Your Daley Gator Obamaconomy Update For Thursday

The One Chart That Shows Just How Stuck Our Economy Is – National Journal

The U.S. jobs picture is bleaker than the most recent jobs reports may make you think. The economy added 175,000 jobs last month, but at the rate things are going, it would take almost a decade to get back to prerecession employment levels. A Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics digs in on the bad news: The number of job openings in the U.S. actually fell by 118,000 in April to 3.8 million.

How bad can 3.8 million job openings be? The Economic Policy Institute looks at the number and sees that “the main problem in the labor market is a broad-based lack of demand for workers—and not, as is often claimed, available workers lacking the skills needed for the sectors with job openings.” To bolster this point, they put forward this chart:

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In every industry, the number of unemployed workers outpaces the number of job openings. To state the obvious: To get that disparity to dramatically shrink, we’ve got a long way to go.

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Confirmed: Obama Is The Worst Economic President Ever

Confirmed: Barack Obama Is… Worst. Economic. President. Ever. – Gateway Pundit

We already knew:

** Barack Obama is the worst jobs president since the Great Depression.
** Poverty is at its highest rate since 1960′s.
** America is experiencing its worst economic recovery ever.
** There are more Americans on food stamps than entire population of Spain.
** A record number of Americans are seeking jobs.
** Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus failed.
** Under Obama’s leadership we had four straight years of trillion dollar deficits.
** 8.8 million Americans are on disability.

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Now we can confirm that Barack Obama is the Worst Economic President in US history.

In fact, if President Obama could go back in time and find a way to double his GDP performance, he’d still hold the record for the worst economic president in the past 60 years.

The Las Vegas Review Journal reported:

You don’t have to be a financial whiz to know that the economy isn’t good. Times are tough, and they’ve been tough for some time. The middle class has shrunk; wealth has diminished; poverty is up; and unemployment, especially for minorities, is nothing short of miserable.

But how bad is it, really?

Up until very recently, this was hard to quantify and thus became in large part a political argument. Today, however, enough time has passed that economists now have data points to scientifically put President Barack Obama’s economic policy in its proper place.

On the old legacy-o-meter, things aren’t looking good for Obama and his supporters, who so desperately wanted him to succeed…

…In an article for Investor’s Business Daily, Anderson writes: “Prior to Obama, the second term of President Bush featured the weakest gains in the gross domestic product in some time, with average annual (inflation-adjusted) GDP growth of just 1.9 percent … but average annual real GDP growth during Obama’s entire first term was less than half as much at a pitiful 0.8 percent.”

That performance will establish Obama firmly as the worst president ever on the economy.

Obama’s GDP growth is less than half as much as the worst president in the past 60 years.

Let that process slowly. That means that if President Obama could go back in time and find a way to double his GDP performance, he’d still hold the record for the worst economic president in the past 60 years.

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The Hidden Jobless Disaster (Edward P. Lazear)

The Hidden Jobless Disaster – Edward P. Lazear

The market tanked Wednesday on bad preliminary job news. And so, when Friday’s jobs report is released, the unemployment rate and the number of new jobs will come in for close scrutiny. Then again, they always attract the most attention. Even the Federal Reserve focuses on the unemployment rate, announcing on a number of occasions that a rate of 6.5% will indicate when it is time to start raising interest rates and winding down the Fed’s easy-money policies.

Yet the unemployment rate is not the best guide to the strength of the labor market, particularly during this recession and recovery. Instead, the Fed and the rest of us should be watching the employment rate. There are two reasons.

First, the better measure of a strong labor market is the proportion of the population that is working, not the proportion that isn’t. In 2006, 63.4% of the working-age population was employed. That percentage declined to a low of 58.2% in July 2011 and now stands at 58.6%. By this measure, the labor market’s health has barely changed over the past three years.

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Second, the headline unemployment rate, what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls “U3,” uses as its numerator the number of individuals who are actively seeking work but do not have jobs. There is another highly relevant measure that captures what is going on in the economy. “U6″ counts those marginally attached to the workforce—including the unemployed who dropped out of the labor market and are not actively seeking work because they are discouraged, as well as those working part time because they cannot find full-time work.

Every time the unemployment rate changes, analysts and reporters try to determine whether unemployment changed because more people were actually working or because people simply dropped out of the labor market entirely, reducing the number actively seeking work. The employment rate—that is, the employment-to-population ratio—eliminates this issue by going straight to the bottom line, measuring the proportion of potential workers who are actually working.

During the past three decades the relation between unemployment and employment has been almost perfectly inverse. (See the nearby chart.) When the employment-to-population ratio rises, the unemployment rate falls. When the unemployment rate rises, the employment-to-population ratio falls. Even the turning points are aligned. Consequently, the unemployment rate has been a very good proxy for the employment rate. But that relationship has completely broken down during the most recent recession.

While the unemployment rate has fallen over the past 3½ years, the employment-to-population ratio has stayed almost constant at about 58.5%, well below the prerecession peak. Jobs are always being created and destroyed, and the net number of jobs over the last 3½ years has increased. But so too has the size of the working-age population. Job growth has been just slightly better than what it takes to keep the employed proportion of the working-age population constant. That’s why jobs still seem so scarce.

The U.S. is not getting back many of the jobs that were lost during the recession. At the present slow pace of job growth, it will require more than a decade to get back to full employment defined by prerecession standards.

The striking deficiency in jobs is borne out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Despite declining unemployment rates, the number of hires during the most recent month (March 2013) is almost the same as it was in January 2009, the worst month for job losses during the entire recession (4.2 million then, 4.3 million now).

Why have so many workers dropped out of the labor force and stopped actively seeking work? Partly this is due to sluggish economic growth. But research by the University of Chicago’s Casey Mulligan has suggested that because government benefits are lost when income rises, some people forgo poor jobs in lieu of government benefits—unemployment insurance, food stamps and disability benefits among the most obvious. The disability rolls have grown by 13% and the number receiving food stamps by 39% since 2009.

These disincentives to seek work may also help explain the unusually high proportion of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than 26 weeks. The proportion of unemployed who are long-termers reached 45% in April 2010 and again in March 2011. It is still above 37%. During the early 1980s, when the economy experienced a comparable recession, the proportion of long-term unemployed never exceeded 27%.

The Fed may draw two inferences from the experience of the past few years. The first is that it may be a very long time before the labor market strengthens enough to declare that the slump is over. The lackluster job creation and hiring that is reflected in the low employment-to-population ratio has persisted for three years and shows no clear signs of improving.

