Fairness: Going bankrupt fairly

What’s new Today 

Stories #1and #2 relates Obama’s focus on equity trumps jobs, deficit reduction and just about anything else that logic says we should be paying attention to.  #3 in the meantime gives us five reasons to worry about the economy.  #4 and #5 give us dueling stories about Obamacare’s effect on the deficit.  The first one claims a savings of $460,000,000 per year which the second one give us a deficit of $34,000,000,000 per year.   #6 is a look at the oil boom that appears to be starting in Kansas.  #7 tries to set the record straight that America is one of the least racist countries in the world, while #8 gives us a look at the Democrats racist history.  #9 is about Barbara Walters and her claim not one can tell if the press is left or right.  #10 is a PR disaster for United Airlines. 

1.   Income Equity vs. Jobs and Opportunity

Democrats in Congress and President Obama are ratcheting up their efforts to cast Republicans as out-of-touch elitists by championing the "Buffett Rule" – a proposed bill that would require Americans making more than $1 million in income to pay a minimum 30 percent federal income tax.

Democrats will put the measure to a vote in the Senate next week in a move timed roughly to coincide with the April 15 deadline to file federal income taxes. It is intended to turn the screws not only on Senate Republicans in tight reelection contests but also on Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama’s all-but-certain GOP challenger, who earned $20.9 million in 2011 but paid federal taxes at only a 15 percent rate.

The Buffett campaign has one simple mission – “embarrass Republicans”….

…Yet polling suggests that taxing the rich might not be a winning issue for Obama in November….

Among voters without a strongly held opinion of either Mr. Romney or Obama, 80 percent said they’d be more likely to support a candidate focused on economic growth and opportunity, while 15 percent said they would choose one emphasizing income inequality, according to a poll released Monday by the centrist Democratic group Third Way….

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2012/0409/Buffett-Rule-Could-it-backfire-on-Democrats

I think Romney should come out and say President Obama wants to raise my taxes while I want to raise the economy for everyone. 

2.   Fairness not deficit reduction

The Obama administration is emphasizing “fairness” over deficit reduction in its renewed pitch for the “Buffett rule” ahead of next week’s scheduled Senate vote.

Introducing a minimum 30 percent income tax on millionaires “was never our plan to bring the deficit down and get the debt under control,” Jason Furman, the principal deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters on a conference call Monday afternoon. “This is not the president’s entire tax plan. We’re not trying to say this solves all our economic problems, all our budget problems.”…

…Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) slammed the bill late last month, after the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the rule would generate $46.7 billion in revenues over the next decade...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/74975.html#ixzz1reCPoshQ

Well 46 billion is more than 7 times the savings from Obamacare.  The Democrats and Obama are doing the equivalent of looking for change under the sofa cushions to pay the house payment coming do.  There are more productive things they should look at. 

3.  Five Reasons to worry about the Economy

…Sluggish economic growth.

The economy hasn't been growing fast enough to sustain the level of job growth the United States enjoyed from December through February -- an average of 246,000 jobs a month.

The economy is expected grow around 2.5 percent this year. Economists say that's consistent with monthly job growth of around 140,000.

Some economists fear that March's weaker numbers are just a return to the normal link between economic growth and job growth -- and that hiring won't pick up until the economy accelerates.

Higher gasoline prices.

U.S. gasoline prices have risen 65 cents this year to a national average of $3.93 gallon, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge. Economists had expected consumers to keep spending at a healthy pace in the face of higher prices at the pump…

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2012/04/09/20120409reasons-job-market-may-weakening.html#ixzz1rdW6VHeM

It’s beginning to look bad.  I think gas prices are the cause of it and it will destroy Obama’s chance to be reelected. 

4.  Sebelius: Obamacare saves 0.023%

One thing about unconstitutional laws is that they invariably fail to do what they set out to do. Homicides rose after D.C. passed its unconstitutional gun law in 1976 — and fell to their lowest level in 43 years after the Supreme Court repealed the law. And so it goes with Obamacare, which will drive health insurance prices up as it mandates near universal coverage. That is good for insurance executives like Warren Buffett, but bad for consumers. Nonetheless Kathleen Sebelius, head of DHHS, is touting all the savings Obamacare will bring — $460 million a year to the $2 trillion a year health industry.

That’s 0.023% — 23 one-thousandths of 1%.

Pardon my laughter.

As you read the press release, remember $4.6 billion over 10 years is just $460 million a year. Given the history of blue-skying savings, odds are this will increase costs, but even accepting The Man’s numbers, it is a pitifully small saving.

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/53979

When I first saw this, I thought well over 10 years it could be a lot, and then I realized over 10 years we are talking about $4.6 billion.  That’s a rounding error in the age of Obama. Read the next story for a dose of reality. 

5.   Obamacare and the Deficit: Loses $340 billion

Over the past two years, Obamacare’s champions have often claimed that the new law would actually save the government money and reduce the deficit. Early on, they argued that it would do this in part by reducing health-care costs, but no one really makes that case anymore. Rather, they argue that Obamacare offers a version of today’s preferred liberal approach to deficit reduction: it increased taxes by even more than the immense amount by which it increases spending. That’s not exactly a recipe for fiscal responsibility or a means of addressing the underlying problem of costs, but on the face of it perhaps it should allow them to claim that Obamacare reduces the deficit.

