A time machine. See with a time machine we could all go back to 1979. Why 1979? Well Chris Wysocki figures that today’s “bright” economic news, unemployment hit 7.5%, would really be good news, if this was 1979.
Good news America! The unemployment rate has dropped again! It’s now at 7.5%, and employers are adding more jobs than ever!
U.S. employers added 165,000 jobs in April, and hiring was much stronger in the previous two months than the government first estimated. The job increases helped reduce the unemployment rate from 7.6 percent to a four-year low of 7.5 percent.
The government revised up its estimate of job gains in February and March by a combined 114,000. It now says employers added 332,000 jobs in February and 138,000 in March. The economy has created an average of 208,000 jobs a month from November through April — above the 138,000 added in the previous six months.
Alas every silver lining has a cloud. Or 2.
First, the workforce participation rate remains stubbornly stuck at 63.3%, the lowest it’s been since 1979. Because once you’ve given up, you’ve given up. And your president has likewise given up on you.
Second, and perhaps more ominously, ObamaCare is pushing more and more people into part-time work.
Many part-timers are facing a double whammy from President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The law requires large employers offering health insurance to include part-time employees working 30 hours a week or more. But rather than provide healthcare to more workers, a growing number of employers are cutting back employee hours instead.
See! Even good news is bad news in Obamaland. So, would we REALLY be better to go back to 1979? Well, in 1979, Carter was president, and things were not great at all. But there was no Obamacare looming over us, and do you recall what happened the very next year? Yep, Reagan was elected! Also, there was no MSNBS, no reality TV, of course there was no internet, and no blogs, so, what would I be doing with my time?
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.
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.
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.
Let me put it this way. They KNEW about the high unemployment numbers, especially among minorities, and young voters, yet, they voted for Obama anyway. I would say that is, if not stupid, at least unwise
Obama supporters continue to suffer the most in the latest jobs report. Blacks, Hispanics and young adults suffer the most under this administration.
The national unemployment rate is 7.8% (not counting the millions who dropped out of the market.)
The overall unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds for December 2012 is 11.5 percent (NSA).
The unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans for December 2012 is22.1 percent (NSA); the unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics for December 2012 is 12.2 percent (NSA); and the unemployment rate for 18–29 year old women for December 2012 is 10.4 percent (NSA).
The declining labor force participation rate has created an additional 1.7 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.
If the labor force participation rate were factored into the 18-29 unemployment calculations, the actual Millennial unemployment rate would rise to 16.3 percent (NSA).
That was part of his rhetoric, yet, unemployment has risen sharply, AGAIN it stands at over 8%. And, thanks to the walking brain donors who vote with their hands out, we have four more years of this!
U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, was 7.8% for the month of November, up significantly from 7.0% for October. Gallup’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 8.3%, nearly a one-point increase over October’s rate.
The economy is shedding jobs at roughly the same rate as we’ve seen for [the past 18 months], and it’s not generating jobs quickly enough to give those workers enough options other than unemployment.
Given the continuing misery, why did Americans re-elect Obama?
Why? So many reasons, most revolving around the lack of an understanding of what American principles are about. Start with an education system that spends far more than it should to NOT teach about the Constitution! Add a news media that shills for Obama, and the rest of the Democrats. Add a growing sense of entitlement from so many Americans. Add a detachment from politics and things political by most of us. And of those who do try to be informed, many just skim headlines, so they end up misinformed rather than informed. Add the Americans who want to be “understood” and “related to”. Good grief we are so sensitive now. Finally, add the fact that style and not substance matters to most voters.
Mitt Romney spoke to a crowd of nearly 4,000 people here in a midday rally, where he emphasized for the coal industry, a vital part of the economy in southwest Virginia. There was a strong representation at the rally from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).
While at the rally, I got a chance to talk with an award-winning local reporter, Debra McCown, who explained that some 1,200 coal workers in the area had been laid off recently because of EPA regulations that have curbed the use of coal in electrical power plants. McCown explained that during the 2008 campaign, Obama made two trips to the area, as did his running mate Joe Biden, while John McCain’s only visit to the area was an airport stop at the Tri-Cities Airport in Sullivan County, Tennessee — just south of the Virginia border — the day before Election Day.
During his speech, Mitt got a cheer from the crowd when he mentioned the debate, and said that Obama’s statements during Wednesday’s debates were essentially “a reiteration of the status quo.” The biggest cheer during the entire rally was when Romney promised to repeal ObamaCare. Citing the latest employment report, Romney said, “We can do better.”
Pretty soon we will have only a few million people employed and “full employment” in this country. Well, not quite. But you get the point. The economy is creating so few jobs that millions are staying out of the labor market, thereby prevent the unemployment rate from soaring. In September we created a measly 114,000 jobs, but the rate declined to 7.8 percent.
Consider that if labor force participation had held even since January (when it was 8.3 percent), the jobless rate would be 8.4 percent. If the job participation rate were the same as when Barack Obama took office, the rate would be 10.7 percent. The broader U-6 rate (unemployed plus total employed part time for economic reasons) held steady at 14.7 percent. Obama can spin the numbers anyway he likes, but this is not an economic “recovery” in a meaningful sense. We are adding fewer jobs on average per month than we did last year (143,00 vs. 153,000).