The second is that the various programs of quantitative easing (and other fiscal and monetary policies) have not been particularly effective at stimulating job growth. Consequently, the Fed may want to reconsider its decision to maintain a loose-money policy until the unemployment rate dips to 6.5%.

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Thanks Barack… Shorter Work Week Equivalent To 500,000 Jobs Lost

Thanks Barack… Shorter Work Week Equivalent To 500,000 Jobs Lost – Gateway Pundit

The good news is the unemployment rate dropped to 7.5%. The bad news is that companies are cutting hours.

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In April the shorter work week was equivalent to 500,000 jobs lost.

Market Watch reported:

The April employment report exceeded expectations, with 165,000 jobs created and a welcome drop in the unemployment rate to 7.5%.

But there was a dark side to the report: Total hours worked fell sharply, and the total amount of money earned by U.S. workers actually declined from the month before.

“Aggregate weekly hours” is an obscure series of data in the jobs report, but it’s vital to understanding how strong the economy is performing. As the name implies, it measures the total number of hours worked, which is what matters for sizing up overall growth in the economy.

Usually, we focus just on the number of new jobs created and the unemployment rate, but the number of hours we work matters just as much, if not more, to our economic well-being…

…In April, companies hired 165,000 more workers, but they cut everyone’s hours (on average) by 12 minutes. That doesn’t sound like much of a decline, but spread out over the 135 million-strong work force, the decline in hours worked is the equivalent of firing more than 500,000 workers while keeping hours steady.

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Jihad Blows Up The Liberal Utopia (Jeffrey Lord)

Jihad Blows Up The Liberal Utopia – Jeffrey Lord

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Jihad has blown up The Liberal Utopia.

The visionary liberal land of political and social perfection.

President Obama is not happy – and he isn’t alone.

You know the place.

• The Liberal Utopia is a land where gun background checks prevent mass murder.

• The Liberal Utopia is a land where Islamic fundamentalists have changed their perception of America because the President travels to Muslim nations to give lovely speeches, believes that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere is a wonderful sign of an Arab Spring, and refuses to use the word “terrorist” whether his administration is investigating Ft. Hood, Boston, or Benghazi.

• The Liberal Utopia is a land where a 2009 presidential video proclaiming a “new beginning” in American relations with Iran will halt the effort to build a nuclear bomb.

• The Liberal Utopia is a land where the good intentions of Social Security will never bankrupt the Social Security Trust Fund.

• The Liberal Utopia is a land where the good intentions of Medicare could not possibility result in trillions of unfunded liability.

• The Liberal Utopia is a land where the War on Poverty was supposed to end poverty – and instead winds up sending violent crime skyrocketing, and, in the words of Thomas Sowell, setting up the American black family for rapid disintegration in the liberal welfare state “that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”

One could go on… and on and on… spotting those will-o-the-wisp glimpses of The Liberal Utopia (Obamacare here, the Obama stimulus over there, the promise to close Guantanamo way back there) with example after example of this miserably failed attempt to find or create a Liberal Utopia.

Or what our friend Mark Levin deftly calls Ameritopia.

The search for this Liberal Utopia has been going on in this country since at least 1932 and in fact before that when one keeps going on back to Woodrow Wilson’s progressives and beyond to the late 19th century when the progressive movement began to gain political steam with the likes of William Jennings Bryan and a whole host of other if lesser known figures.

The idea is always the same. To quote Levin: “Utopianism is the ideological and doctrinal foundation for statism.”

Or, to simplify: if only Americans are made to do X, The Perfect Society will manifest.

What is X? The above list suffices: background checks, a video sending nice words to Iran, opening up to the Muslim Brotherhood, setting up a government-run Social Security or Medicare or Obamacare, declaring a government-run War on Poverty. The Obama stimulus.

And let’s not forget the Philadelphia abortion scandal where live human babies outside the womb were repeatedly killed – a direct contradiction of the entire Roe.v. Wade sacrament.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Let’s start with two stories that have dominated the news in the last week: gun control and the Boston Marathon murders.

Recall that after the Senate defeated the Toomey-Manchin background amendment, President Obama, outraged, took to the White House Rose Garden to say this:

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. They claimed that it would create some sort of ‘big brother’ gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite. This legislation, in fact, outlawed any registry.”

Next up was former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who took to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times to say “I’m furious.” Giffords accused the Senate of being in the “grip of the gun lobby” fearful of political consequences.

Gifford’s statement was filled with irony. There are people aplenty out there who have also discussed issues other than guns as being a problem in this area of violence in America. Indeed just this last Sunday Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley not only talked about guns but the role of abortion in what O’Malley called a “Culture of Death.” But did Gabby Giffords want to talk about abortion as a contributing factor? Did the president? Of course not – and for exactly the reason they attributed to those who oppose background checks. Which is to say, pro-choice politicians both, neither Giffords nor Obama have the guts to take on the abortion lobby.

But let’s stay focused on background checks and its role in the liberal Utopia.

Remember the Brady law? So named for President Reagan’s press secretary Jim Brady who was seriously and permanently wounded during the assassination attempt on Reagan.

The Brady law mandated background checks across the country. Challenged in the Supreme Court, the law was mostly upheld in 1997, with the exception of the mandate. States however, were free to do background checks. One of the states that picked up on this – as did most states – was, yes, Massachusetts. In 1998 Massachusetts, headed on that endless journey to The Liberal Utopia, passing what has been called “the toughest gun control legislation in the country.” Reported Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby – just two months ago on February 17, 2013 – the “toughest gun control legislation in the country” was signed into law by the-then Republican governor and praised to the hilt by the Democratic Attorney General, as well as a leading anti-gun activist. Jacoby quoted from the Globe story of 1998 that trumpeted the bill’s signing:

“Today, Massachusetts leads the way in cracking down on gun violence,” said Republican Governor Paul Cellucci as he signed the bill into law. “It will save lives and help fight crime in our communities.” Scott Harshbarger, the state’s Democratic attorney general, agreed: “This vote is a victory for common sense and for the protection of our children and our neighborhoods.” One of the state’s leading anti-gun activists, John Rosenthal of Stop Handgun Violence, joined the applause. “The new gun law,” he predicted, “will certainly prevent future gun violence and countless grief.”

