Romney Awakens -You Can Only Push Even A Trained Man So Far!

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I noticed Romney has finally begun saying he is proud of the fact that he is wealthy, made it in his own and would like, as president, to be able to help others improve their own lot.

I am glad he is finally acknowledging, that for the last ten years, every job he undertook he sought and took no salary. It's about time he began telling us who he is and not let others define him.

My only problem is, a successful president knows he cannot provide Americans with what they would like to have. He can, should and must set forth policies that provide opportunities for achievement, bring competent people into government to administer them but eventually it is up to free people to hoe their own row so to speak.

If America is to remain free, Americans must be free. Free to succeed. Free to fail. They must become educated, they must adhere to laws that are reasonable and not overly restrictive and debilitating of the spirit and they must be allowed to keep much of what they produce. They have a right to expect their government will be run efficiently and honestly and their elected official, at all levels of government, must be dedicated , act honorably and place their own interests last. A tall order in which we are currently failing and most particularly because of  this president and those he has brought into his administration

For the past three years I have consistently pointed out where Obama has lied, has done everything in his official power to thwart self reliance and personal responsibility and has done everything he can to bring our nation down either through his own actions and/or through proposed legislation.

This is why he does not deserve another term and why he must be run out of town. Four more years of this man, his philosophy, his concept of what America should be like and we will not recognize our once great nation.He is, whether purposefully or not, bent on bankrupting our nation because he believes in a world that is unrealistic and he seeks to achieve it through destructive methods.

His animus for America is obvious and his desire to pit American against American is equally evident.

His only desire is to be re-elected, bring about radical change, under the guise of helping the 'forgotten man,' from which we will never recover.

Obama always seeks a victim or a class of victims in order to elevate himself and his ideas. It's the ole flim flam approach. Set up a straw man and knock him down. Rather than this approach  making his case it shows the flaws in his character.

Meanwhile, it never seemed to matter until too late.  (See 1 below.)

WAKE UP AMERICA!
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A response from a dear friend and fellow memo reader regarding my own comments about the forlorn Sergeant whose 'snapping' should, in large measure, be laid at the feet of the military .There is only so much any human, trained or not, can endure and should be subjected to without adequate rest and supervision/monitoring: " ...I do agree about that Sergeant. He should not have been there for the 4th or 5th time. Love to Lynn! ......"
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A response from a friend and fellow memo reader about stealing elections: " You may recall the scandal when Kennedy (the inimitable JFK, who would be a conservative today) beat Nixon by taking Illinois. The DemocRATS went out to the cemeteries; wrote the names down of the deceased (didn’t think they were smart enough to remember them.) Unlike Al Gore in 2000, Nixon decided not to contest the election … for the “good” of the country.Didn’t turn out so well with the Great Society!"
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President control freak at it again.  (See 2  and 2a below.)
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John Mauldin and where will the jobs com from and who will have them?  (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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 1)

