Big Dogs House

What To Do About Bad Job Numbers

Feb 16, 2010 Political

Barack Obama is getting beat up over the unemployment rate because it is higher than he said it would be unless the Stimulus was passed. It got passed and the numbers are not good at all. The Stimulus did not work and the insanity of the Democrats is shown in a new stimulus only they are calling it a jobs bill. Stimulus is a poison word because it is associated with failure.

So they will just do more of the same and call it a jobs bill. A turd by any other name is still a turd.

In order to get the agenda moving the administration needs to find a way to get rid of the bad news. What better way to do that then to eliminate the part of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics that reports the dismal numbers?

The Obama administration has apparently come up with a creative way to deal with the increasingly bleak news regarding the economic position of the United States in the world. It proposes to eliminate the office in the Bureau of Labor Statistics that collects and publishes the comparative data on employment, unemployment, manufacturing productivity and labor costs, among other things. You can find it right there on page 11 among the various programs that it has marked for termination. DC Dave

Well that should do the trick. Eliminate the office that publishes the bad news and there is no need to worry about having it reported or researched. The minions will not be able to get on their computers and look up the data and will instead have to rely on the numbers the government gives them.

How convenient.

Unlike the global warming scientists, Obama found a way to hide the decline.

How is that for the most transparent government in history?

Tags: bls, comparative data, eliminate jobs reports, numbers, unemployment

Vast Right Wing Says Stimulus A Bust

Jan 12, 2010 Political

OK, it was really the Associated Press which is so far left it is holding up the walls on that side. The AP has found, by comparing 700 counties that received stimulus money to 700 that did not, that the stimulus had no effect on the unemployment rate.

In other words, the stimulus did not work. Say it again children, the stimulus did not work.

A federal spending surge of more than $20 billion for roads and bridges in President Barack Obama’s first stimulus has had no effect on local unemployment rates, raising questions about his argument for billions more to address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”

An Associated Press analysis of stimulus spending found that it didn’t matter if a lot of money was spent on highways or none at all: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless. And the stimulus spending only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, the analysis showed.

With the nation’s unemployment rate at 10 percent and expected to rise, Obama wants a second stimulus bill from Congress including billions of additional dollars for roads and bridges — projects the president says are “at the heart of our effort to accelerate job growth.” AP

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood defended the stimulus plan and the government is considering another but the AP reports:

But AP’s analysis, which was reviewed by independent economists at five universities, showed the strategy of pumping transportation money into counties hasn’t affected local unemployment rates so far.

“There seems to me to be very little evidence that it’s making a difference,” said Todd Steen, an economics professor at Hope College in Michigan who reviewed the AP analysis.

And there’s concern about relying on transportation spending a second time.

“My bottom line is, I’d be skeptical about putting too much more money into a second stimulus until we’ve seen broader effects from the first stimulus,” said Aaron Jackson, a Bentley University economist who also reviewed AP’s analysis.

The stimulus had no effect on employment.

Of course, not all of the money was spent. It is being held in reserve so the government can release it before the next election in hope of changing things prior to the November elections. But if spending the billions now had no effect, will spending more later do any good?

Democrats have run the economy into the ground with the stimulus with promises that it would curb unemployment (it is higher than they said it would be) but the whole thing has been a bust.

But at least they were able to use money borrowed from China (that will be repaid by taxpayers) to pay supporters for political favors.

Others:
Gateway Pundit
Ace of Spades

Tags: ap, bust, Obama, stimulus, unemployment

About Those Unemployment Numbers

Jan 9, 2010 Political

Don Surber takes a look at the unemployment numbers for the country. The numbers for December came out yesterday and they were 10 times higher than expected. But the numbers do not tell the entire story because of tricky accounting.

For the second month in a row, Americans were told that there was a net loss in jobs nationally, but that the unemployment rate had either fallen or remained the same.

This is bogus.

Two years ago, in December 2007, there was a net gain of only 18,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate soared from 4.7% to 5.0% in that one month.

In December 2009, there was a net loss of 85,000 jobs. And the unemployment rate remained unchanged, at 10.0%?

We have lost a net total of 96,000 in two months and the unemployment rate fell from 10.2%?

This is liberal math.

As Heidi Shierholz pointed out, the Department of labor is reducing the number of people in the work force dramatically — shrinking it by 661,000 people in just one month — down to a labor force of only 64.6% of those eligible.

