It does not always have to be about politics.
The first three photos are of Estelle Victoria (Stella) our son's new daughter and the last is of Dagny Frances, our daughter's daughter.
As you will learn below, they are unemployed or is it out of work?
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A discussion of unemployment and those out of work, (See 1 and 1a below.)
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If you have a different view of Obama and his relationship with Israel you had better not try and express them. See: "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j6tgSGTaQA&feature=g-upl
An accomplished president? You decide? (See 4 below.)
Then a little parody. (See 4a below.)
---
Obama compares Romney and Bain to a vampire.
If Obama is as intelligent as his lap dogs in the press and media say he is, then his persistent acts of stupidity and dumb policies suggest his intent is purposeful. (See 5 and 5a below.)
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As I expected. (See 6 below.)
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Who is Mitt?
The biggest problem for all candidates can be allowing handlers to muddy the water, preventing the candidates to allow voters to see who they are, warts and all, and letting voters decide based on realism and not facade. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Subject: Unemployed and Out of Work (CLASSIC)..........PRICELESS!!!!!!!!!142....WHO'S ON FIRST WITH NUMBERS Too:
COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America. ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible Times. It's 9%.
COSTELLO: That many people are out of work? ABBOTT: No,that's 16%.
COSTELLO: You just said 9%. ABBOTT: 9% Unemployed.
COSTELLO: Right 9% out of work. ABBOTT: No, that's 16%.
COSTELLO: Okay, so it's 16% unemployed. ABBOTT: No, that's 9%...
COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 9% or 16%? ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.
COSTELLO: IF you are out of work you are unemployed. ABBOTT: No, you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!! ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.
COSTELLO: What point? ABBOTT: Someone who doesn't look for work, can't be counted with those
who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.
COSTELLO: To whom? ABBOTT: The unemployed.
COSTELLO: But they are ALL out of work. ABBOTT: No,the unemployed are actively looking for work. Those who are out of work stopped looking. They gave up. And, if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.
COSTELLO: So if you're off the unemployment rolls, that would count as less unemployment? ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!
COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don't look for work? ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That's how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don't want to read about 16% unemployment do ya?
COSTELLO: That would be frightening. ABBOTT: Absolutely.
COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means they're two ways to bring down the unemployment number? ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.
COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job? ABBOTT: Correct.
COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job? ABBOTT: Bingo.
COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work. ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like an economist.
COSTELLO: I don't even know what the hell I just said!
And now you know why Obama's unemployment figures are improving!
1a)
The Lost 5 Million
By Jeffrey Folks
Five million Americans have been thrown under the bus. They are walking around dazed, outcast, and defeated. Worst of all, they are not even counted in official tallies of the unemployed. They are those whom the Obama administration simply wishes to ignore: working-age adults who have dropped out of the labor market completely. They are those for whom the economic recovery underway should have created jobs but has not.
Despite Obama's latest assertion of having created 4 million jobs in the last 26 months, the reality is that in the past two years, 5.4 million workers have left the job market entirely. These are the 5.4 million whom academics like to call "discouraged workers," and as far as the administration and its media cheerleaders are concerned, they do not exist.
The fact is that these millions of Americans are not so much discouraged as they are hopeless. They are working-age adults who, in a normal economic recovery, would have found jobs in an expanding economy. But this recovery -- one can hardly call it that -- is not at all normal. The U.S. economy has expanded on average at something like 2% since Obama took office, and now, with the latest GDP growth figures for the first quarter of 2012 revised downward to 1.8%, the economy seems to be slipping back toward stagnation, if not recession.
During a normal period of recovery, the economy grows at a rate of more than 4%. This was the case during the Reagan recovery of the 1980s, the Clinton recovery of the 1990s (with a major assist on spending restraint from Newt Gingrich), and the Bush recovery of the mid-2000s. But ever since Obama took office, the economy has suffered. Under constant attack by a hostile administration, businesses have decided not to expand, or they have moved or expanded their operations overseas. The result is that 4.7 million fewer jobs have been created in the past three and a half years than would otherwise have been the case -- almost enough to provide a job for every one of those who have dropped out of the labor market.
Those 5.4 million include older workers who have lost their jobs and decided to apply for disability benefits or exhaust their 401(k) savings while waiting to file for Social Security at age 62. Many of those who retire early are now consigned to live out their lives in poverty. For this cohort, early retirement means that they will not enjoy the golden years they had planned, and many will outlive their savings entirely. And for this, they have President Obama to blame.
