Despite some modest improvements in the jobs picture with the release of Friday’s Labor Department report, I would guard against any irrational overexuberance that problems with employment or the economy are being solved.

A smaller-than-expected 80,000 gain in nonfarm payrolls was bolstered by upward revisions in the prior two months, amounting to 102,000 additional jobs. So over the past three months the establishment survey has averaged 114,000. It’s really nothing to write home about.

A 2 percent economy is simply way too slow to generate the kind of 300,000 per month job gains the country needs. Economic growth at 5 percent would be more like it.

And this should be a warning to members of Congress who are flirting with higher tax rates as part of the supercommittee deficit deliberations. There’s loose talk about raising the top Bush tax rates and adding to that a surcharge on millionaire tax rates. That would be a big negative for future growth.

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BG contributor Charlie Gasparino in The New York Post:

Jon Corzine appears to have committed more than a few sins in the runup to the demise of MF Global, including possibly using client money to pay for the risky trades that forced his brokerage firm into bankruptcy over the weekend. But possibly his biggest sin was his steadfast belief in the power of government.

The former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs chief executive went wrong by assuming that a government bailout would somehow turn his firm’s bet on some of the worst investments in the world — the sovereign debt of Italy and Spain — into gold. That absurd faith has doomed many chief executives — Dick Fuld of Lehman Bros. chief among them, just a little more than three years ago.

And, more than any of the other shenanigans that may have taken place during the ill-fated firm’s final hours, it’s what did in Corzine and MF Global.

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“Did a corporation end slavery, or did the government end slavery?!?!”

That’s the sort of question investment guru and radio show host Peter Schiff fielded as he debated Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters last week in New York’s Zuccotti Park.

Schiff is no ordinary observer. As the prinicipal of the financial firm Euro Pacific Capital, he’s a full-fledged and unapologetic member of “the 1 Percent.” As an outspoken radio show host (listen online here) and commentator, he not only predicted the housing crash and financial crisis, he railed bank and auto-sector bailouts as they were happening. Schiff believes that capitalism offers the only hope for young, frustrated people to have a vibrant and prosperous future (get information on his latest book, How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, here). So he went to Occupy Wall Street to engage and debate the protesters. (more…)

From Entrepreneur:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has very different objectives from most small-business owners. Doug Schoen, a political pollster and Fox News analyst, recently surveyed 200 protesters and concluded that the majority of the movement’s members want higher taxes to redistribute wealth and heavier regulation on the private sector. But most small-business owners have been calling for less regulation and lower taxes to get the economy going again.

Moreover, most small-business owners believe in the capitalist system, while Occupy Wall Street expresses some anti-capitalist views. Take a look at some statements made in the movement’s first official release. “Corporations … have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions…. have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ health care and pay…. [and] have spent millions of dollars … to get … out of contracts in regards to health insurance.”

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From The Hill:

More than two-thirds of voters say the United States is declining, and a clear majority think the next generation will be worse off than this one, according to the results of a new poll commissioned by The Hill.

A resounding 69 percent of respondents said the country is “in decline,” the survey found, while 57 percent predict today’s kids won’t live better lives than their parents. Additionally, 83 percent of voters indicated they’re either very or somewhat worried about the future of the nation, with 49 percent saying they’re “very worried.”

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The latest Gallup poll pegs President Obama’s approval at a new low of 41 percent. That adds to the thought that the winner of the GOP presidential-primary sweepstakes is going to be the next president.

And inside that Republican contest, the policy pendulum is swinging toward pro-growth, flat-tax reform. A new agenda. With Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan and the announcement of a Steve Forbes-type flat tax from Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP flat-tax-reform competition is dominating the headline news.

While President Obama stumps for huge tax hikes — on incomes of $200,000 to the millionaire and billionaire level — and demoralizes businesses and entrepreneurs with his populist attacks on success and risk-taking, the GOP is fast coming up with a much better idea.

The handwriting is now on the wall. A huge part of the 2012 campaign will be pro-growth tax reform versus “fairness,” redistribution, and soak-the-rich. In a stalled-out economy, I’ll take the supply-side bet anytime. Pro-growth, flat-tax reform is going to win.

The stock market gets this. The flat tax is bullish. In late September, Herman Cain trumpeted his 9-9-9 flat-tax/fair-tax hybrid reform plan at the Orlando, Fla., debate. Since early October, stocks have come out of their funk, rising 12 percent.

Coincidence?

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Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is holding little back as he compares his state’s model for success to Washington’s big government corporate socialism and big labor cronyism. In a recent letter, Gov. McDonnell writes, “we are unapologetic supporters of Virginia’s Right To Work laws.”  But, McDonnell doesn’t stop there.  He pulls no punches when he compares Richmond to Washington, DC and boasts about Virginia’s success.

