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From: greatplains_guy	4/23/2012 1:45:26 AM
	of 65211

The Hypocrisy of Hope and Change Sheldon Richman, Reason April 18, 2012 Last November, President Obama stood before an audience and said government needs to be “responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special interests.” He added, “That is probably the biggest piece of business that remains unfinished.” He made these remarks, The New York Times reports, before a $17,900-a-plate fundraising dinner at the home of Dwight and Antoinette C. Bush, two heavy contributors to his reelection. But according to the Times, that wasn’t Antoinette Bush’s only contact with Obama. Six months earlier, she had visited the White House, bringing with her a “top entertainment industry lobbyist.” This was when a big brouhaha was erupting between that industry and Internet companies over online piracy. The visit of a big political contributor and an industry lobbyist to the White House may not normally raise eyebrows, but this is the Obama White House. The Times notes, Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits. … [T]he regular appearance of big donors inside the White House underscores how political contributions continue to lubricate many of the interactions between officials and their guests, if for no other reason than that donors view the money as useful for getting a foot in the door. Welcome to Obama’s new world. It looks a lot like the old. And this is not the only way it resembles politics as usual. Like his predecessors, Obama has been a good friend to big companies, especially banks. Take Bank of America. BoA is what you’d expect of a financial institution coddled by government subsidies and privilege: inefficient, corrupt (unjustly foreclosing on homeowners), and a frequent corporate-welfare recipient. Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi reports that when BoA needs help, Obama is there. Taibbi writes that BoA is a de facto ward of the state that depends heavily upon public support to stay in business. In fact, without the continued generosity of us taxpayers, and the extraordinary indulgence of our regulators and elected officials, this company long ago would have been swallowed up by scandal, mismanagement, prosecution and litigation, and gone out of business. It would have been liquidated and its component parts sold off, perhaps into a series of smaller regional businesses that would have more respect for the law, and be more responsive to their customers. But Bank of America hasn’t gone out of business, for the simple reason that our government has decided to make it the poster child for the “Too Big To Fail” concept. Who can we thank? In part, President Barack Obama, who’s planning to run a populist reelection campaign pitting the wealthy and well-connected against the rest of us. Hypocrisy lives—even in Obama’s allegedly post-political world. According to Taibbi, Bank of America … is perhaps the biggest welfare dependent in American history, with the $45 billion in bailout money and the $118 billion in state guarantees it’s received since 2008 representing just the crest of a veritable mountain of federal bailout support, most of it doled out by the Obama administration. (emphasis added) Revealingly, BoA soothed nervous creditors last year by shifting $73 trillion in derivatives to the part of the bank covered by federal deposit insurance—aka the taxpayers. Writes Taibbi, This move, encouraged by the Obama administration, put the American taxpayer on the hook for an entire generation of irresponsible gambles made by another failed investment firm that should have gone out of business, but was instead acquired by Bank of America with $25 billion in taxpayer help—Merrill Lynch. (emphasis added) This is just one of the many ways in which Obama reveals himself as a friend of big, well-connected business interests—that is, as an advocate of the corporate state. Considering that Mitt Romney also favors having government as business’s ally, we can look forward to an election between two variations on this corporatist theme. Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. This article originally appeared at The Future of Freedom Foundation. reason.com

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From: greatplains_guy	4/23/2012 1:47:33 AM
	of 65211