Catch all that? Massachusetts was “cracking down on gun violence.” This “will save lives and help fight crime” in the state’s communities. The new law was a “victory for common sense” that was a “victory for common sense” and “the protection of our children and our neighborhoods.” The law “will certainly prevent future gun violence and countless grief.”

Now let’s leave aside the point of Jacoby’s column – that in fact the law did none of that and that indeed, in Jacoby’s words:

…the law that was so tough on law-abiding gun owners had quite a different impact on criminals.

Since 1998, gun crime in Massachusetts has gotten worse, not better. In 2011, Massachusetts recorded 122 murders committed with firearms, the Globe reported this month – “a striking increase from the 65 in 1998.” Other crimes rose too. Between 1998 and 2011, robbery with firearms climbed 20.7 percent. Aggravated assaults jumped 26.7 percent.

Let’s stay focused on the fact that the Boston bombers did in fact have guns.

That’s right, in addition to bombs, the brothers Tsarnaev had guns. And surprise surprise, in spite of all that “toughest” gun law in the country business – you guessed it.

The brothers didn’t apply for a license.

That’s right. As the Huffington Post has noted here:

WASHINGTON – The Boston bombing suspects engaged in a deadly firefight with police last week, possessing six bombs, handguns, a rifle and more than 250 rounds of ammunition. But the Tsarnaev brothers did not have proper licenses to possess the firearms, according to the Cambridge Police Department – a revelation that comes just days after the Senate voted against strengthening and expanding background checks for gun sales.

Cambridge Police Department spokesman Dan Riviello told The Huffington Post that neither Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, nor Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, appeared to have a license to own a handgun.

“The younger brother could not have applied as he is not 21 years of age and the older brother did not have a license to carry and we have no record of him ever applying,” Riviello said.

Got all that?

So in spite of the Brady law, which subjects law-abiding gun owners to all manner of rules and regulations, and in spite of the Massachusetts law, which was “the toughest” gun control law in the country, and in spite of the hundreds (thousands) of other gun control laws that bind the country, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, hell bent on murder and mayhem, never bothered to get a “proper license.” Brother Dzhokhar, of course, wasn’t permitted to have a license because he was just too young.

Yet somehow, without being licensed, the two managed to have “handguns, a rifle and more than 250 rounds of ammunition.” With which the unlicensed brothers shot MIT policeman Sean Collier to death – and came close to killing Boston Transit policeman, Richard Donohue.

Shocker, isn’t it?

Yet there is no more shock in listening to the reasoning of liberals on gun control than there is in listening to their reasoning on Islamic fundamentalists. The subjects may be different – although they happened to become two stories in one this last week – but the reasoning is always the same.

Let’s hear from Andrew McCarthy, who was the Clinton-era prosecutor of the Blind Sheikh, the brains behind the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Andy later wrote the more than aptly titled book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad and now writes this from National Review in an article headed:

Jihad Will Not Be Wished Away: But willful blindness remains the order of the day.

“Outlook: Islam.” So reads the personal webpage of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who ravaged Boston this week, along with his now-deceased brother and fellow jihadist, Tamerlan – namesake of a 14th-century Muslim warrior whose campaigns through Asia Minor are legendary for their brutalization of non-Muslims.

Brutalizing our own non-Muslim country has been the principal objective of jihadists for the last 20 years. This week marks a new and chilling chapter: the introduction on our shores of the tactics the self-styled mujahideen have used to great, gory effect for the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Willful blindness remains the order of the day, as it has since the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. It is freely conceded that, when the identities and thus the motivation of the Marathon terrorists were not known, it would have been irresponsible to dismiss any radical ideology as, potentially, the instigator. But in our politically correct, up-is-down culture, to suggest “Outlook: Islam” was unthinkable. So the most likely scenario – namely, that jihadists who have been at war with us for two decades had, yet again, attacked innocent civilians – became the least likely scenario in the minds of media pundits. Instead, they brazenly prayed (to Gaia, I’m sure) for white conservative culprits with Tea Party hats and Rush 24/7 subscriptions.

To borrow from the gun control debate, closing one’s eyes to Islamic fundamentalism is not just displaying a lack of common sense (to borrow a phrase from the gun control debate) – it is indeed, as Andy McCarthy accurately calls it, willful blindness.

And this particular willful blindness on jihadists is lethal.

It is exactly the same as the willful blindness that kept the State Department from understanding that there was a reason for the repeated pleas from the now murdered Benghazi diplomats for security assistance. When the attack came on those diplomats last September, the U.S. government had been willfully blinded – right from the top – that such a thing could be the result of Islamic fundamentalism

Ditto with the attack on Ft. Hood by the Islamic fundamentalist Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major. Shouting “Allahu Akbar!” – God is Great – as he opened fire, Hasan killed 13 and wounding more than 30. The response from the US government? To declare yet another mass murder in the name of Islam to be “work place violence” – and then have the then-Army Chief of Staff murmur aloud that to treat this as anything else would somehow hurt the military’s diversity push.

And so it goes.

From the promises of Obamacare that you can keep your own doctor to the massive indebtedness of Social Security and Medicare to the War on Poverty that wasn’t and the Obama stimulus that wasn’t either – and on and on and on – liberalism’s Achilles’ heel is that it isn’t about serious, common sense ideas that display an understanding of everyday human reality.

What liberalism is about is creating Utopia.

A Utopian world where gun control stops criminals, being politically correct with jihadists means they won’t attack, the value of helping the aging means Social Security and Medicare cannot possibly be in debt to the tune of trillions, that Obamacare will work just as the War on Poverty worked, and that forcing banks to give millions of Americans the money to buy homes they can’t afford can’t possibly crash the economy.

And on goes the endless parade.

Substituting sentiment for common sense, then watching the results crash and burn in a hurricane of dead Americans, impoverished Americans, massively indebted Americans or continually impoverished, jobless and hopeless Americans.

Does anyone really wonder why so many Americans listen to President Obama say that “the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill” – and believe it’s the President who lies? And that they believe this for the simple reason that all the other liberal Utopian promises haven’t been kept? With a lie just this last week about the results of Massachusetts gun control being all too painfully obvious? Who, based on hard real-life experience with these Liberal Utopians, would ever believe that the Toomey-Manchin bill will never result in what Obama calls “some sort of ‘big brother’ gun registry”? If you believe this, you believe the Boston bombers simply forgot to apply for a license to carry a gun.

The response by liberals to these repeated liberal disasters is to simply ignore the results and walk away. Then finding yet another “problem” on which to visit this same disastrous pattern of emotionally charged non-common sense.

