Friday, January 7, 2011
Barker's Newsbites: Friday, January 7, 2011
Did anyone happen to catch Glenn Beck's TV show yesterday?
I watch Beck's show faithfully (therefore, so should you), but as with anything, not all episodes of Beck's program are created equally. Some are better than others.
Yesterday's (Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011) show was outstanding.
Beck pointed out what I often focus on, namely, that we're constantly being lied to, manipulated, and given false (and at best contradictory) information from government and the media.
Seriously, folks... how often do I "deconstruct" reporting and even government press releases and thus prove my point? This ain't "conspiracy stuff" folks...
(*SHRUG*)
To those of you who rely upon me for a part of your daily news and "continuing education," I'll continue to do my best. Understand though, with Republicans now controlling the House as well as so many state governorships and statehouses, the administration and their allies in the media and academia are going to pull out all the stops in order to confuse, conflate, and distort what our present reality and probable future actually look like.
Keep tuned in, folks! Don't simply depend upon me. Don't simply assume I'm right - though chances are I am! Do your own research. Trust but verify!
Anyway...
(*SMILE*)
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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/December-jobs-report-seen-apf-555289343.html?x=0&.v=7
The nation's economy added 103,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4% last month, its lowest level in 19 months.
* O.K.
* NOW... WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...
But the job growth fell short of expectations...
(*ROLLING MY EYES*) (FRANKLY, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT "EXPECTATIONS." THE HARD NUMBERS AND WHAT THEY MEAN IS ALL I'M INTERESTED IN.)
And the drop in unemployment was mainly because people stopped looking for work.
(*SAD CHUCKLE*) (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Over the past three months, the economy has added an average of 128,000 jobs. That's just enough to keep up with the population growth.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
* FRANKLY, FOLKS, IF MEMORY SERVES THE FIGURE IS ALMOST DOUBLE THAT IN ORDER TO MAKE A DENT IN UNEMPLOYMENT.
* OH... WAIT...
Nearly double is generally needed to significantly reduce the unemployment rate.
(*SMIRK*) (*STILL SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* O.K. NOW PAY ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING:
The number of unemployed fell by more than 500,000 to just under 14.5 million...
* GOT THAT? O.K. GOOD. NOW...
One key reason for the drop was that the government no longer counts people as unemployed when they stop looking for work.
(*BANGING MY HEAD ON THE DESK*) FOLKS... SEE WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT WITH TODAY'S NEWSBITE FRONT PAGE LEAD?!
[T]he unemployment rate has topped 9% for 20 months, the longest such streak on record.
Health care added about 36,000 jobs...restaurants and hotels hired more than 29,000 new workers.
* I EXCERPT THESE FIGURES TO POINT OUT THAT NOT ALL EMPLOYMENT GROWTH IS A POSITIVE. IF PEOPLE ARE SPENDING MORE MONEY ON EATING OUT AND VACATIONING THAT'S POSITIVE... IF HOWEVER PEOPLE ARE SPENDING MORE MONEY IN ORDER JUST TO STAY HEALTHY... THAT'S NOT SO POSITIVE. SPENDING MONEY OF A STEAK OR AN AMUSEMENT PARK IS A FAR DIFFERENT PROPOSITION FROM SPENDING MONEY ON BLOOD TESTS. (*SHRUG*) SEE WHAT I'M SAYING...???
* OH... AND TO REMIND FOLKS... WITH MORE PEOPLE ON MEDICARE (OBAMA'S DELIBERATE POLICY!) THAT MEANS MORE TAXPAYER DOLLARS BEING USED TO SUBSIDIZE THESE PEOPLE WHICH MEANS EITHER HIGHER TAXES, HIGHER DEBT, OR BOTH.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576065991865334286.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
The green lobby got all it wanted - subsidies, insider dealers, fame, money, influence. And then came Climategate...
* FOLLOWED BY...
[M]ultimillionaire Al Gore's personal and professional meltdown, the coldest, iciest, and snowiest winters in memory, all the false warnings about record hurricanes and tsunamis becoming the new norm, the Orwellian metamorphosizing nomenclature (global warming begat climate change that is now begetting "climate chaos").
(*SNORT*)
Gorism is becoming a permanent fixture of late night comedians. When the New York Times keeps publishing op-eds about how record cold proves record global warming, the world wonders: what would record heat prove?
