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Posts tagged ‘unemployment’

Mark Warren Op-ed: Only Spiritual Brotherhood Can Save Men in the Job Crisis

BY: MARK WARREN | DECEMBER 29, 2022

An article on the job crisis has a picture of a young man playing video games on a computer. — **America’s young men are in crisis, and the answer to this problem is spiritual, not economic or political.**

MARK WARREN

There’s a strange thing happening in the American economy right now — what we read in the newspaper or see on TV doesn’t match what we’re witnessing with our own eyes. Job numbers reported in the media seem wonderful. Amazingly low unemployment that hasn’t been witnessed in 50 years! Hundreds of thousands of new jobs created monthly. Yet for all these rosy numbers, when we look at the real world, we see critically understaffed businesses, long waits for repairs, and customer service in the gutter.

America’s young men are in crisis, and the answer to this problem is spiritual, not economic or political. While the media continues to trumpet good news about the economy, the reason your real-life experiences don’t match such optimism is because these reports typically only give you part of the picture. What corporate media doesn’t tell you is that about 11 million jobs remain unfilled right now.

That’s why service is lousy everywhere and you can’t get a plumber. Those jobs go unfilled because millions of young American men between the ages of 25 and 54 aren’t working. At all. As Bloomberg reports, they’ve been left behind, with a lower percentage of men between those ages working than in 1970 — a statistic that emerged before the economic disaster brought by coronavirus lockdowns.

Millions of Young Men Doing Nothing All Day

So, how can millions of men be out of work when unemployment is extremely low? Easy, if you don’t count them.

Yes, the unemployment rate hovers at a record low figure, but this number doesn’t count all unemployed people. It only includes those who don’t have a job and are actively seeking one. This cheery (and erroneous) unemployment rate doesn’t count the millions of young men who aren’t looking for a job. Young males fitting this description are often referred to as “NEETs,” an acronym originating in the U.K. that stands for “Not in Employment, Education or Training.” These fellows aren’t working and, worse, aren’t interested in work.

Of course, this was already a growing problem in the last decade. But unemployment went full supernova during the coronavirus lockdown — and finally smart people are paying attention to it. Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame recently hosted a podcast discussion on the crisis of young men not working.

To further understand the problem’s depth, Rowe interviewed economist Nicholas Eberstadt, who wrote “Men Without Work.” It explains the seriousness of this issue, documenting how the unemployment crisis goes far beyond simply not having a job. Too many men in their prime have fallen into a hollow existence. And their parents — and our tax dollars — subsidize such incredible waste.

What do such men do with their copious amounts of leisure? According to Eberstadt, they aren’t only not working. They aren’t going to church. They typically aren’t dating. They aren’t engaging in charity work or civic activities either, or even helping with housework.

Instead, they play video games, binge watch TV and movies, and, perhaps most concerningly, abuse drugs. So many young men are not only lost to our economy but lost to their families as well. They are at risk of becoming another gloomy statistic in the opioid epidemic.

Social and Spiritual Solutions

So, what is the answer? Unsurprisingly, it depends on who you ask. Eberstadt, the expert on young men dropping out of the economy, believes in secular and market-driven solutions to this crisis. He explains to Rowe on the podcast that we could use shame as a powerful motivator, much like our nation has shamed smokers to give up the habit.

But a campaign to shame men is already widespread in America — and not particularly helpful. In recent years, so many expressions of traditional male values have been labeled “toxic masculinity.” Combine this message with readily available drugs ranging from prescription opioids and fentanyl to legal marijuana in many states, and it almost feels like society is encouraging young men to disconnect from the real world and play “Call of Duty” all day.

We therefore believe the real solution to this crisis is spiritual. And we don’t mean just dragging young men away from the TV and into church. When Eberstadt’s book was first published in 2016, The New York Times highlighted it with an op-ed that made an eye-opening point about the root cause of the problem.

In the article, the journalist explored the issue via an interview with a young man who lost his job in the oil industry. He told the interviewer he feels as if America doesn’t care about him. He says he feels as if he’s “considered nothing.” This is a tragedy that likely resonates with millions of other young men not working. No shaming campaign will solve this. It will only worsen things.

Instead, these men would do well to unite. We suggest they form small groups with other men to help each other and provide non-judgmental spaces to work through life’s problems.

Form a Small Band of Brothers

I did this with several brothers a couple of decades ago — and continue to do to this day. Recently, I recounted what drove me to create such fellowship and how it’s transformed my life and so many others in the new book “Power of 4: How Christian Men Create Purposeful Lives By Not Going It Alone.”

If young men feel isolated and valueless, the answer is to bring them together in brotherhood to help them understand their worth. “Power of 4” emphasizes how much more powerful men can be when they don’t try to go it alone. When a man has three brothers to meet with regularly to work through life’s challenges, he is much better off than trying to handle his problems on his own.

Consider a hypothetical Power of 4 group comprised of men not in the workforce. They could work together to build each other up, for instance, by engaging in charity work while also collaborating on resumes and professional networking. (Simply having regular face-to-face contact with other men who are not keen on blaming themselves for their station in life will do worlds of good for young men in crisis).

An even more powerful approach to a Power of 4 group might be to mix together men with established careers with those not in the workforce. Young men who feel lost and without purpose could get unimaginable benefits from spending time with men who are on solid footing in their profession. Such successful men might even assist their Power of 4 brother by arranging an internship or introductory position.

What’s more, men currently working know just how nearly every employer is screaming out for quality employees now. That means a resume with some gaps in it won’t necessarily hold back a man who wants to better his situation. Undoubtedly, our young men in crisis can transform their lives once they realize they do have value — and even the potential for greatness. All it takes is a determination to relinquish those behaviors holding them back — whether it be drugs and alcohol or Netflix and PlayStation (or all of the above!).

Ultimately, we are deeply concerned by the crisis of young men dropping out of society. Despite so much bad news, we see many positives in the future. If men come together to support each other, this problem can and will correct itself.

With the right support system, young men can achieve tremendous personal growth. Every human has value, a fact lost on so many men for far too long. With the help of three brothers, our blueprint for the Power of 4, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, American men will return to a society that so desperately needs them.

Mark Warren is the coauthor of “Power of 4: How Christian Men Create Purposeful Lives By Not Going It Alone.”

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COMMENTARY: Lindsey Graham Says Unemployment Benefits Are So High People in His Own Family Aren’t Working

Commentary by C. Douglas Golden June 9, 2021

When the disastrous April jobs report came out, President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter whether or not the Democratic push to keep expanded $300 weekly federal unemployment checks contributed to the historic miss.

“No, nothing measurable,” Biden said during a media briefing on May 7, according to a transcript.
“I know some employers are having trouble filling jobs. But what this report shows is that there’s a much bigger problem. … It is that our economy still has 8 million fewer jobs than when this pandemic started. The data shows that more — more workers — more workers are looking for jobs, and many can’t find them. While jobs are coming back, there are still millions of people out there looking for work.”

That’s still the official administration line after two months of disappointing jobs numbers. The fact that the federal government is paying people not to work has nothing to do with the promised economic rebound falling flat, at least when it comes to jobs.

