We Lost: Put Your Faith In Government Now

       I'm Clinging to My Faith And My Guns 

In every heart there is, of course, corruption. No one is immune from lust and greed.

Democracy accommodates this need, Embracing what might else lead to destruction.

People cannot people an ideal. Equality's a myth, always has been; No more than something to put favors in, Dependent on the lie that it is real. 

Each decision is a battlefield, Not of ideas but of interests, yours and mine, 
Calculated shrewdly to define. Exactly what advantage each might yield?

Do not be discouraged: Evil is As much a part of us as love or bliss.

Yet what is not a wound cannot be healed.

The United States has just had our elections, and nothing has changed. Barack Obama remains president. The Democrats remain in control of the Senate with a non-filibuster-proof majority. The Republicans remain in control of the House of Representatives.

The national political dynamic has resulted in an extended immobilization of the government. With the House -- a body where party discipline is the norm -- under Republican control, passing legislation will be difficult and require compromise. Since the Senate is in Democratic hands, the probability of it overriding any unilateral administrative actions is small. Nevertheless, Obama does not have enough congressional support for dramatic new initiatives, and getting appointments through the Senate that Republicans oppose will be difficult.

Thomas Jefferson

There is a quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson: "That government is best when it governs the least because its people discipline themselves." I am not sure that the current political climate is what was meant by the people disciplining themselves, but it is clear that the people want to imposed profound limits on this government. Its ability to continue what is already being done has not been curbed, but its ability to do much that is new has been blocked.

American politics, like politics everywhere, is a passionate business. The vilification from all sides that follows any mention I make of American politics is both inevitable and unpleasant. Nevertheless, it's my job to chronicle the unfoldings of our political system, and the fact that the United States is now moving away from an election cycle will affect American international behavior and therefore the international system.

Sheer size of our economic debt

The United States remains the center of gravity of the international system. The sheer size of our economy (regardless of our growth rate) and the power of our military (regardless of our current problems) is what makes us unique. Even more important, no single leader of the world is as significant, for good or bad, as the American president. That makes the American presidency, in its broadest sense, a matter that cannot be ignored in studying the international system.

There will be a great deal of unhappiness with the second Obama administration overseas. As much as the world condemns the United States when it does something, at least part of the world is usually demanding some action. Obama will disappoint, but it is not Obama. Just as the elections has paralyze him domestically, reality will limit his foreign policy. Immobilism is something the founders would have been comfortable with, both in domestic politics and in foreign policy. The voters have given the republic a government that will give them both.

Obama's campaign was about no particular policies. He ran on a platform that famously promised FORWARD!.  His tremendous political achievement was in getting voters to except the concepts in such a way that they would interpreted it to mean precisely what they wanted them to mean without committing Obama to specific policies. To the anti-war faction it meant that the wars would end. To those concerned about unilateralism it meant that unilateralism would be replaced by multilateralism. To those worried about growing inequality it meant that he would end inequality. To those concerned about industrial jobs going overseas it meant that those jobs would stay in the United States. 

In 2008, Obama told the Democratic convention: “We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage, whether you can put a little money away at the end of each month” but Obama got it dead wrong in suggesting that four more years of his “let government do it” presidency is the path that will restore the nation’s economic greatness.

One of the hardest things for a young adult to master is the principle that, for the most part, there is nothing that can be done. That is the phase in which the United States finds itself at the moment. It is coming to terms not so much with the limits of power as the nature of power. Great power derives from the understanding of the difference between those things that matter and those that don't, and a ruthless indifference to those that don't. It is a hard thing to learn, but history is patiently teaching it to the United States.

As If By Magic

February 2009, there were 141.748 million Americans employed in the United States and the labor force participation rate was 65.6%.  In September 2012, 140.025 million Americans were employed and the labour force participation rate had fallen to 63.6%.  Between February 2009 and September 2012, the civilian non-institutional population grew by 8.859 million adults; yet, 1.723 million fewer Americans were working.  In the last year alone, 1.1 million Americans left the work force.

Given the massacre in Denver and next month's election -- "unexpected" drop in the unemployment rate requires a willing suspension of disbelief.  The "spontaneous uprising" in hiring of a whole 114,000 jobs allegedly caused a drop in the U-3 rate of 0.3%.  In August, the US economy added 96,000 and the unemployment rate went from 8.3% to 8.1%.  In July, the US economy added 163,000 jobs and the unemployment rate went up to 8.3% from 8.2% in June when only 80,000 jobs were created.  Go figure.

Somehow...in a economy growing at a miserly 1.2%...873,000 people managed to find jobs.  Of course, 582,000 jobs were part-time jobs, which the Left used to say weren't "real jobs."  The addition of 873,000 jobs, which, according to CNBC, is “the highest one-month jump in 29 years.”  That would have been in November, 1983...when the GDP was 8.5%.  Once again, the annualised GDP rate for Q2 in 2012 was 1.2%. If the labour force participation rate was constant, the U-3 rate would be 10.7%.  