Except that it doesn’t. From the very beginning, critics of Obamacare have pointed out that, even if you accept all of the implausible claims of cost savings in the law, the CBO score of the legislation double-counted the effects of the enormous Medicare cuts scheduled to occur in the next few years… The Medicare actuary (who works for Barack Obama) has been very clear on this point, writing in 2010 that the Medicare cuts in the law were unlikely to actually occur but that even if they did: “In practice, the improved [Medicare trust fund] financing cannot be simultaneously used to finance other Federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions) and to extend the trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.” CBO has acknowledged that, although it is bound by those accounting conventions and so must double count the proposed cuts, it is true that doing so does not offer a true picture of the law’s effect on the deficit.

Working out exactly what the effect of avoiding this double counting would be, and more broadly what the actual effect of Obamacare on the deficit is likely to be, is no easy feat. It basically requires re-scoring the law using the data available to CBO, but avoiding the misleading conventions forced upon the agency. In an important new paper  out today from the Mercatus Center, Charles Blahous has done just that….

…Regarding the overall effect of the law on the deficit, his conclusion is clear:

Taken as a whole, the enactment of the ACA has substantially worsened a dire federal fiscal outlook. The ACA both increases a federal commitment to health care spending that was already unsustainable under prior law and would exacerbate projected federal deficits relative to prior law. This is an unambiguous conclusion, as it would result regardless of the degree of future success attained in upholding various cost-saving provisions now embedded in the law.

Blahous’s paper is both an exceptionally lucid guided tour of what is actually in Obamacare and a bracing overview of its likely effects on federal finances.

Obamacare’s worsening of the deficit is hardly its worst feature, of course. If it is not repealed, the law will be an utter disaster...

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295626/obamacare-and-deficit-yuval-levin

Accounting gimmicks let the Democrats claim they would save money on the deficit.  Almost no one was fooled except those who wanted to be fooled. 

6.    What is the Matter with Kansas? If You Like Oil, Nothing

Black gold might soon be gushing from the Kansas soil, according to AP. Drilling has only just started but the oil is attracting speculators from all over. Ancient land records are being pulled off of courthouse shelves in a frenzy; land that cost $30 an acre is now fetching $3000.

The familiar signs of an oil boom are everywhere: restaurants busier than ever, rental prices shooting up, hotels booked solid. Kansas has more undrilled acreage than most states. Each horizontal well costs about $3 million and is expected to deliver a 90 percent return on investment, paying for itself after 18 months of production. High oil prices are an extra impetus to drill, baby, drill — and to keep the new jobs sprouting from the Kansas ground. The boom “is going to change things forever in this part of the world,” says one local prospector.

Kansas’ oil boom is important for two reasons. Firstly, here we have another example of the incredible job-producing abilities of brown industry. Compare the furor over Kansas’ oil and gas explosion with the unfulfilled and overhyped “green” jobs, which have yet to materialize. And while green jobs will require subsidies for years, brown jobs don’t require federal upfront money — and will deliver taxes to the Treasury right from the start…

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/04/09/brown-jobs-gush-from-kansas-soil/

The oil boom in this country is just starting while the Obama Administration does everything it can to stop it.  High unemployment, stupid investments in green energy, huge deficits are hallmarks of progressive politics.  It’s time for a change.

7.  Racism and America

In light of the tragic killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin — and the manufactured hysteria surrounding it — one thing needs to be stated as clearly and as often as possible: The United States is the least racist and least xenophobic country in the world. Foreigners of every race, ethnicity, and religion know this. Most Americans suspect this. Most black Americans and the entire left deny this.

Black Africans know this. That is why so many seek to live in the United States. Decades ago, the number of black Africans who had immigrated to the United States had already surpassed the number of black Africans who were forcibly shipped to America as slaves.

And members of other races and nationalities know this. Even Muslim and Arab writers have noted that nowhere in the Arab or larger Muslim world does an Arab or any other Muslim have the individual rights, liberty, and dignity that a Muslim living in America has. As for Latinos and Asians, vast numbers of them from El Salvador to Korea regard America as the land of opportunity.

And when any of these people come here – from anywhere, speaking any language, looking like a member of any race — they are accepted as Americans the moment they identify as such. He or she will be regarded as fully American. This is not true elsewhere. A third-generation Turkish-German, whose German is indistinguishable from the German spoken by an indigenous German, will still be regarded by most Germans as a Turk. The same holds true elsewhere in Europe…

http://rightwingnews.com/column-2/still-the-least-racist-country-in-the-world/

America is the least racists’ country in the world despite what the race baiters try to portray.  Is there racism in America?  Of course there is.  Is it simply accepted?  No, and that is what makes us different. 

8.  Racism and the Democrats

…Democrats through Eisenhower

Wilson was a nightmare for blacks. After he took office, there were mass firings of black federal employees. The new Democrat Congress passed laws barring interracial marriages in the District of Columbia. "Whites Only" and "Blacks Only" began appearing on drinking fountains and in toilets in Washington. President Wilson broke the tradition of appointing American Negroes as consuls to Haiti and Santo Domingo. He rejected a proposal for a National Race Commission to study the status of blacks in the U.S., and he began segregating blacks and whites in the civil service.