(*GUFFAW*)
(*STILL LAUGHING*)
(*PAUSING TO CATCH MY BREATH*)
(*LAUGHING SOME MORE*)
But whom to blame? The bad earth that is not boiling this winter? Right-wing zealots who cannot comprehend that very cold proves very hot? Red-state yahoos that don't understand the brilliance of cap and trade? Broke governments that did not subsidize enough green power, green farming, and green energy?
(*SMILEY SMIRK*) (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD WITH AN AMUSED SMIRK*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513204576047791489619576.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
If Congress is looking for New Year's resolutions, it could start by breaking the habit of funding programs the government doesn't want.
A case in point is the attempt to throw another $450 million at the development of a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a plan that Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the military doesn't need.
GE's engine lost in the procurement competition to the one designed by Pratt & Whitney, as F-35 developers Lockheed Martin and Boeing preferred the latter version.
* UNDERSTAND. THE PLANE IS BUILT BY LOCKHEED MARTIN. THE ENGINE DESIGN AND PRODUCTION WAS OUTSOURCED. GE AND PRATT & WHITNEY COMPETED FOR THE ENGINE CONTRACT. PRATT & WHITNEY WON. GE's BACKERS IN CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE NOW WANT THE AIR FORCE TO BUY BOTH THE PRATT & WHITNEY AND THE GE ENGINE EVEN THOUGH THE AIR FORCE ONLY WANTS WHAT THEY CONSIDER THE BETTER ENGINE - THE PRATT & WHITNEY ENGINE. GOT IT...???
To hedge its technological risk, the Pentagon nonetheless [initially] sought financing for the GE engine as a backup through 2006 in case the Pratt & Whitney version fell short. That hasn't happened, and as budgets have tightened the Pentagon has understandably decided that it needs only one engine design.
Under budget guidelines, if a program does not receive explicit funding through [congressional] authorizing committees, it may only receive funding during the continuing resolution at the request of the Secretary of Defense. But Mr. Gates is opposed.
* NEVERTHELESS... (WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...)
The Pentagon's opposition hasn't stopped Congress, where the usual parochial suspects are still stumping for GE.
* FURTHERMORE...
[T]he White House appears to be bending. In a December letter to Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), White House budget director Jack Lew indicated that Congress could continue to fund the GE engine under Congress's continuing resolution, contrary to his office's own rules.
(*BANGING MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL*) (*WISHING IT WAS OBAMA'S HEAD I WAS BANGING AGAINST THE WALL*)
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom?page=0,2
Hardly anyone has seriously scrutinized either the priorities or the spending patterns of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its junior partner, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)...
Sure, they get criticized plenty. But year in, year out, they continue to grow faster and cost more [even as] there is no evidence whatsoever that the agencies are making Americans any safer.
* SOUNDS LIKE THE BUSH AND OBAMA ADMINISTRATIONS...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* BTW - I WAS ON RECORD AS OPPOSING CREATION OF "HOMELAND SECURITY" FROM THE START.
DHS serves only one clear purpose: to provide unimaginable bonanzas for favored congressional districts around the United States, most of which face no statistically significant security threat at all.
* YEP. SOUNDS LIKE POLITICS AS USUAL.
One thinks of the $436,504 that the Blackfeet Nation of Montana received in fiscal 2010 "to help strengthen the nation against risks associated with potential terrorist attacks"; the $1,000,000 that the village of Poynette, Wisconsin (pop. 2,266) received in fiscal 2009 for an "emergency operations center"; or the $67,000 worth of surveillance equipment purchased by Marin County, California, and discovered, still in its original packaging, four years later. (Every U.S. state, no matter how landlocked or underpopulated, receives, by law, a fixed percentage of homeland security spending every year.)
(*SIGH*)
As for the TSA, I am not aware of a single bomber or bomb plot stopped by its time-wasting procedures. In fact, TSA screeners consistently fail to spot the majority of fake "bombs" and bomb parts the agency periodically plants to test their skills. In Los Angeles, whose airport was targeted by the "millennium plot" on New Year's 2000, screeners failed some 75% of these tests.
Richard Reid, the 2001 shoe bomber, was undone by an alert stewardess who smelled something funny. [T]he ["underwear"] bomber was caught by a passenger, not the feds.
The 2006 Heathrow Airport plot was uncovered by an intelligence tip.