For Obama, immigration reform is always for mañana Washington Examiner, Washington Examiner Aril 18, 2012 "I can promise that I will try to do it in the first year of my second term," President Obama recently told Enrique Acevedo, an anchor at the Spanish language television network Univision. Obama was talking about comprehensive immigration reform, which would regularize the status of more than ten million people living in this nation illegally. On the same subject, four years ago, then-Senator Obama told the League of United Latin American Citizens: "We need to do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States of America. And I will make it a top priority in my first year as president." This earlier promise, of course, was never honored. And voters who care about this issue would do well to note how easy it would have been for Obama to keep it, how little he did to keep it and how impossible it will be to pass any immigration reform bill in a second Obama term. Between July 2009 (when Al Franken, D-Minn., was sworn into the Senate) and February 2010 (the seating of Scott Brown, R-Mass.), Obama enjoyed a strong House majority and 60 Democrats in the 100-member Senate. Throughout the 111th Congress, there were at least five and as many as eight Republican senators, including Brown, who might have broken from the "anti-amnesty" orthodoxy on comprehensive immigration reform, if Obama had lifted a finger to press the issue with them or with his own party. He never tried. Some Obama "top priorities" are more "top" than others. By the time Obama made the Democratic faithful in Congress walk the plank for his health care bill, it was too late. He was gearing up for the 2010 elections, urging Hispanic political leaders to stop complaining about his inaction on immigration and start attacking Republicans instead. Democrats lost the House and six Senate seats, and the window for comprehensive immigration reform closed, possibly for this decade. If Obama wins a second term, it is hard to see how immigration will come up except as a political football -- the kind he holds out for Hispanic voters to kick, only to pull it away at the last moment. The prospect for large Democratic gains in Congress in 2012 are not promising. And in the 2014 election that follows, the Senate map is an absolute nightmare for Obama's party -- Republicans will have several easy targets and just one blue-state Senate seat to defend. Immigration reform will likely be a nonstarter in the coming Congresses. Perhaps Hispanic voters -- at least the ones who consider immigration reform important -- will take Obama's promise seriously, and keep playing Charlie Brown the field goal kicker to Obama's Lucy. Then again, perhaps they will look at what happened to Obama's first promise and catch on to the fact that they are being played. As the old Mexican saying goes, a liar is easier to catch than a one-legged man. washingtonexaminer.com

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To: calgal who wrote (50763)	4/23/2012 1:51:05 AM
From: greatplains_guy	of 65211

Senate Democrats' Budget Fiasco By Yuval Levin April 19, 2012 9:45 A.M. Imagine if Paul Ryan had produced his budget proposal and put it before his committee, but then John Boehner killed it, insisting that the House should not pass a budget of any kind so that his members could be spared a difficult vote in an election year. Surely had any such thing happened it would have been treated as a monumental leadership crisis among House Republicans and a sign of gross dereliction and disorder. Well that is exactly what has happened among Senate Democrats this week. Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad proposed a version of the Bowles-Simpson plan as a draft Democratic budget and said he would bring it up for markup and eventually a vote in his committee—which would be the first time the Senate Democrats have actually bothered to propose a budget in nearly three years. But then Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid stepped in and killed the idea, insisting that no budget was necessary and forcing Conrad into a bizarre farce in yesterday’s committee markup—which involved no votes, and consisted largely of pleading by the chairman directed implicitly against his own leader. And yet, the story has mostly been treated in the political press as a failure of bipartisanship. Politico described it all as “a study in gridlock” and “a metaphor” for a “broken and politically polarized Congress.” Describing the pressure Conrad was under, The Hill deadpans that “Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who consulted with Conrad in recent days, said that he understood Conrad’s attempt to take the temperature of his committee but said the Senate is not ready to come together on a bipartisan plan yet.” One gets the sense that “consulted” has a different meaning in Chicago than in the rest of the English speaking world. But as a study in gridlock, this week’s events should lead to a particular conclusion about the sources of that gridlock: House Republicans have proposed and passed a budget, the chairman of the Senate budget committee sought to propose one of his own, but the Senate’s Democratic leadership preferred inaction instead. That is in fact how essentially all of the “gridlock” of the 112th congress has happened, and it is not properly described as gridlock but as Democratic dereliction. Republicans have put their views and proposals on the table, and Democrats have been afraid to do the same and so have offered nothing but vitriol. The Bowles-Simpson approach to deficit reduction is not best understood as a bipartisan middle ground: It would involve major tax increases but no reform at all of our health-care entitlements (which are by far the foremost drivers of our debt problem). That makes it a plausible opening offer from the Democrats in budget negotiations, not a plausible ultimate outcome of such negotiations. But the Democrats have been unwilling even to make such an opening offer. They prefer instead to offer nothing but demagogic scare tactics and then complain about an absence of bipartisanship. nationalreview.com

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To: greatplains_guy who wrote (50888)	4/23/2012 1:52:31 AM
From: greatplains_guy	of 65211

