Thursday, February 14, 2013
Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 14, 2013
So... I got Mary a 4-pack of dishwashing sponges - the 3 +1 bonus pack - at Shopright yesterday... half-price! (Ya think Mary's gonna like it as a Valentine's Day gift...?!?!)
(Sadly... the answer - in all seriousness - is YES...)
Oh... also surprised her with tulips on Tuesday...
(Trader Joe's - $4.99 a bunch!)
Let's see... what else...? Oh! Decided to take today off from the gym. (I'll go tomorrow, instead; simply trading days off...)
Enjoy today's newsbites!
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http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/02/13/obama-vacation-west-palm-beach/
While unemployment stands at nearly eight percent, Obama is taking his second vacation of 2013.
The year is only six weeks old.
President Obama departs Friday aboard Air Force One for a Presidents’ Day Weekend excursion to West Palm Beach, Florida. Without apparent irony, Obama has decided to jet to a well-trod stomping ground of the rich just days after presenting himself to the nation in his State of the Union speech as the guardian of the middle class.
Obama presumably will head directly to some fabulous golf course, having not been able to play in recent weeks because of the cold weather in Washington.
While Obama may pay some hotel and other miscellaneous costs related to his vacation travel, taxpayers are on the hook for much of the expense, shelling out for the president’s travel aboard Air Force One, a cargo plane that carries supplies, and the cost of the president’s substantial staff and security retinue.
* AMERICA WANTED A KING. WE HAVE ONE.
Obama initially traveled to Hawaii in late December. He returned after a several days to work on a fiscal cliff deal, and then went back for several more days in early January after signing a bill. So this will also be the third time in less than two months that taxpayers have footed the bill for a round-trip Obama vacation.
(*SMIRK*)
* EVEN AS I SMIRK, I KNOW THE JOKE'S ON ME...
(*SIGH*)
It’s not clear if Michelle is going with him – the White House announcement of Obama’s plans doesn’t mention her. She usually goes skiing in the Rockies around this point in the year.
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/283049-gop-leaders-waver-on-tax-reform
Republican leaders are wavering on how aggressively to pursue an overhaul of the tax code this year, just three months after the party’s top tax writer vowed to pass legislation with or without President Obama’s cooperation.
* WHAT ELSE IS NEW...
(*SHRUG*)
* FOLKS... THERE IS NO TRUE "OPPOSITION PARTY" IN THE SENSE OF PRINCIPLED IDEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION. WHEN OBAMA WAS RE-ELECTED AND THEN BOEHNER WAS RE-ELECTED... THESE TWO EVENTS IN CONJUNCTION MARKED THE END OF "OUR" AMERICA.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/160439/2012-pakistani-disapproval-leadership-soars.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines%20-%20USA
With President Barack Obama's first term characterized by strained relations between Pakistan and the U.S., more than nine in 10 Pakistanis (92%) disapprove of U.S. leadership and 4% approve, the lowest approval rating Pakistanis have ever given.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/02/14/puzder-what-recovery/
How long can the pretense of recovery act as a substitute for real recovery?
* FOREVER, I'M GUESSING.
(*SHRUG*)
* FOLKS... I'M SERIOUS. OBAMA WON RE-ELECTION. WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU...?!?!
The pace of job creation in the U.S. over the past four years has, at the very least, tested the limits of pretense. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Satistics (BLS) reported that the economy "added" 157,000 new jobs. This is on top of upward "revisions" to November and December payroll data... Yet, the unemployment rate still ticked up slightly to 7.9%.
One of the reasons for this seeming disparity is that the BLS uses different surveys for reporting new jobs and calculating the unemployment rate.
What the BLS calls the “Establishment Survey” showed that the economy created 157,000 payroll jobs in January.
However, in calculating the unemployment rate the BLS uses the more volatile “Household Survey,” which showed that the number of unemployed actually outstripped the rise in the number of employed people.
The unemployment rate has dropped over two points from a high of 10%, reached in October 2009. But that figure is misleading because the government does not count people as unemployed if they have become so discouraged that they quit looking for a job.
Much of the drop in the official unemployment rate since its peak is due to this aspect of the reporting protocol.
In other words, the unemployment rate has declined mostly because millions of people have dropped out of the labor force.
(In fact, if no one in the United States was either working or looking for work, our government would report that the unemployment rate was zero.)
Media coverage of the January numbers was mostly upbeat; the message was that the economy is moving in the right direction. But an in-depth look at the data reveals a jobs environment that is, at best, very fragile. A closer look at the Establishment Survey, for example, shows payroll employment bottomed out in February 2010, after reaching a peak in January 2008.
During this 25-month period, the economy shed over 8.8 million jobs.
That represents an average job loss of about 349,400 jobs a month.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
From November 2008 to April 2009, the economy shed, on average, an astounding 750,500 jobs per month — over three-quarters of a million — for a total of 4.5 million lost jobs in a six-month period. Job loss peaked in March 2009, when U.S. companies slashed 830,000 jobs from payroll. Overall, from January 2008 to February 2010, the U.S. lost 6% of the payroll jobs that it had at its peak[!]
It is hard to understate the magnitude of these losses. But, it is also easy to overstate the subsequent "improvement." As of January 2013, the country is 35 months from the employment trough, but is still 3.2 million jobs short of its pre-recession high[!]
* AH... BUT IT'S NOT EVEN THAT SIMPLE! READ ON!
But in calculating how far away the U.S. is from a real jobs recovery, population growth has to be considered.
Rather than remaining stagnant, the labor-eligible population of the U.S. has continued to increase. On average, about 119,000 jobs are needed per month to keep up with population growth. Thus, of the 5.5 million jobs added since February 2010, over 75% has simply gone to absorbing population growth.
* DO... YOU... UNDERSTAND...???
Only about 1.3 million payroll jobs have gone to the large pool of unemployed. America is still in the hole the Great Recession created, and it is not even just 3.2 million jobs in the hole; it is about 7.4 million jobs in the hole.
Consider 2012, the best year so far for payroll job growth. Over the year, the economy added a little less than 2.2 million jobs. However, of those jobs, over 1.4 million simply absorbed new entrants into the labor force. Thus, it took eight months of job creation just to offset population growth. Only four months were dedicated to creating “surplus jobs” — that is, jobs above the number necessary to absorb new workers. At that rate, it would take about 10 years for the nation to close the current jobs deficit.
* DO... YOU... UNDERSTAND...???
However, the chance that the country goes a decade without another recession is slim at best.
(Consider the contraction in real GDP last quarter.)
While commentators may attempt to find the silver lining in a report that showed a decline in real GDP, the reality is that output stagnated in the fourth quarter of 2012. Whatever the media may call “good” in terms of economic data cannot avoid the reality that this is a weak and precarious recovery.
* THERE IS NO RECOVERY, FOLKS. THERE'S BEEN NO RECOVERY. THERE WILL BE NO RECOVERY. WE ARE LIVING IN "ATLAS SHRUGGED" AMERICA.
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