Al Qaeda's recent attempt to explode cargo planes was caught by a human intelligence source, not an X-ray machine.
Given this reality - and given that 9/11 was, above all, a massive intelligence failure - wouldn't we be safer if the vast budgets of TSA and its partners around the world were diverted away from confiscating nail scissors and toward creating better information systems and better intelligence?
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/Production-Problems-Delay-New-California-Drivers-Licenses-113039309.html?dr
New security features designed to help prevent fraud and counterfeiting of California driver licenses [are being blamed for causing] a backlog of renewals, according to the California DMV.
(*SMIRK*)
While many drivers applied through the mail or online hoping to save time, some have faced delays of more than two months. Marjorie Barakian, a certified nursing assistant and home health aide, says she's been waiting nearly two months for her new license. Barakian says she wrote a check on Nov. 8 and the DMV cashed it on Nov. 22. As of Jan. 6, she still hasn't received her renewal.
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
So what if you're headed to an airport to catch a flight or you get pulled over for a traffic violation?
(*GUFFAW*)
* ACTUALLY THE ARTICLE DOES DEAL WITH THIS... (*SNICKER*)... BUT JUST THE QUESTION ALONE IS ENOUGH TO ELICIT AN OUTBURST OF LAUGHTER FROM ME.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730704576066101633275980.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_personalfinance
The dividend yield on the U.S. stock market has plummeted to dismal levels.
At the dawn of the new year, the market will pay you back around 1.7% of its value in annual dividends. That's one of the lowest levels in the world - and a fraction of the 4.3% historical average.
* FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... THIS IS YET MORE HARD EVIDIENCE THAT OUR ECONOMY (AND OUR NATION) IS HEADED IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.
* AND ON A RELATED NOTE...
[C]ompanies are buying back their stock; they are also issuing new shares. Many of those are new stock and options for executives and senior staff
For stockholders, what the corporate treasury department giveth, the executive compensation committee taketh away.
(*NOD*)
Bottom line? While the companies were buying in stock, the number of shares outstanding actually went up. So stockholders got diluted. Each share was worth proportionately less, not more.
* FOLKS... REMEMBER MY CONSTANT REFRAIN ABOUT HOW THE OLIGARCHS ARE RIGGING THE SYSTEM SO THAT THEY AND THEY ALONE BENEFIT...
(*PAUSE*)
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
To some observers, it's no surprise that over that period, ordinary investors suffered dismal returns, while insiders at many corporations coined it as never before.
"Stock-option programs have been responsible for a massive wealth transfer from the retirement accounts of middle-class America to the corporate elite over the past decade or so," says Albert Meyer, portfolio manager of the Mirzam Capital Appreciation mutual fund and a long-standing hawk on corporate governance. He says this "perfectly explains why shareholders have suffered a lost decade."
(*NOD*)
Dividends matter. They may be the one aspect of your return that you can rely on. And right now they are very thin on the ground.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html
Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance.
* BEAR WITH ME...
Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective” and “an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.”
* IN OTHER WORDS... SCHWARZROCK WAS THE TYPICAL AMERICAN KID OF HIS GENERATION.
The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).
In the 50 years since Schwarzrock and the others took their tests, scholars - first led by Torrance, now his colleague, Garnet Millar - have been tracking the children, recording every patent earned, every business founded, every research paper published, and every grant awarded.
Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University recently reanalyzed Torrance’s data. The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.
With intelligence [IQ], there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect - each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are [apparently] making kids smarter.
* HMM... I'D LIKE TO DIG DEEPER INTO THIS, BUT PUTTING THE ABOVE STATEMENT ASIDE, LET'S CONTINUE WITH CREATIVITY...
With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
(*SILENCE*)
Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward.
“It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America - from kindergarten through sixth grade - for whom the decline is “most serious.”
(*SILENCE*)
Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why - sometimes parents just wish it’d stop.
Tragically, it does stop.
By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions.
Creativity has always been prized in American society...
* AND NOW...
While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses.
* WE'RE IN TROUBLE, FOLKS.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730704576066273744261318.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_news
Republican governors are pressing the Obama administration to make it easier for states to cut Medicaid enrollment...
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
Medicaid, which provides health insurance and covers nursing-home costs for the poor, has become most states' top spending conundrum. Although the federal government pays 57% on average of states' Medicaid costs, states are straining to cover the other 43% because Medicaid enrollment continues to rise.