Why Democrats Won't Vote on a Budget Washington Examiner, Washington Examiner April 19, 2012 Households make budgets. So do businesses and nonprofits. There was also a time when Congress made them, but those days are long gone -- 1,086 days gone, to be precise. That's the last time Democrats, who have controlled one or both houses of Congress this whole time, passed a budget resolution through either the House or the Senate. On April 15, 2010, both houses failed to meet the statutory deadline for passing a budget for the first time ever. Although the Senate Budget Committee would later pass a plan out of committee, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., blocked it from the floor, going so far as to prevent even a debate about the budget. Asked to explain this bicameral failure in the face of trillion-dollar deficits, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "It's difficult to pass budgets in election years." Turns out, it is also difficult to get re-elected when you don't pass budgets. Later that same year, House Democrats lost 63 seats. Senate Democrats lost six seats in 2010 but managed to retain control of the upper chamber. Surely, in the nonelection year of 2011 they would bring a budget to the floor, right? Wrong. Reid told reporters at the time, "There's no need to have a Democratic budget," adding, "It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage." In July 2011, Reid's assistant leader, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., went so far as to claim on national television that Republican filibusters prevented a budget from passing. He must have known he was fibbing -- under Senate rules, budget resolutions can pass with a simple majority. In fact, Democrats just wanted to focus on attacking the "Path to Prosperity" budget proposed by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "To put other budgets out there is not the point." As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would later say, "We don't have a definitive solution ... We just don't like yours." Fast forward to this past Monday, when Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., announced he would attempt to pass a Democratic budget out of his committee for the first time since 2009. Conrad even held a press conference Tuesday during which he released a budget document nearly identical to the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan that President Obama rejected in 2010. But Reid quickly moved to quash this plan, and Conrad, who is retiring after this year, backed off at the eleventh hour. "This is the wrong time to vote in committee; this is the wrong time to vote on the floor," Conrad told reporters late yesterday afternoon. It is no coincidence that the Democrats' failure to pass a budget began immediately after Obamacare became law. In order to hide its $1.7 trillion price tag and $500 billion in tax increases through 2022, Democrats had already exhausted every last budgeting gimmick. As a result, they had no further tricks up their sleeve to pay for the rest of their spending priorities without voting on the massive tax increases that Conrad's new budget contained -- $2.6 trillion, and not just on the rich. Put yourself in the shoes of the half-dozen vulnerable Democratic senators who are up for re-election this year. Would you want to vote for that? That is why Reid forced Conrad to pull his budget, even knowing that such a move would create an embarrassing spectacle. To paraphrase another politician, "We're running for office, for Pete's sake!" washingtonexaminer.com

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To: calgal who wrote (50830)	4/23/2012 1:54:27 AM
From: greatplains_guy	2 Recommendations of 65211

