Obama’s Economy Has Yet ANOTHER ‘Arab Spring’ As Employment Collapses To Less Than HALF What We Were Told To Expect. And The Beast Is Coming.

Why do I compare Obama’s economy to the so-called “Arab Spring”?  Think back: when the Arab world first began rioting, the liberal-dominated mainstream media coined it “the Arab Spring.”  It was a wonderful thing, they claimed.  It was the Arab world blossoming under Obama and claiming “democracy.”

We now know in hindsight that that was all a giant wave of lies coming from both the Obama White House and his Joseph Goebbels’-style media propaganda machine (see also here and then see here).  We’ve seen close historic U.S. allies topple to the Muslim Brotherhood; we’ve seen an embrace of sharia law from these “democrats”; we’ve seen blood baths of vicious war.

And of course we saw an Obama who claimed credit for that “Arab Spring” (see also here) only to blame everything else instead when it went to hell.

And that’s the way it has been with Obama’s economy.  Over and over again, he took credit for it – only to proceed to demonize the very thing he had taken credit for as he blamed Republicans for the failure of what he had promised would be a success.

Remember that term “green shoots”?  Obama promised that a turnaround was just around the corner, hyped the “green shoots” of his stimulus and promised that happy days were returning?

His false promises are now an annual event.  Let me go back to one year ago to May 2012:

As Economy Sputters, Obama Tries Distraction
Posted 05/02/2012 06:56 PM ET

Economy: It’s no wonder President Obama wants to direct everyone’s attention to far-off Afghanistan these days. The economic news here at home is looking increasingly grim.

Just 28 days after Time magazine ran an April 2 cover story boasting that “in the past few weeks, signs of economic expansion have been everywhere” it warned that “the economy might be stalling.”

The article pointed to “disappointing” news that Q1 GDP had climbed just 2.2% — below expectations — and job growth in March was 120,000, also a miss.

Now, two more troubling signs have emerged. The government reported on Wednesday that new factory orders fell 1.5% in March, the steepest drop since March 2009, when the country was still in recession.

Then ADP reported that private employment climbed just 119,000 in April — the smallest gain in seven months and also far below expectations. The April employment report comes out Friday, which economists think will show an unimpressive 160,000 job gain.

Seems that, once again, all the talk about “green shoots” and “turning the corner” and reaching “escape velocity” are just more false hopes.

Instead, we’re starting to get another round of economic reports that contain “unexpectedly” bad news.

I wrote about Obama’s bogus “green shoots” a year before that in June 2011.  And cited articles from 2010 and 2009 where Obama had made the same bull crap promises with the same economic tank coming after he made those promises.  Oh, after the mockery of his “green shoots,” he came up with a different term that meant the same thing, such as “recovery summer.”  But it’s been the same promise that Lucy keeps making to Charlie Brown.  And unfortunately the American people were as naive and as stupid as Charlie Brown in believing that Obama really would hold the economic football so we could kick it into the air.  Again.  And again.

Was sequestration to blame for the economic plunge last May?

Now we’re at a job creation level that made last year’s miserable job creation level look wonderful in comparison.  But it’s too late to do anything about it, American fools: you voted for it.  And you deserve it and a lot worse just as you’ll eventually be getting the eternity in hell that you deserve.

The liberal-owned financial world that contributed to much to Obama’s reelection (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan) predicted we’d have 190,000 new jobs.  Surprise!  We got the “unexpected” dismal level of 88,000.  Which aint even HALF what they said it would be.

That 88,000 falls WELL BELOW what we needed just to keep up with population growth.  We need at least 125,000 jobs a month just to keep up with the growth in population.  We are LOSING ground under this failed presidency.

And Obama has given us a labor participation rate that is so completely godawful that if we used the same labor participation rate as that which Bush handed over to Obama, unemployment would be measured at about 14% right now.

The labor participation rate measures the percentage of working-age Americans who are employed.  And there is no question when one considers it that Obama has destroyed the American job engine (that existed in the private sector until he killed it) with his socialism, his big government crony capitalist fascist state, his war on business.

Again, I talked about that when I pleaded with the American people to NOT choose stupidity and suicide in the 2012 election:

In 2010 – and this was AFTER we supposedly were out of the recession in Obama’s “wreckovery” –  the labor participation rate was 64.5%, which was at a 25-year low (i.e., lower than it had EVER been under Bush).

In 2011, the labor participation rate dropped to 63.9%, the lowest level in 27 years.

Last year in 2012 under Obama’s failed policies it fell to the lowest level in 30 years.

And here we are today.  You’ve got to go back to the dismal failure of the Carter era in the late 1970s to get such an awful participation rate.  It’s now the worst its been in 34 years.

Stupid people can’t see it, I know, but THERE’S A REALLY BAD TREND going on under this demonic administration.

What is our actual unemployment rate if Obama didn’t get rewarded for crushing the spirits of Americans who desperately want jobs and driving them out of the job market?  It would be 14 percent.  Instead, Obama can keep taking credit for the unemployment rate going down and down even as the American people give up ever having a job.  It’s like I derisively pointed out a year ago when I wrote an article with the title: “Unemployment Rate: At ‘Rate’ We’re Going, We’ll Have 0% Unemployment But No One Will Have An Actual Job.”  And when Bush left office, people stayed unemployed less than HALF as long as they are staying unemployed today as Obama has gutted any incentive for any employer to hire anybody.

Year after year Obama has failed to deliver.  Year after year he had something else to blame,something else to demagogue, to explain away his abject failure to create the jobs he promised with his crony capitalist policies in which he appointed himself and his giant government the sole right to appoint who wins and who loses, who succeeds and who fails.

