Monday, December 10, 2012

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, December 10, 2012


Ah... so many "favorite" Christmas songs... but perhaps my "favoritist" of all...

(*GRIN*)

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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/obama-to-accept-corporate-cash-for-inauguration-84755.html

President Barack Obama will accept unlimited corporate donations for his Inauguration in January...

(*SHRUG*)

[A]ny company that still owes stimulus money or is vying for a big federal contact may be excluded.

* "MAY" BE... NOT "WILL" BE. (*SHRUG*) HEY... FOLKS... I'M JUST SHARING WHAT POLITICO IS REPORTING!

This isn’t the president’s first reversal from a previous stance on contributions. After nearly two years of blasting super PACs for their involvement in politics, as the election ramped up in February he announced he wouldn’t mind his supporters writing multimillion-dollar checks to the groups.

(*SHRUG*)

December 10, 2012 at 10:19 AM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-is-the-economy-creating-a-lost-generation/2012/12/09/41683956-4093-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html

This is not a good time to be starting out in life. Jobs are scarce, and those that exist often pay unexpectedly low wages. Beginning a family — always stressful and uncertain — is increasingly a stretch. The weak economy begets weak family formation. We instinctively know this; several new studies now deepen our understanding.

When the labor market operates smoothly, it creates an economic escalator. Just out of high school or college, young workers typically switch jobs frequently until they find something that fits their talent and temperament. Job changes often mean higher pay; people move to advance themselves. The more they succeed, the more confident they feel in marrying and having children.

The most startling evidence of the broken escalator is the collapse in marriages and births.

Marriage has been declining for years. Now, in a new study, the Pew Research Center finds that in 2011 the U.S. birth rate (births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44) fell to its lowest level since at least 1920, the earliest year of reliable statistics.

From 2007 to 2011, the U.S. birth rate dropped almost 9%.

The total fertility rate - the estimated number of children born to adult women in their lifetime - has fallen four straight years to 1.9 (the replacement rate is 2.1).

* AND WHO ARE THESE CHILDREN WHO ARE BEING BORN? (I'M TALKING DEMOGRAPHICALLY...) ARE THEY FUTURE DOCTORS AND ENGINEERS... OR FUTURE GANG MEMBERS AND CONVICTS?

States with large economic setbacks suffered steeper birth rate drops, Pew says. Interestingly, births to immigrants fell more sharply than for native-born Americans. In 2010 — the latest detailed data — they dropped 13% from 2007 compared with a 5% decline for native-born women. Hispanics, both foreign and U.S.-born, had big birth-rate declines, reflecting exceptionally high unemployment and wealth losses from the recession, Pew says.

* INITIALLY THIS MAY SOUND LIKE POSITIVE NEWS... BUT FROM WHAT HEIGHTS ARE THESE DROPS... HMM...? (AGAIN... I REITERATE MY EARLIER QUESTION...)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 10, 2012 at 10:38 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The bleak labor market has hurt all age groups, but none more than the young. Consider the 23.4 million Americans who, on average, were considered “underemployed” over the past year. This group consists of 12.7 million officially unemployed; 8.2 million working part time but wanting full-time jobs; and 2.5 million desiring work but so discouraged they’d stopped looking. Of all these workers, 41% (9.5 million) were 30 or under, far in excess of their labor force share of 27 %, reports Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank that provided these numbers.

Fully one-fifth of younger workers belong to the “underemployed.” As Shierholz notes, the young always have higher unemployment rates. It’s just worse now. “Young workers are relatively new to the labor market — often looking for their first or second job — and so may be passed over in hiring due to lack of experience,” she says. “If employed, their lack of seniority makes them candidates for being laid off.”

But it’s more than the lack of jobs — or full-time jobs — that hurts the young. Wages have also sagged because too many applicants are chasing too few openings.

Traditionally, U.S. labor markets have featured enormous turnover: Workers voluntarily leave jobs or are fired. Job changes vastly exceed net job creation, as hires often fill slots that someone else just left. On the whole, this has been a good thing, argues a new study. Workers can often find a better-paying job. But this “churning,” as the study calls it, is abating. Because employers are creating fewer net new jobs, workers won’t give up the ones they’ve got. As the labor market freezes up, the young lose bargaining power.

“Because job change accounts for a substantial portion of earnings growth, especially for younger workers, this decrease in churning reflects a decrease in workers’ opportunities for [higher wages],” write the study’s authors, economists John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland and Henry Hyatt, Erika McEntarfer and Liliana Sousa of the Census Bureau.

