Tag Archives: Unemployment

09/27/16

Legal Immigrants are Swayed by Emotions Rather than Facts

By: Sridhar “Sri” Rangaswamy

  • Why do immigrants think differently? The reason: They have been fed all wrong notions without facts.
  • The number of unemployed Afro-Americans has been extremely high the past 8 years. Statistics can be provided for validation. We can check the census.gov.
  • The unemployment rate for the Hispanic community is also rapidly increasing.

All these are proven facts:

We should always go by the facts, rather than emotion. We should not always say what others are saying. This has been done for the past 8 years.

Who is responsible for it? We need to thoroughly inspect, instead of blindly following.

I was talking to my leasing agents in Tulsa, Oklahoma and they were stating it has gotten really bad in the Tulsa area.

Bill Clinton’s trade issue is still affecting the area, according to others with the same leasing company – they were extremely upset.

Here are details – facts and numbers:

During Obama’s tenure, the percentage of African Americans struggling below the poverty line has advanced. According to the most recent Census Bureau data, the rate went from 25.8 in 2009 to 26.2 in 2014 — that’s up 1.6 percent!

The African American unemployment rate was 12.7% when Mr. Obama took office. While the unemployment rate in the U.S. as a whole is below 8%, the Labor Department reported the African American jobless rate was up from 12.9% to 14% for December.

The worst increase during Mr. Obama’s first term was in September of 2011, with 16.7% unemployment for African Americans — the highest since 1983. The African American teen jobless rate also hit a staggering 39.3% in July of 2012.

Real median income among African American households, according to the Census Bureau, also sank from $35,954 to $35,398 — that’s down 1.5 percent!

The Census Bureau report this week found wages have climbed back to pre-recession levels in 2015, including African American and Hispanics. However, throughout Obama’s two terms, the highest unemployment rates continue to be among African Americans and Hispanics.

The number of African American food-stamp participants exploded across that time frame from 7,393,000 to 11,699,000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports — up 58.2 percent! Also, from Obama’s oath of office through the fourth quarter of 2015, the percentage of African Americans who own homes foundered from 46.1 percent to 41.9 percent — down 9.1 percent.

You can read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433222/black-americans-barack-obama-going-backwards-under-president-obama

In Conclusion

With the above facts and figures, how do we think liberals, Obama’s administration and Clinton’s government will fare for the next 4 years? I mean, Mrs. Clinton supported anti-African American laws before and now she talks for and supports the Afro-American community. This does not make sense. Let’s re-evaluate!

This will bring havoc to the entire country!

Liberals want to have African American’s, Hispanic’s, Asian Indian’s or any immigrant’s vote to get the numbers up, but they really do not want to improve their quality of life. If you go back in history – Clinton was anti-black in the years 1992-1994.

08/9/15

Leftists Use Black Lives Matter to Exploit Blacks, Again

By: Lloyd Marcus

BlackLivesMatter

Recently, my black brother shared an unfortunate incident. Years ago, police in two unmarked cars blocked his car. They jumped out pointing guns, demanding that he exit his car. My brother immediately raised his hands, but did not exit his car because he was frozen with fear. An officer pulled him out of his car onto the ground. My brother said, “Calm down! I am not resisting!”

After checking him out, the officers realized he was not their suspect. Rather than sending my brother on his way with an apology, the police framed him. My brother had an unopened six pack of beer on the floor. An officer opened one of the beers and said, “You’re under arrest for drunk driving.” The bogus charge did not stick and my brother was released hours later, angry, with a bitter taste in his mouth.

Ironically, my brother’s reason for telling me about the incident was to defend the police in the recent shooting and arrests covered 24/7 on CNN. He said the cops who framed him were a few bad apples which are everywhere in every profession. Amen to that. Jesus had 12 disciples and one was a bad apple. My brother made the point that he was not harmed because he submitted to the police’s authority. He noted that the blacks in the videos shown on TV did not submit to the police.

My brother’s point is correct. In each incident caught on video in which people are second-guessing officer’s behavior, bad outcomes could have been avoided had the persons simply respected authority and complied.

A friend of mine is a veteran Baltimore black cop. He told me upon arriving at a scene, a cop must immediately take control of the situation. If not, the cop could end up dead – stabbed in the back by a weepy girlfriend or mom. The most hazardous part of a police officer’s job is the routine traffic stop; 62 officers killed 2002- 2011. http://bit.ly/1OV0uQ2

Democrats, CNN and other liberal bias media have an insidiously evil agenda to convince black America that Republicans, conservatives and police are out to get them. These Leftists would love to feature my brother’s bad boy cops story 24/7; claiming the cops were unequivocally motivated by white racism.