Media Employs Double Standard on "Distractions" Jonah Goldberg, National Review April 20, 2012 It’s going to be bait and switch for as far as the eye can see. That’s how it looks now that the smoke has cleared after the recent “Mommy War” skirmish over Democratic operative Hilary Rosen’s comment that mother of five Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life.” There’s no need to litigate all of that again. If Rosen apologized any more she’d have to sever a digit Yakuza-style. And the White House couldn’t distance itself more if they dispatched the Secret Service to burn down Rosen’s house and salt the earth for good measure. Fortunately, the Secret Service is too busy with other things. And besides, the whole episode was a “distraction.” That was the quasi-official line almost the moment Rosen’s comments caught fire. It was a “manufactured controversy.” NBC’s Chuck Todd, easily one of the best political analysts in the mainstream media, responded to the spat by proclaiming: “Welcome to the world of the shiny metal object. A person no one agrees with has ignited a manufactured controversy.” Way over on the left, the editor of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, said on ABC’s This Week: “I think this whole debate has been a distraction. The issues we should be talking about are equal pay, combating rising health-care costs for families, and sick payday leave for women. And these are issues that the Republicans oppose.” In fairness, Todd and vanden Heuvel are right, at least about the spat being manufactured. The Romney campaign smartly pounced on Rosen’s comments as a way to turn the tables on the Obama campaign, which had been banging the war drums on the entirely phony “Republican war on women” ever since the entirely manufactured Sandra Fluke controversy. Fluke, recall, was the Joan of Arc of free birth control who wasn’t invited to testify at a congressional hearing about the Obama administration’s effort to force religious institutions to pay for medical services that violate their religious teachings. A 30-year-old activist who picked Georgetown because she wanted to fight Catholic policies from the inside, Fluke was a ringer, and the Democrats wanted to use her to distract from their deeply unpopular plan to bulldoze religious liberty. When Rush Limbaugh went overboard mocking Fluke’s arguments to the point where he suggested she was a “slut,” the Democrats leapt into action. So did the mainstream press. Fluke became a national martyr, treated with kid gloves by nearly every outlet. The same Katrina vanden Heuvel who mocked the “distraction” of Hilary Rosen anointed Fluke a “profile in courage” who “speaks for millions of women who won’t allow Rush Limbaugh to silence their voice with his vile viciousness.” The Democratic party raised millions off Fluke from the ginned-up controversy. Limbaugh was denounced in Congress. Allegedly pro-free-speech left-wing celebrities started demanding the FCC permanently censor Limbaugh by revoking his broadcast license. After all, Limbaugh had tried to “silence people that are speaking out for women,” in the words of Representative Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.). Funny how all of the “distraction” and “manufactured controversy” talk starts when Republicans are benefiting from a distraction. Now, you might complain that Limbaugh is a much bigger deal than Hilary Rosen — and that’s true. Limbaugh is vastly more influential and important than Rosen. But he’s also not a professional Republican as Rosen is for Democrats (if you actually listened to Limbaugh’s show you’d know that). She’s visited the White House some 35 times and is a business partner with Anita Dunn, the former White House communications director. Regardless, the point is that the controversy over Limbaugh’s comments (for which he rightly apologized) was wholly and completely a distraction from the relevant issues. Heck, his Fluke comments were a distraction from the distraction from the relevant issues. And let me say a word in defense of distractions. Elections are about what voters want them to be about. Rosen’s comments, for instance, may have been hyped by the Romney campaign, but the hype wouldn’t have mattered if the comments didn’t resonate with the public. My complaint isn’t about distractions, it’s about the press’s tendency to treat controversies that help Republicans as “distractions” and ones that hurt Republicans as Very Serious Issues. And the pattern continues. This week, the Romney campaign is rightly distancing itself from some idiotic comments by rocker Ted Nugent. On cue, Andrea Mitchell — who seems to cover Republicans like they’re from some foreign land, oddly fitting for NBC’s “chief foreign affairs correspondent” — is happily distracted by the story. When Bill Maher, HBO’s criminally unfunny and obtuse jester (and million-dollar Obama super-PAC donor) says something idiotic, it’s a meaningless distraction. It’s nothing new, of course. (Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers were preemptively deemed “distractions” by the media.) But it is annoying. Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of the forthcoming book The Tyranny of Clichés. nationalreview.com

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To: greatplains_guy who wrote (50890)	4/23/2012 1:56:05 AM
From: greatplains_guy	of 65211

