June, 2016, Part 1, By The Numbers: More Bad Economic Numbers. Bad Criminal Illegal Immigrant Numbers, and Bad First Lady Numbers

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

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.

In the face of these favorable economic conditions, James Sherk, writing for the Heritage Foundation on June 3, 2016, pointed out how anemic Obama’s economic policies have been, as proven by the numbers:

• 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creation and hundreds of thousands leaving the workforce reduced the standard unemployment rate to 4.7%, showing how out of date and out of touch this measure (U3) is today.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.

Another month and another set of numbers that prove Obama has overseen and managed the weakest economic recovery in a very, very long time, despite the economic tailwinds with listed above.

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.

More endangering of American civilians, e.g. Kate Steinle, while taking better care of criminal illegal immigrants than they deserve. 

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.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Government Gone Wild, Part 3: The Face of Tyranny As Described By Some Very Smart People

We have spent the past few days reviewing the hideous Federal government program that recently came to light which uncovered the fact that the Federal government, and the political class that operates it, have been collecting, analyzing, and storing just about every form of electronic communications possible from just about every American, regardless of whether or not they are a threat to national security. These electronic records include phone calls, emails, Internet activity, etc. and were obtained from secret court orders issued in secret courts and approved by secret judges. Democracy is not served when the word "secret" is used so often to describe government activities.

This is truly the face of tyranny and just another in a recent set of examples of the Obama administration abusing freedom and liberty in this country. Government intrusion and abuse of privacy of citizens and organizations. The silencing of whistle blowers. Using government agents and agencies to silence political opponents and religious freedom. Spying on news organizations and secretly obtaining the phone logs of those news organizations' reporters. Forcing religious organizations to change their religious tenets for political reasons. And then accusing the governed of having a trust problem. Despicable and disgusting.

But possibly we can learn from others, from today and in the past, when it comes to tyranny and how to handle it since tyranny of this scope has never been seen to this degree in this country. This education process starts right now as we quote some very smart people from today and in our past who actually recognized the many faces of tyranny:

1) Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, the Republican author of the Patriot Act, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder saying he is “extremely disturbed” by reports that the NSA collected phone records from Verizon customers – and insists it violates the law: “These reports are deeply concerning and raise questions about whether our constitutional rights are secure.” Again, this is the guy whowrote the Patriot Act and even he is concerned our rights are being trampled by the Obama administration.

2) Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere.” I have heard a few scattered reports that some people applauded the IRS for targeting conservative and Tea Party entities. However, what they fail to realize that endangering the rights of any American citizen makes it easier for today’s and tomorrow’s politicians to violate every citizen’s rights and freedoms.

3) Thomas Jefferson: “When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.” Pretty hard not to fear government when it and its agents have detailed knowledge of your calls, your Internet activity, use its power to suppress your freedom of speech and religion, etc.

4) James Madison: “If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” Sound familiar, we need to spy on every American, trample their rights, in order to win the war on terror.

5) Lysander Spooner: “Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.” Today, perjury comes in the forms of denying Freedom Of Information Act requests and the non-transparency of government activity.

6) Thomas Jefferson: “Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” Sound familiar?

7) Alex Storozynski: “Tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.” Similar sentiment to the  MLK related quote above.

8) C.J. Redwine: “Silent acquiescence in the face of tyranny is no better than outright agreement.”

9) Ben Franklin: ”They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

10) Harry Truman: "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." How better to silence the voice of oppostion than to sic the IRS and NSA after them, to harass them and distract them not because they broke the laws but simply because they had a different political view?

11) Fourth Amendment to the Constitution: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." 

According to Wikipedia, the purpose of the Fourth Amendment was as follows:

The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United Sattes Constitution is the part of the Bill Of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. It was adopted as a response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, which is a type of general search warrant, in the American Revolution. Search and seizure (including arrest) should be limited in scope according to specific information supplied to the issuing court, usually by a law enforcement officer, who has sworn by it.

Sounds like the Obama adminsitration massive secret data colleciotn of telephone records and other electronic communications has Fourth Amendment violations all over it since it is a general search warrant, it is not limited to specific information, it is not supported by probable cause, and the amount and volume of data colelcted of innocent citizens is certainly unreasonable by any measure.

12) Martin Nimbler (German pastor discussing the Nazi tyranny on its own citizens):

“When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.”

I love this last quote because only individual citizens, acting as one to protect everyone’s freedom can defeat tyranny. If you are not conservative, or religious, or a Tea Party supporter, you may not care that the Obama admnistration targeted them for harassment and abuse. If you are not a news reporter, you may not care that the Obama administration harassed and abused news reporters. But standing idly by encourages this type of behavior, making it even more egregious and wide ranging the next time, a time that may impact your beliefs, lives, and families. 

Let this quote and the ones above serve as a guide to defeating what is the creeping tyranny and destruction of our democracy, regardless of which American or group of Americans are being subjected to that tyranny.

Tomorrow we will let you take a Big Brother vs. President Obama quiz to see whether there is any difference between Orwell’s "1984"  Big Brother character and the current actions of this administration. The next day we will propose a plan to defeat this tyranny, restore our freedom, and destroy the political class that has allowed this deterioration of liberty to occur.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w