Not all of the lost 5.4 million are older workers, however. A large number are young men and women in their teens and twenties who have never worked at full-time jobs. They are, in many cases, well-educated young people who have completed college degrees but who are unable to find suitable employment in this stagnant economy. In fact, 40% of young adults aged 24 to 35 (4.6 million of them) are living with their parents, according to the 2010 census. In large numbers, those who have found employment are working at low-paying jobs in the "hospitality" sector, as the Labor Department calls it. This has been the fastest-growing sector of the economy in recent months, and it includes food service. Since February 2010, 576,000 jobs have been added in restaurants and bars alone.
The educated young people who fill these jobs -- and those who have no jobs at all -- are falling permanently behind in their careers. Over the course of their lives, they will achieve less, earn lower salaries, and accumulate less in retirement savings. Compounded over the course of a 40-year career, the effects of this slow start are significant. For this less-than-rosy future, the young have the president to blame.
It is not as if Obama lacked the means to create more jobs. Simply by lowering taxes and reducing regulations, President Reagan created the greatest economic boom in modern American history. At this point during the Reagan recovery (the first quarter of the fourth year in office), the economy expanded by 7.4%. Now, at exactly the same point in the Obama presidency, it is growing at 1.8%. That slow growth is the reason for the lack of jobs and for the tragic loss of hope for so many Americans.
Obama had every opportunity to create jobs. His ban on mountaintop mining in the Appalachians, a region of perennial high unemployment, has cost many thousands of good jobs. The Environmental Protection Agency's veto of Arch Coal's Spruce Mine permit, which the American Coal Council calls "drastic and unprecedented," is just one in a series of job-killing actions taken by the Obama EPA. Obama's closure of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling and continued slow permitting has cost "tens of thousands of jobs," according to one informed source. His refusal to approve the Keystone XL pipeline project is costing an estimated 149,000 jobs, according to TransCanada.
Furthermore, the uncertainties caused by provisions in ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank have discouraged investment, particularly among small businesses that create the lion's share of new jobs in America. Obama's refusal to allow untaxed repatriation of overseas earnings by American corporations has blocked investment of $1 trillionin the U.S. economy. A tax holiday for overseas earnings could add 2.9 million jobs, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, yet Obama has ruled out repatriation on ideological grounds. It is, after all, a business-friendly measure.
Obama's threats to raise taxes on the rich have also cut jobs by precipitating capital flight on an unprecedented scale. Affluent Americans are renouncing their citizenship and fleeing in record numbers to Singapore, the Bahamas, and other tax-friendly locales. Each one of those wealthy citizens has taken thousands of jobs with him, and for this the president is to blame.
If the president had "focused like a laser beam" on job creation, as he promised to do in 2009, he would not have found it that difficult to create jobs. But instead of following up on his promise, Obama treated job-creation as a mere photo op. Having promised to focus on job-creation, he promptly forgot about it and flew off on vacation.
Had the president remained on vacation, things might have gone well. Instead, he chose to squander nearly a trillion dollars in his 2009 stimulus bill, a fraudulent measure that has stimulated nothing except debt levels. He then followed up with a proposal for another $447 billion giveaway, which Congress had the good sense to defeat.
Obama also had the opportunity to lower corporate taxes across the board, a measure that would have spurred job-creation, but taxes for American corporations remain the highest of any major developed economy. Meanwhile, he has blown $100 billion in an attempt to prop up green energy companies that were supposed to create 5 million jobs. In one case after another, however, those green companies have gone bust, and those 5 million jobs have not been created. Instead, 5.4 million have been lost.
There can be no doubt as to who is responsible for those lost jobs, and for the lost dreams of each of those 5.4 million Americans. For the suffering of those who have dropped out of the labor market entirely, as well as for the 21 million (14% of the labor force) who are officially counted as unemployed or underemployed, there is only one person to blame. Come November, those 26.2 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, or no longer looking for work need to remember who was in charge the last four years and vote accordingly. These people should have plenty of time to get to the polls and vote. After all, they're not doing much of anything else.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
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2)-
Targeting John Roberts
The left tries to intimidate the High Court on ObamaCare.
You can tell the Supreme Court is getting closer to its historic ObamaCare ruling because the left is making one last attempt to intimidate the Justices. The latest effort includes taunting Chief Justice John Roberts that if the Court overturns any of the law, he'll forever be defined as a partisan "activist."
Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy recently took the extraordinary step of publicly lobbying the Chief Justice after oral argument but before its ruling. "I trust that he will be a Chief Justice for all of us and that he has a strong institutional sense of the proper role of the judicial branch," the Democrat declared on the Senate floor. "The conservative activism of recent years has not been good for the Court."