Like I said, America.  You voted for this.  You deserve it.  And the people who voted for Obama in the highest numbers: young people, black people, Hispanics and women – have the worst employment figures of all.  They are getting what they deserved.  And they deserve far worse, so Obama will give them far worse.

Now Obama is blaming the sequester for his current “green shoots/recovery summer” failure.  In spite of the fact that the damn sequester was HIS idea, which HE signed into law, and which HE swore to use his veto pen to protect when Republicans wanted to overturn it (see also here).  Oh, and the fact also is that Republicans offered Obama a way to manage the sequestration cuts so that the American people would not feel so much pain, but Obama, WANTING the people to suffer so he could falsely demonize Republicans for that suffering, refused the authority.

Let’s also not forget that Democrats wanted this sequester and they got what they wanted.

Was sequestration to blame for 2009?  2010?  2011?  I mean, the sequestration thing Obama is now demagoguing as being the cause for all the economic calamity didn’t even exist.  Right?

Obama is a cynical liar without shame,  without integrity and without honor.  His political brilliance is in the fact that he never underestimates the sheer stupidity of the American sheep who used to be the American people.

If you are a pathologically morally stupid human being – which based on the polls you likely are – you will decide that Obama is not to blame yet again.

I remind the world that when George W. Bush was president, he had to contend with not just a Democrat House that hated him and plotted his destruction under the rule of Nancy Pelosi, but a Democrat Senate that hated him and plotted his destruction under the rule of Harry Reid, as well.  Just in case you want to blame Obama’s failed economy on the Republican House.

Democrats are abject hypocrites year after year.  The only thing you can trust about them is that they will demagogue and slander and blame and lie.

If you want to blame the tanking economy on the sequester, at least have the integrity to demand that Obama – who again thought it up in the first place, signed it into law and then threatened to veto anything that prevented it – resign from office.  But the fact of the matter is that in spite of two months of pathologically insane Obama lies, the sequester has had so little economic impact that it has had nothing to do with anything (all the sequester did was cut the projected rate of growth – and many of the projected rate cuts don’t occur until years in the future).

If you want to know why the economy is now officially crippled again, blame Obama, blame Democrats and blame their tax hikes.

Unlike Obama, Republicans have been incredibly consistent in pointing out the historic fact that tax cuts increase economic activity and tax revenue, and that tax hikes do the exact opposite by undermining economic activity as job creators and investors have all of their incentives to grow and invest seized from them.

ObamaCare – which is an absolute catastrophic failure – was the largest tax hike on the middle class in American history (and see here).  And now even the überliberal Los Angeles Times now acknowledges that is true:

The threat of higher costs could alienate many of the policyholders the state needs to keep in the fold in order to offset the increased costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years.

According to the state, about 1.3 million people who are middle-income or higher and already have coverage not through an employer will bear the brunt of the higher costs. These are individuals making more than $46,000 and families earning more than $94,000 annually. People below those income levels qualify for federal subsidies.

Look at some of my article titles which pointed out this fact:

Even ObamaCare Backers Now Finally Admit To Seeing Shocking Premium Hikes Coming Due To The Evil Mark-Of-The-Beast ObamaCare Law

This Is Amazing.  30% Of Doctors Leaving Medicine Under ObamaCare.  Just As We Said.  Left Is Handling It Dishonestly.  Just Like They Always Do.

Get This: The CHEAPEST ObamaCare Plan Will Cost $20,000 A Year Per Family, Says The IRS

Somebody Had To Pay For All That ‘Free’ Stuff Obama Stuck Into ObamaCare; Turns Out It’s Companies And Their Workers

Lying Democrats Demonize Romney-Ryan For Gutting Medicare; Meanwhile, ONE-THIRD Of Funding For ObamaCare Comes Out Of Medicare

ObamaCare Killing Economic Growth And Job Expansion – And We Aint Seen NOTHING Yet!

What the hell did thinking people think would be the effect on jobs?  We’re seeing what conservatives said would happen: businesses culling their workforce to remain under that magic “fifty” number so they could escape ObamaCare hell; businesses cutting people to less than full-time so they could escape ObamaCare hell.  And NOBODY expanding their payrolls.

We TOLD you this would happen.  And it is amazing that the American people now prefer socialist and frankly Marxist LIES to the truth and to reality.  And to then reward a liar without shame to slant that truth and reality again and again as the consequences of his immoral policies rain down like the black rain in the aftermath of the nuclear bombs the fascist Japanese demanded fall on them before they would surrender.

Remember the  tax hikes Obama got in January?  Obama demanded – and got – $620 billion in new tax hikes in exchange for only $15 billion in spending cuts.  For a ratio of 41:1 in tax hikes to spending cuts.  Obama called that” balanced.”

Mind you, Obama initially demanded over $1.5 TRILLION in new tax hikes.  So you know where his heart is: punishing job creators and investors in America.

Add to that the payroll taxes that nailed the middle class.  That was another $115 billion in tax hikes just for 2013 alone.

Add to that the $800 billion in NEW tax hikes Obama is now demanding.

And explain to me why a rich person, an investor, a business, should do anything other than protect themselves against this seizure of what they worked so hard to build.  How does taxing productivity generate productivity?  How does punishing wealth production generate more wealth production?  If I beat you with a bat every time you produce, how long will you keep trying to produce?

