May, 2016, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Tax Code Idiocy, Gun Control Idiocy, and Other Idiocy

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) Let’s start today’s insanity with some quick hitters. Obama likes to claim that he saved the economy and that every is going great from an economic perspective. We have already proved this point is totally wrong for a number of reasons:

• 45 million Americans still receive Federal government food assistance every month.
• The labor participation rate is at 45 year lows.
• The real unemployment rate is still almost 10%.
• Wages and household income levels have remained stagnant, six years after the recession ended.

And now we have even more damning evidence that Obama has totally mismanaged the economic welfare of this country. According to a recent analysis from the Federal Reserve Board, 47% of Americans would need to borrow money or sell possessions if confronted with an unexpected expense of just $400. In addition, in inflation adjusted terms, middle class American families on average earn 7% less than they did 15 years ago.

Thus, despite spending over $830 billion on a failed economic stimulus program, experiencing the lowest energy costs in decades, and having the benefit of the Fed pumping trillions of dollars into the economy, Obama’s administration and economic policies still could not make it work. As a result, we now have a middle class in America that would find it difficult to replace a busted washing machine, fix a broken car, or cover any other relatively inexpensive and unexpected expense. Insane and so sad.

2) Let’s stay with economic insanity for a bit. As I am writing this, the latest economic conditions, as reported by the government, are not pretty:

• Monthly job growth for April came in at a seven month low.
• Rather than the composite estimate of economists of seeing 202,000 jobs created in April, only 160,000 came about.
• The 160,000 was about 20% lower than the first quarter monthly average of 200,000 per month.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a whopping 94,044,000 Americans are not participating in the labor force, as this measure continues to be near historic highs.
• This increase was an increase of a whopping 562,000 people from March.
• This means that more than three times as many Americans dropped out of the labor force than jobs were created by the economy.
• There were 5,962,000 Americans who had to settle for part time work in April even though they desired full time employment.
• The real unemployment rate, not the one the government uses, was 9.7%, almost double what the official government unemployment rate is, 5.0%.

In other words, the 47% of Americans who cannot outright afford an unexpected $400 expense, did not get much relief from Obama’s economic policies in April, despite the economic stimulus plan, low energy costs and the Fed pumping paper money into the economy.

3) We have often pointed out that the city of Chicago has some of the most stringent gun control laws and rules in the country, if not the most stringent. And yet despite these draconian gun laws, according to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, over 1,000 people in the city have already been shot this year.

This comes out to about 10 people a day taking a bullet in the city. This is the highest gun violence rate since the 1990s. Although much of the shootings involves gang violence against each other, it does show the fallacy of people like Hillary Clinton who seem to think that MORE gun control laws is a good thing and that it would reduce gun violence. 

Anybody with a lick of sense could see from this Chicago reality that gangs will get guns in the face of any kind of gun control that Hillary puts in place and more gun control equals more gun-related woundings and killings. The insanity is that people like Clinton are so stupid in the face of this reality.

4) As a follow up to the filing of Federal income taxes a few weeks ago, consider the insanity from the nation’s income tax processes as reported by the Washington Examiner and the American Action Forum:

• In total, American citizens spent an amazing 11.4 BILLION hours completing all types of government forms every year including tax forms. 
• This comes out to 35 hours per person, or about a week’s worth of working at one’s job on average.
• The Federal government alone interfaces with Americans via 23,000 different forms.
• The Health and Human Services organization alone has more than 5,000 different forms that citizens have to fill out depending on what their needs are.

Imagine how much more productively those 11.4 BILLION hours could be used. People would have more time to volunteer, to interact with their kids, to help their neighbors, to start a business and help grow the economy. Instead, the Jabba The Hutt, oversized government bureaucracy sucks up our time and energy filling out tens of thousands of different forms for government purposes. Please do not try to tell me that government in this country is not too big, anything with 23,000 different options is way too large to be effective and efficient.

5) It is a pretty well known fact that about 47% of the U.S. adult population pay nothing in Federal income taxes. In fact, for millions of Americans, the tax process is a revenue generator for them. We have pointed out why burdening fewer and fewer Americans with more and more taxes to pay for more and more government spending is a real problem:

- The number of Americans who renounce their citizenship every year and move out of the country has been growing steadily over the past few years. You can be sure that these are not the non-taxpaying, low income, low wealth citizens. These are mostly the highest earning, most productive citizens who have gotten so fed up with shouldering such a high tax burden that they are leaving the country, taking their wealth and initiative with them. But now that they have left but the government has not reduced its spending, that void left by the wealthy leaving now has to be passed to the non-wealthy.