WHEN - he refused to disclose who donated money to his election campaign, as other candidates had done, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he received endorsements from people like Louis Farrakhan, Muramar Kaddafi and Hugo Chavez, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - it was pointed out that he was a total newcomer and had absolutely no experience at anything except community organizing, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he chose friends and acquaintances such as Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn who were revolutionary radicals, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - his voting record in the Illinois Senate and in the U.S. Senate came into question, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he refused to wear a flag lapel pin and did so only after a public outcry, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - people started treating him as a Messiah and children in schools were taught to sing his praises, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he stood with his hands over his groin area for the playing of the National Anthem and Pledge of Allegiance, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he surrounded himself in the White House with advisors who were pro-gun control, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marriage and wanting to curtail freedom of speech to silence the opposition, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he said he favors sex education in kindergarten, including homosexual indoctrination, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - his personal background was either scrubbed or hidden and nothing could be found about him, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - the place of his birth was called into question, and he refused to produce a birth certificate, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he had an association in Chicago with Tony Rezco - a man of questionable character and who is now in prison and had helped Obama to a sweet deal on the purchase of his home - people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - it became known that George Soros, a multi-billionaire Marxist, spent a ton of money to get him elected, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he started appointing White House Czars that were radicals, revolutionaries, and even avowed Marxist /Communists, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he stood before the Nation and told us that his intentions were to "fundamentally transform this Nation" into something else, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - it became known that he had trained ACORN workers in Chicago and served as an attorney for ACORN, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he appointed cabinet members and several advisors who were tax cheats and socialists, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he appointed a Science Czar, John Holdren, who believes in forced abortions, mass sterilizations and seizing babies from teen mothers, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he appointed Cass Sunstein as Regulatory Czar who believes in "Explicit Consent," harvesting human organs without family consent and allowing animals to be represented in court, while banning all hunting, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he appointed Kevin Jennings, a homosexual and organizer of a group called Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Education Network as Safe School Czar and it became known that he had a history of bad advice to teenagers, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he appointed Mark Lloyd as Diversity Czar who believes in curtailing free speech, taking from one and giving to another to spread the wealth, who supports Hugo Chavez, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - Valerie Jarrett, an avowed Socialist, was selected as Obama's Senior White House Advisor, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, said Mao Tse Tung was her favorite philosopher and the person she turned to most for inspiration, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he appointed Carol Browner, a well known socialist as Global Warming Czar working on Cap and Trade as the nation's largest tax, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he appointed Van Jones, an ex-con and avowed Communist as Green Energy Czar, who since had to resign when this was made known, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - Tom Daschle, Obama's pick for Health and Human Services Secretary could not be confirmed because he was a tax cheat, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - as President of the United States , he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia , people said it didn't matter..
WHEN - he traveled around the world criticizing America and never once talking of her greatness, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - his actions concerning the Middle East seemed to support the Palestinians over Israel , our long time ally, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he took American tax dollars to resettle thousands of Palestinians from Gaza to the United States , people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he upset the Europeans by removing plans for a missile defense system against the Russians, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he played politics in Afghanistan by not sending troops early-on when the Field Commanders said they were necessary to win, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he started spending us into a debt that was so big we could not pay it off, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he took a huge spending bill under the guise of stimulus and used it to pay off organizations, unions, and individuals that got him elected, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he took over insurance companies, car companies, banks, etc., people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he took away student loans from the banks and put it through the government, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he designed plans to take over the health care system and put it under government control, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he claimed he was a Christian during the election and tapes were later made public that showed Obama speaking to a Muslim group and 'stating' that he was raised a Muslim, was educated as a Muslim, and is still a Muslim, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he set into motion a plan to take over the control of all energy in the United States through Cap and Trade, people said it didn't matter.
WHEN - he finally completed his transformation of America , people woke up--- but it might be too late.

All of the items in the preceding paragraphs have been put into place. All can be documented very easily. Before you disavow this do an Internet search and think Solyndra, our enormous debt and dedication to defeat in Afghanistan by comitting withdrawal before victory  etc.
WHEN - November 2012 comes, it will matter who you vote for!

"When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you… you may know that your society is doomed." … Ayn Rand

Our new granddaughter, Dagny Frances Nelson, was named after the female character in Ayn Rand's " Atlas Shrugged."

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) President Obama signs Executive Order allowing for control over all US resources

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Kenneth Schortgen Jr

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On March 16th, President Obama signed a new Executive Order which expands upon a prior order issued in 1950 for Disaster Preparedness, and gives the office of the President complete control over all the resources in the United States in times of war or emergency.

The National Defense Resources Preparedness order gives the Executive Branch the power to control and allocate energy, production, transportation, food, and even water resources by decree under the auspices of national defense and national security.  The order is not limited to wartime implementation, as one of the order's functions includes the command and control of resources in peacetime determinations.

Section 101.  Purpose.  This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (the "Act").
(b)  assess on an ongoing basis the capability of the domestic industrial and technological base to satisfy requirements in peacetime and times of national emergency, specifically evaluating the availability of the most critical resource and production sources, including subcontractors and suppliers, materials, skilled labor, and professional and technical personnel; - White House

Additionally, each cabinet under the Executive Branch has been given specific powers when the order is executed, and include the absolute control over food, water, and other resource distributions.