You are getting what you voted for.  You are getting a foretaste of the hell you will one day spend the rest of your eternity in for your role in the participation in the murder of 56 million innocent babies since 1973.  You will get what you deserve for voting for the Democrat Party Platform of Romans Chapter One.

I put it crystal clear in November after the election fiasco: Congratulations, America, You Got What You Voted For: Soaring Unemployment, A Crashing DOW.  Next Comes The Beast (You’ll Be Worshiping Him Soon).  And: Obama Gives America One Of Worst Post-Presidential Market Plunges In History As Businesses And Investors Say Sayonara To Economic Growth, Jobs.

Do I look like I’ll be right or wrong???  And, again, unlike Obama – who was for the sequestration before he was against it – I’ve been consistent in explaining why America would end up in misery under this most wicked president in American history.

We are watching the world melt down.  We are watching Iran get nuclear weapons – after Democrats mocked Bush for warning of that fact – and will one day soon reap hell as Iran seeks Armageddon.  We are watching North Korea pursue a level of brinksmanship unlike anything we have ever seen.  We are watching China and Russia rise up against us and block us at every turn – while they rob us blind with no response from Obama.  Thugs know they can push us around now because of our weak and failed leadership.  And we are watching our own America become weaker and weaker as Obama has gutted American jobs – with tens of millions of jobs now vaporized as measured by the dwindling labor participation rate – even as he keeps claiming success for his nonexistent economic turnaround.  Before Obama, we could fight two wars simultaneously; now it’s a real question whether we can even fight one.

The beast is coming.  The Bible describes him as a man who will criminalize the God of the Bible while imposing the most gargantuan fascist government stranglehold on the private economy ever witnessed in human history.  In other words, he will be a Democrat.  That’s the Party that is working overtime to criminalize God even as they advance a giant welfare state to replace God.

We’ve just seen two appalling sings of the coming financial ruin: in the theft of private bank account holdings in Cyprus and in the confiscation of bondholders’ investments in the bankruptcy of Stockton, California.  The first has been compared to being a “Sarajevo moment” in which an event in a tiny country triggered catastrophic global consequences.  The cat is out of the bag; the European Union has described the confiscation of privately held bank assets as a “new template” to follow in other bailed-out nations’ financial crises.  Countries who cannot pay for all of their socialism will be encouraged to seize the assets of banking account holders.  And what spillover effect will that have in terms of confidence in the banking system?  How many people will start withdrawing their holdings fearing their savings will be targeted next?  The second has been in Stockton, California, where bondholders are going to get screwed while union pensions remain sacrosanct.  How does that do anything but discourage holding bonds in cities that could fall next?  What impact will that have on the interest rate of such future bonds?  Would you like to lose YOUR money so completely out of control union pensions can remain untouched???  How can bondholders not flee from this idiocy???  How can that not trigger more and more cities – starved of funds – from declaring bankruptcies in a domino effect???

We’re facing the collapse of the entire global financial system, folks.  And the night before it all just melts down and implodes, I promise you this: the “experts” that will be trotted out by the mainstream media will assure everybody that everything will be fine the night before the collapse occurs.  This is a house of cards that is going to catastrophically fall; and when it falls you will deserve it and your children will deserve it.  Because the Bible makes it plain that a nation suffers for the wickedness of its king.

Abject hypocrite liberals tell me I’m angry and hateful.  Only to hate me with a hate that I NEVER had for my opponents even as they self-righteously lecture me about hate.  And I AM angry: I have watched America go from walking toward the beast and ultimate collapse to running to fall at the feet of the beast and worship him.  Our real debt is not the $16.7 trillion you hear about; it is HUNDREDS of trillions.  This nation is doomed.  In the four miserable years of Obama, this nation has crossed the threshold and there is no way to avoid complete collapse and the ensuing mark of the beast.

The same people who voted so eagerly for Obama will vote for the Antichrist.  And they will get the hell they deserve both on earth and in eternity.

Mystefied Democrats See Tide Going Out Rapidly, With Huge Wave Appearing Over The Horizon

There’s an article on how to spot the warning signs of a tsunami.  Point #3 says:

Watch. If there is a noticeable and rapid fall in the water and it’s not time for low tide, head inland immediately. Think of how waves work: water first pulls back, then returns with force. An excessive or unusual retreat of water in the ocean is the biggest indication of a tsunami. Many people died in the Indian Ocean tsunami because they went to observe the bare sea floor after the ocean retreated.

That’s your Democrat Party for you.  They’re looking at the bare sea floor after the ocean retreated, too short-sighted to see the huge building wave in the horizon, too uncomprehendingly stupid to change and move to safer places.

So they keep spending more, and more, and more, and demonizing Republicans because they aren’t willing to recklessly spend.  And they demagogue on issues like the Arizona law and the Ground Zero mosque, attacking Republicans who have staked their ground on positions that the American people overwhelmingly agree with them on.  And of course there’s ObamaCare, which was hugely unpopular from the start to the finish, and yet Democrats used every godawful and corrupt means imaginable to ram down our national throats.

Ignorance is bliss, until that giant wave hits you like a billion freight trains.

Scared Monkeys ran this block quote from an article in the New York Times, mocking the liberal paper for finally figuring out that Democrat control of Congress was genuinely at risk:

Representative David R. Obey has won 21 straight races, easily prevailing through wars and economic crises that have spanned presidencies from Nixon’s to Obama’s. Yet the discontent with Washington surging through politics is now threatening not only his seat but also Democratic control of Congress.