-  We have already shown with a real life example of what happens when you raise the tax burden on your wealthiest, most productive citizens at the state level. The state of Maryland did that several years ago when it raised the tax rate on anyone making over a million dollars a year. Just a few years later, they found that the tax revenue they were receiving from millionaires was less than it was prior to raising the tax rate on millionaires. The state’s millionaires did the rational thing, much like those leaving the country altogether, they moved to a less tax heavy state. This left the non-millionaires with a higher tax burden despite a higher tax rate on millionaires.

The bottom line is as politicians put a higher and higher tax burden on fewer and fewer Americans, without cutting spending, the results are never good. This principle recently played out again in the state of New Jersey, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times:

• David Tepper is a very successful and wealthy hedge fund manager.
• Up until recently he lived in New Jersey but has now moved his home and operations to Florida, a state with no state income tax.
• In stark contrast, New Jersey has a top state income tax rate of almost 9%.
• For a person that averaged about $1.5 billion in income a year from 2012 through 2015, Tepper could save about $130 to $140 million a year on average in New Jersey income taxes by moving to Florida.
• But more important, by taxing the wealthy so much, New Jersey loses that same amount of revenue every year, which according to a recent report by Frank Haines III, the New Jersey legislative budget and finance officer, a move by just one citizen like Tepper and “we may be facing an unusual degree of income tax forecast risk,” i.e., the out of state move by a single citizen could have significant negative impact on the whole state budget.
• In Connecticut, Kevin Sullivan, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, said that if just five or six of that state’s citizens follow Tepper to Florida to avoid the high Connecticut income taxes on the wealthy, there would be a “measurable impact on the [state’s] revenue stream.”

As we stated above, if the wealthy move, either out of state or out of the country, the government get’s less tax revenue and if spending is not reduced, than the rest of the state’s residents have to pick up the slack. This is not good or fair tax planning, it is economic suicide over time, higher and higher tax rates result in LOWER tax revenue. 

It is insane when one taxpayer in New jersey or five or six in Connecticut can create a budget crisis by simply moving out of state. The need for tax reform and the slashing of government spending has never been so obvious at the state and Federal level.

That will do it for today’s insanity: idiotic tax rules and regulations, a continuing lousy economy despite the lies of the Obama administration, and the continuing idiocy of gun control advocates as witnessed by the violence and murder rates in Chicago. More insanity 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

July, 2015, Part 1, By The Numbers: Weak Economy, Weak Govenrment Systems Security, Weak Audit Controls, Weak Politicians

On a semi-regular basis we revisit the theme "by the numbers" just to check in on the state of the country and political class using actual realities and their underlying numbers, not the spin or lies from our politicians. You see, politicians usually have nothing to gain by looking at reality and the numbers since they are more than likely to have screwed up reality and our lives in the first place.

That is why they would rather lie and deceive than tell the truth. But that approach can be destroyed by looking at the hard numbers behind the mess they have created. I once worked for a boss whose favorite saying was: "There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the right number.” And that is what we try to do with this theme, devastate politicians’ opinions by looking at the right numbers.

So let’s take a look at the numbers that have recently cropped up and again prove that the political class in America continues to be one of the worst set of people to ever hold office, given the state of the country, the many ways they screw up our wealth and government functions, and their inability or non-desire to step up and tell the truth.

1) Think about how bad the job situation is in America, based on the June employment statistics from the Federal government:

• The June job numbers were not only weaker than expected but the previous two months' job estimates were reduced by 60,000.
• Underneath we see that the number of part time jobs increased substantially, 161,000, but the number of full time jobs dropped by more than twice as much, 350,000.
• 640,000 Americans dropped out of the workforce in just the single month of June.
• A whopping 94 million American adults are now sitting idly outside of the labor force.

