Tag Archives: Business

News

Jobless claims rise to eight-month high, consumer confidence falls

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Video stolen from NW War College.

Can the government create jobs by spending money and running deficits? (H/T Kelly)

Excerpt:

The number of Americans filing for jobless aid rose to an eight-month high last week and productivity growth slowed in the first quarter, clouding the outlook for an economy that is struggling to gain speed.

While the surprise jump in initial claims for unemployment benefits was blamed on factors ranging from spring break layoffs to the introduction of an emergency benefits program, economists said it corroborated reports this week indicating a loss of momentum in job creation.

New claims for state jobless benefits rose 43,000 to 474,000, the highest since mid-August, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists had expected claims to fall.

[…]Other reports this week showed weaker employment growth in the manufacturing and services sectors in April and a step back in private hiring, suggesting Friday’s closely watched data could prove weaker than economists have been expecting.

An industry survey released on Thursday found hiring by U.S. small businesses almost ground to a halt in April.

This isn’t surprising. Government spending takes money OUT of the private sector and puts money IN to the non-productive public sector.

The Heritage Foundation explains how government spending has never worked to create jobs. Not even when Republicans do it.

Excerpt:

Indeed, President Obama’s stimulus bill failed by its own standards. In a January 2009 report, White House economists predicted that the stimulus bill would create (not merely save) 3.3 million net jobs by 2010. Since then, 3.5 million more net jobs have been lost, pushing the unemployment rate above 10 percent.[1] The fact that government failed to spend its way to prosperity is not an isolated incident:

  • During the 1930s, New Deal lawmakers doubled federal spending–yet unemployment remained above 20 percent until World War II.
  • Japan responded to a 1990 recession by passing 10 stimulus spending bills over 8 years (building the largest national debt in the industrialized world)–yet its economy remained stagnant.
  • In 2001, President Bush responded to a recession by “injecting” tax rebates into the economy. The economy did not respond until two years later, when tax rate reductions were implemented.
  • In 2008, President Bush tried to head off the current recession with another round of tax rebates. The recession continued to worsen.
  • Now, the most recent $787 billion stimulus bill was intended to keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8 percent. In November, it topped 10 percent.[2]

So obviously government spending reduces employment – it could never happen any other way. And everyone who has ever held a job in private industry knows this. Government spending only works in the university classrooms, where the right answer is always the answer that makes academic wordsmiths feel good about themselves. Good intentions are the right answer in the classroom – good results are the right answer in the free market.

Drilling moratorium = higher gas prices = low consumer confidence

What happens to consumer confidence when Obama cuts off oil drilling and gas prices go up?

Excerpt:

Consumer confidence dropped last week to the lowest level in more than a month as rising fuel costs squeezed American household budgets.

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index decreased to minus 46.2 in the week ended May 1, the lowest level since the end of March, from minus 45.1 the prior period. Another report showed claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly surged last week, raising the risk the improvement in the jobs market has stalled.

Stocks dropped and Treasury securities rose on concern that rising expenses, including the highest gasoline prices in almost three years, may prompt companies and households to cut back on spending. The reports bolster the arguments of Federal Reserve policy makers like Chairman Ben S. Bernanke who’ve said job growth is too slow to remove record monetary stimulus.

Obama has been printing money in order to goose people into spending more instead of saving. The problem with devaluing the currency, which is what he is doing, occurs when you reach the stage where consumers stop spending because prices must increase when you print money. We are now at that stage, and our economy is about to go down the drain. Interest rates will have to rise, which is going to slow economic growth even more. This is all known.

When you don’t understand economics, you take the whack-a-mole approach to fixing the economy. That’s what Obama has done. He keeps trying to control things from the top instead of trusting businesses and consumers with their own money. Everything Obama does makes the economy worst. He doesn’t know what he is doing, and he won’t listen to people who do know. His baseless confidence (arrogance) should have been a red flag to the American people. There is nothing worse than hiring someone who thinks that they know everything, but who hasn’t the qualifications to run a lemonade stand.

News

Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper wins a majority

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Stephen Harper Wins Majority
Stephen Harper Wins Majority

You can see the latest Canadian election results here on the Sun News Network.

The Conservatives won 167 seats in the House of Commons. They needed 155 for a majority of the 308 seats.

From the Vancouver Sun.

Excerpt:

Conservative leader Stephen Harper has emerged from the election campaign as a much more powerful prime minister and will lead a majority government with four years to change the country.

At a rally of his supporters here, Conservatives cheered and celebrated Monday as the results rolled in from throughout the country, confirming that Canadians, in large numbers, had given Harper the trust he had sought in the five-week campaign.

As the evening wore on, Harper’s party was coming within striking distance of reaching the benchmark threshold — 155 seats — they needed for a majority. When the Tories crossed that threshold, a great cheer erupted in the hall here in Calgary where supporters had gathered to celebrate and listen to Harper’s speech.

The Conservatives success came as the NDP made historic gains at the expense of the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois, which saw their popular vote drop as they lost seats.

In recent days on the hustings, Harper had portrayed the election as having historic consequences for the country. In addition, his own personal future was at stake.

It was clear that with a majority victory, Harper will be regarded by historians as a political success story who united the political right in Canada.

He will have a four-year mandate to implement significant change in areas ranging from tax policy, to the criminal justice system, to foreign affairs.

Here’s the reaction to the Harper victory from businesses and investors.

Excerpt:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has won for a third time the leadership of Canada, in a stunning vote which changed the country’s political landscape.