FDR was a hero to black America, but one must ask why. He won the 1932 Democrat nomination by collecting all of the convention votes in 9 of the 11 states of the old Confederacy. Only Virginia and Texas, which had "favorite son" candidates, did not give every single delegate to FDR, although by the fourth ballot, every single delegate in all eleven states voted for FDR.

President Roosevelt appointed Hugo Black, a former Klansman, and although later this was downplayed, Black was elected to the Senate from Alabama with the backing of the Klan. Roosevelt appointed another Klansman, Tom Clark, as attorney general of the United States. Paul Robeson called the appointment of Clark as attorney general by FDR "a gratuitous and outrageous insult to my people." Black leaders despised FDR. Roy Wilkins accused FDR of "expedient cowardice."

Were Democrat leaders after FDR better? Harry Truman applied to join the Klan (but stopped when he found out that the Klan hated Catholics.) Harry Truman had said that one man is as good as another "so long as he's honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman," and he referred to Martin Luther King as a "troublemaker." When asked about racial integration, he asked a reporter: "Would you want your daughter to marry one of them?"

Adlai Stevenson, the Democrat nominee in 1952 and 1956, selected as his running mate John Sparkman of Alabama, a segregationist. As a congressman, LBJ opposed civil rights legislation, opposed anti-lynching legislation, and opposed legislation to end the poll tax and end employment discrimination.

JFK, too, was a bigot. In 1960, when Time Magazine interviewed John Kennedy, he said: "It was so hot that even niggers went to the beach." During the 1960 election campaign, John Kennedy had breakfast in Alabama with the White Citizen's Council in Alabama, a fact that Jackie Robinson noted in expressing frustration at the indifference to racism in the Kennedy campaign.

It is a testament to the racism pandemic in the Democrat Party that when Hubert Humphrey courageously spoke up against "white only" primaries in the South at the 1948 Democrat Convention, that was recognized as a breakthrough for civil rights -- but Republicans, of course, had accepted blacks in their primaries and caucuses all along, and blacks from the South had been delegates at Republican conventions since the end of the Civil War. Humphrey was asking Democrats to move up to where Republicans had been since 1868….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/race_republicans_and_democrats.html#ixzz1rdOFME7W

This is an interesting history of racism and the Democrats. 

9.  Barbara Walter’s must think Americans are idiots!

What world does she live in? According to veteran journalist Barbara Walters on Monday, the American public doesn't know whether "most" reporters are "Republicans or Democrats." The unbelievable claim came during a View segment on the passing of 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace.

Walters, who once recoiled at the prospect of the "scary" Sarah Palin becoming President, insisted, "But, most of us...you don't know whether we're Republicans or Democrats or exhibitionists." (Exhibitionists?) The comment came after comedienne Whoopi Goldberg insisted, "And also, the journalists today don't do what journalists did, which was keep their opinions to ourselves."

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2012/04/09/barbara-walters-journalists-you-dont-know-whether-were-republicans-o#ixzz1rbTqcunJ

I’m afraid Barbara is losing it.  Not only are there studies that show us the media is overwhelmingly liberal, but reporters haven’t even tried to be unbiased for decades.   

10.                   UA PR Disaster

“Flight attendants are on this aircraft to save your rear end, not kiss it!"

That's the warm and fuzzy "Welcome aboard" with which passengers were greeted on a recent United Airlines flight from Phoenix to Houston.

A sticker with that wording was attached to a United Airlines flight attendant's bag that was placed in the overhead luggage bin near the front of the plane, according to the businessman/frequent flier who took the photo at right. The passenger assures that it was not a hoax from an angry Alec Baldwin- type….

http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/04-10-12-united-airlines-flight-attendants-rear-end-sticker-reinforces-new-unfriendly-skies-reality/

I know the Flight Attendant probably thought this was clever.  It wasn’t and UA needs to take action with whoever this person is. 

Can we trust anything?

What’s new Today 

Story #1 relates that bigotry, or at least “approved” bigotry is still with us, but it has changed its targets.  #2 gives a new example of chutzpa as practiced by the Obama Administration.  #3 should be unsettling for Obama supporters.  It seems that SCOTUS’s approval rating rose after Obama attacked the Court.  #4 shows while Eric Holder should be in support of voter ID laws.  #5 tells that neo-nazis have gone to Sanford Florida.  #6 relates that Obamacare adds to the deficit.  It doesn’t subtract from it as its proponents claimed it would.  And finally #7 demonstrates who the settled science of nutrition blaming fats for obesity and heart disease was wrong and it’s actually sugar.  Next thing you know they’ll tell us that the sun is the cause of global warming.

1.  Bigotry: They’ve only changed the targets

…But have we done away with approved bigotries ?  Hardly. We just keep changing the targets.

Recall the attitudes of feminists in the '60s and '70s toward housewives.

As an experiment, you might today try bringing a big-haired woman -- perhaps a Dallas socialite -- to a Manhattan cocktail party or gallery opening.

Go ahead. I dare you.

And may God have mercy on those who live in a trailer park.

These thoughts were all prompted by three recent events when someone I had just met, and with whom I was having a friendly drink, launched into a jeremiad against "Christians."

They are awful, I was told. Rank hypocrites. Hateful people.

This isn't an altogether rare phenomenon, of course. In fact, it is epidemic.

I suppose I should have felt complimented. The unspoken assumption is that I am smart enough and sophisticated enough to share these attitudes.

