While the Old Media has been ecstatic over recent job numbers, claiming that some 200,000 jobs have been added to the economy, we should note that while Obama giveth Obama also taketh away. The media may be trying to claim the President has “created or saved” jobs (the latest weasel word is he’s created job opportunity) but his policies have also cost jobs. In particular his policies are costing jobs in the medical field.

Last week, layoffs were announced at the University of Mississippi Medical Center due in part to the 80 million dollars that it will cost to implement a new computer system named EPIC Systems, Obama’s newly mandated electronic medical records system.

Naturally, the system Obama is forcing on an entire nation of medical professionals and hospitals is the same system owned and operated by Judith Faulkner, one of his own big donors. Faulkner is also a big donor to the Democrat Party. Not surprisingly, besides affording her the lucrative, crony capitalist business deal, Obama also put Faulkner in a key role on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, the committee responsible for implementing the President’s e-records policy. She has become known as Obama’s medical records czar.

As hospitals and doctors are forced to launch their own EPIC Systems portals, the costs are forcing hard choices for administrators. All to implement what many call a flawed system.

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

he number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell last week, though the decline isn’t enough to signal improvement in the job market.

The Labor Department says weekly applications dropped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 423,000. The four-week average, a less volatile figure, rose slightly for the fifth straight week to 421,000.

(more…)

New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, in a radio interview on Friday, warned that high unemployment could lead to widespread rioting. That’s right. He actually said that. At a time when European cities have suffered massively from hooliganism, and at a time when U.S. towns like Philadelphia and Kansas City have suffered huge human and commercial tolls from so-called flash riots.

For Bloomberg to come out with this statement is irresponsible and incendiary. But you know what? He’s got a personal agenda. This is a desperate talking point to sell Obama’s jobs plan, which Bloomberg favors as a solution to high unemployment and zero growth.

There’s a whole history here of liberals threatening riots if they don’t get their way. WABC radio host Mark Simone reminded me that back in 1994, Matilda Cuomo warned there would be race riots in New York if her husband Mario weren’t reelected governor in his race against George Pataki.

So now the liberal Mike Bloomberg is trying to go to bat for his pal Obama. And he’s doing so in a very clumsy and inappropriate way.

In fact, Bloomberg is pitching for the whole Obama jobs package — the $450 billion stimulus plan and the $470 billion tax hike. The package is totally unpopular. A recent Bloomberg poll (how ironic) showed that voters disapprove of more Obama stimulus by 51 to 40 percent, and that 56 percent of independents oppose it. Other polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy.

Memories are long. The $800 billion stimulus package nearly three years ago didn’t work. So why do it again?

(more…)

In 2008, candidate Obama famously dodged a serious question by telling America that the question was simply “above [his] pay grade.” Three years into his Presidency, voters around the country are clearly voicing their opinion that being held accountable for the failing economy is not above his pay grade.  Even in California, perhaps America’s last bastion of liberalism, voters are finally turning on Obama.

Around the country, the numbers all point to Obama losing in next year’s Presidential election.  Generic Republicans beat him in polling match ups.  Following Democrats’ loss of the House last year, Republicans just won a special election for a seat in New York that they haven’t held since 1923.  Perhaps the most telling number, unemployment is above 9% (with no real improvement in sight) and no President has won re-election with unemployment above 8%.

In California, however, a majority of voters have stood by Obama.  For most of this year, a strong majority of voters approved of Obama’s job performance.  Now suddenly, Obama’s ratings took a sharp turn for the worse and, for the first time, less than a majority of voters in California approve of his job performance – just 46% to be specific.

Given that the economy has not changed much over the last year, the question could be asked:  Why have California voters suddenly turned on Obama?

(more…)

From National Journal:

As lawmakers continue to joust over how to accelerate growth and unleash job creation, the Census numbers are a timely reminder of how mightily the U.S. economy struggled over the last decade — and particularly over the last few years, during and after the Great Recession.