The glut of job seekers depresses wages in a second way, argues the study. New firms — which create a disproportionate share of new jobs — don’t have to pay as much to hire. In 2001, workers at firms 10 years old or less earned 85% as much as workers at older firms. By 2011, they were paid only 70% as much. And these newer firms matter. From 1998 to 2011, they created 40% of net new jobs despite representing only 25% of total employment.

It’s usually a mistake to generalize about entire generations. The bad luck and bad timing of today’s 20-somethings may pass. Birth rates could bounce back. “In the past, women who have postponed births make up for it later,” says Pew’s D’Vera Cohn.

* BUT, AGAIN, WHO ARE THESE WOULD-BE (MIGHT BE) MOTHERS OF THE FUTURE? AND HOW WILL THEIR CHILDREN BE RAISED...???

December 10, 2012 at 10:38 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/12/10/jobs_under_obama_economic_stagnation_is_the_new_normal_100035.html

The labor force declined by 350,000 in November, despite an increase of 191,000 in our working age population.

* DO... YOU... UNDERSTAND...?

Friday's "Employment Situation" report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that 5.4 million Americans have dropped out of the labor force since Barack Obama took office.

* DO... YOU... UNDERSTAND...?

The unprecedented decline of labor force participation under President Obama is not news.

* ACTUALLY... TO THE AVERAGE AMERICAN... IT PROBABLY WOULD BE "NEWS." AND WHY NOT WHEN THESE ARE THE TYPES OF HEADLINES THE AVERAGE AMERICAN BROWSES THROUGH: "Jobs Report: A Pleasant Surprise" (Jared Bernstein); "The Employment Emergency is Over" (Felix Salmon); "Fiscal Cliff? What Fiscal Cliff? No Evidence in Jobs Numbers" (Stephen Gandel).

(*SHRUG*)

As of November 2012, total employment was still 3.2 million below its peak, which occurred five years earlier. This is particularly ghastly, because America's working age population has increased by 11.2 million since then.

We had fewer full-time jobs last month than we did in January 2005, which was almost eight years ago.

* BUT WAIT...! THERE'S MORE...!

Assuming that November's CPI comes in as expected (2.0% annual inflation rate), the real wages of ordinary ("production and non-supervisory") workers were 1.9% lower in November 2012 than they were in November 2010. They were also 9.0% lower than they were in November 1964, for that matter.

* AND, FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... THESE DISASTEROUS FIGURES ARE BASED UPON ACCEPTING A DELIBERATE UNDERREPORTING OF INFLATION BY PERHAPS A FACTOR OF THREE... FOUR... EVEN FIVE!

* FOLKS... EXAMPLE... THE HUDSON RIVER BRIDGES AND TUNNELS JUST WENT UP FROM $12 (CASH) TO CROSS TO $13 (CASH) TO CROSS. DO THE MATH! MY HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS (FOR WORSE INSURANCE TOO!) WENT UP 17% THIS YEAR. I WAS THRILLED TO DEATH TO PAY "ONLY" $3.30 gal. FOR GAS THE OTHER DAY IN JERSEY... LAST YEAR... $3.10. (YES... GAS PRICES FLUCUATE... BUT IF YOU CHART YEAR BY YEAR THE TREND IS FOR THE LOWS TO GET LESS LOW AND THE HIGHS TO LAST LONGER - THUS, YEARLY GAS SPENDING ON THE RISE BY A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN 2%. (ANYWAY... YOU'VE ALL HEARD MY SPIEL ON INFLATION...)

* MY POINT? STANDARDS OF LIVING ARE DECLINING. THERE'S SIMPLY NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.

Under Obama, economic stagnation has become the new normal.

* I'D SUBSTITUTE THE WORD "DECLINE" FOR "STAGNATION."

* FOLKS... THIS ISN'T SIMPLY ABOUT "BASHING" OBAMA. RECALL: I WAS WISHING BUSH DEAD FOR MOST OF HIS SECOND TERM! DO ME... AND YOURSELVES... A FAVOR. UTILIZE THE LINK PROVIDED UP ABOVE AND READ THE REST OF THIS PIECE.

December 10, 2012 at 12:10 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2032:expanding-covert-warfare-makes-us-less-safe&catid=64:2012-texas-straight-talk&Itemid=69

* BY THE HON. RON PAUL

Earlier this month we learned that the Obama Administration is significantly expanding the number of covert Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agents overseas. From just a few hundred DIA agents overseas today, the administration intends to eventually deploy some 1,600 covert agents. The nature of their work will also shift, away from intelligence collection and more toward covert actions. This move signals a major change in how the administration intends to conduct military and paramilitary operations overseas. Unfortunately it is not a shift toward peace, but rather to an even more deadly and disturbing phase in the “war on terror.”

