January, 2017, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Creepy Joe Biden, A Botched Ecomomic Recovery, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us. 

Today and for all of the insanity posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy." 

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) One of the truisms we have always talked about is the reality that government jobs do not incrementally add to the economy. Why? Well, the salaries and the resultant wealth that government workers receive are the result of taking wealth from non-government workers via taxes. If there were no taxes, those tax funds would have been spent in the economy anyway. Now that wealth may been spent differently but having government employees drawing a salary and spending those salary dollars in the economy do not incrementally build a bigger economy.

All of which makes a recent article by Terence P. Jeffrey, writing for the CNS News site on January 6, 2017, very distressing:

• According to the latest government reports, U.S.manufacturing jobs declined by 45,000 positions in 2016 while government jobs increased by 183,000.
• There are now 9,948,000 more government jobs than manufacturing jobs in this country.
• There are currently 12,275,000 manufacturing jobs in this country and a whopping 22,223,000 government jobs in this country.
• So one of the biggest wealth creation segments of the country, manufacturing, is decreasing in size where the biggest non-wealth creation segments of the economy, government workers, is increasing in size, not a go trend.
• This unhealthy economic trend has been going on for quite a while:

• To get a perspective on how bad this trend is, the Bureau of Labor Statistics points out that there are now more government workers in the country today than there EVER were manufacturing jobs.

It is obvious what is happening here. As the number of Americans employed as government workers increases over time and the number of Americans employed in non-government jobs grows less quickly or actually decreases like the manufacturing sector, the economy starts to fold in ionto tself as fewer and fewer wealth generators have to support more and more non-wealth generators (government employees.) 

This trend is also feeding the ever increasing national debt, currently at about an atrocious $20 TRILLION. With fewer and fewer jobs creating new wealth, there are less taxes available to keep the debt load under control. And while this trend has been going on for while, the Obama Presidency did nothing to stop it, adding tons of employees to the Federal payroll, employees that have to be paid because non-government workers have to pay an ever increasing amount of taxes.

2) A lot of non-Trump supporters were turned off by his statements that denigrated women. Fair enough, but if you are a Democrat and liberal you cannot convince me that Joe Biden is not just as bad or creepy when it comes to women, as evidenced by the following video montage:

http://rightalertspolls.com/sick-look-what-joe-biden-did-to-gop-senators-wife-on-senate-floor/

Creepy is too mild a word to address this politician’s actions as it relates to women. Icky and insane.

3) We have another update on the gun violence in Chicago, our third update this week. The previous updates covered the carnage that occurred over the Christmas and New Year’s weekends. Many killed, dozens wounded as Chicago wrapped up a year in which over 700 citizens were killed and over 4,000 were wounded as a result of gang related violence, despite living in a city with likely the most stringent gun control laws in the country.

Unfortunately, the first week in 2017 brought no relief to the citizens of Chicago, as explained in a recent Breitbart article:

• In the first four days of 2017, 54 people in Chicago had already been shot.
• Seven of those 54 shot had died.
• At this daily rate, over 600 people will die from gun violence in 2017.
• And these shootings do not take place only under the cover of darkness since16 year old and 17 year old boys were shot around noon.

And still no politician, local, state, or Federal has any clue on how to fix this insanity and start protecting the citizens of Chicago.

4) One last piece of insanity for today, something we have covered many times already in this blog but it cannot be said enough, the failure of Obama’s economic strategies and policies over the past eight years. Granted, Obama did inherit an economy in very sad shape. 

But it was not the first time that an incoming President had to deal with a bad economy. When Reagan took office, he was dealing with a very bad economy, one that was saddled with both high unemployment and high inflation (stagflation), an economic situation that economists had previously felt was impossible.

But Reagan dealt with it, much like every other President dealt with thewir recession, and their recoveries were robust and strong. And the same should have happened with Obama, a strong and robust economy, since he had three strong economic tailwinds that other President did not have: 

1. Obama implemented a (failed), $800 billion massive economic stimulus plan that he claimed would keep unemployment below 8% (it did not, unemployment sailed to over 10%).
2. The country enjoyed a surprise and substantial dip in energy prices that should have pumped billions and billions of dollars into the economy, spiking it significantly.
3. The Federal Reserve flooded the economy with trillions of dollars that should have spurred economic growth.