Promising once again that if Americans just do this next X, Utopia will finally arrive.

The question here is whether a majority of Americans will ever come to understand the game.

To know that the real meaning of Utopia is not some visionary system of political or social perfection, as the dictionary says.

Utopianism is, precisely as Mark Levin documents, the ideological and doctrinal foundation for statism.

It is dumb. It is wrong. It is a call to mindless emotion instead of careful, logical thought. It can and will bankrupt. It can and will – and as we have seen this last week it does – kill.

Which makes the ideas of a Liberal Utopia not just wrongheaded.

It makes them dangerous.

Which makes it time to say enough is enough.

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Thanks Barack… Food Stamp Participation Has Increased At 10 Times The Rate Of Job Creation Under Obama

Thune: Food Stamp Participation Has Increased At 10 Times The Rate Of Job Creation Under Obama – Daily Caller

South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune and Indiana Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman introduced legislation Thursday aimed at saving $30 billion in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over a decade.

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Thune and Stutzman said their “Streamlining the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Act” would eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and close loopholes in a program that, under President Obama, has seen participation increase from 32 million to 47.8 million people and spending double to $80 billion in fiscal year 2012.

“Since President Obama came into office, SNAP participation has increased at 10 times the rate of job creation, the annual spending on SNAP has doubled, and one in seven Americans now participates in SNAP,” Thune said in a statement.

“This explosive growth in both the SNAP enrollment and federal cost of the program is alarming and requires lawmakers to take cost-effective legislative control measures,” he added.

The cost-saving measures laid out in the bill would not affect current benefit levels. The legislation would, however, refine categorical eligibility – or automatic qualification for SNAP if a person is enrolled in other assistance programs – to just low income people receiving cash assistance.

It would further require interviews for SNAP participants re-enrolling in the program to ensure that they remain within the income and asset limits and end the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) loophole – which allows states to provide SNAP recipients with small $1 and $5 energy assistance checks to increase their SNAP benefits.

The legislation would also limit the Able-bodied Adult Without Dependents (ABAWD) work requirement waiver to areas with unemployment higher than 10 percent and require the agriculture secretary to create a national database to make sure people are not receiving benefits in more than one state.

Additionally it would reform the nutrition and obesity program to reduce cost, eliminate state quality bonuses and focus on quality control in states via penalties for improper payments.

“Everyone in Washington talks about deficit reduction but we’ve introduced a real, responsible plan to save taxpayer dollars,” Stutzman said. “Over the past decade, SNAP spending has doubled as this program outgrows its original mission of providing temporary assistance. This is a common-sense start for Congress’ Farm Bill discussions as we look for ways to tackle Washington’s nearly $17 trillion debt.”

“Our bill would ensure that benefits are available for needy families by maintaining system integrity and reducing waste in the system,” Thune added. “I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to move this common-sense legislation through Congress in the Farm Bill.”

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Kansas Governor Signs Law Requiring Welfare, Unemployment Recipients To Take Drug Tests

Brownback Signs Bill That Requires Welfare, Unemployment Recipients To Be Tested For Drugs – Wichita Eagle

Calling drug addiction a “scourge in Kansas,” Gov. Sam Brownback signed into law Tuesday a bill to test welfare and unemployment recipients suspected of using illegal drugs.

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“This is a horrific thing that hits so many people,” he said. “What this effort is about is an attempt to get ahead of it and, instead of ignoring the problem, start treating the problem.”

The drug testing bill lets the Department for Children and Families require urine tests of any welfare recipient suspected of using illegal drugs. That could be triggered by a person’s demeanor, missed appointments or police records.

Opponents of the bill said that may leave the decision open to people’s biases. But the bill was swiftly approved by the House 106-16 and backed by the Senate on a 29-9 vote.

Senate Vice President Jeff King, R-Independence, called it “the most treatment-focused drug testing bill in the entire country.”

Any person who is tested and failed, can request a second test and be reimbursed for that test, which runs about $50, if they test clean.

Welfare recipients who fail the test will lose their benefits until they complete a drug treatment and job skills program. That’s paid for by federal welfare funds. A second failed test will result in a year-long loss of benefits. A surrogate can apply for benefits on behalf of children whose parents fail a drug test and lose benefits.

Senate Bill 149, effective July 1, also bans anyone convicted of a drug-related felony from getting welfare for five years. Those convicted a second time lose benefits for life.

The testing program for unemployment recipients is similar, although Department of Labor officials will require employers who usually drug test job applicants to submit a list of people who applied and didn’t get a job because they failed a pre-employment drug screen.

The testing, already required of the governor and several other top state officials, now also extends to House and Senate members suspected of illegal drug use.

The tests will not look for alcohol use.

Officials acknowledged they have no precise number of how many people getting welfare or unemployment use drugs or how many people will require government-funded treatment and job training.

“I’ve not found a piece of legislation I’ve been around yet that is perfect,” Brownback said. “But this starts to address a significant issue.”

King said about 8.5 percent of those applying for welfare fail substance abuse screening.

Kansas is one of dozens of states that have been considering such drug tests. Florida required all new applicants to take such tests, as opposed to Kansas’ plan that hinges on “reasonable suspicion.” Data showed that program provided no direct savings to the state and only 2.6 percent of those tested failed tests, usually for marijuana use.

Marijuana, which is now legal for recreational use in two states and for medicinal use in several others, tends to be detectable in standard urine drug tests for much longer after use than drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine that cycle out of the body faster.

Kansas officials have yet to decide on the details of how the testing and treatment will be done. Testing would begin by Jan. 1. Anyone convicted of a drug-related felony after July 1 would lose welfare benefits for five years.

The state estimates it will need to hire four more employees to deal with drug testing and treatment management under the bill. The drug testing program and treatment is estimated to cost about $1 million the first year, after any savings from people losing benefits.

Brownback and King pointed to a program called Partners in Change at Neosho County Community College as a model for job skills training.

Neosho college president Brian Inbody, who attended the bill signing, said the six-week program was started by businesses who couldn’t find a steady flow of skilled workers. So they started a program to assist the “chronically unemployed.”

He said the first three weeks is about crisis management and attitudes toward the workplace. It then focuses on resume writing, math and English. He said 72 percent of those who completed the program kept a job for a year or got an industry certification to get a job.

“They went from unemployable and constantly churning in the system to employed and from a tax consumer to a taxpayer in just a few weeks,” he said.