Surely attacks on foreign countries will increase as a result of this move, but more and more the strikes will take place under cover of darkness and outside the knowledge of Congress or the American people.

* AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM, FOLKS. NO MATTER HOW MUCH I MYSELF DETEST MOST MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENCY WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE A VIRTUAL DICTATORSHIP OR IF YOU'D RATHER, MONARCHY.

The move also represents a further blurring of the lines between the military and intelligence services, with the CIA becoming more like a secret military unto itself. This is a very troubling development.

* I ABSOLUTELY AGREE WITH RON PAUL!

In 2010, I said in a speech that there had been a CIA coup in this country. The CIA runs the military, the drone program, and they are in drug trafficking. The CIA is a secretive government all on its own. With this new expanded Defense Intelligence Agency presence overseas it will be even worse. Because the DIA is operationally under control of the Pentagon, direct Congressional oversight of the program will be more difficult. Perhaps this is as intended. The CIA will be training the DIA in its facilities to conduct operations overseas. Much of this will include developing targeting data for the president’s expanding drone warfare program.

Already the president has demonstrated his preference for ever more drone attacks overseas. In Pakistan, for example, President Obama has in his first four years authorized six times more drone strikes than under all eight years of the Bush Administration. Nearly three thousand individuals have been killed by these drones, many of those non-combatants.

President Obama said recently of Israel’s strikes against the Palestinians in Gaza, "No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” This announcement by the administration amounts to precisely that: the U.S. intends to rain down ever more missiles on citizens overseas. I believe what the president says about Israel is true everywhere, so what about those overseas who live in fear of our raining missiles? How will they feel about the United States? Is it not possible that we may be inviting more blowback by expanding the covert war overseas? Does that make us safer?

An exhaustive study earlier this year by Stanford and New York University law schools found that U.S. drone strikes on Pakistan are “damaging and counterproductive,” potentially creating more terrorists than they kill. Its recommendations of a radical re-appraisal of the program obviously fell on deaf ears in the administration.

Thousands of new DIA spies are to be hired and placed undercover alongside their CIA counterparts to help foment ever more covert wars and coups in foreign lands. Congress is silent. Where will it all end?

* NOWHERE GOOD. AND THE WORST PART... THE AVERAGE AMERICAN COULDN'T CARE LESS.

December 10, 2012 at 5:51 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-forget-surrender-republicans-should-stand-and-fight/2012/12/10/8c0014c8-42de-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_story.html

* BY MARC THIESSEN

When the 1st Marine Regiment was encircled by communist forces at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Marine Col. Lewis “Chesty” Puller was said to have declared: “We’re surrounded. Good! Now we can fire in any direction.”

* ARE KIDS TAUGHT THIS IN SCHOOL? I DOUBT IT. MORE'S THE PITY.

It’s time for congressional Republicans to adopt some of Puller’s courage — and strategy — when it comes to their fiscal stand-off with Barack Obama.

Like Puller’s Marines, the GOP is surrounded. That means Republican leaders have only two options: 1) Surrender. 2) Stand and fight.

Right now, it seems as if they are seeking the least painful way to surrender.

* FRAG BOEHNER! FRAG MCCONNELL!

Republicans can still shoot their way out of their current predicament. It won’t be pretty and they will have to fight ugly — but they can still win. Here is a three-step battle plan for doing so:

1) Stand your ground on taxes. You’ve already conceded hundreds of billions in new revenue through limiting deductions. If Obama refuses to compromise, pass legislation extending current tax rates for all Americans. Let Obama reject it and take us over the “fiscal cliff” be prepared to live under the Clinton tax rates while negotiations on tax reform continue. In the short term, Americans may blame you. You can recover from that. What you will never recover from is surrendering your principles and giving up your brand as the party of low taxes and limited government.

2) Go on the offensive. Immediately put forward a plan to fundamentally reform the tax code. You will be able to outbid Obama and the Democrats in any tax-cut fight. And the intellectual groundwork has already been done. During the supercommittee negotiations last year, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) put forward a plan to lower rates, raise revenue and limit deductions. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has a revenue-neutral corporate tax reform plan that lowers the rate to 25% and moves to a territorial system.

On the spending side, “soak the rich” by getting rid of the billions of dollars in government benefits, taxpayer subsidies and corporate welfare the wealthy receive each year and don’t need, and by means-testing government programs from unemployment benefits to farm subsidies.