Obama's Problem? His Record By Jonah Goldberg April 18, 2012 ‘The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and that gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead, and an economy that continues down the road we are on, where a fewer and fewer number of people do very well and everybody else is running faster and faster just to keep pace.” That’s Obama adviser David Axelrod on Fox News Sunday, explaining why people should vote for . . . Barack Obama. Odds are this was simply poor phrasing. But it might not have been, given how desperately the Obama campaign wants to turn back the clock to 2008, when the choice was between hope and change or continuing “down the road we are on.” Regardless of the spin, the simple fact is that Obama is the stay-the-course candidate stuck with a team, a record, and an economy ill-suited for a stay-the-course strategy. That’s what gives poignancy to Obama’s recently renewed love affair with Ronald Reagan, whom Obama invokes these days as a model of reasonableness and bipartisanship. He even wants to rename the “Buffett rule” the “Reagan rule.”Even before he got the nomination in 2008, Obama said he wanted to be a “transformative” president like Reagan had been. And last year, Time magazine featured a cover story, “Why Obama [Hearts] Reagan,” which in Time’s words gave the true story behind “Obama’s Reagan Bromance.” There were two key elements to Obama’s man-crush. The first was the simple hope that history — or at least the business cycle — would repeat itself. The White House’s plan was to run for reelection in 2012 with a soaring economy at its back. After an absolutely bruising recession (that was in some ways worse than the one Obama inherited), Reagan got to ride a surging economy to reelection. America enjoyed 6 percent annual growth in 1984: In three of the four quarters before Election Day, GDP quarterly growth was more than 7 percent, while inflation and unemployment plummeted. At Obama’s back is a dismayingly anemic recovery, constantly threatening to get worse. He wants credit for “creating” 3 million jobs but insists he be held blameless for millions more workers who’ve left the job market entirely. The other reason the White House admired the Reagan White House? According to Time: “Both relied heavily on the power of oratory.” Then– press secretary Robert Gibbs added, “Our hope is the story ends the same way.” And there’s the problem for Obama. He’s sticking to his rhetorical guns on the assumption that he’s the great orator his fans have always claimed. It’s admirably Gipperesque, I suppose, but the problem is that Obama has never once significantly moved public opinion on domestic issues with his arguments. If he had that power, not only would “Obamacare” be popular today, it would have been popular when he gave more than 50 addresses and speeches on it during his first year. Obama’s out on the stump embracing Obamacare, and also doubling down on green energy, on the need for “investments” in government programs, and for the whole hodgepodge of rationalizations for hiking taxes and “spreading the wealth around.” Asking whether Obama is as good a communicator as Reagan is like comparing boxers from different generations; there’s plenty of evidence to form opinions but no way to settle the matter. But what must be very troubling for Obama is the mounting evidence that presidential persuasion is vastly overrated. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan has noted that Reagan’s rhetoric had little effect on the polls or his media coverage. Liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, surveying the academic literature in a recent issue of the New Yorker, found that there’s little evidence that any president has really moved the country with his rhetoric. My hunch is that such findings are overdone and leave out some aspects of presidential persuasion. Still, what’s undoubtedly true is that results matter far more than words. And despite Axelrod’s assertions, the fact is that Obama has been leading us down the road we are on for more than three years, and that’s what voters will have in mind come Election Day. realclearpolitics.com

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To: joseffy who wrote (50681)	4/23/2012 1:58:20 AM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation of 65211

Expel Argentina From the G-20 Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal April 19, 2012 'I'm the head of state, not a thug," Argentine President Cristina Kirchner felt it necessary to explain on Monday in Buenos Aires. This is never a good sign from a politician. And, sure enough, she was trying to defend her decision to nationalize the oil company YPF by expropriating 51% of the shares belonging to majority owner Repsol from Spain, an act the civilized world is calling "theft." Only Hugo Chávez applauded. In modern Latin America, Brazil is a growing economic power, Mexico has developed a middle class, and Colombia, Chile and Peru have joined the world economy. Then there's Argentina, which seems intent on fulfilling all the political and economic stereotypes that have made that blessed land so much poorer than it should be. The expropriation shook Spain, which is already struggling with high unemployment and a debt crisis. The decision also makes zero sense for Argentina given its need for foreign capital to develop what are believed to be vast supplies of oil and gas. The country's political risk level has leapt into Caracas-ville. But if history is any guide, Mrs. Kirchner doesn't care. She's trying to save her presidency as the economic model she inherited from her husband, the late President Néstor Kirchner, runs out of steam. Kirchner came to office in 2003 after the collapse of the convertibility law that pegged the peso at one-to-one to the dollar. To lead the recovery he imposed price controls, confiscated property, abrogated contracts, reneged on debt and drove out foreign investors. After a sharp economic contraction, Argentina enjoyed a robust recovery. The growth was off a low base and was fueled by an artificially weak peso and increased protectionism designed to generate internal demand. But after the hardship of recession, Argentines celebrated their heavy-handed president. The Federal Reserve's easy money also helped by creating a boom in prices for commodities that are a major chunk of Argentine GDP. Now the bust seems inevitable. The economy is slowing down and international reserves are fleeing. By stealing Repsol, Mrs. Kirchner is playing to nationalist sentiments while gaining political control of oil supplies and a potential patronage machine. But this will also encourage more capital flight, which rigid controls and even sniffer dogs on the ferries across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay haven't been able to stop. After generations of peronismo, the Argentine public knows how to stash its cash abroad. The European Union denounced the nationalization, and Repsol says it will fight it. But Mrs. Kirchner isn't one to recognize any international court. A better way to send a message to Buenos Aires would be for the world's civilized countries to expel Argentina from the G-20. When its president wants to behave like a real head of state and not a thug, the country can be invited back into the club of serious nations. realclearpolitics.com