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Thanks Barack… Nation’s Biggest Movie Theater Chain Cuts Workweek, Blaming ObamaCare

Nation’s Biggest Movie Theater Chain Cuts Workweek, Blaming ObamaCare – Fox News

The nation’s largest movie theater chain has cut the hours of thousands of employees, saying in a company memo that ObamaCare requirements are to blame.

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Regal Entertainment Group, which operates more than 500 theaters in 38 states, last month rolled back shifts for non-salaried workers to 30 hours per week, putting them under the threshold at which employers are required to provide health insurance. The Nashville-based company said in a letter to managers that the move was a direct result of ObamaCare.

“In addition, some managers have requested guidance on what they should tell those employees negatively impacted and, at your discretion, we suggest the following,” read the memo obtained by FoxNews.com. “To comply with the Affordable Care Act, Regal had to increase our health care budget to cover those newly deemed eligible based on the law’s definition of a full-time employee.”

“To manage this budget, all other employees will be scheduled in accord with business needs and in a manner that will not negatively impact our health care budget,” the message continues.

Regal, which had revenue of $2.8 billion in 2011, is the latest company to respond this way to the Affordable Health Care Act’s requirement that employees at companies of a certain size who work more than 30 hours per week be provided health coverage. Applebee’s and Olive Garden also scaled back the hours of workers. A handful of colleges have cut hours because of the law, including Palm Beach State College in Florida and New Jersey’s Kean University. Critics say the law is boomeranging on working folks.

“If you want to have reduced work, lower wages and economic stagnation, this is a great way to do it, said Ed Haislmaier, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

One Regal theater manager told FoxNews.com the move has sparked a wave of resignations from full-time managers who have seen their hours cut by 25 percent or more.

“In the last couple weeks, managers have been quitting on a daily basis from various locations to try and find full-time work,” said the manager, who asked not to be named. “Regal up until now has never restricted anyone to anything below 40 hours.”

The manager told FoxNews.com ObamaCare has had the unintended consequence of taking food off his table.

“Mandating businesses to offer health care under threat of debilitating fines does not fix a problem, it creates one,” he said. “It fosters a new business culture where 30 hours is now considered the maximum in order to avoid paying the high costs associated with this law.

“In a time where 40 hours is just getting us by, putting these kind of financial pressures on employers is a big step in a direction far beyond the reach of feasibility for not only the businesses, but for the employees who rely on their success,” he said.

Regal, which operates cinemas under the names Regal Cinemas, Edwards Theatres and United Artists Theaters and recently purchased Oregon-based Hollywood Theaters for $191 million, did not respond to repeated requests for comment from FoxNews.com. The publicly-traded company’s stock has risen nearly 30 percent over the last year.

In addition to the movie theater chain and several restaurants, the state of Virginia also rolled back the hours of all part-time employees back to 29 per week in February, with officials from the state claiming that the new mandate would cost the state tens of millions of dollars a year.

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People Not In Labor Force Soar By 663,000 To 90 Million, Labor Force Participation Rate At 1979 Levels

People Not In Labor Force Soar By 663,000 To 90 Million, Labor Force Participation Rate At 1979 Levels – Zero Hedge

Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work .The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% – the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is “improving.”

People not in labor force:

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Labor participation rate:

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*VIDEOS* CPAC 2013 Highlights: Day 3 – Saturday (03/16/13)

…TEA PARTY PATRIOTS CO-FOUNDER JENNY BETH MARTIN

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…CONGRESSMAN STEVE KING

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…WISCONSIN GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER

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…FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH

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…CONGRESSWOMAN MICHELE BACHMANN

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…AUTHOR ERIC METAXAS AND NEUROSURGEON BEN CARSON

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…FORMER CONGRESSMAN ARTUR DAVIS

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…FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN

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…EAGLE FORUM FOUNDER PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY

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…’10 CONSERVATIVES UNDER 40′ PANEL

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…MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER PRESIDENT BRENT BOZELL

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…SARATOGA SPRINGS, UTAH MAYOR MIA LOVE

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…NRA PRESIDENT DAVID KEENE

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…AUTHOR ANN COULTER

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…SENATOR TED CRUZ

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…………Note: more videos to be posted as they become available.

…………………..Click HERE to watch highlights from Day 1.

…………………..Click HERE to watch highlights from Day 2.

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*VIDEOS* CPAC 2013 Highlights: Day 1 – Thursday (03/14/13)

…LIEUTENANT COLONEL ALLEN WEST

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…CONGRESSMAN LOUIE GOHMERT

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…SENATOR MARCO RUBIO

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…SENATOR RAND PAUL

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…GOVERNOR RICK PERRY

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…JUDICIAL WATCH PRESIDENT TOM FITTON

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…………Note: more videos to be posted as they become available.

…………………..Click HERE to watch highlights from Day 2.

…………………..Click HERE to watch highlights from Day 3.

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Record 89,304,000 Americans ‘Not In Labor Force’… 296,000 Fewer Employed Since January

Record 89,304,000 Americans ‘Not In Labor Force’… 296,000 Fewer Employed Since January – CNS

The number of Americans designated as “not in the labor force” in February was 89,304,000, a record high, up from 89,008,000 in January, according to the Department of Labor. This means that the number of Americans not in the labor force increased 296,000 between January and February.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) labels people who are unemployed and no longer looking for work as “not in the labor force,” including people who have retired on schedule, taken early retirement, or simply given up looking for work.

The increase marks the second month in a row, after rising in January from 88.8 million in December. Those not in the labor force had declined in December from 88.9 million in November.

The nation’s unemployment rate decreased to 7.7 percent in February, down from 7.9 percent in January. Overall unemployment “has shown little movement, on net, since September 2012,” the Labor Department said.

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 236,000 in February, according to the report.

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*VIDEO* Obama’s Sequester Flip-Flop

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#SOTUGottaBKiddingMe (Sarah Palin)

#SOTUGottaBKiddingMe – Sarah Palin

If you missed President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, you didn’t miss much – especially if you watched any of his past four State of the Union addresses.

We heard the same recycled rhetoric, and we heard his Orwellian declaration that the cornucopia of new federal programs he proposed, as well as his intention to eradicate world poverty, wouldn’t “increase our deficit by a single dime.”