Consider:

• Last year, real median income dipped below $50,000 a year for the first time since 1996.
• By that measure — median income — this is the worst post-recession economy ever recorded by the Census Bureau (which began compiling this data in 1967). From 2009 to 2010, real median income fell by 2.3 percent, a steeper drop than the years that followed the end of recessions in the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s.

(more…)

Today, the Obama Administration sent legislation to Congress, detailing its latest plan to spur job creation. It relies on half-a-trillion dollars in new spending with an almost equivalent amount of tax increases. Very little of the proposed spending would actually spur new investment or hiring, while most of the tax hikes would work directly against them. The man is simply out of tricks. (Full text below.)

American Jobs Act — final

From Politico:

Just hours before President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress on his jobs plan, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is demanding the nation’s first African-American president prove he cares as much about unemployed blacks as he does about Iowa’s swing voters.

“There are roughly 3 million African Americans out of work today, a number nearly equal to the entire population of Iowa. I would suggest that if the entire population of Iowa, a key state on the electoral map and a place that served as a stop on the president’s jobs bus tour were unemployed, they would be mentioned in the president’s speech and be the beneficiary of targeted public policy,” Waters said in a statement to POLITICO on Thursday.

“So, one question to be answered this evening is, are the unemployed in the African-American community, including almost 45 percent of its youth, as important as the people of Iowa?” Waters asked.

(more…)

I’ve made some uncannily accurate predictions in the past 3 years.

Back in 2008, as I ran for Vice President of the United States on the Libertarian Presidential ticket, I made a prediction I’m very proud of today. I said, “Voting for McCain is voting for four more years of Bush. But voting for Obama is voting for four years of Karl Marx.” How’s that working for you?

I also predicted that Obama’s entire Presidency would be devoted to saving the union- the teachers union, government employees union, and auto union. Sure enough, the White House now comes adorned with a union label. If you look closely at Obama’s forehead, you’ll find it’s stamped SEIU. Obama’s signature initiative Obamacare affects every American citizen, except union members. Real life under Obama is more shocking than fiction.

A year ago, while economists and Obama administration lackeys talked of a recovery, I publicly stated we’d never left the last recession and the worst was yet to come. I predicted that “Obama’s Axis of Evil” policies of taxation, regulation, government strangulation, unionization, litigation and illegal immigration would turn a serious economic crisis into The Greatest Depression Ever. It’s all unfolding before our very eyes on a daily basis.

As conditions got progressively worse during 2010, I predicted the Tea Parties would pull off one of the great landslide victories in U.S. political history that November.

(more…)

A lead story in Wednesday’s trade press publication E&E Daily was “Energy, fighting EPA at the core of GOP jobs agenda”. This is true, but also reveals what may be the greatest gap between Obamanomics and an approach to governance that most Republicans claim to support:

• Obama treats the energy sector like a centrally planned jobs program, putting the boot on the neck of the stuff that works while ‘creating’ politically desired but economically unsustainable positions making politically desired but economically undesirable products. Republicans argue that if wind- and solar-powered electricity, pioneered in the 1890s, work then they will work but in the meantime creating jobs in the energy sector means getting your boot off the neck of the stuff that works.
• Obama and his team have long argued that their costly regulations will actually create jobs. Of course, every program, regulation and even hurricane “creates jobs”, just not on net. The administration either doesn’t get ‘net’, or thinks you will be persuaded by ‘the seen’ and imagine there is no unseen.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson embarked upon a campaign to advance these absurd arguments in February, arguing that, e.g., if she adopts a rule requiring you to do something costly or even prematurely destroy capital, why, you’ll have to hire someone to do it!

The WSJ accurately characterized this philosophy: “In other words, the government should harm an industry and force it to ruin working assets so maybe other people can clean up the mess.”

Obama administration “green jobs” emissary Jackson also said these will require many more new environmental regulators. Yes, she said that, risible dogma that was repeated by administration apologists as recently as this week on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show. So they aren’t giving up on it.

