conflicts about rules and laws,” the worksheet says.

“Government is like a nation’s family. Families take care of children and make sure they are safe, healthy and educated, and free to enjoy life. Families encourage children to be independent hardworking and responsible,” it continues. “Families make and enforce rules and give appropriate punishments when rules are broken. Government does these things for its citizens, too.”

A concerned parent forwarded the homework assignment to TheBlaze. The worksheet asks the following questions:

1. How does your family keep you safe?

2. How does the government keep its citizens safe?

3. How does your family keep you healthy?

4. How does the government keep its citizens healthy?

5. How does your family help you learn and become educated?

6. How does the government help its citizens learn and become educated?

7. What kind of rules does your family have for you?

8. What kind of rules does government have for its citizens?

9. How does your family punish you when you break the rules?

10. How does government punish citizens who break the law?

Teri Madl, the superintendent for East Prairie School District 73 in Illinois, told TheBlaze the assignment was not pushing a political message.

“In response to your questions and said worksheet, it is meant to offer a simple analogy that helps children understand that part of a government’s role is to set rules, enforce those rules, and provide safety, security and freedom for its citizens,” Madl said in a statement. “It is not an attempt to include and/or promote a political message. If a parent does have a concern I would encourage him or her to contact the child’s teacher.” (the Blaze)

You’d expect such a blase’ answer from a liberal. Nothing to see, move along…Oh, we have an Obama Praise sing-a-long later, Ummm-Mmmm-mmmm…:)

The New America

John Stossel: The Obama administration now proposes to spend millions more on handouts, despite ample evidence of their perverse effects.

I would argue that that is exactly WHY HE IS DOING IT and he knows exactly why he’s doing it. As usual, it’s political, not economical.

The more dependents, the more votes for more dependents, the more addicts for the never-ending hamster wheel to the promised land.

Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says, “The single most important thing HUD does is provide rental assistance to America’s most vulnerable families — and the Obama administration is proposing bold steps to meet their needs.” They always propose “bold steps.”

In this case, HUD wants to spend millions more to renew Section 8 housing vouchers that help poor people pay rent.

Isn’t it curious 🙂 that Section 8 housing just happens to be named similar to : The term Section 8 refers to a category of discharge from the United States military when judged mentally unfit for duty.  (It’s what Klinger was trying for for 11 years on M*A*S*H).

Coincidence? I doubt it. 🙂

The Section 8 program ballooned during the ’90s to “solve” a previous government failure: crime-ridden public housing. Rent vouchers allow the feds to disperse tenants from failed projects into private residencies. There, poor people would learn good habits from middle-class people.

It was a reasonable idea. But, as always, there were unintended consequences.

“On paper, Section 8 seems like it should be successful,” says Donald Gobin, a Section 8 landlord in New Hampshire. “But unless tenants have some unusual fire in their belly, the program hinders upward mobility.”

Goo, because then the low-information drug addicted voter votes to keep the gravy train going. That’s good for the politician. And what’s good for the politician MUST be good for all of us because they “care” and it’s only “fair”.

Gobin complains that his tenants are allowed to use Section 8 subsides for an unlimited amount of time. There is no work requirement. Recipients can become comfortably dependent on government assistance.

Isn’t that the goal? 🙂

In Gobin’s over 30 years of renting to Section 8 tenants, he has seen only one break free of the program. Most recipients stay on Section 8 their entire lives. They use it as a permanent crutch.

Government’s rules kill the incentive to succeed.

But who cares, they vote for the politicians who best kisses their ass. Success and struggle are over-rated when you can get others to do it for you. 🙂

Section 8 handouts are meant to be generous enough that tenants may afford a home defined by HUD as decent, safe and sanitary. In its wisdom, the bureaucracy has ruled that “decent, safe and sanitary” may require subsidies as high as $2,200 per month. But because of that, Section 8 tenants often get to live in nicer places than those who pay their own way.

Well, isn’t that “fair”?

True, the worst rent I ever had was $1,200 a month in very nice neighborhood (allegedly I had 2 roommates to share the burden with at the time but I guess they thought I was the government and I had to do all on my own–that didn’t last).

They deserve it right, because it’s only “fair”. 🙂

Kevin Spaulding is an MIT graduate in Boston who works long hours as an engineer, and struggles to cover his rent and student loans. Yet all around him, he says, he sees people who don’t work but live better than he does.

“It doesn’t seem right,” he says. “I work very hard but can only afford a lower-end apartment. There are nonworking people on my street who live in better places than I do because they are on Section 8.”

But if you complain about it, you’re just a mean old capitalist who just wants them to be homeless! You cad!

It’s not “fair”! 🙂

Spaulding understands why his neighbors don’t look for jobs. The subsidies are attractive — they cover 70 to 100 percent of rent and utilities. If Section 8 recipients accumulate money or start to make more, they lose their subsidy.
 “Is there a real incentive for the tenants to go to work? No!” says Gobin. “They have a relatively nice house and do not have to pay for it.”

Then you have your Obama Phone, Your Obama Internet, Your Obama Food Stamps, Your Obama Welfare Check. Why would you ruin a good thing like that with something as hard and mean as a JOB!!  <<shudder in terror>>

That’s ridiculous. Besides, the world owes me . Why? Just Because the politicians I voted for said so! 🙂

Once people are reliant on Section 8 assistance, many do everything in their power to keep it. Some game the system by working under the table so that they do not lose the subsidy. One of Gobin’s lifetime Section 8 tenants started a cooking website. She made considerable money from it, so she went to great lengths to hide the site from her case manager, running it under a different name.

Now see, that’s capitalism! Gaming the system, everyone does it. Especially “rich” people so why shouldn’t I do it. It benefits me, and that’s all that matters.

It’s a lot easier than the alternative.

“Here’s a lady that could definitely work. She actually showed me how to get benefits and play the system,” says Gobin.

Just like “rich” people, right? But with less struggle and less discrimination. 🙂

Although Section 8 adds to our debt while encouraging people to stay dependent, it isn’t going away. HUD says it will continue to “make quality housing possible for every American.”

Because that’s “fair” and you don’t wanna be mean and see all these people homeless now do you? 🙂
Despite $20 billion spent on the program last year, demand for more rental assistance remains strong. There is a long waitlist to receive Section 8 housing in every state. In New York City alone, 120,000 families wait.

Some are truly needy, but many recipients of income transfers are far from poor.

America will soon be $17 trillion in debt, and our biggest federal expense is income transfers. They are justified on the grounds that some of that helps the needy. But we don’t help the needy by encouraging dependency.

Government grows. Dependency grows.

And that’s Exactly why they do it in the first place. That’s a good thing for everyone involved in the incestuous relationship.

It’s just not good for everyone else.

Screw You!  I got mine and YOU get to pay for it! that’s the New American Motto.