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wasn’t having it. As he questioned Shalanda Young, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, he said he had relatives who weren’t working because unemployment benefits were so high. Graham was arguing that the benefits should be killed before they’re set to expire in September.

“There’s a lot of jobs out there that are unfilled and will never be filled until you change the benefit structure. Does that logic make sense to you, given where we’re at in our economy?” Graham asked Young.
“I understand the logic, but I’ve also not met Americans who would prefer not to work,” Young replied. “There’s a dignity to work in this country.”

A chuckling Graham used his relatives to show why this is problematic. “I got a lot of people in my family that ain’t working because they’re getting — I’ll show you some of my family,” Graham said.

“Bottom line is I think there are people out there, they’re not bad people, but they’re not going to work for $15 an hour if they make $23 unemployed,” he added.
“That doesn’t make you a bad person. If you’re working for $15 an hour, that makes you almost a chump.”

The expanded benefits have been part of a tug-of-war between the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill and in governor’s mansions. As part of the American Rescue Plan, Biden kept the $300-a-week checks going through Sept. 6. As The New York Times reported last week, the administration has promised not to renew them, but has no plans to cancel the additional aid early.

However, many Republicans have seen enough, with 25 states having already ended the benefits starting this month.

In a Friday media briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said “that’s OK,” although the Biden administration still sees the $300 payments as an “extra helping hand.”
“Every governor is going to make their own decision,” Psaki told reporters.

That decision should become markedly easier when staring down two months of dreadful jobs reports. April is the month that sticks out; that’s when economists were expecting a million new jobs and the total was 278,000. And let’s not forget May. The 559,000 jobs added still came in below expectations of 675,000 jobs. Let’s also not forget that a roaring economy was set to be a Democratic talking point going into 2022.

Even though the Biden administration inherited a strong economy before lockdowns shuttered businesses, and even though the beginning of mass vaccinations was felicitously timed with Biden’s inauguration, the massive bounceback the White House was counting on hasn’t quite happened yet. But the weekly $300 checks have nothing to do with it, they swear. After all, who wouldn’t choose the dignity of work over getting paid to sit on the couch?

It isn’t just Shalanda Young making this argument — during the May 7 media briefing on the April jobs numbers, Biden claimed “most middle-class, working-class people that I know think the way my dad did.
“He used to say — and I know I’m repeating myself, but I’m going to continue to because I think it’s critical. ‘A job is a lot more than a paycheck,’ he’d say. ‘Joey, it’s about your respect, your dignity, your place in the community.’ More than a paycheck. It’s people’s pride. It’s about being able to look at your child in the eye and say, ‘Honey, it’s going to be OK.’”

I know, empurpled prose like that makes the tears well up in your eyes. However, if you stay at home for $23 an hour instead of working for $15 an hour, it’s a lot easier to look your child in the eye and say, “Honey, it’s going to be OK.” Yes, a job might be “people’s pride.” It’s not the kind of pride that goeth before the fall, but it’s the kind of pride that, in this case, goeth before making considerably less money for doing actual work.

Now, was Graham making a rhetorical point, throwing his family under the bus, or both? Whatever the case, one hopes they — as well as millions of other Americans — get off the dole with all due rapidity.

In a country where anyone over 12 can get a vaccine with ease and employers are desperately looking for workers, the federal government needn’t be throwing $300 a week at the unemployed in the name of recovery.

ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR:

C. Douglas Golden, Contributor,

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.@CillianZeal

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I Looked Up What Happened When Sweden Refused To Shut Down – They Were Right, We Were Wrong

Reported By Josh Manning | Published August 1, 2020 at 3:39pm

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/looked-happened-sweden-refused-shut-right-wrong/

Sweden did it.

The Nordic country defeated COVID-19 without seeming to break a sweat — fever-induced or otherwise. They effectively showed that Fauci & Co. were completely wrong about a shutdown being necessary to save civilization as we know it.

While that accomplishment should be lauded and their efforts duplicated around the world, the media has instead chosen to blast the Nordic state and paint a dismal picture that simply doesn’t exist. A few examples (among many, many others) are below:

CBS News declared: “Sweden becomes an example of how not to handle COVID-19.”

Similarly, the University of Virginia Health System issued a news release titled: “Lack of Lockdown Increased COVID-19 Deaths in Sweden.”

Taking a stab at prognostication, Newsweek said: “Sweden COVID-19 Deaths Linked to Failure to Lockdown as Country Prepares for Second Wave.”

Always eager to bravely embrace the status quo, The New York Times ran a piece headlined: “Sweden Tries Out a New Status: Pariah State.”

Finally, Business Insider reported: “Sweden’s coronavirus death toll is now approaching zero, but experts are warning others not to hail it as a success.”

It’s all awfully prickly from a leftist media that used to adore Sweden’s welfare state. The reason for the barbed headlines is simple — Sweden dealt with COVID-19 in its own way.

The country didn’t truckle to the tyranny of over-educated, under-experienced experts. It didn’t implement authoritarian policies designed as much to break spirits as to break the pandemic. And it didn’t turn its voters into quasi-prisoners. In other words, Sweden responded more or less the way the rest of the developed world has responded to contagious diseases until 2020, which just happens to also be President Donald Trump’s re-election year.

What were Sweden’s results?

Well, first let’s consider American results brought to us courtesy of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, the establishment media, government officials around the country and legions of panic-prone and morally superior “Karens.” All around the country, the U.S. tried just about every imaginable combination of mask, lockdown, quarantine, curfew and closures orders — up to and including literally refusing entry across some state lines to certain fellow Americans.

The results were, well, not what anyone wanted. As of Saturday, the U.S. coronavirus death rate was 3.35 new deaths per million per day (based on a seven-day rolling average), which ranks as the 11th worst rating on the planet, according to Our World in Data.

And remember, thanks in large part to the Andrew Cuomo nursing home/death camp model of virus containment, New York state accounts for more than a fifth of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data. So we’re probably getting dragged down a little in the ratings by the disproportionate number of deaths in that state.

What else has America’s scattershot, but mostly heavy-handed, response yielded? If you read The Wall Street Journal, you will learn it led to anywhere between 30 million and 40 million lost jobs. (Some of those workers have no doubt been rehired as parts of the economy reopen, but millions more haven’t. And economists don’t really know how many of those job losses are permanent.)

So we destroyed constitutional rights, shed a few dozen million jobs and watched tens of thousands of people die. Oh, and we turned Americans against each other, all the way from the state to family levels.

But at least gross domestic product didn’t take it too hard, right? Not exactly. Commerce Department numbers released Thursday revealed that the U.S. economy shrank by a record 32.9 percent last quarter in what Bloomberg called the “sharpest downturn since at least the 1940s.”

So what about those rebellious Swedes? The ones who refused to play ball with all-knowing scientists and a ridiculously tunnel-visioned medical establishment?

While much of the rest of the developed world drowned themselves in hand sanitizer, locked ankle monitors onto their citizens and bought super cute masks on Etsy, the stalwart Swedes pressed on. They lived their lives. They didn’t mandate masks. They didn’t turn into NKVD-aspiring Karens, eager to publicly shame or quietly narc on neighbors, friends and family who dared bare an uncovered nostril.