From Gov. McDonnell’s letter:

There’s much more separating Richmond and Washington than just 100 miles of interstate.

It’s a Tale of Two Cities.

In Washington they’re bogged down in red ink, spiraling debt, expanding government and overspending – all while the difficult decisions are left to future generations.

Here in Richmond, for the second straight year, we’ve reached the end of our fiscal year in the black —with a surplus this year of more than $500 million.

What does it take to create jobs and bring economic development to Virginia?

It’s really common sense and a focus on getting results, something that is in short supply in Washington.

Businesses want consistency and a level playing field, low taxes, reasonable regulation, good schools and a world-class transportation system.

We are unapologetic supporters of Virginia’s Right-to-Work laws and fighting off the union excesses that is hurting businessmen across the United States.

We’ve kept taxes low on businesses in Virginia.

We’ve worked to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses here in the Commonwealth.

Contrast that with how Washington does businesses.

In Washington, the Administration is using unelected people in appointed boards to do what Congress can’t, like using the NLRB to prohibit companies like Boeing from relocating some of their workforce to Right To Work states.

In Washington, a national healthcare plan was passed which explodes the cost of healthcare that employers must pay, and places an estimated $2.2 billion unfunded mandate on Virginia over the next 10 years.

In Washington, the Democrats beat the redistribution drums for increased taxes on job creators and wealth generators.

What business wants more than anything else from government is to make sure there is certainty and a level playing field —and then get out of the way.

When we took office in January, 2010, we were greeted by a massive budget shortfall, our rest stops were closed, and we were facing outgoing Governor Tim Kaine’s proposal for a job-killing $2 billion tax increase to solve our shortfall.

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The mainstream media is knocking itself out making comparisons between the Occupy Wall Street protests and the tea party movement. For years, the left has tried to find a left-wing equivalent to the tea party movement without success. Remember the Coffee Party? I didn’t think so.

The protesters in Manhattan and the tea party are 180 degrees apart. This rag-tag group of unwashed, middle-class socialists protesting against corporations and the rich don’t really know why they’re protesting. They just know they want something for free.  Lots of free stuff to everyone, except to the wealthy who produce the free stuff, is what the protesters want.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters represent perfectly what liberals, such as Nancy Pelosi, initially labeled the tea party movement in 2009. Pelosi tried to halt the rapid spread of the grass-roots tea party by suggesting it was controlled by the Republican Party and calling it “astro-turf.” That failed as people recognized that the Republican Party is not capable of creating anything with the brilliance of the tea party movement. The Occupy Wall Street protesters are another matter. The strings controlling it run directly to the labor unions and the White House. Obama political advisor Patrick Gaspard, who has worked closely with the ACORN-controlled Working Families Party and the largest local within the Service Employees International Union, has actually advertised on Craigslist to pay protesters to join in the fun taking place in Manhattan. Don’t expect any reporting of this from the mainstream media! They are too busy trying to compare the incomparable Occupy Wall Street to American patriots in the tea party movement.

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I was watching coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests the other day and couldn’t help but laugh at how pitiful the whole ordeal has become. It’s almost become a cliché to note how the protesters go on and on about big business when they sport corporate swag such as iPads and Rolexes. Now, the burnout kids who started the protests are being co-opted by labor unions, the type of  people who are so charismatic and idealistic they have to pay demonstrators to march with them.

Despite the sympathetic — even fawning — media coverage they’ve received, the message of Occupy Wall Street protesters isn’t being taken seriously by America. Take, for instance, a manifesto posted online by an early O.W.S. participant. This is the most laughable lefty pipe dream list ever. Here are a few of the demands:

Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Put more simply, they want free healthcare because saving money for emergencies will cut into their nachos budget. They lack the basic self-awareness to understand that cutting into the profits of hospitals will destroy the healthcare industry’s ability to improve equipment and competitively compensate the best doctors and nurses, thus giving incentive for doctors to leave their trade due to lower wages and higher work loads. (more…)

From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama on Saturday urged the US Senate to pass his jobs bill this week, boosted by a non-partisan group’s report that the plan could cut the deficit and grow much-needed employment figures.

“It is time for those who oppose the jobs act to explain why they are fighting against something that we know will improve the American economy,” Obama said in his weekly Internet and radio address.

The bill, he said, “will provide our economy with the jolt that it really needs right now.”

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The stronger-than-expected ISM manufacturing-index reading for September might normally suggest that the economy, at least for now, has dodged a recession bullet. After zero jobs and zero real consumer spending in August, which put the stalled economy on the front end of recession, the ISM number is the first major September reading.