Now Obama supporters will point out that this administration has been in power during the past 57 months of consecutive job growth. Impressive….until you realize that:

• While the job growth has been positive for almost six years, the growth is still anemic, barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth has been virtually non-existent for most Americans during that time period, meaning that most Americans lost buying power over those 57 months.
• A very high proportion of those created jobs were part time jobs and in lower wage industries, accounting for much of the stagnant wage growth.
• Having 94 million Americans NOT working or employed, the lowest labor participation rate since the dark days of stagflation during the Carter years, means that this is not a healthy economy.

The numbers do not lie, Washington and the Obama administration do not know how to operate a vibrant, growing economy.

2) In this blog, the TSA, the Social Securriy Administration (SSA) and the EPA constantly stick out and compete for the title of worst performing Federal entity. Just when you think that the TSA is the worst, the SSA screws up royally to move ahead when out of the blue the EPA does something remarkably inept to forge a lead.

That is where we find ourselves today with one unbelievable number from the EPA. According to a recent Inspector General (IG) report, an estimated 90,000 tons of hazardous waste comes into this country every year from foreign countries, but the Environmental Protection Agency often can’t say what or where the dangerous stuff is: “Based on our assessment of data in EPA information systems, the EPA has an incomplete picture of hazardous waste entering the country. This can give rise to undetected and unenforced violations of federal hazardous waste laws, which could result in unknown human and environmental exposure to toxic substances.”

Some toxic waste shipments analyzed by the IG never reached their intended destination, but the EPA couldn’t confirm whether those shipments were lost since the EPA cannot locate those shipments. The EPA officials also weren’t sure about the exact volume of hazardous waste entering the U.S. In some cases, they incorrectly identified where the waste shipment originated.

Inept on all counts, with dozens of tons of toxic waste floating around inside the country somewhere unbeknownst to the EPA.

3) We have previously reported on how the Federal government’s personnel data systems are so inept that Chinese hackers were able to steal the private and confidential information on over 4 million current and past Federal government employees. Such a serious hack is likely to cause massive identity theft issues for Federal employees in addition to exposing Federal employees and their families to blackmail and extortion threats.

But the numbers recently got even worse. It is apparently not 4 million Americans who had their private information stolen but an amazing 21.5 million Americans who got hacked via the inept Federal government. In addition to over 21 million Social Security numbers being stolen, the stolen information included employment history, family information, addresses and information regarding mental health, including drug abuse, on almost 20 million Americans who had submitted to background checks as part of the Federal government job application process. An additional 1.8 million records were those of associates and family members of those applicants. Many of the records stolen included fingerprints, educational history and health information.

As dire as this hack was, the reaction to it was just as bad or worse, according to the numbers. Congressional testimony shows that while the hack began in May, 2014, those responsible for protecting that information did not apply a security fix until an atrocious eight months later.

4) You can always tell when people do not know how to do their jobs, they end up working on trivial stuff that they can handle but which makes no contribution to resolving major issues they are supposed to be resolving. Such is the case with the latest set of numbers. 

Consider what is going on in America today. The economy is weak, 45 million Americans are getting food assistance every month, ISIS is terrorizing the world, our public schools still stink at education, we are still losing the hopeless “war on drugs,” millions of Americans are homeless, our military veterans are dying after not receiving the health care they were promised, etc. 

All of these major issues are going down but over two dozen Congressional members are working to eliminate the words "husband" and "wife" from Federal law. Are you kidding me? Of all the crises, of all the suffering many millions of Americans are experiencing, two dozen politicians want to edit Federal law for two words, according to the bill from Congresswoman Lois Capps: "The Amend the Code for Marriage Equality Act recognizes that the words in our laws have meaning and can continue to reflect prejudice and discrimination even when rendered null by our highest courts. Our values as a country are reflected in our laws. I authored this bill because it is imperative that our federal code reflect the equality of all marriages."

And it is not just one screwball politician doing this, news reports are saying dozens of them have nothing better to do, or are incapable of doing anything constructive, and are working on this garbage. Pathetic priorities.

5) One last set of numbers for this month but these will be in graphic form. As most informed people know, the government Greece is facing a severe financial problem since they have run up so much debt in running their government that the debt load is crushing their financial integrity and economy. Bloomberg recently ran a graph that shows how their debt over time eventually outran their economic ability to support such high debt levels:




As we see, about seven years after the Greek government debt exceeded the annual Greece GDP, the whole economy started to fall apart.