Sweden defied the (dare we say) scientific consensus and has performed exceedingly well compared to the U.S. As of Saturday, Sweden had registered 0.65 deaths per million per day, based on a seven-day rolling average. Trading Economics projects a second-quarter GDP change of -4.2 percent (and a third-quarter growth of 2.4 percent). Depending on your preferred method of calculation, we could casually say that’s 7.8 times better than what the U.S. saw last quarter.

As of June 18, Statista forecast a 2.6 percent drop in Sweden’s employment rate for 2020. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, meanwhile, reported unemployment in the U.S. shot up 11.2 percentage points from 3.5 percent in February to 14.7 percent in April, before dropping a bit to 13.3 percent in May and 11.7 percent in June as parts of the economy reopened.

Now we’re not going to be like the dogmatic pro-mask Stasi here. There are lots of factors that impact the difference between U.S. and Swedish outcomes. We can’t say with 100 percent certainty that Sweden’s refusal to lock down saved their economy or is responsible for the miraculously low death rate. But it would also be foolish to say that the decision didn’t play some role in the different outcome.

We can all learn two significant lessons from how COVID-19 responses have played out in the U.S. versus Sweden.

First, it is clear that the expert class in America whom the left appeals to at every turn (aren’t you sick of hearing “scientists say” or “experts find”?) is worth substantially less than we pay them.

We’ve spent literally trillions of dollars as a result of this virus and have only managed to buy our own personal hell.

Second, Sweden succeeded using an approach that left people free. The response they got from the U.S. media complex, however, wasn’t celebration and an urge toward duplication. It was derision and aspersion.

That betrays what lays at the heart of everything COVID-19-related.

In America, COVID-19 has never been first and foremost a virus to fight. It has instead been a tool that the left, anti-Trumpers and the establishment could use to mercilessly kick Americans in our collective groin. With COVID-19, the left finally found a chink in Trump’s armor. The left knew exploiting it was vital, and they knew that Americans would have to suffer if they wanted to succeed.

As America continues to languish economically even as deaths drop, remember to thank the left for that. And when you walk into that voting booth on Tuesday, Nov. 3, remember to pay the left back for the hell they’ve just put us through — pay them back by voting for Donald J. Trump.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Josh Manning

Editor-at-Large, The Western Journal

Josh Manning is deputy managing editor, assignment, at The Western Journal. He holds a masters in public policy from Harvard University and has a background in higher education.

@Josh_Manning

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Trump to Halt Foreign Visa Worker Programs to Free Up 600K U.S. Jobs for Americans

Reported by JOHN BINDER | 22 Jun 2020

URL of the originating web site: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/22/trump-halts-foreign-visa-worker-programs-to-free-up-600k-u-s-jobs-for-americans/

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

President Trump will expand an executive order on Monday, halting a series of visa programs that bring hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to the United States to take American jobs. The order will halt the inflow of foreign worker pipelines until at least December 31. The visa programs suspended include:

H-1B visas, who take white-collar U.S. jobs
H-4 visas, who are the spouses of H-1B visa holders
H-2B visas, who take blue-collar nonagricultural U.S. jobs
L visas, who take white-collar U.S. jobs
J-1 visas, who take a variety of blue-collar and white-collar U.S. jobs

“Obviously American workers have been hurt, and it’s nobody’s fault that the coronavirus hit, but it did do a blow to the economy and to businesses who were furloughing and laying people off, and we want to make sure that Americans get hired into those spots,” said Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.

Altogether, the order is expected to free up about 600,000 American jobs for the more than 30,000,000 Americans who are jobless mostly due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis. That includes about 287,000 U.S. jobs freed up for Americans that would have otherwise been taken by H-1B, H-2B, and L-1 visa workers, according to Cuccinelli.

Halting the J-1 visa program through the end of the year is set to free up about 97,000 U.S. jobs that would have otherwise gone to foreign workers. The order will be up for expansion within 30 days and reviewed every 60 days after that date. Those reviews include evaluating all regulations relating to visa programs. Cuccinelli credited the April order’s 60-day review process for giving the administration time to consider Monday’s expansion.

The order includes a handful of exemptions, such as an exemption for foreign au pairs who arrive on J-1 visas to do low-wage nanny work for mostly wealthy American households. Also exempted are H-2B visa workers taking U.S. jobs in the food industry, J-1 visa workers taking U.S. jobs in coronavirus-related medical research or treatment, and the Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa program, which delivers foreign graduates to multinational corporations at discounted wage rates.

DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are given authority to exempt visa workers from the order if they are deemed “necessary to facilitate the immediate and continued economic recovery of the United States.”

A DHS official told Breitbart News the exemption is for specific foreign visa workers who are vital to putting Americans back to work.

“The president is confident this is going to be very popular with the American people,” Cuccinelli said. “It’s proven popular thus far — to start clearing this space … and it is the kind of thing that, frankly, some people on the other side of the aisle have supported in the past.”

Indeed, reductions to overall immigration in the middle of mass unemployment are hugely popular with Americans.

In April, nearly 80 percent of Americans said they wanted immigration halted to the U.S. during the crisis and amid mass unemployment. This month, majorities of 55 to 85 percent of voters in ten swing states said they want less immigration at the moment.

Every year, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants on green cards to permanently resettle in the country. In addition, another 1.4 million foreign workers are admitted every year to take American jobs. Often, Americans are fired and replaced by visa workers. Many are forced to train their foreign replacements.

This is the first time in American history that a president has used this particular executive order authority to reduce annual legal immigration levels, one administration official said. Trump’s authority over immigration, like all other presidents, is vast and broad.

In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the president’s control over legal immigration. In Trump v. Hawaii, the court stated that presidents have extraordinarily broad discretion to admit or exclude foreign nationals from the U.S. when they believe doing so is in the national interest.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

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Home Depot Co-Founder Blasts Socialism, Quietly Calls Out Ocasio-Cortez in Explosive Interview

Reported By Karista Baldwin | January 27, 2019 at 10:32am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/home-depot-co-founder-blasts-socialism-quietly-calls-ocasio-cortez-explosive-interview/

The co-founder of The Home Depot slammed supporters of socialism during a Friday interview on Fox News. Bernard Marcus, The Home Depot co-founder, talked to Fox News host Neil Cavuto about the failure of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba. Marcus said socialism has devastated those countries and compared their present state to what they were like before socialist rule. He specifically called Cuba a “perfect example of socialism gone wrong.”

“They took a great country. They put it right down the drain in every way possible,” Marcus said about Cuba.

“People are starving to death. Medical (care) is not available for them. And we have a group of people in Washington today, new representatives especially, that look at socialism as the way to go,” he said. “And if you don’t think that’s dangerous, I do.”

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one such self-proclaimed “socialist Democrat.” Ocasio-Cortez is one of the leading backers of the Green New Deal, which calls for some of the largest government expansion in decades.

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Marcus told Cavuto that he believed the growing support for socialism among young Americans “comes right out of the universities.”

“You see students graduating today and a very high percentage … almost 50 percent of students coming out of universities today believe that socialism is the answer,” Marcus said.

One recent survey found that that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live under socialist or communist rule than in a capitalist country. A study by Campus Reform found that Ocasio-Cortez’s alma mater, Boston University, overwhelmingly supported Democratic causes. The study found that of the donations given by Boston University faculty in 2017-2018, 97 percent were to Democrat politicians and Democrat organizations. And support for socialism springs from these disproportionately left-leaning schools.