Moby, the electronic musician-vegan-animal rights activist-economic guru whose career peaked roughly ten years ago, has weighed in on the new jobs report.
With his unique blend of sophisticated intelligence and silver-tongued verbiage, Moby Tweeted:
“in 2008 the u.s was losing 250,000 jobs a month. in 2012 the u.s is adding 100,000 jobs a month. how, pray tell, is that not an improvement?
So, angry, delusional, and unmedicated republicans, where was your outrage when bush was president and u.s was losing 500k jobs a month? Hm?
i mean, simply: isn’t adding 100k jobs a month better than losing 500k jobs amonth, as was the case at the end of bush presidency?
rationally debating with republicans is like trying to teach a pig to sing. you wasteyour time and end up irritating the pig.”
What the intellectually challenged musician is too dumb to note is that we are not in a recession; we are supposedly in an economic recovery. There are so many people dropping out of the labor force (the labor participation rate is at a 31 year low) that if one used the labor participation rate from January 2009, unemployment would be close to 12 percent. Average wages actually declined in August.
And here’s something else for Moby to chew on: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, back in January 2009 when Barack Obama was sworn in, there were 2.6 million people unemployed for more than 6 months. By June 2012, the ranks of the long-term jobless soared more than 100 percent to 5.3 million.
So, what Moby really is, besides a hateful little man, is a useful idiot who apparently gets his marching orders on what to say and thing straight from the Obama propaganda machine AKA MSNBS
Breitbart also points out that Moby is, in fact a Heteraphobe
Dance star MOBY has no time for overly-heterosexual males, insisting gay men are far superior to their straight counterparts. The heterosexual music-maker is so appalled by macho male culture he hopes his future children will be gay because “they are less likely to get into a fight and less likely to date rape people”. The PLAY hitmaker says, “I’m straight but I’ve grown up around gay people and gay clubs. They are superior to straight people. If you have a gay child you’re more inclined to be a prouder parent.”
Good Freaking Grief! Did this tool fall out of the Tree of Stupidity, hitting every branch on the way down?
The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose last week, suggesting the labor market is healing too slowly to make much of a dent in the unemployment rate.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 372,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the highest level in five weeks.
Darn those “unexpected” events. These jobless reports, and rising unemployment numbers just keep catching the Left off guard. Like I have said before, the only thing we know about Obamanomics is that we can expect the unexpected to a lot worse than anyone ever expected!
The engine of growth remains in low gear, it seems, and it’s not just in a few isolated pockets around the nation. While the overall employment numbers for July were disappointing at best, the state by state breakdown provides an even more alarming glimpse at precisely how little ground we are making in terms of a sustainable economic recovery. The Hill reports that only a handful of states didn’t register losses during the period in question.
Close to 90 percent of states saw their unemployment rates rise in July, a potentially worrisome development for President Obama’s reelection campaign.
The Labor Department reported Friday that 44 states in all saw their jobless rate go up, with four states seeing no change at all. Only Idaho and Rhode Island – along with Washington, D.C. – saw their rates drop last month…
Even though the unemployment rate remains north of 8 percent, some analysts expected Obama to get a boost because many of the swing states that both campaigns are targeting have jobless rates below the national average.
But among the dozen or so states that both parties are contesting, only Ohio – which saw its rate stay at 7.2 percent – did not see an increase in July.
Nevada is back up to 12%. New Hampshire – with one of the most enviable unemployment rates in the nation – also saw an uptick to 5.4%. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin both notched up a .3% increase. If these are the states the President is counting on to carry him over the finish line, he might not want to mention that three four letter word – Jobs – too often. (Hat tip… Joe Biden.)
Even California, a state which has actually been producing a positive number of jobs per month in 2012, is still struggling.
“I’m looking for anything,” said a woman named Pam at the Verdugo Jobs Center in Glendale, CA. “At my age, no one wants to hire me.”
She says she has done secretarial work and worked in merchadising. Now she’s hoping to become a house cleaner.
But hey… let’s not dwell on the past. Things could always turn right around in August and get us back on track, right? Maybe, but Gallup doesn’t seem to be sparkling with enthusiasm.
New Gallup unemployment data suggest an increase in the government’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for August when it is reported on Friday, Sept. 7. During recent months, Gallup’s measurements have been more optimistic than those of the BLS. Barring a sharp reversal in this relationship, the government’s unadjusted unemployment rate might be expected to stay the same or increase in August…
Trying to guess the U.S. unemployment rate has been a thankless task in 2012, even using Gallup’s 30,000 interviews as a basis for estimation – even worse than trying to guess the results of the government’s establishment survey. However, like ADP’s (Automatic Data Processing) estimates of the establishment survey results, Gallup’s numbers have been close to the household survey results much of the time.
Regardless, barring heroic adjustments or a sharp change in direction, Gallup data suggest the seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate for August will increase – possibly substantially – when announced in early September.
Apparently this is what change looks like. And the Summer of Wreckovery marches on.