Now look at the U.S. numbers of national debt vs. GDP from the www.zerohedge.com website:



The U.S. GDP level is the blue line and the Federal government debt is the red line. They crossed about a year ago which, if the numbers hold true, by around the year 2021 or so we can expect the U.S,. economy to also implode if we do not heed the Greek numbers and find a way to the out of control Federal government spending and debt under control.

Unfortunately, as we see today, it is very seldom that the numbers created by the Washington political class are good numbers. The economic numbers are weak, the EPA audit numbers are weak, Federal government systems controls are weak, and politicians; priorities are weak, and pathetic. The numbers do not lie even if politicians do: the numbers say we are in a bad way in every way imaginable way due to the incompetence of the American political class.

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

More Presidential Delusions on the Economy

Yesterday we discussed the delusional President we have in the White House right now, the one who recently claimed that he “saved” the U.S. economy besides other making other grandiose and unreal claims to greatness. Today, we want to focus on the economic part of his delusion, namely how his administration’s economic policies have led to the weakest, lamest economic recovery from a recession in at least a hundred years.

Before we get into today's economic discussion, let’s review the top line economic problems this administration created or failed to address in the past six and half years, as we laid them out yesterday:

• Economic growth during his administration after the economy came out of recession status has been at historical lows relative to past recoveries.
• Historic annual economic growth in this country has been over 3% a year but this administration has yet to get even one year over 3%.
• The economic growth after this recession was half as robust as the recovery coming out of the Reagan administration recession.
• There are still about 45 million Americans receiving Federal government food assistance every month, about 50% higher than when Obama took office and years after the recession ended.
• The labor force participation rate is lower than it has been in decades despite the recession having ended five years or so ago.
• The true unemployment rate is much higher than the official unemployment rate as the drop off in labor force participation has caused millions of Americans to stop looking for work as they became too discouraged to even try.
• Wage growth during this recovery has been stagnant if not negative, depending on how it is measured.
• Job creation has been deceptive during this administration since many of the newly created jobs were lower paying, temporary, and part time, all factors which deceptively lowered the official unemployment rate.
• By the time this administration is over, it is likely that the national debt will have grown by 100% or a whopping $10 TRILLION. A debt burden that large has made the country weaker, not stronger, as he asserts in the interview.
• These anemic results have occurred despite a failed $800 billion economic stimulus package, trillions of fake dollars the Federal Reserve pumped into banks and other financial institutions, and an energy revolution that helped increase employment and put downward pressure on energy costs.

Certainly a pretty sad track record of ineptness, made all the worst when the President thinks he did a fantastic job, having heroically saved the economy himself.

But let’s leave these top line disaster and dive down into some of the nitty gritty of his administration’s economic performance, as laid out in a recent article by Mr. Jim Clifton, President and CEO of the Gallup organization. Mr. Clifton does a fabulous job explaining that the economy we have been stuck with under Obama is fundamentally different, in a bad way, than the traditional measures of our economy’s strengths and weaknesses. 

In other words, even though Obama’s supporters point to a much lower unemployment rate than when he came into office, it is really a false sense of accomplishment when you understand what is really going on within the economy, something that Obama and others in Washington either are too ignorant or lazy to understand:

