Tag Archives: jobs

Successful Economic Policies

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The present administration’s policies are not examples of these.  The Wall Street Journal reported last week the following, which are the results of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s policies [emphasis mine; perhaps, those falling incomes, reported elsewhere, are showing up].

  • US economic output in the second quarter was weaker than previously thought.  GDP grew at an annual rate of 1.3% between April and June, down from the previously reported 1.7% gain.
  • That revised GDP figure showed weaker growth because of downward revisions in inventory investment, consumer spending, and exports.
  • Orders for durable goods, products designed to last at least three years, fell 13.2% last month, the biggest decrease since January 2009 [at the depth of the Panic of 2008].  Absent highly variable transportation, August orders still slid 1.6%.
  • Shipments of durable goods slid 3.0%.
  • Unfilled orders, a sign of future demand, decreased 1.7%.
  • The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported this week that US industrial production dropped sharply in August.  This follows last week’s Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia report that said factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region continued to contract “this month….” [two major national sectors suffering decline]

In another report from the WSJ, we get this datum from the Chicago PMI: the Chicago Business Barometer fell last month to a seasonally adjusted 49.7 from 53.0 in August.  This is the first contraction in three years: a reading below 50 constitutes contraction in the sector.

All of these add up to a fading economy.  The policies in place are inhibiting what should be a very robust recovery from the sharp contraction of the Panic of 2008.  Now consider: the Progressives will argue that we’ve had 20+ straight months of growth, and the data from this report extend that streak.  They’re right, of course, as far as they go.  However, think about how far we would have come instead, had we had 20+ straight months of growth unimpeded by these policies.

Can we afford four more years?

Our So-Called Recovery

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Some new data are in from Sentier Research on the state of our economy and how well the Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s policies are working.  The report is available here and here.

Here are some high points.

  • median household incomes are down 8.2% since Obama took office and are falling
  • median household income has dropped 5.7% since the economic recovery technically began in June 2009
  • median income was $50,678 by August 2012, down 1.1% from July 2012
  • average hours worked per week in August 2012 was 34.4, down from the 34.6 hour average in December 2007
  • the poverty rate in 2011 was 15 percent.  The number of people in poverty last year, 46.2 million, was up from 37.3 million in 2007

How are those policies working out for you?

A Thought about Unions

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Perry Chiaramonte, of Fox News, noticed this bit a few days ago.

The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) was carrying signs and chanting slogans in front of the future site of the United Food and Commercial Workers federal credit union in downtown Pittston.

Because UFCW is using non-union labor for the construction of this future site.  The reasons for both the picketing and the use of non-union labor is made clear by the IUPAT’s spokesperson:

Bob Griffiths said he never expected a fellow union to bypass organized labor to save a buck.

Doesn’t a business improve its chances of succeeding—and of keeping its employees employed—by holding down its costs?

Griffiths also said, without any irony,

It’s about the principal, not losing the work[.]

Never mind that those who got the work would be out of work if the union took the job.  Never mind that, as Griffiths has already bragged, that job would be done at higher cost, which can only be passed on to the credit unions’ customers.  Never mind that those customers include union members.

I have to ask: are unions for the working stiff, generally, or just the chosen few?  Are businesses just jobs welfare programs for unions?

Welfare, Work, and the Stimulus

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It turns out Obama’s HHS waiver of the work requirement for welfare (in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, signed into law by President Bill Clinton) wasn’t the first Obama waiver of the work requirement.  No, it’s just one more instance of the wealth redistribution in which Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama believes so much.

The Congressional Research Service has a new report out, albeit one done at the behest of an Evil Republican, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (the report can be found here or here).  This report demonstrates that the Obama Stimulus Package, drafted up shortly after his inauguration in 2009 and passed just after that also waived the requirement for work in order to get welfare.

Typically the food stamp program requires that group [“able-bodied adults” between 18 and 49 years old who have no dependents] to work or participate in a training program at least 20 hours a week to continue receiving benefits after three months. The stimulus law, though, allowed states to suspend the rule from April 2009 to October 2010—and most states did.

The CRS study showed that in fiscal 2010, the last year for which data was available, the number of food-stamp recipients in that group was at nearly 3.9 million. That’s up from 1.9 million in 2008.

Though food-stamp enrollment was already rising at the time in part due to the recession, the study noted the number in this group “increased more rapidly than the overall caseload.”

Their percentage of that caseload grew from 6.9 percent in 2008 to 9.7 percent in 2010.

This was no effort to accommodate spiking unemployment, though.  Indeed, it never was intended to—unemployment would never rise above 8% and would fall back to 5.5% by the end of 2009 with the stimulus, Obama promised us.  The waiver was, nevertheless, extended beyond 2010.

The latest CRS report noted that while the stimulus law lifted the food stamp work requirement until late 2010, the law allowing extended unemployment benefits likewise allowed most states to waive those work requirements in 2011 and 2012.

Bread and circuses.

Is AARP Tax-Exempt?

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The short answer is yes—it’s a 501(c)4 non-profit.  Follow-up question: should it continue in that status?

If the information outlined in Kimberly Strassel’s Wall Street Journal article last Friday is accurate, I suggest the follow-up’s answer should be “No.”

…AARP worked through 2009-10 as an extension of a Democratic White House, toiling daily to pass [Obamacare].  We know that despite AARP’s awareness that its seniors overwhelmingly opposed the bill, the “nonpartisan membership organization” chose to serve the president’s agenda.

71 pages of emails tell the story.  For instance,

As early as July 2009, Mr. Sloane [AARP Senior Vice President David] was sending the administration—”as promised”—his “message points” on Medicare.  Ms. DeParle [an Obama senior aide Nancy-Ann] assured him “I think you will hear some of your lines tomorrow” in President Obama’s speech—which he did.  Mr. Rother [AARP Policy Chief John] advised the White House on its outreach, discouraging Mr. Obama from addressing seniors since “he may not be the most effective messinger [sic]…at least to the McCain constituency.”  Better to manage these folks, he counsels, through the “authoritative voices of doctors and nurses.”

And

Ms. LeaMond [AARP Executive Vice President Nancy] worried that the Medicare spin wasn’t working against public criticism of the bill.  She emailed Mr. Messina [another Obama senior aide Jim] and Ms. DeParle that she was “seized” with “concerns about extended coherent, strong messaging by Republicans on the Medicare savings.”  To pull off the legislation, she mused, “we”—the White House and AARP—will need a “concerted strategy.”

And so on, including AARP internal polling passed on to DeParle and Messina that indicated AARP’s membership opposed the developing Obamacare by 98%.  This last isn’t legally relevant to AARP’s tax exempt status; it just shows how…out of touch…AARP management was with its membership.

Plainly, the aggregate of these emails demonstrates violation of the non-partisan requirement for such non-profits.

RTWT.