Tag Archives: jobs

A Do-Nothing Senate

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Recall the mandate to move to the right of center that our Congress received in the 2010 elections, when the people transferred 63 seats in the House of Representative and 6 in the Senate from the Democrats to the Republicans—a majority of those transfers to Tea Party Republicans, hence the mandate to move to the right.  Despite that outcome, though, the Senate remained under the control of the Democrats.  What has the Senate done in response to those instructions from its bosses?  The figure below, from The Wall Street Journal, tells the tale of the Progressives’ insubordination.

This illustrates the work the House has done these last two years in response to those instructions and the (not insignificant) numbers of House Democrats who actively supported that work.

On top of this dereliction, the Senate has refused to do its own work:

[T]he Senate failed to pass any budget in 2012. Or 2011. Or 2010. …more than 1,200 days.

And

The Senate also failed in 2010 and 2012 to pass a single appropriations bill.  …that hadn’t happened before in the 150-year history of the current spending process.  This year the Senate even failed to enact a national defense authorization bill, which almost never happens.

Senate Progressives have announced that they’ll continue their refusal to perform in 2013 [emphasis in original]:

Chuck Schumer (D, NY) warned that Democrats will stop any attempt at bipartisan tax reform next year, calling the idea “obsolete.”

We can’t afford even two more years of this Progressive refusal to perform, much less four more years of an incumbent President’s arrogance.

Lies of the Democrats, Part 2

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This is Part 2 of my series on the lies told by Democrats during the present administration’s term in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with the dishonesty while in office.

In this post, I’ll mention a few more economic lies.

The Democrats insist that their “Stimulus” spending and their diversion of part of the TARP funding “saved the American automobile manufacturing industry,” the latter itself of questionable legality, given the legislated purpose of the TARP funding.

This is nonsense.  In fact, only two car companies were at risk out of the seven major car companies that comprised, and still comprise, the American automobile manufacturing industry.  Those seven?  In no particular order, they are Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, Nissan, GM, and Chrysler.  But wait, you say, Ford, GM, and Chrysler are the only American car manufacturers; the other four are foreign—and two of those three were threatened with bankruptcy.  How is saving those two not saving the American automobile manufacturing industry?

The fact is, none of those seven car manufacturers manufacture anything in the US, including the American three.  All seven of those companies do have major plant complexes in the US whose function is to produce cars for sale in the US.  That production, though, is limited to final assembly.  Every plant, for every car manufacturer, imports all of their cars’ parts—chassis, body panels, engines, batteries, even tires and wheels—from other countries: Mexico, Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, India, wherever the costs of parts production is lowest.  Thus, every automobile manufacturer in that American industry is on an even footing with every other auto manufacturer: they all do final assembly (and only final assembly), of imported parts, in the US, for sale to American customers.  Those seven, not only the American three, are the American automobile manufacturing industry.

Now, of those two car companies that were saved, what was the nature of the rescue?  Normal bankruptcy procedures were bypassed, and the Obama administration forced senior creditors to the back of the line—the funds went first to the auto manufacturing unions (vis., the United Auto Workers and the Canadian Auto Workers Unions), while those senior creditors wound up getting nothing.  This stood bankruptcy law and order of precedence for creditors on their collective head.

And the bailout of the two American car companies went so well that one of them—Chrysler—is now an Italian car company.

When Greed Meets Tinker Bell

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State pension funds are another time bomb of malaise (to the tune of a $1.4 trillion shortfall) waiting to explode, and Rhode Island provides an example of the difficulty we each, in our own state, face in defusing it.

Rhode Island passed a massive overhaul (as such things go; they have a long way, yet, before they’ve completely cured their problem) of their state retirement system last year, including such unheard-ofs as raising the retirement age, suspending pension increases for several years, and generating a hybrid retirement plan that combines traditional pensions with 401(k)-like accounts.  Rhode Island’s General Treasurer, Gina Raimondo, says that this reform will save Rhode Islanders $4 billion over the next 20 years (compared to a 2013 budget that proposes spending $8 billion in that year alone, small potatoes, indeed, but a critical start).  This minor reform also seeks to redress astonishing conditions that include 58 percent of retired teachers and 48 percent of state retirees receiving more in their pensions than in their final years of work.

But it’s too much change for some.  The public “service” unions (service: you service me) object: it’s somehow wrong for their members to be responsible for their own retirement funding.  Even a little bit.  Instead, these public “service” unions protest that it’s all unfair.  Rhode Island is reneging on promises to workers, they say.  Bob Walsh, Executive Director of the National Education Association of Rhode Island, goes so far as to insist

What they did was illegal.  We’re deep into a real assault on labor.  It worries me that people who purport themselves as Democrats do this.

Never mind that there’s nothing at all illegal about these changes.  It’s a well-established principle in American jurisprudence that when the conditions extant when a contract was agreed (stipulating arguendo that the agreement was made in good faith by all parties) no longer exist, or have so radically changed that the terms can no longer be met, the contract can be abrogated and either a new one negotiated or the parties involved go their separate ways.  In extreme cases, this is what bankruptcy achieves; although, when the conditions have changed as radically as these have, bankruptcy isn’t necessary.

Never mind, also, these are promises that couldn’t be kept in any event, and both the state government and the public “service” unions at the time knew they could not be kept.  Or they blindly believed real hard in government’s ability to keep collecting funds from…somewhere.  Tinker Bell is alive and well in Public Service Land.