Meanwhile, the Left avoids experiences like mine with police like the plague. In the 80’s, an interracial couple robbed a bank, their description matching my wife, me and our car. Police surrounded our car with guns drawn and ordered us out of our car. We complied. They checked us out, apologized and went on their way. We were stopped on another occasion years later. Again, the officers were respectful and professional.

As a young adult, my cousins wife called me in a panic to their home in the hood. My black cousin had a nervous breakdown. He held their two toddler sons hostage in the basement, threatening to kill himself and their boys. First on the scene were two white cops – one young and fit, the other much older and morbidly obese. Masterfully, the old obese cop gained my cousin’s trust and talked him out of the basement. “C’mon son, I know life gets tough, but you don’t want to do this.” My cousin was arrested, given the mental health assistance he needed and was later released. My cousin is alive, well and a great dad.

Folks, cops kill whites at almost double the rate of blacks. http://bit.ly/1gxYodS As a matter of fact, blacks are killed by blacks 93% of the time. http://nws.mx/1IfGDXh The Left does not want you to know the biggest threat to black lives is other blacks. Despite the Left’s Black Lives Matter (blame and hate white America) movement, incidents of blacks killing blacks are on the rise.

The Left is ignoring the stunning numbers of blacks murdered in Chicago by blacks. http://bit.ly/1VTmLT2

In July, Baltimore homicides reached its highest in 43 years, up 60%. http://fxn.ws/1N19K3S

The mainstream media deliberately creating the false impression that cops are the biggest threat to blacks is reprehensible. Proving they do not give a rat’s derriere about blacks, the Left refuses to address real issues plaguing black America; multi-generational government dependency; increasing numbers of fatherless households; unprecedented high unemployment under Obama http://bit.ly/1HggQwz ; epidemic school dropouts; black on black homicides and Leftist encouraged moral and cultural decline. http://bit.ly/1hcAQek

White guys in white hoods, the Aryan nation nor cops are infiltrating black neighborhoods, victimizing residents and murdering blacks. The Left has been fooling blacks with its blame-everything-on-whitey tactic for decades; keeping blacks voting for their supposed Democrat saviors.

As young as 9 or 10, I realized the blame-everything-on-whitey excuse was a lie. My family lived on the sixth floor of a Baltimore project high-rise building. The elevators were often not working due to vandalism. The stairwells were pitch black due to broken light bulbs and smelled of urine. The crunch sound under foot echoing off the concrete walls was due to broken liquor bottles. I knew whites were not sneaking in at night, peeing in our stairwells.

Not to indict everyone who lived in the projects, some neighbors kept their apartments immaculate. Even as a child, I concluded that poverty (and ghetto) was a mindset rather than simply an absence of money.

The Black Lives Matter movement, “white privilege” and so on are founded on lies. They are despicable tools to exploit blacks’ emotions. These Leftist scams have resulted in what can be described as black terror cells. Police are assassinated, outbreaks of black flash mob attacks and innocent whites assaulted, raped and murdered. http://bit.ly/1IdaXE5

Outrageously, Black Lives Matter thugs threaten to “shut down” the Republican National Convention. http://bit.ly/1KJ6VEq Notice the stupid, hateful and racist assumption that white Republicans are a threat to black lives? Imagine if the Tea Party announced a plan to shut down the Democrat National Convention. After recovering from multiple convulsions of pleasure from being given such an opportunity to demonize the Tea Party, Leftist media would bombard the public with 24/7 news coverage; branding the Tea Party racist, sexist and homophobic.

Rest assured, you will not hear any meaningful criticism from the MSM, Democrats or Obama regarding Black Lives Matter thugs arrogantly assaulting free speech. Quite the opposite. Leftists are behind the scene cheering on the Black Lives Matter thugs.

Wake up black America. The Left is playin’ y’all, again.