On entitlements, put forward a plan to save Social Security and Medicare through structural reforms and by reducing benefits for well-off retirees and eliminating them entirely for the wealthiest seniors. Propose a “Buffett Rule” of your own: Warren Buffett does not need taxpayers to subsidize his retirement and health care.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 10, 2012 at 6:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

3) Pass your plans. If the president refuses to negotiate and no progress is made by February, inform him that you will attach all or part of your plan to legislation raising the debt limit and pass it in the House. Then do so. Obama will sign it. Unlike with the fiscal cliff, Republicans have all the leverage when it comes to the debt limit.

Today, Obama is perfectly willing to go over the fiscal cliff and blame the GOP for the resulting tax increases on the middle class. But when it comes to the debt limit, he does not have that luxury. He can’t default on our debt — the consequences are too catastrophic. So in the end he will cave.

Indeed, he would have caved during the last debt-limit stand-off, in the summer of 2011.

* YEP! BUT BOEHNER ISN'T JUST A PIECE OF SHIT... HE'S A STUPID PIECE OF SHIT! HE WAS TOO STUPID TO CONNECT THE DOTS! BOEHNER IS AS RESPONSIBLE FOR OBAMA's RE-ELECTION AS ANYONE! BOEHNER AND THE RINOs TOOK THE WIND OUT OF REPUBLICAN SAILS.

* I STILL SAY IT: GINGRICH COULD HAVE WON. GINGRICH COULD HAVE WON BY CAMPAIGNING AGAINST NOT JUST OBAMA AND THE LEFT, BUT BY CAMPAIGNING AGAINST THE RINOs... THE CRONY CAPITALISTS... THE PEOPLE WE ALL HATE!

According to Bob Woodward, when Obama told his advisers he intended to veto the debt-limit bill the Republican-controlled House had passed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told him he couldn’t — that if Republicans didn’t give in, he had no choice but to sign their bill. “You can’t veto,” Geithner reportedly told Obama, because the consequences “would be indelible, incurable. It would last for generations.”

Republicans had Obama cornered and didn’t know it — so they let him off the hook.

* I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT AT THE TIME! (CHECK THE ARCHIVES...!!!)

When the next debt-limit increase comes in February, they will know better. The president’s current negotiating leverage dissipates as soon as we go over the fiscal cliff. Come February, the tables will be turned — and Republicans will hold all the cards in the debt-limit negotiations.

When that moment comes, the GOP should treat Obama with the same magnanimity that he is showing them today. Right now, Obama is not seeking middle ground with the GOP opposition; he is seeking to crush and humiliate them. That is his choice. But in February, when he suddenly needs Republicans to raise the debt limit, he should be made to regret his refusal to compromise.

* THE GOP SHOULD HAVE RUN ON A UNIFIED PLATFORM OF HOLDING THE LINE ON SPEND FOR THIS UPCOMING CONGRESSIONAL TERM. IF THEY HAD... PERHAPS THEY WOULD HAVE WON.

* AGAIN... FOLKS... BOEHNER, MCCONNELL AND THE REST OF THE RINOs BROKE TRUST WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. IT'S REALLY THAT SIMPLE.

The GOP can prevail in the current face-off. Doing so will require the kind of fortitude more common in Marines than in members of Congress. Republicans need to put down their white flags and start fighting for their principles.

There is no dishonor in being surrounded — only in surrender.

December 10, 2012 at 6:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/121012-636426-americans-figure-out-public-employees-have-it-better-than-private-workers.htm?p=full

In the 1,420 days since Barack Hussein Obama first took the oath of office, the federal government has daily hired on average 101 new employees.

Every day.

Seven days a week.

All 202 weeks.

That makes 143,000 more federal workers than when Obama talked forever on that cold day in January of 2009.

Under Obama the total federal workforce has surpassed two million for the first time since the first Clinton term - now sitting about the 2.2 ,million level.

"The federal workforce has become an elite island of secure and high-paid workers, separated from the ocean of average American workers competing in the global economy," according to a report this year by the Cato Institute.

That report found the average civilian federal government worker collected just under $84,000 a year in taxpayer money, about $32,000 more than the average private sector worker. That's a total federal worker package of about $236 billion a year.

* GIVING CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE..

Obama has frozen the inflated federal salaries into next spring...

[T]he Republican platform in this fall's campaign called for a 10% reduction in the federal labor force through attrition. (The re-elected Obama seems unlikely to go along with that idea.)

Congressional Republicans have also called for firing the thousands of federal employees who are behind in their income taxes but still somehow remain on the public payroll. (The latest IRS report said, for instance, that 36 of Obama's White House aides had $833,000 in unpaid back taxes.)

December 10, 2012 at 11:11 PM

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