Tag Archives: political parties

Disappointing

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An understatement. These indicators of the failure of our education system are via Three Percenter; the list of all 50 is here.

  • only 36% of all Americans can name the three branches of government
  • only 25% of all Americans know how long US Senators are elected for (6 years), and only 20% of all Americans know how many US senators there are
  • 1% of American young adults in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket are currently living with their parents
  • 25% of all employees that have Internet access in the United States visit sex websites while they are at work
  • 30 million Americans are on antidepressants [that’s roughly 10% of our total population]
  • Americans account for about five% of the global population, but we buy more than 50% of the pharmaceutical drugs
  • 60 million Americans have a problem with alcohol addiction
  • small business ownership in the United States is at the lowest level that has ever been recorded
  • approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father
  • Americans in the 15 to 24-year-old age group account for about 50% of all new STD cases each year

Notice that: both children currently in our “education” system, and adults recently passed through it.

Hmm….

Politicizing Ebola

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And right before a major election, too.

On Oct 12, the Agenda Project Action Fund released a political ad called “Republican Cuts Kill,” which according to the group, has been scheduled to air in Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, and South Dakota—all states with high-stakes Senate elections in November. The ad juxtaposes pictures of dead bodies and body bags in West Africa with Republican lawmakers like Sens Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul.

“Like rabid dogs in a butcher shop, Republicans have indiscriminately shredded everything in their path, including critical programs that could have dealt with the Ebola crisis before it reached our country,” said ad producer [Agenda Project Action Fund] Erica Payne[.]

Never mind some facts.

In both 2013 and 2014, it was Congress that boosted the funding after the administration had proposed scaled-back budgets.

[W]hen the 2014 budget was passed in January, the CDC’s budget rose to $6.9 billion, $567 million more than it received in 2013 and more than the agency anticipated, as the president only requested $6.6 billion.

…double the budget the CDC was getting in 2000 ($3.4 billion)[.]

And

With NIH, the numbers have edged up from $28.5 billion in 2006 to $30.14 billion in 2014….

And

…this administration [has been] pushing the CDC to spend time and resources on bike lanes and farmers markets instead of prioritizing national security and the health of Americans[.]

Projects like origami condoms, to the tune of $2.4 million, a part of nearly $40 million of CDC funding that The Washington Free Beacon reports could have been…better used.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $39 million on obese lesbians, origami condoms, texting drunks, and dozens of other projects that could have been scrapped in favor of developing an Ebola vaccine.

And not a single Democrat has corrected this distortion, not a single Democrat has distanced himself from this distortion. Their silence demonstrates their condoning this politicization.

Elections are soon.

A Tidbit

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…of a concept that’s lost on one of the main groups of central planners of the world, those of Russia.

This one comes from an article in Pravda, which plays a role for the Russian government similar to that of The New York Times for the Democratic Party’s administrations. Interestingly, in addition to being missed by the Pravda author, it’s also missed by Tom Friedman, who cited the article in his NYT article.

The context is an alleged oil war being waged by the US and Saudi Arabia against Russia and Iran, an attempt, supposedly, to destroy those two nation’s economies. (I say “alleged” and “supposedly” because of course President Barack Obama wouldn’t do such a thing. Both he prefers engagement with our enemies over contesting with them, and an oil war would be inconsistent with Obama’s promise to Vladimir of greater flexibility in this post-2012 election period. Besides, the Pravda author denies the existence of a war, so that settles it.)

The tidbit from Pravda:

The planned economy of the Soviet Union was not able to cope with falling export revenues [from collapsing oil prices]….

The planned economy was not able to cope.

Planned economies just aren’t flexible enough. More, by introducing like a dam into a river a small body of men into the information stream that is the core of a free market economy, planned economies can’t react with the speed that a freely flowing river of information produces for an unfettered market economy.

This is a fact well known to capitalist economists and empirically demonstrated all over the world, repeatedly, if most dramatically by that Soviet Union collapse.

Unfortunately, this tidbit also is lost on our own central planners, and so we get Obamacare and Dodd-Frank; an explosion of economy-governing rules from EPA, the CFPB, et al; and a burgeoning production of Executive Orders from our Democratic Party President.

Leading from Behind

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…and continuing the Obama administration meme of letting the “international community” dictate our foreign policy—and now our domestic policy, also.

A quarantine against travel from the Ebola-infected nations of western Africa to the United States, ideally as part of an international effort but plainly not dependent on it, is critical to mitigating the risk to the United States of the Ebola epidemic spreading to here. I’ve answered the CDC chief’s objections to a travel ban here and here. Others more knowledgeable than me also are calling for such a travel ban.

Here, though, is what Obama’s State Department—medical experts all—claim in all seriousness:

“We are not imposing any sort of ban,” a State Department official told FoxNews.com. “We need to allow for this to be a global response and make sure that there is proper care and training throughout the region.

Because, it’s not perfect, therefore mustn’t do it at all. Because, safety in numbers, especially if those numbers give cover for avoiding responsibility for error. Because, it might show initiative. Because, leading from the front is arrogant.

The most likely global response from this foolishness is an Ebola pandemic.

It just isn’t the Democrat way to accept responsibility and the personal risk that entails.

It just isn’t the Democrat way to be out front, with or without the “international community.”

It just isn’t the Democrat way actually to lead.

Jobs Numbers

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The headline numbers are in, and they seem favorable enough: unemployment has dropped to 5.9%, and 248,000 new jobs were created in September.

However.

Counting the 142,000 new jobs created in August, new jobs were created at a monthly average of 195,000 jobs per month over the total interval. Using, instead, Labor’s revised August number of 180,000 new jobs (I’d be curious to learn how President Barack Obama’s Labor Department could make such a large estimation error—a 20% error), that still works out to a pretty anemic 214,000 new jobs per month over the period.

The labor force participation rate, at 62.7%, remains at historic lows. If this rate were at 2007’s level of 66.2% (a rough average for the year), the unemployment would be nearly 11%.

Even taking the 5.9% unemployment rate as legitimate, we’re still years behind schedule—not just behind the rate extant at this point in a normal recovery, but behind Obama’s promised unemployment rate which he used to sell his Stimulus package, as this graph illustrates.ObamaPromisedEmploymentRate

In particular, we’re still not at the 5% Obama promised we’d reach by last year. Oh, and that peak unemployment of 8% worked out to over 10%, which was worse than the No-Stimulus situation which he projected.

Additionally, median income remains down sharply from pre-Panic levels—7.9% sharply.

Additionally, new jobs created since the Panic officially ended in 2009 has only just, this past summer, matched the number of jobs extant in 2007, some three or more years later than prior recoveries. And that…milestone…ignores the fact that there are, today, 16 million more Americans in the civilian noninstitutional population (able-bodied Americans, capable of working) than there were just prior to the Panic.

What’s different between this recovery and the recoveries from prior recessions? Only Obama’s policies, actively aided and abetted by his pet, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) and the latter’s Senate cohorts. All the prior recoveries proceeded much faster, and those paces occurred under both Republican and Democrat administrations.