Tag Archives: Unemployment

News

Recent college graduates realizing that Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t produce jobs

1 Comment

From the Daily Caller. (H/T Right Wing News)

Excerpt:

A very large proportion of recent university graduates have soured on President Barack Obama, and many will vote GOP or stay at home in the 2012 election, according to two new surveys of younger voters.

“These rock-solid Obama constituents are free-agents,” said Kellyanne Conway, president of The Polling Company, based in Washington, D.C. She recently completed a large survey of college grads, and “they’re shopping around, considering their options, [and] a fair number will stay at home and sit it out,” she said.

The scope of this disengagement from Obama is suggested by an informal survey of 500 post-grads by Joe Maddalone, founder of Maddalone Global Strategies. Of his sample, 93 percent are aged between 22 and 28, 67 percent are male and 83 percent voted for Obama in 2008. But only 27 percent are committed to voting for Obama again, and 80 percent said they would consider voting for a Republican, said New York-based Maddalone.

That’s a drop of almost 60 points in support for Obama among this influential class of younger post-grad voters, who Maddalone recruited at conferences held at New York University and Thomson-Reuters’ New York headquarters.

The bad news for Obama was underlined May 19 with a report by a job-firm Adecco that roughly 60 percent of recent college-grads have not been able to find a full-time job in their preferred area. One-in-five graduates have taken jobs far from their training, one-in-six are dependent on their parents, and one-in-four say they’re in debt, according to the firm’s data.

Let’s see. These graduates voted for Obama during college, and now they’ve just finished going through many years of indoctrination from teachers who are typically isolated from real life, i.e. – isolated from private sector employment, military service, entrepreneurship, stay-at-home motherhood, and so forth. They parroted all of the secular left-wing views of their indoctrinators, got their diplomas in social work or English or peace studies, and now they are out on their own for the first time, looking for jobs from the people they have been taught to hate and despise. Imagine their surprise to find out that the world is nothing like they were led to believe, their non-quantitative degrees are useless, and that they are now $60,000 in debt, and they will never collect a dime from entitlement programs from Social Security.

Not to mention the $534,000 dollars that each household in the US owes because of  Nancy Pelosi’s $5.34 TRILLION dollar addition to the national debt. (H/T Doug Ross)

Obama Unemployment Stimulus Graph
Obama Unemployment Stimulus Graph

Image from Conservative Compendium.

Here’s another interesting article from the Washington Examiner, by political guru Michael Barone.

Excerpt:

Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional supermajorities of 2009-10 raised federal spending from 21 to 25 percent of gross domestic product. Their stimulus package stopped layoffs of public employees for a while, even as private sector payrolls plummeted.

And the Obama Democrats piled further burdens on would-be employers in the private sector. Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill are scheduled to be followed by thousands of regulations that will impose impossible-to-estimate costs on the economy.

[…]It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the threat of tax increases and increased regulatory burdens have produced something in the nature of a hiring strike.

And then there is the political posturing. On April 13 Obama delivered a ballyhooed speech at George Washington University. The man who conservatives as well as liberal pundits told us was a combination of Edmund Burke and Reinhold Niebuhr was widely expected to present a serious plan to address the budget deficits and entitlement spending.

Instead the man who can call on talented career professionals at the Office of Management and Budget to produce detailed blueprints gave us something in the nature of a few numbers scrawled on a paper napkin.

The man depicted as pragmatic and free of ideological cant indulged in cheap political rhetoric, accusing Republicans, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan who was in the audience, of pushing old ladies in wheelchairs down the hill and starving autistic children.

The signal was clear. Obama had already ignored his own deficit reduction commission in preparing his annual budget, which was later rejected 97-0 in the Senate. Now he was signaling that the time for governing was over and that he was entering campaign mode 19 months before the November 2012 election. People took notice, especially those people who decide whether to hire or not. Goldman Sachs’s Current Activity Indicator stood at 4.2 percent in March. In April — in the middle of which came Obama’s GW speech — it was 1.6 percent. For May it is 1 percent.