Never mind, finally, that this public “service” union greed at the expense of taxpayers makes “labor” a valid target.

One tear-jerker that the unions are trotting out is this:

North Providence retiree Jamie Reilly left her job as a secretary at age 50 [remember that raising of the retirement age?], thinking her 30 years of state employment would mean good benefits during her later years.  But now she said she may be forced to re-enter the workforce at age 55 because the state has put off pension increases.

“I counted on that money,” Reilly said….  “You work all your life and you plan, and they take it away from you.”

Worked all her life?  She worked 30 years and wanted to be retired for 40.  Workers in the private sector don’t get it that easy; they work until they’re in their mid-60s—a working life 50% longer.

And this one:

Cranston firefighter Dean Brockway said higher retirement ages mean he will have to work several years longer than he expected, and he wonders how he’ll climb stairs in heavy gear in his 60s.

“Could I do something else? I don’t know,” he said. “A lot of us chose to dedicate our lives to public service because to us it’s an honor.  Could I be a carpenter?  I don’t think so. This is what I do.”

Brockway has a legitimate concern, but it’s no different from the concerns of a private sector employee whose work is primarily physical labor.  But if he’s not going to look for alternatives, if he’s not going to try to retrain into something less physically demanding (certainly no stroll in the park for a middle-aged or older person, but assuredly not impossible), he loses sympathy for his plight, which begins to be self-imposed.  Certainly, there’s no more obligation for Rhode Island’s citizens to indemnify him against the outcomes of his choices than there is for them to indemnify similarly situated private sector employees.

Raimondo understands this in all its practicalities—how affordable are the existing programs:

These problems won’t go away.  The longer you wait, the bigger the problems get.  People looking for easy, short-term solutions. … Well, there are none.

Raimondo doesn’t believe in Tinker Bell.

Unemployment Numbers and Jobs

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In the aftermath of last week’s reported headline number of 7.8% unemployment, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama was out on the hustings bragging about how his policies had created some 5,000,000 jobs since the end of the Panic in 2009.  Like that’s a good performance.

Let’s look at that.  He promised in 2009 a 5.5% unemployment rate by now.  How many new jobs would have been created had we actually reached his promised number?  In December 2009 (some six months after the nominal end of the Panic of 2009), the civilian labor force was 153,059,000, of which 137,792,000 Americans were employed, a 10% unemployment rate, according to BLS statistics, and using round numbers.

In September 2012, again using BLS numbers, the civilian labor force was larger, at 155,063,000 (and it had a smaller participation rate than in 2009, but we’ll gloss over that).  There were some 142,974,000 Americans actually employed—that increase of 5,000,000 of which Obama is so proud.

However, a 5.5% unemployment rate corresponds, if my 1st grade arithmetic serves me well, to 94.5% of the civilian labor force actually employed: 146,535,000 Americans.  Again consulting my 1st grade arithmetic book, there are some 3,561,000 Americans that should be employed but aren’t—because Obama’s proudly proclaimed policies have come up short, and we aren’t anywhere near 5.5% unemployment.

Let’s look at this another way.  It’s been widely reported that this “recovery” is the weakest, most anemic post-recession recovery in our nation’s history.  Those reports aren’t far wrong.  A normal recovery coming out of a downturn as deep and steep as was the Panic of 2009 typically sees growth rates of 5%-6% per year, or more.  This Obama recovery has been 6.7% over the entirety of his term in office—nearly four years.  Had we seen a normal recovery (and using a pessimistic 5%/year growth rate), we would have reached today’s unemployment rate after a shade over one year—in 2010—and we would have been back to full employment (in the range of 4.8%-5.5%) in just under 2 years—by last year.

Obama says his policies are working.  Sure.

Yet Another Thought on Immigration

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The Wall Street Journal has another article on immigration, entitled, tellingly enough, “Washington’s New Twist on Human Sacrifice.”  The sacrifice?  Sending away foreign students who’ve graduated from our colleges and universities, rather than making it easy for them to stay.  And maybe naturalize.

The WSJ, among other things, provided a list of immigration bills that have failed passage:

  • Stopping Trained in America PhDs from Leaving the Economy Act
  • Advanced Degree Visa Bill
  • Startup Act
  • Immigration Driving Entrepreneurship in America Act
  • Benefits to Research and American Innovation through Nationality Statutes Act

And the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Jobs Act, proposed this year by Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX), which treatment in Congress was typical.  This bill would have granted visas to graduates from qualifying universities in the hard sciences instead of the current program, a lottery for a limited numbers of visas, with the limits based on national origin. As Congressman Smith said,

Unfortunately, the Democrats voted today [20 Sep 12] to send the best and brightest foreign graduates back home to work for our global competitors.

And there’s this, a bit ago, from Steve Jobs on conversations he and a group of Silicon Valley execs he’d put together had with Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama:

The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can’t get done.  It infuriates me.

What’s up with all this obstruction?  Do we want immigration and immigrants, or do we not?  Progressives oppose school/education reform, and they oppose steps to welcome trained, talented, intelligent folks from other countries into our nation.  What’s up with that?

If Progressives put as much energy into doing things as they do to blocking them, we’d be a whole lot better off today, three years after the “end” of the Panic of 2008.