Sec. 201.  Priorities and Allocations Authorities.  (a)  The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:
(1)  the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;
(2)  the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
(3)  the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
(4)  the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;
(5)  the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
(6)  the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.
(e)  "Food resources" means all commodities and products, (simple, mixed, or compound), or complements to such commodities or products, that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals, irrespective of other uses to which such commodities or products may be put, at all stages of processing from the raw commodity to the products thereof in vendible form for human or animal consumption.  "Food resources" also means potable water packaged in commercially marketable containers, all starches, sugars, vegetable and animal or marine fats and oils, seed, cotton, hemp, and flax fiber, but does not mean any such material after it loses its identity as an agricultural commodity or agricultural product.

Executive Orders created for national defense and national preparedness are not new in American history, but in each instance they brought about a Constitutional crisis that nearly led standing Presidents to hold dictatorial power over the citizenry.  During the Civil War, President Lincoln halted freedom of speech and freedom of the press, while at the same time revoking Habeas Corpus and the right to a fair trial under the sixth amendment.  During World War I, when Congress refused to grant Woodrow Wilson extended power over resources to help the war effort, he invoked an Executive Order which allowed him complete control over businesses, industry, transportation, food, and other economic policies.

In both cases, it was only after the death of each President that full Constitutional powers were restored to the citizens of the United States.

The economy of the United States is based on the free flow of resources, energy, and the rights of consumers to buy and sell as they see fit.  Any interference in this economic process quickly leads to shortages, rising prices, and civil unrest.  The purpose of President Obama signing this new Executive Order is yet unclear, however, it may coincide with information coming out of Israel yesterday that plans for a tactical or strategic strike on Iran are accelerating.  Oil prices in Europe rose over $3 a barrel for Brent crude after the Israeli actions, and US oil prices rose $2 for WTI.

The Obama administration appears to be preparing for a long drawn out war in the Middle East, or at the very least, an expected crisis that will require the need to override Constitutional authority and claim dominion over all resources in the United States under the guise of national defense.  With the rise in Disaster Preparedness growing for both individuals and states leading up to yesterday's Executive Order, the mood of the nation points strongly towards some event or disaster that will require massive preparations on a national as well as local scale.

Barack Obama



2a) Executive-order panic: Martial law in U.S.?

White House quietly releases document that creates widespread worry

The White House’s late-week release of an executive order has sent the online community into an uproar, worried that President Obama had secretly provided himself means to institute martial law in America.
In the common practice of dumping government documents on a Friday afternoon, just as the news cycle is wrapping up for the week – a move critics say allows the administration to avoid widespread coverage of embarrassing actions – the White House released an executive order on “National Defense 

Filled with language about “government-owned equipment” and a “defense executive reserve,” among other vague statements, rumors began to spread that the executive order expanded the president’s power to do everything from seizing whole industries to drafting private armies.

A Canada Free Press article titled “Obama Executive Order: Peacetime Martial Law!” spread concerns of gasoline ration cards; while an Examiner article declared the order would “nationalize everything” and “allow for a civilian draft.” Facebook, email and Twitter were suddenly abuzz, and even the extremely popular Drudge Report posted a link to the White House release under the title “Martial Law? Obama Issues Executive Order.”

But are the cries of martial law and expanding executive power justified?
No, says William A. Jacobson, associate clinical professor at Cornell Law School.

“If someone wants to make the argument that this is an expansion of presidential powers, then do so based on actual language,” warns Jacobson. “There is enough that Obama actually does wrong without creating claims which do not hold up to scrutiny.”


