Misery Index HIGHEST EVER, Hiring Only 70% Of 2006 Levels, And Boy Do We Ever Need A New President

Economics statistics are well on their way to becoming a Department in the 1984-style “Ministry of Truth.”

We start with misery, and the real apples-to-apples misery index that we can compare to the misrule of Jimmy Carter.  From Economic Policy Journal:

John Williams, over at Shadow Stats, compiles economic data for inflation and unemployment the way it used to be calculated pre-1990. Based on that data, the CPI inflation rate is over 10%, and the unemployment rate is over 15% (see charts). The Misery Index is the sum of the current inflation rate and the unemployment rate.  If it were to be calculated using the older methods, the Index would now be over 25, a record high. It surpasses the old index high of 21.98, which occurred in June 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president. Most believe the height of the Index along with the Iranian hostage crisis is what caused Carter to lose his re-election bid.

 

 

Using current calculation methods, April unemployment came in at 9.0% and the annualized April CPI number came in at 4.8%, for a Misery Index reading of 13.8.

The last time the Index came in with a higher reading with this index reading was in March 1983, with a reading of 13.90.

Ronald Reagan, of course, was president in 1983.  Reagan had a monster that Jimmy Carter largely created called out-of-control inflation.

As I previously explained:

The numbers told the sad story of the Jimmy Carter presidency: interest rates of 21%; inflation at 13.5%, and an unemployment rate of 7%.  And a relatively new economic device called “the misery index” – the combination of the unemployment and inflation rates which Carter had himself used to great effect in his 1976 campaign to win election – was at a shocking 20.5%.

And those who went through those dark and difficult times may soon be looking back to that period as “the good old days.”

Welcome back, Carter.

When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession. There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save. And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future. Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

But Ronald Reagan had a solution.  And by the time he left office, he had solved the problem of creeping inflation increases and had actually reversed the trend: he left behind a healthy inflation rate of 4.1%.

Reagan’s policies set the trajectory for growth that would last for 20 years.

Jimmy Carter didn’t have an answer for the economy, so he just made it worse and worse and WORSE.  Reagan had an answer.  He not only made it better; he established a trajectory of economic success.

And of course, we’re heading right back to that time of shocking inflation.  The cost of EVERYTHING is going up.  And there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that Barack Obama has an answer that is working.  Which is only going to make the pain last longer and the solution more difficult.  Presuming there is another Reagan waiting in the wings for that time when the American people overwhelmingly abandon Democrats and revile them for the failures that they are and basically always have been.

So what does the mainstream media do with that?

They create the propaganda that somehow Obama is a new Reagan, despite the fact that Obama reviles everything Reagan stood for, just as Reagan would have reviled everything Obama stands for.

Then there’s the enemployment beast.  How’s THAT hope and change working out for you?

Here’s some new news about hopey changey from the Wall Street Journal:

 MAY 16, 2011
Why the Job Market Feels So Dismal
The number of hires is the same today as it was when we were shedding jobs at record rates.
By EDWARD P. LAZEAR

Why don’t American workers feel that the labor market is on the mend? After all, the May 6 jobs report could suggest that the labor market is improving. Nonfarm employment rose by 244,000 and employment growth over the last three months is averaging over 200,000 per month. With unemployment at 9%, employment is still down many millions from where it should be, but up from its recession lows.

The fact is the jobs numbers that create so much anticipation from the business press and so many pundit pronouncements do not give a clear picture of the labor market’s health.  A better understanding requires an examination of hires and separations, or what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data. Here are some surprising facts:

First, the increase in job growth that occurred over the past two years results from a decline in the number of layoffs, not from increased hiring. In February 2009, a month during which the labor market lost more than 700,000 jobs, employers hired four million workers. In March 2011, employers hired four million workers. The number of hires is the same today as it was when we were shedding jobs at record rates.

We added jobs because hires exceeded separations, not because hiring increased. There were 4.7 million separations in February 2009. In March 2011 that number had fallen to 3.8 million. The fall in separations reflects a decline in layoffs, which went from 2.5 million per month in February 2009 to 1.6 million per month in March 2011. One small piece of good news is that the just-released April data showed hires up about 2% over last year’s average and 12% above the low reached in January 2010.

The decline in layoffs is not unexpected and does not necessarily reflect labor-market health. Layoffs tend to occur early in a recession. When an economy has reached bottom and has already shed much of its labor, layoffs slow. But that doesn’t mean that the labor force is recovering. We could have high unemployment and a stagnant labor force even when layoffs are low. Isn’t the fact that hires exceed separations indicative of a healthy labor market? Unfortunately, no.

At any point in the business cycle, even during a recession, American firms still hire a huge number of workers. That’s because most of the action in the labor market reflects “churn,” the continual process of replacing workers, not net expansion or contraction of employment. The lowest number hired in any month of the current recession was 3.6 million workers. Even during the dismal year of 2009 there were more than 45 million hires.