Mr. Obey is one of nearly a dozen well-established House Democrats who are bracing for something they rarely face: serious competition. Their predicament is the latest sign of distress for their party and underlines why Republicans are confident of making big gains in November and perhaps even winning back the House.

The fight for the midterm elections is not confined to traditional battlegrounds, where Republicans and Democrats often swap seats every few cycles. In the Senate, Democrats are struggling to hold on to, among others, seats once held by President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Democrats are preparing to lose as many as 30 House seats — including a wave of first-term members — and Republicans have expanded their sights to places where political challenges seldom develop.

But more and more political pollsters are seeing not 30 Democrat seats going Republican, but double and even triple that number:

A 1994-style scenario is probably the most likely outcome at this point. Moreover, it is well within the realm of possibility – not merely a far-fetched scenario – that Democratic losses could climb into the 80 or 90-seat range. The Democrats are sailing into a perfect storm of factors influencing a midterm election, and if the situation declines for them in the ensuing months, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Democratic losses eclipse 100 seats

Here’s a link to that entire Real Politics article by Sean Trende.

And with the latest news of a 27% plunge in existing home sales – the worst decline since the LAST TIME a Democrat was president – it seems that the “situation” has declined for them in these ensuing months.

This news is a stunning economic indicator, because mortgage rates are at an all-time low, and low-priced home bargains abound, and people STILL aren’t buying.

From USA Today:

Economic forecasts were plenty pessimistic ahead of Tuesday’s report by the National Association of Realtors because of other data pointing to weakening sales since the federal tax credit ended in April.

The actual numbers were far worse — sales fell more than 27% from June and 25% from a year ago to an annual rate of 3.83 million units.

“It is not clear if the housing market hit a huge air pocket or crashed and burned, but for now, this sector looks to be flat on its back,” says Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors.

The stunning drop-off when mortgage rates are at historic lows indicates many potential buyers have lost confidence, Naroff says. “If no one is confident, I don’t know that the interest rates matter, no one is going to want to borrow,” he says.

Economists say Tuesday’s report also indicates that the housing recovery has faltered.

“This qualifies as a double dip in housing,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, adding buyer confidence has also been shaken by a weakening stock market and a lack of jobs. “These are pretty ugly numbers.”

No region of the country was spared: Existing-home sales fell 35% in the Midwest, 30% in the Northeast, 25% in the West and 23% in the South.

In addition to the one trillionth usage of the mainstream media’s favorite adverb – “unexpected” – being employed, I’m seeing a far more frightening adverb: “double dip.”

As in “double-dip recession.”  As in, how is Obama going to blame Bush for a second recession that occurred entirely while “the One” was president?  Remember Obama’s economic team telling us the recession was over? Remember Obama and Biden boasting of their “Recovery Summer”?

If Bush’s recession is over, but we’re going into a recession, then just who the hell owns this recession?

Blame Obama.

Reuters has the following:

(Reuters) – More Americans now disapprove of President Barack Obama than approve of him as high unemployment and government spending scare voters ahead of November’s congressional elections, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday.

In the latest grim news for Obama’s Democrats, 72 percent of people said they were very worried about joblessness and 67 percent were very concerned about government spending.

The unemployment rate of 9.5 percent and the huge budget deficit are dragging down the Democrats and eating away at Obama’s popularity only 20 months after he took office on a wave of hope that he could turn around the economy.

Another bit of bad economic data arrived on Tuesday when the National Association of Realtors reported sales of existing homes plummeted in July to their slowest pace in 15 years.

Piling the pressure on Obama, the top Republican in the House of Representatives called on the administration’s economic team to quit.

Obama’s disapproval rating was 52 percent in Tuesday’s poll, overtaking his approval rating for the first time in an Ipsos poll. Only 45 percent of people said they approved of the president’s performance, down from 48 percent last month.

That number, coupled with a hearty 62 percent who think the country is going in the wrong direction, could spell trouble for Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

Let me paraphrase that last paragraph:

That tsunami, couple with a giant tidal surge that is pushing everything in the country backwards in the wrong direction, could spell trouble for residents around the Indian Ocean, who live in regions that are now fifty feet underwater.

Obama is reading some finely-honed demagoguery off his teleprompters, talking about Republicans having led us in the wrong direction, and cars, and ditches, and not giving Republicans the car keys.  But now more Americans by a wide margin think Obama sucks even according to the left-leaning Ipsos polling organization.  And 62% of Americans think the “wrong direction” is the one Obama is leading them in.

Mind you, reality won’t stop Joe Biden from guaranteeing that the Democrats will retain control of the House.

On my view, Republicans easily take the House in an eye-popping takeover, and yes, either retake the Senate, too, or fall just short.  Everything will have to go right for Republicans and wrong for Democrats in order for Republicans to win the ten seats they need, but let’s not forget that Democrats are in full meltdown mode.

Which is why on November 2 I’ll be watching the election with the Beach Boys’ “Catch a Wave” playing over and over in the background.

VIA CNBC: ‘Many Firms Reluctant To Hire Because Of [Democrats’] Taxes, Rules’

Enjoy your unemployment, courtesy of the Obama administration.

And understand that the fact that you NEED unemployment is also courtesy of the Obama administration.

Is Obama helping the economy, or hurting it?  What we find out is that businesses and the people who actually hire and create jobs understand that what Obama has already done has been bad, and what he is trying to do is even worse.

The key phrase of the article is “paralyzing uncertainty.”

Obama, thy name is turd.  And according to Rasmussen, 53% of the American people now recognize it.