Related Video
Editorial page editor Paul Gigot on why the left is trying to intimidate the Supreme Court on ObamaCare. Photo: Associated Press
He added that, "Given the ideological challenge to the Affordable Care Act and the extensive, supportive precedent, it would be extraordinary for the Supreme Court not to defer to Congress in this matter that so clearly affects interstate commerce."
The elite liberal press has followed with pointed warnings that Mr. Roberts has a choice—either uphold ObamaCare, or be portrayed a radical who wants to repeal the New Deal and a century of precedent. This attack is itself clearly partisan, but it's worth rehearsing the arguments to show how truly flawed they are.
The first fallacy is defining judicial activism as overturning a Congressional law. SinceMarbury v. Madison established judicial review in 1803, the High Court has overturned hundreds of laws in part or whole. The real measure of activism is whether the Court's reasoning is rooted in Constitutional principle. If it is, the Court is not activist but is adhering to the highest legal principles.
Regarding the Affordable Care Act, we'd argue that upholding the individual mandate to buy health insurance requires far more judicial activism. That's because if the Court finds this federal mandate to be Constitutional, it will have no principle on which to limit future purchase mandates.
Once health insurance can be mandated, Congress will inevitably find that other products or services are equally essential to national well-being. Future Courts will either have to find all such purchase mandates to be legal, in which case there is no limiting principle, or they will have to pick and choose, which means an endless exercise in policy-making.
AFP/Getty Images
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
Far better for judicial modesty—and the reputation of the Court—to draw the line that the Commerce Clause forbids Congress from mandating that individuals engage in commerce because such police powers are reserved for the states. This is the truly restrained judicial position.
The most dishonest argument is the liberal media chant that overturning the law means overturning the New Deal era's Commerce Clause precedents. This is propaganda. None of the plaintiffs advocated that any precedents be overturned, even though in our view some of those cases deserve to be overturned. Paul Clement and Michael Carvin, who argued for the plaintiffs before the Court, explicitly denied any such desire.
The left is playing up the libertarian legal views of academic Randy Barnett in particular, to suggest that he's a pied piper for the conservative Justices. We often agree with Mr. Barnett, who has written for these pages, but on ObamaCare his influence has been overstated. Lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey were far more consequential in developing the legal and Constitutional case.
As recently as the gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago in 2010, a conservative majority ignored Mr. Barnett's pleas to revive the long-dormant Privileges and Immunities Clause. Justice Antonin Scalia quipped during oral argument that this view was "the darling of the professoriate," and libertarian legal activists denounced him for it. But in the Court's 5-4 ruling, Justice Samuel Alito employed the conventional legal analysis known as substantive due process. So much for the primrose path to the 19th century.
The truth is that shouts of a "radical" Court are heard every time the Justices break with liberal orthodoxy, however modestly. The same journalists now warning about a radical states-rights agenda rang the same alarms in 1995 after the Rehnquist Court said Congress couldn't use the Commerce Clause to regulate guns near schools in Lopez.
Far from beginning a radical march to the right, a 6-3 majority of the Court subsequently said Congress can regulate the growth of marijuana for personal use in Gonzales v. Raichin 2005. We disagreed with that ruling, but liberals ignore it because it doesn't fit their current political narrative that Chief Justice Roberts is Roger Taney with a better haircut.
We doubt the High Court will be intimidated by any of this, and the truth is that no Justice would be worthy to sit on the Court if he is. As Chief Justice Roberts said at his confirmation hearing, a judge should be a neutral umpire who calls legal balls and strikes fairly as he sees them. The Court's reputation will be tarnished if it bows to the political distemper of the moment, not if it follows the Constitution.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3) CBO: Ending Bush Tax Cuts Will Send US Off 'Fiscal Cliff'
A new government study says that allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire and a scheduled round of automatic spending cuts to take effect would probably throw the economy into a recession.
The Congressional Budget Office report says that the economy would shrink by 1.3 percent in the first half of next year if the government is allowed to fall off this so-called "fiscal cliff" on Jan. 1. The cliff is what experts call the combination of higher tax rates and more than $100 billion in automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies.
It's a point that Republican leaders have hammered at again and again in an effort to move President Obama into responsible negotiations over keeping the Bush tax cuts.
“It looks like there will not be a vote until after the election, but I can’t say that for certain — but it certainly looks like that,” predicted Sessions. “That’s not healthy because we need certainty in our tax rate. There’s far too much uncertainty in our financial condition in America today.”