 As it turns out, Obama’s executive order is nearly identical to EO 12919, issued by President Clinton on June 7, 1994, which itself was an amendment to EO 10789, issued in 1958 by President Eisenhower, and which in fact, was later amended by EO 13286, issued in 2003 by George W. Bush.
Obama’s executive order specifically assigns “executive departments and agencies responsible for plans and programs related to national defense” to do five things:

• “identify” requirements for emergencies;
• “assess” the capability of the country’s industrial and technological base;
• “be prepared” to ensure the availability of critical resources in time of national threat;
• “improve the efficiency” of the industrial base to support national defense;
• “foster cooperation” between commercial and defense sectors.

Later provisions in the order establish the protocol for government agencies to purchase equipment needed in times of national emergency and even make loans to ensure the availability of that equipment.

Despite the vague nature of the functions, none mention anything about martial law or seizing private property. The five functions are also identical to those identified in Clinton’s EO 12919.
So why did Obama issue the order at all?

A side-by-side analysis of Obama’s order compared to Clinton’s, conducted by Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com, reveals Obama’s order is essentially just an update to reflect changes in government agency structure.

“If one takes a look at EO 12919, the big change is in the cabinet itself,” Morrissey writes. “In 1994, we didn’t have a Department of Homeland Security, for instance, and some of these functions would naturally fall to DHS. In EO 12919, the FEMA director had those responsibilities, and the biggest change between the two is the removal of several references to FEMA (10 in all). Otherwise, there aren’t a lot of changes between the two EOs, which looks mainly like boilerplate.

“I’m not ruling out the possibility that this is more than it seems,” adds Jacobson, “but unless and until someone [demonstrates any expansion of powers in the order], I’ll consider this to be routine.”
“The timing of this release might have looked a little strange,” Morrissey concludes, “but this is really nothing to worry about at all.”
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3) "Humans used to desire love, money, food, shelter, safety, peace and freedom more than anything else. The last 30 years have changed us. Now people want to have a good job. This changes everything for world leaders. Everything they do – from waging war to building societies – will need to be in the context of the need for a good job."

- From The Coming Jobs War, by Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup

Each month investors and politicians in countries all over the world obsess over the release of the monthly employment numbers. Even though these numbers are likely to be revised significantly from the original release, the markets can't help responding to the variations from the expected number. Why the focus on numbers that are likely to be proven wrong in the coming years? Because the single most important factor in the direction of an economy is employment. Consumer spending, personal income, tax revenue, corporate profits, and a host of other variables all swing on rising and falling employment.

This week we begin a series of letters on employment. I have been researching the topic more than usual for the book I am writing with Bill Dunkelberg (the Chief Economist of the National Federation of Independent Businesses) on the entire employment issue. We will look at why employment is so critical. How are jobs created and what policies can be adopted to help foster more jobs? Should the US try and keep jobs that are going overseas, or develop whole new industries? Who exactly is the competition globally for jobs?

We will find that billions of jobs will disappear in the coming decades and even more will be created. There are today some 1.2 billion good jobs, but 1.8 billion people want them. Over the next 30 years the world economy will double and then almost double again. Where will the new jobs be and who will get them? What should you and you children be doing today to be sure that you have jobs in the future?

In order to try to answer these questions, we will start with a general view of the employment situation in the US. What has it looked like in the past and where is it going? Today, we will look at the direction of employment in the US and then focus on both what employment is likely to be in the next few years as well as the dynamics of the labor market. There is a lot to cover. (This letter might print a little longer, as there will be lots of charts.)

Getting Back to Full Employment

The headline unemployment rate is 8.3%, down from 10% only a couple years ago. But ten years ago it was less than half that, and at the beginning of the last decade it was less than 4%. 60 years ago it was less than 3%! Employment is a very volatile number, and as we have seen, it can rise substantially before and during a recession. The first graph we will look at is the unemployment rate, from the FRED database created by the St. Louis Federal Reserve.


Notice how much unemployment fell after the recession that followed World War II, during the '60s, and then in the Reagan and Clinton years. What kept it from rising in the last decade less than after almost any previous recession, and what caused it to rise more following the recent recession than in any since WWII? We'll look at that later, but for now let's just get the lay of the land.