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To: calgal who wrote (50846)	4/23/2012 2:00:44 AM
From: greatplains_guy	of 65211

Millennials Turning Away from Obama Walter Russell Mead April 20, 2012 One of the biggest political stories of 2008 was the rise of the Millennials as an electoral force. As “Obamamania” swept the nation, college students across the country abandoned their usual political apathy and volunteered for the Obama campaign in droves, canvassing, phone banking and harnessing the power of social media. This youth enthusiasm paid dividends for the Obama campaign, and was reflected in the vote totals: Obama beat McCain among 18-24 year-olds by a whopping 34 percent, winning 66 percent of the vote. That excitement is gone. A new Public Religion Research poll shows that while Obama still leads in the 18 to 24 age group, his lead has fallen dramatically to 7 percent. And those who still support him are less enthusiastic; Politico recently discussed the “tepid” support for Obama on college campuses, where few students are still interested in issues like the Iraq War, which dominated the discussion in 2008. The army of student volunteers that propelled Obama in 2008 is unlikely to materialize this time around. The Obama camp may be alarmed by these results, but it shouldn’t be surprised. This is an Administration that has been focused on protecting the status quo. Here, as in Europe, the reigning blue system taxes and marginalizes the young to support the privileges of the established. As the economic downturn grinds on, issues like the Iraq War have been replaced with concerns about the economy. Obama’s policies have done little to help Millennials navigate the new economic conditions, and they are beginning to notice. Via Meadia would love to see genuine competition for the youth vote. America is failing the rising generation, and it would be good to see both Republicans and Democrats thinking hard about how to make this a more future-oriented, pro-opportunity country. Unfortunately, we’ve heard very little talk along these lines in this election so far. This is a shame. Today’s youth should be demanding more from their politicians. blogs.the-american-interest.com

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To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (50870)	4/23/2012 2:03:17 AM
From: greatplains_guy	of 65211

Where’s the recovery? Economic fundamentals will remain weak until pro-growth policies are enacted By THE WASHINGTON TIMES Friday, April 20, 2012 April remains a cruel month. New jobless claims are the highest they’ve been since late January, with the four-week average stubbornly hovering around the 375,000 mark. Though we’re technically in a recovery, nobody believes it. A Rasmussen Reports survey earlier this week shows a majority is under the impression America is still in recession. That’s for good reason. To dig America out of the hole created by the financial sector’s collapse, we need an explosion of industry. Instead, we’re seeing a fizzle. The Philadelphia Reserve Bank found manufacturing output growth slowed slightly in the mid-Atlantic region, with its index of general business activity for the factory sector falling from 12.5 in March to 8.5 in April. The lackluster performance dampens the rest of the economy. People who don’t feel secure about their economic future aren’t investing in homes, so housing inventory remains substantial, with 2.4 million houses listed for sale by the end of February. In a healthy market, an average of 6 million homes changes hands in the course of a year; today, that number is closer to 4.5 million. With a significant chunk of the market still in the process of foreclosure, housing won’t recover anytime soon. Company managers are also skittish. Employers added a net of 120,000 new employees in March. That’s barely half the number of jobs created in each of the last three months. April’s numbers aren’t expected to be much better, with predictions in the 125,000 to 175,000 range. That will leave the official unemployment rate at 8.2 percent. That figure understates the true depth of the joblessness problem. The unemployment rate only measures the number of people actively looking for a job. It doesn’t count those who have left the labor force, discouraged in their unsuccessful efforts to seek work. The labor-force participation rate of 63.8 percent represents an all-time low. Even a year ago, the labor-force participation rate was higher at 64.2 percent. The drop in this rate understates the true level of unemployment. About 42 percent of those in the jobless line haven’t had work in at least six months. This is a dangerous figure because the longer someone is out of work, the higher is the risk he will lose his home. The longer the period of unemployment, the harder it is to find another job. Because skills atrophy, employers are less willing to hire someone without a recent work history. Individuals who fall into this trap are increasingly likely to throw in the towel and join the ranks of the permanently unemployed. As we drag through the second year of this “barely there” recovery, there’s little room for optimism. The Federal Reserve meets again soon and might unleash another round of quantitative easing. With interest rates already near zero, nothing is left in that bag of tricks. The true solution lies beyond the reach of monetary policy. Our oversized, debt-laden government is unleashing new regulations and creating marketplace uncertainty. This tells entrepreneurs they should hold back from the kinds of investment that would trigger growth and job creation. Real deregulation, not monetary or fiscal stimulus, is what’s going to free up America’s economic engine so we can finally see an actual recovery. washingtontimes.com

