Big Dogs House

Good News: Only 36,000 Lost Their Jobs

Mar 5, 2010 Political

Darrel and Mike, two commenters at this site, have been having a debate about a chart that shows the number of people losing their jobs. There are still jobs being lost but not as many and these two gentlemen are discussing if losing fewer jobs is good or if it is still bad because we are losing them.

Harry Reid has settled this and it would appear that losing jobs is a good thing as long as it was not as many as before. Reid tells us today that the good news is that only 36,000 people lost their jobs last month.

That is great news, unless you are one of the 36,000.

The administration was preparing us for bad numbers by telling us that the numbers would be bad because of the snowstorms in February. That is a bogus claim. I can’t see how the storms resulted in people losing their jobs. But if I concede that the storms caused job loss I would have to say it was a wash because a whole lot of people became employed clearing snow. The labor report (linked below) addresses how people were counted with regard to the storms.

In order for severe weather conditions to reduce the estimate of payroll employment, employees have to be off work for an entire pay period and not be paid for the time missed.

It is unlikely that people would lose their jobs over bad snowstorms. They might get time off without pay but that is about it. But then again, that counts as unemployed to the BLS.

Now the progressive pundits, in response to an unemployment rate that held at 9.7%, are claiming the numbers would have been better if we had not had the storms. Once again, not credible (especially considering the definition of unemployed due ot severe weather). Also, when discouraged workers are counted, the number rose:

The U6 alternative gauge of the unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers and those forced to work part-time, rose to 16.8% from 16.5%. Market Watch

The government has boosted the number of jobs by hiring for the census. Thousands of people have been hired to work for the government. Those people will lose their jobs once the census is completed.

So remember, it is good when people lose jobs so long as it is fewer than before (progressive mantra). It is certainly a positive trend but it is not good news. These numbers do not indicate that jobs are being created, just that fewer people are losing them. We will not see job creation until jobs are being added to the numbers. In other words, the graph has to rise above the zero line.

It is also interesting how we continue to have jobs being lost, albeit many fewer than before, and yet the unemployment rate dropped from 10% to 9.7% two months ago and has held there. How can this happen?

No job loss is good news despite what Harry Reid believes.

Well, maybe there are a few exceptions…

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Tags: Harry Reid, jobs, lies, Obama, snowstorms, unemployment

About That Job Creation

Feb 25, 2010 Political

Looks like the 95,000 jobs a month the administration is predicting hit a little snag:

The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance surged to just below the 500,000 level last week, and have climbed more than 12% over the past two weeks, the government said Thursday. Money.CNN

Obama and his mouthpieces keep saying they “saved” or created millions of jobs.

The only thing I can figure is that they saved or created them in states 51 through 57…

Then again, if the White House can create ZIP codes and Congressional Districts out of thin air then it can certainly create jobs numbers the same way.

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Tags: jobs, Obama, unemployment

How Many Jobs Have Been Saved Or Created?

Jan 24, 2010 Political

It all depends on who you ask:

Axelrod, on CNN’s State of the Union: “But understand that, in this recession that began at the beginning of 2007, we’ve lost 7 million jobs. Now, the Recovery Act the president passed has created more than — or saved more than 2 million jobs. But against 7 million, you know, that — that is — it is cold comfort to those who still are looking.”

Jarrett, on NBC’s Meet the Press: “The Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs. There are schoolteachers and firemen and— and— teachers all across our country, policemen, who have jobs today because of that recovery act. We’re investing in infrastructure. We’re investing in public education so that our kids can compete going forth into the next— generation.”

Gibbs, on “Fox News Sunday”: “Well, Chris, let’s take for instance the example you just used of the stimulus package. We had four quarters of economic regression in terms of growth, right? Just last quarter, we finally saw the first positive economic job growth in more than a year. Largely as a result of the recovery plan that’s put money back into our economy, that saved or created 1.5 million jobs.” Politico

It would seem that Obama’s people don’t actually know how many jobs have been created and the idea that saved jobs can be measured is bogus. The administration dreamed up this category to tout success that can’t possibly be measured. The guidelines used to indicate a “saved” job are nonsensical and were dreamed up to give the appearance of success.