Despite these strong tailwinds, somehow Obama managed meager economic growth with stagnant wages and incomes, as summarized in a recent article from Investors Business Daily:

• A recent jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the economy added 156,000 new jobs in December and the outdated but still official U3 unemployment rate dropped to 4.7%, somewhat good news on both fronts.
• This was the 75th straight month of job growth, also good news.
• But not good enough if you look under the hood of the economy.
• In 2016, the Obama recovery created 2 million jobs but the working age population increased by 2.8 million in the same time frame so the Obama economic policies could not even keep up with the growth of the population, not even close.
• But this should not be a surprise since the Obama recovery has averaged 2.2 million jobs a year while the increase in the country’s working age population has averaged 2.5 million new potential workers a year.
• Thus, unlike just about every previous President’s economic recoveries, Obama could not even keep up with normal population growth despite the unique tailwinds we listed above.
• And the really bad news is that this gap between population growth and job creation growth has gotten WIDER over time, not better.
• The only reason why the “official” unemployment rate is low is that a whopping 14 million working age Americans have given up looking for work, dropping them out of the U3 unemployment rate calculation.
• This reduced labor participation rate from 65.7% when Obama took office in the midst of the recession to an almost historical low of 62.7% six years into his recovery, a previously unheard of possibility.
• If these discouraged 14 million workers were taken into account in the unemployment rate calculation like the U6 rate does, then the true unemployment rate in America is close to 9%, hardly a level of a healthy economy.
• While some of the 14 million are Baby Boomer retirements, that does not account for a majority of the discouraged workers, especially when you consider the reality that there is a higher percentage of senior citizens in the labor force today than ever before.
• The article summarizes the poor economic policy results of Obama as follows: “The lackluster growth since 2010 explains a lot of things. It explains why incomes have been largely stagnant. It explains why so many people jumped onto the Social Security Disability Insurance program. It explains why the public has been so pessimistic about the economy. And it explains why the working class largely abandoned Obama and his chosen successor in November in favor of Donald Trump.”

So many reasons (economic stimulus spending, low energy prices, Federal Reserve actions) why the economic recovery should have been excellent but was so badly botched by an administration that raised taxes, added tens of thousands of regulations to the economic via Obama Care, Dodd-Frank, and a myriad of other avenues, doubled the national debt, and allowed government bureaucracies and employment to grow without the resulting societal benefit. Insane.

That will do it for today’s insanity: a botched economic recovery, more Chicago violence, a creepy Joe Biden, and out of control government growth. 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Retro 6, Part 6, The Obama Presidency, The End Of An Error - Gross Economic Mismanagement

We originally ran this post back in October at around the 100 day mark of the final days of the Obama Presidency. We ended up running about seven blog posts which did a deep dive into the activities, acomplishmentsand failures of this Presidency. We found very little in the way of accomplishments but dozens and dozens of cases of falures and disasters, from the economy to foreign affairs to the basic concept of integrity. We are going to rerun those post over the next week or so as we close in on an end of an error, the Obama Presidency. 

Part 6, The Obama Presidency, The End Of An Error - Gross Economic Mismanagement

As we near the end of the Obama Presidency, I thought it would be a good idea at the 100 day mark to review what he has done to and for this country over the past eight years. Before we do that, though, let me repeat my previous background statements on my past political actions:

• I have never voted for a Republican Presidential candidate in my life and I have been voting since the the Nixon era.
• Until 2010, I have never voted for a Republican for national office in my life. 
• I am not affiliated with nor do I associate myself with the Republican Party, conservatives or people like Donald Trump. 

Okay, now that we understand where I am coming from, let me just say that in my opinion Barack Obama has been the most inept, most divisive, most narcissist and worst diplomat in my lifetime to reside in the White House. From the economy, to race relations, to the national debt, to foreign relations to government operations, to blatant disregard for existing laws and the Constitution, in just about any measure we are far worse off as a nation than prior to him coming into office.

Today, we will focus on the total mismanagement of the economy by the Obama administration. Now, I bet that many Obama supporters will try to point out what a fine job that Obama did in the economic realm over his Presidency, that:

• He has gotten the U3 unemployment rate down to about 5%. 
• He has presided over an economic recovery that is one of the longest ever. 
• He has seen steady, if low, job growth over the past six years. 
• He came into office with a nation suffering from a deep recession. 