* AND THAT'S THE OBAMACARE MODEL!
Medicaid enrollment rose to 47.8 million people in 2009 from 42.6 million in 2008, according to the Census Bureau.
At least a half-dozen states have publicly discussed withdrawing from the Medicaid program altogether because of its expense.
(*NOD*)
States are pressing forward with deep cuts to the few parts of Medicaid they can change without risking losing their federal matching funds. Those including trimming nonessential benefits for adults - such as prescription, vision and dental coverage - and shaving the rates Medicaid pays health-care providers.
* AIN'T OBAMACARE GRAND...?!?! (*SNORT*) (*SMIRK*) (*SNICKER*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730704576065942040672186.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_business
Bacteria made quick work of the tons of methane that billowed into the Gulf of Mexico along with oil from the Deepwater Horizon blowout, clearing the natural gas from the waterway within months of its release, researchers reported Friday.
The federally funded field study, published online in the journal Science, offers peer-reviewed evidence that naturally occurring microbes in the Gulf devoured significant amounts of toxic chemicals in natural gas and oil spewing from the seafloor, which researchers had thought would persist in the region's water chemistry for years.
(*SHRUG*)
"Within a matter of months, the bacteria completely removed that methane,"said microbiologist David Valentine at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "The bacteria kicked on more effectively than we expected," he said.
* I JUST WONDER HOW MANY OF THOSE RESEARCHERS AND SCIENTISTS WHO WERE "SURPRISED" ARE BIG BELIEVERS IN MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING AND ITS "THREAT" TO THE WORLD? (JUST CURIOUS...)
In a report last month, federal officials managing the cleanup effort said there was no longer any significant oil from the spill left offshore and no evidence of chemical dispersants in the water that exceeded federal safety standards.
(*SMIRK*)
* NO... NO... NO ONE IS "DEFENDING" OIL SPILLS. I'M JUST POINTING OUT THAT DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS ADVANCED BY THE LIKES OF AL GORE AND HIS DISCIPLES SEEM TO BE... er... (PARDON THE PUN)... HOT AIR.
* HEY... EDUCATE YOURSELVES! READ THE FULL ARTICLE!
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/07/morning-bell-americans-are-fleeing-obamas-crony-capitalist-economy/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
* A COMPANION PIECE TO TODAY'S INITIAL NEWSBITE --
You are going to hear a lot of noise from the White House about how this drop from a 9.8% unemployment rate to 9.4% means the economy is in a strong recovery.
This [claim] is false.
The reality is that the only reason the unemployment rate dropped is because the U.S. labor force decreased by 434,000.
More importantly 260,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force entirely.
(This means that the Obama economy is now driving Americans out of the labor force faster than it is bringing them.)
This Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tweeted out: “General Motors Co.’s sales were up 21% in 2010 for its four core brands.”
[I]nteresting spin.
As "The Truth About Cars" [website] points out, GM’s retail market share for all of their brands actually fell a full 1.8% in 2010.
(*SMIRK*)
[By the way,] the Obama Administration did sell off a majority stake of their ownership of GM this November (at a $10 billion loss to taxpayers), but that still leaves them owning about a 37% share in the company.
In other words, our government is still part owner of a supposedly private car company.
* A "PRIVATE COMPANY" WHICH HAS BEEN RELEIVED OF IT'S RESPONSIBILITY TO PAY TAXES FOR THE NEXT FEW YEARS...
(*SMIRK*)
* IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT... (*SIGH*)... LOOK IT UP!
The Obama "czar" who oversaw the GM bailout, Ron Bloom, was just named the new "czar" for all of manufacturing policy at the White House’s National Economic Council (NEC). [Chances are] we can expect to see continued favoritism for GM and its bailed-out brothers from the entire Obama Administration.
The manufacturing industry is not the only sector of the economy where the Administration has installed a bailout revolving door. Over just the last two months, the Obama White House has sent budget director Peter Orszag to Citibank ($306 billion bailout), taken in Gene Sperling as NEC director from Goldman Sachs (beneficiary of the $173 billion AIG bailout), and added former Fannie Mae ($135 billion bailout so far) lobbyist and JPMorgan ($12 billion bailout) executive Bill Daley as President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff.