“That’s frightening to me because the things that made this country great, that created the wealth of this country — and I mean the wealth of every single person right down the line — the best medical care in the world, the best housing in the world, that’s why people want to come here, is because of the system, and that’s the free enterprise system,” Marcus said.

Instead of looking to socialism, Marcus said to look at what the U.S. is doing right. He pointed to the current low unemployment and economic prosperity.

“Why would you want to take that formula, where there’s prosperity, where jobs are out there where people can pay their own way, take care of their families. Why would you want to change that?”

It’s a good question to ask those like Ocasio-Cortez who are eager to proclaim the virtues of socialism. One just needs to look to Cuba or Venezuela to see what a few decades of socialism will do to a country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Karista Baldwin

Contributor, Commentary

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Pollster Gets Shock Trump Results, Immediately Disavows Own Poll

Reported By Ben Marquis | May 7, 2018 at 8:24am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/pollster-shock-results-disavow/

Much has been said and written about the use of polls and polling data over the past few years, particularly as it related to candidate-turned-President Donald Trump and typically in regard to how poll samples are skewed to disfavor him and marginalize his support.

According to Breitbart, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday contained results that were so against the grain of that poll’s usual results that the pollsters actually added in a sort of disclaimer when the results were released, seemingly disavowing the results of their own poll.

The openly stated reason for that disavowal was that the poll showed a sudden spike in support for the president and a number of his policies over the most recent polling period.

That would be the latest weekly approval numbers compiled by the Reuters/Ipsos polling team, which placed Trump’s approval rating at 48 percent and disapproval at 49 percent among all adults — with a 49-49 tie among registered voters — for the period of April 27-May 1, a significant uptick in approval over the prior week’s results.

That sudden surge in Trump’s approval compelled the pollsters to preface their report with an explanation that cast the shocking results as an outlier they refused to accept as reality, but would report to the public nonetheless.

“This week’s Reuters/Ipsos Core Political release presents something of an outlier of our trend,” cautioned the pollsters. “Every series of polls has the occasional outlier and in our opinion this is one.

“So, while we are reporting the findings in the interest of transparency, we will not be announcing the start of a new trend until we have more data to validate this pattern.”

Interestingly, when Trump’s approval rating was broken down by party line, it showed the president received 20-79 approval versus disapproval among Democrats, 81-18 approval among Republicans and a 51-45 split in his favor among independents.

A breakdown of the issues shows where Trump’s support is strong, as he cleared the 50 percent approval threshold on a number of incredibly important issues, including the economy (57-39), employment and jobs (59-35), dealing with the Islamic State group (58-35) and taxation (52-42).

Even on the hot-button issue of immigration, Trump came out ahead with a rating of 50-47 percent in his favor.

The president was also winning support, albeit with slimmer margins, on the issues of foreign policy (48-45), dealing with Congress (47-46) and international trade (49-43).

On a separate but important note as we approach the midterm elections, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Democrats held only a slight five-point lead over Republicans on the generic Congressional ballot — 39-34 percent — with 14 percent undecided.

Unfortunately for Democrats, while their base was a bit more solid than Republicans in this measure, the poll showed independents leaning more toward the GOP — 22-19 percent — with 19 percent supporting a third party and 31 percent still undecided.

The poll of 1,548 Americans doesn’t appear to be as skewed toward the left as we have seen with other polls. Samples included 556 Democrats, 579 Republicans and 163 independents — though as a whole the respondents appeared to identify slightly more as Democrat than Republican.

If the Reuters/Ipsos poll is truly an outlier, we’ll know for sure in another week or two if those numbers remain reverse dramatically.

That said, there is no denying that Trump has recently been gaining steam — particularly in regard to the economy, jobs and potential peace with North Korea, to say nothing of a possible “Kanye bump” — so much so that even the pollsters have to admit that more Americans view Trump as “winning” than they would have imagined.

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Conservatism Works: Trump Economy Offers Most Jobs in History, Enough for Everyone

Reported By Benjamin Arie | May 9, 2018 at 2:22pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/trump-economy-job-record/

When Donald Trump won the presidential election, the doomsayers came out in droves. “Experts” predicted the worst: A crashing economy. Skyrocketing unemployment. Years of joblessness. Instead, the exact opposite is now happening.

On Tuesday, an astonishing record was set that shows just how wrong those critics were: The U.S. now has the highest number of available jobs in recorded history. For the first time, the U.S. Department of Labor has announced that the number of job openings matches the number of unemployed people. This means that at least on paper, there is a job available for every single American worker — a situation that has never occurred since these statistics began being tracked.

“The Labor Department reported Tuesday there were 6.6 million job openings in March, a record high — and enough for the 6.6 million Americans who were actively looking for a job that month,” The Post continued.

Even more promising, the trend appears set to continue. As unemployment keeps on falling, there will likely be more jobs available than the number of workers looking for employment in just a few months’ time.

“The jobless rate for African Americans and Hispanic Americans is at an all-time low,” The Post explained.

That also means more opportunities for everyone, even those who have had past difficulty finding work.

“Companies are revising their hiring practices to ensure that they do not rule out any potential good workers, especially those who might not have a college degree or people who have criminal histories and have served time in jail,” the newspaper reported.

Of course, just because the number of job openings now matches the number of job seekers doesn’t automatically mean that everyone will find the position they want. There will always be some mismatch between the types of job openings and the qualifications and desires of candidates.

“The people looking for work don’t always have the right skills or live in a place where there are a lot of opportunities to get hired,” summarized The Post.

There’s also the fact that some people choose to leave a job for personal reasons and do not immediately enter a new workplace. “In a nation as big as the United States, there will always be people who quit their jobs and take time to find new employment,” the newspaper said. “More than 3 million people voluntarily left their jobs in March, according to the Labor Department.”

The major takeaway is that critics dramatically underestimated the Trump economy, and the president’s conservative agenda appears to be working. This record-setting economic boom is happening even as Trump’s opponents do everything they can to undermine him.

If just a year and a half of conservatives cutting taxes and red-tape regulations can trigger these results, imagine for a moment what three more years — or a whole second term — could bring.

You can’t argue with results. The Trump presidency is working, and Americans of all colors and backgrounds are benefiting from it.

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Nearly Half of D.C. Employers Said They Have Laid Off Workers, Reduced Hours Due to Minimum Wage Hikes

BY: Ali Meyer June 7, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://freebeacon.com/issues/nearly-half-d-c-employers-said-lay-off-employees-due-minimum-wage-hike/

The minimum wage in the District of Columbia has increased from a $8.25 hourly rate in 2014 to the current rate of replacement $11.50 per hour. Mayor Muriel Bowser advocated a $15 minimum wage in her State of the District address earlier this year.

“In recent months, the City Council in D.C. has considered enacting a number of new labor mandates, including a higher minimum wage, a bill that would fine employers for schedule changes, and a family leave policy funded by a tax on employers,” the report says.

The institute surveyed 100 employers in Washington, D.C. to understand how they would react to a further minimum wage hike.