Last week, House Speaker John Boehner called on Congress and the White House to work out a long-term deficit deal and threatened not to raise the nation’s debt ceiling next year unless a greater amount of spending cuts is enacted.
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that Obama is not behaving like an "adult" on negotiations to stave off the fiscal disaster.
McConnell said that without Mr. Obama taking action, nothing can be done regarding debt. "Look, without presidential leadership, nothing is, can be accomplished," he said. "We didn't have presidential leadership last year. It's pretty clear the president's not going to lead on this any time soon.
"We don't control the entire government," McConnell added. "We control the House of Representatives only. We'd like to do something about the nation's biggest problem — spending and debt, which is, of course, the reason for this economic melees and this high unemployment — and whenever the president is willing to engage, we're ready to go."
CBO's report says immediate tax increases and spending cuts would "represent an additional drag on the weak economic expansion."
CBO is the respected nonpartisan agency of Congress that produces economic analysis and estimates of the cost of legislation.
“Given the pattern of past recessions as identified by the National Bureau of Economic Research, such a contraction in output in the first half of 2013 would probably be judged to be a recession,” the report states. A recession is technically defined as two economic quarters of negative economic growth.
If Congress and the White House turn off all the automatic cuts and tax increase, growth would rise to 4.4 percent, CBO predicted.
The CBO projections appear to go farther in stating the economic risks of lawmakers failing to act than other policymakers have gone.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned of the risk to the economic recovery, the Hill pointed out.
"It's very important to say that, if no action were to be taken by the fiscal authorities, the size of the fiscal cliff is such that I think there's absolutely no chance that the Fed could or would have any ability to offset, whatsoever, that effect on the economy," Bernanke told reporters in April. "I am concerned that if all the tax increases and spending cuts that are associated with current law would take place, absent congressional actions . . . that'd be a significant risk to the recovery.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Obama’s Rather Impressive List Of “Accomplishments”
Whoever said that Obama hasn’t acomplished anything in his first term?
WHAT AN IMPRESSIVE LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS!…
First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.
First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
First President to defy a Federal Judge’s court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party, a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.
First President to recommend changing our National Anthem as it portrays and promotes violence and is warlike in its theme.
First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer Breakfast and activities.
First President to initiate a Cash for Clunkers Program to clean up exhaust that adds to global warming, then extended it because it was so popular — wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
First President to bypass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company which state they are allowed to locate a factory in.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
First President to fire an inspector general of Americorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.
First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 90 to date.
First President to pledge complete transparency while campaigning, then hide his medical, educational,and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to go on multiple global ‘apology tours’.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends; paid for by the taxpayer.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
First President to repeat the Holy Qur’an and tells us that the early morning Islamic call to worship is the most beautiful sound on earth.
Now it is up to us Freedom-loving Americans to see to it that he is voted out after his FIRST term.
4a)NEWS ANCHOR: "Mr. Obama, we want to talk about jobs and the economy. What are you doing to fix these problems?"
BARRACK O: "I just found out that Mitt Romney put his dog in a cage about 30 years ago. Isn't that just awful?
NEWS ANCHOR: "Mr. Obama, that information isn't important, we've heard that you eat dogs, What are you doing to fix the economy?"
BARRACK O: "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon"
NEWS ANCHOR: "We are all stunned by that tragedy, Mr. Obama but what are you doing to fix the economy?"
BARRACK O: "I support gay marriage"
NEWS ANCHOR: "Mr. Obama, that doesn't answer the question. What are you doing to fix the economy?"
BARRACK O: "Isn't it terrible? Mitt Romney's wife isn't a carreer woman, she just stayed at home and raised her kids."
NEWS ANCHOR: "Mr. Obama, that information doesn't matter,either. What are you doing to fix the economy?"
BARRACK O: "Oooohhhhhhhh nooooooooo, somebody said that Mitt Romney picked on a gay boy when he was in high school"
NEWS ANCHOR: "Mr. Obama, that story has been proven to be false, based on statements from the "victims" family, What are you doing to fix the economy?"
BARRACK O: "This is awful, this is terrible!! I heard Mitt Romney was a Morman, He doesn't go to the same church as me"
NEWS ANCHOR: "Mr. Obama, we've heard that your church allows no one who isn't black. That really doesn't matter. What are you doing to fix the economy?"
BARRACK O: "Isn't it just terrible, the republicans are waging war on women!! Rush Limbaugh said something mean to a woman!!"
NEWS ANCHOR: "We don't listen to Limbaugh and he's not involved in this election, anyway. What are you doing to fix the economy?"
BARRACK O: "Alert, alert, alert. We found out that Mitt Romney yelled at a cop once, mmmmmmmm. 'bout 30 years ago!