But he had the following economic tailwinds to help the recovery, tailwinds that no other recession President ever enjoyed:

• Obama spent over $800 billion on a (failed) economic stimulus plan. 
• He enjoyed record low energy prices during his term that should have significantly spurred consumer and business economic growth, employment, and activity. 
• He had the support of trillions of fake dollars that the Federal Reserve pumped into the economy. 
• The Federal Reserve kept interest rates at low, low levels for a record long time.

Despite these unprecedented tailwinds, he still managed to botch the recovery since:

Over 43 million Americans still require Federal food assistance every month, 13 million more Americans than who were on food assistance rolls when Obama took office despite six years of the Obama economic recovery.

Growth in household incomes and wages has been basically stagnant during most of the Obama economic recovery period.

Job growth during the Obama economic recovery period has been concentrated in low wage areas of the economy, e.g. food services and retailing, which is a major factor in the lack of household income and wage growth.

According to a recent Gallup poll and a different analysis by the Federal Reserve Board, over 40% of U.S. households could not easily cope with an unexpected $400 household expense.

According to a recent Chapman University survey, more than a third of U.S. households have no savings to speak off despite six years of Obama’s economic recovery.

More Americans over the age of 65 than ever have elected to stay in the workforce, possibly because they have not yet recovered from the recession, six years into the Obama recovery period.

More American millennials than ever are still living at home since many of them cannot find a job that enables them enough wage power to live on their own.

The labor participation rate is at a forty year low as Americans cannot find a suitable full time job, causing many of them to drop out of the workforce.

There are more than 94 million American adults who are not in the workforce, an all time record.

More than six million Americans are working at part time jobs because they cannot find suitable full time jobs.

A more suitable measure of unemployment, the U6 unemployment rate, which more realistically takes into account frustrated Americans who have dropped out of the workforce is almost 10%, double the now outdated U3 unemployment rate.

Annual GDP growth never came close to the long term average during this recovery, with the Obama recovery never attaining at least a 3% annual GDP economic growth rate in any single year, an unprecedented, lower than average performance relative to historical trends.

The Obama administration has doubled the national debt load from $10 trillion to about $20 trillion during its tenure, adding more debt than all previous Presidencies COMBINED, a debt load that will restrict robust economic growth into the future.

The Obama administration has done nothing to reduce the long term growth in the national debt, which will place incredible economic pressure and strains on future American workers, businesses, and households.

The Obama administration has raised the key economic measure, national debt to GDP ratio, to over 1.00, a historically and dangerously high level, making the country’s debt load dangerously high and comparable to Greece’s.

The Obama administration spent over $800 billion on a failed economic stimulus program, that did nothing to promote long term economic growth (e.g. no substantial infrastructure was put in place despite the infamous “shovel ready jobs” slogan.)

The Obama administration implemented a series of inane, ill fated and amateurish economic programs that failed miserably including Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, and Cash For Insulation.

The Obama administration’s economic policies have done nothing to improve the employment plight of minorities despite being the first African-American President.

The Obama administration gave away billions and billions of dollars to a multitude of alternative energy companies, most of which had political and fundraising relationships with Obama, and almost all of them went bankrupt with no societal benefits in return.

The Obama administration added thousands and thousands of new Federal government regulations which wasted business and business owners' time and effort, distracting them from growing their business and overall economic growth, and placed bureaucratic, taxation, and legal burdens on businesses and industries across the nation while simultaneously raising the cost of doing business in America, costs that could have better been used to grow businesses and the economy.

The Obama Care regulations forced employers to reduce many of their employees to part time status which has greatly contributed to the stagnation of household income growth and forced those business owners to waste time, effort, and resources complying with the burdensome Obama Care bureaucracy and regulations.

Horrible, horrible economic management despite the four major tailwinds we listed above. So yes, Obama did get the outdated U3 unemployment rate down to about 5% but that accomplishment was attained with low wage jobs and in the face of millions of Americans dropping out of the workforce from frustration. 

Yes, he did preside over one of the longest economic recoveries of all time but he did it by doubling the national debt and generated far less economic growth than most other economic recoveries that were shorter in duration.

And yes, he did come into office in the midst of a recession but so did other Presidents, almost all of whom managed the country out of the recession into far more robust recoveries.

Overall, very forgettable economic strategies and management despite incredible conditions that should have had the economy soaring. More failures 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:


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

Part 6, The Obama Presidency, The End Of An Error - Gross Economic Mismanagement

As we near the end of the Obama Presidency, I thought it would be a good idea at the 100 day mark to review what he has done to and for this country over the past eight years. Before we do that, though, let me repeat my previous background statements on my past political actions:

• I have never voted for a Republican Presidential candidate in my life and I have been voting since the the Nixon era.
• Until 2010, I have never voted for a Republican for national office in my life. 
• I am not affiliated with nor do I associate myself with the Republican Party, conservatives or people like Donald Trump. 