Without that shrinkage, unemployment would be 10.4%, Shierholz said.

The reason that it still looks and feels bad is because it is still bad even though they keep telling us that it is getting better and the stimulus is working.

As Surber points out here:

Those numbers do not add up. Clearly the administration is removing people from the labor market statistically at a faster rate than jobs are disappearing in some sort of desperate attempt to rationalize a $787 billion stimulus dud.

The government has all kinds of accounting tricks (like global warming scientists) to hide the decline. They use methods that would land private business owners in jail and they get away with it. Keep in mind that we keep losing jobs (and that is under reported) and the rate holds steady or drops. It makes no sense unless people are being removed from the equation.

Also keep in mind this is the same government that tells you there was a surplus of money when Clinton was president even though the government had (and still has) massive debt.

Tags: don surber, fuzzy math, government accounting., unemployment

Obama Takes Limbaugh’s Advice

Dec 9, 2009 Political

After Barack Obama won the election Rush Limbaugh gave him some advice on the economy. OK, actually Rush gave Obama a proposal which Obama ignored. Limbaugh said that we should cut the Capital Gains tax to zero for a period of time and cut the corporate income tax in half. Limbaugh also said that cutting those taxes would put more money in the pockets of Americans and businesses would have more money to hire and expand. Of course this was ignored by Democrats even though cutting taxes always increases revenue to the Treasury and stimulates the economy.

I know a number of liberals who do not believe we should cut taxes. In fact, many of them say we should pay more taxes (somehow liberals always want more taxes but find ways not to pay them – see Obama administration for examples).

It looks like Barack Obama has finally taken some of Rush Limbaugh’s advice. Obama, in an effort to stimulate job growth, is pushing to eliminate the Capital Gains tax on small business for a one year period. The cut should be more and include many others but this is a good first step.

A major part of his package is new incentives for small businesses, which account for two-thirds of the nation’s work force. He proposed a new tax cut for small businesses that hire in 2010 and an elimination for one year of the capital gains tax on profits from small-business investments. Breitbart

Obama wants to cut taxes to zero for one year in order to stimulate job growth. Listen up liberals, your leader has just told you that cutting taxes stimulates job growth.

This is not the first time a Democrat has mentioned cutting a tax to stimulate the economy or stimulate job growth and each time they say it they are admitting that conservatives especially Mr. Limbaugh are right. Saying it is one thing and doing it is another and they seldom carry through with the plan but they do admit, probably unknowingly, that the conservatives are correct.

This economy would be on the mend in a big way had Obama listened to Limbaugh in the first place. Cutting Capital Gains taxes to zero for a year would cause a massive influx of money into the economy where people would spend it. Cutting the corporate tax in half would leave companies with a lot of money to expand and hire.

And the government would get its cut because people who have more money buy things that are taxed. People who get a job pay taxes and the revenue to the Treasury would skyrocket.

I know Obama is only talking about cutting the tax for small businesses but that is better than the path he has been on.

It would have been better if he took all of Limbaugh’s advice but baby steps, a little at a time and we will get there. Once the economy picks up Obama will take the credit but he will have shown that tax cuts are a good thing.

If Obama can cut the Capital Gains taxes on small business the job numbers should improve and the economy should start to improve. But that won’t do it all.

So, here is the piece Limbaugh wrote so Obama won’t have to search around. Read it Barry and follow all of it.

Tags: Obama, Rush Limbaugh, small business, taxes, unemployment

Obama And His Team Miss The Mark – Again

Aug 26, 2009 Political

The Obama team of nincompoops has missed the mark since he took over the helm of state here in the good ole’ US of A. First we had to pass the stimulus right away or the world would end. We were told that with the stimulus unemployment would not go above 8% but that without it the rate would be above 9.5% and maybe higher. They passed the huge bill (one that contains very little to actually stimulate) and unemployment went up to the number it would ONLY reach if we did NOT pass the stimulus.

Now, before some liberal responds and tells me that unemployment is a lagging indicator let me say that I know this and I did not expect unemployment to lower with the stimulus. Obama and his team were the ones who claimed the stimulus would keep unemployment down so they are the ones with whom you have a beef.

I have said all along that we did not need the stimulus and that the recession would clear on its own as all recessions have done in the past. The major recession that turned into a depression took that path because of government interventions very much like what is taking place today. The interference of our government is the reason the rest of the world had a depression and we had a Great Depression.