In case you thought there was no risk of your taxes going up again, think again. Washington isn’t done with you yet.

Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, want lawmakers to consider a fresh set of tax increases in the next several weeks when they discuss whether to cut spending. 

Think about that for a moment. While they are discussing cutting spending (which they won’t do) they want more tax increases.

But much of what Obama is talking about is raising tax revenue without actually raising tax rates. In Washington-speak, lawmakers will try to collect more tax money by closing tax loopholes, perhaps limiting popular tax deductions and to some degree changing the way citizens pay into the popular Medicare and Social Security programs. (mcclatchydc).

The Tax that isn’t a tax so they can say it’s not a tax per se.

Sounds like Gaming the System. Just like the Section 8 housing.

Funny how that happened…

After all the “fiscal cliff” deal is expected  to raise about $600 billion over 10 years. That’s 60 Billion a year. At the current rate of over-spending that pays for 12 days!

What a Deal! Stick it to “the rich” for virtually nothing and then come back for more!

And if you’re denied just complain, again, that you’re opponent is a “rich” loving asshole!

Funny how that happened… 🙂

According to the CBO, deficits in just the first three months of this fiscal year already add up to $293 billion.

Which means that, despite Obama’s massive tax hikes, deficits will likely top $1 trillion for the fifth year in a row, and Obama will have added $7.5 trillion to the nation’s debt since taking office.

The problem isn’t just that the country is borrowing too much.

It’s that Washington is spending too much on programs that increase dependency on government. (IBD)

But that’s why they ARE doing it. The incestuous drug-addicts are killing everyone else but they don’t care because it benefits them NOW.

And after all, that’s all that matters. What benefits ME, right here, right now. Screw everyone and everything else!

A new Heritage Foundation study finds that the number of people getting federal benefit checks — through Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, subsidized housing, tuition aid or countless other entitlement programs — has shot up 62% since 1988.

That’s more than twice the rate of population growth.

As a result, more than four in 10 Americans are dependent on the federal government for financial help of one sort or another.

And they Vote!

Welcome to the Have-Not Drug Addicts and their “fair” political fellow drug addicts running the asylum.

All you suckers out there slogging along working hard trying to make something of yourself, keep doing it, because grandma needs a new flat screen, SUCKER! 🙂

 

That Easy Road

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”– Thomas Jefferson

The greatest lesson Mom ever taught me, though, was this one: she told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected. She said to always pick being respected, that love without respect was always fleeting -- but that respect could grow into real, lasting love.

Now, of course, she was talking about women.

But I have learned over time that it applies just as much to leadership. In fact, I think that advice applies to America today more than ever.

I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved.

Our founding fathers had the wisdom to know that social acceptance and popularity is fleeting and that this country’s principles needed to be rooted in strengths greater than the passions and emotions of the times.

Our leaders today have decided it is more important to be popular, to do what is easy and say “yes,” rather than to say no when “no” is what’s required.

In recent years, we as a country have too often chosen the same path.

It’s been easy for our leaders to say not us, and not now, in taking on the tough issues. And we’ve stood silently by and let them get away with it.

But tonight, I say enough.

I say, together, let’s make a much different choice. Tonight, we are speaking up for ourselves and stepping up.

We are beginning to do what is right and what is necessary to make our country great again.

We are demanding that our leaders stop tearing each other down, and work together to take action on the big things facing America.

Tonight, we choose respect over love.

We are not afraid. We are taking our country back. -Gov Chris Christie.

As I have said many a times, the Truth doesn’t care if you like it. It’s still the truth.

10 years ago I was facing a mountain of debt that I had no hope of fixing. Then I looked at myself and my situation very honestly.

I didn’t like what I saw. But unlike today, I didn’t blame others and then just keep doing it because it was there fault. I didn’t take the easy road.

Sure my ex-roommate had a lot to do with my nearly bankruptcy, but I also was responsible for helping him do it!

I decided that “It is what it is” and I don’t have to like it. But I do have to do something about it.

My parents come from the Depression as young kids and World War II as young adults. They came from an industrious, hard working, background.

I was rediscovering my roots.

I worked 2 jobs from 7:30am to 1am 5 days a week for years. My parents also saw that I had finally risen to the challenge but didn’t help me until years down that road.

I remade my life. From near bankruptcy (I had $125 in the bank and a rent payment for more than that in 2 weeks) nearly every week for 3 years to owning a home with a job with a 401K and a pension plan.

Now that was hard work. And it’s FAR from over. Far from over. But, I used to joke that it would have benefited me if I could have had a microwave in the passenger seat of my car because then I could eat commuting between jobs and get a longer nap (which was an hour). I settled for fast food and microwave dinners. Not the healthiest choice. But it was what it was.

But now I have an obsessive work ethic that drives my boss crazy.

I made the choice.

My ex-roommate is probably still living with his mother wondering why the universe doesn’t bow down and kiss his lazy ass brilliance.

That’s the difference.

And I see that today also.

And I applaud any politician who will stand up and not only tell you the truth about the shit we’re in, but actually wants to do something about it.

Mind you all the “roommates” want to complain to you about how mean you are.

Tough Crap. Tough Love. Tough Times.

My parents survived them so can we. But the spoiled brats have to grow up.

The Truth is what it is. You don’t have to like it.

16 Trillion in Debt isn’t going to go away if you just talk to it nicely and try to reason and appease it.

8%+ unemployment for nearly 4 years is going to go away if you keep savaging the people you want to hire them and sabotaging the workers who want to work rather than just sit on their buns watching Ellen all day.

Medical Costs must be controlled, but Obamacare is not the solution. It’s throwing napalm on the fire.

Inflation will not go away.

And most importantly, not everything in the universe is all about you! You are NOT the center of the universe and everyone must kiss your royal ass.

Get over it.

Then go out and do something extraordinary, not sit around blaming others.

Life ISN’T Fair. Never will be. Deal with it!

And anyone who says they can make it “fair” is a DAMNED LIAR!

“A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have….”–Thomas Jefferson

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”–Thomas Jefferson

NOVEMBER IS COMING!

SEE TRUTH I DARE YOU

Rhetorical Reality

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” —  Ben Franklin

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” — Ben Franklin.

Then Liberals want to attack him for being a greedy, selfish, SOB. 🙂

“A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.“– Ben Franklin

And ignorance is much prized by the Left.

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”— Ben Franklin

USDA has an agreement with Mexico to promote American food assistance programs, including food stamps, among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.

The goal, for USDA, is to get rid of what they see as enrollment obstacles and increase access among potentially eligible populations by working with arms of the Mexican government in America. Benefits are not guaranteed or provided under the program — the purpose is outreach and education.

Some of the materials the USDA encourages the Mexican government to use to educate and promote the benefit programs are available free online for order and download. A partial list of materials include English and Spanish brochures titled “Five Easy Steps To Snap Benefits,” “How To Get Food Help — A Consumer’s Guide to FNCS Programs,” “Ending Hunger Improving Nutrition Combating Obesity,” and posters with slogans like “Food Stamps Make America Stronger.”