U.S. jobless claims jumped 34,000 to 386,000 last week, the government reported Thursday, reflectingtypical summertime fluctuations in auto-industry employment. Applications for unemployment benefits are now back tosomewhat elevated levels after falling two weeks ago to a four-year low, suggesting the labor market remains sluggish. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast claims would rise to a seasonally adjusted 365,000 in the week ended July 14. The level of claims is a rough gauge of whether layoffs are rising or falling. Claims in the prior week were revised up to 352,000 from 350,000.
The unemployment applications exceeded forecasts by 21,000 and that’s just “typical,” eh? Unemployment is just “somewhat elevated,” eh?
And by the way, does anyone remember the Labor Department’s unemployment numbers being revised downward during this administration? Or am I correct in suspecting that the initial report pretty much always understates the numbers, and then they come back to “revise upward” later on when they think we won’t notice? Dog-bites-man headline of the day:
Is this the best they can do, Chris Matthews and his ilk? They are really going with Mitt is weird?
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Let’s go into the code, the intangibles again about Romney. He has come off in the early part of this campaign as a bit odd in different ways. His sense of humor is definitely somewhere out there for most people. Politico, your organization, has written in the past that there’s a sense of him being weird, and that can be played upon and may tangentially catch on to his religion as well as part of the weirdness about the guy. He comes from a different background from us, from other people. How do you think it’s going to play, John Harris?
JOHN HARRIS, POLITICO: I don’t think Romney is weird, but he has lived a life that is removed from the experiences and the sort of outlook of many Americans. It’s been removed because of his wealth, because of his career orientation, but also because of his religion.
MATTHEWS: Well, for example, let me give you an example of weird. When you think it’s a funny joke that somebody has grabbed your tush from behind and you go jumping out as if somebody’s done that. Is that humor that strikes you as like 70 years old?
Go read the rest, it is pathetic! Of course, if they were a real news source they would be reporting on something important, like this
Every single state that elected a Republican governor in 2010 saw their unemployment rate drop. FOX Nation reported:
In 2010, influenced by the Tea Party and its focus on fiscal issues, 17 states elected Republican governors. And, according to an Examiner.com analysis, every one of those states saw a drop in their unemployment rates since January of 2011. Furthermore, the average drop in the unemployment rate in these states was 1.35%, compared to the national decline of .9%, which means, according to the analysis, that the job market in these Republican states is improving 50% faster than the national rate. Since January of 2011, here is how much the unemployment rate declined in each of the 17 states that elected Republican governors in 2010, according to the Examiner:
Kansas – 6.9% to 6.1% = a decline of 0.8%
Maine – 8.0% to 7.4% = a decline of 0.6%
Michigan – 10.9% to 8.5% = a decline of 2.4%
New Mexico – 7.7% to 6.7% = a decline of 1.0%
Oklahoma – 6.2% to 4.8% = a decline of 1.4%
Pennsylvania – 8.0% to 7.4% = a decline of 0.6%
Tennessee – 9.5% to 7.9% = a decline of 1.6%
Wisconsin – 7.7% to 6.8% = a decline of 0.9%
Wyoming – 6.3% to 5.2% = a decline of 1.1%
Alabama – 9.3% to 7.4% = a decline of 1.9%
Georgia – 10.1% to 8.9% = a decline of 1.2%
South Carolina – 10.6% to 9.1% = a decline of 1.5%
South Dakota – 5.0% to 4.3% = a decline of 0.7%
Florida – 10.9% to 8.6% = a decline of 2.3%
Nevada – 13.8% to 11.6% = a decline of 2.2%
Iowa – 6.1% to 5.1% = a decline of 1.0%
Ohio – 9.0% to 7.3% = a decline of 1.7%
Hmmm, think that might be more than a coincidence? No wonder the walk behinders and brown-nosers at MSNBS are willing to report ANYTHING, except the economy of course
Is there any doubt that MSNBS is the worst news organization in the history of news? Consider this nugget
There’s some good news behind the discouraging headlines on the economy: Gas is getting cheaper. At least two states had stations selling gas for $2.99 on Friday and it could fall below $3 in more areas over the weekend.
A plunge in oil prices has knocked more than 30 cents off the price of a gallon of gas in most parts of the U.S. since early April. The national average is now $3.61. Experts predict further decline in the next few weeks.
See, it is WONDERFULLY WONDERFUL! But……
The downside? Lower oil and gas prices are symptoms of weakening economic conditions in the U.S. and around the globe.
On Friday, oil prices plunged nearly 4 percent as a bleak report on U.S. job growth heightened worries about a slowing global economy and waning oil demand. The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent. Sobering economic news from China and Europe also contributed to the drop.
Ah, yes, REALITY!, The most important part of the story is not lower gas prices, it is the weakening economy. Does anyone think that MSNBS would have done a similar headline if Bush were president? Or any Republican were president for that matter? There would have been no “silver lining”, just bad economic news.
More and more Americans have given up on finding employment. As that number grows, the lower that pesky unemployment rate drops. So, once everyone just throws in the towel, the sooner we can all revel in a o% rate of unemployment! See, Obmanomics does work! At least that is what the Left thinks apparently
According to the AFP, President Obama “shrugged off” this morning’s miserable economic news, and instead focused on thephony unemployment rate which keeps falling as more and more Americans despairingly give up on looking for work.