Okay, now that we understand where I am coming from, let me just say that in my opinion Barack Obama has been the most inept, most divisive, most narcissist and worst diplomat in my lifetime to reside in the White House. From the economy, to race relations, to the national debt, to foreign relations to government operations, to blatant disregard for existing laws and the Constitution, in just about any measure we are far worse off as a nation than prior to him coming into office.

We will breaking down the failures and disappointments of this administration into some broad categories that will take us a number of days to cover as we analyze “The Obama Presidency - The End Of An Error.” Over the past few days we have touched on a number of broad categories of Obama’s failures:

• Broken Promises and Lies - XXXXX
• YYYY
• ZZZZZ
• XXXXXX

Today, we will focus on the total mismanagement of the economy by the Obama administration. Now, I bet that many Obama supporters will try to point out what a fine job that Obama did in the economic realm over his Presidency, that:

• He has gotten the U3 unemployment rate down to about 5%. 
• He has presided over an economic recovery that is one of the longest ever. 
• He has seen steady, if low, job growth over the past six years. 
• He came into office with a nation suffering from a deep recession. 

But he had the following economic tailwinds to help the recovery, tailwinds that no other recession President ever enjoyed:

• Obama spent over $800 billion on a (failed) economic stimulus plan. 
• He enjoyed record low energy prices during his term that should have significantly spurred consumer and business economic growth, employment, and activity. 
• He had the support of trillions of fake dollars that the Federal Reserve pumped into the economy. 
• The Federal Reserve kept interest rates at low, low levels.

Despite these unprecedented tailwinds, he still managed to botch the recovery since:

Over 43 million Americans still require Federal food assistance every month, 13 million more Americans than who were on food assistance rolls when Obama took office despite six years of the Obama economic recovery.

Growth in household incomes and wages has been basically stagnant during most of the Obama economic recovery period.

Job growth during the Obama economic recovery period has been concentrated in low wage areas of the economy, e.g. food services and retailing, which is a major factor in the lack of household income and wage growth.

According to a recent Gallup poll and a different analysis by the Federal Reserve Board, over 40% of U.S. households could not easily cope with an unexpected $400 household expense.

According to a recent Chapman University survey, more than a third of U.S. households have no savings to speak off despite six years of Obama’s economic recovery.

More Americans over the age of 65 than ever have elected to stay in the workforce, possibly because they have not yet recovered from the recession, six years into the Obama recovery period.

More American millennials than ever are still living at home since many of them cannot find a job that enables them enough wage power to live on their own.

The labor participation rate is at a forty year low as Americans cannot find a suitable full time job, causing many of them to drop out of the workforce.

There are more than 94 million American adults who are not in the workforce, an all time record.

More than six million Americans are working at part time jobs because they cannot find suitable full time jobs.

A more suitable measure of unemployment, the U6 unemployment rate, which more realistically takes into account frustrated Americans who have dropped out of the workforce is almost 10%, double the now outdated U3 unemployment rate.

Annual GDP growth never came close to the long term average during this recovery, with the Obama recovery never attaining at least a 3% annual GDP economic growth rate in any single year, an unprecedented, lower than average performance relative to historical trends.

The Obama administration has doubled the national debt load from $10 trillion to about $20 trillion during its tenure, adding more debt than all previous Presidencies COMBINED, a debt load that will restrict robust economic growth into the future.

The Obama administration has done nothing to reduce the long term growth in the national debt, which will place incredible economic pressure and strains on future American workers, businesses, and households.

The Obama administration has raised the key economic measure, national debt to GDP ratio, to over 1.00, a historically and dangerously high level, making the country’s debt load dangerously high and comparable to Greece’s.

The Obama administration spent over $800 billion on a failed economic stimulus program, that did nothing to promote long term economic growth (e.g. no substantial infrastructure was put in place despite the infamous “shovel ready jobs” slogan.)

The Obama administration implemented a series of inane, ill fated and amateurish economic programs that failed miserably including Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, and Cash For Insulation.

The Obama administration’s economic policies have done nothing to improve the employment plight of minorities despite being the first African-American President.