When asked for details and to elaborate on the program, USDA stressed it was established in 2004 and not meant for illegal immigrants.

Aka, “It’s Bush’s Fault so don’t blame me” and “oh, no, we aren’t targeting Illegal immigrants (at the same time that Obama is wanting to close 9 border crossing stations).

So advertising free food in Mexico is NOT going to encourage more illegals. 🙂

“If you talk to economists, they will tell you there are two things that are the most stimulative that you can do — one’s unemployment insurance, the other’s food stamps, okay?”

“Why is that?” he said. “Because those folks who receive those resources must spend them. And they’ll spend them almost upon receipt. Most economists with whom I talk believe that those with significant discretionary income, that that’s not the case.”–House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.)

Unemployment and Food Stamps stimulate the economy. So obviously we need even more of it. 🙂

And the persistent 8%+ unemployment and 1/7 of the US population on Food Stamps is good for us. We should be happy.

Government is here for you. 🙂

“USDA does not perform outreach to immigrants that are undocumented, and therefore not eligible for SNAP.” (RELATED: USDA buckles, removes Spanish food stamp soap operas from website)

Tell, me another fairy story, grandma…

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families bill incentivized states to create welfare-to-work programs, trying to transition Americans from government dependency to financial solvency.

In 1996, Republicans forced through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) bill, also known as welfare reform (and embraced by President Clinton for political reasons). It incentivized states to create welfare-to-work programs, trying to transition Americans from government dependency to financial solvency. But states quickly acted to poke holes in that legislation, calling the following activities “work” for purposes of the statute: bed rest, personal care activities, massage, exercise, journaling, motivational reading, smoking cessation, weight loss promotion, participation in parent-teacher meetings, or helping friends or family with household tasks and errands.

This was idiotic. So in 2005, Congress closed the loophole, over the objections of then-Senator Obama.

Now, Obama has walked back the 2005 legislation, using his Department of Health and Human Services to unilaterally waive those work requirements. “This Administration is unbelievable,” said Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). “Green-lighting new regulations to change bipartisan welfare reform without consultation from Congress is an outright abuse of the federal government’s system of checks and balances and an insult to American taxpayers.”

A high-ranking Republican staffer commented, “Only someone with a religious faith in government would change the rules such that ‘journaling’ now qualifies you for welfare assistance.”

But this is Obama’s new definition of work: anything that allows you to receive government assistance. After all, welfare, unemployment benefits, and all other payouts forward the economy, according to our magnificent president.  (Ben Shapiro)

Being on the Government dole stimulates the economy. And boy is it over-stimulated!

More people go on SSI disability than get hired for jobs. So the “private sector is doing fine” 🙂

Thomas Sowell: There was a time, within living memory, when the achievements of others were not only admired but often taken as an inspiration for imitation of the same qualities that had served these achievers well, even if we were not in the same field of endeavor and were not expecting to achieve on the same scale.

The perseverance of Thomas Edison, as he tried scores of materials before finally trying tungsten as the filament for the light bulb he was inventing; the dedication of Abraham Lincoln as he studied law on his own while struggling to make a living — these were things young people were taught to admire, even if they had no intention of becoming inventors or lawyers, much less president.

Somewhere along the way, all that changed. Today, the very concept of achievement is de-emphasized and sometimes attacked. Following in the footsteps of Barack Obama, Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard has made the downgrading of high achievers the centerpiece of her campaign against Sen. Scott Brown.

To cheering audiences, Professor Warren says, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You build a factory out there, good for you, but I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate.”

Do the people who cheer this kind of talk bother to stop and think through what she is saying? Or is heady rhetoric enough for them? People who run businesses are benefitting from things paid for by others? Since when are people in business, or high-income earners in general, exempt from paying taxes like everybody else?

At a time when a small fraction of high-income taxpayers pay the vast majority of all the taxes collected, it is sheer chutzpah to depict high-income earners as somehow being subsidized by “the rest of us,” whether in paying for roads or the educating the young.

Since everybody else uses the roads and the schools, why should high achievers be expected to feel like free loaders who owe still more to the government, because schools and roads are among the things that facilitate their work? According to Elizabeth Warren, because it is part of an “underlying social contract.”

Conjuring up some mythical agreement that nobody saw, much less signed, is an old ploy on the left — one that goes back at least a century, when Herbert Croly, the first editor of The New Republic magazine, wrote a book titled “The Promise of American Life.”

Whatever policy Herbert Croly happened to favor was magically transformed by rhetoric into a “promise” that American society was supposed to have made — and, implicitly, that American taxpayers should be forced to pay for. This pious hokum was so successful politically that all sorts of “social contracts” began to appear magically in the rhetoric of the left.

If talking in this mystical way is enough to get you control of billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money, why not?

Certainly someone who claimed to be part Indian, as Warren did when applying for academic appointments in an affirmative action environment, is unlikely to be squeamish about using imaginative words in a campaign.

Sadly, this kind of cute use of words is not confined to one political candidate or to this election year. The very concept of achievement is a threat to the vision of the left, and has long been attacked by those on the left.

People who succeed — whether in business or anywhere else — are often said to be “privileged,” even if they started out poor and worked their way up the hard way.

Outcome differences are called “class” differences. Thus when two white women, who came from families in very similar social and economic circumstances, made different decisions and got different results, this was the basis for a front-page story titled “Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do'” in the New York Times.

Personal responsibility, whether for achievement or failure, is a threat to the whole vision of the left, and a threat the left goes all-out to combat, using rhetoric uninhibited by reality.

AMEN

Yea, because hearing both sides of a presidential campaign is unnecessary when Obama is running for a second term.

That’s political discourse in AMERICA 2012.

NOVEMBER IS COMING

 

Money & Politics

Happy Cost of Government Day!

Candidate Obama 2008:

I always believed that welfare had to be changed. I was much more concerned ten years ago when President Clinton initially signed the bill that this could have disastrous results …

… It worked better than I think a lot of people anticipated. And one of the things that I am absolutely convinced of is that we have to have work as a centerpiece of any social policy. Not only because, ultimately people who work are going to get more income. But the intrinsic dignity of work, uh, the sense of purpose.

… We were made for work … and the sense that you are part of a community, because you’re making a contribution.

President Obama 2012 pandering for re-election because of his lousy economy: Ah, forget it!

The Department and Health and Human Services announced the agency will issue waivers for the federal work requirement of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program — considered a central facet of welfare reform in 1996 — Thursday.

The “Information Memorandum” states that the agency will be issuing waivers for TANF’s work participation requirements for parents and caretakers as a way to find new approaches to better employment outcomes.

Just sit on your ass. Collect your check and watch The View.