By the way, at a rate of adding 114,000 jobs per month, we wouldn't return to full employment until 2025.   114,000 jobs per month would be great...if we were living in the late 1950s.  We need twice that many just to maintain current employment.  A robustly growing economy requires job creation in the range of 300,000+.  Take a look at the number of jobs that were being created during the Reagan Recovery when GDP was 7-8%. 

Based upon its most recent Household Survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that the unemployment rate in the United States decreased from 8.1% to 7.8% in September.  This apparent improvement in our labor markets is deceptive for the following reasons:

1.  Two-thirds of the new jobs claimed by the Report (582,000 jobs) are part time jobs.

2.  Of the claimed 582,000 new part time jobs, only 268,000 are real.  The remaining 314,000 part time jobs are the result of a "seasonal adjustment" by the BLS.

More jobless people

3.  The BLS reported dramatic increases in seasonally adjusted part time employment in September of 2011 (483,000 jobs) and September of 2010 (579,000 jobs) only to report significant decreases in such jobs in each of the following Octobers (419,000 jobs in 2010 and 480,000 jobs in 2011) with continuing decreases in November and December.  It is therefore reasonable to expect that the increase in part time jobs this year and the resulting improvement in the unemployment rate is also temporary.

4.  The U-6 unemployment rate, which is the broadest measure of unemployment, in that it includes among the unemployed those persons who are working part time but would rather be working full time, was unchanged in September at 14.7%.



In conclusion, in the third year of an alleged recovery, the unemployment problem in the United States did not really change in September. This is not good news for the United States or the continued employment prospects of President Obama.

The Anti-Jobs President Strikes Again



Hold on Sir, The folks are working on getting a new guy in 2012







John Bryson

President Obama’s nomination of John Bryson as the next Secretary of Commerce is like putting Bernie Madoff in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Unfair? Not when you look at Mr. Bryson’s record as the co-founder and chairman of the left-wing environmental group, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has a history of supporting jobs-killing environmental policies and bringing lawsuits at the expense of U.S. economic growth and jobs.

Given Mr. Bryson’s record, the Senate may not confirm him as the nation’s new Commerce Secretary. Nevertheless, the President’s choice is yet another example of hostility to job-creation and pro-business policies.

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama made an appeal to Congress to forget politics and get to work on job creation: “At stake right now is not who wins the next election … At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else. It’s whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded.”

The President’s rhetoric hasn’t matched his record. In addition to his Commerce nominee, consider other recent actions:

In April, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) tried to block Boeing from opening a brand new $2 billion factory for its new Dreamliner plane in South Carolina, which would employ around 1,000 Americans. The NLRB defended this action by claiming that it was looking out for union workers, who would have been cut out of the South Carolina plant. But, really, this is a right-to-work state, job-killing payback to union allies, who will return the favor with millions of dollars of campaign cash and door-knocking campaigning.

Rep. Paul Ryan

Also last month, the House of Representatives adopted the budget proposal introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan, which nobly takes big steps to reduce the deficit by cutting Medicare growth. President Obama’s response was an overly partisan and vicious attack that attempted to kill the debate before it even began. The President’s salvo also provided the opening for Democratic allies to unload misleading attacks without suggesting a solution other than the old canard that increasing taxes on Americans who make more than $250,000 will solve the problem.

It seems many prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, are concluding that the growing debt, weakening of the dollar, downgrading of our creditworthiness and desire to raise taxes has hurt our economy and discouraged businesses from taking risks, expanding and hiring.

President Obama’s budget proposal failed to get one vote in the Senate as it essentially ignores the American people’s determination to cut government spending and bring back confidence so businesses start hiring.

The hits just keep coming. Now, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that Obamacare will reduce household employment of 800,000 Americans by 2021. It also reported to Congress that the law will cost $1.13 trillion over the next six years rather than the initial cost of $778 billion. We’ve lost track of how many times the CBO has had to revise its original estimate, which Congress of course exploited to rush Obamacare toward passage. Nevertheless, despite the corrections, the White House clings to CBO’s original deficit-cutting myth.

If all that weren’t enough, after years of saying it wanted to move the free trade agreements, the Administration announced it would not support their passage unless Congress committed to billions of dollars in Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a program that has little record of success. So instead of our farmers, manufacturers and workers benefiting from lower tariffs and more jobs, the trade agreements will wither because Republicans will not support such obviously wasteful spending.

Donald J. Boudreaux



As George Mason University economics professor Donald J. Boudreaux lamented, “Would it have been appropriate, for example, for the White House to prevent Americans from buying iPods and Kindles until and unless Congress funded the retraining of workers who lost their jobs at Tower Records and Borders?”

Finally, two weeks ago the President announced he would forgive U.S. loans and give additional cash to Arab countries, countries whose leadership may prove to be hostile to America. So while both political parties strive to save American jobs by cutting spending we are giving away more money abroad.

At some point you have to scratch your head and wonder whether President Obama understands that jobs come from job-creators – not from unions, foreign governments or even from government spending and employees. But that’s what happens when political calculations outweigh the interests of middle-class Americans.

Until and unless the President changes this anti-jobs course we can continue to expect a sullen economy and millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans.