Mortimer Zuckerman: The Trouble with Obama’s Economy

Obama’s ‘Less Economy’: Americans Facing Less Work,

Less Reward

Under Barack Obama, unemployment has declined

due to a drop in labor participation, not because of actual economic growth

By Mortimer B. Zuckerman     at  U. S. News:

The political season has begun in earnest, with each side putting forth facts and figures hoping that the persuasive power of statistics will bolster the weaker argument. It was Mark Twain who popularized the comment attributed to Disraeli, to wit, that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. So don’t be impressed by the fact that the most popular unemployment rate being bandied about dropped to 8.1 percent in April from 8.2 percent in March.

Progress? Not so. Paradoxically, the reason for the drop is negative, not positive. It is due solely to the fact that 342,000 discouraged workers who were seeking employment dropped out of the labor force and are no longer counted as unemployed. Without that withdrawal, the unemployment rate would have risen to 8.4 percent in April. In fact, if the labor force participation rate had remained where it was in June 2009, when the recession officially ended, the headline jobless rate would be north of 11 percent.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the economy.]

Every basis point decline in the unemployment rate, which peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, has been due to the drop in the labor force participation rate and not in the growth of real employment. A steady stream of men and women and young people got tired of looking for work that isn’t there.

The 8.1 percent unemployment rate seized upon by the government and the media accounts only for those people who have actively looked for a job in the previous four weeks and haven’t found one. It’s called the U-3 rate. But there’s a nastier categorization—the U-6 rate. It’s the more relevant measure. Why? Because it covers those people who have actively applied for a job in the last six months and also accounts for not just full-time unemployment but for involuntary, part-time employment as well. That number is still at 14.5 percent, the highest it has ever been so far into a so-called economic recovery.

Not to mention that warm weather boosted winter employment in the first three months of the year—Goldman Sachs, for example, estimated at least 100,000 jobs—and much of that will wash out eventually. David Rosenberg, chief economist at the Gluskin Sheff wealth management firm, points out that if you strip out the sectors that should have benefited most from the balmy winter (the warmest since 1895), real GDP actually contracted at a 0.2 percent annual rate and final sales shrank by nearly 1 percent.

That’s not all. There is a little-known category of job creation called the birth/death model, a seasonal adjustment in which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) arbitrarily adds jobs for net new companies it thinks are starting up and creating positions. Last month, the BLS made the assumption that 206,000 jobs were created in this category based on the companies that it thinks, but really can’t prove, have just started up and essentially are invisible to government labor surveys. This is an imprecise, controversial guesstimate based on historical extrapolation. One must be skeptical, since this figure of 206,000 rose from 172,000 in April 2011 despite the obvious decline in economic activity this spring and the general lack of financing for start-up companies.

Right now, it looks as if the only people getting jobs are in the 55 and older cohort. According to the BLS household survey, employment for those age 55 and up has risen 3.8 million since the recession began in December 2007, whereas the ranks of the employed in the under-55 age cohort have shrunk by 8.2 million. But as aging baby boomers remain in their jobs, youth employment shrinks; the unemployment rate for teenagers is now at 25 percent.

According to the BLS, job increases have been virtually cut in half this year alone, from 277,000 in January to 130,000 in April. But we need 150,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with new people trying to enter the labor force. Much of the job “growth” has been in sectors such as healthcare and tourism, low-wage work that hasn’t been exposed to global competition. And perhaps as many as half of all new jobs have been part time. The result is some good jobs at the top and plenty at the bottom but not enough in the middle.

Needless to say, slack in the labor market is a drag on personal income growth. Americans’ after-tax income in the first three months rose just 0.6 percent from a year earlier, the skimpiest increase in over two years. Average weekly earnings are up roughly 2 percent over the last 12 months, but inflation has climbed by 3 percent, which means real incomes have dropped and forced workers to save less in order to keep up their spending. No wonder many of the big retailers such as Costco and Target were reporting sales below expectations, and April chain store sales slowed to a plus 2.2 percent on a year-over-year basis. Quite simply, income inevitably drives the trend in spending.

There is one area of growth in the government’s statistics: the number applying for disability benefits. Last month there were 225,000. As Rosenberg points out, this is a new stealth stimulus program. Last year, about 1 million Americans applied for disability, and since President Obama took office more than three years ago, more than 5 million people have been added to the nation’s disability coverage, costing the government billions upon billions of dollars every year. Rosenberg caustically comments that either the safety standards at work have eroded dramatically or many working people have found a creative way to game the system and turn it into a quasi-welfare state.

Income decline is not the only aspect of the misery. A majority of middle- and lower-income Americans are seeing their net worth fall because their largest asset is typically the value of their home equity—and home prices have declined in value by at least a third. Given mortgage levels, on average this has wiped out perhaps two thirds of home equity. No wonder people are feeling the pinch, not to mention that many buyers and home­owners are spooked when so many homes are underwater with mortgage debt exceeding the value of the property. There is still almost $3.7 trillion in excess mortgage debt that Americans need to pay off just to return to normal loan-to-value ratios on housing, according to St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard.

In addition to declining home prices, we face a “fiscal cliff” as 2012 turns into 2013. That means fiscal tightening if we do not extend the income tax cuts from the Bush administration and the temporary payroll tax cuts from the Obama administration—and we must adjust the mandatory spending cuts of $1.2 trillion over the next decade that come from last year’s budget deal legislation. And this is all at a time when the downsizing of state and local governments continues. Our economy seems hardly strong enough to absorb a fiscal tightening of as much as 4 percent of GDP in the context of a recession unlike no other since the end of World War II.

The political community has so far been unable to revive an economy operating so far below capacity. One critical question is how to disaggregate the forces for decline into those that are cyclical and those which are structural. The latter cannot be easily cured; they reflect such forces as globalization and dramatic technological change enabling companies to employ fewer workers and an educational system that simply is not doing enough to train workers for the higher standards of a modern economy.

The irony is that the Obama administration expended its political capital on healthcare and its social welfare agenda in lieu of a range of policies to nurture strong, durable economic growth. We have instead what might be called the “Less Economy.” Unemployment and under­employment mean that as many as a stunning 30 million Americans are now facing less work and less reward for the work they can get

What the Coleman King Lefty Racists are Writing about Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney fails to see America

 

by Colbert L. King   at the Washington Post:

After a third reading of Mitt Romney’s Liberty University commencement speech, I still fail to see how my Post colleague Michael Gerson could have described it as “more than good.”

Romney’s address struck me as standard fare for a college graduation. He hit all the familiar notes: gratitude to school and a nod to parents for sacrifices made; celebration of the virtues of hard work, devotion to principles, individualism, service, family. There was even a little shameless politicking, with Romney telling the audience “what the next four years might hold for me is yet to be determined. But . . . things are looking up, and I take your kind hospitality today as a sign of good things to come.”

 

Toles draws Mitt Romney: A collection of cartoons about the former Massachusetts governor.

 

It was the kind of speech that could have been delivered — sans the pandering and the references to more-contemporary figures (the late Chuck Colson; the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded Liberty University; and the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) — to college graduating classes in the 1950s or even in 1900.The Liberty remarks, as seems to be true of many Romney speeches, reflected a rather constricted view of the country. Perhaps it’s because Romney chooses to deliver most of his lines to narrow audiences.Missing in his Liberty offering, as with some other Romney speeches, is any recognition — not praises, mind you, but simple acknowledgment — that 21st-century America is more than a white, middle-class country.

He revealed no sense whatsoever of knowing that the overwhelming majority of Liberty grads will, in their adult lives, inhabit an America in which they will be the minority.

Romney’s speeches seem tailor-made for audiences that look pretty much like him.

At least that is what one is led to believe after observing where Romney chooses to go and what he has to say.

I tried to imagine Romney’s Liberty address being delivered to the graduates and their families at the 2012 commencement exercises I attended a week ago at historically black Howard University in Washington.

I cannot believe, however, that the Romney campaign apparatus would have allowed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to tell an African American audience numbering in the thousands that Falwell was “a gracious Christian example” and a “courageous and big-hearted minister of the Gospel who . . . never hated an adversary.”

Indeed, Romney lauded Falwell, who famously said: “I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations.”

Romney spoke glowingly of the same Falwell who said of the landmark Supreme Court school desegregation decision: “If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never had been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”

The same Falwell who disparaged Nobel Peace Prize winner and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a phony. (Falwell later apologized for that remark and claimed that he had misspoken.)