Oh, and VOTE FOR ME! because the other guy won’t be as nice. He’s the Devil incarnate , you know (a rich white guy!). 🙂

And also, F*ck you Bill! (Clinton who passed the Welfare form with Democrat support in 1996).

According to Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, the memorandum is proof of the Obama administration’s continued disrespect for the rule of law.

“President Obama just tore up a basic foundation of the welfare contract,” Jordan said in a statement. “In exchange for taxpayer-funded TANF payments, the law calls on able-bodied adults to work, look for work, take classes, or undergo drug and alcohol counseling. It’s the tough love that gives people motivation to help themselves…Today’s action is also a blatant violation of the law. After immigration, education, marriage, and religious conscience protections, we can now add welfare reform to the list of laws President Obama refuses to follow.” (DC)

He just don’t feel like it, right now. He has only 1 priority in his life right now and this is getting in the way.

It’s good to be The King.

Speaking of Money:

The Internal Revenue Service’s total revenue went down from 2007 to 2009, while the tax rate for the top earners went up, increasing from 19.4 percent to 21 percent. Meanwhile, McBride said, the tax rates for the bottom two quintiles’ — -5.8 percent of income in 2007 and -9.3 percent in 2009 — means the  IRS actually paid them.

The top 20 percent of earners — the top quintile — bore 67.9 percent of the federal tax burden in 2009. The middle quintile paid 9.4 percent, while the lowest paid .03 percent of the federal tax burden.

So the Rich got poorer and the poor got refunds. The rich paid more taxes and the poor paid less (50% pay no income taxes at all!)

Now that’s “fair”!! 🙂

In the chart <below>, we’re measuring the strength of all the post World War II recession recoveries as measured from the very bottom of payroll jobs lost. The last time we featured it, the recovery from the 2007 recession was just barely the worst ever.

And today, it is definitively the worst recession jobs recovery ever.

Worst. Recession. Jobs. Recovery. Ever.

But that’s Bush’s Fault!  🙂

Nothing produces a greater sense of the futility of facts than seeing someone in the mass media repeating some notion that has been refuted innumerable times over the years.

On July 9, on CNN’s program The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, commentator Gloria Borger discussed President Obama’s plan to continue the temporary extension of the tax rates established under the Bush administration — except for the top brackets, where Obama wanted the tax rates raised.

Ms. Borger said, “If you’re going to lower the tax rates, where are you going to get the money from?”

First of all, nobody is talking about lowering the tax rates. They are talking about whether or not to continue the existing tax rates, which are set to expire after a temporary extension. And Obama is talking about raising the tax rate on higher-income earners.

But when Ms. Borger asked “where are you going to get the money from” if you don’t raise tax rates, she was assuming an automatic correlation between tax rates and tax revenues, which is demonstrably false.

As far back as the 1920s, a huge cut in the highest income-tax rate — from 73 percent to 24 percent — led to a huge increase in the amount of tax revenue collected by the federal government. Why? Because investors took their money out of tax shelters, where they were earning very modest rates of return, and put it into the productive economy, where they could earn higher rates of return, now that those returns were not so heavily taxed.

This was the very reason why tax rates were cut in the first place — to get more revenue for the federal government. The same was true, decades later, during the John F. Kennedy administration. Similar reasons led to tax-rate cuts during the Ronald Reagan administration and the George W. Bush administration.

All of these presidents — Democrat and Republican alike — made the same argument for tax-rate reductions that had been made in the 1920s, and the results were similar as well. Yet the invincible lie continues to this day that those who oppose high tax rates on high incomes are doing so because they want to reduce the taxes paid by high-income earners, in hopes that their increased prosperity will “trickle down” to others.

In reality, high-income earners paid not only a larger total amount of taxes after the tax-rate cuts of the 1920s, but also a higher share of all the income taxes collected. It is a matter of record that anyone can verify by looking at with official government statistics.

This result was not peculiar to the 1920s. In 2006, the New York Times reported: “An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year.”

Expectations are in the eye of the beholder. Tax-cut proponents expected precisely the result from the Bush tax cuts that so surprised the New York Times. So did tax-cut proponents in the John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan administrations.

If this concept has not yet trickled down to the New York Times or CNN’s Gloria Borger, that is a commentary on the media commentators.

Ms. Borger may simply not know any better, but Barack Obama cannot use that excuse. When he was a candidate for president back in 2008, Charles Gibson of ABC News confronted him with the fact that there was no automatic correlation between the raising and lowering of tax rates and whether tax revenues moved up or down.

Obama admitted that. But he said that he was for raising tax rates on higher-income earners anyway, in the name of “fairness.” How higher tax rates that the government does not actually collect make any sense, whether from a fairness perspective or as a way of paying the government’s bills, is another question. The point here is that Obama knew then that tax rates and tax revenues do not automatically move in the same direction.

In other words, he is lying when he talks as if tax rates and tax revenues move together. Ms. Borger and others in the media may or may not know that. So they are not necessarily lying. But they are failing to inform their audiences about the facts — and that allows Obama’s lies to stand.

NOVEMBER IS COMING

Education

Audiences at a graduation ceremony were left aghast when Congressman Barney Frank told a black degree recipient that his graduation gown finally gave him a hoodie that he could wear ‘and no one will shoot at you’.

The Democrat made the controversial remarks while speaking at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth graduation on Sunday.

And no one in the Liberal Media will bat an eye.

Barck Obama’s Dreams of My Father: Here’s a quote from pages 100 and 101:

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints.We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated.

Thomas Sowell: “Education” is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital, life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement, without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic understanding of the world required for a citizen in a free society.

The lack of realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated in many ways.

When I saw signs in Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to get too close to a buffalo, I realized that this was a warning that no illiterate farmer of a bygone century would have needed. No one would have had to tell him not to mess with a huge animal that literally weighs a ton, and can charge at you at 30 miles an hour.

No one would have had to tell that illiterate farmer’s daughter not to stand by the side of a highway, trying to hitch a ride with strangers, as too many college girls have done, sometimes with results that ranged all the way up to their death.

The dangers that a lack of realism can bring to many educated people are completely overshadowed by the dangers to a whole society created by the unrealistic views of the world promoted in many educational institutions.

It was painful, for example, to see an internationally renowned scholar say that what low-income young people needed was “meaningful work.” But this is a notion common among educated elites, regardless of how counterproductive its consequences may be for society at large, and for low-income youngsters especially.

What is “meaningful work”?

The underlying notion seems to be that it is work whose performance is satisfying or enjoyable in itself. But if that is the only kind of work that people should have to do, how is garbage to be collected, bed pans emptied in hospitals or jobs with life-threatening dangers to be performed?

Does anyone imagine that firemen enjoy going into burning homes and buildings to rescue people trapped by the flames? That soldiers going into combat think it is fun?