Unfortunately, I'm not. I continue to find bigotries of every description pathologically indistinguishable.

I have found one highly effective way to force these bigots to stand eye-to-eye with their bigotry.

Simply ask them to substitute another minority for Christians and repeat the statement. Blacks are rank hypocrites? Muslims are hateful people?

No?

Then why do you feel so comfortable saying these things about Christians?

I like to think this is a quiet and loving way to teach a good moral lesson, but the response so far indicates that it will always result in anger….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/bigotrys_permanent_appeal.html#ixzz1rRxzKlkc

The left has always been bigots.  They just change who they are bigoted against.

2.  It Takes A Lot Of Nerve…

…to criticize Mitt Romney’s support for the House Republicans’ budget when Senate Democrats won’t even write one, in violation of the law, and President Obama’s budgets can’t garner a single vote. But that is nevertheless what Obama did:

When President Barack Obama criticized Mitt Romney by name this week for embracing a controversial Republican budget proposal, he worded his attack carefully and with bite.

“(Romney) said that he’s ‘very supportive’ of this new budget, and he even called it ‘marvelous’ — which is a word you don’t often hear when it comes to describing a budget,” Obama said during a speech on Tuesday, before adding: “It’s a word you don’t often hear generally.”

You certainly don’t hear it said about Obama’s budget. His FY 2012 budget was voted down 97-0 in the Senate, and his FY 2013 budget was voted down 414-0 in the House. The Senate’s Democratic leadership is trying to prevent it from coming up for a vote in that body, lest it be skunked again. But Obama has no intention of offering a serious budget proposal; he is 100% politics, 0% policy.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/lt-takes-a-lot-of-nerve.php

I remember when the left complained because Bush didn’t put the Iraq war on the budget.  For the past three years the Democrats refuse to put anything on the budget.   Obama has proposed budget that have been defeated 511-0 during that time.  No one in the Democratic Party appear to be serious about the budget, the deficit, or the country’s fiscal problems. 

3.  SCOTUS Popularity Up after Obama attack

Just before the highly publicized hearing on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law, ratings for the U.S. Supreme Court had fallen to the lowest level ever measured by Rasmussen Reports. Now, following the hearings, approval of the court is way up.

Forty-one percent (41%) of Likely U.S. Voters now rate the Supreme Court’s performance as good or excellent, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That’s up 13 points from 28% in mid-March and is the court’s highest ratings in two-and-a-half years.

Nineteen percent (19%) still rate the court’s work record as poor, unchanged from last month.

It is impossible to know if the improved perceptions of the court came from the hearings themselves, President Obama’s comments cautioning the court about overturning a law passed by Congress, or from other factors. Approval of the court had fallen in three consecutive quarterly surveys prior to the health care hearings….

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/supreme_court_update

Obama has a magic touch.  Everything he’s against turns to gold. 

4.  Why We Need Voter ID Laws Now

Attorney General Eric Holder is a staunch opponent of laws requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls to improve ballot security. He calls them “unnecessary” and has blocked their implementation in Texas and South Carolina, citing the fear they would discriminate against minorities.

I wonder what Holder will think when he learns just how easy it was for someone to be offered his ballot just by mentioning his name in a Washington, D.C., polling place in Tuesday’s primaries

Holder’s opposition to ID laws comes in spite of the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in 2008, authored by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, that upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s tough ID requirement. When groups sue to block photo-ID laws in court, they can’t seem to produce real-world examples of people who have actually been denied the right to vote. According to opinion polls, over 75 percent of Americans — including majorities of Hispanics and African-Americans — routinely support such laws….

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295431/why-we-need-voter-id-laws-now-john-fund

O’Keefe is at it again, but this time his undercover person could have voted in place of AG Holder. 

5.   White Supremists patrolling Sanford Florida

Neo-Nazis are currently conducting heavily armed patrols in and around Sanford, Florida and are "prepared" for violence in the case of a race riot. The patrols are to protect "white citizens in the area who are concerned for their safety" in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting last month, says Commander Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement. "We are not advocating any type of violence or attacks on anybody, but we are prepared for it," he says. "We are not the type of white people who are going to be walked all over."

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2012/04/heavily_armed_neo-nazis_patrol.php

Law enforcement needs to get hold of the situation.  Let the investigation continue, but right now between the escalation by black groups such as the New Black Panthers and celebrities chiming in and now this with Neo-Nazis patrolling Sanford, we have a tinderbox ready to go up in flames.

6.   New Study:  Obamacare to add $340 billion to the deficit

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a Republican member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

The study is set to be released Tuesday by Charles Blahous, a conservative policy analyst whom Obama approved in 2010 as the GOP trustee for Medicare and Social Security. His analysis challenges the conventional wisdom that the health-care law,  which calls for an expensive expansion of coverage for the uninsured beginning in 2014, will nonetheless reduce deficits by raising taxes and cutting payments to Medicare providers…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/health-care-law-will-add-340-billion-to-deficit-new-study-finds/2012/04/09/gIQAti1o6S_story.html

The financing of Obamacare has always been done with smoke and mirrors.  But as Nancy Pelosi said, “We need to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” and evidently how much it is going to cost. 