“Employers affected by the proposed increase to a $15 minimum wage were asked if they had either reduced the number of employees on their staff, or reduced the hours of current employees, to adapt to recently enacted minimum wage increases,” the report says. “Nearly half of employers surveyed had already taken one of these steps—suggesting that 2014-16 minimum wage increases haven’t been absorbed through higher prices alone.”

According to the report, just over half of the businesses surveyed said they planned to raise prices in order to offset the cost of a minimum wage hike. Thirty-five percent said they would likely reduce staffing levels and 37 percent said they would reduce employees’ hours or reduce the number of hours they were open for business. Thirty-one percent of businesses said they were very likely to hire more skilled workers in the future to offset the higher wage.

One in five businesses said they would move out of the District of Columbia and into Arlington, Virginia where the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Sixteen percent of businesses surveyed said they were somewhat likely to close their business if the minimum wage hike were implemented and 6 percent of businesses said they would likely close.

“These results are consistent with the best and most recent published research on the minimum wage, which finds that past increases (at lower proposed wage levels) have reduced employment for younger and less-educated employees,” the report states.

“These proposed laws have encouraged a perception that D.C. is becoming less friendly for businesses,” the report says. “Two-thirds of surveyed businesses agreed with this sentiment, with half strongly agreeing that D.C. is becoming a business-unfriendly city.”

While Bowser did not comment on this specific report she said that there was consensus that a $15 minimum wage was the right thing to do for the District of Columbia.

“We are glad there is consensus around a $15 minimum wage and welcome the ongoing conversation on how best to support our workers, while creating an environment where businesses can start, grow, and thrive in all 8 wards,” Bowser said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ali Meyer is a staff writer with the Washington Free Beacon covering economic issues that expose government waste, fraud, and abuse. Prior to the Free Beacon, she was a multimedia reporter with CNSNews.com where her work appeared on outlets such as Drudge Report and Fox News. She also interned with the Heritage Foundation and Pacific Research Institute. Her Twitter handle is @DJAliMeyer, and her email address is meyer@freebeacon.com.

true battle In God We Trust freedom combo 2

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McDonald’s Makes Bold Move To Combat Minimum Wage Hike

Reported by Jack Davis April 18, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://www.westernjournalism.com/mcdonalds-makes-bold-move-to-combat-minimum-wage-hike

disasterous

A new mega-McDonald’s comes complete with a glimpse of the future as fast food chains respond to legislation enforcing minimum wage hikes. In addition to adding bottomless fries to their menu, and revamping the atmosphere to provide armchairs and couches, the Mound City, Mo., McDonald’s will have kiosks taking orders instead of people.

Owner Chris Habiger said the kiosks will make it easier for customers to order. But efficiency is not all the kiosks represent. Andy Pudzer, CEO of Hardee’s and fellow fast food giant Carl’s Jr. said moving from people to technology is the future of the fast food sector. He said the need to explore an “employee-free restaurant” is linked to higher minimum wage rates imposed by state and local governments. New York State and California are two of the largest states to recently embrace the drive for a $15 minimum wage.

“With government driving up the cost of labor, it’s driving down the number of jobs,” Pudzer said. “This is the problem with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and progressives who push very hard to raise the minimum wage. Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job?”

Pudzer suggested the Eatsa chain of restaurants, which are fully automated, as a possible model. Customers swipe charge cards into iPads, then place their orders. McDonald’s is using kiosks in more places than just Missouri. It recently unveiled one in Chicago for coffee customers.

h/t: The Daily Mail

Cloward Pevin with explanation true battle In God We Trust freedom combo 2

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Branco Cartoon – State Of Denial

Posted by A.F. Branco Monday, September 7, 2015 at 7:30am

URL of the original posting site: http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/09/branco-cartoon-state-of-denial/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29

Happy Labor Day!

Workforce Participation

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Illegal Immigrants Outnumber Unemployed Americans

BY: Ali Meyer July 27, 2015

URL of the original posting site: http://freebeacon.com/issues/illegal-immigrants-outnumber-unemployed-americans

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States totaled 11.3 million in 2014, outnumbering the 9.6 million Americans who were unemployed in the same year, according to data from Pew Research Center and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). “An estimated 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2014,” says a Pew report. “The new unauthorized immigrant total includes people who cross the border illegally as well as those who arrive with legal visas and remain in the U.S. after their visas expire.” Of those 11.3 illegal immigrants, 8.1 million are participating in the labor force. “Unauthorized immigrants make up 5.1% of the U.S. labor force,” Pew says. “In the U.S. labor force, there were 8.1 million unauthorized immigrants either working or looking for work in 2012.”

In 2014, there were 1.7 million more illegal immigrants living in the United States than there were unemployed Americans. According to the BLS, the average number of unemployed Americans in 2014 was 9.6 million. The BLS defines an unemployed individual as someone who did not have a job but actively sought one in the past four weeks.

The executive action on immigration President Obama put in place in November of 2014 is set to help more illegal aliens become active in the labor force. “Last year, President Barack Obama took executive action to expand an existing program and establish a new one that would offer work permits and deportation relief to an estimated 5 million unauthorized immigrants,” according to Pew. “The actions—which are on hold because of a lawsuit by 26 states—would be open to unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, who are parents with a child who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident, as long as they meet certain requirements.”

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Obama Train

June 8, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2015/06/obama-train

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Backyard Police with Barry Fife

May 29, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2015/05/backyard-police-with-barry-fife/

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Prepare Your Homes And Neighborhoods For The Violence That Is Going To Sweep America

Posted By Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream On May 27, 2015

Article printed from Infowars: http://www.infowars.com

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.infowars.com/prepare-your-homes-and-neighborhoods-for-the-violence-that-is-going-to-sweep-america/

The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is beginning to disappear, and a new era of chaos and anarchy is coming to our cities.

I don’t know if you have noticed, but violence is increasing on the streets of America. Over Memorial Day weekend, 29 people were shot in Baltimore and 55 people were shot in Chicago. But of course the trend that I am talking about is much broader than that. According to the FBI, the number of police officers “feloniously killed” in the line of duty rose by an astounding 89 percent in 2014. We live at a time when Americans are becoming extremely angry and extremely frustrated, and this is only going to intensify as economic conditions worsen. But already we have seen some of this anger and frustration boil over into violence in Ferguson and in Baltimore. And you know what? The vast majority of Americans expect more of the same in the coming months. According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey that was recently released, 96 percent of all Americans believe that there will be more civil unrest in America this summer. What we have seen up until now is just the warm up act. The main event is still to come.

If things are this bad already, how bad will they be when the next great economic crisis hits this nation and unemployment skyrockets and poverty is everywhere?

That is why I am encouraging people that currently live in the heart of our major cities to consider moving. Unfortunately, most Americans are completely dependent on the jobs that they currently have, so moving is not really a practical option for a lot of people.

For those that cannot move, you are just going to have to get prepared right where you are. That means making your home and your family as unattractive a target to potential criminals as you possibly can. The goal should be to avoid a violent confrontation if at all possible. So you will want multiple layers of security between you and those that would potentially harm you and your family. You want to try to deter the bad guys from ever coming on to your property in the first place, but if they do come, you need to be ready to deal with them.