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee

06/6/15

The Fat Lady Hums A Few Notes

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Amidst all the other emergencies, real and concocted here in the US, one has gone almost virtually unnoticed. But it’s a kicker. The Bird Flu is sweeping the country like wildfire and has now killed 45 million chickens and turkeys here in the US… 20 million 2 months ago and 25 million last month. Nearly 80 percent of those are egg-laying hens, a reality that has been crippling for the egg industry. That’s staggering. And to goose the visuals for a little perspective, take a gander:

This photo provided by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources shows chickens in a trench on a farm in northwest Iowa. Millions of dead chickens and turkeys are decomposing in fly-swarmed piles near dozens of Iowa farms, culled because of a bird flu virus that swept through the state’s large poultry operations. (Iowa Department of Natural Resources via AP)

Oh look… they’re killing all the chickens and turkeys – so many they are dumping them in humongous trenches and burying them. Wonder what that portends for all of us? Well, in Texas, the egg rationing has begun. H-E-B, one of the largest grocery chains in the nation, limits you to purchasing three dozen eggs. The suppliers of liquid eggs are running dry – they supply restaurants, bakeries and other food producers. Prices are beginning to skyrocket as well. Don’t believe me? Ask the USDA:

Guess where we are going today? To buy dozens of eggs. We have two fridges and we’re stocking up. Consider it our modest way of getting into the commodities market in egg futures. Fully 25% of the US’ chickens and turkeys are now ‘offline,’ which is a nice way of saying they have died from the flu or have been euthanized. If one bird gets sick in a batch, they slaughter all of them.

Here’s some info from TwinCities.com – it’s already outdated as the numbers have gone up significantly since this report:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Millions of dead chickens and turkeys lie in stinking, fly-swarmed piles near dozens of Iowa farms, casualties of a bird flu virus that’s swept through the state’s large poultry operations in the last month.

Contractors hired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture move methodically from barn to barn at the 28 farms, killing the animals that haven’t yet died from the H5N2 virus — a suffocating foam for turkeys, carbon dioxide gas to asphyxiate chickens. Neighbors say they understand the challenge the state’s producers face in disposing of more than 20 million bird carcasses, but are eager for quick action, especially as temperatures rise.

“People in low-lying areas near those facilities have contacted me complaining about a very large number of flies and, until the wind comes up and goes the right direction, a lingering odor,” said Sen. David Johnson, whose northwest Iowa district includes Sunrise Farms — where 3.8 million chickens in 20 barns are dead or dying.

There are few details about how the carcasses are being handled; some are piled up and covered with dirt or other material, turkeys are often composted inside barns and at least one chicken farm is burying them in trenches. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is working with area landfills on agreements to dispose of poultry inside plastic bio-bags and has approved permits for a company to operate portable incinerators in three counties, with the possibility of a fourth roving incinerator.

But one thing is clear, according to Ken Hessenius, a DNR environmental supervisor: “We’ve got to look at all methods of disposal here to deal with this. It truly is a crisis. It’s an extremely difficult situation for all these farms.”

Iowa, which raises nearly 20 percent of the nation’s egg-laying chickens and produces nearly one in every five eggs consumed in the U.S., saw its first reported case on April 13. Since then, nearly 21 million chickens and 470,000 turkeys have died, are dying or are in line to be euthanized. It isn’t the only state dealing with the issue: More than 100 farms in the Midwest have been hit, leading to the loss of more than 28 million chickens and turkeys — 5.5 million of those in Minnesota, the nation’s leading turkey producer.

So, buckle up… because this emergency is expected to last at least a year and a half. The eggpocalypse is upon us it would seem. The poultry industry is facing two, count ’em two, strains of Bird Flu here in the US now. So far, the H5N2 strain has hit the states of Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin. It has also been identified in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The H5N8 strain has not been doing quite as much damage yet, but it has been killing birds in California, Idaho, Indiana, Oregon and Washington. In addition, Canadian officials have discovered that the H5N1 strain is spreading in British Columbia. Wonder why a poultry plague is not big news in the US? By the time Americans figure out there is a problem, it’ll be too late for most of them to take any mitigating action. I don’t know about you, but we depend on eggs. My household eats Paleo and Whole30 and eggs are a mainstay for us. What are the odds that two different strains would go active at the same time? Aggressive little mutant flu virus, for sure. Who knew that chickens would experiment with influenza virology? Those hens need to be careful what eggscapes from their dimly lit underground labs. Without proper precautions, some dumb cluck could devastate egg production nationwide. *Ahem* … okay, meanwhile back on this side of the cartoon curtain…