“After the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, our businesses have now created more than 4.2 million jobs over the last 26 months (and) more than one million jobs in the last six months alone,” Obama said at a school in the crucial election swing state of Virginia.
The rate of new company creation in the United States dropped to a record low in 2010, according to a survey by the US Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
Researchers found the business startup rate fell to 7.87 percent,Reuters reported. It’s the first time it’s dipped below 8 percent. The startup rate was at its highest in 1987, when it was 13.02 percent.
New firms as a percentage of all firms also decreased in 2010, the data, published on Wednesday, show. New companies – defined as firms less than five years old – were 35 percent of all companies in 2010, down from 49 percent in 1982, CNN reported.
Only 12 percent of US employment in 2010 was at new companies, compared with 20 percent in the 1980s, Reuters reported.
What else would we expect from a Marxist who does not believe in American Exceptionalism?
Could this guy be any more detached from reality? Michelle Malkin wonders
Earlier today, the professor-in-chief himself opened his mouth and exposed his abject ignorance of how free markets work. Straining to explain away another Wreckovery Summer, President Obama blamed technological innovation instead of his own hapless technocrats for high unemployment. He told the Today Show:”
Michelle points to Human Events, where John Hayward lays the intellectual smack down on Obama
As Rush Limbaugh observed, we had lots of ATMs during the Bush years, and his unemployment rate was half of Obama’s. Did the number of automated tellers and airline ticket machines double since 2008?
Besides groping for any possible excuse to evade responsibility for skyrocketing unemployment, Obama’s comments represent the convergence of two lines of populist liberal thought. One is the Left’s curious conviction that people absolutely hate ATM machines, based on the occasional round of complaints that fees for using the machines are too high. I suspect most people would be far more upset if automated tellers were not readily available – a distinct possibility, given legislative attempts to cap the amount of money banks can charge for debit card transactions. Price controls always come with a reduction in quality.
The other, much older, criticism Obama raises is the fear of productivity, which is part of the Left’s overall critique of capitalism. Machines are cheaper than people; businessmen want to reduce cost, and do not care about people; therefore, they can’t wait to automate and fire everyone in sight.
This betrays a deep misunderstanding of the power of productivity. Machines don’t really “replace” human employees. They make humans more productive. ATM machines allow banks to service their customers with many more convenient locations – a machine built into the wall of a grocery store, or located in a small booth, can provide easy access to funds for customers.
Is every 20 or 30 ATMs roughly equivalent to one bank office that doesn’t need to be built, and staffed with human tellers? It doesn’t really work that way. ATMs increase the productivity of the existing bank staff. If they didn’t exist, the banks wouldn’t be making a lot of big investments in bricks, mortar, and tellers. Instead, people would drive further to get their money, spend more time standing in line, and arrange their affairs so they didn’t have to go to the bank as often. If you’re not old enough to remember what that was like, watch movies from the 60s and 70s, and look for scenes set in banks.
Increased productivity doesn’t destroy jobs, any more than the development of automobiles put the people who make buggy whips out of work for the rest of their lives. We would not have achieved such low unemployment rates during periods of great technological progress otherwise. Freed human capital is not automatically wasted human capital… provided opportunity can be accessed with relative ease.
To put it simply, if automation “wipes out” a number of jobs, and a given company cannot find new purposes for its displaced workers, some of them will create new businesses in pursuit of new opportunities. A huge economy brimming with resources and consumers provides plenty of opportunity. This natural flow is interrupted, and the overflow of unemployment results, when forming new business ventures and hiring employees becomes too difficult. High labor costs and regulations create such barriers. Introduce high licensing fees for lemonade stands, and there will be fewer lemonade stands.
Very well said. Of course, the Obamunists do not believe in free markets, they believe in government control, and regulation. Everything must come from government for collectivists. Private enterprises and profits are bad, unless of course, government decides how much profit the private sector can keep. Innovation? Surely this can only come through big government programs and spending. The Left will never allow itself to accept that individuals are better able to innovate and grow businesses. To accept such a premise would mean the Left would have to embrace individualism, and that, they will never ever do.
Are you sitting down? From the perpetually blind-sided Reuters:
New jobless claims unexpectedly rise
WASHINGTON | Thu Jun 9, 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, according to a report on Thursday that could reinforce fears the labor market recovery has stalled.
Initial claims for state jobless benefits increased 1,000 to 427,000, the Labor Department said. However, economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims dropping to 415,000 from a previously reported count of 422,000.
Imagine them being wrong.
By the way, neither Reuters (nor the AP) bother to note it, but last week’s already bad new claims number was revised up by an additional 4,000 claims – from 422,000 to 426,000. Just as it always is.
The rise kept first-time claims perched above the 400,000 mark for the ninth week in a row. Analysts normally associate a level below that with steady job growth.
Fueling concerns about job creation, the U.S. government said on Friday the U.S. unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1 percent in May while nonfarm employers added a paltry 54,000 workers to their payrolls.