The Obama administration gave away billions and billions of dollars to a multitude of alternative energy companies, most of which had political and fundraising relationships with Obama, and almost all of them went bankrupt with no societal benefits in return.

The Obama administration added thousands and thousands of new Federal government regulations which wasted business and business owners' time and effort, distracting them from growing their business and overall economic growth, and placed bureaucratic, taxation, and legal burdens on businesses and industries across the nation while simultaneously raising the cost of doing business in America, costs that could have better been used to grow businesses and the economy.

The Obama Care regulations forced employers to reduce many of their employees to part time status which has greatly contributed to the stagnation of household income growth and forced those business owners to waste time, effort, and resources complying with the burdensome Obama Care bureaucracy and regulations.

Horrible, horrible economic management despite the four major tailwinds we listed above. So yes, Obama did get the outdated U3 unemployment rate down to about 5% but that accomplishment was attained with low wage jobs and in the face of millions of Americans dropping out of the workforce from frustration. 

Yes, he did preside over one of the longest economic recoveries of all time but he did it by doubling the national debt and generated far less economic growth than most other economic recoveries that were shorter in duration.

And yes, he did come into office in the midst of a recession but so did other Presidents, almost all of whom managed the country out of the recession into far more robust recoveries.

Overall, very forgettable economic strategies and management despite incredible conditions that should have had the economy soaring. More failures 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:


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

How Badly Did Washington/Obama Butcher The Economic Recovery?

We have often pointed out that Obama’s economic policies, strategies, tactics and results have generally been very anemic. Overall economic growth has been historically tepid, food assistance rolls have stayed way too high, the labor participation rate is at 45 year lows resulting in a real unemployment rate that is closer to 10% than 5%, and wager and household income growth has been stagnant. He doubled the overall national Federal government debt with little to show in return for this wasteful spending. He achieved these horrid economic results despite the following tail winds:

1. He implemented a failed $830 billion economic stimulus program.
2. He had the advantage of record low energy prices for a long period of time.
3. The Federal Reserve pumped up the economy by flooding the market with trillions of fake dollars.

Shows how really bad your economic management skills are when you cannot boost the economy to any great degree with these factors working in your favor.

Rather than referring back to our past writings about the economy, let me summarize some economic analyses that was recently published on the NewsMax website where writer Andrew Schrage did some research and found “10 Reasons The Economy Isn’t As Good As It Seems.” We have touched on some of these areas previously but let’s review everything that Mr. Schrage found:

1) Labor Participation Rate - This important labor measurement has been declining throughout the Obama Presidency despite the end of the recession. This measure tracks the proportion of employed or unemployed (actively seeking work) individuals against the total population of working-age, non-disabled people. According to the Federal Reserve, the labor force participation rate has declined from a long-term high of 67.3% in early 2000 to 62.8% in July 2016. This is lower than at any point since the late 1970s when the country was stuck in Jimmy Carter’s stagflation years.

While some of the drop in labor force participation is because some Baby Boomers are retiring voluntarily, much of the drop is a result a sluggish recovery. People have gotten so discouraged after losing their jobs to the recession and other factors that they stop looking for work and drop out of the workforce. Thus, we now have a record number of adults in this country that are not working and not contributing to the economy or society.

This in turn makes most people misread the traditional unemployment rate, the so-called U3 rate. This measure does not take discouraged workers into consideration and thus underestimates the real unemployment rate. Since these discouraged workers are still unemployed, even if they have stopped looking for work, the better measure of unemployment in this environment is the U6 rate which takes into account these discouraged workers. And the U6 rate is still at a very depressing and disappointing level that is closer to 10% than the 5% or so of the U3 rate.

2) Under Employment - One of the other problems with the U3 unemployment measure is that it does not capture the people that want a full time job but have to settle for a part time job. That reduces the U3 unemployment rate but masks the reality that the job market is unable to generate enough full time, robust jobs for those that want one, forcing them to settle for part time work, and reduced take home pay, only.

3) While more people have found jobs since the recession ended, both part time and fulltime positions, the proportion of workers who have been without a job for 27 consecutive weeks or longer, the definition of long term unemployment, has been stuck well above the long term average. The long term unemployment rate is now still higher than at any point between 1994 and 2007, through both good and bad economic times.

This presents a long term problem since many of the long term unemployed cannot get a job now because they have been unemployed for so long and hiring managers and hiring companies tend to avoid potential hirees that have been out of work for so long. This makes the long term unemployed even longer term unemployed. And as a person spends more and more time unemployed they eventually give up looking for a job which further depresses the labor participation rate discussed above.