It is so dire out there, a number of suppliers are going to what they call “eggless eggs.” These are eggs produced from plants. Sounds so very tasty – not. Whataburger has announced that it is going to be limiting the number of hours that it serves breakfast. McDonald’s and others can’t be far behind. They will either limit hours serving, raise costs, limit their menus or all of the above. I almost feel sorry for McDonald’s – they are mostly shutting down in San Francisco because of skyrocketing property prices. Then there’s the minimum wage fiasco – $15 an hour will also shut them down. Heck, in de Blasio’s commie utopia, 1 in 5 fast food joints are closing their doors now because of the $15 an hour extortion imposed on them. Seattle, Portland and LA are lining up as well. You have to wonder about Walmart running national ads about how great they are since they will be paying their employees higher wages. Egg timer on viability anyone? But, I digress.

And not to alarm everyone more than I already have, but this Bird Flu crap has the potential to jump to humans. The CDC has already issued a warning:

“Clinicians should consider the possibility of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5 virus infection in persons showing signs or symptoms of respiratory illness who have relevant exposure history,” the CDC said in a health alert issued to doctors.

“This includes persons who have had contact with potentially infected birds (e.g., handling, slaughtering, defeathering, butchering, culling, preparation for consumption); direct contact with surfaces contaminated with feces or parts (carcasses, internal organs, etc.) of potentially-infected birds; and persons who have had prolonged exposure to potentially-infected birds in a confined space.”

Boy, this would be an elitist’s dream… how to reduce the population and fast. Let’s pray that this virus does not jump the shark.

I’m in Oklahoma – the rationing is in Texas and soon to come in other states I presume.

The egg shortage and Bird Flu pandemic is just one emergency… we are caught in the middle of a number of harsh scenarios playing out. Everything from the drought in the west which will cause food inflation and other ramifications, to terrorism threats from ISIS.

From the attack in Garland, Texas to the take down of two Jihadists in Boston who were planning to behead Pamela Geller and police officers, lone wolf attacks and worse are becoming a reality here in the States. Yesterday, a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) helicopter was shot at and had to make an emergency landing. The shots came from Mexico and it’s your best guess whether it was the emboldened cartels or ISIS, who has at least two camps there, or a combo of both. Now ISIS is bragging it can bring a nuclear weapon into the US… I suggest we pay attention with the non-existent borders we now have.

Our cities are also embroiled in an epic crime wave, escalating across the nation. Shooting attacks — mostly ethnic minorities — are up 60 percent in Baltimore so far this year compared to 2014. Homicides are up 180 percent in Milwaukee, 25 percent in St. Louis, 32 percent in Atlanta and 13 percent in New York in the same period. All because of Progressive-manipulated racism and riots, fomenting cop hatred. In other words, Cloward and Piven.

Probably of the greatest concern to many here in the US is our massive unemployment problem, the fall of the dollar and it’s replacement as the world’s reserve currency. Did you know that a global bond crash has started? Didn’t hear that in the news? I’m not surprised. Why do you think they want to do away with tangible money? The powers-that-be want to go digitized so they can implement taxes and a global fiscal confiscation “haircut” to bail their sorry asses out as the fiscal emergency — of their own creation — continues to spiral out of control. The Chinese look to take control with the Yuan as the new global currency. Since they are our biggest debt holder, what do Americans think will happen when they come to collect?

Militarily, Russia, China and Iran are plotting and planning on a World War to end all wars. And with a neutered US, there may be no one standing in their way of global conquest. I saw one major media outlet predict WWIII was a sure bet beginning this summer and to pray it would not be nuclear. If it goes full blown, nukes are a virtual certainty along with financial, cyber and space warfare.

The fat lady isn’t belting it out in the US yet, but she’s humming a few notes. The Bird Flu is just one more note in a discordant visage playing out in America. Marxists believe you have to break a few eggs to make a communist omelet – I always thought that was supposed to be a metaphor.

05/21/15

“Commencing” Climate Change – POTUS Warns Coast Gards Grads At Commencement

05/12/15

This one policy has correlated with higher unemployment, more bankruptcies and greater inequality. Can you guess what it is?

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

In a new book titled “The Floating Kilogram,” former long-time Wall Street Journal editor and founder of the New York Sun Seth Lipsky makes an impassioned, reasoned, common sense case for returning America to sound money in the form of the gold standard.

Much like Steve Forbes and Jim Grant with whom we have touched on this issue before, as Seth and I discussed during an in-depth interview, Lipsky believes there is significant economic and moral merit to backing currency with a tangible asset, with benefits for all Americans.