The last few months have seen good overall employment growth. January was revised up by 61,000 to 284,000 jobs created and February was 227,000. If we could keep that up it would mean 3 million new jobs this year. How likely is that to happen? Let's look back over the last 20 years for evidence. The next table is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) web site, a treasure trove of employment data. Then I will sum up the monthly numbers for you in the next table.
[Hundreds of thousands of jobs]



Notice that about half of the time in the 1990s we saw growth in the neighborhood of 3 million annual jobs. We only went above 2 million in three years this last decade, and the rise over 2 million in those years was entirely due to construction jobs, which have since plummeted by 25%. Does anyone expect construction to supply such growth in the next few years?

Then look at employment growth month by month and notice that putting together a long string of 250,000 new jobs a month has not been easy in the last 13 years. You can get 3-4 months with solid job growth … which is then followed by a falloff in job growth. For instance, in 2010 the entire year's growth of 1 million jobs came in just three months. And last year two months (February and March) saw almost 500,000 jobs and half the year's growth.

The 1990s were the years of growth in all sorts of technology areas, and a resulting strong economy.
How long will it take us to get back to 4% unemployment? First, let's look at how many jobs we have lost.


We lost 10 million jobs peak to trough in the last recession. We are still down 7 million jobs from the high-water mark. But it is actually worse than that, because we need 125,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. That is 1.5 million jobs a year. IF we grew at 3 million jobs a year, it would still take over 4 years (until some time in 2016) to get back to the level of unemployment (4.5%) that we saw in 2007.

It will be even tougher in coming years, as we are watching government jobs fall steadily by around 15,000 each month, rather than adding 10,000 or so each month. Government jobs are down around 500,000 over the last three years. That is a big swing.

Who's Participating in Employment?

The articipation rate is the number of people who either have a job or are looking for one, as a percentage of the total population. Students and retirees, for example, are not considered as participating in the labor force. Nor are people on disability payments who are not looking for a job. Some 25% of the people who lost jobs since 2008 have applied for and received government disability checks. As an aside, we normally think of disability as something physical (back pain, etc.), but since 2008 43% of those getting approved for disability cited psychological reasons like stress. A rising percentage of them are white-collar workers. This is now costing us over $200 billion a year, which is almost 10% of total federal revenues. (I get it that individual people get very small checks, but there are now 10 million people on disability. And less than 1% a year either give up or lose their disability payments.)


The last month saw an increase in the civilian labor force (the people who are counted as either employed or looking for a job) by 476,000, which is a healthy rise. Most saw it as a positive sign that people had better expectations of finding a job and were therefore looking. And that is a good part of the reason. But remember that you have to have been looking for a job within the last four weeks to be counted as unemployed. We are now seeing an increasing number of people coming to the end of their employment benefits, which were extended to 99 weeks. There were over 100,000 more people who were no longer getting benefits in just one week in February. There is clear research and evidence that losing your benefits can be a real motivator to start looking for a job!

And that is one of the reasons (as I have written for years) that bringing the unemployment rate down is harder than merely adding jobs. Those who are not considered to be in the labor force will either be motivated to look for a job because of improved conditions or be forced to look for a job because their benefits run out. Either way, the participation rate rises, which means you need at least as many new jobs as new people entering the labor force, just to keep the unemployment level even.

I point out the mountain we face in getting back to a reasonable unemployment level, not to be negative but to highlight the importance of job creation. The engine of job growth in the US is small business and new business. If we want to see rising employment, we need to be figuring out how to create more entrepreneurs. Roadblocks need to be removed. The amount of paperwork (and the cost!) required to hire just one new employee can be daunting for a small business. All those reports don't just magically fill themselves out. It takes time and money away from core business efforts to prepare them.

There are areas where new jobs will be created. The US has the opportunity to become energy self-sufficient by the end of the decade. That effort can create hundreds of thousands of direct jobs, with hundreds of thousands more created to service the people who are doing them. And those are jobs that pay well. We will explore various new industries that can supply jobs in the US (and in other countries as well).