But economist Michael Darda says hold the applause: Inside the ISM, new orders and order backlogs either flat-lined or declined and remain below 50 — the DMZ recession marker on the index.

Darda believes weak data in the U.S., plus the ongoing European crisis, plus the China slowdown, plus widened corporate credit spreads and stressful financial conditions, all point to a declining economy and additional stock market drops.

Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) is also on the bear side. He has a falling weekly leading index that signals recession is inevitable. “It’s either just begun, or it’s right in front of us,” he told CNN Money.

Tough stuff.

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From Reuters:

Democrats want tax hikes to be the first item negotiated in “super committee” deficit-reduction talks, trying to force Republicans to confront an issue at the heart of this year’s budget fights, sources told Reuters.

The tough stance by Democratic members of the powerful 12-member congressional panel reflects the party’s wariness that Republicans might try to sideline the issue of revenue increases in the negotiations.

“They’ve raised the idea of doing taxes first,” a Republican aide involved in the discussions said on Friday on condition of anonymity.

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From the Associated Press:

The withdrawal of Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked rebels from their bases in Mogadishu and severe food shortages in southern Somalia may be linked to the same problem familiar to politicians the world over: tax collections.

The abandonment of Mogadishu by al-Shabab puts Somalia’s U.N.-backed government in its strongest position in years in a country where anarchy has reigned for two decades.

Somali drought victims who lived in territory controlled by al-Shabab say there was little incentive to plant surplus crops because the militants demanded so much of the harvest as a form of tax payment. Families had nothing to fall back on after drought withered this year’s crops, so they were forced to flee to the government-controlled capital.

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We’re hearing an awful lot about the “wealthy” paying “their fair share” where taxes are concerned. Pres. Obama and his Progressive and liberal Democrat brethren have perfectly coordinated their talking points to affect a campaign of undefined and reckless class warfare against the productive class, doing so for the sole purpose of political gain. Expectedly, Mr. Obama presents a Janus face: denying out of one mouth that he is utilizing class warfare; demonizing the producers out of the other.

In announcing his new, but all too familiar, deficit reduction plan on September 19th, Mr. Obama said:

“This is not class warfare, it is math…All I’m saying is that those who have done well, including me, should pay their fair share in taxes…We can’t just cut our way out of this hole… It is only right we ask everyone to pay their fair share…We can’t afford these special lower rates for the wealthy. We can’t afford them when we are running these big deficits… Middle class taxpayers shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires. That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that…”

Of course, an honest man would admit that the federal government is spending way, way, way beyond its means. An honest man would admit that the federal government has gone far, far, far beyond its constitutional mandate in providing special interest programs that would be better suited for private sector benevolence organizations. An honest man would acknowledge the fact – the fact – that the federal government, now hijacked by the political correctness of Progressivism, has ventured into social engineering via its “social justice” campaign and departed, to a great degree, from the vision of federal government established by our Founders and Framers.

But, that would be an honest man and honest men. We, here today, are dealing with opportunistic politicians, whose primary goals are to retain power (and by any means possible) and to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

Which brings me back the points I want to address: What is anyone’s “fair share” of taxes when our tax code is not only a progressive tax code (oh, the irony), but rife with special interest exemptions, limitations and write-offs? Who decides what constitutes someone’s “fair share”? And for that matter, who defines who is “wealthy” or “middle class” or “working class” or “poor”?

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In the wake of President Obama asking America’s richest and most successful to do their patriotic duty and contribute their fair share to our Nation, more and more are refusing to be content with merely ostentatiously asking to have their taxes raised.  The hot new trend in Democrat circles is taking personal action to show patriotism through concrete actions and real sacrifice.

“I had a net worth of $200 million, so I wrote a check to the federal government for $199,999,900!” said high tech legend Frank Spindleman.  The big-time Democratic contributor and pioneer in the field of foreign Internet drug store spam was inspired by the President’s call to action.  Sitting in the open door of his new home, a beige 1973 Ford panel van parked down by the river, Spindleman is proud that he put his money where his mouth was.

Merely raise my marginal rates a little?  That’s nothing to me.  I wanted to really make a difference, so I gave the country everything.  Sure, it’s a little less comfortable here than my mansion, and I’ve got fewer and lower quality hookers hanging around, but it’s worth it for the personal pride I feel in not being one of those loudmouth jerks pretending to sacrifice in order to impress the media!

One of the founders of leading Internet search engine Gaggle felt the same.  Chet Vingly sold off his 401’ yacht, his Ferrari collection and his prized unicorn herd and sent all his cash to Uncle Sam.