• Mr. Jim Clifton starts his analysis with the following quote and then goes about explaining why our economy is nowhere near as strong as it may appear to be: “The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.”
• While the official unemployment rate is now down to about 5.4%, certainly an improvement over where it was, this is not the good news it may have been in the past.
• If anyone becomes unemployed and then gives up looking for job out of frustration and hopelessness, the Department of Labor doesn't count them as unemployed….even though they are unemployed.
• Given their methodology of computing the unemployment rate, you have to be unemployed AND still looking for a job. Otherwise, you do not exist in the eyes of the government. 
• Consider a basic example. Assume there are 100 people in a population and ten are unemployed but looking for a job while the other ninety have a job. The unemployment rate in the traditional sense is then 10%, the number of unemployed (10) divided by the number of unemployed and employed (100). But assume one of those 10 gets so frustrated not finding a job that they drop out of the group of unemployed people looking for a job. The government now says the unemployment rate is the number of unemployed people still looking for a job (9) divided by the number of unemployed people still looking for a job plus those that have a job (99) yielding an unemployment rate of 9.1%. There are still 10 people without a job but according to the government’s official calculation of unemployment, the rate can go down even though no one found a job.
• That is how you get to a state where there may now be as many as 30 million Americans who either out of work or severely underemployed even though the official unemployment rate has been declining.
• Mr. Clifton gives another example of why a declining official unemployment rate is no longer a good barometer of the economy’s health. Assume a person is an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager. According to the government’s calculation rules, if you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20, say for shoveling the snow out of someone's driveway as an example, you are somehow not officially considered as unemployed even though you are earning far, far below what you would be earning if you had a real job.
• Consider another inane example from Mr. Clifton of how the government works and calculates unemployment. If you have a degree in chemistry, engineering, math, accounting, etc. but are working 10 hours a week part time because that is the only work available to you, making you severely underemployed, the government still considers you fully employed.
• This is why the official unemployment rate keeps coming down but wage levels stay stagnant. People are working at part time jobs or are underemployed relative to their skill set and in both situations are earning less than would have been expected in non-Obama recoveries.
• This leads Mr. Clifton's analysis to the following, depressing conclusion: “The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.”
• Gallup has developed its own unemployment/employment barometer to get a fuller picture of the economy. It defines a “good job” as one that provides at least 30 hours of stable work a week for one company or organization that provides a steady paycheck.
• Under this definition, the Obama economic policies are delivering permanent jobs at a staggeringly low 44% rate, i.e. only 44 out 100 American adults are finding steady, full time work.
• According to Gallup, that rate has to be at least 50% and be on the road to developing 10 million incremental new jobs to restore America’s middle class.

A very insightful and accurate description of why the economy still stinks even though the government and the Obama administration would try to spin reality to show that everything is cool, just look at the drop in the official unemployment rate. As we said yesterday, the U.S. economy always recovers from recessions, it did not need Obama to “save” it. 

The bigger question that we raised yesterday, is how quickly and how strongly we get out of a recession is the bigger challenge, a challenge in which this administration has failed miserably. Just ask the accountant who is shoveling snow or the engineer who is working only ten hours a week.

One final way to view the failed economic policies of the Obama administration. The following graph contains the twenty year view of the official unemployment rate (U3) and the more realistic rate (U6) which takes into account those unemployed Americans who have grown too frustrated to even look for a job. Three conclusions to draw from the graph:

1. The more realistic unemployment rate is still about a whopping 11%, almost double what the official rate is.
2. And remember from the above discussion, that 11% includes people that are shoveling snow for work or working at jobs that are not commensurate with their jobs and profession occupations, i.e. underemployed.
3. And finally, by definition the U3 unemployment rate is always going to be lower than the U6 unemployment rate, the gap between the two has never been larger. Up until a few years ago, the U3 and U6 rates were always between about three and four percentage points different from each other. Under the Obama administration, the gap is rarely, if ever, less than five percentage points different. Thus, the Obama administration policies have negatively bucked the trend line, causing more and more people to drop out of the work force from frustration of not finding a job than ever before.

This graph is from the we site, http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate, where you can drag your mouse across the graph and see the difference between the U3 and U6 lines and where you will see that the gap has grown larger and larger over the past few years.

So we reach the same conclusion we did yesterday but with some deeper data analysis and math. Obama did not “save” the economy. And in fact his insistence on thousands and thousands of more government regulations, the onerous regulations and two dozen or so new taxes from Obama Care, the higher tax rates he has imposed on some Americans, and his crony capitalism has resulted in the worst economic recovery in a very long time. 

That will be part of his legacy no matter how much he tries to convince and delude himself it is not reality.

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

October, 2014, Part 1 - By The Numbers: Economic Fallacies, Deceptions, and Realities

Every month or so we do a regular feature in this blog called “by the numbers.” rather than believe the drivel and spin that the American political class generates to make themselves look better than their actual performance in office, we go beneath the headlines to look at what is really going on by looking at the underlying numbers of our reality.

I once worked for a boss whose favorite saying was: “there is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the proper number.” that is what we do in this numbers series and what we will try to do today.