All of this results in an economy that is losing the opportunity to hire motivated and skilled workers that would help boost economic growth and make for more fulfilling lives. But not much of that is happening under the economic policies of this administration.

4) Stagnant wages and incomes - Probably one of the most depressing aspects of this so-called recovery is that on average, Americans are not moving up and earning more money over time. Wages and household incomes have been mostly stagnant since this recovery started, a highly unusual trait of a recovery, especially coming off a recession that was so bad.

Even Politifact, a well known liberal and Democratic Party leaning organization, supports this assertion, claiming that inflation adjusted median weekly earnings fell by about 1% from 2009 and 2015, the time after the recession ended. In addition, Politifact found that median household earnings, adjusted for inflation, fell 4% over that same time frame. Americans are working just as hard and getting less buying power for their efforts.

5) Rising poverty levels and government assistance levels - The Census Bureau estimated that the country’s poverty level rose by more than a full percentage point after the recession ended in 2009 through the middle of 2014. Historically, one usually does not see a rise in poverty rates as an economic recovery takes hold.

Similarly, the U.S.Department of Agriculture found that the number of Americans needing food assistance every month rose by 39% from 2009 when the recession ended to 2014, five years into the recovery, or so-called recovery.

6) Collapsing oil and commodity prices - while many people and industries got a positive nudge from lower prices for oil, gas, and other commodity prices, other workers and industries got walloped when energy prices suddenly collapsed. Oil and fracking companies laid off relatively high paid workers when the price of crude oil dropped from near $100 a barrel down below $40 a barrel. Less revenue meant less employees needed and that negative impact rippled through the economy, especially in the high energy producing states in the midwest. 

Adding insult to injury, unexpectedly these job losses were not totally offset by increased hiring in other industries since the additional money in consumers and businesses pockets as a result of lower energy costs only partly made its way back into the economy. 

7) Weak retail sales - Continuing on the last sentence of consumers keeping their money in their pockets, according to Trading Economics, U.S. retail sales growth since the collapse of oil prices has been very tepid. In the past when, oil prices dropped, retail sales surged. For whatever reason, consumer spending, which accounts for about two thirds of the U.S. economy, has been very conservative leading to anemic overall economic growth.

8) Strong U.S. dollar - I call this the “queen of the pigs” theory. While our economic activity has been pretty bad, the economic activity in the rest of the world has been far worse. As a result, we are relatively strong compared to the rest of the world which has made the U.S. dollar’s value rise against other currencies. This makes our exports more expensive and less attractive which hurts our domestic manufacturers and depresses our economic growth.

For example, about two years ago, one euro was worth about $1.40 but now that exchange is down to about $1.10. This makes traveling around the world for U.S. tourists very cheap but does little for our domestic economy.

9) More queen of the pigs talk - Russia and Brazil are in recession, the entire Eurozone is growing just over 1% a year, Canada is being hit hard with low oil prices, and Chinese growth has dropped considerably from the the sky high rates it had been enjoying over the past decade. All of this results in less demand for U.S. goods and services.

10)  Global politics and security - What happens around the world today quickly and directly can impact the U.S. economy. The Ebola outbreak in 2014 slammed U.S. airline stocks. Terrorist attacks shake confidence and reduce tourism and consumer spending. And with the growth and power of ISIS and the worldwide refugee crisis, uncertainty, never a friend of economic growth, is still high.

Here are several other economic factors and realities, that the article did not cover, which should give one pause:

• We are well past the average time between recession and recovery so the likelihood of the next recession, which will happen if history is any indicator, is past due.
• The Federal Reserve has allowed interest rates to stay at historic lows so that if a new recession rises up the Fed has little left in its toolbox to fight that new recession.
• Several govenrment and private surveys have found that over 40% of U.S.households do not think they could afford an unexpected $500 out of pocket expense (e.g. a car repair, a new appliance, etc.) without suffering some financial hardship.
• More people in their 60s continue to work than ever before on a percentage basis, indicating they are feeling uncomfortable about retiring and feel the need to continue to work.
• More people in their 20s are living at home on a percentage basis than ever before, indicating that they cannot find a job that they feel would justify moving out and living on their own. By not forming new households at the historic rate and staying home, the economy suffers.
• Mr. Schrage points out that “57% of respondents in a 2014 NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll falsely believed that the United States remained in recession,” despite being five years officially out of the recession.This lack of confidence results in reduced spending and investment and anemic economic growth.
• The Obama administration has added thousands and thousands of new regulations on business which will continue to be an economic drag for years to come.