Except… On the Friday before this past long holiday weekend, President Obama somewhat buried a rational decision if a decision, like Thursday’s speech announcing Son of Stimulus, rooted entirely in his own political needs.

(more…)

James Hoffa Jr., aka Jimmy the Lesser, joined President Obama yesterday for a rally of the rapidly-dwindling faithful. (Thanks to some heavenly playwright for setting this scene in Detroit, a city more decimated by leftist ideology than any other.) As the President sat calmly by off-stage, Jimmy the Lesser excited the crowd with an old-fashioned stemwinder of trade unionist fire-and-brimstone. (Paging Jeremiah Wright.) It is worth multiple viewings:

The “Era of Civility” is definitely over, I guess.

Most of the commentariat is arguing over whether or not Jimmy the Lesser was making threats against the tea party (read American public). The wanna-be grundoons at Media Matters spittle that somehow Hoffa’s comments were taken out of context. Such an argument takes the context out of context. I’ve learned that when a Teamster or Longshoreman says things like “war” or “army” and calls his opponents “sons of bitches” it is prudent not to fidget over the nuances of language. Best to get ready for a dust-up.

But, the “debate” over whether or not Jimmy the Lesser was making threats is kind of beside the point. I watch his speech and see only one thing…panic.

(more…)

President Obama’s home state of Illinois is proving to be an example of “what not to do” when it comes to promoting job growth, and a massive income tax hike was among the poor policy choices recently pursued by Democratic state leaders.

Illinois lost more jobs during the month of July than any other state in the nation, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report. After losing 7,200 jobs in June, Illinois lost an additional 24,900 non-farm payroll jobs in July. The report also said Illinois’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.5 percent. This marks the third consecutive month of increases in the unemployment rate.

Illinois started to create jobs as the national economy began to recover. But just when Illinois’s economy seemed to be turning around, lawmakers passed record tax increases in January of this year. Since then, Illinois’s employment numbers have declined. When it comes to putting people back to work, Illinois is going backwards. Since January, Illinois has dropped 89,000 people from its employment rolls.

A petition to repeal the state’s income tax hike needs your signature.

Last week, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and a number of other Congressmen with states who rely heavily on energy production for economic stability, sent a letter to EPA head Lisa Jackson expressing some concerns over her agency’s impartiality. At the heart of their complaints, a series of backdoor regulations the EPA has put into place in recent months: regulations that are not only harming American energy industries, but which are actively destroying jobs in a already troubled economy.

Now, the EPA doesn’t seem to mind that it wields extensive power that it’s using to change the very fabric of the American financial system, but residents of states whose economies are dependent on energy job growth – and the leaders of these industries – are starting to see a problem.

Before, it might have just been industries that environmentalists considered “problematic,” but a recent EPA rule is about to put a wrench in the operations of nearly every carbon-dioxide-expelling creature or industry on the planet. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone, part of the Clean Air Act, currently demands that ozone emissions be limited to 75 parts per billion. That standard was put into place only two years ago, and companies are only now beginning to come into compliance. Instead of allowing industries to meet this standard, though, the EPA immediately moved the goalposts: they are now considering standards that would limit ozone emissions to only 70 or, more stringent yet, 60 parts per billion.

Apart from economic and social context, these numbers seem meaningless. But consider this: if the EPA were to choose the lesser of the standards, 70 parts per billion, only 24% of the 675 US counties who monitor ozone would be in compliance. If the bar were lowered to 60 parts per billion, only 4% of counties would make the cut. All of the areas that didn’t meet the standard would become subject to strict EPA scrutiny, as well as billions in fees and fines. Some of the more egregious offenders might even lose federal highway funding, and find themselves under the never-ending watchful eye of Lisa Jackson’s already-intrusive environmental watchdogs.