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To: greatplains_guy who wrote (50889)	4/23/2012 2:14:54 AM
From: greatplains_guy	of 65211

Three years and no Senate budget Industrious ancestors put to shame our do-nothing Democrats By Deroy Murdock Friday, April 20, 2012 A pril 29 will mark three years since Senate Democrats passed a budget. This dereliction of duty lagrantly violates the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. “On or before April 15 of each year, the Congress shall complete action on a concurrent resolution on the budget for the fiscal year,” this statute states. Senate Democrats could not care less about this federal law. This is a milestone in human sloth. While it has taken Majority “Leader” Harry Reid of Nevada and Senate Democrats 36 months to conceive zero budgets, House Republicans have delivered two - one for each year they governed. Nonetheless, Mr. Reid said on Feb. 3: “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year. It’s done. We don’t need to do it.” “This is the wrong time to vote on the floor,” Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, North Dakota Democrat, declared Tuesday. “I don’t think we will be prepared to vote before the election.” Floor votes would require Senate Democrats to borrow and spend, which annoys taxpayers, or cut outlays, which aggravates liberal lobbyists and porcine government-employee unions. So, Senate Democrats break the law and demand continuing resolutions, which spend on autopilot. Meanwhile, consider what focused, energetic humans have completed in less time than Senate Democrats have consumed to accomplish nothing on the budget. c Broad Group, a Chinese construction company, erected the 30-story Ark Hotel in just 15 days late last year. Laboring around the clock, employees in Changsha used prefabricated modules to build an energy-efficient structure that reportedly could withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake. According to London’s Daily Mail, no worker was injured on this project. Watch Gizmodo.com’s stunning time-lapse video of this effort. c Producer David O. Selznick and director Victor Fleming took nine months and 16 days (Jan. 26 to Nov. 11, 1939) to shoot, edit and release “Gone With the Wind.” This beloved Civil War epic features a huge cast, massive sets, lavish costumes and landmark performances, all of which made it a box-office smash. It eventually scored a then-record 10 Academy Awards. c Led by Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied Forces landed on Normandy Beach, France, on June 6, 1944, and bravely battled Nazi Germany until Victory in Europe Day on May 8, 1945. American and Allied GIs needed 11 months and two days to liberate Europe. c Creating the Empire State Building required one year, three months and nine days. Between Jan. 22, 1930 and May 1, 1931, about 3,400 workers built what was the world’s tallest skyscraper for 42 years, rising 1,454 feet above the sidewalks of New York. (The late, great World Trade Center won that distinction in 1973.) As documentarian Ric Burns noted, the building’s steel beams were forged in Pittsburgh and whisked to the site via trains, barges and trucks. As they were riveted into place, they still were warm. c The Pentagon’s construction began on Sept. 11, 1941, and ended one year, four months and two days later, on Jan. 15, 1943. Col. Leslie Groves, who later spearheaded the assembly of the atomic bombs that ended World War II, led the installation of this 6.5-million-square-foot office building, still Earth’s vastest. Oddly enough, the Sept. 11 hijackers crashed into the Pentagon on the 60th anniversary of its groundbreaking, killing 189 people. c According to the latest Department of Education data, 656,784 students earned MBAs and other master’s degrees in 2008-09. Most secured those credentials within two academic years. c In the War of 1812, American GIs spent two years, six months and six days (June 18, 1812 to Dec. 24, 1814) persuading revanchist British soldiers that we weren’t kidding when we declared independence on July 4, 1776. These triumphs of human action are both private and public. Even government sometimes can finish what it starts, assuming leadership, industriousness and responsibility. Too bad these virtues are AWOL in today’s Democratic Senate. Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with Stanford’s Hoover Institution. washingtontimes.com

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