Bear in mind that the U.S. labor force has more than 150 million workers or job seekers. In a typical year, about one-third or more of the work force turns over, leaving their old jobs to take new ones. When the labor market creates 200,000 jobs, it is because five million are hired and 4.8 million are separated, not because there were 200,000 hires and no job losses. When we’re talking about numbers as large as five million, the net of 200,000 is small and may reflect minor, month-to-month variations in the number of hires or separations.

The third fact puts this in perspective. In a healthy labor market like the one that prevailed in 2006 and early 2007, American firms hire about 5.5 million workers per month. Recall that the current number of hires is four million and it has not moved much from where it was two years ago. The labor market does not feel like it is expanding if hiring is not occurring at a recovery-level pace—and that means at least a half million more hires per month than we are seeing now.

The combination of low hiring and a large stock of unemployed workers, now 13.7 million, means that the competition for jobs is fierce. Because there are now many more unemployed workers, and because hiring is only about 70% of 2006 levels, a worker is about one-third as likely to find a job today as he or she was in 2006. It is no wonder that workers do not feel that the labor market has recovered.

One final fact is worth noting. Healthy labor markets are characterized not only by high levels of hiring, but also by high levels of separations. Although it is true that the importance of quits relative to layoffs rises during good times, even the number of layoffs was greater in the strong labor market of 2006-07 than it is now. No one would suggest that layoffs are good for workers, but what is good is a fluid labor market, where workers and firms constantly seek to produce better products and to find more efficient ways to produce them. High labor market churn is a characteristic of a strong economy. It generally means that workers are moving to better jobs in growing sectors that pay higher wages and away from declining sectors that pay lower wages.

Allowing maximum flexibility encourages fluidity and means that employers are willing to hire workers who lose their jobs elsewhere. Many European countries have restricted mobility by imposing severance pay penalties on employers that lay workers off. More than reducing layoffs, these rigidities make employers reluctant to hire because of the penalties that they will later incur if a layoff is necessary. Such restrictions are in large part responsible for the chronically high rates of unemployment that have been prevalent in many European countries.

The prescription for the American labor market is simple: low taxes on capital investment, avoidance of excessively burdensome regulation, and open markets here and abroad. We must create a climate in which investment is profitable, productivity is rising, and employers find it profitable to increase their hiring rate. These are the mantras that economists have chanted in the past. But they are our best bet for ensuring a dynamic and growing labor market.

Mr. Lazear, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-2009, is a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and a Hoover Institution fellow

Wait a minute.  What was that one sentence again?

Because there are now many more unemployed workers, and because hiring is only about 70% of 2006 levels, a worker is about one-third as likely to find a job today as he or she was in 2006.

Yeah, but George Bush was bad by mainstream media propagandist definition, and Obama is good by the same standard.

If you want welfare, vote for Obama.  You’ll get it until United States of America implodes into a failed banana republic.  And then you’ll get the Marxist-fascist hybrid the left has been dreaming of for the last fifty years.  You want a job?  Vote for a conservative Republican.

Giant Hyopcrisy Of Left Revealed Through Grayson ‘Die Quickly’ Remarks

In England, Parliament often takes on the form of professional wrestling, with members loudly decrying one another with nothing sans public opinion to monitor what they say or how they say it.

But in America, we’re assured, we have a greater sense of political decorum.

That “decorum” was “shockingly” violated when Rep. Joe Wilson blurted out, “You lie!” during a speech that President Obama called Congress into session to make.  It didn’t matter that Joe Wilson was actually RIGHT when he said Obama was lying.  As the Washington Examiner pointed out, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office declared:

“Under H.R. 3200, a ‘Health Insurance Exchange’ would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange.”

No, it was beside the point that Joe Wilson was right and Obama really WAS lying.  What mattered was that decorum had been violated.

And then there was somthing else that Nancy Pelosi made – inspired by the “hateful remark” made by Joe Wilson – that further ratcheted up the debate:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.”

(Youtube here).

Nancy Pelosi, as I point out here, cried her alligator tears to demonize Wilson and by extension Republicans, all the while pointing out invented facts.  Among other things, the violence that she alluded to was committed by a career DEMOCRAT, and it didn’t have anything to do with “rhetoric.”  Rather, Harvey Milk and George Moscone were murdered by a San Francisco District 8 Democrat official named Dan White because Milk and Moscone had refused to reappoint him.

So Nancy Pelosi came out and lied about and then demagogued a historical event as a ploy to demonize Republicans and anything they might say in opposition to the liberal agenda.  It was a vile thing for her to do.

The fact of the matter was that Joe Wilson was wrong in his outburst, and he apologized both personally and in a letter.