One of his more interesting and overlooked arguments concerns some of the devastating consequences for the country since we officially severed the link between the dollar and gold under President Nixon in 1971. Lipsky explains:

From 1947 when [the] Bretton Woods System really got operating to 1971, when the dollar was convertible into gold at a 35th of an ounce, unemployment in America averaged 4.7 percent. And then we got rid of the Bretton Woods system — we defaulted on it — we went to fiat money, and in the years from 1971 to today, unemployment has averaged significantly above 6 percent. Low unemployment: gold standard. High unemployment: fiat money.

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Title: The Floating Kilogram: … and Other Editorials on Money from the New York Sun
Author: Seth Lipsky
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But it’s not just unemployment. The bankruptcy rate which Elizabeth Warren likes to focus on was one point something per thousand for years, and suddenly it shot up. When did it do that? The mid-1970s when we went off the gold standard and moved to the age of fiat money.

And you’ve no doubt read about this economic Thomas Piketty who likes to warn about the inequality rate. It was trending gently downward for years and suddenly it began to shoot up. That was the mid-1970s when we abandoned the gold standard and went to a system of fiat money.

So there are a lot of reasons to start looking at this and to see whether the absence of a sound dollar is the root cause of our system of growing inequality and high unemployment and lack of jobs and high bankruptcy rate, and to see whether something can be reformed so as to bring us back to a system of sound money. [Links ours]

The title for Lipsky’s book, “The Floating Kilogram,” reflects an editorial published in 2011 in his New York Sun, in which Lipsky asked the question, “Why don’t we let the kilogram float?” The implication is that if weights and measures are no longer defined, why shouldn’t the kilogram — a man-made measure which the New York Times noted may have been losing mass — fluctuate just as a dollar fluctuates in value. Lipsky wrote:

[H]ere in the modern age, the members of the Federal Reserve Board don’t worry about how many grains of silver or gold are behind the dollar. They couldn’t care less. And when the value of a dollar plunges at a dizzying rate, the chairman of Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, goes up to Capitol Hill and, in testimony before the House, declares merely that he is “puzzled.” No “new urgency” to redefine the dollar for him. The fact is that we’ve long since ceased to define the dollar, and it can float not only against other currencies but against the 371 ¼ grains of pure silver.

So why not the kilogram? After all, when you go into the grocery to buy a pound of hamburger, why should you worry about how much hamburger you get — so long as it’s a pound’s worth. A pound is supposed to be .45359237 of a kilogram, of course. But if the Congress can permit Mr. Bernanke to use his judgment in deciding what a dollar is worth, why shouldn’t he — or some other PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology — be able to decide from day to day what a kilogram is worth?

During our interview which you can listen to in full below, we discuss the fundamental flaws in and immorality of floating fiat money and several other topics including:

Note: The link to the book in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.

04/8/15

Obama’s “Potemkin Village”

By: T F Stern
T F Stern’s Rantings

Financial MarketsHistorians would recognize the term “Potemkin village” as it’s used to describe “any attempt to make others believe we are better than we really are”.   I first heard the unusual sounding combination of words this past Saturday evening as used by Dieter F. Uchtdorf in his General Conference talk, On Being Genuine, when he addressed the Priesthood Session.

He intended to emphasize the importance of actually being who you claim to be publicly as he explained the origins of this interesting terminology.

“In the late 18th century, Catherine the Great of Russia announced she would tour the southern part of her empire, accompanied by several foreign ambassadors. The governor of the area, Grigory Potemkin, desperately wanted to impress these visitors. And so he went to remarkable lengths to showcase the country’s accomplishments.

For part of the journey, Catherine floated down the Dnieper River, proudly pointing out to the ambassadors the thriving hamlets along the shore, filled with industrious and happy townspeople. There was only one problem: it was all for show. It is said that Potemkin had assembled pasteboard facades of shops and homes. He had even positioned busy-looking peasants to create the impression of a prosperous economy.”

As I listened my first thoughts turned immediately to Barrack Obama and his administration; lie after lie covered by smoke and mirrors, deception and stone walling to keep the public in the dark until such time as the truth didn’t matter anymore.

The health and safety of our nation has taken a back seat to how Obama and his administration appear in public; but I fear it is much worse than Grigory Potemkin’s slight of hand trick to make himself look good, Obama’s implementation of Marxist communism seems to be the driving force behind all this fakery.