Of course, he glossed over the inconvenient facts. He boasted about job creation, but didn’t mention that real unemployment is higher today than when he took office. He touted all those still undiscovered “clean energy” jobs without mentioning the tens of thousands of real jobs the Keystone Pipeline will create if he would simply allow it to be built. He sang of new energy development, but didn’t mention that new offshore leases for oil and natural gas drilling have declined a decimating 61% under his administration.

He talked about “helping” to build “a thriving middle class,” but didn’t address how the middle class is actually faring under his economic stewardship. This is important – his deception must be addressed: under his leadership, middle class families have seen the average price per gallon of gas increase 96%, the average cost of family health care premiums rise 24%, the annual cost per household from federal regulations rise to over $15,000, and real median household income decline $4,520. If this is what happens when he “helps” the middle class, then please, Mr. President, we implore you to stop “helping” us.

He talked about a “balanced approach to deficit reduction” without mentioning that $5.9 trillion has already been added to the debt since he took office. We’re $16.5 trillion in debt and he keeps digging the hole deeper! He didn’t mention his record trillion dollar deficits or the fact that his last proposed budget would add $9.2 trillion to the debt through 2022. His Democrat-controlled Senate hasn’t passed a budget in four years. That’s obviously not “responsible” or “balanced.” He said, “We can’t cut our way to prosperity.” Well, we definitely can’t get there by borrowing and spending money we don’t have on his “investments” that don’t work. If indiscriminately borrowing and spending money led to prosperity, then bankruptcy would be a sign of economic strength. But it isn’t.

A State of the Union address should give us a true picture of the direction in which we are headed. But we didn’t get the truth last night. And it WAS Orwellian.

What is the true state of our union? Though this may sound harsh, I’ll speak the truth here. We are a country going bankrupt to fund a bloated, distant, and often corrupt federal government led by venal politicians more concerned with paying off their campaign cronies and consolidating their own power than in preserving the constitutional republic that so many have fought and died for (including our brave men and women in uniform who were barely mentioned last night).

We are a country with an economy being stifled under the weight of a bankrupt and voracious federal machine demanding more taxes and burdensome regulations. Job creators are the ones stuck with the bill when Obama calls for “new revenue.” Their businesses bear the brunt of the nearly 87 million paperwork hours imposed by federal regulations in 2012 – annually costing them $1.75 trillion. And I haven’t even mentioned Obamacare yet, which looms like the dark cloud it is over our private sector. Is it any wonder why our economy is stagnant or why job growth is so anemic? President Obama’s “solution” to these problems is to make the federal government more intrusive, bankrupt, and controlling.

If we continue down the path Barack Obama has us on, the long-term forecast of the state of our union is not a pretty picture. Yet he merrily rolls along it, deceiving too many Americans into thinking that these are intelligent, economic, and ethical proposals.

Our President wasn’t candid with Americans about our forecast, but, interestingly, in a Q&A session last week, Paul Krugman, one of President Obama’s economic cheerleaders at the New York Times, was remarkably candid about where we’re headed.

When asked about our federal debt, he admitted that “eventually we do have a problem” especially because “the population is getting older” and “health care costs are rising.” So, what does he see as the solution to pay for all this? He admits that your taxes will rise. And worse:

“Surely in the end it will require some middle class taxes as well. We won’t be able to pay for the kind of government the society will want without some increase in taxes, not a huge one, but some increase in taxes on the middle class, maybe a value added tax. And we’re also going to have to make decisions about health care – not pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits. So, the snarky version I use, which I shouldn’t even say because it gets me in trouble, is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.” (But wait, I thought there’d be no such thing as “death panels,” liberal liars?)

Mr. Krugman tried to portray this brave new world in the gentlest possible light, but it’s going to take quite a lot of “sales taxes” to meet the payments on the ever-increasing multi-trillion dollar debt we’re burying our kids and grandkids under. And with health care costs rising under Obamacare, obviously a lot of care will be rationed and even flat out denied by panels of faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions for you and your loved ones. This is the long-term forecast for the state of America under Obama’s failed policies: middle class taxes and death panels.

Does that sound good to you? It doesn’t to me. So, we better get motivated to do something about it. We’d better get out of our post-election funk and wake up to the radicals’ reality being created as America gets “fundamentally transformed.”

Here’s the good news: President Obama is in many ways a lame duck president. None of his ridiculous ideas will come to pass via the legislative process. Of course, he may try to force them down America’s throat by imposing them through other means. But they can be undone if the right people are in position to undo them. He is very bold right now – some would say cocky – because of his November win, but there is another election around the corner, and we can check his boldness at the ballot box by electing constitutional conservatives. We must continue to affirm the fact that growing our bankrupt federal government is NOT the solution. Most of what the federal government does could be handled better on the individual, local, and state levels.

Our country didn’t weather a Revolution, two World Wars, a Civil War, a Great Depression, and countless other political and economic storms, just to be sunk by the dangerous policies of this current administration. We’re stronger than this. As President Reagan said, “I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”

So, do something. 2014 is just around the corner. Get motivated! Get organized. America, don’t retreat. In the words of yet another White House program, “Let’s move.”

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Here It Comes… States Will Under-Employ Workers To Avoid Cost Of ObamaCare

Here It Comes… States Will Under-Employ Workers To Avoid Cost Of ObamaCare – Clash Daily

The costs of Obamacare are not just hitting businesses this year – they are also hitting the government, and public employees as well. Virginia, for example, is about to limit part-time employees to 29 hours per week in order to avoid triggering Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide health insurance to those working 30 hours per week or more. The state cannot afford the $110 million annual cost of insurance.

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Elsewhere, public institutions are taking similar steps to limit part-time work. In Ohio, Youngstown State University recently announced a 29-hour-per-week part-time limit, and placed employees on notice that they would be fired if they worked more than the maximum. Other public universities are doing the same across the nation, just as their private-sector counterparts are limiting part-time hours to avoid the Obamacare rule.

In addition to limiting part-time hours, many institutions–public and private–are moving employees from full-time to part-time status to avoid Obamacare requirements. Doing so means facing the ire of left-wing institutions such as John Podesta’s Think Progress, which recently castigated a Wendy’s franchise for cutting employees’ hours. Yet there is little most businesses can do – they are merely responding to incentives written into law.

As the economic reality of Obamacare begins to bite, Democrats are uneasy with the legislation they forced through Congress in 2010, and which survived at the Supreme Court only because Chief Justice John Roberts saw fit to rewrite it. At a recent retreat for House Democrats, former President Bill Clinton advised his party to lead the way in pushing for changes to Obamacare, so they could “[p]rove that we were right to do it.”

