What’s New Today
Story #1 relates
to the public sector and how it’s doing with regard to unemployment. #2 looks at the public sector as far spending
is going. #3 looks at how the American
public is doing (not so good). #4 warns
the young voters may not vote this year.
#5 has James Carville warning the democrats that they must shift the
discussion away from the economy. #6
gives us the latest from Rasmussen on the generic battle. And finally #7 looks at Obama’s high speed
rail dreams.
Today’s
Thoughts
Howard Dean: “I’m not one of those who thought last
week was a bad week for the Democrats, I
actually thought it was a good week for the Democrats.” Looking back on it the way things are going
for the Democrats (read story 1), Dean
may be right.
Margaret Thatcher warned that a single currency could not accommodate both industrial powerhouses such
as Germany and smaller countries such as Greece. Thatcher predicted the currency would harm poorer countries because it
would "devastate their inefficient economies."
On Tuesday night, blogger David Burge of the Iowa
Hawk blog tweeted: “The principal
delusion of liberals is that liberalism is popular. The principal delusion of
conservatives is that liberalism is popular.”
There is an old saying, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you see every problem as a
nail.” This pretty much sums up
Obama’s approach to the economy. The hammer of government is the only
solution Obama sees.
President Obama's claim Friday that "the private sector is doing fine" sparked a firestorm of attacks from Republicans and prompted a quick retraction, of sorts, from Obama, who later said "it is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine."
But what has gone largely unnoticed was Obama's complaint that it's the government that's hurting these days. "Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy," he said Friday, "have to do with state and local government."
Even when he tried to walk back his comment later that day, Obama said that the private sector is showing "some good momentum" but the bigger problem is state and local government cutbacks.
And over the weekend, Obama's top adviser, David Axelrod, argued that the private sector is "certainly doing better than the public sector."
But a review of data from several government sources paints a different picture. State and local government spending and revenues are up, and while state and local government jobs are down slightly, these losses pale in comparison with the damage done to private-sector jobs over the past four years.
Here's a rundown:
State spending: Despite the deep recession and the slow recovery, annual state spending overall hasn't dropped once. In fact, by fiscal 2011, total outlays at the state level were 14% higher than they were in 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget officers. (See nearby chart.)…
http://news.investors.com/article/614516/201206120801/state-and-local-governments-growing.htm
From the looks of it, the public sector is doing fine. It’s the private sector that is in the need of attention primarily in giving it some certainty in tax rates and in cutting down on regulations.
2. The Public Sector is Doing Fine
Sound familiar? These words are not President Obama’s. They were spoken six months ago by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. While pushing a Democratic proposal to spend another $35 billion we don’t have to help states hire more public workers, Reid declared: “It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers.” At last week’s news conference, Obama simply repeated the point Reid made last October.
Jared Bernstein, a former Obama economic adviser, said the president’s gaffe won’t do lasting damage “because that’s not the way he sees it.” But as Reid’s comment demonstrates, that is precisely how Obama and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill see it. They’ve been saying for months that the private sector is doing fine and that the solution to our unemployment problems is to spend even more taxpayer money to hire more government workers.
Obama and Reid have it precisely backward: It’s the public sector that’s doing fine. According to the BLS, the unemployment rate for government workers last month was just 4.2 percent (up slightly from 3.9 percent a year ago). Compare that to private-sector industries such as construction (14.2 percent unemployment), leisure and hospitality services (9.7 percent), agriculture (9.5 percent), professional and business services (8.5 percent) and wholesale and retail trade (8.1 percent). As Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute points out, the public-sector unemployment rate “is the lowest of any industry or class of worker, even including the growing energy industry.” If the rest of Americans enjoyed the same unemployment rate as government workers, Obama would be cruising to reelection….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-the-public-sector-thats-doing-fine/2012/06/11/gJQAKNpvUV_story.html
Do you think Obama would be in trouble if the unemployment rate for the country was 4.2%? But 4.2% raises alarm bells with Progressives when it is the unemployment rate for government workers.