An example of Obama’s questionable use of the presidency, and I’m being far too kind in calling it questionable; some might prefer treasonous…would be his entering into nuclear treaty talks with Iran.

Thomas Sowell wrote an article for the National Review,  Obama’s Iran ‘Agreement’ Is a Charade, in which he outlines the incredulity of forming any alliance with Iran and believing this band of terrorists might keep their word.  (I suppose the folks in Iran are saying the same thing about Obama and his administration; none are men of integrity.)

“By abandoning virtually all its demands for serious restrictions on Iran’s nuclear-bomb program, the Obama administration has apparently achieved the semblance of a preliminary introduction to the beginning of a tentative framework for a possible hope of an eventual agreement with Iran.

{…}

Why then all these negotiations? Because these charades protect Barack Obama politically, no matter how much danger they create for America and the world. The latest public-opinion polls show Obama’s approval rating rising. In political terms — the only terms that matter to him — his foreign policy has been a success.”

Sowell goes on to give a history lesson on Neville Chamberlain’s handling of a treaty made with NAZI Germany in an attempt to stave off war.  At no time did it appear that Chamberlain intended to set Great Britain up for the nasty ramifications of such poor judgment; but at the same time his actions did “throw a small country to the Nazi wolves in order to get a worthless agreement with Hitler”.

On the other hand, as Sowell points out, Obama’s worthless treaty giving Iran the ability to expand its nuclear program may well be throwing Israel to the wolves “for the sake of another worthless agreement”.

“If anyone examines the hard, cold facts about the Obama administration’s actions and inactions in the Middle East from the beginning, it is far more difficult to reconcile those actions and inactions with a belief that Obama was trying to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons than it is to reconcile those facts with his trying to stop Israel from stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

If you consider the folks Obama has for his inner circle then his intentions become more troubling.

His senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and openly stated she looks forward to using America’s ignorance and tolerance of all religions via the First Amendment to further advance Islam into our society in order to bring about an eventual Transformation to Islam here.

Obama has been steadily weakening our military while at the same time placing ‘questionable’ individuals who happen to be Muslim, not only Muslim… but individuals who have ties to radical jihadist groups in key positions of government.

“In 2002 Mohamed Elibiary founded the Freedom and Justice Foundation in Plano, Texas. Freedom and Justice is the political party of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He was appointed a member of the Homeland Security advisory council which meant Elibiary had access to security documents. In October of 2011, it was reported he took sensitive reports from the Texas Department of Public Safety.”

Obama, Hillary and the Muslim BrotherhoodI almost wish I wasn’t aware of the loose ends, the shady deals, the outright lies and deception Obama and his administration have foisted off on the public, all the while claiming to be working for a better America.  It would seem the America Obama wants our constitutional republic Transformed into is under the flag of Islam.

America’s economic recovery… It’s all for show and major media outlets refuse to report the truth, instead they prefer building up Obama’s image as America’s first and greatest Black president.

I haven’t brought up job reports, unemployment or the disturbing fact that 63 million potential members of the workforce don’t have a job, some of them having quit looking long ago so they aren’t considered unemployed.  How’s that for another of Obama’s Potemkin Villages?

This article has been cross posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government, & The American Constitution”.

02/28/15

Sessions Discusses Need To Block Funds For President’s Unconstitutional Amnesty

Jeff Sessions:

“In its simplest terms, here is where we stand now… Six Senate Democrats are standing in the way of the interests of 300 million Americans. Six Senate Democrats are keeping us from protecting American workers and American borders. We will take that case to the American people and see whether it is indeed possible for six Senate Democrats to defy the hopes, the dreams, and the sacred rights of every law-abiding American citizen.”

02/24/15

Media Accepting Obama’s Spin on the Economy

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

With as many lies and distortions that proceed from this scandal-plagued administration, one might think that mainstream reporters would turn a skeptical eye toward another one of President Obama’s carefully crafted narratives. Each narrative is designed to push “progressive” policies or to cover up administration mismanagement. But our corrupt media reflexively cheer whenever the leftist agendas for amnesty, Obamacare, climate change, and economic regulation are mentioned. Add to the list of official narratives the hyped state of the economy, the successes of which cannot fail to be championed because they reflect on the viability of the current President’s policies.

Yet President Obama’s claims about how his administration’s efforts have boosted the economy, or that the economy is actually improving, are based on cherry-picked data.