7.  At Last Settled Science that everyone agree on

Once upon a time, there was a medical “consensus” that fats and cholesterol in the blood were major causes of heart disease. Armed with this “settled science,” the public health establishment moved in the 1970s to expunge the offending substances, beyond a basic minimum deemed to be necessary, from Americans’ diets. Food bureaucrats established dietary guidelines. Physicians ordered billions of dollars of blood tests. Pharmaceutical companies made tens of billions of dollars on drugs that suppressed cholesterol levels. Food companies, castigated in some quarters as soulless merchants of dietary corruption, were compelled to report the nutritional breakdown of their packaged products. Badgered by public officialdom and the media over the decades, Americans slowly, grudgingly changed their eating habits.

What good did it do them? Americans are more overweight, more prone to diabetes and more at risk of heart disease than ever before. Now, it transpires, the public health consensus and settled science might not have gotten it right. A new wave of scientific research finds that the worst culprit of all is sugar. CBS‘ “60 Minutes” hit the highlights of that research in a show broadcast April 1, “Is Sugar Toxic?”

In that segment, Dr. Gupta interviewed Dr. Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist who was the proverbial voice in the wilderness for years.

Gupta: “What are all these diseases that you say are linked to sugar?”

Lustig: “Obesity, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart disease itself.”

Gupta: “So, with the best of intentions, they said, it’s time to reduce fat in the American diet.”

Lustig: “And we did. And guess what? Heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and death are skyrocketing.”

Gupta: “Dr. Lustig believes that’s primarily because we replaced a lot of that fat with added sugars.”

Lustig: “When you take the fat out of the food, it tastes like cardboard. The food industry knew that. So they replaced it with sugar.”

Prediction 1: Often wrong but never in doubt, the progressives and do-gooders will develop amnesia about the past 40 years of regulatory activism. The old “settled science” will go down the memory hole, to be replaced with a new “settled science.” With new demons to castigate and a new cause to justify meddling in peoples’ lives on the grounds that they are too ignorant, slothful or obstinate to do what’s good for them, progressives will embark joyfully upon a new crusade. Soon we’ll be hearing how sugar is as addictive as cocaine. (Oh, wait, Dr. Gupta quoted a different scientist saying exactly that.) Sugar companies will replace the fat peddlers at McDonald’s as the new villains du jour. (Dr. Gupta also interviewed a sugar-industry lobbyist.)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/6/sugar-shock/

Wait until they find out that global warming has been caused by the sun!  Of course most any 5 year old could tell you that (I picked 5 since that would be before the child would have started school and been brain washed by the AGW crowd). 

Happy Easter

What’s new Today 

Story #1 relates some of the inconsistencies in the unemployment numbers.  #2 talks about how the Obama Administration that is lambasting tax cuts from the Bush Administration is lauding the Chinese government for a new policy to tax cuts in China.

        1. Unemployment numbers

The March unemployment data has been issued. The government claims 120,000 jobs were created and the unemployment rate fell to 8.2% from 8.3% in February. However closer looks at the statistics reveal an altogether different scenario.

In March, an additional 164,000 people dropped out of the labor force bring the total of people not in the labor force up to nearly 88 million (a new record). In January of 2009 (when Obama assumed office that total was 81 million.

The published unemployment rate of 8.2% does not include those who have dropped out of the job market or are discouraged. However the Bureau of Labor Statistics does publish a statistic that takes into account the total unemployed, plus discouraged workers and those marginally attached to the labor force (but not the entire universe of those who have completely dropped out of the labor force), that they all the U-5 unemployment rate, which in March was 9.6%.

If the labor force participation rate (that part of the overall civilian population in the labor force) were the same as when Obama took office, then the actual unemployment rate would be 10.5%. As those not in the labor force has increased nearly seven million since Obama became President.

By comparison the last time the nation faced a severe recession (actually worse than what Obama faced) was in the early 1980's. The unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% (November 1982) under Ronald Reagan; however within 14 months that rate was down to 7.6% after the effect of Reagan's new policies took hold -- a drop of 30%.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/04/unemployment_data_not_what_it_appears.html#ixzz1rM3ztR8X

In the past 12 months only 33% of the people who came into the age groups that make up the civilian population entered the work force vs almost 67% traditionally found there.  

2. Do as you do, Not as I say

While making positive comments about the most recent five-year-plan developed by the Communist government of the People’s Republic of China, Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats specifically applauded China’s decision to lower taxes because it would spur economic growth.

“What’s really encouraging to me is that there are a lot of groups in China that are reform-minded,” Hormats said while addressing a group of foreign reporters in New York City last week…

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-administration-applauds-tax-cuts-people-s-republic-china

The hypocrisy of the left is paramount in this story.  The applaud tax cuts in China while condemning them here.  Kind of reminds you of Obama stopping drilling in America while applauding Brazil’s offshore drilling telling them we want to be their biggest customer. 

Romney vs Obama

What’s new Today 

Story #1 is a speech by Mitt Romney at ASNEC which he nails the Obama Presidency.  #2  looks at how the MSM differs in charges by the left vs the right.  Calling Obama a socialist is bad, but Obama’s calling Ryan’s plan social Darwinism is endorsed by the NYT.  #3 illustrates Obama’s real weakness.  #4 looks at the President’s claim to be for “all of the above” in energy.  That is a crock.  #5 is a funny clip from Jon Stewart.  #6 is a new reason to get rid of the DDT ban. 