(*SHRUG*)
There is a phrase for an economy that is so dependent on close relationships between business people and government officials: crony capitalism. And it is strangling our economic recovery.
* WORSE... IT IS DESTROYING WHO WE ARE... WHAT AMERICA IS...
This past June, marking the first anniversary of the Obama Administration’s destruction of our nation’s bankruptcy code, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) warned: “The nation is not safe from crony capitalism. In the past year we’ve experienced the nationalization of the student loan industry and the passage of national health-care and financial-services regulation, each of which is rife with new opportunities for government favoritism and preferential handouts to favored corporations like Chrysler.”
Our economy will never reach its full potential as long as the best way to succeed in business is to succeed in Washington.
(*NOD*) AMEN.
http://steveking.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Newsroom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=5c5b18dd-19b9-b4b1-1244-1a7e3913786b&Region_id=&Issue_id=
Congressman Steve King (R-IA), Congressman Phil Gingrey (R-GA), Congressman Gary Miller (R-CA) and Congressman Rob Woodall (R-GA) released the following statements after introducing legislation to end the practice of automatically granting American citizenship to “Anchor Babies” born in the United States to illegal alien parents.
(The legislation is officially designated as H.R. 140, the “Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011.” )
[Quoting] Congressman King --
“The current practice of extending U.S. citizenship to hundreds of thousands of ‘Anchor Babies’ every year arises from the misapplication of the Constitution’s citizenship clause and creates an incentive for illegal aliens to cross our border. The ‘Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011’ ends this practice by making it clear that a child born in the United States to illegal alien parents does not meet the standard for birthright citizenship already established by the Constitution. Passage of this bill will ensure that immigration law breakers are not rewarded, will close the door to future waves of extended family chain migration, and will help to bring an end to the global ‘birth tourism’ industry.”
[Quoting] Congressman Miller --
“It is unfair to grant birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants because it undermines the intention of the Fourteenth Amendment, rewards those that have recklessly broken our nation’s immigration laws, and costs American taxpayers billions annually. By simply closing this loophole, we will save taxpayers billions and reduce the appeal of entering the United States illegally. This bill simply makes sense.”
* GOD BLESS THESE GUYS! SOMEONE IS FINALLY ADDRESSING THE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE!
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/06/morning-bell-repeal-doesnt-increase-the-deficit/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
[This week, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi falsely] claimed that repealing Obamacare would do “very serious violence to the national debt and deficit.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
While the CBO did produce a report projecting that Obamacare could produce $124 billion of savings over its first 10 years, no honest and intelligent person believes that that score will ever become reality. Not even the CBO.
* WE COVERED ALL THIS DURING THE DEBATES... (*SIGH*)
CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote: “CBO’s cost estimate noted that the legislation maintains and puts into effect a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time.”
(*SMIRK*) A CLASSIC POLITICAL UNDERSTATEMENT.
Elmendorf then [went] on to identify a number of specific Obamacare policies, such as arbitrary reductions in the growth rate for Medicare spending, that anyone who follows health care policy [knew would]l be impossible to actually implement.
* AGAIN... (*SIGH*)... WE COVERED ALL THIS DURING THE DEBATES.
Speaker Pelosi gamed the CBO to get a fantasy deficit reduction number [by ignoring] how Medicare pays doctors altogether. Early versions of Obamacare included a permanent “doc fix” that prevented automatic cuts to physician reimbursements under Medicare. But when Democrats couldn’t get the score to come out right with the doc fix included, they simply solved that problem by cutting it out of the legislation entirely.
(They have since been forced to pass two extensions of the doc fix in separate pieces of legislation.)
It’s super easy to claim that your health care bill doesn’t add to the deficit if you don’t bother to include payment for doctors in it.
(*SMIRK*)
* FOLKS... (*GUFFAW*)... ONE MORE TIME... ALL THIS WAS COVERED HERE AT USUALLY RIGHT DURING THE DEBATES! THIS IS NOTHING "NEW." THIS ISN'T "NEWS." (WELL... EXCEPT IN THE SENSE MOST AMERICANS RELY UPON THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA INSTEAD OF BARKER'S NEWSBITES, NO DOUBT MOST PEOPLE ARE IGNORANT OF WHAT YOU AND I KNOW AND WHAT WE'RE REITERATING HERE IN THIS PARTICULAR NEWSBITE.)