1) The Federal government recently announced the latest economic numbers and those in the Obama administration were touting the fact that the official unemployment rate, the U3 unemployment rate measure, had finally gotten below 6%. That’s the headlines but what are the underlying numbers and realities:

• The Obama administration promised that unemployment would be down to below 6% by 2012 because of the $800 billion wasted on the economic stimulus package. Thus, even with the failed stimulus spending, we are two years late at reaching the promised goal.
• These awful unemployment rate results were achieved over the past few years despite having spent the stimulus money, had record low interest rates for a record length of time and enjoyed an energy boom, all of which should have led to an economic boom and record low unemployment.
• The labor force participation rate in September slid from an already three decade low 62.8% to 62.7%.
• This is the lowest rate in over 36 years, matching the February 1978 lows. 
• While 232,000 Americans found jobs, the number of citizens that are not in the labor force, rose to a new record high, increasing by 315,000 to 92.6 million.
• At a rate of 232,000 people finding jobs a month, it would still take six years for the current 17 million Americans who are unemployed or part time employed to find a full time job, assuming hat no one with a job today lost it in the next six years.
• A record 55,553,000 women 16 years and older did not participate in the labor force in September, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This means that 55,553,000 women in the United States did not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks.

Thus, despite Obama’s claim that the recovery is taking hold years after the recession ended, there are fewer Americans working today, and fewer women, than when Obama took office. That is not a successful Presidency when you look at the numbers.

2) The Heritage Foundation recently had their economic analysts look at the economic numbers also. Salim Furth, Ph.D., researches and explains how public policy affects economic growth as senior policy analyst in macroeconomics at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. His analysis of the underlying numbers in this economy has found that:

• Median wages are lower than they were when Obama took office and continuing this year despite some growth in the employment numbers.
• Gross domestic product (GDP) is growing but the growth rate number is far less than forecasters expected at the time Obama came into office. 
• The Congressional Budget Office had forecasted that GDP growth would exceed 4% a year from 2011 to 2013. Instead, it struggled to reach even 2%.
• The labor force participation rate among adults between ages 25 and 54 has fallen steadily through the weak Obama recovery, from 82.8% when he took office to 81.1% most recently.
• One reason for the unimpressive employment and economic growth numbers is the reality that all of the new barriers to investment created by this administration and its excessive generation of regulations and laws, every day more businesses are closing their doors than opening them, resulting in a business failure rate is much higher than it used to be.

Mr. Furth’s conclusions: the economy is still very weak and anemic if you look at all of the numbers.

3) James Sherk, also from the Heritage Foundation, finds that while some things in the economy is are improving, there are still major problems in the underling numbers and the realities they represent:

• Despite the drop in the unemployment rate, the government’s payroll survey also reported that average hourly earnings fell $.01 to $24.53 an hour. 
• Over the past year, average hourly earnings have grown just 2 percent–just a half-percentage point faster than inflation. Mr. Sherk concludes that employers apparently see little need to raise real wages to attract employees.
• One of the reasons why the U3 unemployment rate fell below 6% was the reality that, despite 232,000 people finding jobs, 315,000 people dropped out of the search for jobs, artificially lowering the official U3 unemployment rate. 
• The employment-to-population ratio also remained at a flat but low 59.0% rate for the fourth consecutive month, implying that the somewhat improving job growth and unemployment figures in past few months have not translated into an increase in the proportion of Americans with jobs.
• The employment-to-population ratio among 25-54 year olds dropped in September, dropping from 76.8 to 76.7%, showing that the growth in employment rates remains anemic even for Americans in the prime of their working years.

Mr. Sherk’s conclusion: “The labor market has clearly improved this year. But it also remains far weaker than the headline figures suggest. American workers could definitely use a more robust recovery.”

Mix in the following set of numbers on top of the above analyses:

• About 17 million Americans are still unemployed or under employed.
• The number of Americans on government food assistance programs is almost 50% higher than when the recession hit despite years of “economic recovery.”
• The U6 unemployment measure, a more comprehensive and better number for looking at the unemployment picture, is still stuck above 10%, a disgraceful result of a terrible economic recovery. 

The numbers do not lie. The Obama administration and this set of Washington politicians have created and presided over the worst economic recovery in recent history. And they have created these economic numbers despite massive government deficit spending, record low interest rates for a record length of time, and an energy boom.

4) We have often shown how low taxes, low state government debt, and low regulations make for a more vibrant state economy and happier citizens than those states with high taxes, high debt, and high amounts of government regulations. Most recently, we proved these conclusions where we compared so-called “Sinkhole States” with “Sunshine States.”