Many Firms Reluctant to Hire Because of New Taxes, Rules
Published: Tuesday, 12 Jan 2010
By: Albert Bozzo
Senior Features Editor

A potential wave of new regulation and higher taxes may be scaring many businesses from hiring, prolonging any rebound in employment, say business groups and economists.

The prospect of increased federal and state regulation and taxes has been particularly disruptive to the hiring plans of small- and medium-sized businesses, which have historically generated about two-thirds of the nation’s jobs.

“I don’t really see the private sector hiring much in the next few months,” says Brian Bethune, an economist at Global Insight. “For the small-business sector there is just too much uncertainty about what happens beyond 2010.”

Not only is the Obama administration seeking to push through major overhauls of energy and health care policy, it is also expected to impose dozens of new workplace rules and raise income taxes.

As Washington and Wall Street grow increasingly restless about the unusually slow pace of job creation and the risk of a so-called jobless recovery, key business groups have begun to bang the drum more loudly.

In reporting that its small business optimism index fell for the second straight month in December, the National Federation of Independent Business Tuesday said members’ No. 2 reason for not expanding payrolls was the prospect of government policy initiatives.

Twelve percent said it was not a good time to expand because of the political environment. Over the next three months, 15 percent said they plan to reduce employment, while eight percent plan to create new jobs.

“We’re hearing it more and more from our membership,” says Bill Rys, the NFIB’s tax counsel. “At the federal level, there’s uncertainty about tax rates, health care costs, energy costs. You also have what’s going on at the state and local levels, with new fees and taxes. They’re reluctant to jump back in.”

Rys says the effect has been more pronounced in the past few months, perhaps mirroring the legislative progress of the massive health care reform bill, the highly-publicized Copenhagen climate change conference and new EPA rules on carbon emissions, as well as the approach of 2010, when the near decade-long Bush administration tax cuts are expected to expire.

The NFIB has some 350,000 members with an average size of eight to ten employees.

Much like the severity of the recession, the degree of potential government change is a historic first for many business owners.

“When they went into business this isn’t something they considered,” says Rys.

The American Chamber of Commerce’s latest economist forecast cited similar impediments.

“To create jobs we must ease the uncertainty over tax increases as well as health, environmental, labor, legal  and fiscal policies,” the group’s president and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said in a speech Tuesday.

Chamber members are predominantly small companies with ten or less employees.

In a recent interview with CNBC.com, the group’s chief economist, Martin Regalia, described a paralyzing uncertainty over policy issues, saying that many members “had adopted an attitude of survival” and “few talked about net new hiring.”

If so, that will not go unnoticed. Small businesses were hemorrhaging jobs in the first quarter of 2009 when the recession was cutting deep into the economy.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, companies with 1-4 employees lost 140,000 jobs in that period; firms with 10-19 employees shed 220,000 jobs. (That’s the most recent period covered by the data.)

Some of those jobs as well as new ones would normally be created in the coming year.

Coming out of the previous two recessions, companies in the two groups were responsible for net job gains relatively soon after the downturn had ended and picked up momentum as the recovery was established.

In the third quarter of 1993, the 1-4-employee group created about 120,000 jobs, while the 14-20-person group added 60,000. That may not seem like a lot, but the workforce was much smaller then.

Near the peak of the last economic recovery, the two groups were combining for more than 140,000 jobs a quarter.

Though data for the past three quarters isn’t available, people who follow small- and medium- sized business say anecdotal evidence from owners is compelling

“A lot of small, medium sized businesses are waiting to see what health care is going to mean, in terms of cost,” says John Challenger, of the outplacement firm Challenger, Grey and Christmas, “I think they’re also waiting and seeing on the estate tax. The other one I hear the most about is the union issue—the worry that there could be much higher labor costs, that might curtail hiring.”

Amid the massive uncertainty, there are levels of certainty.

It’s unclear, for instance, what health care will cost small businesses, which tend not to provide it to employees. There’s talk of some kind of exemption, but it’s not clear yet.

The cost for those providing insurance will go up—at least in the short term; fees for health insurers, medical devices and branded drugs, for instance, start to kick in 2011 and work their way into the broader cost chain.

On another front, the Obama administration has said it intends to introduce some 90 new workplace rules this year.

Two thousand and ten may also bring the approval of cap-and-trade legislation, which given the complex scientific and economic models involved, will create another long list of question marks.

Changes in tax law are almost a certainty, even if the specifics are still unclear. The estate tax, which—as part of the Bush tax cut plan—is zero in 2011, is expected to be raised in future years and that change may even be made retroactive.

Income taxes for the two highest tax brackets are expected to rise; the Obama administration at various times has said taxes will be increased on people earning 200,000 or $250,000.

“When people talk about who’s making above $200,000, it tends to pull in a lot of small business people,” says Mark Calabria of the Cato Institute, a former senior staffer on the Senate Banking Committee.

Budget-strapped states have already raised taxes or intend to do so.

Unlike the complex tax structure of global corporations, there are few or any loopholes.

“If you are talking about the entrepreneurial class, they run a small business, have a handful of employees and they just report that as regular income,” adds Bethune.

Less income, more expenses—it’s hardly a prescription for expansion, says experts.

Small- and medium-sized business owners are still recovering from the real estate collapse and the credit crunch; it is not uncommon for them to use real estate as collateral or credit lines to make payroll.

On top of that, like big business, they’re still waiting for a return in demand

“It may mean you take less investment chances,” says Challenger. In that context, jobs are looking might chancy.”

“Over the next three months, 15 percent said they plan to reduce employment, while eight percent plan to create new jobs.” There’s your practical definition of ‘one step forward, two steps back.'”