3. Net
Worth of American family down 40% since Obama became President
The net worth of the American family
has fallen to its lowest level in two decades, according to government data
released Monday, driven by a more than
40 percent drop in their stakes in their homes.
The Federal Reserve’s detailed
survey of consumer finances showed families’ median wealth plunged from
$126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010 — a 39 percent decline. That put them on
par with median wealth in 1992.
What the old joke? If
it weren’t for bad luck, Obama wouldn’t have any luck at all? November is not going to be kind to the
Democrats (he’ll be pulling a lot of them down with him).
4. Young
Voters Dropping Out says Zogby
Nearly four years after enthusiastic
younger voters poured into polling booths to help push Barack Obama over the
finish line and into the Oval Office,
their hope has turned to fear and pollster John Zogby says that they are ready
to give up on politics.
“I truly am worried about today's twenty-somethings,” he frets. “They are our global generation and I have seen them move from hope and grand expectations for themselves and their world to anxiety and disillusionment. We can't afford to lose them,” he adds.
Zogby previewed his remarks to the League of Women Voters 50th anniversary convention Monday night with Secrets. His worry: that younger voters will stop voting.
“I truly am worried about today's twenty-somethings,” he frets. “They are our global generation and I have seen them move from hope and grand expectations for themselves and their world to anxiety and disillusionment. We can't afford to lose them,” he adds.
Zogby previewed his remarks to the League of Women Voters 50th anniversary convention Monday night with Secrets. His worry: that younger voters will stop voting.
Well
the youth vote is important to liberals and Zogby is a liberal so of course he
worries that younger voters will stop voting. So this is bad news to everyone on the
left.
5. Carville:
Shift the narrative away from the economy or Die
The above flatly repudiates President Obama’s “the private sector is doing fine” statement made during Friday’s press conference. It also points out that if the president’s economic plans are not seen as serious, they will go nowhere.
The memo goes on to note some of Mitt Romney’s vulnerabilities, before delivering this hammer blow: “But we underscore the sentiment [the voters] expressed in the postcards to the President they wrote at the end of the exercise: overwhelmingly, these voters want to know that he understands the struggle of working families and has plans to make things better.”
There
are two parts to this. First Obama needs
to convince voters he “feels their pain.” Second he needs to convince them he
has a plan that will make it better for them.
Sounds like the Democrats need Bill Clinton, not Barack Obama.
6. Rasmussen: Generic Republican Lead Generic Democrat by
6%
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Republican in their district’s congressional race if the election were held today, while 39% would choose the Democrat instead. Republicans led by seven points the week before, 44% to 37%.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/generic_congressional_ballot
Here
are more warnings for the Democrats.
7. High Speed Rail
From solar panel manufacturer
Solyndra (which received a $535 million federal loan guarantee and later
declared bankruptcy) to electric car-maker Fisker Automotive (which used a $529
million federal loan to create jobs in Finland), President Obama's landmark economic stimulus legislation is rife with
failures. But the California High-Speed Rail project serves as a
particularly sterling example of what
happens when idealistic big government liberalism has to face cold, hard
reality.
Obama has pushed high-speed rail
throughout his presidency, billing it as a
way to create jobs, improve transportation and protect the environment by
reducing carbon emissions. The economic stimulus package included $8
billion in funding for bullet train projects, and Secretary of Transportation
Ray LaHood told National Public Radio that "President
Obama would like to be known as the high-speed rail president." In his
2011 State of the Union address, Obama called for giving "80 percent of
Americans access to high-speed rail" within 25 years as part of his plan
for "winning the future." His
budget for 2013 asked for $47 billion in funding for high-speed rail over the
next six years.
Though Obama has not wavered in his
commitment to high-speed rail, residents of the Golden State, home to the
nation's most ambitions rail project, have soured on the idea. A Los Angeles
Times poll released last week found 59
percent of Californians now oppose the state's high-speed rail plan, and 69
percent said they would never or hardly ever ride the train even if it were
built. The San Jose Mercury News, once a
proponent of the project, called the plan "delusional" in an
editorial over the weekend, urging the state legislature to kill it….
I think Obama will end up being known as the “going off the
high speed rails President.”