Paul Bedard, writing for the Washington Examiner on September 30, 2014, looked at another set of numbers to show high taxes, high debt, and high regulation states suffer, along with their citizens, vs., low tax, low debt and low regulation states:

• The Census Bureau recently reported that population growth has shifted to southern states, resulting in the eleven states that make up the Northeast being bled dry of representation in Washington to the tune of 40% fewer members representing those states in Congress since 1950.
• While the states from Pennsylvania to Maine had 141 House members in 1950, they are down to 85 today, a drop of some 40%
• Critics blame rising taxes in northeastern states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut for limiting population growth to just 15% from 1983 to 2013 while the rest of the nation grew more than 41%.
• California and Texas combined have more House Of Representatives than the eleven northeastern states combined.

The American legislative Council concluded: “This result is one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in American history. This migration is shifting the power center of America right before our very eyes. The movement isn’t random or even about weather or resources. Economic freedom is the magnet and states ignore this force at their own peril.” 

In other words, as we have shown many times previously: the numbers prove that low taxes, low debt, low government regulations results in good economic numbers and, in this case, stronger government representation. Maybe if Obama and his economic advisors had looked at these numbers and results, his economic recovery legacy would not be as pathetic as it turned out to be.

Besides the obvious lessons learned today of low taxes, low debt, and minimal government regulations leading to great economic results and numbers, the other important lesson is to not just look at the numbers that the political class want you to see. Step behind the curtain and look for the reality of all the numbers. There you will find the truth of our country’s government and economic health, a truth that politicians usually do not want us to see. More numbers and realities 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The American Political Class - "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:" The Bad, Part 2

This week we are going through a number of posts under the theme of “The Good, The Bad, and The ugly,” stealing a title from an old Clint Eastwood movie. Yesterday, we looked at some of the good things going on in the country. When you write a blog like this, it can get kind of depressing as we watch our political class operate government in such a way that incompetence is rampant and rewarded, taxpayer wealth is abused and wasted, and the politicians in office have neither the will or the ability to truly resolve the major issues facing Americans. They are more intent on personal self-enrichment and staying in office.

Thus, it was good two days ago to get away from the disaster that is the American political class and talk about some good things going on in the country (“The Good“), all being executed and put forth for the betterment of Americans by private citizens doing the right thing. This is opposed to waiting for the politicians to do the wrong thing or do nothing but costing us a lot for their non-productive efforts.

However, today and yesterday we have to dive into the “The Bad” part of our theme. “The Bad” items discussed below are mostly concerned on how Americans feel about the state of the country, the state of their lives, and their attitudes towards the people causing most of the problems in this country, namely the current set of politicians. Never has a set of politicians been so ineffective or so demoralizing to the citizens of Americas, as we review “The Bad” conditions and feelings prevalent in America today, Part 2 ("The Bad," Part 1 can be accessed at; http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-american-political-class-good-bad.html)

5) Despite Washington being dominated by Democrats in charge of the Senate and in control of the White House for the past six years or more, and the constant Democratic rant that non-Democrats are “waging a war on women,” how does a Democrat explain the fact that according to recent analyses by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of women 16 and older not in the labor force climbed to a record high of 55,299,000 in June? 

• This translates into a whopping 55,299,000 women aged 16 and older who not only did not have a job, they did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. That is up 282,000 from the 55,017,000 women who were not in the labor force in May.
• According to BLS, the labor force participation rate for women was 56.8 percent, the lowest it has been this year.
• It has not been this bad for women in about 26 years, not since October, 1988.

Thus, given how much political control the Democrats have had since Obama took office, it appears that they are the ones waging war on women, at least from providing an economic environment that helps American women……and American men, and American minorities, and American kids to have a chance at a decent economic opportunity and a decent economic life.

6) Speaking of young Americans, consider some more bad research results from Pew:

• 51% of the millennial generation believe they will not receive any Social Security benefits at all when they reach retirement. 
• Just 6% of millennials think they will get benefits at the level enjoyed by current retirees.
• 39% believe they will receive benefits but at reduced levels. 
• They are even more pessimistic today than they were when Pew conducted a similar poll in 2011 when Pew found that 42% of millennials said they expected to receive no Social Security payments and 72% said benefits would not be the primary source of their own retirement income. 