“At this moment when our economy is growing and creating jobs, we’ve got to work twice as hard, especially in Washington, to build on our momentum,” claimed President Obama in his recent economic report, according to The New York Times. He continued, “And I will not let politics or partisanship roll back the progress we’ve achieved on so many fronts.”

Back in January, the labor force participation rate was the lowest since 1978. It has since increased by a mere 0.2%. And while hiring may be up, wages remain stagnant.

What type of progress, exactly, is the President citing? His entitlement and regulatory policies, such as Obamacare and proposed EPA regulations, shackle American economic ingenuity with an ever-increasing burden.

“Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed,” wrote Gallup President Jim Clifton in, “The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment.”  “Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast ‘falling’ unemployment.”

“Our concern with our analysts is that [the unemployment statistic is] very, very misleading because what America really wants are full-time jobs. … The percent of full-time jobs in this country, to the population, is the worst it’s been in thirty years,” Clifton said on CNBC. He connected this to the middle class crisis.

Mortimer Zuckerman, of The Wall Street Journal has argued that the President’s signature health care legislation depresses full-time hiring. “Many employers cut workers’ hours to avoid the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to provide health insurance to anyone working 30 hours a week or more,” wrote Zuckerman last July. “The unintended consequence of President Obama’s ‘signature legislation?’ Fewer full-time workers.”

But President Obama, his administration, and the media are on a full-blown public relations campaign to promote “middle class economics,” with more government as the answer.

“In a letter to Congress with the report, Mr. Obama called on lawmakers to approve his economic agenda of expanded tax breaks for the middle class and increased spending on initiatives such as early childhood education,” reported The Washington Times. “The president also wants to raise several hundred billion dollars through tax increases on mostly wealthier families.”

“The [recent economic] report…also contained a fair dollop of wishful thinking—or what some might call the administration’s own ‘dynamic scoring,’” observed Neil King Jr. for The Wall Street Journal.

President Obama has tied his favorite policies to theoretical economic gains which may, or may not occur. “So various measures to provide free preschool or expand the Earned Income Tax Credit would bring more adults into the workforce, thus expanding the tax base,” writes King. “A revamped immigration system would in turn lure more foreign-born workers to counteract what the president’s report calls ‘the effects of an aging native-born population.’”

“Although annual budget deficits have fallen from the trillion-dollar-plus levels early in Mr. Obama’s presidency, the national debt has continued to soar and topped $18 trillion late last year,” notes The Washington Times.

With the current controversy over comments by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani questioning whether or not President Obama loves this country, we are reminded of President Obama’s comments when criticizing then-President George W. Bush for running up $4 trillion of new debt during his eight years in office. Obama said it was “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.” President Obama has so far added over $8 trillion in new debt, and he still has two more years in office. So how would he rate himself?

Both The Wall Street Journal and New York Times ran articles which summarized the economic report without questioning its assumptions, effectively offering the administration additional platforms from which to spout its economic spin.

I reported last November that President Obama unsuccessfully attempted to sell the “illusion of economic success” to the public in order to “salvage what most polls indicate is about to be a dismal election for Democrats.” This effort continued with the President’s State of the Union, where he argued that “we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth.”

Obama’s tired rhetoric of hope and change resonated with the media back in January, and it still does. Meanwhile, many in America struggle to put bread on the table.

“Not only have the ‘benefits’ of the Obama recovery not been ‘fully shared,’ but many Americans are still worse off today than when Obama became president,” reports Townhall. The 2013 median family income, “the most recent year available,” is more than $2,000 less than what it was in 2009 when Obama became President, it reports.

The media are doing their part to validate Obama’s claims about the economy. It is all about their political agenda and double standard.

“Among Democrats, there are divisions over the degree to which Hillary Rodham Clinton, considered their leading contender, should praise the recovery and run on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the economy,” wrote Jonathan Martin for The New York Times on February 22. “And Republicans—assessing falling unemployment and soaring job creation under a president with still-mediocre approval ratings—are grasping for the right way to frame their 2016 campaign message.”

Martin, like so many other reporters, operates under the premise that the economy has actually recovered. But to the extent it has, there may be other factors at work besides Obama’s initiatives. How much credit for the nation’s economic growth belongs to the Republican-led states, such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida and especially Texas; states which are doing far better at adding jobs and balancing their budgets than the federal government? And how much is attributable to the powerful capitalist economy in this country, which chugs along despite the burdensome taxation, regulatory and bureaucratic demands that have been imposed on it by this administration?