“Less income, more expenses—it’s hardly a prescription for expansion.”  There’s your expression of common sense that Democrats will never comprehend.

Now, you might well be dumber than stupid, and continue to blame Bush for the economic collapse rather than placing much of the blame squarely on Democrats where it belongs, but the fact remains: Republicans have been saying this from day 1.  And they were right, and Democrats are being proven to be 100% wrong.

Obama’s claims of “shovel-ready jobs” should be greeted by hysterical mocking laughter, if only the man’s utter failure wasn’t creating so much misery and suffering.

We find that that the country’s that ignored Obama’s government stimulus mindset have done far, far better than the countries that paid attention to the community organizer.

Obama says “green jobs” are the answer.  But Obama is an idiot.

When you take the “National debt road trip,” you’ll find Obama driving the debt like a drunken, raving maniac.

Obama and the Democrats have also lied about damn near everything.

And the result of the Obama administration – from his opening porkulus to the present moment – is that he has done everything imaginable to drive employment down and the employment rate up.

The simple fact of the matter is that Obama – not Bush, Obama – has now presided over more jobs lost than any president since 1940.

And all our failure-in-chief can do is change an already sick twisted joke of a “job counting” system related to his stimulus (the category of “saved” jobs had NEVER existed prior to Obama inventing it as a self-marketing ploy – and the lamestream media revealed that they were dishonest propagandists by allowing the bogus category to be used on their airwaves).  Obama has finally abandoned the continuous campaign of lies and incompetence used to calculate how many jobs he “created or saved,” only to now embrace an even WORSE standard: from now on, Obama will take credit for any job that got any stimulus money at all.

So if you had your job before the Obama stimulus, and you would have had your job AFTER the Obama stimulus, if the place you work for got any stimulus money, Obama will claim credit for your job.

I’m sick of this man’s demagoguery.  I’m sick of his Bush-blaming.  I’m sick of his self-serving excuses.  I’m sick of his idiotic lies.

And I’m utterly heartsick at the massive damage this clown is doing to our country.

I got into blogging due to the revelations about the “reverend” and “church” that Obama chose to join and associate himself with for 23 years.  I had never been particularly involved with politics up to that time.  But as I watched hateful statement after hateful statement emerging from Obama’s church and from Obama’s pastor – to the cheering of the vile congregation – I knew that Barack Hussein was an evil man who would destroy this country if he were elected president.

And a year after his misrule, every single thing I feared when I saw Obama’s pastor spout evil, hateful, racist, unAmerican, Marxist filth back in March of 2008 has come true in spades.

Myth Of Obama’s ‘Shovel-Ready’ Jobs Revealed In Unemployment Stats

Democrats’ promises of “shovel ready jobs” was a shovel load of sh*t.  That’s pretty much what we’re learning.

Here’s a headline to remember: “Construction unemployment rises to 22.7%.”

In a clear sign of construction’s persistently severe problems, the industry’s jobless rate hit its highest level in at least a decade, climbing to 22.7% in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported.

The latest BLS monthly employment figures, released Jan. 8, show that construction’s December jobless rate rose from November’s 19.4%, and also was well above the December 2008 mark of 15.3%.

“In at least a decade”?  That would be during – your audible gasp here – the Clinton years, when the streets were paved with gold (but clearly not laid by construction workers).

Hot Air shows us what a bunch of hot air Obama’s and the Democrat’s promises really were:

Democrats insisted that they would usher in a wave of new jobs by speeding up spending on infrastucture, especially road construction.  All across the US, signs began appearing that heralded the local traffic snarl as a product of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — Porkulus, as we came to call it.  Did it do anything to create or even “save” jobs?  The Associated Press says no:

Even within the construction industry, which stood to benefit most from transportation money, the AP’s analysis found there was nearly no connection between stimulus money and the number of construction workers hired or fired since Congress passed the recovery program. The effect was so small, one economist compared it to trying to move the Empire State Building by pushing against it.

Which is to say, Obama is depending on “the butterfly effect” for his stimulus package to actually work.

I should confess here that I have actually captured a butterfly, and have evilly created chaos all over the planet by forcing it to flap its wings.  But apparently no U.S. jobs have come out of it.

I also have to mock the part about the porkulus road signs (actually the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” – but “porkulus” has turned out to be FAR more accurate).  We find that the Democrats are spending millions of dollars for “stimulus” road signs that aren’t stimulating anything but the Democrats’ political slush fund to bribe votes for their ObamaCare boondoggle.

Michelle Malkin presented what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signs SHOULD HAVE looked like nearly 8 months ago:

Meanwhile, what is unemployment among government workers?

3.6%.

Rush Limbaugh was all over that on like poop on stink (which is rather like Obama on stimulus, but actually telling the truth):

“I mean you cannot take $50 trillion or $50 billion, any amount of money out of the private sector then put it back in and say you’re stimulating something.  You’d have to infuse money that’s not already there.  And there’s no money to do that.  You have to print it, you have to borrow it, or you have to tax it and then put it back.  This is an old shell game; it’s an old trick. It’s designed to enhance the growth of government.  But the proof is right there in the latest unemployment numbers — and I don’t mean the 10% employment, which is an obvious disaster, and I don’t mean the 17% real unemployment.  That’s an obvious disaster.  But here are two numbers from last Friday’s jobless numbers: Construction unemployment is 22.7%. It’s 22.7%!  Now, remember, the stimulus was for “shovel-ready jobs;” Roads, bridges, schools, all this infrastructure stuff.  Construction unemployment is almost 23%. Government worker unemployment is at 3%, 3.6, less than 4%.”