These bad and depressingly low numbers and attitudes are not surprising, given how badly the Washington political class has managed the Social Security program in the face of the following realities:

• Within 15 years, the number of Americans reaching retirement age will increase 70% while the number of working Americans will rise by just 6%. 
• When Social Security started in 1935, there were 17 workers for each retiree but by 2035, there will likely be only two workers per retiree. 
• Social Security already accounts for 23% of the Federal budget and the overall program is currently cash flow negative despite the accounting trick that shows the Social Security Trust Fund will not run out until 2042. 
• In 1940, life expectancy after age 65 was about 12 years but today it is 19 years, a driving force behind the coming bankruptcy of the program.

Thus, how depressing do you think it will be for our kids and grandkids, given they have already realized that they are paying their hard earned wealth into a decaying government system, for the benefits of others, that they will receive little, reduced, or absolutely no benefit from? This is another example where taxation has morphed into repression in this country, courtesy of the American political class.

7) One last set of "Bad" data for today, getting too depressing to dive into more than that. The following chart comes from the Against Crony Capitalism website and it puts into a table the increase in the price of products we use everyday, courtesy of David Stockman, a gentleman who used to be Reagan's main budget resource. Of course, an increase in prices means a decrease in buying power for all of us and a hit to our economic freedom:

A very depressing chart, as we see that we have lost substantial buying power across a whole range of things we need for life, from food to transportation to health care to postage stamps. Although not included in the chart, I am positive that if the chart had a line labeled "Wages" that the growth in wages would be far less than most, if not all, of these household items.

And consider something even more depressing, courtesy of the potlicial class. The government and the politicians that operate it want us to think that the cost of living since 2014 has only gone up either 39.09% or 31.65% depending on what measure of CPI or inflation is bieng used. 

Given that food, health care, and transportation costs have gone up far greater than these two "official" inflation numbers, do the politicians really think we are that stupid not to realize they are "cooking the books" when it comes to calculating inflation? Try to name a major household expense that rose less than 30% in the past 14 years and try to see if that expense could overcome a 176% increase in gas, a 106% increase in eggs, a 59% increase in electricity, etc. 

There are not any major categoies of household purchases that could pull down the overall inflation number to what the politicians say it is. Thus, not only does the American political class not know how to facilitate a growing, low inflation  economy, they then cover up the truth with inflation numbers that do not reflect reality and expect us to believe them.

That will do it for "The Bad" part of this week's blog theme. Nasty, depressing stuff we have discussed over the past two days:

• The number of women not in the American work force is at an all time high and trending upwards.
• Younger Americans are beginning to realize that the personal wealth they are paying into the Social Security System for the benefit of others are benefits and wealth they are increasingly not likely to see returned back to them when they retire.
• The cost of products has grown considerabley over the past 14 years, reducing the buying power and economic freedom of most Americans, courtesy of a political class that is as economic ignorant as they come.
• Americans are suffering through a deteriorating crisis in confidence regarding America's greatness and our levels of freedom and liberty.
• The tepid economic recovery from the Greaty Recession has left millions and millions of Americans cash strapped or unemployed or under employed, further contributing to the state of depression hovering over the country.

Things are bad and getting worse so ask yourself: do you really think that the fools in Washington, the very same people that got us into this fix with faulty economic policies and economic ignorance, have any chance of somehow miraculously getting smart and wise in our lifetimes?

Nick Sorrentino, writing for the Against Crony Capitalism website, sums up our situation and depression quite succintly with the following quote: 

This is a trend which began in earnest under Mr. Bush and which then began to snowball under Mr. Obama. And most people don’t even know anything about the NDAA (which Obama signed which allows him to jail US citizens without trial, attorney, or even notification of abduction). They just feel it. They know that the NSA lurks online, somewhere and everywhere. They stand with hands up in the radiation machines at the airport. They witness the increased police checkpoints. They see the president disregard the rule of law to pursue naked political ends. They feel the loss of dignity. People feel the loss of freedom and of their liberty.

This is just the beginning I am afraid. I don’t see Americans feeling more free or that their government is any less corrupt anytime soon.

Still, each and every one one of us has an obligation to reverse this trend. 

Sad but true. And tomorrow it gets worse before it gets better. Tomorrow we go after the "The Ugly" part of the American political class, which is probably even worst than "The Bad" part we have disucssed over the past two days. 

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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w