(more…)

The Obama administration recently proposed raising corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards affecting cars and light trucks sold in America to 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025.  However, in a surprising development, the administration is now taking heat from Democratic legislators from Michigan including liberal Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who is up for re-election in 2012, in addition to congressmen representing districts in which German automakers operate in the South.

Last week, 14 of Michigan’s 15 congressmen plus both its senators penned a letter calling the 56.2 miles per gallon standard “overly aggressive” and “not reasonably feasible.”  (Rep. John Conyers was the lone non-signatory among the delegation). The letter further indicates that the standard would have a negative impact on jobs and promotion of U.S. manufacturing.  Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder had previously signed a letter urging a sensible approach on CAFE.

But less reported on was a letter sent the day before by South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy and Tennessee Rep. Charles Fleischmann expressing concern about the administration’s approach.  Gowdy and Fleischmann appear concerned that German automakers who manufacture vehicles in their districts—Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen—could be unfairly hammered by the rules, with attendant negative consequences for employees and their communities.  Reads the letter:

(more…)

Washington Post, “Hidden workforce challenges domestic economic recovery,” March 15, 2011:

“Adding These Workers to February’s Jobless Rate Pushes It Up to 10.5 Percent”

“Overshadowing the nation’s economic recovery is not only the number of Americans who have lost their jobs, but also those who have stopped looking for new ones.  These workers are not counted in the Labor Department’s monthly unemployment rate, yet they say they are willing to work. Since the recession began, their numbers have grown by 30 percent, to more than 6.4 million, amounting to a hidden labor force that could stymie the turnaround. Adding these workers to February’s jobless rate pushes it up to 10.5 percent, well above the more commonly cited 8.9 percent rate.”

The following is a chart that has been regularly updated by Ways and Means Republicans, displaying the unemployment rate including unemployed people the Washington Post calls the “hidden labor force.” This same group was dubbed the “invisible unemployed” by Austan Goolsbee, the Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, in an article he wrote in 2003 assailing the prior Administration.  According to Goolsbee, the “invisible unemployment rate” back then “probably pushed 8 percent” – well below the current level.

(more…)

In 2006, the last full year in which the U.S. federal minimum wage was a constant value throughout the whole year, at least before 2010, approximately 6,595,383 individuals in the United States earned $7.25 per hour or less.

For 2010, the first full year in which the U.S. federal minimum wage was a constant value through the year since 2006, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that an average of just 4,361,000 individuals in the United States earned the same equivalent of the current prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 or less throughout the year.

In terms of jobs lost, that means that 2,234,383 of the jobs lost in the U.S. economy since 2006 have been jobs that were directly impacted by the series of minimum wage increases that were mandated by the federal government in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Interestingly, the average number of employed members of the civilian labor force in 2006 was 144,427,000. In 2010, the average number of employed members of the civilian labor force in the U.S. was 5,363,000 less, standing at 139,064,000.

(more…)

The Media is aflutter these days about the imminent return of the economy.   Of course, it marks a stark contrast to the manner in which they covered the Bush economy.  In the months leading up to the 2008 election, the Media was talking the economy down.  Now they are attempting to talk it up.  No amount of Media optimism, however, will change some basic dynamics which will keep the economy in its weakened state or worse for years to come.  As you go through these reasons, keep in mind that consumer spending makes up, and has for years, approximately 70% of the US economy.

1.  Historically High Unemployment.  The unemployment rate remains historically very high.  History also tells us that unemployment takes longer to recover than other economic indicators.  That certainly applies to our current economic troubles.  Despite Pelosi’s claims about how unemployment checks create jobs, the magnitude of our unemployment translates directly into a historically high lack of consumer purchasing power.  That’s true for the 9.8% of unemployed Americans and their families – not to mention those affected by the much higher underemployment rate of  17+%  – and those dependent on consumers.  No one expects unemployment to fall rapidly and therefore this will continue to hurt the US economy for years.