NEWS ANCHOR:: "We'll check into that a little later, Mr. Obama. That sounds serious. But, What are you doing to fix the economy?"
BARRACK O: "Did you people hear about Mitt Romney having two cadillacs? Isn't it terrible that he isn't on my food stamp program?"
NEWS ANCHOR: We know that's disgusting, Mr. President, but are you doing anything to fix the economy?"
NEWS ANCHOR: "Mr. Obama?.............."
NEWS ANCHOR: "Mr. President?.............."
NEWS ANCHOR: Anybody seen Mr. Obama?
WHITE HOUSE MAID: He left for another vacation, he'll be back in two weeks. Can I help you?
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5)How Change Happens
By DAVID BROOKS
Forty years ago, corporate America was bloated, sluggish and losing ground
to competitors in Japan and beyond. But then something astonishing happened.
Financiers,
private equity firms and bare-knuckled corporate executives
initiated a series of reforms and transformations.
Josh Haner/The New York Times
David Brooks
The process was brutal and involved streamlining and layoffs. But, at the
end of it, American businesses emerged leaner, quicker and more efficient.
Now we are apparently going to have a presidential election about whether
this reform movement was a good thing. Last week, the Obama administration
unveiled an attack ad against Mitt Romney's old
private equity firm,
Bain
Capital, portraying it as a vampire that sucks the blood from American
companies. Then Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. gave one of those
cable-TV-type speeches, lambasting Wall Street and saying we had to be a
country that makes things again.
The Obama attack ad
<
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMndjLIQUFw&feature=relmfu> accused Bain
Capital of looting a steel company called GST in the 1990s and then throwing
its workers out on the street. The ad itself barely survived a minute of
scrutiny. As Kimberly Strassel noted
<
http://online.wsj.com/article/potomac_watch.html> in The Wall Street
Journal, the depiction is wildly misleading.
The company was in terminal decline before Bain entered the picture, seeing
its work force fall from 4,500 to less than 1,000. It faced closure when
Romney and Bain, for some reason, saw hope for it in 1993. Bain acquired it,
induced banks to loan it money and poured $100 million into modernization,
according to Strassel. Bain held onto the company for eight years, hardly
the pattern of a looter. Finally, after all the effort, the company, like
many other old-line steel companies, filed for bankruptcy protection in
2001, two years after Romney had left Bain.
This is the story of a failed rescue, not vampire capitalism.
But the larger argument is about private equity itself, and about the
changes private equity firms and other financiers have instigated across
society. Over the past several decades, these firms have scoured America
looking for underperforming companies. Then they acquire them and try to
force them to get better.
As Reihan Salam noted
<
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289352/let-us-now-praise-private-equ
ity-reihan-salam> in a fair-minded review of the literature in National
Review, in any industry there is an astonishing difference in the
productivity levels of leading companies and the lagging companies. Private
equity firms like Bain acquire bad companies and often replace management,
compel executives to own more stock in their own company and reform company
operations.
Most of the time they succeed. Research from around the world clearly
confirms that companies that have been acquired by private equity firms are
more productive than comparable firms.
This process involves a great deal of churn and creative destruction. It
does not, on net, lead to fewer jobs. A giant study
<
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6847.html> by economists from the University of
Chicago, Harvard, the University of Maryland and the Census Bureau found
that when private equity firms acquire a company, jobs are lost in old
operations. Jobs are created in new, promising operations. The overall
effect on employment is modest.
Nor is it true that private equity firms generally pile up companies with
debt, loot them and then send them to the graveyard. This does happen
occasionally (the tax code encourages debt), but banks would not be lending
money to private equity-owned companies, decade after decade, if those
companies weren't generally prosperous and creditworthy.
Private equity firms are not lovable, but they forced a renaissance that
revived American capitalism. The large questions today are: Will the U.S.
continue this process of rigorous creative destruction? More immediately,
will the nation take the transformation of the private sector and extend it
to the public sector?
While American companies operate in radically different ways than they did
40 years ago, the sheltered, government-dominated sectors of the economy -
especially education, health care and the welfare state - operate in
astonishingly similar ways.
The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the
experience to extend this transformation into government.
The Obama campaign seems to be drifting willy-nilly into the opposite camp,
arguing that the pressures brought to bear by the capital markets over the
past few decades were not a good thing, offering no comparably sized agenda
to reform the public sector.
In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would
not compete to be the party of change and transformation. For a candidate
like Obama, who successfully ran an unconventional campaign that embodied
and promised change, I have no idea why he would want to run a campaign this
time that regurgitates the exact same ads and repeats the exact same
arguments as so many Democratic campaigns from the ancient past.