Didn’t matter.  Nancy Pelosi’s House censured him anyway, taking a day of the people’s time to do it.  “Decorum,” remember.

So with all that as backdrop, let’s proceed to the latest bit of “This kind of rhetoric” that “is just, is really frightening” and which could easily create “a climate in which … violence” could take place.

Representative Alan Grayson, Democrat-Florida, came to the same House floor that Joe Wilson had sat on, and said:

“It’s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America… It’s a very simple plan. Here it is. The Republican health care plan for America: ‘don’t get sick.’ If you have insurance don’t get sick, if you don’t have insurance, don’t get sick; if you’re sick, don’t get sick. Just don’t get sick. … If you do get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: ‘die quickly.'”

(Youtube here).

It was utterly outrageous.  For two reasons.  Number one, the Republicans – who have submitted more than three dozen health care reform bills and who actually held them over their head and waved them during the Obama speech – currently have a major bill to reform health bill available to any who would just look at it.  It is just a lie that amounts to rank demagoguery to claim that Republicans don’t have a plan beyond, “don’t get sick” and “die quickly.”  Number two, the polls are crystal clear: senior citizens – who presumably would not want to rely on a plan to “not get sick” and then to “die quickly” – are opposed to the Democrats’ plan by a nearly 2-1 margin.  From Rasmussen:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% are opposed to the plan.

Senior citizens are less supportive of the plan than younger voters. In the latest survey, just 33% of seniors favor the plan while 59% are opposed. The intensity gap among seniors is significant. Only 16% of the over-65 crowd Strongly Favors the legislation while 46% are Strongly Opposed.

So according to Alan Grayson, not only Republicans, but nearly two out of every three seniors who basically support the Republican position on health care, want seniors to die.  Grayson’s remark was both insane and immoral.

Republicans called upon Alan Grayson to do what Joe Wilson had done (RIGHT AWAY) and apologize for his statement.  Here’s what they got:

Republicans got an apology of sorts from Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson Wednesday – it just wasn’t the one they wanted.

Instead of saying he was sorry about accusing Republicans of wanting people to “die quickly,” he gave an apology “to the dead.”

“I would like to apologize,” he said. “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America.”

And thus a man representing the party that has murdered nearly 50 million human beings before they could even enjoy being born compares Republicans to Adolf Hitler and their actions to the murder of six million Jews.

That same article, for what it’s worth, also further points out what a patholigical liar Grayson is:

Grayson provided the contretemps of the day on Capitol Hill, and even one of his party’s leaders, Democratic Caucus Chairman John B. Larson of Connecticut, at one point publicly called on him to apologize for Tuesday night’s speech.

“I wouldn’t have used the words that Mr. Grayson has,” Larson said. “I would encourage Alan to apologize.”

Later, Grayson contested whether Larson really meant what he said.

“I spoke to him and he did not ask me to apologize,” Grayson offered.

He also claimed he hadn’t said “Republicans want you to die quickly” – until a reporter read his words back to him.

Not only did Grayson say “Republicans want you to die quickly”; he literally had the words written down on a giant card which he displayed on an easel as he spoke.  That’s how much of a twisted lying weasel this guy is.

And do the Democrats – who as we now know so value decorum – call upon Alan Grayson to first apologize and then shut his lying mouth?

Absolutely not.

Did the Democrats – who literally shed alligator tears decrying the hateful rhetoric – demand that one of their own cease and desist from hateful rhetoric?

Absolutely not.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had this to say to defend the man who said that Republicans want seniors to die (with said Republicans supported by 59% of seniors) and that the Republicans had created a holocaust of people dying without health care:

“We have to have a debate that is not distracted from… Apparently Republicans are holding Democrats to a higher level than they are holding their own members,” she said, referring to floor comments by some Republicans who have said Democratic health care reforms would lead to higher deaths among seniors.

“There’s no more reason for Mr. Grayson to apologize… If anybody’s going to apologize everybody should apologize,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference.

Well again, Nancy Pelosi, in defending Grayson, has to lie to do it.  Republicans aren’t trying to hold Democrats to a “higher standard”:

Wilson’s conduct was denounced by Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Senator John McCain of Arizona, Obama’s Republican opponent in the 2008 presidential race, called Wilson’s outburst “totally disrespectful.”

“He should apologize,” McCain said in an interview on CNN.

Many other Republicans called for Wilson to apologize, including his Republican House leadership.  And Joe Wilson DID apologize.

“I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health-care bill,” Wilson said in a statement. “While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable.”

So it’s a lie that Republicans are trying to hold Democrats to a “higher standard.”  Rather, they are trying to hold Democrats to the VERY SAME standard Republicans had held for themselves, and in fact the VERY SAME STANDARD THAT DEMOCRATS HAD JUST HELD REPUBLICANS TO.