“That is a major drop in no time at all,” wrote Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal.

After April 13 Obama Democrats went into campaign mode. They staged a poll-driven Senate vote to increase taxes on oil companies.

They began a Mediscare campaign against Ryan’s budget resolution that all but four House Republicans had voted for. That seemed to pay off with a special election victory in New York’s 26th Congressional District.

The message to job creators was clear. Hire at your own risk. Higher taxes, more burdensome regulation and crony capitalism may be here for some time to come.

Corporations do not hire workers or expand their businesses when there is uncertainty and looming tax increases.

News

Texas requires losing parties of frivolous lawsuits to pay their own costs

9 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal, some good news on tort reform.

Excerpt:

This week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a law that will help free Lone Star State businesses from the threat of frivolous lawsuits by enacting “loser-pays” tort reform. Prior to the legislation, litigants faced a no-lose situation, while defendants stood to lose everything—even for the most outrageous, bizarre and wrongful accusations.

Even when defendants won, the legal fees associated with protecting themselves could add up to tens of thousands of dollars. As a result, many pre-emptively settled out of court, as the settlement payment would be less than the legal fees. Under Texas’s new legislation, however, litigants will be forced to pay for the defendant’s attorney fees if the case is determined groundless. This will compel would-be litigants to consider the practicality of their complaint before taking legal action, and it will protect defendants from the dire financial impact of frivolous cases.

The Texas legislation should serve as a national model, especially as we recover from the Great Recession. America has the most expensive civil-justice system in the world, costing $255 billion in 2008, or nearly 2% of gross domestic product, according to a 2009 study by the firm Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson). That’s more than twice as much as any other industrialized nation as a percent of the GDP.

Small businesses—the engines of our economy and the creators of 64% of American jobs—are usually the target of frivolous lawsuits. In fact, small businesses paid 81% of business tort liability costs in 2008. On average, a small business earning $1 million must spend $20,000 annually on lawsuits—money they could have otherwise spent on product development or new job creation.

Softening the threat of frivolous lawsuits sparks economic activity. In 2003, for example, Texas put limits on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. Since then, the number of doctors applying to practice in the Lone Star State has jumped by 60%. The same can be expected of businesses that no longer have to fear the financial impacts of civil-lawsuit abuse.

One of the reasons why we are in an economic mess is because we have not reined in the excesses of the trial lawyers. And the Democrats will never be able to rein them in because they are the core of the Democrat party, along with labor unions, teacher unions, word-smithing academics, criminals, welfare recipients and Hollywood celebrities. The sheltered, non-productive segments of society, who have never had to run a business or make payroll.

Let me add this tort reform law (loser pays) to the other list of policies we need at the national level:

  • National right-to-work law
  • National photo ID required for voting
  • National voucher system for education
  • National voucher for health care
  • Nation cap on damages for lawsuits
  • allow Opt-out of Social Security
  • allow Opt-out of Medicare
  • allow Opt-out of Medicaid
  • allow Opt-out of unemployment insurance
  • Flat income tax at 10% below 50,000 and 25% over 50,000, with no deductions except for charity and retirement contributions
  • Zero capital gains tax, phased in over four years
  • Tax-free savings accounts with no restrictions on withdrawals, limit $5,000 per year

I hope the Republicans will campaign on these ideas.

News

Economists and investors are alarmed by Obama’s reckless and wasteful spending

Leave a comment

Reuters reports on a statement by 150 economists backing Republican demands for spending cuts.

Excerpt:

More than 150 economists back House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner’s call to match any increase in the debt limit with spending cuts of equal size, according to a letter released by the Republican leader’s office on Wednesday.

The letter will give Boehner an important talking point as he and his fellow House Republicans meet with President Barack Obama at 10 a.m. to discuss the debt limit and other fiscal issues.

“An increase in the national debt limit that is not accompanied by significant spending cuts and budget reforms to address our government’s spending addiction will harm private-sector job creation in America,” the letter said.