5a)How the Recovery Went Wrong
Of the 11 recoveries in the last 60 years, this one is at or near the bottom in job growth and every other economic indicator.
President Obama, in speech after speech, proudly makes the following point: Although we inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression, we have generated net new jobs every month, and while we need to do more, we are going in the right direction.
Of course, recoveries always go in the right direction—that is, things get better over time. But merely going in the right direction is an incredibly low performance standard. Moreover, since deep recessions are generally followed by more robust recoveries, this should have been one of the strongest recoveries ever.
So what went wrong? All the available Keynesian levers for achieving economic growth have been pulled, yet the recovery is one of the weakest since World War II. The problem lies with the way the "stimulus" was carried out, the uncertainty of looming higher taxes, and the antibusiness rhetoric and regulatory strong-arming of this administration.
First, exactly how weak has this recovery been? The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis tracks economic performance for each recovery and compares gross-domestic-product growth and job growth, the two most important indicators of economic performance. Over the past 60 years, there have been 11 recessions and 11 recoveries.
Sadly, this recovery is near the bottom of all 11. Cumulative nonfarm job growth is just 1.9% 34 months into recovery, the ninth-worst performance and well below the average job growth of 6.5%. Cumulative GDP growth is just 6.8% 11 quarters into this recovery, less than half the average (15.2%) and the worst of all 11.
But wouldn't things be even worse without massive fiscal and monetary stimulus? It's true that monetary policy by the Federal Reserve has resulted in extraordinarily low interest rates, almost zero for the past three years. Normally, low interest rates would result in increased borrowing by individuals and businesses, generating increased economic activity. Its positive effects in this recovery, however, have mainly been to help the government borrow more cheaply, large banks recapitalize quickly, and homeowners refinance at low rates.
Uncertainty regarding ObamaCare and higher taxes on businesses and individuals has discouraged the type of borrowing and lending that low rates generally encourage. Near-zero interest rates have also resulted in historically low yields on savings and encouraged riskier investments. In effect, we have subsidized increased spending by penalizing savings.
Fiscal policy, under the control of the president and his party, increased expenditures by about $700 billion per year since 2008 and launched a spending package of about $800 billion (along with various "targeted" temporary tax reductions), all of which resulted in an increase in national debt of over $5 trillion. In other words, we borrowed $5 trillion, for which we will pay interest for who knows how long, in order to stimulate the economy now.
There's little doubt that this level of spending—$5 trillion in an economy with an annual GDP of about $15 trillion—has a temporary stimulative effect. The question is, was it a good investment? For the most part the money was spent poorly and we will get very little future value from it. Billions were spent to reward favored constituencies like government employees and the auto industry. Billions more were spent on training programs that don't work and unemployment insurance that reduces incentives to actually find work. Little went toward building infrastructure or other assets that will help the nation create wealth over time.
So, yes, we are going in the right direction—but far too slowly to create reasonable economic growth and needed jobs. By their very nature, recoveries involve people and businesses making investments and spending money and borrowing to do both. However, for rational people to spend or invest requires confidence in the future. The "animal spirits" so necessary for a true recovery have been dampened by this administration's policies and rhetoric.
Indeed, this administration has been overtly hostile to business across the economy except for progressive favorites like electric cars or wind and solar power. It has tightened regulatory screws on the coal industry and all other fossil-fuel providers, enacted health-care "reform" based on false estimates of its likely costs and effects, unleashed a hostile National Labor Relations Board on businesses, and passed financial regulations in the form of Dodd-Frank along with hundreds of other regulatory actions that put increased burdens on the private sector. Meanwhile, the president has yet to pass a budget or announce a plan to rein in government expenditures.
The president has said, over and over again, that he wants to increase taxes on businesses—small and large—and on financially successful individuals. He doesn't quite articulate the point that way, but that is the effect. After all, he says millionaires and billionaires aren't paying their fair share. He forgets, or simply does not know, that the top 1% of earners actually pay as much as the bottom 90%, and the bottom half pay no income taxes at all.
In this negative environment, businesses are less willing to invest in the future, and individuals are less willing to spend what they can. Meanwhile, savers and retirees have seen much of their income decline because of low interest rates. The massive costs of all the stimulus have been wasted because of the heavy counterweight put on the economy by the administration's antibusiness and pro-redistribution policies.