The Associated Press has the following story (from which the quote from Hot Air above is a part):

Stimulus for roads no path to help joblessness
Analysis comes as Obama urges another bill funding more transit projects

updated 9:01 a.m. ET Jan. 11, 2010

WASHINGTON – Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an AP analysis has found.

Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama’s argument that more road money would address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”

Obama wants a second stimulus bill from Congress that relies in part on more road and bridge spending, projects the president said are “at the heart of our effort to accelerate job growth.”

And Rush Limbaugh picks up from there:

“The AP is admitting here it didn’t work but then, hey, they say let’s try it again.  They outline in this piece that the stimulus money that’s been spent so far has had no effect on jobs, none.  Not anywhere.  The veil is off.  They’re no longer pretending that there are jobs created or saved.  Now, here how the story starts: “Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in –” and it’s not Bush’s.  It’s Obama’s.  “– spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an AP analysis has found. Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama’s argument that more road money would address an ‘urgent need to accelerate job growth.'”

All they can talk about from the stimulus that’s been beneficial is the extension of unemployment compensation benefits.  So, you know, the real question there, folks, is how come despite the vast amount of history that’s available to all of us, all of the smart, so-called smart educated business and economic people, hard evidence, examples of failure and successes, charts and graphs, data out the wazoo, we still seem to be confounded by the elementary process of creating and keeping jobs.  Why is this?  Why is the blueprint for coming out of the circumstance we’re in, the 1980s, JFK in the 1960s, why is it ignored?  And why is this, government spending, constantly looked at as a panacea when it isn’t?  And the answer is it’s not looked at as a panacea.  The people in charge of doing this know exactly what they’re doing.  They’re weakening the private sector for a host of reasons that we’ve mentioned.  I’m going to get blue in the face here, repetitive.  Just don’t doubt me.  It’s being done on purpose and the reasons are all recounted in various multiple monologues at my website, RushLimbaugh.com.”

Meanwhile, the government sector is absolutely thriving compared to the rest of the economy.

Would you have supported the stimulus if you’d known the TRUTH: that instead of “shovel-ready jobs” we’d be getting “bureaucrat-ready jobs”?

Even Liberals Realizing Obama Has Been Total Bust At Creating Jobs

This article is in many ways typical New York Times.  It comes from a distinctly liberal perspective, and views solutions to the problems that America faces through a liberal prism.

The big difference in this case is that it really takes a critical look at a Democrat.  It slams Barack Obama as being basically disinterested and uninvolved in – and even uncomprehending of – the biggest crisis facing the country.

Does Obama Get It?

By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 5, 2009

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country.  Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over.  Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. Faced with the relentless monthly costs of housing, transportation, food, clothing, education and so forth, they have precious little time to wait for this lagging indicator to come creeping across the finish line.

Americans need jobs now, and if the economy on its own is incapable of putting people back to work — which appears to be the case — then the government needs to step in with aggressive job-creation efforts.

Nearly one in four American families has suffered a job loss over the past year, according to a survey released by the Economic Policy Institute. Nearly 1 in 10 Americans is officially unemployed, and the real-world jobless rate is worse.

We’re running on a treadmill that is carrying us backward. Something approaching 10 million new jobs would have to be created just to get back to where we were when the recession began in December 2007. There is nothing currently in the works to jump-start job creation on that scale.

A massive long-term campaign to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure — which would put large numbers of people to work establishing the essential industrial platform for a truly 21st-century American economy — has not seriously been considered. Large-scale public-works programs that would reach deep into the inner cities and out to hard-pressed suburban and rural areas have been dismissed as the residue of an ancient, unsophisticated era.

We seem to be waiting for some mythical rebound to come rolling in, magically equipped with robust job creation, a long-term bull market and paradise regained for consumers.

It ain’t happening.

While the data mavens were talking about green shoots in September, employers in the real world were letting another 263,000 of their workers go, bringing the jobless rate to 9.8 percent, the highest in more than a quarter of a century. It would have been higher still but 571,000 people dropped out of the labor market. They’re jobless but not counted as unemployed. The number of people officially unemployed — 15.1 million — is, as The Wall Street Journal noted, greater than the population of 46 of the 50 states.

The Obama administration seems hamstrung by the unemployment crisis. No big ideas have emerged. No dramatically creative initiatives. While devoting enormous amounts of energy to health care, and trying now to decide what to do about Afghanistan, the president has not even conveyed the sense of urgency that the crisis in employment warrants.

If that does not change, these staggering levels of joblessness have the potential to cripple not just the well-being of millions of American families, but any real prospects for sustained economic recovery and the political prospects of the president as well. An unemployed electorate is an unhappy electorate.

The survey for the Economic Policy Institute was conducted in September by Hart Research Associates. Respondents said that they had more faith in President Obama’s ability to handle the economy than Congressional Republicans. The tally was 43 percent to 32 percent. But when asked who had been helped most by government stimulus efforts, substantial majorities said “large banks” and “Wall Street investment companies.”

When asked how “average working people” or “you and your family” had benefited, very small percentages, in a range of 10 percent to 13 percent, said they had fared well.

The word now, in the wake of last week’s demoralizing jobless numbers, is that the administration is looking more closely at its job creation options. Whether anything dramatic emerges remains to be seen.

The master in this area, of course, was Franklin Roosevelt. His first Inaugural Address was famous for the phrase: “The only thing we have to fear. …” But he also said in that speech: “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” And he said the country should treat that task “as we would treat the emergency of a war.”