And who can forget Falwell’s finger-pointing after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks? He declared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” show: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’ ”

I suspect if Romney spoke at Howard, he would have skipped that part about Falwell.

But what does the man who seeks to lead this country have to say about, and to, this rapidly changing nation of diverse people with diverse interests and needs?

Thus far, Romney’s thoughts and policy prescriptions seem focused on America’s largest — and slowest-growing — racial group: his own.

Democratic critics accuse Romney of having values that skew to the rich at the expense of the poor. They say he’s disconnected from the problems of average Americans; that he’s out of touch and just doesn’t get it.

Would that it were only a matter of determining whether Romney is on the side of the rich or middle class.

The question is much broader and more significant: When Mitt Romney thinks and speaks of Americans, do those who don’t look like him even come to mind?

Since he launched his presidential campaign, it’s been hard to tell. And Romney’s Liberty University speech was no help.

Comment:      Black racist King  apparently writes his articles for his larger black racist readership of the Washington Post.    I wonder how many they might be these days for the uppity  nationa’s capital paper’s subscriptions cost money…..Moreover, how does he control the race of those who might read his columns?

I am not black, as you, dear reader, might notice from  the words I write.   

I am older than this King.   I remember when from the segregated South in the 1940s and 50s  the Coleman King’s were white, and nearly all without robes to hide their personal identities.

Mr. King has every right to write as a black racist.   They are a dime a dozen these days and occupy very important positions in Congress……its black caucus and nearly all of its members.

Mr. Romeny’s ‘lines’ are dated,  black racist King writes.

Mine are too.   I remember when the majority, the overwhelming majority of   parents of students at the mixed race urban school which I attended many decades ago, were civilized, living in respect to others as well as themselves.    Crime was unpopular in those time regardless of race.    Folks got married in those days.     Swearing in public was unheard of, and people of all shapes and sizes were a helluva lot poorer.

Maybe Mr. Romney was reflecting on better times when blacks were called Negroes and showed respect among themselves and to others.   Perhaps  the Republican candidate was thinking of better days, when the first word of  black writing was not  from a racist agenda.

Yes, America is more than  a white middle class community.    That the Republican contender speaks to folks  from  his own cultural background shouldn’t come as a surprise to a  Washington columnist white or black.     Why should it be suggested as a negative?

From what I know about Liberty University and remember about Jerry Falwell, I believe this is a middle class, rather old fashioned,  home-spun crowd who still become mothers and fathers and work for a living……the ones likely to be taxed to transfer billions to continue to pay for black social disorders  and violence in today’s Coleman King, one party  American urban black plantation society.

Again, perhaps Mr. Romney was thinking of better times, when Negroes were Americans and  from respect for other human beings would not have prevented  a serious presidential candidate from speaking to them without violence, obsenities, threats,  and burnings.

There are some estimates that in the past 50 years   $8,000,000,000,000 have been transfered from the American taxpayer to fight black poverty and all of the disorders that have arisen from it.

And what has that taxation bought for all Americans…….Well,  racists like Coleman King  to begin with and the misery of the inner city black plantation life to worry about.

 

 

The Senility of New York Times’ Lefty Nicholas Kristof…..or “How American Marxists Think”

THE SCOURGE OF KRISTOF

“I am paging through my most recent copy of the Weekly Standard and halted, Ach Tung, when I caught a title of an article, “The Scourge of Kristof”.

What would this vacuous busy body and mindless pleasant fellow be up to now?    I had to find out, and so, read the following:

“It’s probably not too much of an overstatment to say that American politics went off the rails in the early part of the 20th century.  We’re still living with the legacy of the many foolish things the first generation of progressives inflicted  on us then and that today’s progressives are intent on religitating.

     And so New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently found himself arguing against the scourge of legal beer sales.  Pine Ridge, a large Oglala Sioux Indian reservation in South Dakota, bans alcohol because of its role in a host of social ills.  And yet Sioux who wish to drink often leave the reservation and head for the next town.  According to Kristof, this is happening because of “Anheuser-Busch’s devastating exploitation of American Indians.”