And through all of this, Obama continues to publicly claim he saved the economy from destruction and all is well. But even liberal friendly Politifact cannot save him from this delusion: “According to Politifact, falling unemployment, consistent job growth, and rising per-capita gross domestic product fail to offset a host of less-rosy metrics indicating that the economy is actively deteriorating on many fronts, such as historically low labor force participation and high long-term unemployment rates.”

And this was accomplished with the three strong tailwinds we listed above which makes these poor economic results even worst on a relative basis. All of which reinforces our long standing assertion that we are being served by the worst set of politicians ever to serve this country from an economic, foreign affairs, and morality perspective. 

Maybe we can do something about that in November because keeping the same tired people with their same tired ideas in power does not seem to be working.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2016, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: Unsustainable Federal Debt, Unprotected LA Citizens, Obama Plays The Blame Game (Again!) and More

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.

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.

So let’s get started with the latest insanity:

1) This topic is from a few years ago but it is a good example of how today’s politicians are in it for themselves and not for the good of Americans. We have already discussed many instances how politicians ensure they get paid first when it comes to taxpayer wealth. 

Today’s greed comes from the California Political Review website in an article that was published on April 26, 2013 by Katy Grimes. Ms. Grimes wrote that U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband had been awarded a California railroad track contract:

• Her husband, Richard Blum, won the first phase construction contract for California’s high speed rail line.
• The winning bid for the construction was almost a billion dollars which comes out to a mere [sarcasm]  $35 million per mile of track that is to be laid between the not so mega-cities of Madera and Fresno.
• A billion dollar contract that goes to a U.S. Senator’s husband. Just a coincidence? If I had to bet, I would bet that it was not a coincidence, given the widespread corruption that exists within the political class today, corruption we report on every month. 

But there is also a bigger issue. The politicians in California want to build a high speed rail line along the length of most of the state. The first leg between two very small cities is coming in on an initial bid of a whopping $35 million per mile. Since no government infrastructure project has ever come in at or under budget, that $35 million cost per mile is likely to go much higher. 

And what is the cost going to be when they try to build a rail line in much more populated areas like LA? The costs are going to go through the roof. I will predict today that this endeavor will never make enough money to pay back a cost that is starting at $35 million per mile and future California taxpayers are going to be paying for this idiotic idea for generations.

2) We have often discussed the reality that the economic recovery from the last recession, as led by President Obama, has been the weakest economic recovery that the country has seen in a very, very long time. Despite spending (and wasting) over $800 billion on a so-called economic stimulus program, record low fuel costs for consumers and businesses, and trillions of fake dollars that the Federal Reserve pumped into the economy, the Obama recovery has been stained with the following realities:

• 45 million Americans still rely on the Federal government for food assistance every month.
• 14 million Americans are either unemployed or underemployed since they still cannot find full time jobs years after the end of the recession.
• Wages and household incomes have flatlined over the years since the recession ended.
• Newly created jobs have tended to be in low paying industries.
• The labor participation rate is at decades long lows, bouncing around at the same levels we suffered through during the Carter administration’s stagflation years.
• The true unemployment rate, the U-6 rate, is still almost 10%.

Not a pretty picture from an economic perspective despite the tailwinds of the stimulus, low energy costs, and trillions of Fed paper dollars. Increased taxes, thousands of new Federal government regulations, politicians’ economic ignorance, and the doubt that all of this injected into the economy has left us with a pathetic economic recovery.

And now for the real insanity: given that the entire recovery was run by and occurred during the Obama administration, a time when the Democrats controlled the entire Congress for the first two years of his administration and controlled the Senate for the first six years of his administration, whose fault is this anemic recovery? According to Obama and his recent comments, it is essentially Bush’s fault that the recovery has been so bad despite the fact that Bush left office in early 2009.

Yes, Obama still cannot admit that he screwed anything up, it is always someone else’s fault that he failed to deliver on his promises and duties. The reason why the latest jobs report was so tepid is that there is a lingering “hangover” from the recession in 2008 (eight years ago), a recession that ended well over six years ago. Thus, the reason that the economic recovery that he oversaw and managed and spent lavishly on has been so pathetic is because of what Bush left him with seven years ago. 