Mr. Golub, a former chairman and CEO of American Express, is the chairman of Miller Buckfire and serves on the executive committee of the American Enterprise Institute.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)Japan breaks oil embargo against Iran before Baghdad talks end
EU executive Catherine Ashton with Iran's negotiator Saeed Jalili
A senior official in Tokyo announced Wednesday, May 23, that the Japanese government will seek parliamentary approval for a bill allowing Japanese firms to insure tankers carrying Iranian oil to Asia if European insurers refused to do so. The new law would apply to 16 Iranian tankers in the first stage.
This decision means that any intention to stiffen the oil embargo against Iran, as Israel had expected, was virtually voided even before the resumed nuclear talks ended between the six powers and Iran in Baghdad. Instead of taking place under the shadow of tougher sanctions, the oil embargo had begun falling apart and a major disincentive for Iran to continue its drive for a nuclear bomb was fading.
Still, without any real grounds, European coordinator Catherine Ashton and IAEA head Yukiya Amano were openly optimistic about the outcome of the current round of talks. In this, they backed US President Barack Obama’s expectation of successful negotiations with Iran and his advocacy of continuing diplomacy in contrast to his earlier remarks this month that the window for negotiations was closing.
By spreading good cheer, Ashton and Amano obscured the real state of play with Iran. Amano said Tuesday that a deal for inspections would soon be signed with Iran although he didn’t know when. Now it appears that there was no deal.
And all Ashton’s spokesman would say was, "I am not going to go into the details of what we are proposing, but of course we are putting proposals on the table that are of interest to Iran."
Israeli ministers who urged the world powers to make tough demands of Iran and impose stiff penalties were clearly talking through their hats. Japan is not alone in helping Iran beat the toughest sanction, the embargo on its oil exports, India and Turkey were in there first. They were all essentially signaling Tehran that its inflexibility in negotiations would not rate serious punishment because some of the threatened sanctions are no longer workable.
No comment was forthcoming from US official sources on the developments around the Baghdad talks Wednesday. Other American sources close to the Obama administration, such as Dennis Ross, the president’s former adviser on Iran, warned Tuesday, May 22, on the eve of the resumed talks not to expect any breakthrough or dramatic progress.
Ross stressed that Tehran would get no sanctions relief until uranium enrichment is discontinued – and not only the 20-percent grade but lower levels too.
Russia and the UK, alone of the powers (the others are the US, France, Germany, China) represented in Baghdad, spoke openly about the possible failure of the meeting and the outbreak of war with Iran in consequence.
The Russians again warned Tehran that the West is using the screen of negotiations for a conspiracy to set a military trap. In London, just before the talks began, British ministers were warned of their likely breakdown and were reported to have prepared “contingency plans” for a possible conflict between Israel and Iran.
Some sources reported that under discussion was British military and diplomatic aid to Israel, in particular the deployment of Royal Navy vessels on Israel’s coast.
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7)Mitt, We Hardly Know You
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
For much of the American public, Mitt Romney remains a cipher. As
Via Meadia has
noted previously, Romney has too often ceded control of his personal narrative to the press and his opponents, making him
particularly vulnerable to countless attacks on his character and to damaging stories like the account of his prep school days. A new Brookings Institution study of the impact of Romney’s Mormonism on the electorate underscores this crucial point.
BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins
summarizes:
According to the study, a full 82 percent of respondents said they knew “little” or “nothing” about Mormonism, and researchers found that feeding them even a couple sentences of basic information about the church’s beliefs had the ability to swing wide swaths of the electorate in terms of their support for Romney.
Americans’ perceptions of the presumptive Republican nominee, in other words, are still highly malleable. Romney abandons this territory to pundits and political opponents at his own risk. The competition to define “the real Romney” is just beginning, and the candidate needs to be out in front.
There are signs that Team Romney is beginning to change its approach. Over at the
New York Times, Jodi Kantor examines how important
Romney’s Mormonism has been in shaping the contours of his life. Although Romney himself declined to be interviewed for the article, that his son Tagg was quoted suggests the campaign might be adopting a new course. What’s more, we are glad to report that, while Kantor’s piece throws a few obligatory bones to the reflexively anti-Romney readership, the article generally eschews the insidious Mormon-bashing and ludicrous theocracy warnings that have sadly characterized much of the coverage of Romney’s faith.
But the piece exposes the dilemma at the heart of the Romney campaign: the former governor can only be understood and appreciated as a human being in the light of the deep faith that informs and guides his approach to life, but few Americans understand what that faith is and how it works. Worse, while a tolerant society no longer persecutes Mormons or drives them out of town, many Americans view Mormonism as a cult and as an aggressive competitor against orthodox Christianity rather than as just one more stripe in the coat of many colors that makes up the American Christian world. (On the left, many find Mormon evocations of traditional American values and social norms both hackneyed and threatening; for these people, the profound theological differences between the faiths are obscured by their conservative social agenda. Either way, Romney loses.)