Read more: Breitbart.com

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Government Doled Out $10.3 Billion In Improper Unemployment Payments In 2012

Government Doled Out $10.3 Billion In Improper Unemployment Payments In 2012 – CNS

The Federal-State Unemployment Insurance program paid out $10.3 billion in benefits in 2012 to people who should not have received the money, according to the Department of Labor (DOL).

The data provided on the government website, paymentaccuracy.gov, shows those payments amount to 11.42 percent of all the unemployment insurance checks handed out – an increase from 11.36 percent in 2011 and in excess of the government’s “target” for overpayments of 9.66 percent.

The DOL states that most of the data reported on its paymentaccuracy website was for the federal government’s fiscal year, which runs from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1, but that some data may have come from calendar year tabulations, which is why the department “used the term fiscal reporting year to best describe the time period in which the most current information was reported.”

The data also show that improper unemployment insurance payments increased steadily between 2009 and 2012, from 10.3 percent to 12 percent, respectively.

That percentage dropped 0.6 percent between 2011 (12 percent) and 2012 (11.4 percent), according to the DOL, which consequently forecasts that improper payments will fall below 10 percent in 2013 and 2014.

As reported by CNSNews.com, statistics released by DOL show that of the $10.3 billion in improper payments, the states improperly paid more than $5 billion for the period July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012. (See DOL spread sheet on states payments.xls)

The “program contents” portion of the website states that 70 percent of the $10.3 billion that was paid out in 2012 was done so through one of three scenarios: “individuals did not meet their active work search requirements, continued to claim UI benefits after they had returned to work, or were ineligible for benefits because they voluntarily quit their jobs or were discharged for misconduct.”

An estimated 2.85 percent of state and federal improper unemployment payments were the result of fraud, according to the DOL.

The government website states that unemployment “helps cushion the impact of economic downturns and brings economic stability to communities, states, and the nation by providing temporary income support for laid off workers.”

The website also promotes the government’s efforts to end this trend.

“The reduction of improper payments in the UI program is a top priority of the Department of Labor,” the website states.

And the government is spending more money to that end.

“In fiscal year 2012 the Department awarded $169.9 million in supplemental funding to 33 states for the prevention, detection, and recovery of improper UI benefit payments; improve state performance; address outdated Information Technology (IT) system infrastructures necessary to improve UI program integrity; and enable states to expand or implement Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment (REA) programs,” the website states.

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Obama’s First Term: Americans ‘Not In Labor Force’ Increased 8,332,000

First Term: Americans ‘Not In Labor Force’ Increased 8,332,000 – CNS

The number of Americans age 16 or older who decided not to work or even to seek a job increased by 8,332,000 to a record 88,839,000 in President Barack Obama’s first term, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, the number of retired workers collecting Social Security increased by only 4,234,480.

The increase in Americans opting out of the labor force during Obama’s first term resulted in a decrease in the labor force participation rate from 65.7 percent in January 2009, the month Obama was first inaugurated, to 63.6 percent in December 2012, the latest month reported. Before Obama took office, the labor force participation rate had not been as low as 63.6 percent since 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan took over from President Jimmy Carter.

To be in the labor force a person must either have a job or actively sought one in the previous four weeks.

When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, there were 80,507,000 American civilians age 16 or older who did not have a job or seek one. In December 2012, there were 88,839,000 – thus, the increase of 8,332,000.

Also, in January 2009, there were 32,484,808 retired workers collecting Social Security benefits, according to the Social Security Administration. By December 2012 that had risen to 36,719,288, and increase of 4,234,480.

The increase in the number of Americans not participating in the labor force during Obama’s presidency outstripped the increase in the retired workers collecting Social Security by 4,097,520 persons.

In the comparable period of George W. Bush’s second term, the number of Americans choosing not to participate in the labor force went from 76,808,000 in January 2005 to 80,380,000 in December 2008 – an increase of 3,572,000.

At the same time during Bush’s second term, the number of retired workers collecting Social Security rose from 30,086,392 to 32,273,145, and increase of 2,186,753. During this period, the increase in those not participating in the labor force outstripped the increase in retired workers collecting Social Security by only 1,385,247.

The rate of participation in the labor force was the same in January 2005 that it was in December 2008 – 65.8 percent.

In Bush’s first term, the number of Americans choosing not to participate in the labor force went from 70,088,000 in January 2001 to 76,581,000 in December 2004, an increase of 6,493,000. In January 2001, the labor force participation rate was 67.2 percent. In December 2004, it was 65.9 percent.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking the labor force participation rate since 1948. Since then, the rate peaked at 67.3 percent, a level it maintained for the first four months of 2000.

Before President Obama took office, the labor force participation rate had not been as low as 63.6 percent since 1981, which was the year President Ronald Reagan took over from President Jimmy Carter.

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Laser Focus: Obama Jobs Council Hits 1 Year Without Official Meeting

Obama Jobs Council Hits 1 Year Without Official Meeting – Politico

President Barack Obama’s Jobs Council hit a notable milestone on Thursday: one year without an official meeting. The 26-member panel is also set to expire at the end of the month, unless Obama extends its tenure.

The group, formally known as the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, last convened on Jan. 17, 2012 for a White House session where it presented formal recommendations to Obama. It was the panel’s fourth official meeting since it was created in early 2011.

A spokesman for Jobs Council chairman Jeffrey Immelt, who’s the CEO of General Electric, referred questions about the panel’s future to the White House.

A White House spokeswoman had no comment Thursday.

POLITICO caused a stir last July by reporting that the panel had not convened officially for six months. The story noted some simmering tension between the slew of business executives on the board and a pair of labor leaders who are also members of the group. The report also said that some CEOs were reluctant to appear with Obama at the height of the presidential campaign and that Obama’s public attacks on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for outsourcing complicated the idea of an election-season sit-down between the president and the business leaders.

Romney leapt on the story by accusing Obama of neglecting the panel and the broader issue of job creation. The White House’s initial response to the report also fanned the flames when Press Secretary Jay Carney said Obama was too busy to meet the panel, a remark the Obama aide later clarified by saying the president was “extremely appreciative” of the group’s work.

Immelt’s spokesman, Gary Sheffer, said Thursday that the council has not been idle in the past year – despite the lack of a public meeting or a full group meeting with Obama. The GE spokesman pointed to a series of “listening and action” events across the country where members of the council – usually one or two of them – talked about the panel’s work and solicited ideas from the public.