     You might assume that some of these exploited Indians drink Miller, but Kristof is only calling for a boycott of Bud.   Kristof notes another “nifty solution” to the Pine Ridge proglem would be to have the state of South Dakota extend the boundaries of the reservation, so that the tribe’s alcohol ban covers places where it’s currently legally sold.

Kristof’s argument for this boycott is nearly identical to the original argument for prohibition;  Once you acknowledge alcohol contributes to a host of social ill, from domestic violence to suicide, you’re an immoral monster for not having blind faith in proscriptions against vice.”….etc., etc., etc.

The New York Times has enjoyed  the employment of the nation’s Three Biggest Donkeys in the news business for decades…….Paul Krugman, Frank Rich,  and Nick Kristof.    The list as written is now toothless, for Frank Rich has moved on to other New York asylums, creating the gap in the  Times’ mouth.

When one wonders the origin of the  Donkey disease which inflicts them and so many others in American entertainment, it must come from the neighing of the animal they so fondly and religiously worship…..the Progressive Ass.

They write and report news having  never learned anything about yesterday,  think nothing  realistic of today, and romance about tomorrow…….as Rome burns.

 

David Brooks Writes Five Star New York Times Article (for a change)….(“When the People Discover GREED”)

The Age of Innocence

By DAVID BROOKS

“The people who pioneered democracy in Europe and the United States had a low but pretty accurate view of human nature. They knew that if we get the chance, most of us will try to get something for nothing. They knew that people generally prize short-term goodies over long-term prosperity. So, in centuries past, the democratic pioneers built a series of checks to make sure their nations wouldn’t be ruined by their own frailties.

 

The American founders did this by decentralizing power. They built checks and balances to frustrate and detain the popular will. They also dispersed power to encourage active citizenship, hoping that as people became more involved in local government, they would develop a sense of restraint and responsibility.

In Europe, by contrast, authority was centralized. Power was held by small coteries of administrators and statesmen, many of whom had attended the same elite academies where they were supposed to learn the art and responsibilities of stewardship. Under the parliamentary system, voters didn’t even get to elect their leaders directly. They voted for parties, and party elders selected the ones who would actually form the government, often through secret means.

Though the forms were different, the democracies in Europe and the United States were based on a similar carefully balanced view of human nature: People are naturally selfish and need watching. But democratic self-government is possible because we’re smart enough to design structures to police that selfishness.

James Madison put it well: “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind, which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.”

But, over the years, this balanced wisdom was lost. Leaders today do not believe their job is to restrain popular will. Their job is to flatter and satisfy it. A gigantic polling apparatus has developed to help leaders anticipate and respond to popular whims. Democratic politicians adopt the mind-set of marketing executives. Give the customer what he wants. The customer is always right.

Having lost a sense of their own frailty, many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements. They become incensed when their leaders are not responsive to their needs. Like any normal set of human beings, they command their politicians to give them benefits without asking them to pay.

The consequences of this shift are now obvious. In Europe and America, governments have made promises they can’t afford to fulfill. At the same time, the decision-making machinery is breaking down. American and European capitals still have the structures inherited from the past, but without the self-restraining ethos that made them function.

The American decentralized system of checks and balances has transmogrified into a fragmented system that scatters responsibility. Congress is capable of passing laws that give people benefits with borrowed money, but it gridlocks when it tries to impose self-restraint.

The Obama campaign issues its famous “Julia” ad, which perfectly embodies the vision of government as a national Sugar Daddy, delivering free money and goodies up and down the life cycle. The Citizens United case gives well-financed interests tremendous power to preserve or acquire tax breaks and regulatory deals. American senior citizens receive health benefits that cost many times more than the contributions they put into the system.

In Europe, workers across the Continent want great lifestyles without long work hours. They want dynamic capitalism but also personal security. European welfare states go broke trying to deliver these impossibilities.

The European ruling classes once had their power checked through daily contact with the tumble of national politics. But now those ruling classes have built a technocratic apparatus, the European Union, operating far above popular scrutiny. Decisions that reshape the destinies of families and nations are being made at some mysterious, transnational level. Few Europeans can tell who is making decisions or who is to blame if they go wrong, so, of course, they feel powerless and distrustful.