Note to Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat minions: please don’t get so damn hoity toity with your self righteous outrage when it suits you, only to show what blatant hypocrites you are the very next moment when it suits you.  Your hypocrisy shines through like brilliant glittering diamonds.

As vile, hateful, and dishonest as Alan Grayson’s remarks have been, that isn’t where the real outrage is.  No, the real outrage is the complete dishonesty and the rabid demagoguery of the Democrat leadership – especially as epitomized in Nancy Pelosi.

When a party demands that one party be held accountable to violations to “decorum,” and then cynically violates that very same decorum with far more loathsome and dishonest outbursts, it is past time to remove that party from power.

Nancy Pelosi Cries Alligator Tears To Demonize Right

Nancy Pelosi – she who falsely compared ObamaCare protesters at town hall meetings to swastika-toting Nazi AstroTurf – decried the climate of hate from everyone who doesn’t think exactly like her.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.”

Video:

I find a few things hilarious.  First of all, remember not very long ago when the Democrats were accusing us of “manufactured anger”?  Well, when that lie failed, they trot out another one – and lie one a direct contradiction from the last lie.  Before, it was “apparent outrage” and “manufactured anger” from “Astroturfers.”  Fake protesters with fake anger.  Now all of a sudden they are so afraid of this very REAL and GENUINE anger that they have to wonder if we’re going to become violent.

That, in addition to the fact that Democrats have proven to be loathsome enough to carry out hate attacks just to blame them on the right, such as what clearly happened in Denver, Colorado.

And that a lot of the “Nazi” stuff has actually been the work of Lyndon LaRouche supporters.  LaRouche, mind you, has run for political office seven times AS A DEMOCRAT.

But let’s consider the actual violence that made Nancy the Alligator so teary-eyed:

Remember the elderly man in stage four cancer who got shoved around by SEIU thugs?  That was Democrats doing the physical attacking:

You remember that black conservative named Kenneth Gladney who got physically beaten and kicked by four SEIU goons as he tried to hand out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags outside of a town hall event?  That was Democrats doing the physical attacking:

Do you remember a man from a MoveOn.org counter-protest walking over to threaten – and ultimately BITE OFF THE FINGER – of a man who had merely stopped to ask ObamaCare protesters about their purpose/goals? That was DEMOCRATS doing the physical attacking.

And – given that the nasty little rodent biter came from MoveOn.org – innocent victim William Rice had better get shots for rabies.

These were the people who claimed that the hundreds of thousands of ObamaCare protesters from across the country were “AstroTurf” even as they were PAYING their own side to show up at events.

These are people who go to bed at night wondering how they can demonize and lie about their opponents.  And if the lie the tell the following morning completely contradicts the lie they told the previous night, it doesn’t matter.  Democrats are thorough-going postmodernists.  Truth is irrelevant.  Mutual contradictions can simultaneously exist.  Facts don’t matter; only the will to power matters.  And they can deconstruct reality and re imagine history to suit their ambitions.

Let’s see.  Where has the violence come from?  Gee, I remember it coming from the Democrats and being directed toward the Republicans.

What’s interesting is that Pelosi is clearly alluding to the murder of gay Democrat politicians Harvey Milk and George Moscone.  There’s no question that Milk was brutally murdered – but maybe Nancy Pelosi is simply too stupid and too ignorant to know that Milk and Moscone were murdered by a DEMOCRAT who was angry because his fellow Democrats refused to reappoint him.

So we have demagogue Nancy Pelosi falsely demonizing the right for hate that is clearly coming from her side – and shedding false tears to remind us of what turns out to be a lie – as the violence she alludes to was committed by DEMOCRATS.  This woman has no honor, no credibility, and absolutely no shame.

Nancy Pelosi and those like her are liars to the cores of their shriveled, hollow souls.  And if she truly has any desire to stop “this kind of frightening rhetoric,” the first thing she needs to do is stop spreading her evil hatred and her demonic lies.

We are under such sustained and such false attack that protesters are resigned to carry signs like this:

Not that it matters: demagogues in the Democrat Party along with their media propagandist lackeys call it ‘racism’ or whatever else suits them anyway.

Here’s an example of where we stand as a free country being objectively informed by an independent media.  MSNBC has this story:

What they don’t tell you – after showing this threatening figure with the assault weapon slung over his shoulder and raising the conclusion that this is “racial” – is that the man is black.  As the next video of the SAME event reveals:

Newsbusters carries the full story, with a transcript to show just how blatantly dishonest the media has become.

We have become a society that is being spoon fed one lie after another, by Democrats and by the mainstream media, as liberals attempt to impose their agenda by the most vile tactics ever seen in this country.  The innocent are demonized by the guilty, edited and polished for mass consumption.

My telling the truth by revealing the fraud and the twisted lies by people like Nancy Pelosi is not hateful; her lies and demagoguery are.