In the real world, many things are done simply because they have to be done, not because doing them brings immediate pleasure to those who do them. Some people take justifiable pride in working to take care of their families, whether or not the work itself is great.

Some of our more Utopian intellectuals lament that many people work “just for the money.” They do not like a society where A produces what B wants, simply in order that B will produce what A wants, with money being an intermediary device facilitating such exchanges.

Some would apparently prefer a society where all-wise elites would decide what each of us “needs” or “deserves.” The actual history of societies formed on that principle — histories often stained, or even drenched, in blood — is of little interest to those who mistake wishful thinking for idealism.

At the very least, many intellectuals do not want the poor or the young to have to take “menial” jobs. But people who are paying their own money, as distinguished from the taxpayers’ money, for someone to do a job are unlikely to part with hard cash unless that job actually needs doing, whether or not that job is called “menial” by others.

People who lack the skills to take on more prestigious jobs can either remain idle and live as parasites on others or take the jobs for which they are currently qualified, and then move up the ladder as they acquire more experience. People who are flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s on New Year’s Day are seldom flipping hamburgers there when Christmas time comes.

Those relatively few statistics that follow actual flesh-and-blood individuals over time show them moving massively from one income bracket to another over time, starting at the bottom and moving up as they acquire skills and experience.

Telling young people that some jobs are “menial” is a huge disservice to them and to the whole society. Subsidizing them in idleness while they wait for “meaningful work” is just asking for trouble, both for them and for all those around them.

Now the Liberal Thought Police will coming to your door because remember, Liberals “evolve” when they are two-faced hypocrites after all.  So you need to “evolve” and be “re-educated”. 🙂

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs)- Karl Marx

You are “entitled” to a “living wage”, health care, a car, a home, a big screen tv, and lots of money you never earned…

Chuck Norris: On May 23, President Barack Obama told more than 1,000 jubilant, uniform-prepped-and-polished graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy that the world has a “new feeling about America.” He declared: “I see it everywhere I go, from London and Prague to Tokyo and Seoul to Rio and Jakarta. There’s a new confidence in our leadership.” If only it were true.

Obama boasted, “We can say with confidence and pride: The United States is stronger, safer and more respected in the world.”

“Stronger, safer and more respected”?

“Stronger,” as in Obama’s plan to initiate more than $500 billion in automatic cuts to the defense budget over a decade, starting next January. Bloomberg Businessweek reported that the Democratic-controlled Senate voted May 24 to authorize another reduced spending package for the Pentagon.

“Safer,” as in the report card from the Bipartisan Policy Center, including many of the original 9/11 Commission members, which reported on national preparedness 10 years after those catastrophic terrorist attacks: “Our country is undoubtedly safer and more secure than it was a decade ago,” but “we fail to achieve the security we could or should have.” The report concluded that the federal government has failed to meet nine of the 9/11 Commission’s 41 recommendations.

“More respected,” as in The Washington Times’ report that according to a poll by even two left-leaning groups, “a majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than two years ago and believe President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security.”

In February, Gallup reported that “Americans continue to express much greater dissatisfaction than satisfaction with the United States’ position in the world, and their views have improved little since hitting a low point in 2008.”

Why do we have such a weak, unsecured and disrespected U.S.?

Maybe a significant reason is that Obama paraded U.S. weaknesses and mistakes to the world in his 2009 “apology tour.” (Check out http://bit.ly/JIG7J1 to see The Heritage Foundation’s report on the top 10 decries of America by Obama.)

Sandwich all of those apologies and countless others since then with the apology in March for the unintentional burning of Qurans in Afghanistan and we have a perfect recipe for America’s global disrespect and dissolution.

Mr. President, you don’t build national or leadership strength, safety and respect by groveling and groping.

If you want examples of how America could become “stronger, safer and more respected,” then look no further than to our amazing, exemplary, courageous U.S. military personnel — especially those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom and republic, including some of the people I met on my two trips to Iraq. They are the ones who truly create the good U.S. qualities and deserve the credit for them.

One thing we can say for sure: Though the federal government and this administration have weakened our standing in the world and despite the lack of leadership by the commander in chief, our dedicated service members are responsible for strengthening our republic. To all who have served or are serving our great country, I salute you!

My father fought and was wounded in World War II, in the Battle of the Bulge. I served in the U.S. Air Force in Korea. I am also an honorary Marine. My brother Aaron served in the U.S. Army in Korea. And our brother, Wieland, served in the Army in Vietnam, where he paid the ultimate price June 3, 1970. Wieland was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star with “V” device (first oak leaf cluster) for his heroism. His name is etched among those of more than 58,000 other fallen service members on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. (Go to http://bit.ly/JQd0Nt to watch my 91-year-old mother speak about Wieland in her interview on Fox News Channel’s “Huckabee.”)

It’s fitting for a soldier like Wieland that Memorial Day falls every year a week or so before the anniversary of when he gave his life for the cause of freedom. Though we didn’t win the Vietnam War, my brother did not die in vain, just as the case is with other service members today.

Whether they be for our freedom or another’s, the words of Jesus are true for all: “There is no greater love than this: that a man lay down his life for another.”

About such patriots, Gen. George S. Patton was right: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.”

 

Shrinking is Good For You

Jobs: Normally, a drop in the unemployment rate would be a welcome sign of an economy on the mend. But in the upside-down world of Obamanomics, the jobless figure is increasingly useless, hiding more than it reveals.

Which is perfect for Liberals. Because fakery and falsehoods is what they live for. After all, you’re too stupid to be responsible for yourself so the truth isn’t something you or they can handle so self-lying statistics is a great boon to “transparency”.

In April, the unemployment rate officially declined to 8.1% from the previous month’s 8.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But you don’t have to look very hard to see that the jobs picture actually deteriorated last month.

In fact, the only reason the jobless rate didn’t climb in April is because so many people have simply quit looking for jobs and didn’t get counted as unemployed.

So when the liberal trots out like a puffed up peacock that more private sector jobs were created, mention that more people where destroyed than created.

They will be offended and call you a partisan hack and have no heart, but they were going to do that anyways.

Last month, 342,000 people disappeared from the labor force. Had that not happened, the unemployment rate would have been 8.3%, not 8.1%.

115,000 New Jobs. 342,000 give up. Now that’s a rosy picture! 🙂

But don’t expect the Ministry of Truth or the Liberal Talking Heads to mention anything but that first half. The second half doesn’t exist and you’re just a partisan hack who just wants to destroy Obama if you mention the second half.

It will just be “unexpectantly low” but still “showing signs of progress” and my favorite “the lowest unemployment in 3 years”.

WHAT A CROCK!

8+% Unemployment for more than 3 years and countless millions of people who have given up and this is GOOD NEWS?

Only in Liberal Orwell Land.

