Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the first post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.
1) Obama continues to insist that he has done miracles in reviving the U.S. economy. But six years or so after the recession ended, has he really performed miracles? We have often discussed the reality that the Obama administration has done a terrible job from an economic strategy perspective despite the following tail winds:
- Implementing a failed and massive $800 billion economic stimulus plan.
- Getting the benefit of a long term drop in energy prices.
- Having the advantage of the Fed infusing trillions of paper dollars into the economy.
- The economy created only 38,000 jobs in May, far below the 150,000 jobs that economists had more or less forecasted.
- Hundreds of thousands of people (664,000) left the workforce because they have given up hope of finding a job.
- Job estimates from April and March were also revised downward by 59,000.
- These job creation estimates are not even high enough to cover population growth.
- The combination of low job creation and hundreds of thousands leaving the workforce reduced the standard unemployment rate to 4.7%, showing how out of date and out of touch this measure (U3) is today.
- The labor participation rate dropped another .2 percentage points in May and occurred in many different age groups, not just retiring Baby Boomers as the labor participation rate for prime age workers, aged 25 to 34, also dropped .2%.
- The number of Americans employed part time for economic reasons, i.e. they could not find a full time job, jumped up by almost 500,000.
- The only bright spot in May in the face of low job creation, lower labor participation rates, and more people settling for part time work was that wage growth has now risen 2.5% over the past twelve months and continued to grow in May.
2) Adam Kredo, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on June 3, 2016, discussed some dangerous immigration numbers that are being suppressed by the Obama administration:
- Congressman Brian Babin told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is trying to hide information related to 86,000 known criminal illegal immigrants that the administration has released or will release onto the streets of America.
- These 86,000 criminal illegal immigrants have committed at least 231,000 crimes already before they have been released.
- These 231,000 crimes have been committed in just the past two and a half years.
- This comes out to about 250 crimes a DAY on average.
- But this type of behavior is not unexpected from the Obama administration’s Department Of Homeland Security has deported less than 1% of foreigners who illegally overstayed their travel visas in this country despite having their budget increased over the years.
- According to the Congressman, these criminal illegal immigrants are being released into American towns but the authorities in those towns are not being told who is being sent to their towns and cities.
3) Susan Jones, writing for CNS News on June 3, 2016, followed up on the numbers from the latest economic results:
- In May, there was a record 94,708,000 adult Americans not in the labor force.
- This was in increase in 664,000 just one month over April.
- For perspective, consider that 664,000 is larger than the city of Seattle.
- The labor participation rate is at 62.6%, a 38 year low.
- When Obama took office in January, 2009, 80,529,000 were not in the workforce, a number that has grown by 14,179,000 in just seven years despite the view of Obama who says that he has created economic miracles: "By almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the beginning of my presidency. We cut unemployment in half, years before a lot of economists thought we would."
- The U3 unemployment rate has indeed been cut in half but that measure is no longer valid as the number of Americans dropping out of the labor force from discouragement renders it an ineffective measure of economic health.
- The 62.6% labor participation rate in May 2015 compares with 62.8% in April and 63.0% in March.
- The creation of only 38,000 jobs in May beings the three month monthly average of jobs creation down to 116,000 a month.
- This is almost half of the average monthly job creation over the past 12 months which was 219,000.
- African-American workers have an unemployment rate that is about 80% than the national average.
- The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons increased by 468,000 to 6.4 million in May, after showing little movement since November.
- These 6.4 million Americans would have preferred full-time employment but were forced to work part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.
- Outside of healthcare and government jobs, other industries showed minimal job growth or net drop losses.
- As reported above, there was some good news on the wage growth component but people with jobs seeing wage growth does not help the millions of Americans who have no full time job at all.
Different source, same sad economic story of this administration.
4) We have never talked about numbers when it comes to the First lady, Michelle Obama, since she usually stays out of the spotlight relative to numbers. However, it would be remiss of us if we did not point out some numbers that she royally screwed up recently, making one wonder if she ever took a U.S. history test or she has anyone on her staff that can fact check any numbers she puts forth before she embarrasses herself.
She was recently the featured speaker at the National Archives in D.C. when she spoke in front of a gathering of 50 newly naturalized American citizens: “It’s amazing that just a few feet from here where I’m standing are the signatures of the 56 Founders who put their names on a Declaration that changed the course of history, and like the 50 of you, none of them were born American – they became America.”
Hold on their Michelle. Thomas Jefferson, certainly a founding father, was born in Virginia. Jefferson was a chief writer and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Ben Franklin was born in Pennsylvania. John Adams was born in Massachusetts. In reality, only 8 of the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence were NOT born in this country. So not even close, 48 out of 56 were native born vs. the zero who were native born the the First Lady seriously gets wrong.
But we should not be surprised by this misrepresentation of facts and numbers. Her husband does it all the time. As an aside, the First Lady also claimed in her speech that the Constitution was signed in D.C. when it was really signed in Philadelphia. So sad when those pesky facts get in the way of political speech.
Those are the numbers for today. Continued bad economic numbers, continued bad criminal illegal immigrant numbers, and obviously bad and incorrect historical numbers from a former lawyer and Princeton graduate and current First Lady. More by the numbers tomorrow.
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http://www.reason.com
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http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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