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/01/07/breaking-cbo-says-repealing-ob
The Congressional Budget Office, in an email to Capitol Hill staffers obtained by the [American] Spectator [Magazine], has said that repealing the national health care law would reduce net spending by $540 billion in the ten year period from 2012 through 2021.
(*SHRUG*)
That number represents the cost of the new provisions, minus Medicare cuts.
Repealing the bill would also eliminate $770 billion in taxes.
(It's the tax hikes in the health care law - along with the Medicare cuts - which accounts for the $230 billion in deficit reduction.)
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145478/Gallup-Finds-Unemployment-December.aspx
* OH... AND ONE MORE THING ABOUT THOSE GOVERNMENT FIGURES...
Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.6% at the end of December - up from 9.3% in mid-December and 8.8% at the end of November.
(*SHRUG*)
* HEY... I'M JUST REPORTING THE NEWS AS I FIND IT.
Meanwhile, the percentage of part-time workers who want full-time work increased to 9.4% of the workforce in December - up from 9.2% in mid-December and 8.4% at the end of November.
(*SHRUG*)
* DON'T BLAME ME... I'M SIMPLY TELLING YOU WHAT THE POLLING STATES IN CONTRAST TO WHAT THE OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT STATS SHOW.
The increase in Gallup's U.S. unemployment rate and the worsening in the percentage of part-time workers wanting full-time work combined to raise underemployment to 19% in December from 18.5% in mid-December and 17.2% at the end of November.
* HERE'S HOW GALLUP EXPLAINS THE DISCREPENCIES:
The U.S. unemployment picture may seem unusually confusing these days. Gallup monitoring showed a sharp improvement in the jobs situation in November, particularly as companies added holiday workers. However, the government surprised Gallup and most other economic observers as it reported last month that the U.S. unemployment rate increased to 9.8% in November. It appears that the government made a larger seasonal adjustment than was generally anticipated for the month.
ADP on Wednesday reported that the economy added 297,000 private-sector jobs - far above the consensus expectation that the government on Friday will report the U.S. economy added 140,000 new jobs overall in December. In contrast, Gallup shows the unemployment rate increasing as companies let go of holiday workers. At the same time, Gallup's Job Creation Index shows monthly average hiring and firing conditions essentially unchanged over the past three months.
(*SHRUG*)
* HERE'S THE BOTTOM LINE FROM GALLUP'S PERSPECTIVE:
Because the Gallup unemployment measure is not seasonally adjusted, it tends to more accurately reflect what is actually taking place in the U.S. job market and may not agree with the government's estimate that is seasonally adjusted.
Further, Gallup's data tend to be more up-to-date than the government's because Gallup polls on the unemployment situation continuously.
Whatever the government reports about unemployment on Friday, Gallup's U.S. underemployment data for the end of 2010 show that nearly one in five Americans continue to be unemployed or employed part-time looking for full-time work.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/256614/no-paul-krugman-texas-not-broke
* THIS ARTICLE IS A REAL EYE OPENER, FOLKS; I SUGGEST YOU READ IT IN ITS ENTIRETY. IN THE MEANTIME, I'LL DO MY BEST TO PRESENT THE HIGHLIGHTS --
Texas doesn’t do [budget] shortfalls.
Texas starts from scratch.
Every year is basically Year Zero when it comes to the state budget; there is no assumption that next year’s funding will match or exceed this year’s, and the state’s constitution explicitly forbids any legislature to tie the hands of a subsequent legislature, financially or otherwise.
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
When necessary, Texas implements zero-baseline budgets, in order to keep the state living within its means...
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
Rick Perry established a pretty good standard for gubernatorial brass-dangling the last time there was a projected budget shortfall, in 2003. [Back then,] Gov. Perry and his colleagues in the Texas legislature took a "radical right-wing" approach to government budgeting, inasmuch as they started by asking: “How much money do we have?” (Insane, right?)
(*CHUCKLE*) (KEVIN WILLIANSON IS ONE HELL OF A WRITER; REMINDS ME OF ME!)
After they figured out how much money they were going to have, they then decided how to divvy it up, in total and "radical" and "right-wingish" contravention of the Washington model of budgeting, which goes: Spend everything you have, spend everything you can borrow, and then spend some more, regardless of how much you actually have to spend. And then spend some more; repeat. (Which is totally how James Madison wanted it, I am sure.)