1.   Romney zeroes in on Obama

From a speech at the ASNEC:

President Obama’s comments to President Medvedev are deeply troubling. That incident calls his candor into serious question. He does not want to share his real plans before the election, either with the public or with the press. By flexibility, he means that “what the American public doesn't know won't hurt him.” He is intent on hiding. You and I will have to do the seeking...On what other issues will he state his true position only after the election is over? But instead of answering those vital questions, President Obama came here yesterday and railed against arguments no one is making – and criticized policies no one is proposing. It’s one of his favorite strategies – setting up straw men to distract from his record. And while I understand why the President doesn’t want to run on his record, he can’t run from his record either. As I have said many times before, the President did not cause the economic crisis, but he made it worse. He delayed the recovery, and made it anemic. When he took office, millions of Americans looked to him to turn around the economy and lead us back to full employment. He failed these Americans. The first three rules of any turnaround are focus, focus, and focus ... The President's attention was elsewhere--like a government takeover of healthcare and apologizing for America abroad.

...Through it all, President Obama has failed to even pass a budget. In February, he put forward a proposal that included the largest tax increase in history, and still left our national debt spiraling out of control. The House rejected it unanimously ... Of course, no fiscal challenge is greater than the one we face with entitlements. As the President himself acknowledged three years ago, this is not a problem that we can kick down the road any further. I’d be willing to consider the President’s plan, but he doesn’t have one. That’s right: In over three years, he has failed to enact or even propose a serious plan to solve our entitlement crisis. Instead, he has taken a series of steps that end Medicare as we know it.

A couple of months ago, we saw a fascinating exchange on Capitol Hill that epitomized not only this administration’s inaction on entitlements, but also its appalling lack of leadership. The President’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, was testifying before Congress. And Congressman Paul Ryan – who, unlike this President, has had the courage to offer serious solutions to the problems we face – was pressing Geithner on the administration’s failure to lead on entitlement reform. Geithner's response was this: “We are not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.” Take a moment and think about that: We don’t have a solution. All we know is we don’t like yours. It almost makes one long for the days when the President simply led from behind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ-qmvyaSHA&feature=player_embedded#!

Romney nailed it in this speech and in doing so has nailed Barack Obama to the failed policies he has implemented. 

2.  Socialism vs Social Darwinism

The arbiters of appropriate expression in America get very exercised when conservatives call Barack Obama a “socialist.” They treat the claim in the same way as calling Obama a Muslim, Kenyan, or “the anti-Christ.”

But headlines this week report that President Obama accused the Republicans of “social Darwinism,” and I don’t see anyone exercised about that. A New York Times editorial endorses the attack.

Is “social Darwinist” within some bound of propriety that “socialist” violates? I don’t think so. After all, plenty of people call themselves socialists — not President Obama, to be sure, but estimable figures such as Tony Blair and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Members of the British Labour Party have been known to sing the socialist anthem “The Red Flag” on the floor of Parliament.

But no one calls himself a social Darwinist. Not now, not ever. Not Herbert Spencer. The term is always used to label one’s opponents. In that sense it’s clearly a more abusive term than “socialist,” a term that millions of people have proudly claimed….

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/socialism-and-social-darwinism/

It’s just more of the same from the left.   Rules for Radicals tells leftists to make your opponents live up to their standards.  But the left doesn’t seem to have any standards to live up to.   So they can pretty much call their opponents any names and then turn around and tell the same person, “Don’t you dare say that.”

3.  Rasmussen and the Undecided Voters

As Mitt Romney assumes the role of presumptive Republican nominee, polls suggest a competitive general election matchup between the former Massachusetts governor and President Obama. Typically, both candidates poll in the mid-40s, while 10 to 12 percent remain uncommitted to either side.

Among these uncommitted voters, Rasmussen Reports polling shows that just 22 percent approve of the way the president is handling his job. Seventy-two percent (72 percent) disapprove. As for intensity, just 2 percent strongly approve, and 40 percent strongly disapprove…

http://townhall.com/columnists/scottrasmussen/2012/04/06/and_they_wonder_why_voters_are_angry/page/full/

Obama is toast.

4.   All of the above?  Not really

…Yes, Obama still says he's in favor of an all-of-the-above energy policy, but that hasn't slowed him down in his pursuit of his very-few-of-the-above policy.

Back in 2008, then-Sen. Obama explained that under his energy plan, electricity prices would "necessarily skyrocket."

The explosion in costs wouldn't be a bug of his plan either, but a feature. The idea under so-called cap-and-trade is that if you tax fossil fuels, you will, over time, reduce the use of fossil fuels. It's really basic economics. One wishes the president saw the logic of this proposition when it came to taxing business and investment as well. But that's a topic for a different column.

The president's defenders have long complained that it's unfair to dredge up this old sound bite, particularly in a climate of gas-price outrage, because Republicans -- and a lot of Democrats -- successfully prevented cap-and-trade from ever becoming law.

Absent cap-and-trade, they claim, he is pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy. Coal! Oil! Natural gas! Solar! Wind! And, of course, algae, algae, algae! We're doing it all, Obama says.

Just the other day, Vice President Joe Biden insisted that "our energy policy's the best it's ever been." Why? Because, he said, we're doing "everything," i.e., all of the above, to make energy affordable.