Signatories include Nobel laureate Robert Mundell of Columbia University and economists from schools like New York University and Georgetown University, as well as conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute.

The Treasury Department has warned that the country could face a default that could push it back into recession and roil markets across the globe if it does not raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit by Aug 2. Treasury has been tapping federal employee pensions and other funds to pay the nation’s bills since it reached the current debt limit on May 16.

Republicans say they will not back any increase that does not include steep spending cuts and other limits to ensure that debt stays at a manageable level.

The Republican-controlled House on Tuesday defeated a bill that called for a debt-limit increase without conditions.

This Wall Street Journal article quotes a few economists responding to the recent disappointing job report.

Excerpt:

–What appeared to be a sustainable level of job growth seems to have faded hard in May. Yes nonfarm payrolls increased for the month, but that increase is actually a net-negative considering population growth that adds 75,000 – 85,000 workers to the labor force in an average month. Job growth is (was?) the only thing going for consumer incomes and spending, and this most recent result will throw said spending, responsible for 70% of economic activity, into a questionable state. –Guy LeBas, Janney Montgomery Scott

–There is no way to put lipstick on that pig: That was an extremely weak employment report. Nonfarm payrolls rose at the slowest pace since last September and private payrolls (+83,000) even posted their smallest increase since last June. One important factor behind the sudden deterioration between April and May was the swing in retail employment. The latter fell by 9,000 in May after still rising 64,000 in April. That pattern corroborates our view that the unusually late Easter lifted payrolls in April and were a corresponding drag in May… One sector that has to be highlighted here is “leisure & hospitality”. After creating 132,000 jobs (44,000 per month) between January and April, the sector cut 6,000 jobs in May — a monthly swing of -50,000 jobs. The reasons for this could be manifold: Households had to cut back on spending for arts, entertainment etc. amid soaring gasoline prices, or they were reluctant to visit restaurants amid higher food prices. –Harm Bandholz, Unicredit

–The slowdown in the pace of growth has clearly rattled the confidence of small and medium size firms that have been responsible for much of the hiring over the past few months.. Beneath the headline the data was just as dreary. Goods producers essentially slammed the brakes on hiring, with manufacturers culling 5,000 workers from the payrolls. Seasonal adjustments at the BLS likely accounted for the increase in hiring in the food and beverage sector, thus negating whatever McDonalds effect on retail hiring that might have occurred. The only real positives in the report were hiring by health care firms and in business services which modestly decelerated below their respective three month averages of 40,000 and 56,000 respectively. –Joseph Brusuelas, Bloomberg

–It is fairly clear that in the face of increasing uncertainty, against the backdrop of a deep recession and shallow recovery, firms decided to stop hiring. The bigger question remains whether this is a temporary hold or the pause before renewed layoffs on a broad scale. Looking at the underlying metrics of the economy, the June employment report will likely be worse than May. Going past the next the several months the economy is in the nexus of a temporary squall today created by the supply chain disruption and higher food and energy prices. All else being equal these issues will resolve themselves and the economy should rebound later in the summer. All else is not equal, however, as China is slowing, QE2 is ending, and no one really knows what fiscal policy is beginning. In sum, these factors will build increasing headwinds to growth whose full effect on real activity is unlikely to be felt for several more months.–Steven Blitz, ITG Investment Research

–The critical importance of continued labor market improvement cannot be overstated, as the wage and salary income that a labor market recovery, even a sub-par one by historical standards, provides to consumers will be key in providing fuel for ongoing economic growth in 2011. Therefore, today’s payroll figures, along with other evidence pointing to labor market woes in May (higher initial unemployment claims and a reduction in small business hiring plans being the two most important) are bad news indeed. To be fair, all was not terrible in this report, as the average workweek held steady from an upward revised 34.4 hour level in April and the manufacturing workweek increased to a robust 40.6 hours. –Joshua Shapiro, MFR Inc.

We’re in serious trouble, and the Democrats are oblivious.