At the moment, we are still in the midst of relatively stable economic times. But even in these relatively stable times, violence is escalating. Just consider what happened in Baltimore over the recent holiday weekend. A grand total of 29 people were shot…

Police say 29 people were shot, 9 of them killed over this weekend, adding to the record-breaking violence.

The shooting didn’t stop on Monday night after a 9-year-old boy and another man were both injured by gun fire in the 2900 block of Arunah Avenue. Police say the child was shot in the leg and another man suffered a graze wound to the head.

Overall, this past month has been the deadliest month for Baltimore in 15 years.

Things are even worse in the city of Chicago. Over this past weekend, 55 people got shot…

Twelve people were killed and at least 43 — including a 4-year-old girl — were wounded in shootings across Chicago this Memorial Day weekend, police said.

The 4-year-old, identified by her family as Jacele Johnson, was shot about 8 p.m. Friday in the West Englewood neighborhood. She and her 17-year-old cousin Romare Wilson were inside an SUV in the 7000 block of South Justine when another vehicle pulled up and someone inside opened fire, according to their family and Chicago Police.

Early in April, I went on the record and specifically named Chicago and Baltimore as two of the cities where we would be seeing civil unrest. Since that time we have seen horrible rioting in Baltimore and the violence in Chicago continues to spiral out of control.

Other experts are issuing similar warnings. For example, consider what an assistant professor at New Jersey City University recently had to say…

Urban unrest expert Dr. Max Herman says that the United States is on the “cusp” of a wave of domestic disorder and that the country will see more race riots.

Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology at New Jersey City University, told the New Republic’s Joel Gillin that the economic downturn, in addition to incidents of police brutality, have provided fertile conditions for civil unrest.

He sees the re-emergence of a 60’s-style “protest ideology” amongst black communities which will lead to more disorder.

“It’s very clear from studying history that these things tend to run in cycles,” said Herman, adding, “I think we are at the cusp of another cycle.”

Author Chris Hedges is saying similar things. The following comes from a recent article about him in the National Post…

The United States is primed for a rebellion. So argues Chris Hedges in his new book, Wages of Rebellion, in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and polemicist examines revolts from 1700s to the ending of apartheid in South Africa, as well as the “sublime madness” that drives the people at the centre of such rebellions.

When asked by the National Post why he wrote his new book, this is what Hedges had to say…

I didn’t write it as a warning or a prediction. I wrote it more as an assessment. I covered disintegrating societies like Yugoslavia. I know how they break down; I know what the warning signs are, so it’s familiar. I don’t think at this point there’s much dispute. Even just the financial indicators in terms of wealth disparity and chronic unemployment. The fact that Congress has a nine-per-cent approval rating. Where I’m coming from, the book is an attempt to explain where we are in this particular historical period.

But it isn’t just that we are entering a new cycle of unrest. Our “leaders” have made things much worse by the decisions that they have made. For instance, Barack Obama’s decision to leave our southern border virtually unguarded has resulted in a massive flood of illegal immigrants coming into this country. As a result, violent gangs that have roots in Central America and South America have mushroomed in size. So now major cities far from the border such as Charlotte, North Carolina are being absolutely terrorized by these gangs…

Recent busts of murderous MS-13 gangsters put the lie to President Obama’s sympathetic amnesty narrative of illegal immigrants as “workers who mow our lawns, make our beds (and) clean out bedpans.”

Authorities Wednesday rounded up 37 MS-13 gang members in Charlotte, N.C., on racketeering conspiracy charges, along with charges of murder, attempted murder and firearms violations. All of them are illegal aliens from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Several are round-trippers — illegals who broke in once, committed crimes, got deported and broke back into the U.S. — proving that our border is porous and unsecured.

Charlotte police discovered the rat’s nest of foreign gangsters after some of them started shooting up local nightclubs and bars.

In 2015, it isn’t just our own citizens that we need to be concerned about. At this point, many of our biggest cities are absolutely packed to the gills with gangs made up primarily of illegal immigrants. I discussed Chicago earlier. Did you know that it is estimated that approximately 150,000 gang members now live there? When things start really breaking down in this country, those gangs are going to have a field day.

America is changing, and not for the better. And when violence starts sweeping this nation, don’t count on the government to come in and rescue you. After watching what happened in Ferguson and in Baltimore, you should know better than that by now. It is time for the American people to prepare their own homes and their own neighborhoods for the chaos and the violence that is coming. For the moment, things are still relatively stable so we have a little bit of time to prepare, but it won’t last for long.

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Retail apocalypse: Major chains closing 6,000 stores

Posted By -NO AUTHOR- On 05/04/2015

Article printed from WND: http://www.wnd.com

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/retail-apocalypse-6000-chains-closing-stores/

Officedepot

WASHINGTON – The long feared “retail apocalypse” may be hitting with little or no fanfare if a growing list of store-closing plans by major chains is any indication. Major U.S. retailers have announced the closing of more than 6,000 stores from coast to coast. The list includes only those retailers that have announced plans to close more than 10 outlets this year and next.

For example,

1,784 Radio Shack stores are vanishing,
400 stores in the Office Depot/Office Max chain by 2016, and
340 Dollar Tree/Family Dollar stores.

The growing list of stores getting shuttered coincides with the decline in discretionary consumer spending over the past six months. “Expect to see more storefronts closed at malls across the country,” one retail watcher told WND. “It’s getting ugly out there.”

Another factor, the source said, is that Americans’ credit is maxed out – a problem that will impact holiday season sales later this year. Add the demand of rising taxes, housing and health-insurance costs and you’ve got a formula for belt-tightening across the board. Expected to be hit hardest by the trend are poorer- and lower-middle class neighborhoods. The recent riots in Baltimore are expected to make retailers even more skittish.

See the big list:

Retail

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Toady’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon

Obama Economy

May 11, 2015

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2015/05/obama-economy/

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Pure Torture: EPA Tyranny… At least the CIA isn’t torturing Americans

Posted on December 13, 2014

URL of the Original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2014/12/pure-torture-epa-tyranny-least-cia-isnt-torturing-americans/

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It’s official: Businesses cutting jobs because of Obamacare

Written by Allen West on September 17, 2014

unemployment With all the issues confronting our national security and foreign policy, it’s easy to forget were facing serious domestic policy issues as well. Namely, we are stuck in the worst economic recovery in quite some time and many Americans feel we’re still in a recession — Main Street is suffering.

This past Monday evening I spoke to the Marquette University Campus Republicans on the issue of “Growth, Opportunity and Promise for the Next Generation”. The purpose of my comments was to outline the government policies that are affecting their future hopes to find gainful employment in America upon graduation.

One of the policies that I stressed as being an immense anchor weighing down our economy and its growth is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) – aka Obamacare. It just might be the reason these graduates won’t be able to find a fulltime job.

Fox News says “Businesses are cutting jobs due to ObamaCare, according to surveys by several regional Federal Reserve Banks. Health economist John Goodman noted that “three Federal Reserve Banks in Philadelphia, New York and Atlanta have surveyed the folks in their area and roughly one fifth of the employers are saying they cut back on employment. “Roughly one fifth are saying they’re moving from full time to part time,” Goodman added. “More than one in ten are saying they’re doing more outsourcing – all this because of the new health care reform.”