I was listening to the President at a Beverly Hills fundraiser and lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills when it hit me – he was right!  The people who rely on government support – cowboy poets, performance artists, people who have better things to do than supporting themselves – these are the people we need to really focus on.  They deserve my money, not me.  I only earned it, but they really, really want it.  So, I think it’s pretty clear who’s entitled to it.

But for some, just giving away all their money isn’t enough.  Democratic impresario and synergy industry mogul Lance Gordon gave up his corporate jet.  He’ll be taking no more trips to his houses in Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard.

Thanks to the President’s warnings about the threat posed by global warming deniers, I bike everywhere now.  I mean, if you really, really believe that the science is settled and that climate change is real, you’ll absolutely stop flying around on private jets.  I’d be an incredible hypocrite if I believed in global warming but still jetted everywhere.  People would look at me and wonder why, if global warming was such a threat, all I was doing about it was having my butler separate my garbage into trash and recyclables.  Heck, if I was such a blatant poser jerk as that I couldn’t look myself in the mirror.

But for some prominent and wealthy liberals, President Obama’s inspiring call to patriotism demanded even more sacrifice.  Steve Berkley was a big-time Democratic bundler and the owner of the ubiquitous Buckstar’s Coffee shops.

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A Parable If You Will…

A friend of mine has a sister who has been broke for years.   Ten years ago he could no longer watch her struggle while his own career took off and he began supporting her by supplementing her small income with his own money.  He makes $300,000 a year and gives her $30,000 a year to help her out…roughly 20% of his take-home after all of his taxes (federal, state, local) are taken out of his paycheck.

Now, in those ten years of supporting her, she has not used that money as a foundation to build herself a better more independent life contructed on sound financial footing.  If anything, her situation now is even worse than it was a decade ago because she continues to make bad  decisions again and again.  She married an alcoholic husband (despite warnings from her family this was the case) and she then had a child with that same husband who is now of course estranged, voluntarily putting exponentially more strain on her already stressful life.  As of now, despite my friend having willingly given her all in $300,000 over ten years – money he could have put towards his kid’s college education, paying off his mortgage, or just socked away in the bank for a rainy day – she is no better off because the way she is running her affairs is still a disaster.  She hasn’t learned a thing.

Still, he continues to pay her because he believes it is his moral obligation to give back to those in need, especially as he has done so well in life.  He’s not thrilled about it, but he gets the concept and bucks up.  Plus he genuinely cares for the down-trodden, realizing that a few bad decisions in his own life, a wrong fork in the road taken, and he could have been there with her…still could be even.  He made need help himself someday.  Who knows what the future holds?

Now, the other day she came to him for her annual $30,000.  But this time, because of  new credit card debts accumulated, she asked him for $35,000.  Her logic?  He can afford it and she needs it.
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Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Elizabeth Blackney are joined by Philip Klein from the Washington Examiner to discuss the latest on the Solyndra scandal and how it perfectly illustrates the crony capitalism and back room deal culture of the Obama administration. Then, we’ll discuss Obama’s plan to reduce the deficit through phantom cuts and trillions in tax hikes.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

OMB had warned Solyndra “NOT ready for prime time”
Obama Rejects Obamaism
Day No. 972: President Obama unveils a deficit reduction plan
Obama reaches out to liberals with budget plan
Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Obama’s deficit reduction plan based on faulty math and his call for $1.5 Trillion in new taxes, the newest controversial figure in the Solyndra scandal and the college kids that invaded Wall Street this weekend.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Fed Ponders Jobs, Inflation Targets
The European dream lies in ruins
Obama deficit plan aimed at Democratic base
Obama Proposing $1.5 Trillion in New Taxes
Solyndra, the logical endpoint of Obamanomics
#OccupyWallSt: Just A Saturday Stroll Through The Park…

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During a radio interview Wednesday morning, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) made a startlingly candid statement about taxpayers and the wealth they earn and produce. It was her Joe the Plumber moment in that it broke the Democratic playbook rule about revealing the left’s true intentions.

She was interviewed on Chicago radio station WLS 890 AM by hosts Don Wade and Roma. You can listen to the entire interview here, but the part about taxes comes in around the 13:50 point.

Don Wade played a question that was posed to the GOP candidates at the recent Tea Party Debate in Florida. A young man at the debate asked a simple enough question: “Out of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?”

Her response?

“I’ll put it this way. You don’t deserve to keep all of it and it’s not a question of deserving because what government is, is those things that we decide to do together. And there are many things that we decide to do together like have our national security. Like have police and fire. What about the people that work at the National Institutes of Health who are looking for a cure for cancer?”

No one disputes that government needs some level of taxpayer revenue to function. The problem is with Schakowsky’s response and what it reveals about the left.

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