2. The Foreclosure/Mortgage Crisis.  The magnitude of the continuing foreclosure/mortgage crisis continues to be grossly under-reported by the press. (Surprise).  Many believe that foreclosures will actually increase in 2011 over the approximately 1.2 million that occurred in 2010.  Combined with the 2009 numbers, that means over 3 million foreclosures in a three year period.  That depresses housing prices and hurts the housing industry overall which, historically, has led the way in past recoveries.  Worse yet, estimates of the number of mortgages “under water,”  (homes whose mortgage is higher than the value of the home) continues to rise – not to mention those homes which have less equity than the costs of sale.

Looking at it another way, the Federal Reserve believes Americans have lost $6 trillion in home equity since 2006.  All of that translates into nervous homeowners with much lower – if not lost – purchasing power.   That won’t turn around in time for Obama either given his policies.

3. Rising Gas Prices.

(more…)

The chart below (found also here), from Big Government contributor Veronique de Rugy clearly shows that federal employment has grown by 98,000 jobs since the start of the recession. This bears repeating, because lefty columnist Paul Krugman is furiously spinning that the increase in employment is due to Census hiring. Krugman:

But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.

Um, no.

(more…)

The Department of Labor today released its latest state-by-state job report, showing state jobs and unemployment data for September 2010. This latest data, when compared with the level of jobs in February 2009, when President Obama signed Democrats’ trillion-dollar stimulus plan into law, reveals that 48 out of 50 States have lost jobs since then.

48_50 chart

(more…)

Believe it or not, with jobs falling for four consecutive months and unemployment stubbornly high near 10 percent, President Obama is out on the campaign trail bashing businesses and promoting class warfare. Huh? Oh my gosh is he off message.

He’s slamming the Chamber of Commerce for allegedly using foreign money in campaign ads, even though there’s not one shred of evidence of this. Huh (again)? Is the Chamber really a big election-year issue? Is it causing high unemployment?

Of course, Obama never mentions the unions, including the SEIU and AFL-CIO, and all their foreign money from their big international affiliates. Instead, he extends his own cast of villains, attacking special interests, Wall Street banks, corporations, the oil industry, the insurance industry, credit-card companies, AIG, and ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil? What did they do? Oh, they’re an oil company.

Phew. Kind of anti-business, wouldn’t you say?

Obama then blasts millionaires and billionaires, waging war on capital and investors, too. Next he talks about getting young people, African Americans, and union members to the polls. Even more division. Even more class warfare.

All this, of course, from the “post-partisan” president who was going to bring us all together for change.

But what’s truly incredible about Obama’s pre-election performance is how it totally misses the mark on the issues that really matter, like high unemployment, low growth, big-government spending, Obamacare, and tax hikes. That’s the stuff people are really talking about.

(more…)

By Reps. Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa and Peter Roskam:

Last January, President Obama declared, “Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010.”

Since that time, more than 2.5 million Americans have lost their jobs and unemployment stands at 9.6%. Some focus. The President and his Democrat allies in Congress instead chose to unleash a torrent of bills that do anything but create jobs, like the so-called financial services reform bill that didn’t fix the real problem of government meddling in mortgages, and another round of “stimulus” spending that only deepened states’ addiction to Washington bailouts. Last week, Congressional Democrats canceled a vote on tax relief for all Americans until after the November elections, creating more economic uncertainty while delaying private sector job creation.

The primary job killer is the trillion-dollar folly of ObamaCare. The bill hits America’s struggling small businesses and their families with 2,801 pages of new taxes and complicated rules, creating a climate of hyper-regulation and uncertainty that the nation’s most important small business alliance – the National Federation of Independent Businesses –has called “death by a thousand cuts.”

Just a couple of those painful wounds: by 2018, self-employers and small firms will be hit by a $14.3 billion health insurance tax, while a projected $17 billion will be raised by taxing every business-to-business deal over $600. Washington insiders pushing ObamaCare appear to ignore these truths and clearly don’t understand the negative impact the law is already having on entrepreneurs.

(more…)