Regardless of the delay of the employer mandate, it’s still a looming threat to our economy, especially small business owners. There’s also the looming specter of the 50-employee threshold which is preventing business expansion due to the increased fines for providing healthcare.

All this is occurring in an environment where small business owners are having to contend with increased regulatory costs and higher tax rates — remember small businesses operate as S-Corps/LLCs using personal income tax rates.

So when we hear the incessant ranting of progressive socialists regarding spreading the wealth, paying your fair share, and economic fairness, the message is simple: we don’t support small business growth.

And when you have a president whose business acumen is nonexistent and a philosophy centered on the statement, “you didn’t build that” — you can just imagine his care and concern about individual American entrepreneurial investment, innovation, and ingenuity.

I sat on the House Committee on Small Business and heard constantly how the policies emanating from the Obama administration are negatively impacting that which represents almost 75 percent of our economy.

As Fox News says, “according to Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, said “for the smaller employers — those that have between 20 and 49 employees — you get a negative impact on jobs, you get a negative impact on wages in those jobs. What this means for small business as a whole is over $22 billion of earnings gone for their workers and 350,000 jobs.”

And with the loss of earnings and jobs, so goes the loss of opportunity for Americans — but hey, they can be added to the growing number on food stamps and fitting into Yankee Stadium 925 times. And just so you know, since Obama’s reign began, the number of Americans on food stamps has gone from 31 million to over 46 million — it topped out at 47 million.

All this sounds rather purposeful to me and part of the “fundamental transformation” of America — the expansion of the welfare nanny-state and the decimation of our private sector economy, which is being replaced by a government spending economy.

Another aspect of Obamacare that is killing our economic recovery is the 30-hour work week maxim, which is also part of the employer mandate — resulting in more part-time positions and the loss of FTE (full time equivalent).

Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation noted, “you have a kind of a natural cliff there, that keeping your employees under that magic number” relieves employers of the mandate to provide insurance. “The 30-hour cutoff is how the administration determines whether you’re full time or part time,” Goodman explained. “And so we see this everywhere that people are restricted, they’re pushed below 30 hours, they count as part time and when they’re part time, the employer doesn’t have to provide health insurance.”

The Obama administration has effectively raised operating costs on employers and is making it harder for them to survive, let alone grow. “Yes we are going to see increased cost to employers who are trying to provide health care for their employees, but employers don’t just take that lying down,” said Tevi Troy of the American Health Policy Institute. Goodman added, “Even among full-time workers, their take home pay is going to go down because one thing that almost all the employers are doing in response to Obamacare is raising the deductibles, raising the co-payments and making the employee pay more of the premium.”

So in order for these struggling businesses to remain viable they have two options — shift new costs to consumers or shift the new burdens to the employees. There however is another option — shut down — and then we have more on unemployment who in turn must seek the assistance of the welfare nanny-state and the dependency society expands.

So I just have to ask, is the goal of Barack Hussein Obama and his progressive socialist disciples one of economic empowerment or economic enslavement? Do they want to encourage and incentivize the indomitable American entrepreneurial spirit or crush the will and determination of producers to build, hire and grow? Does Obama believe in individual sovereignty or collective subjugation?

Yes, these are rhetorical questions, but the answers are evident — to many, but sadly enough not to all — and still this truth is rejected by those drunk on Obama’s kool-aid.

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Mr. President, how about those job thingys

http://joeforamerica.com/2014/03/mr-president-job-thingys/#muScE9mAwBj6ew1z.99

Posted by Michael Becker on Mar 19, 2014

President Obama is about due for another “pivot toward job creation”. We can’t remember just when the last pivot but hey, we’re old and our memory is not what it used to be. We think. Anyway, it seems like there was another jobs pivot just a couple of weeks ago and it came and went in about a heartbeat.

The point of all this snark is that Reuters is reporting today about the first of President Obama’s “manufacturing innovation hubs” in Youngstown, Ohio.

The President announced, with appropriate fanfare, in his 2013 State of the Union address that he was creating these hubs to attract new manufacturing and create great, middle class jobs that would revitalize the area where the hubs are located. Youngstown was the first hub and seven more are planned by the end of the year in Chicago, Detroit, Raleigh, and four other US metro areas hard hit by unemployment and economic problems.

With this Presidential initiative, you should think “O’manufacturing”. This plan appears to be about as well thought out as “O’healthinsurance”.

One of the biggest challenges is the nature of factory innovation itself, which often reduces, rather than bolsters, the need for workers who aren’t very skilled. That means the manufacturing initiative could help create jobs for people with highly specialized skills, such as engineers, but it may do far less to help people struggling to find work after the shuttering of local steel mills.

Three-D printers, the focus of the Youngstown project, are an example of this. Once they are programmed and loaded with raw materials, they work their magic with nary a human hand. If they are ever widely adopted, researchers say a big reason will be that they use less labor than traditional manufacturing.

Heck of a job Sparky.

The President asked Congress for $1B to set up 45 of these thingys, the money is tied up in Congress, thankfully, and he’s stealing money from the military for the first seven.

Here’s the net result of the project so far in Youngstown, keeping in mind that we don’t know how much the administration spent on the project or what, if any, their initial goal was.

The Youngstown hub is still in its very early stages but so far, at least, there are no obvious signs of a wider impact. About 29,600 people held factory jobs in the Youngstown metro area in January, the latest month for which data are available. That’s actually slightly lower than the number of manufacturing jobs there when the administration awarded the hub to Youngstown in August 2012 and when it opened its doors that October. Total employment in the area was flat in 2013, while it grew nationwide.

Of six organizations in Youngstown and Cleveland – the nearest major city in the state – working on America Makes projects, none has made new hires for the work.

So, money spent, no return. It’s a government project.

How about we look at something that is adding jobs, lots and lots of really good paying jobs, to the economy.

Signs of pride and prosperity were evident all over Williamsport and the gorgeous northern Pennsylvania countryside around it. Friendly, happy people greeted us. New cars, trucks, hotels and restaurants sparkled in a clean, bustling downtown. New roofs topped barns and houses, while late model tractors worked the fields. Former dirt roads are now paved.

Men and women again have high-paying jobs, young people are coming back instead of moving away, their salaries are supporting other businesses and jobs, and many are taking college programs in oilfield technical and business specialties…

What could be causing that to happen? Could it be an administration jobs initiative that we missed?

Hydraulic fracturing has created 1.7 million new direct and indirect jobs in the United States, with the total likely to rise to 3 million jobs over the next seven years, IHS Global Insight reports. It has injected billions into North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas and other state economies. It’s added $62 billion to federal and state treasuries, with that total expected to rise to $111 billion by 2020.

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking” is the bearer of this good news. Fracking is an initiative of private industry and they’ve been fought tooth and nail by the Obama administration’s EPA and every blue state governor in the nation.

The boom that we’re seeing from fracking is happening almost exclusively in red states and only on privately developed lands. Federal lands, which hold huge reservoirs of gas and oil that could be safely recovered by fracking are off limits thanks to the Obama administration. They’re building solar and wind powered turkeys instead and keeping people unemployed and the US economy on a code blue.

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Too lazy to stand in line to get their welfare checks!

Now, don’t tell me that welfare recipients aren’t innovative! No reason to stand on your feet waiting to get your check. Just put your flip-flops next in line and go back and sit on your ass and play games on your free government issued cell phone! What a great country!