As a language, Newspeak applies different meanings to things and actions by referring only to the end to be achieved, not the means of achieving it;

The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history and change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. This is the “how” of the Ministry of Truth’s existence. Within the novel Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute. It cannot ever seem to change its mind (if, for instance, they perform one of their constant changes regarding enemies during war) or make a mistake (firing an official or making a grossly misjudged supply prediction), for that would imply weakness and to maintain power the Party must seem eternally right and strong. (1984 By George Orwell).

Sound Like NBC, CBS, ABC, et al?

Worse, the labor force participation rate has been on a downward slide throughout Obama’s presidency, as millions of workers have given up their fruitless job searches (see chart). That also masks the size of the unemployment problem.

Had the participation rate stayed where it was in June 2009 — the month the recession officially ended — the unemployment rate would be more like 11% today.

And when you add in all those who can’t get full-time work because of the lousy job market, the jobless rate reaches Depression-era levels of 14.5% — unchanged, by the way, from the month before.

Nor does the unemployment number adequately capture the many other ways the job market has deteriorated on Obama’s watch.

There are, for example, 5.1 million people who’ve been out of work for 27 weeks or more — nearly double the number when Obama took office.

The median length of unemployment is now 19.4 weeks — also nearly double from what it was in January 2009.

Even using the misleading unemployment number, there are half a million more people who can’t find jobs today than there were when Obama got his keys to the White House.

And the economy isn’t producing nearly enough new jobs to make a meaningful dent in any of this.

The 115,000 jobs created in April won’t even cover population growth, much less bring back any of the 7.7 million who’ve dropped out of the labor force over the past three years.

The percentage of Americans working or looking for work has fallen to its lowest level in more than 30 years, according to gloomy economic figures that are a major blow to President Barack Obama’s hopes of re-election. This stark ‘participation’ figure of the proportion of Americans in work will underline the sense of continued crisis and we know already, “Never let a Crisis Go to Waste”.

Obama has, in other words, managed to give a whole new meaning to the term “jobless recovery,” one that the traditional unemployment measure simply isn’t able to capture.

And until someone comes up with a better measure, the public would do well to ignore whatever the unemployment rate appears to be telling them.(IBD)

Unless you work for the Ministry of Truth, that is. 🙂

The Unemployment rate Dropped again, so He must be doing a good job and the economy is improving! Re-Elect Him and he will save you from those evil Republicans and their fat cat, greedy,racist, corporate capitalist exploiters!

“The last three months we’ve created an average of 212,000 jobs a month, which is pretty darn good, and the overall rate of unemployment has come down to about 8.2 — some people have said, ‘well, that’s because people have stopped looking for jobs’ — but look, I think we’re on a very solid trend now. As you said, 4 million new jobs in four years, that’s something to be pretty proud of,” Author William Cohan said on MSNBC. (MRC)

CBS “Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley shared “a little bit of good news on jobs” on Sept. 7, 2011. He led into a report about Obama’s proposed jobs plan by optimistically reporting that in July there were 3.2 million job openings posted by employers. “That’s the most in nearly three years,” Pelley said without noting the huge shortfall between available jobs and the roughly 14 million who were unemployed in August.

Now doesn’t that sound like the Ministry….ignoring the nearly 8 million jobs lost and up to 8 million who have given up because they don’t suit the meme of how great they are.

Last year, 86 million Americans were not counted in the labor force because they didn’t keep up a regular job search. Most of them were either under age 25 or over age 65.

A person is counted as part of the labor force if they have a job or have looked for one in the last four weeks. As of April, only 63.6% of Americans over the age of 16 fell into that category, according to the Labor Department. That’s the lowest labor force participation rate since 1981.

As these trends continue, the Chicago Fed expects the labor force participation rate will keep falling, hitting 62.4% by 2020.

That poses a problem for a variety of reasons.

It hits tax revenue and makes it harder to fund social safety nets like Social Security. Not to mention, it’s likely to increase income inequality.

Most importantly though, it makes the U.S. economy less productive and weighs on growth. (CNN Money)

So we have to squeeze the “the rich” even more and we can play the class warfare card even harder. Hurray! 🙂

So what if the policies are creating this, it works for me politically so gives a damn!

America, Whatta Country in 2012.

The Real Story

To make this easier I have removed the Trillions (now dollars) and the like to simplify it.

You take in $2.00

You spend $3.60

So now when people are screaming at you to cut spending you say “ok I’ll  promise that my ‘super committee’ will cut .15 cents a year (That’s a $1.50 over TEN years) if you let me spend another $1 NOW on top of what I am ALREADY spending.

I will gladly pay you .15 cents on Thursday if you loan me a dollar now.

Oh, you don’t want to?

Well, rich Uncle Warren can afford it. He has more than he needs so let’s force him to give it to me.

And that will solve everything.

It’s only “fair” He has more than me, or you, after all.

And what are you going to do with that dollar, young man, you might ask? Pay down your debts?

No. I’m going to spend it on my union buddies,entitlements, and government jobs so they can kick it back to me for my campaign just like I have done before.

So how is that going to create more jobs?

It will create government jobs (government jobs are paid for by whom exactly? — taxpayers! and unions make up how much of the actual workforce- 18%!!).

The Top 2% spend 1/3 of all the consumer cash in this country. They also pay the most taxes.

The Top 1% pay nearly 40% of all the income taxes.

47% of all American pay no income taxes AT ALL.

But the rich  are the greedy bastards who have to be taken down by the Bolsheviks.

Hate them!

Mind you they create most of the actual jobs.

But they are evil, hoarding little bastards and we must take their money.

Not cut spending or pay down the debt. We need to give out more freebies to my apparatchiks and monetary drug dealers.

The number of households receiving food stamps swelled by 2 million to 13.6 million, meaning that nearly 1 in 8 receives the government aid.

But food stamps are an economic stimulus according to Obama Administration officials. So it’s all good.

In record-setting numbers, young adults struggling to find work are shunning long-distance moves to live with Mom and Dad, delaying marriage and buying fewer homes, often raising kids out of wedlock. They suffer from the highest unemployment since World War II and risk living in poverty more than others – nearly 1 in 5.

“We have a monster jobs problem, and young people are the biggest losers,” said Andrew Sum, an economist and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. He noted that for recent college grads now getting by with waitressing, bartending and odd jobs, they will have to compete with new graduates for entry-level career positions when the job market eventually does improve.

“Their really high levels of underemployment and unemployment will haunt young people for at least another decade,” Andrew Sum, an economist and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University said.

In all, the employment-to-population ratio for all age groups from 2007-2010 dropped faster than for any similar period since the government began tracking the data in 1948. In the past year, 43 of the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas continued to post declines in employment, led by Charlotte, N.C., Jacksonville, Fla., Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Detroit, all cities experiencing a severe housing bust, budget deficits or meltdowns in industries such as banking or manufacturing.

Without work, young adults aren’t starting careers and lives in new cities, instead hanging out with their parents.