The superficially obvious route for the Romney candidacy would be to present his Mormon faith in the safest and most domesticated way possible, attempting to minimize the unique features and beliefs of the church. Lots of talk about Jesus, faith, the Bible, and God—and little or nothing about the more distinctive tenets of the Church. That would make many evangelicals and Catholics uncomfortable; some feel that Mormon missionaries operate deceptively by claiming to present a form of Christianity while leading proselytes farther and farther away from core Christian teachings. Most of the conservative evangelical and Catholic voters who make up so much of the Republican base today are okay with a”‘live and let live” approach to the Mormon faith, but many of them resist the idea of accepting Mormons as a “legitimate” Christian church—and its claim to be truly Christian is exactly what they like least about it.
Yet the Times piece makes a strong case that his Mormon faith is the cement that holds the candidate’s worldview together.
Now, as the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Mr. Romney speaks so sparingly about his faith—he and his aides frequently stipulate that he does not impose his beliefs on others—that its influence on him can be difficult to detect.
But dozens of the candidate’s friends, fellow church members and relatives describe a man whose faith is his design for living. The church is by no means his only influence, and its impact cannot be fully untangled from that of his family, which is also steeped in Mormonism.
But being a Latter-day Saint is “at the center of who he really is, if you scrape everything else off,” said Randy Sorensen, who worshiped with Mr. Romney in church.
Here is the contradiction that Romney must reconcile if he is to connect with voters: for a candidate who has earned a well-deserved reputation for his malleable policy views, talking about his faith allows Romney to articulate his core convictions and to relate to the electorate on the basis of some core common values: family, self help, generosity to those in need. At the level of daily values and political ideals, Mormonism grounds Romney in the mainstream of American life; at the level of theology, Mormonism pushes him to the margin.
The relationship of the Mormon community to the American mainstream is an interesting one. From the standpoint of orthodox Trinitarian Christianity as understood by the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholic Church and the leading American Protestant denominations and movements, the Mormon faith is pretty far “out there” in theological terms. But from the standpoint of traditional American civic, social, and political values, the Mormon faith and its community values are in many ways so normal and wholesome they strike many as corny.
To many people, the Mormon religion feels at once hyper-American and un-American. It is apple pie and secret underwear; it is Doris Day on the outside and Carmen Miranda within. (Let me emphasize that I am not trying to describe what the religion is or to judge either the faith or its adherents; I am merely trying to capture the contradictory ways in which its social conformity to conventional and historical American ideals clashes with its doctrinal originality and unique history and organization.)
This is not all that unlike the way Catholicism looked to many Americans two and three generations ago. On the one hand, Catholics were as American as apple pie. On the other, they were the members of a mysterious and even frightening religious body who accepted the dictates of the allegedly infallible Pope of Rome. They claimed to be just like everybody else while insisting that the differences between their church and everyone else’s were a matter of life and death. They were patriotically orthodox but religiously “weird”—at least that is how they often appeared to Protestants.
At one level, this isn’t going to matter much. The Republican base deeply wants President Obama out of the White House, and they are going to turn out for their party’s man. But for independents and swing voters, it’s complicated.
Candidates need to connect with voters in ways that are more visceral than intellectual. (Liberals still recoil when they remember how exit polls from the 2000 election showed that voters would overwhelmingly prefer to have a beer with George W. Bush instead of Al Gore.) As
Via Meadia pointed out recently, surveys from
Gallup show Barack Obama holds a near two-to-one advantage over Mitt Romney when voters are asked to name which candidate is more likable. According to
Gallup, this could spell trouble for Romney:
Voters usually elect the candidate they like more. In each of the last five presidential elections, the candidate whose basic favorable rating was higher won the election each time.
If voters like Mitt Romney, Democratic attacks on his record at Bain won’t make much headway. If voters don’t like or don’t trust him, any mud thrown in his general direction is likely to stick. The central dilemma for the Romney campaign: Romney’s faith is unpopular and that isn’t likely to change in the course of an election cycle. But that faith makes him behave in ways that are popular for the most part: helping neighbors, contributing to his community, standing by his word, making sacrifices for his beliefs. So central is this faith to Romney’s life and character that if you keep faith in the background it’s hard to project a coherent and likable portrait.
Romney can’t talk about his faith; Romney must talk about his faith. If his strategists and advisers can figure this one out, they will deserve the huge fees that they charge.
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