Except that's simply not true. It's not remotely true. A new rule from the Obama administration's EPA will, according to an Associated Press analysis, force 32 mostly coal-fired power plants to shut down and threatens to close 36 others. Moreover, the new "blackout" rule will effectively prevent the creation of any new coal-fired plants in America unless they adopt new technologies that will make it unprofitable to burn coal at all. So there's that…

… But forget coal. What about oil? The president killed the Keystone XL pipeline. After the BP oil spill, his administration overruled its own panel of experts to implement a moratorium on offshore drilling (while suggesting it was the experts' idea). Obama wants to revoke "subsidies" for oil companies, which are in fact the same tax write-offs that any business gets. He takes credit for the increase in oil drilling on U.S. soil but leaves out that drilling on federal and American Indian lands has gone down under his administration. He also forgets to mention that he opposes drilling off the mid-Atlantic coast, the Florida coast, the full Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or in the Rockies…

http://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/2012/04/06/obama_energy_policy_very_few_of_the_above/page/full/

Obama’s forward looking agenda includes going back to trains, windmills, and growing algae for fuel.  Sometimes self-parody seems to be a permanent feature of leftist ideology. 

5.   Government Scandals

http://nation.foxnews.com/jon-stewart/2012/04/06/jon-stewart-finally-admits-fox-news-yourre-right

John Stewart skews the GSA and even gives Fox News a “well done.”   Of course he was in tears when he said it.  This is a fun video to watch.

6.  Malaria may be back

Millions of lives are at risk as one of the best drugs used to treat malaria is losing its potency, say experts.

Resistant strains of the deadliest and most common form of the disease have been confirmed on the border of Thailand and Burma.

Tests revealed that the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum has undergone a genetic change making it resistant to artemisinin, one of the world's most popular drug treatments….

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2125983/Millions-lives-risk-worlds-effective-malaria-drug-loses-potency-warn-experts.html#ixzz1rH51cFOK

It’s time to end the ban on DDT.

Obamacare before and after

What’s new Today 

We are going to simply review a story out of Forbes today.  With all the discussion going on about Obamacare, this article gives you a great summary of many of the issues that are argued about . 

Would Democrats Block a Republican Plan for Universal Coverage, Out of Spite?

Who’s to blame and what could happen?

“If Obamacare is overturned, and Obama is defeated, who will win the Democratic party’s next fight over health care? Probably not the folks counseling compromise,” Ezra Klein wrote on Monday. “Too many Democrats have seen how that goes.” Ezra’s frustration is shared by many on the Left. But is he right? Were Republicans to blame for the failure to achieve bipartisan health-care reform? Would Democrats really reject a proposal from a Republican President that dramatically expanded health insurance coverage? A review of the facts makes clear that the answer to the first question is “no.” As to the second, we’ll see.

Ezra says, in response to my piece describing prior liberal antagonism to the individual mandate, that yes, liberals flip-flopped on the mandate, but their reason for doing so was a noble one. “Many liberals opposed such a shift. But they lost to the factions in the party that wanted health-care reform to be a bipartisan endeavor…The Democrats changed their mind in order to secure a bipartisan compromise on health-care reform. Republicans changed their mind in order to prevent one.” Let’s examine those claims.

There appears to be a plethora of bitterness in the left.  The true believers think that Obama went overboard to try to bring Republicans on board and that their refusal was a calculated attempt to deny Obama any kind of a victory. 

Most conservative health wonks have consistently opposed the individual mandate

I’ve tried my best to explain that most conservative opposition to the mandate is not driven by partisan hypocrisy. Here is Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in 2006, well before anyone was worried about Obamacare: “An individual mandate crosses an important line…it opens the door to widespread…political interference in personal health care decisions.” Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, also in 2006: “The first concern [of the Massachusetts health plan] is the requirement that every individual in the state must purchase health insurance or face financial penalties.”

Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review, the same year: “The commonwealth’s plan that is most controversial on the Right—which is to say, its most controversial feature, the plan having inspired opposition from much of the Right while mostly winning support from the Left: the mandate that all individuals purchase health insurance.” Says Ilya Somin,

I was a college student intern at Heritage back in 1994, not long after the political battle over Bill Clinton’s health care plan. Although I didn’t work on health care policy myself, I well remember the ongoing war of words between Heritage and the libertarian Cato Institute over the Heritage individual mandate plan, which Cato opposed. So too did leading free market health care and entitlement experts such as John Goodman and Peter Ferrara.

I could go on and on and on—and have. Let me be as clear as I can be on this point: the idea that Obamacare was designed by magnanimous Democrats, as a way to be nice to Republicans, is bunk. Instead, Obamacare was designed to please both left-wing and centrist factions within the Democratic Party.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/02/07/the-tortuous-conservative-history-of-the-individual-mandate/

This appears to be a talking point of the left.  The mandate was the right’s idea.  I’ve seen a number of leftist claim the right was for the mandate before they were against it and only turned against it because Obama was for it.  This is rationalization by the left.  It lets them feel good about the goodness in their and Obama’s heart while casting the right as evil which is basically how they look at the right.   And while some people on the right were for a much different kind of individual mandate there was a split in the conservative movement.  The link above gives you great background on the individual mandate. 

Democrats liked Romneycare because it didn’t require entitlement reform

Liberal commentators are fantasizing when they argue that a state-based approach to universal coverage, like the one in Massachusetts, would have been palatable to conservatives at the national level. Allow me to explain.

If you’re a governor, and you’re trying to improve your health care system, you are severely constrained by federal programs and federal laws. You can’t do much to reform Medicaid. Medicare dominates the system. The employer tax exclusion unnecessarily ties health insurance to employment, and creates the pre-existing condition problem.

Hence, a state-based approach to universal coverage must, by necessity, work within the federal constraints of Medicare, Medicaid, the employer tax exclusion, and myriad federal regulations. That’s why few governors—Republican or Democratic—have made any headway on the issue.

Indeed, a big part of the appeal for Democrats of adapting Massachusetts’ reforms to the federal level was that doing so required no structural changes to the three big federal entitlements.

But adding on new federal health-care entitlements, without fixing the existing ones, was reckless from a policy standpoint. Any serious federal approach to health-care reform must tackle runaway spending in Medicare and Medicaid, and reform federal laws—especially the employer tax exclusion—in order to make the insurance market more efficient.

This is interesting for two reasons.  It gives you a good idea why Romneycare ended up like it did.  It had to conform to all federal rules and regulations.  It also lets you know why Obamacare looks like Romney care.  The feds don’t have to conform to federal regulations since they can change them.  But the left didn’t want to change them so Romneycare became their guide.  This may give you a good idea why the left is attempting to assassinate Paul Ryan’s Medicare fix. 

There was a path to bipartisan reform, but Democrats rejected it

Hence, a bipartisan health-care agenda at the federal level will necessarily look quite different than one at the state level. If liberals had bothered to ask, they could easily have elicited bipartisan support for a proposal that did the following: (1) set up the Obamacare exchanges for those under 400% of FPL; (2) applied the Ryan reforms to Medicare and Medicaid (or, alternatively, folded in Medicare and Medicaid acute-care into the PPACA exchanges); (3) equalized the tax treatment of employer-sponsored and individually-purchased insurance; and (4) not increase taxes or the deficit.

But they didn’t. The Democratically-controlled House passed its plan in 2009 with nearly zero Republican input. In the Senate, the Gang of Six—Democratic Sens. Baucus (Mont.), Conrad (N.D.), and Bingaman (N.M.), and Republican Sens. Grassley (Iowa), Snowe (Maine), and Enzi (Wyo.)—failed to come to an agreement because the Republicans were concerned about the bill’s dramatic increase in taxes and spending.

Indeed, Democrats wouldn’t even have needed to do everything I listed above. Simply expanding coverage without raising taxes would have been enough, as contemporaneous reporting makes clear. But the Democratic leadership had no interest in a bipartisan deal.

Universal-coverage activist John McDonough, in his book Inside National Health Reform, recounts that Max Baucus’ original November 2008 blueprint for health reform “had made known [Baucus’] intention to use changes in the tax treatment of health insurance as his major financing source to pay for reform.” As Baucus put it in his blueprint, “It is time to explore ways in which tax incentives can be modified to distribute benefits more fairly and effectively…This could be done by limiting or capping the tax exclusion based on the value of health benefits, or as an alternative, based on a person’s income—or both.” A salutary idea.

But the President, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) were having none of that. As Roll Call reported at the time, “According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus it wasn’t worth securing [Republican] support.”

McDonough, who was on the inside during these discussions, notes that Democratic leaders felt that it was unnecessary to solicit Republican support because Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate. “Reid’s directive, backed by the White House and supported by the House, was motivated in part by the seating of Minnesota’s Al Franken, the Democrats’ elusive sixtieth vote, meaning that Republicans were no longer needed to pass a bill. This directive, though, left Baucus’s plan with a gaping financial hole.”

Democrats, unwilling to budge on broader reform, then tried to ram through a partisan expansion of coverage, with substantial tax increases and an individual mandate, and zero structural reform to Medicare, Medicaid, and the employer tax exclusion. They got what they wanted. But blaming Republican intransigence for this outcome is myth-making, pure and simple. The blame goes to left-wing Democrats, who refused to entertain a more balanced approach to health reform.

Put simply, liberals’ principal goal was and is universal coverage, and conservatives’ principal goal was and is entitlement reform. These two goals could have been simultaneously accomplished in a bipartisan bill, but liberals had no desire to reform entitlements.

The tale the Democrats like to tell is that of intransigent Republican refused to work for the good of the country and doomed any chance of bi-partisanship.  In their tale the left is always looking for the bi-partisanship but keep getting their outstretched hand kicked aside.  In reality the Democrats in the Senate looked for bipartisan support until Al Franken, the 60^th vote was seated and after that no compromise was sought or offered. 

If Obamacare goes down, what next?

Many liberals believe that if Obamacare goes down, we’ll have to wait another 20 years for a serious attempt at health reform. That view is too pessimistic. Republican policy leaders, today, understand the critical importance of broader health reform in tackling the federal deficit

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/04/05/would-democrats-block-a-republican-plan-for-universal-coverage-out-of-spite/

Obamacare most likely will be going down in June when SCOTUS  announces their decision on the Constitutionality of the law.  If that doesn’t happen then Romney and the Republicans will repeal the bill.  But the Republicans will not simply be able to end Obamacare without  coming up with a solution to the major problems of preexisting conditions, the rate of increase in medical costs, etc.  If they are smart they will tackle one problem at a time with  legislation that people will be able to read.