4 Million New Jobs a Month!

Now let's turn to something that I find encouraging. If I told you that there were 4 million new jobs created in January, most readers would want to know what I was drinking. But that is the reality we find in another report by the BLS, called the JOLTS report or Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. It comes out each month and reports on just what it says.

In January there were actually 4.1 million new hires in the US, according to the JOLTS report. Of course there were also 3.9 million "separations." Separations can be voluntary (called quits), as in a person leaving a job to either go to or look for another job. Or they can be involuntary, as in layoffs and discharges. The quits rate can serve as a measure of workers' willingness or ability to change jobs. It will surprise no one that quits are down by 1/3 in the last few years as fewer people quit without a job in hand. But layoffs are also down by a third from 2009, which is a clear sign of improvement in the job market.

And that brings us to the job openings. The good news is that job openings are up 50% from the bottom in 2009, but still off by 1 million jobs from 2007. The bad news is there is still only about 1 job for over 3 people who are looking.

What that says is that the labor market in the US is still very dynamic and fluid, even with the high unemployment level. When 3% of the labor force changes jobs in any one month, that means there are companies hiring somewhere. And while 3% may sound high, the rate has been over 4% in the last ten years. And when 1.5% of the labor force voluntarily quits, that means they are either retiring or expect to find a new job.

The BLS has an item in its monthly labor report (the establishment survey) called the birth-death ratio. This is basically a number they use to estimate the number of net new businesses created each month. In times of rising employment, the survey of businesses misses new businesses (as a new business is obviously not on the call list). In some years, especially after a recession finishes, those new businesses can account for a large part of net new job creation.

But if we go back to the unemployment rate (the first chart in this letter), you have to ask yourself, why are we not creating new jobs like we did in the past? Why has job growth been sluggish for over a decade, especially if you take out the construction jobs in the middle of the last decade? Doing so makes job growth last decade look particularly bad in comparison with other recoveries in the previous 20 years (before 2000).
I
n coming letters we will look at what I think might be some of the reasons. But for now we will close with a quote from Jim Clifton, who I quoted at the beginning on the importance of creating jobs. Clifton and the Gallup organization have been surveying people about their jobs for decades, and Jim has been consulting on employment for at least that long. I find his book, The Coming Jobs War, to be very readable (and provocative) and to offer a lot of good ideas. I recommend it.

Where Will the Jobs Come From?

I came across this quote from an interview Jim did with Forbes, when he was asked the question, "What obstacles do leaders have when trying to create more jobs?"

"There are no real obstacles. Just wrong thinking, bad assumptions. When you build strategies and policies on wrong assumptions, the more you execute, the worse you make everything, which is what we are doing now. There are three wrong assumptions that cause all the current job creation attempts to not work.

1. "Innovation is not scarce. Entrepreneurship is scarce. We are spending billions and wasting years of conversations on innovation and it isn't paying off. Great business people are more valuable and rarer than great ideas.

2. "America has about six million active businesses. Ninety-nine percent of them are small businesses. An incalculably huge mistake leaders are making now is spending time, money, strategies, and especially policies for those who need 'help' getting a job. A useful way to look at any citizen is this, 'Can she herself create jobs or does she need a job created for her?' We are spending all our time on the cart and doing little or nothing on the horse. We have our assumptions and futurism that backward. 'The horse (small and medium business) stopped, so we fix the cart (jobs).' If we change all our strategies and policies to favor the job creators (small and medium businesses) the horse and cart will get moving again. We have our compassion right, but the logic is staggeringly stupid.

3. "It is wrong thinking to imagine that Washington has solutions. Job creation is a city problem. There is great variation in job creation by city in the United States. San Francisco and the greater Valley keep pumping away while Detroit isn't. Austin's cart works while Albany's doesn't. Cities need to look inwardly and say, 'What can I do to create great economic energy, to bring new customers for all existing companies and start-ups?'"

We will follow up on those thoughts in coming weeks.

John Mauldin
John@FrontlineThoughts.com
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