Isn’t two years into a supposed recovery a bit late to be “fueling concerns about job creation”?
The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid slipped to 3.68 million in the week ended May 28 from 3.75 million. Economists had expected so-called continuing claims to edge down to 3.70 million from the previously reported 3.71 million.
The ever plucky Associated Press manages to be a little more upbeat:
Unemployment aid applications stuck at high level
By Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON – The number of people seeking unemployment benefits hardly changed for a second straight week, stuck at a high level that points to a slowing job market.
“Slowing”?
Weekly unemployment benefit applications ticked up 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 427,000 last week, the Labor Department said.
It marked the ninth straight week in which applications have been above 400,000. That trend represents a setback after applications had been declining all winter…
Applications had fallen in February to 375,000, a level that signals sustainable job growth. They stayed below 400,000 for seven of nine weeks. But applications surged in April to 478,000 – an eight-month high – and they have been stuck above 400,000 since then.
The growth in unemployment benefit applications is one of many signs that the economy has faltered from earlier this year, when hiring was picking up and many economists expected growth to accelerate…
Remember when the economy was just chugging along earlier this year? We don’t either.
All told, 7.6 million people obtained unemployment benefits in the week ending May 21, the latest data available. That’s a drop of 90,000 from the previous week. Some of those no longer receiving benefits may have gotten jobs, but many likely used up all the benefits available to them.
Bear in mind that much of Mr. Obama public sector union bailout ‘stimulus spending’ is scheduled to run out at the end of this quarter, on June 30th. So the unemployment numbers have no where to go but up.
Luckily for the Obama administration, and the two article note in passing, more and more people are also losing their unemployment benefits. And they will soon be joining the ranks of the ‘discouraged workers.’ Discouraged workers are very conveniently no longer counted in the Department Of Labor’s official unemployment numbers.
But since there doesn’t appear to be any office definition for when one becomes “discouraged,” the Labor Department can probably tweak the jobless numbers anyway they want – in their efforts to save Mr. Obama’s re-election chances.
New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, bouncing back above the key 400,000 level, while core producer prices clumbed faster than expected in March, government reports showed on Thursday.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 27,000 to a seasonally adjusted 412,000, the Labor Department said.
The reason the whole “unexpectedly” thing is funny is because the high unemployment rates America has been suffering since Obama took office are anything but unexpected.
Business owners, investors and entrepreneurs are nervous and with good reason. They never know what’s coming next. This lack of stability creates an environment which thwarts growth. The government, rather than staying out of the way of innovation and creating an environment that’s hospitable to job growth, keeps inserting itself.
Maybe that will be Obama’s 2012 slogan-”Expect the Unexpected to be a lot worse than you ever expected!”!
The unemployment roller coaster went thundering back up the tracks last month, as the Labor Department released its numbers for the week ending January 8. Initial unemployment claims were back up to 445,000, which is up 35,000 from the previous week. The four-week moving average, considered a more stable measure of employment activity, was pulled up to a dismal 416,000 new claims.
Major media outlets describe these numbers as “unexpected,” which is only true if you thought the good numbers from the past few weeks represented anything other than Christmas-season temporary hires. Remember all those big stories in November about how a record-breaking season of phenomenal retail sales was in store? It looks like many retail outlets responded to those stories by staffing and stocking up.
How did that Christmas season work out for retailers, anyway? Well, it was “unexpectedly” disappointing, despite a surge of online sales. I would think a move toward online retail sales wouldn’t be good for the job market. Brick-and-mortar stores are much more labor-intensive, and their hiring is distributed across many communities. Online retailers just need a few centralized warehouses and data processing facilities.
CNN offers some curious analysis of the new unemployment figures from Peter Maris of the Resource Financial Group, who says, “Looking at the weekly numbers is like looking at the stock market on a day-to-day basis, you can expect a few ups and downs without a real reason, but the trend is still that jobless claims are stabilizing and the jobs picture is gradually getting better.”
So unemployment is a flight through turbulent weather, bouncing up and down without a real reason, but the situation is “stabilizing?” Let’s get through a few months without any “unexpected” bad news before we start talking about stability.
Maris also said “jobs are being posted, but many employers just don’t seem to be filling the jobs.” What does that have to do with a surge in new unemployment claims? Hiring is poor at the moment too, but that’s an entirely different topic from a vast wave of people losing the jobs they already held.
December began with a job bubble caused by media hype over strong retail sales that didn’t materialize. The Obama economy is settling back to business as usual in January. The situation will only improve if the new Republican House improves it with sane spending policies, and long-term reductions in the tax and regulatory burden on business.
A federal judge in Florida on Thursday said he will allow some of the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health care law to proceed – and criticized Democrats for making an “Alice in Wonderland” argument to defend the law.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson allowed two major counts to proceed: the states’ challenge to the controversial requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance and a required expansion of the Medicaid program.
In his ruling, Vinson criticized Democrats for seeking to have it both ways when it comes to defending the mandate to buy insurance. During the legislative debate, Republicans chastised the proposal as a new tax on the middle class. Obama defended the payment as a penalty and not a tax, but the Justice Department has argued that legally, it’s a tax.
“Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an “Alice-in-Wonderland” tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check,” he wrote.
Vinson ruled that it’s a penalty, not a tax, and must be defended under the Commerce Clause and not Congress’s taxing authority.
A Dec. 16 trial date is planned in the lawsuit, brought by 20 state attorneys general and governors. Many legal experts expect it to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Just last week, a Michigan judge struck down a similar challenge to the reform law, arguing that Congress was well within its constitutional authority when it crafted the law. There are several lawsuits against the health law that are working their way through the court system, but the attorney general suit is the highest-profile challenge.
Vinson dismissed three of the states’ challenges, including complaints that the law interferes with state sovereignty as to whether employers must offer insurance; that the law coerces states into setting up insurance exchanges; that the individual mandate violates the states’ due process rights.
The states argued in September that the law violates the Constitution by requiring an expansion of the Medicaid program that’s funded in part by the states and for penalizing people for not purchasing health insurance.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican who lost the state’s gubernatorial primary this summer, filed the suit minutes after President Barack Obama signed the health care bill into law in March.
The Obama administration argued that the states and the National Federation of Independent Business, the small business lobby that joined the suit, don’t have standing to bring the lawsuit. They said that only individual taxpayers do.
The White House downplayed the ruling Thursday.
“Having failed in the legislative arena, opponents of reform are now turning to the courts in an attempt to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government,” Stephanie Cutter, an assistant to the president for special projects, wrote on the White House blog. “This is nothing new. We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act – constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation, and all of those challenges failed. So too will the challenge to health reform.”
First lady Michelle Obama appears to have violated Illinois law – when she engaged in political discussion at a polling place.
The drama began after Mrs. Obama stopped off at the Martin Luther King Center on the south side of Chicago to cast an early vote. After finishing at the machine, Obama went back to the desk and handed in her voting key. She let voters take some photos.
A tiny baby girl snatched from her parents’ custody a week ago when her father was accused of being an “Oath Keeper” was returned to her parents on Thursday.
According to WorldNetDaily sources close to the case, the accusations against the father, Johnathon Irish, whose fiancée, Stephanie Taylor, is the mother of Cheyenne, have been dropped.
A soldier who recorded the terror of last year’s deadly shooting rampage in Fort Hood using his cell phone was ordered by an officer to delete both videos, a military court heard Friday.
Pfc. Lance Aviles told an Article 32 hearing that his noncommissioned officer ordered him to destroy the two videos on Nov. 5, the same day that a gunman unleashed a volley of bullets at the Texas Army post.
The world’s longest tunnel made a decisive breakthrough on Friday when a boring machine crushed the remaining short distance between the north and south ends of the easterly shaft of the Gotthard rail tunnel under the Swiss Alps.
At 57km, the tunnel eclipses other links, such as the Channel tunnel between Britain and France, opened two years ago.
General Motors said Friday it was recalling more than 300,000 Chevrolet Impala sedans because the seat belts may fail to restrain people in the front seats during a crash.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on its website that the front-seat belt webbing may not be secured properly to a lap belt anchor on the side of the seat near the doors.
The state’s largest insurer has been approved to raise health premium rates by 41 percent to 47 percent for some of its policies sold to individual buyers, in the largest price hikes yet seen in Connecticut since the adoption of national health care reform.
For all of its individual market plans, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has received approval to raise rates by at least 19 percent.
China has shut down more than 1,600 small, illegal coal mines this year as part of an effort to improve safety standards in a mining industry that is the most dangerous in the world.
The state-backed People’s Daily newspaper reported Thursday that 1,611 small mines across China with outdated facilities were closed this year, citing the National Energy Bureau.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether the state of Illinois missed the deadline for mailing absentee ballots to members of the military and other overseas American voters.
Cris Cray, Director of Legislation at the Illinois State Board of Elections, says not all of Illinois’ 110 jurisdictions were compliant with the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act.
U.S. authorities have announced the biggest fraudulent enterprise in Medicare history. A group of Armenian gangsters set up “phantom” healthcare clinics, as well as a variety of other measures, with the intent to cheat Medicare out of $163 million.
Thus far, 73 associates have been indicted, 53 have been arrested, and seven suspects remain on the run.
Unemployment claims rose last week, hardening the view the central bank will pump more money into the economy, and keeping pressure on Democrats poised to lose congressional seats in November.
At the same time, record0-high imports from China helped push the U.S. trade deficit wider in August, while rising food and energy prices pushed inflation at the wholesale level up.
Riot police clashed with protesting Culture Ministry workers barricading the ancient Acropolis on Thursday, using tear gas to clear the entrance to Greece’s most famous landmark.
But the monument remained closed for the rest of the day as guards there launched a strike in solidarity with the evicted protesters. Protest organizers said they would gather again at the Acropolis early Friday.
Republicans will have President Barack Obama’s czars and his use of regulatory powers to circumvent congressional inaction in GOP crosshairs if the party takes control in January.
Obama has named more than 30 czars without Senate confirmation and congressional oversight, and together they hold power over everything from the environment and bank bailouts to the auto industry.
French students blockaded more high schools and universities Thursday, as the third straight day of nationwide strikes over the government’s retirement reforms snarled train travel and sent a renewed challenge to President Nicolas Sarkozy.