Jobs are counted as saved if stimulus money went to them even if they were not in danger of being lost. The formula originally used allowed for more jobs saved than actually existed in the companies. If any stimulus money is spent on a job (like giving a pay raise) then it is considered saved. It is a sham.

Now the administration spin masters are out talking up the numbers in an effort to show some kind of success even though the stimulus has been a dismal failure.

I would think that if they were all going to go on different networks to discuss this they could all coordinate their lies.

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Tags: bogus, created, jobs, lies, saved, stimulus

Why Government Can’t Run Health Care

Nov 20, 2009 Political

The government is working on passing a health care takeover package that will cost upwards of $2.5 trillion over the actual first ten years of its life. They claim it will cost less than a trillion over ten years but they do that by counting ten from the passage and taxing people from the passage but only providing care four or five years after passage. They will get a four or five year head start on the money in order to pay for it. You cannot sustain a program where you have to tax for ten years to provide for five. The first ten years where actual health care is provided will cost at least 2.5 trillion dollars. They are using budget voodoo to fool the public.

The government claims it will save money by eliminating fraud in Medicare. If they could eliminate the fraud why have they not done it up to this point? How about they take a few years and eliminate the fraud and let us see the results before they try to get us on board with their health plan? The government has 98 billion dollars of fraud this year (and it is not over) with most of it being in Medicare.

Shouldn’t we expect them to have concern for this and to be addressing it with or without the reform they want?

Regardless of the costs, government cannot run the health care program because it will be a disaster. We already know that they cannot run Medicare and that it is rife with fraud. They have admitted that the fraud is there but they have done nothing to end it in the entire time it has existed. This is because government is wasteful and is not very good at oversight.

Case in point, Recovery.gov, the website that was designed solely to track the stimulus. It was supposed to be a transparent way for Americans to see how the money was being spent and how many jobs are being created. I know they claim to report jobs saved but that is a nonsensical item that cannot be tracked or quantified. There is no way to determine a “saved” job. I discount any saved job as a lie.

The government website is full of inaccuracies and probably lies. I say lies because all of the errors that have been caught were errors of over reporting. If there were mistakes one would expect that some of them would be under reporting. After the initial issues with the site the government spent 18 million dollars to revamp it. For 18 million dollars they should be able to buy a server farm with enough bandwidth to stream a concert to 1000 people and still have money left over to pay someone who knows how to be accurate when reporting. That seems like an awful lot of money for a website. Do they have the entire graduating class of MIT working on it?

The government could not get the website to work (which might mean they could not hide the lies well enough) so they spent 18 million to make it better. It still is not working because they are reporting jobs created in districts that do not exist. The reports of jobs created are being shot down time and again by the likes of ABC news and the entire project has done nothing to instill confidence in the government’s ability. One would think that with the kind of money they spent and the talent they can hire they would get it right.

But they did not. So they did what government always does when a plan fails. They threw more money at it and it still failed.

If the government is unable to spend 787 billion dollars on a stimulus and track that money as well as the jobs created then how are they going to run health care? The stimulus program has fraud that has been reported, fraud they acknowledge is inherent in a program of this size. The size pales in comparison to the health care takeover so how much ineptitude and fraud will that have? I know that Obama and his party claim they will end the fraud but they have failed to do so thus far with Medicare and they could not stop it in the stimulus. I have read they are considering another stimulus. Like with the website, they will throw more money at a failed program.

Imagine the amount of fraud that will accompany their health care reform. The reform will be much larger than Medicare and it has billions in fraud. The reform is much larger than the stimulus and it has billions in fraud. How many billions of dollars in fraud will result from their health care takeover plan?

Government is not able to run a simple website that it spent a whopping $18 million on and it is unable to stop the fraud in Medicare. It is also unable to track recovery money accurately or to prevent fraud in that program.

What moron believes that government will do better with health care?

Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.

Those three words more accurately describe nearly all government programs. Why would any sane person put one sixth of our economy in their hands?

I encourage you to visit Recovery.Gov. You paid over 18 million for it, you own it, so you might as well use it.

But don’t believe anything you read there.