Western democratic systems were based on a balance between self-doubt and self-confidence. They worked because there were structures that protected the voters from themselves and the rulers from themselves. Once people lost a sense of their own weakness, the self-doubt went away and the chastening structures were overwhelmed. It became madness to restrain your own desires because surely your rivals over yonder would not be restraining theirs.

This is one of the reasons why Europe and the United States are facing debt crises and political dysfunction at the same time. People used to believe that human depravity was self-evident and democratic self-government was fragile. Now they think depravity is nonexistent and they take self-government for granted.

Neither the United States nor the European model will work again until we rediscover and acknowledge our own natural weaknesses and learn to police rather than lionize our impulses.”

Comment:   It appears contrary to others at the New York Times and its mass media sisters,  David Brooks went to college, actually learned something, and didn’t wipe what he had learned with a Marxist eraser.

Wow……Why is it, however, that no one in the media or in academia seems to want to write forthrightly about the American revolution of 1967-1977…..the carnal one, druggie one,  the feminist, racist, class, and religious warfare one in which the cannibals won?…..and until very, very recently, have been still winning with the present administration………

……..an administration determined to dictate Marxism to the  population too busy, too uneducated, too isolated from classical  Truth and the American purpose,  too cowed by grades from zombies at university who graduated through the classrooms of the carnal street and noise of that revolution and have never turned back?

Fortunately, at last, their are voices , writings, sufferings from those in the American community who have not been persuaded by the Power of the Street Mobs and the baseness of that animal nature of the human female as well as its male, her greed and hysteria coupled with his violence and drives.

Mankind’s God has given this dark continent Dennis Prager…..and I’ll  shout that from the bottom of my MIND and HEART till I can shout no more.

And, thank you David Brooks, for writing so “Pragerlike”.

 

Stand Up for Marriage in Minnesota

In this issue:

• Marriage And The Presidency – “What Is Marriage?”
• Marriage Is One Dad, One Mom – Fargo InForum
• Marriage Minute: “Isn’t It Wrong For Churches To Be Involved In The Marriage Campaign? What About Separation of Church And State?”
• Sign Up To Be A Grassroots Leader

Marriage And The Presidency – “What Is Marriage?”

“..[T]he administration has created a long-awaited and much-needed platform for a national discussion of the core issue in the debate: ‘What is marriage?’”

CLICK HERE to check it out.

Marriage Is One Dad, One Mom – Fargo InForum

“A report by Child Trends, a nonpartisan research organization, summarized the scholarly consensus on marriage this way:” ’’Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.”

CLICK HERE to check it out.

Marriage Minute: “Isn’t It Wrong For Churches To Be Involved In The Marriage Campaign? What About Separation of Church And State?”

The Minnesota Marriage Protection Amendment isn’t about sin; it’s about preserving the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman as has been the case in Minnesota since before Minnesota became a state.

CLICK HERE to view the video.

Sign Up To Be A Grassroots Leader

We’re now moving to the next phase in the campaign of finding volunteers who are willing to stand up and be grassroots leaders for their local areas. These leaders will oversee volunteers who have signed up throughout various house districts in the state, sorted by zip code.

Leaders will work directly with the campaign staff to make sure all of the necessary grassroots activities we need to protect marriage in Minnesota are getting done: phone calls, door knocking, letters to the editor, yard sign and bumper sticker distribution.

If you are interested, have questions, or know of someone who might be a good fit for this position, please have them email our Grassroots Director Tim Gould at Tim@MinnesotaForMarriage.com.

Please Make A Contribution!

President Obama’s betrayal of marriage has caused a much needed national dialogue about “What is marriage.” You can help keep that conversation going by making a generous financial contribution today. You can make a secure online contribution here.

Remember To Check Out Our Website And Social Media Outlets

Check out our website at www.MinnesotaForMarriage.com. Here you will find useful resources on defending marriage and a sign-up form to volunteer with our campaign. Please also “Like” us on Facebook and “Follow” us on Twitter and tell your kids and grandkids to do the same.

Help us make Minnesota the 32nd state to pass the Marriage Protection Amendment by volunteering to be a grassroots leader today.

Sincerely,

John Helmberger
Chairman, Minnesota for Marriage

Prepared and paid for by Minnesota for Marriage, 2355 Fairview Ave N, Box 301, Roseville, MN 55113, in support of the Minnesota Marriage Protection Amendment.