Right now, countries that did not have huge stimulus packages are well on their way to recovery while we still linger in tough times. I have been told by several liberals that I communicate with that the recession is softening and that we are on our way to recovery. They tell me that this means the stimulus is working. First of all we were told the stimulus would jump start the economy. Then when that did not happen we were told it was not meant to jump start the economy and that it was actually designed to take affect next year. Now that things are “softening” the stimulus is suddenly the reason and is meant to work this soon.

Only about 10-15% of the stimulus money has been allocated so if the economy is getting better with only that relatively small infusion shouldn’t we cancel the other 85-90% that we were going to spend? If we are on our way to recovery without all the stimulus money then let’s save it so we can reduce our debt.

I think we are in for some serious trouble ahead because of the careless and unsound monetary policies of the Obama administration. While things are looking a little better (stress little) now there will be problems next year. Obama is already revising his estimates of unemployment for next year from his unrealistic 7.9% made in May to 10%.

U.S. unemployment will surge to 10 percent this year and the budget deficit will be $1.5 trillion next year, both higher than previous Obama administration forecasts because of a recession that was deeper and longer than expected, White House budget chief Peter Orszag said.

~snip~

Administration and congressional budget officials expect the unemployment rate, which was 9.4 percent last month, to keep rising. White House officials said the rate likely will rise to 10 percent by the end of 2009, averaging 9.3 percent for the entire year. It will worsen to a 9.8 percent average in 2010 instead of the 7.9 percent estimate in May. Bloomberg

Joe Biden told us before that this is worse than anyone thought and now they are saying it again. It was made worse by the careless spending and haphazard approach to addressing it. They can blame this all on Bush (and he along with the Democratically controlled Congress certainly share in the blame) but it belongs to them. There were plenty of economists who said that the stimulus was the wrong way to go. Couple that with the huge number of items that have nothing to do with stimulating the economy (and everything to do with paying off political supporters) and you have a recipe for disaster.

The Obama team will be hit with a double dip recession. The recession we are recovering from will make a slow improvement into the beginning of next year. Then we will get hit with another recession which will drive us down again. This will be accompanied by inflation the likes of which have not been seen since the Carter administration.

Numbers are looking up a little but they are deceptive. Businesses posted “profits” last quarter but many cut workers from their workforce and pared down about as far as they could go. This time we have cash for clunkers which numbers wise was a success and will be a good thing for dealers (if they get paid). It will be a failure in the long run because of what it did. It allowed people who had functioning vehicles that were, in most instances, paid for to trade them in and get up to $4500 of TAXPAYER money to buy a new one. Now they have a new bill to contend with. If we have this double dip recession as I suspect (and as some economists are predicting) will these people fall in the same boat as those who bought houses they ended up being unable to afford?

The clunkers program probably took people who would have bought cars in a few months and enticed them to buy now. This means sales numbers will decrease in the coming months. The real issue is the program itself. Pay attention closely. This program was conceived only a short time ago and it is already over. In that period of time the paperwork required of dealers became a substantial burden, the computer network set up to accept the forms was inadequate and crashed a number of times. The deadline for submitting the paperwork has been extended a few times and dealers are not getting paid in a timely fashion.

Two things strike me about that. If dealers are kept waiting for six or eight weeks for reimbursement some of them will go bankrupt and be forced out of business. Also, if the government cannot effectively manage a 3 billion dollar program for a few weeks what makes anyone think it will be able to handle a health care system involving trillions of dollars. If a clunker took a mountain of paperwork and reimbursement is slow what will a doctor have to go through to get paid and what will a patient have to go through to get treated?

Keep this in mind when they tell you they can run health care. They could not run cash for clunkers without making it an administrative nightmare full of delays. Imagine how it will be when it is health care.

The Obama team has been inept at figuring out what the economy is doing and they continually admit they did not have a clue. Their fall back position is to blame the Bush administration (without mentioning the majority Democrat Congress in place when this happened) and say that they inherited a mess.

They got a mess but they made it really bad and now it ALL belongs to them. So they need to stop whining and start getting things right.

They can start by recalling the stimulus and not spending any more money and by also ending the overhaul of health care.

Let’s face it folks, the last think we need to hear after Obamacare passes is “we underestimated how much this would cost and we were really wrong about rationing/wait times/death panels…”

By then it will be too late…

Tags: health care, ineptitude, Obama, stimulus, unemployment, waste