**I incorrectly stated that the website cost 18 Billion dollars when it was Million. Each occurrence was changed. Thanks to commenter Mike for pointing out the mistake.

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Tags: abuse, fraud, health care takeover, jobs, lies, Obama, recovery.gov, waste

Stupidity To The Left, More Stupidity From The Left

Oct 30, 2009 Political

Oh Boy! How’s that stimulus working out for all you Americans out of work? Seen any “created” jobs lately? Not many, unless you are Chinese- they are getting a large part of stimulus cash to make wind turbines and sell them to the “Gwai-loh”, or barbaric Americans. That’s right, instead of keeping the manufacturing jobs of building the wind turbines and blades here at home, where jobs would actually have been created, (can’t have that- how are you supposed to keep people believing that they are victims, if you help them?), the administration has chosen to send all that money and jobs overseas, where it helps us not at all.

A consortium of Chinese and American companies announced a joint venture Thursday to construct a massive 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas, using wind turbines manufactured in China.

$1.5 billion wind farm would be funded largely by Chinese financiers, with an assist from the United States government in the form of loan guarantees and grants from the federal stimulus package.

“This wind farm project came about thanks to the openness of the United States for investments in the field of renewable energy,” said John Lin, the chief operating officer of Shenyang Power Group, an industrial group in China focused on renewable energy projects.

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com

No, actually the project came about because our feckless leader is a traitor who lies as easily as waking up- all of these jobs could have stayed here in the US, but since we (actually Nobama’s administration) owe China sooooooooooooooo much money, the pressure was applied, and everyone in the WH began learning Mandarin- all the better for talking whilst being bent over and driven to Shanghai by the Chinese.

“Created or saved jobs”- the big lie. There are no jobs created here by this venture- certainly no manufacturing jobs. I would think the unions would be howling with outrage- they certainly would if this was done by Dubya. But since they have been getting stroked by the WH for the last several years, like lizards rubbed on the belly, it may take them awhile to wake up.

According to a recent article in The New York Times by Keith Bradsher, China required 80 percent of the materials used to construct its first solar power plant earlier this year come from China.

Foreign manufacturers of wind turbines have struggled to gain entry into the Chinese market, Mr. Bradsher reported.

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com

Well, in this instance, it is not the Chinese market that we are trying to “enter”- it is our own, and we should be able to do this better, with more innovation, and keep the jobs at home. We could do this, but noooooooooooooo.

Instead, (perhaps because all the WH loves Mao) the Chinese get the lion’s share of the work. And as for jobs, well, I will let this article say it all-

The project would mark the first instance of a Chinese manufacturer exporting wind turbines to the United States market, according to the vice mayor of the city of Shenyang, Yang Yazhou, who spoke at a news conference announcing the joint venture.

The farm is to be built on 36,000 acres in western Texas — an exact location was not specified — and will use 240 2.5-megawatt turbines manufactured in China. Construction is expected to begin next March. The project will create an estimated 300 temporary construction jobs, and 30 permanent jobs.

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com

300 temporary jobs and 30 permanent jobs. Somehow, I believe if we were manufacturing these turbines ourselves, there might be more than just *30* permanent jobs. That is not very many, even by the White House’s dubious accounting methods of “saved” jobs. And you know that a bunch of the 300 temporary jobs will go to illegal aliens- that’s a given, considering who is in the White House.

All in all, this deal benefits a select few, most of them either Chinese, or the leeches in the administration, like Jeffery Immelt, the CEO of GE, who gets a cut of this deal. 

The turbines for the Texas wind farm, although slated for construction in China, will use technology from the United States and Europe, including a turbine designed by German wind power manufacturer Fuhrlander and gear box design by General Electric.

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com

Yes, in most logical societies, Jeffery Immelt’s being inside the WH should disqualify him and/ or his company from deals involving him and the government- a conflict of interest, you see. If this was Haliburton and Cheney, the howls of outrage would be heard coast to coast, but not from this liberal crowd- they can’t see the hypocrisy here.

When it comes to liberal hypocrisy, they are blind, deaf, and dumb.

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Tags: china, energy, GE, jobs