“Many young adults are essentially postponing adulthood and all of the family responsibilities and extra costs that go along with it,” said Mark Mather, an associate vice president at the private Population Reference Bureau. He described a shift toward a new U.S. norm – commonly seen in Europe – in which more people wait until their 30s to leave the parental nest. (AP)

And it’s “the rich”‘s fault don’t you know!. And Republicans “protect” the rich so vote for me (the Democrat) because the other guy’s an asshole!

If we just SPEND EVEN MORE and have even more government largess everything will eventually work out.

If you bang your head against the wall hard enough YOU WILL BREAK THE WALL!

The Wimpy President : Wimpy is soft-spoken, very intelligent, and well educated, but also cowardly, very lazy, overly parsimonious and utterly gluttonous. He is also something of a scam artist and, especially in the newspaper strip, can be notoriously underhanded at times.

“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”

I’ll gladly cut $1.5 Trillion OVER TEN YEARS (most of which I won’t be the President for) if I can spend yet another Trillion Now!

And if you don’t let me “pass the bill now” you’re just an obstructionist protecting greedy rich people, and a violent tea-bagger racist! 🙂

New campaign ad for Obama in Spanish only, “In the face of Republicans, the President can’t do it alone. Read the plan. Stand together for more jobs.”

Welcome to Obamanomics. The Land of Opportunists and Apparatchiks!

As the U.S. government grapples to find ways to trim the bloated federal deficit, a new report suggests officials might start with cutting out $16 muffins and $10 cookies.

“We found the Department (of Justice) spent $16 on each of the 250 muffins served at an August 2009 legal conference in Washington,” said a DOJ Office of Inspector General report released on Tuesday.

The DOJ spent $121 million on conferences in fiscal 2008 and 2009, which exceeded its own spending limits and appeared to be extravagant and wasteful, according to the report that examined 10 conferences held during that period.

The review turned up the expensive muffins, which came from the Capital Hilton Hotel just blocks from the White House, as well as cookies and brownies that cost almost $10 each.

The department spent $32 per person on snacks of Cracker Jack, popcorn, and candy bars and coffee that cost $8.24 per cup at another conference, the report said.

The DOJ also spent nearly $600,000 for event planning services for five conferences, the document said.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said most of the gathering were held when there were no strict limits on food and beverage costs, adding the DOJ had taken steps since 2009 “to ensure that these problems do not occur again.”

Word of the agency’s extravagant spending drew a swift response from Capitol Hill.

Senator Chuck Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee which has oversight of the Justice Department, said the report was a blueprint for the first cuts that should be made by the “super committee” searching for at least $1.2 trillion in savings.

“Sixteen dollar muffins and $600,000 for event planning services are what make Americans cynical about government and why they are demanding change,” Grassley said in a statement. “People are outraged, and rightly so.” (yahoo)

Let them Eat Cake!  or in this case Muffins! 🙂

The Buck Stops

One of the best, Thomas Sowell:

President Barack Obama boldly proclaims, “The buck stops here!” But, whenever his policies are criticized, he acts as if the buck stopped with George W. Bush.

The party line that we are likely to be hearing from now until the November elections is that Obama “inherited” the big federal budget deficits and that he has to “clean up the mess” left in the economy by the Republicans. This may convince those who want to be convinced, but it will not stand up under scrutiny.

No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.

Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president (January 2007 to be precise). The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.

The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.

The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.

Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.

Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.

“The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” he said recently. “In November, you’re going to have that choice.”

These risky loans, and the defaults that followed, were what set off a chain reaction of massive financial losses that brought down the whole economy.

Was this due to George W. Bush and the Republicans? Only partly. Most of those who pushed the lowering of mortgage lending standards were Democrats– notably Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, though too many Republicans went along.

At the heart of these policies were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who bought huge amounts of risky mortgages, passing the risk on from the banks that lent the money (and made the profits) to the taxpayers who were not even aware that they would end up paying in the end.

When President Bush said in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reined in, 76 members of the House of Representatives issued a statement to the contrary. These included Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel.

If we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.

The current policies of the Obama administration are a continuation of the same reckless policies that brought on the current economic problems– all in the name of “change.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still sacred cows in Washington, even though they have already required the biggest bailouts of all.

Why? Because they allow politicians to direct vast sums of money where it will do politicians the most good, either personally or in terms of buying votes in the next election.

Another political fable is that the current economic downturn is due to not enough government regulation of the housing and financial markets. But it was precisely the government regulators, under pressure from politicians, who forced banks and other lending institutions to lower their standards for making mortgage loans.

Amen! And those were Democrats by and large.

The RINOs still have to learn that getting along with Socialist Democrats is not possible and that even if they win Obama will be ideologically opposed to them on everything.

But at least it can’t get any worse and there is some hope, especially from the Tea Party Candidates.

Now that’s real “Hope and Change”. 🙂

25 Reasons to “jaws” the Democrats…

But first, I would add #26: “Though the job losses we were experiencing earlier this year have slowed dramatically, we’re still not creating enough new jobs each month to make up for the ones we’re losing,” Obama said last week. “For families and communities across the country, this recession will not end until we completely turn that tide.”

Was this last week?

No.

It was December 2009.

Sounds like last week doesn’t it?

“We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times,” he said, alluding to the concerns about the soaring budget deficit. “But we have an obligation to consider every additional, responsible step that we can to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country.”

This week?

No.

November 2009.

“Democrats have to reassure voters we are not being reckless,” said a Democratic official involved in the planning. “The White House knows this and that’s why we’ll be hearing a lot about reducing the deficit early next year. Democrats owned this issue for the past four years and cannot afford to cede it to Republicans now.”

You got it. November 2009!

You be the Judge, Jury and hopefully executioner.

1) Remember the stimulus bill? Republicans strongly opposed it and said it wouldn’t work. Democrats said it would revive the economy and keep unemployment under 8 percent. So, what happened? Democrats shoved through a bill that cost $1.1 trillion when you add in the interest. It cost more than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase (the real one not the Health Care one 🙂 ), and putting a man on the moon — combined. The result? The economy didn’t take off, the unemployment rate is still at 9.6 percent, and Democrats are calling for…you guessed it, another stimulus bill.

2) Perhaps the biggest problem with the economy right now is that businesses are so afraid of what the government will do that they’re stockpiling cash instead of spending it. Having a pro-market, Republican Congress that will oppose tax hikes, red tape, and damaging new legislation will reduce uncertainty and help give businesses the confidence they need to start hiring and expanding again.

3) While he was campaigning, Barack Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, but in his first 100 days alone, he quadrupled the deficit. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his budget blueprint adds more, “debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined.” No civilization in human history has spent like America has over the last two years of Democratic rule and unless we can get more Republicans in office, this country’s economic future is going to be deader than King Tut and uglier than a 7 day old chunk of roadkill.