As we have said many times with this President, he fails to be a leader since a leader takes blame when things go bad and hands out credit when things go well. This President has not taken the blame for anything but is quick to jump into the spotlight when things go good. 

Note: for those of you that blame Bush for the recession, please refer to the following post where we explain that the seeds of the last recession were planted way back in the Carter administration (a Democrat) and cultivated by the Clinton administration (a Democrat):

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/who-really-caused-great-recession-part.html

3) A recent Washington Examiner article by Anna Giaritelli on February 4, 2016 reported on another Obama administration failure, this one in the area of criminal illegal immigrants. A Senate subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest recently issued a report that estimated the number of fugitive criminal illegal immigrants in this country is larger than the total number of people living in New Hampshire’s largest city.

There are an estimated 170,000 illegal immigrants in this country who have been arrested on various criminal charges but who have been let go into the public domain rather than deported. This number is larger than the population of Manchester, New Hampshire, the state which hosted the second primary event of the Presidential campaign. Only 110,000 people live in Manchester. 

The 170,000 criminal illegal immigrants is also larger than the population of 26 U.S. state capital cities. The 170,000 is also larger than the populations of such well known U.S. cities as Chattanooga, Tennessee, Vancouver,Washington, Salem, Oregon, and Kansas City, Kansas. In other words, the Federal government has released a lot of criminals onto the streets of America, criminals that should not even be in this country to begin with.

But it gets worse. The Obama administration reported that in 2015, its immigration function detained 63,539 criminal illegal immigrants, only about one third of the number of criminal illegal immigrants it released back into society. Thus, for every criminal the administration took off the streets of America last year, it put three more back onto the streets. In no universe can this be considered anything but an insane failure of the political class and the government it operates. 

4) Pete Kasperowicz, writing for the Washington Examiner on February 4, 2016, explained how really bad the national debt situation is, as reported by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in a recent Congressional hearing. This is particularly important seeing how the debt level recently exceeded a devastating $19 TRILLION. This comes ot to about a $160,000 debt burden for every U.S. family in the country, a burden that goes up every moment of every day.

The head of the CBO, Director Keith Hall, told Congress recently that the national debt trajectory cannot be sustained. Even an improving economy could not reverse the dire consequences that will occur unless that trajectory is curtailed by government spending cuts. Testifying in front of the House Budget Committee he said: "[Economic] Growth will help,” but “We're so far behind, it's hard to imagine that just growth is going to fix this deficit and debt problem."

The CBO is estimating that another whopping $9.4 TRILLION in national debt will be incurred in just the next ten years under current trends, about another $80,000 for every U.S. household. So much debt will make it hard for the Federal government to convince other countries and individuals to invest in U.S. bonds to finance the government operations and the debt it has incurred. This will require the Federal government to increase the interest rate it pays, further increasing the debt.

Director Hall went on to say that: "Over [the] next 10 years, we could see debt go from 74 percent of [gross domestic product] to 86 percent, then eventually to 155 percent over 30 years, which is a really high number." Yes, that is a really big number that makes our financial situation look like Greece and other countries that have spent their countries into a huge debt hole.

Hall also went on to explain how the Obama administration’s idiotic position that since the annual deficits are down to “only” about half a trillion dollars a year, life is good. First of all, half a trillion a year is more than any annual deficit incurred by any previous administration and second, the CBO is quick to point out that under the current spending scenarios, the debt will soon start climbing again and quickly get to a trillion dollars a year.

When pressed by Congressional members on what are the big drivers of this unsustainable debt, Hall replied: "The big growth in the deficit is from Social Security and spending on major healthcare programs. Those are the two big-ticket items that are creating this problem going forward." I am assuming that the medical programs he is referring to are Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama Care. 

Obviously, the Obama administration in its first seven years has come up with no effective ways of curtailing the out of control spending in these programs. In fact, I do not believe the adminsitration has come up with any programs at all including ineffective ones. But it certainly did add to the problem with the expensive and almost useless Obama Care legislation.

Great insanity today:

• The Washington political class continues to spend and indebt us to a future of financial insolvency unless radical spending cuts occur.
• The Obama administration releases three illegal immigrant criminals onto the streets of America for each one it apprehends.
• Seven years into this administration the President continues to blame everyone else but himself for his failures.

Funny stuff unless you are an under protected, over taxed, fed up taxpayer. 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