Now that’s the sense of urgency we need.

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on October 6, 2009, on page A31 of the New York edition.

Not to dive into the genetic fallacy, as so many liberals so often do, but it is nevertheless significant that the Economic Policy Institute is a distinctly liberal think tank.  And Hart Research Associates aint exactly Rasmussen.  So while I don’t know that they aren’t right in their survey about Obama vs. Congressional Republicans, I would point out: 1) that I wouldn’t regard it as gospel; and 2) don’t forget that as LOW as Bush got in the polls, he STILL outperformed the Democrat-controlled Congress throughout his entire presidency.

In fact, Bush had more than DOUBLE the ratings of the Democrat Congress:

Bush’s job approval rating fell to 24 percent from last month’s record low for a Zogby poll of 29 percent. A paltry 11 percent gave Congress a positive grade, tying last month’s record low.

So in terms of net differences, Bush actually fared quite a bit better when pitted against a Democrat Congress than Obama is faring when pitted against Congressional Republicans.  And I would submit that the public thinks a lot more highly of Republican ideas than this smoke-and-mirror statistic would otherwise indicate.  Just sayin’.

I made that point just to demonstrate the statistical sleight of hand going on.

Now, Bob Herbert is a big government, rah-rah FDR guy, who sees the big public projects of the WPA as the model for our country’s salvation.

For what it’s worth, I – and Congressional Republicans – agree(d) that that would have been FAR better than Obama’s $3.27 trillion pork-laden employment bust known as the stimulus.

A New York Times story points out why Republicans opposed the porkulus so fiercely:

But the committee’s ranking Republican, Jerry Lewis of California, asserted that the program would do far too little to finance road construction, flood control projects and other works for the public good.

“Facts are stubborn things,” Lewis said, describing the package as a recipe for bloated government programs that would saddle taxpayers with a debt burden “well, well into the future.”

And now even the New York Times is essentially acknowledging that the Republicans were right and Obama was wrong.

I would also point out that the Hoover Dam is named the Hoover Dam because Herbert Hoover was doing public works projects before FDR.  And Herbert Hoover was the guy that every Democrat loves to blame for the Great Depression.

And while we’re on the subject of what happened in the 1930s, I might as well point out that things didn’t go so good under the leadership of FDR.

In fact, FDR’s Treasury Secretary had this to say as he looked back over the decade:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” — Henry Morganthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 1939

A look at the graph of unemployment should help you understand what Henry Morganthau understood:

It shouldn’t surprise you when you take the time to learn about what FDR attempted that he actually prolonged the Great Depression by seven years.

Having mentioned the massive yet mysteriously ignored failure of FDR to solve unemployment or get the economy going, allow me to return to Obama’s current failure.

Still another liberal publication, Time Magazine, ran an article back in July entitled, “Obama’s Stimulus Plan: Failing by Its Own Measure.”  It begins:

Back in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Last month, the jobless rate in the U.S. hit 9.5%, the highest level it has reached since 1983.

And of course, it’s currently 9.8% – and almost certain to keep rising.

Now contrast what the Obama team predicted – a ceiling no higher than 8% unemployment – and then see what the administration is trying to pass off now:

Vice President Joe Biden delivered a rousing review of the government’s economic stimulus plan in a conversation with the nation’s governors. “In my wildest dreams, I never thought it would work this well,” he said. “Thank you, thank you.”

I mean, is this a statement that when team Obama said that they believed their stimulus plan would keep unemployment under 8% that they were being fundamentally dishonest with the American people?  And that 9.8% unemployment is better than their wildest dreams?

And don’t just say Vice President Joe Biden is an idiot and dismiss him.  He IS an idiot, of course.  But he is the official spokesidiot of the Obama Administration.

Having affirmed that significant public works-style projects would have been a massive improvement over the failed Obama stimulus, allow me to briefly point out a few other things that would have helped the nation restore confidence in the U.S. economy and the jobs that would have gone with it.

For one thing, tax breaks would have helped, but we didn’t get them.

Contrary to Democrat fluffery, there really weren’t “tax breaks” in the stimulus.  Rather, the people who got the “breaks” didn’t actually pay federal income taxes.  The “tax breaks” were really welfare breaks.  Lowering taxes stimulates more investment and more productivity by allowing investors to keep more of what they earn, rather than incentivizing them to shelter their money, which raising taxes invariably does.  Transferring money from the pockets of tax payers and giving it to those who didn’t pay federal income taxes – even if you euphemistically call it a “tax break” – simply doesn’t accomplish that goal.

Another thing that would have helped was targeting stimulus toward the businesses that actually do most of the hiring.

Small businesses which employ 20 or fewer workers are responsible for 50% of the jobs in this country.  And businesses defined as “small businesses” are responsible for nearly 3/4ths of the total jobs in the USA.

And what did small businesses get from the stimulus? Butkus.  The porn-loving National Endowment for the Arts actually got more stimulus funds than all the small businesses in the country combined.

If Democrats wanted to create jobs, they might have considered giving the money to businesses that actually created jobs, rather than to their politically connected liberal special interest groups.  Again, just sayin’.

It also would have helped if the stimulus had been something that actually helped more than it hurt.  The Congressional Budget Office, hardly a conservative bastion, reported that the stimulus bill would lead to a lower GDP 5 to 10 years out than if Congress had done absolutely NOTHING.  The enormous government spending will ultimately crowd out private investment which would have had a much higher chance of increasing GDP than the spending in the stimulus bill.