4)The Democrats seem hellbent on taking over as much of the private sector as possible. In a relatively short period of time, our government has taken over much of the banking industry, auto industry, health care industry, and student loans. There are currently no viable plans to get out of any of these industries either. This sort of Sovietization of the American economy can only end badly. After all, look what similar policies did to the Soviet Union.

5) In the middle of a recession, the Democrats in Congress still seem to be on track to enact the largest tax increase in American history by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Here we are with a struggling economy and businesses that are afraid to move because they can’t be sure of what the Democrats will do, and Pelosi, Reid, and Obama still haven’t addressed this massive tax hike. How incompetent. How short-sighted. How foolish.

I would add (#27): In the middle of a recession, with joblessness hovering around the 10% mark, the Obama administration made a deliberate decision to impose a drilling moratorium knowing it would cost at least 23,000 jobs. Why?

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Never mind the fact that an event like this had never happened before in deep water.   Never mind there were hundreds of deepwater wells functioning properly and well.  Never mind that those jobs were well paying jobs  and that through their elimination would cause ripple-effect unemployment down the supply chain.

Instead, deliberately trash the lives of 23,000 workers – and their families – because of unfounded fears.

And a deep seated radical environmentalist “green” agenda. They weren’t the right kind of jobs, after all.

Yeah, that’s leadership, isn’t it?

6) “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” — Joe Biden

7) Our economy is no longer suffering from the recession. At this point, the economy is suffering from the policies the Democrats put in place that were supposed to create a “recovery.”

So how was the “summer of recovery” for you?

8) I don’t mind a President taking a vacation now and then or playing a little golf, but Barack Obama has taken it to a ridiculous extreme. The man has already played more golf in two years than George W. Bush did in his whole presidency. Is he planning to try out for the PGA after he gets out of office? And what’s with the never ending vacationinh? It’s like the presidency is a distraction from taking time off for this guy. Wait, is that the phone ringing? Oh, it’s Marie Antoinette. She is just calling to say that Obama needs to show more sensitivity to the people during tough economic times.

9) “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.” — Democratic Congressman Pete Stark to a constituent at a Townhall.

10) “But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” — Barack Obama explains his views on bipartisanship.

11) The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home… What I think we know — separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact. — President Barack Obama explains that racism was behind the arrest of his friend, Bill Gates

12) “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” — Attorney General Eric Holder

12a) Suing Arizona. Period.

13) Iran, a nation that’s known for supporting terrorism and chanting “Death to America,” is about to get nukes and Barack Obama’s reaction has been…well, pretty much nothing.

14) On the other hand Israel, a nation that’s known for being a bastion of freedom in a backwards region and for supporting America, is just trying to survive and Obama’s reaction has been cold and hostile. Maybe if Benjamin Netanyahu started leading “Death to America” chants in the Knesset, Obama might become a little friendlier.

15) The President of the United States should not bow to foreign leaders.

16) Nancy Pelosi once promised to run the most “ethical and honest Congress in history.” She wasn’t alone. Yet, how have the Democrats been doing on that front? Perhaps we could ask Eric Massa, Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, Roland Burris, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Alan Mollohan, Laura Richardson, Pete Visclosky, and William Jefferson among others. Sorry that all the charges aren’t laid out, but covering all the Democratic corruption that has occurred would be a double sized article in and of itself.

17) In one of the most corrupt deals in American history, Barack Obama broke existing contracts and tossed away billions in taxpayer dollars to give his union pals an outsized ownership stake in Chrysler and General Motors. Now, every time you buy a car from one of those companies, you’re essentially contributing to the Democratic Party. Calling that sleazy is like calling the ocean “wet.”

18) “The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act. The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” — Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the public’s lack of concern over greenhouse gasses

19) “How about just tracking down every single person who said drill baby drill and putting them all in prison. Why don’t we do that? Starting with Michael Steele.” — Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson

19a) By Grayson himself on the floor during the Health care debate: Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) warned Americans that “Republicans want you to die quickly” during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night, highlighted by a sign reading “The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly.”

Then the apology for this hyper-partisan rhetoric: “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,” he said on the House floor Wednesday afternoon.

Now that’s your Obama Post-Partisan Congress for you.

20) “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the (Ground Zero) mosque being funded. How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City — Nancy Pelosi

20a) If you disagree with a Democrat you’re a racist, a bigot, or a terrorist. Or all three. Isn’t that enough right there? 😦

21) “When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — (Obama) charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.” — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden explaining that Democrats no longer view space as one of NASA’s top priorities

22) The Democrats in the House actually managed to pass a cap and trade bill that’s supported by Barack Obama. This bill would impose massive new energy costs on American consumers. Estimates range from $1600 to $4000 in new costs per family. Although the Senate hasn’t passed this legislation yet, in an almost unbelievable show of arrogance, they’re considering trying to push it through during the lame duck session. If they try that, the American people should rise up as one and proclaim that it will be a “cooked duck session” for anybody who tries to shove significant legislation through before the next Congress arrives.

22a) The massive, seismically so, tax increases that the Democrats want to see on 1/01/11  when the Bush Tax Cuts expire. They actually think it’s a good idea to raise taxes on everyone during a recession. But they will be dishonest and say “it’s only the rich” we want to target. This kind of Class Warfare has never worked out in the past and won’t now.

23) How about Obama’s big, oily Katrina? Know what the difference was between the oil spill in the Gulf and the other programs Obama has pushed? With most of the other programs, it’ll take years for people to see how bad they are. With the oil spill, the country could see the complete and utter incompetence of the Obama Administration in real time.

24) It’s bad enough that the federal government ignored the law, isn’t trying to finish the fence, and refuses to secure our southern border. But now, not only are they still talking up amnesty, they’re actually harassing and suing Arizona because that state has decided to do the job that the federal government is refusing to do. If only the trial lawyers, unions, or ACORN were demanding that the border be secured, we might get some action.

25) You’d have to go all the way back to the days when the British were bossing around American colonists at the point of a bayonet to find the sort of government arrogance that led to Obamacare being shoved through in Congress. No matter how loudly the American people said they didn’t want the bill, Democrats insisted that they knew best. So now, the quality of American health care will be destroyed, private health insurance will end, rationing will occur, death panels will be instituted, the deficit will soar, and taxpayer dollars will be used to fund abortion — but on the upside, Democrats think over the long-term, it will be good for their political prospects. However, there is an alternative. The GOP House Leadership has pledged to defund and repeal Obamacare. If we can get them into power, we can start putting the brakes on now and start working on health care reform that will actually improve what we have now instead of destroying it utterly and replacing it with an inferior system. (John Hawkins- Townhall.com)

So when the Democrats trot out their bribes in the next few months, don’t buy it. It’s just more Marxist Snake Oil.

We don’t need anymore Snake Oil. That buck has to stop.