(*FULL BORE LAUGH*)
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
In 2003, Governor Perry and Texas Republicans took the state’s budget baseline to zero, and told state agencies to write new budgets, based on what they actually needed to spend to accomplish their missions, rather than based on increasing by 3% or 4% or 30% or 40% what they spent last year. And the Republicans handled the politics pretty well: Instead of calling state agency chiefs down to the legislature to be dressed down by pompous elected types or denouncing them from the governor’s office, they had a bunch of what must have been drearily tedious private meetings with them, and helped them to sweat their budgets down in a rigorous but respectful way.
It worked. Texas balanced the books, and the place does not look like Afghanistan.
(*NOD*)
* I SAY WE SIMPLY ASK CONGRESS AND PRESIDENT OBAMA TO COLLECTIVELY GO ON "BREAK" FOR A COUPLE YEARS AND WHILE THEY'RE GONE, WE ALLOW TEXAS TO RUN THE COUNTRY!
* WHO'S WITH ME...?!?! COM'ON!
Texas’s low-B.S. approach has had some salubrious effects...[such as creating budget] surpluses that allowed the state to put about $10 billion in its rainy-day fund...
* NOT BAD!
Republicans plan to introduce a budget that comes in within current revenue without touching the rainy-day fund. Get your head around that: There’s a multibillion-dollar pot of cash sitting there in front of politicians who must be just slavering inside at the thought of it, and they aren’t going to touch it - even though they have a pretty good excuse.
* WILLIAMSON IS REFERRING TO THIS YEAR'S BUDGET TIGHTNESS IN TEXAS.
Texas’s potential shortfall probably is not $25 billion. The inside guys talk about $11 billion to $15 billion, spread out over a two-year budget. (Texas writes one budget every two years, and has a legislature that meets every two years.) Even the liberal bedwetters over at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities expect the budget hole to amount to about 10% of the whole enchilada, as compared to more than 50% in basketcase California. Of that $11–$15 billion, about $8 billion will be Medicaid...
* AH-HA!
Rules changes associated with ObamaCare will add about 71% to Texas’s Medicaid expenses over the first ten years of implementation - that’s Texas’s out-of-pocket expense, not money that the feds reimburse under Medicaid - an increase that quite literally threatens to bankrupt the state.
(*NOD*)
Analysts predict that Medicaid expenses could outstrip all state revenue within a few decades - meaning that Texas could not pay its Medicaid expenses, even if it dedicated 100% of its tax revenue to them.
* FOLKS... WASHINGTON IS THE PROBLEM. BUSH AND THE RINOs SUCKED... (*SIGH*)... BUT PELOSI... REID... THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS... OBAMA... (*SIGH*)... THEY'VE PUSHED THIS NATION TO THE BRINK.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c27463a0-1a64-11e0-b003-00144feab49a.html#axzz1APQKb4gF
* ONE MORE REITERATION (FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES THIS TIME!) CONCERNING HOW UNTRUSTWORTHY THE DATA WE GET FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA OFTEN IS:
Markets hoped that December’s payroll report would mark a breakthrough for the US economy’s recovery, with a surge in private job creation towards 200,000 - a level that would finally put a dent in the unemployment rate.
Instead they got a murky mixture of a report, prompting one economist, Rob Carnell of ING Bank, to call it an “utter mess”...
The problem is that the monthly payrolls report contains two different measures - a survey of households and a survey of employers - and in December they pointed in different directions.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* FOLKS... BOTTOM LINE... OBAMA AND BERNANKE'S IDIOTIC ECONOMIC POLICIES ARE HURTING, NOT HELPING, THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
Most analysts attribute the fall in labor force participation and therefore the fall in the unemployment rate, to the expiry of long-term unemployment benefits in December. If you no longer receive unemployment benefits, the theory goes, then you no longer have any reason to tell a survey you are actively looking for work.
The number of “discouraged workers”, who say that they are no longer looking for a job because they do not think they can find one, was 1.3 million in December.
Congress has since renewed long-term unemployment benefits. A likely consequence is that the size of the labor force will bounce back in January, reversing the fall in the unemployment rate.
(*HEADACHE*)
A further disappointment was in the average duration of a spell of unemployment, which rose from 21.7 to 22.4 weeks...
(*SIGH*)
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