France’s BFM TV showed groups of students toppling trash cans in southeast France and erecting barricades in the middle of a Paris avenue.
For a guy known to hold some pretty strange views, this might be the most bizarre perspective on welfare policy I have ever seen. Here is Jerry Brown from his Pacifica Radio show in 1995:
“The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs. Jobs for every American is doomed to failure.”
The 527 Harry Reid Votes will file an ethics complaint against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada as early as this Friday.
The complaint alleges that Reid violated “the Senate rules of conduct by accepting certain contributions from the top executives of a federal government contractor,” according to a draft of the letter to be sent to the Select Committee on Ethics.
A teenager who just passed his driving test crashed into a state driver license center in western Pennsylvania.
The accident happened Wednesday afternoon as the teen was trying to leave the parking lot of a driver license center in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bridgeville. Officials said at least three people were injured, but their injuries were not considered serious.
About 50 goats were hired for an unusual job in Oregon, but one they obviously were born to do: lawn mowing. The animals were brought in to clear weeds from a two-acre lot in southeast Portland, drawing hundreds of onlookers.
The idea came from Brett Milligan, whose Portland landscape company was hired to tend the lot. Milligan liked the idea of avoiding gas-powered mowers.
A Lincolsnire plumber has built the fastest mobility scooter in the world – which whizzes along at an incredible 69mph. Colin Furze, 31, spent nearly three months converting the machine which has a 125cc motorbike engine under the seat, five gears and twin exhausts.
The petrol-powered super scooter can almost reach the national speed limit and keep up with cars on the motorway.
Megan C. Taylor, 20, and Donna Toure, 34, two Cincinnati area prostitutes were jailed Monday after a customer refused to pay one of the women, and she reported him to the police.
According to Cincinnati police, officers were called to a Camp Washington hotel on a report that hostages were being held at gunpoint, and they needed help fast. When officers arrived, they found no hostages.
A Treasury Department watchdog has launched an investigation into whether the Obama administration improperly snooped around the tax records of the mega-conglomerate that has poured millions into Republican campaigns.
J. Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, wrote in a brief letter Sept. 28 to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that he will launch a “review” of the allegation at the request of Grassley and six other Republican senators.
The controversy concerns the multibillion-dollar oil company Koch Industries, a major political contributor to conservative causes and a major target this year of Democrats trying to stoke voter outrage over the funding behind those causes.
President Obama publicly called out the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity at an early August fundraiser in Texas – that incident, in turn, helped fuel suspicion after an administration official was quoted later in the month speaking in unusual detail about Koch finances.
Coinciding with the release of a report on corporate tax reform, the official was quoted saying Koch, described as a “really giant firm,” was set up as a pass-through company – in other words, a company structured to escape corporate taxes by allowing income to flow directly through it.
But a Koch attorney questioned where and how the administration found that information – while at the same time denying the suggestion that it does not pay corporate income tax – and Grassley subsequently called for a probe into whether officials breached tax privacy law.
In a Sept. 24 letter, Grassley and other senators urged George to investigate the “very serious allegation” that the administration may have violated the IRS code that protects federal tax return privacy. The senators noted that the Koch website does not reveal anything about being a “flow-through entity.”
“Thus, the statement that Koch is a pass-through entity implies direct knowledge of Koch’s legal and tax status, which would appear to be a violation,” they wrote. “The statement is also troubling because it was made shortly after the president highlighted the advocacy work of certain tax-exempt organizations funded by Koch Industries, Inc.”
A company spokesman told FoxNews.com said Koch Industries is “cooperating fully” with the investigation, adding that the firm is “grateful that our concerns appear to be taken seriously.”
Koch Industries has been an increasingly popular topic of political conversation after The New Yorker published a lengthy article on the “war against Obama” being waged by the company’s owners, David and Charles Koch.
The article detailed the Koch family’s enormous wealth; their role in setting up the conservative Americans for Prosperity and the libertarian Cato Institute; and their web of political contributions – though the political donations are difficult to pinpoint, the magazine reported that the family’s charitable foundations have spent close to $200 million over the past decade.
Campaign finance records at the Federal Election Commission show the firm’s political action committee, KochPAC, contributed about $8 million over the past decade, with much of that money going to the campaigns of top Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in September that companies like Koch are “going in and opposing Democratic candidates and supporting Republican candidates.”
Employment in the U.S. private sector fell by 39,000 in September, the first drop since January, according to the ADP employment report released Wednesday.
In September, the goods-producing sector cut 45,000 jobs while the service sector added 6,000 jobs. Large businesses saw employment decline by 11,000 while medium-size businesses fell by 14,000.
The disastrous folly of trying Al Qaeda enemy combatants in civilian court stands proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the case of the first Guantanamo detainee brought to New York to face justice.
There is abundantly conclusive proof that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani participated in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 41.8 million in July as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the federal government has reported.
Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 18 percent from a year earlier and increased 1.4 percent from June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.
John Edwards’ political career is dead but the federal probe into whether he used campaign funds to keep his mistress quiet has shown public signs of life for the first time in more than a year.
Federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas for witnesses to appear before a grand jury that is deciding whether to charge Edwards with using cash from donors to provide a “love nest” for mistress Rielle Hunter.
The White House in the spring blocked release of government worst-case estimates of the amount of oil spewing from BP’s well in the Gulf of Mexico, a presidential commission said on Wednesday.
The commission said government officials told its staff that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wanted to release some of its long-term, worst-case spill models for the accident.
The recession put a 3.1 percent dent in the personal incomes of New York state residents, who endured their first full-year decline in more than 70 years, according to a report released Tuesday.
Paychecks or net earnings tumbled 5.4 percent, while dividends, interest and rent slid 8.4 percent, to a grand total of nearly $908 billion, the state comptroller’s report said.
Roy Halladay spent his whole career waiting for this start, wondering what it would be like to pitch in the playoffs. It was better than he – or anyone else – could have predicted.
Halladay threw the second no-hitter in postseason history, leading the Philadelphia Phillies over the Cincinnati Reds 4-0 in Game 1 of the NL Division Series on Wednesday. “It’s surreal, it really is,” Halladay said.
China’s premier has threatened Japan in an escalating row over disputed islands in the East China Sea. This dispute has already caused high-level government contacts to be frozen, and has dragged pop stars and pandas into the wake.
Speaking Tuesday night in New York, Premier Wen Jinbao said, “If Japan acts willfully despite advice to the contrary, China will take further actions and Japan must accept full responsibility for all the severe consequences.”
The bitter diplomatic confrontation started with a maritime collision involving a nondescript blue Chinese fishing boat. In waters near the disputed islands earlier this month, it collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels. The captain remains in Japanese custody.
This small bust-up has spiraled into this high-level standoff, centering on claims to the uninhabited but resource-rich islands. Even their name is a matter of dispute; they’re called Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China.
Twice in the past three weeks, small protests have taken place in front of Japan s embassy in Beijing. It’s significant these demonstrations are being allowed at all in the Chinese capital.
The Chinese protesters sing the national anthem, a reminder that rising nationalism born from China’s century of humiliation underlies their anger.
“I want our government to be stronger,” said a protester who gave his name as A Min.
He was trembling with anger as he spoke. “They shouldn’t let the Japanese bully us on our own soil. The Diaoyu islands have always been ours. Young Chinese people shouldn’t forget the humiliations of history, and shouldn’t allow history to repeat itself.”
Protests were held last weekend on the 79th anniversary of an incident that led to Japan’s brutal occupation of northeast China.
China has suspended ministerial contacts, and China-Japan talks on aviation issues have been called off.
Non-official contacts are also suffering, with China refusing to allow 1,000 Japanese students to visit the Shanghai Expo on a bilateral exchange and calling off a Japanese pop concert in Shanghai.
Beijing also sent a team of investigators to Japan to examine the death of a Chinese panda there.
It’s a good thing this racist is a big lib or her public career would be finished. Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez appeared on Spanish-Language Univision and told Latino voters, “Those Vietnamese and GOP are trying to take our seat from us.”
Rep. Sanchez is in a hotly contested race for re-election against the very popular, Vietnamese-American Republican, Van Tran. — Video
The Sean Bielat campaign has declared themselves within reach of unseating Barney Frank in Massachusetts’ 4th CD, one of the presumed safest districts for Democrats in the nation.
The poll, conducted for the campaign by OnMessage, shows Frank falling below the 50% mark. Bielat comes within nine points, even though the poll shows that he still badly trails in name recognition.
Floods and landslides from the strongest storm to hit China this year have killed at least 54 people and left dozens missing since it struck earlier this week, officials said Thursday.
Typhoon Fanapi swamped south China’s Guangdong province after directly hitting the island of Taiwan on Sunday and killing two there. Guangdong’s meteorological center said heavy rains would start to ease Thursday night.
Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert is slated to testify at a congressional hearing Friday on immigration titled “Protecting America’s Harvest.” One Republican source said Colbert will be testifying “in character,” the Bill O’Reilly-like muse Colbert uses for his show.
A House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman, confirming Colbert would testify, said the hearing was a “serious issue… this is not a TV stunt.”
A new survey of Wisconsin voters from left-leaning Public Policy Polling has the three-term liberal firebrand trailing Republican challenger Ron Johnson, 52 percent to 41 precent.
This comes on the heels of last week’s Rasmussen poll in which Feingold trailed Johnson by seven points. What’s to blame for Feingold’s surprising swoon, and how would a loss change the composition of the Senate?
The tally of newly laid-off workers requesting unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time in five weeks.
Initial claims for jobless aid rose by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 465,000. Many economists had expected a flat reading or small drop. The rise suggests that jobs remain scarce and some companies are still cutting workers amid weak economic growth.
President Obama’s inner circle will likely be losing some key players. Bill Plante reports that sources say David Axelrod, the president’s closest advisor, will move to Chicago next spring.
Axelrod is expected to reassume his role as campaign manager in Mr. Obama’s 2012 reelection bid. A potential, if not likely, replacement for Axelrod is current White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
darcprynce
Dave C
Gatordoug