02/18/15

Irreconcilable differences: Obama’s job approval ratings and unemployment

By: James Simpson
WatchDog.org

Shutterstock Image

PERCEPTION VS. REALITY: A number of economic statistics not covered in official reports reveal the differences between the public’s perception of the president’s performance in handling unemployment and the reality.

PERCEPTION VS. REALITY: A number of economic statistics not covered in official reports reveal the  differences between the public’s perception of the president’s performance in handling unemployment and the reality.

According to a recent poll by AP-GfK, President Obama currently has a 47 percent job approval rating, up from 41 percent in December. Fifty-one percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the unemployment issue, compared with 44 percent before, while 45 percent approve of his handling of the economy overall, up from 41 percent in December.

These numbers track with the declining unemployment rate and optimistic newscasts that followed the publication of the most recent unemployment statistics, but do not reflect actual economic conditions. In fact, a closer look at the poll itself reveals that people have grave reservations about the economy—reservations that are reflected in a number of economic statistics not covered in published reports.

The overall unemployment rate has been on the decline since the trough of the recession in 2010 (see Chart 1. below); however this paints a very deceiving picture. Were it indicative of a true economic recovery, other indicators would show similarly positive results. But this is not the case. For example enrollment in food stamps has grown 65 percent since President Obama took office, from 28 million in 2008, to 46 million today. Despite a small decline in 2014, food stamp use has been at its highest levels in recorded history—magnitudes higher than any previous time. Over 46 million people, equal to about 30 percent of the civilian labor force, now use food stamps.

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Chart 2 shows the number of people working part time for economic reasons. Workers in this category are defined by the Bureau of Labor statistics as being part timers due to slack work, poor business conditions, or only being able to find a part-time job. These people would work full-time if the opportunity were available. While these numbers have come down somewhat, they remain at the highest level in recorded history.

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The overall civilian unemployment rate does not account for these part-timers. It also does not consider those marginally attached to the labor force. This includes the so-called “discouraged workers,”—i.e. people who have given up looking for work in the past year because they do not believe they will find a job—and others who are unemployed as a result of work slowdowns or temporary layoffs.

When these groups are included, a much more troublesome picture emerges. As of January 2015, this unemployment rate stands at 11.3 percent. This is the real unemployment rate, and is the lowest it has been since October 2008. It reached an unprecedented high of over 17 percent in 2010. The last and only time the rate went over 11 percent was in early 1994. (See chart 3.)

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The civilian labor force participation rate measures the percentage of those among the population who are working or actively seeking work. In measuring this rate, the most important demographic is 25 to 54 year-olds. Younger people often leave the labor force to attend college, and as the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, older folks are retiring at an increasing rate, thus the absence of these groups may not directly reflect economic conditions. This rate reached an all-time high of 84.6 percent in 1999. It fell substantially following 9-11 but began to recover during the later Bush years. Since the end of 2008 however, it has fallen precipitously with little sign of recovery.

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Real (inflation adjusted) wages are also a good indication of economic conditions. Real wages have grown consistently year-over-year since the mid-1990s. For the past four years however, real wages have been flat. (See chart 5. Note: the CPI less food and energy was used to correct the wage figures for inflation. That data series removes the volatility associated with food and energy prices and is considered a better measure of underlying inflation.)

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These economic statistics present a much worse picture of the economic situation than portrayed by the civilian unemployment rate taken alone. Indeed the same AP-GfK poll indicates that while Obama’s approval ratings have improved slightly, the assessment of overall economic conditions has not.

Only 35 percent of families say they have fully recovered from the recession. An almost equal number, 33 percent, say their situation has improved little or not at all. For small business owners, 46 percent said they have not recovered at all, while only 18 percent responded that their businesses had completely or mostly recovered. Thirty-nine percent of individuals said the job market in their area had not improved, while only 27 percent said it had recovered. Finally, only 38 percent believe the economy will improve in the next 12 months.

That response is unchanged from December. Fifty-nine percent believe the economy will either remain as is or get worse. In December, 61 percent believed this. So, while the media like to harp on the falling unemployment rate and Obama’s modest poll improvements, the actual poll, supported by numerous economic statistics, reveals continued widespread pessimism about the economy.

This article was written by contributors of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.