As the ballot counting wore on over six times zones and more than 5,000 miles from Atlantic to Pacific, Harper won his great aim, a majority government after two minorities in 2006 and 2008. The television networks declared his majority victory well before 11 p.m. ET. The Conservatives may have won 160 to 165 seats when 155 are needed for a majority in the 308-seat House of Commons.

While a Conservative victory again was always considered quite possible, the countrys political landscape was altered in three stunning ways:

The New Democratic Party, a rump group of social democrats in the 41st Parliament with 36 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons, surged into becoming the chief opposition party in the 42nd Parliament with about 105 to 108 seats.

The former chief opposition party, the historically great Liberal Party of Canada, the government of the country for more than 100 years of Canada’s 144 years since Confederation of separate British colonies into one nation, sunk to a very poor third with perhaps 30 seats. Michael Ignatieff, who became Liberal leader exactly two years earlier to the date, was looking to lose his Toronto-area seat.

The Bloc Quebecois, the separatist party from the French-speaking province of Quebec, was wiped out by the surging NDP, from 47 of Quebec’s 75 seats to perhaps two seats.

While the social democrats in the new Democratic party hold a powerful position in the House of Commons, the Conservatives with their majority will enforce a program which by and large is what foreign and domestic business and investors prefer.

The Conservatives will bring back a budget which was lost in the last Parliament when the election intervened 36 days ago, and will continue with a further tax cut for corporations, but a reduction in spending it said would bring back balance during 2014, erasing the federal budget deficit the Conservatives created after 11 years of Liberal government-created surpluses.

Prime Minister Harper campaigned for a majority saying his Conservatives were the prudent economic managers while the others were “tax and spend” parties. He will keep the same course. Economists have said that they see no significant changes in deficit reduction or in monetary policy under the Conservatives.

Well done, Canada! Congratulations!

News

How would allowing gays to marry affect your life?

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Here’s a post from Legal Insurrection, a prominent law blog.

Excerpt:

King & Spalding has withdrawn from representing the House of Representatives with regard to the Defense of Marriage Act.  King & Spalding was hired after the Obama administration abruptly — and disingenuously — changed its legal position recently.

The attempts to intimidate, both politically and sometimes physically, supporters of traditional marriage are nothing new.

The strategy is to define the traditional marriage view as bigotry on par with racism.  Once you accept that premise, then everything else follows and is justified.  Even expressing a legal view that there is no federal constitutional right to same sex marriage — a view expressed under oath by Elena Kagan — now constitutes hate speech.

There were numerous boycotts of businesses owned by people who supported Prop. 8 in California, including a boycott organized by an association of law professors.

Taking it one step further, there was a widespread campaign to demonize and boycott Mormon-owned businesses in the wake of Prop. 8 in California…

[…]Now the intimidation has moved beyond political supporters of Prop. 8 and Mormons, and into an attempt to deprive pro-traditional marriage groups of their counsel of choice.  As Jennifer Rubin points out (via John Hinderaker), the attempt to intimidate lawyers into not representing pro-traditional marriage clients is part of a deliberate strategy, not a haphazard reaction.

[…]Would such lawyers and staff now be afraid to express their views on the subject, fearing a backlash against their individual careers much as King & Spaulding feared a backlash?  If representing the pro-traditional marriage view is unacceptable for the firm, would there be a hostile work environment for such people?

Dennis Prager wrote more about how same-sex marriage affects society back in 2008.

Excerpt:

Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming — to do so would be declared “heterosexist,” morally equivalent to racist. Rather, they will be told to imagine a prince or a princess. Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage. But that of course is “heterosexism,” a bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.

Companies that advertise engagement rings will have to show a man putting a ring on a man’s finger — if they show only women fingers, they will be boycotted just as a company having racist ads would be now.

Films that only show man-woman married couples will be regarded as antisocial and as morally irresponsible as films that show people smoking have become.

Traditional Jews and Christians — i.e. those who believe in a divine scripture — will be marginalized. Already Catholic groups in Massachusetts have abandoned adoption work since they will only allow a child to be adopted by a married couple as the Bible defines it — a man and a woman.

Anyone who advocates marriage between a man and a woman will be morally regarded the same as racist. And soon it will be a hate crime.

Indeed — and this is the ultimate goal of many of the same-sex marriage activists — the terms “male” and “female,” “man” and “woman” will gradually lose their significance. They already are. On the intellectual and cultural left, “male” and “female” are deemed social constructs that have little meaning. That is why same-sex marriage advocates argue that children have no need for both a mother and a father — the sexes are interchangeable. Whatever a father can do a second mother can do. Whatever a mother can do, a second father can do. Genitalia are the only real differences between the sexes, and even they can be switched at will.

And what will happen after divorce — which presumably will occur at the same rates as heterosexual divorce? A boy raised by two lesbian mothers who divorce and remarry will then have four mothers and no father.

We have entered something beyond Huxley’s “Brave New World.”… Our children and their children will pay the price.

Check out this vandalism at a Catholic church by supporters of same-sex marriage. The vandalism says “where is the love?” I don’t think that the vandals showed much love for those who disagree with same-sex marriage, though. And sometimes the consequences for disagreement can be much worse than vandalism.  It can mean legal consequences, sensitivity indoctrination, vandalism, or even violence. What’s sad is that the well-meaning young leftists, who think what they are doing is compassionate, are actually encouraging this coercion.

How would allowing gays to marry affect your life?

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