“The Council was focused in 2012 on implementing the recommendations made in its three reports. Of the 60 recommendations for executive action, significant progress has been made on 54. Also Congress passed legislation on six recommendations made by the Council,” Sheffer said in an email. Council recommendations led to administration initiatives to fast-track infrastructure projects, accelerate the processing of business and tourist visas, and a program to “look back” through existing regulations for those that are outdated and burdensome, Sheffer added. He also pointed to a series of public-private initiatives council members launched to jump start job creation.

It seems unlikely the panel will meet before Jan. 31. Its meetings are required to be announced in the Federal Register at least 15 days in advance and no future meeting has been noticed, though the notices for none of the four official sessions actually made it into the official docket 15 days ahead of time.

Despite the lack of public council meetings in the past year, council members have convened a series of private conference calls where they heard reports from and interacted with senior Obama Administration officials like National Economic Council chair Gene Sperling and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Though those calls were not open to the public, the public recently got some insight into what those discussions may have been like when Jobs Council member Robert Wolf scored a half-hour-long interview with Sperling earlier this month for Wolf’s Reuters TV show, “Impact Players.”

Wolf, former chairman of the American divison of Swiss bank UBS, launched the show in September. The Reuters website describes Wolf as “one of President Obama’s major fundraisers and outside advisers on economic issues.”

The Jobs Council is the successor to another outside panel Obama used during his first two years in office, the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, headed by former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker.

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Here’s The Real Unemployment Rate

Here’s The Real Unemployment Rate – WorldNetDaily

The real unemployment rate for December 2012 is closer to 23 percent, not the 7.8 percent reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to economist John Williams.

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Williams, author of the Shadow Government Statistics website, argues that the federal government manipulates the reporting of key economic data for political purposes, using methodologies that tend to mask bad news.

In the BLS news release Jan. 4, the unemployment rate for December 2012 was reported to have remained unchanged at 7.8 percent.

Williams recreates a ShadowStats Alternative unemployment rate reflecting methodology that includes the “long-term discouraged workers” that the Bureau of Labor Statistics removed in 1994 under the Clinton administration.

The BLS publishes six levels of unemployment, but only the headline U3 unemployment rate gets the press. The headline number does not count “discouraged” unemployed workers who have not looked for work in the past four weeks because they believe no jobs are available.

Williams has demonstrated that it takes an expert to truly decipher BLS unemployment statistics. For instance, in Table A-15, titled “Alternative measures of labor underutilization,” the BLS reports what is known as “U6 unemployment.”

The U6 unemployment rate is the BLS’s broadest measure. It includes those marginally attached to the labor force and the “under-employed,” those who have accepted part-time jobs when they are really looking for full-time employment. Also included are short-term discouraged workers, those who have not looked for work in the last year because there are no jobs to be had.

Since 1994, however, the long-term discouraged workers, those who have been discouraged for more than one year, have been excluded from all government data.

While the BLS was reporting seasonally adjusted headline unemployment in December 2012 was only 7.8 percent, it was also reporting the broader U6 seasonally adjusted unemployment in December 2012 was 14.4 percent.

In his subscription newsletter, Williams contended the “headline changes” reported by BLS for the December 2012 unemployment rate of 7.8 percent “lack statistical significance.”

“To the extent that there is any significance in the monthly reporting,” he said, “it is that the economy is not in recovery, and that unemployment has made a new high, at a level that rivals any other downturn of the post-Great Depression era.”

The only measure BLS reports to the public as the official monthly unemployment rate is the headline, seasonally adjusted U3 number.

Williams calculates his “ShadowStats Alternative Unemployment Rate” by adding to the BLS U6 numbers the long-term discouraged workers, those workers who have not looked for work in more than a year but still consider themselves to be unemployed.

Williams believes that his ShadowStats Alternative Unemployment measure most closely mirrors common experience.

“If you were to survey everyone in the country as to whether they were employed or unemployed, without qualification as to when they last looked for a job, the resulting unemployment rate would be close to the ShadowStats estimate,” Williams explained to WND.

The headline BLS unemployment rate has stayed relatively low, because it excludes all discouraged workers, Williams argues.

As the unemployed first become discouraged and then disappear into the long-term discouraged category, they also vanish from inclusion in the headline labor force numbers. Those workers still are there, however, ready to take a job if one becomes available. They are unemployed and consider themselves to be unemployed, but the government’s popularly followed unemployment reporting ignores them completely.

Here is a more complete unemployment table that includes the seasonally adjusted unemployment percentages for U3 unemployment, as well as the same for U6 unemployment, followed by the ShadowStats Alternative Unemployment rate for both December 2011 and December 2012:

Increasingly, critics like Williams believe the seasonally adjusted U3 numbers reported by the BLS as the official monthly unemployment rate do not give a reliable picture of the true magnitude of unemployment in the United States.

The definitions used by the BLS exclude from the calculation of the monthly U3 unemployment rate anyone who has not looked for work at any time during the past four weeks. Those workers are considered to be “discouraged” and “not in the labor force.”

In the U6 calculations, the discouraged workers are only those who have actively looked for work in the past year.

The BLS definitions don’t consider those who would look for work if there were a reasonable chance they could find employment.

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73% Of Jobs Created In Last Five Months Government Jobs

73% Of Jobs Created In Last Five Months Government Jobs – Big Government

While the media pants with exhilaration over a dip in the unemployment level that was created by over a half-million people giving up and dropping out of the workforce, a deep-dive into the employment numbers also reveals that it’s mainly government workers benefiting from what meager job growth we are seeing. Over the last five months, 73% of all jobs created were government jobs. Moreover, the unemployment rate for government workers plunged to 3.8% in November – which is considered full employment.

Even though deficits rule the day at every level of government, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 847,000 new jobs created since June, a full 621,000 were government jobs. In November alone, 35,000 new government jobs were created.

In other words, as the labor participation rate plummets to a thirty year low – which means we have fewer taxpayers – we’re not only increasing the number of taxpayer-funded jobs, but the government is using the creation of these jobs to juice the employment numbers in a way that makes it look as though the job situation is actually improving.

Naturally, none of this would be possible without a compliant media working overtime to bring out the pom-poms and cover up what’s really going on.

Let me tell you something, if Obama had an “R” after his name and creating the exact same economic results, the media would make damn sure the public was familiar with what “labor participation rate” means.

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