LEST WE FORGET;

In 59 voting districts in the Philadelphia region, Obama received 100% of the votes with not even a single vote recorded for Romney. (A mathematical and statistical impossibility).
In 21 districts in Wood County Ohio, Obama received 100% of the votes where GOP inspectors were illegally removed from their polling locations – and not one single vote was recorded for Romney. (Another statistical impossibility).
In Wood County Ohio, 106,258 voted in a county with only 98,213 eligible voters.
In St. Lucie County, FL, there were 175,574 registered eligible voters but 247,713 votes were cast.
The National SEAL Museum , a polling location in St. Lucie County, FL had a 158% voter turnout.
Palm Beach County , FL had a 141% voter turnout.
In Ohio County , Obama won by 108% of the total number of eligible voters.
NOTE: Obama won in every state that did not require a Photo ID and lost in every state that did require a Photo ID in order to vote. Imagine that!

ARE WE THE DUMBEST NATION ON THE PLANET OR WHAT??

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Ninety million Americans are no longer in the workforce.

We Are Living in a Dying Country

April 05, 2013 http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/04/05/we_are_living_in_a_dying_country

By Rush Limbaugh

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, I don’t know how else to categorize this. We are living in a dying country. I don’t know how else to categorize what’s happening — 88,000 new jobs. The unemployment rate, because of a terrible statistic, is down to 7.6%. The number of people in this country who are not working is shameful. Ninety million Americans are no longer in the workforce. Ninety million. People not in the labor force grew by 663,000, and now 90 million. That’s the labor force participation rate. This is 1979 levels. The only difference is that we don’t have an election around the corner to fix it like we did in 1979. We had that election last November, and we blew it.

In addition to payrolls only adding 88,000 jobs, an additional 81,800 went on disability in March. We’re now up to 8.8 million Americans on disability. We had nearly as many people go on disability in March as people who found jobs. I think it’s official. We have a dying country. There is literally no way that our entitlement programs and our safety net and our absorption of immigrants, legal or otherwise, can be supported this way. This simply cannot be sustained. I don’t know how else to describe this. The unemployment rate of 7.6% is ridiculous.

The U-6 unemployment rate is still around 15%. That is the unemployment rate you get if you add people who are out of work and looking for a job and people who are out of work and have given up looking. Those people have been out of work for a long time. They’ve had 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, and they’ve given up looking, so they’re not counted in the reported unemployment percentage of 7.6%. If they were counted, the number would be 15%. And if there were not the demographic weighting — the 7.6% number is arrived at by estimating certain factors as being in existence or being true based on demographics. There are assumptions made about employment, unemployment in the Hispanic community, with women, black community so forth.

This is from Jim Pethokoukis, our buddy at the American Enterprise Institute. If you take out all of the demographic weighting — let me give you another example of weighting. Let me use radio numbers for it. In local markets, there are minority-owned-and-operated radio stations. This goes way back, by the way. For the purposes of affirmative action, the audiences of minority stations were always bumped a little beyond what the actual ratings were. It was part and parcel of recognition of past discrimination. It was part of making amends. It was part of affirmative action, and it was accepted. Nobody complained about it. It’s the way it was. People did business that way, but nevertheless it existed. You agree with me on this?

(interruption)

What? Well, there’s a whole bunch of reasons. Yeah, the ratings didn’t reach minority people, was one of the explanations, the old diary system. Now it’s the one-eyed, one horned flying purple people meter, whatever it is, but they didn’t reach these people. So it was just estimated that audiences to minority radio stations were much higher than they actually ended up being reported as being. That’s called weighting. Well, the same thing is done in employment, unemployment numbers. And Mr. Pethokoukis’ point is if we just dealt with what the real numbers are, as Bob Johnson was the other day, unemployment in the black community, 15%, black teenagers, 25%, if you deal with those numbers, his point is that the U-3 number or the 7.6% number would actually be 9.9.

If we just took the data and just reported the data as it is without any demographic weighting, then we’d be at 9.9%, not 7.6%. It’s like yesterday we had the report on the number of applications for unemployment compensation, which skyrocketed back up 388,000. Much higher than what was expected by the experts. And, of course, that number will be revised upward even more in a couple of weeks. You have to work really hard to find that revised number, but it will be around 400,000. In the meantime, while all this is going on, the regime’s running around talking about our economic recovery and why we’ve gotta start making loans to people that can’t pay ’em back again to boost the home market that’s recovering.

It really is obscene. There is no housing market recovery to speak of. There is no recovery anything to speak of here. Now we’re gonna start making loans to people who can’t pay ’em back. Banks are being forced to do this by the regime so those people are not left out of this housing boom. Folks, it’s utterly ridiculous, 7.6% unemployment weighed against 90 million Americans not working. The labor force participation rate also includes the number of jobs that have disappeared. They’re no longer in existence. They’re not there to be filled by anybody. The regime does that to get that number down to 7.6%. If the universe of jobs available shrinks, then the percentage of people out of work will be smaller, by definition. I can’t tell you how many months I had to go through fisticuffs, practically, to get people who are telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about, to convince them that I did. But if your universe is a hundred percent and your unemployment rate’s 7.6%, then what do you figure? You got 93% or whatever of the people working.

Well, what if your universe shrinks to 80% but you still call it a hundred percent? That’s what’s happening here. There aren’t a hundred percent anymore. It’s shrunk. The number of jobs that are available, the number of businesses which are open, the number of businesses which have jobs to fill, plummeting. We’re a dying country. Everybody knows it. Even Ichabod Goolsbee, who is a former economics guru in the regime, now in the private sector making legitimate money, Ichabod Goolsbee said, “This is like a punch to the gut.” And we’ve got some sound bites and news stories here where all these experts just can’t believe this. Why, this doesn’t make any sense, and of course they’re blaming the sequester for this. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, the sequester, because that means it’s the Republicans. Except the sequester’s got nothing to do with this.

This all started January 21st, 2009. That’s when the intense trend began with the immaculation of Obama and the mythical stimulus package. We’re a country in decline, and the president is presiding over a country in decline. So he’s gotta budget that he’s gonna be presenting soon, we’re told, and one of the things that the president is going to do to generate revenue — ’cause, see, that’s the problem. Do you know in the midst of all this what the big problem is? The government does not have enough money. It’s not that the country doesn’t have enough jobs. It’s not that the people of this country aren’t earning enough salary, wages, whatever. No, no. The problem is the government doesn’t have enough money.

So the president is going to trying to get more money by placing a $3 million upper limit on tax preferred retirement accounts. So he’s going to take even more money from the so-called rich under the guise they’re not paying their fair share. Because the government’s running out of money, and we cannot have that. So payrolls grow by 88,000. Eighty-two thousand new Americans on disability in March. A total of 8.8 million Americans on disability, and every damn one of them feels justified. And I’ll tell you something else. All of the people — 90 million Americans — ladies and gentlemen, 90 million Americans are not working, but they are all eating, and they’re all using cell phones. And they are all watching television. And most of them are driving.

I don’t know how this can be sustained. A blogger at ZeroHedge.com, a guy named Tyler Durden, which is a stage name, says things just keep getting worse for the American employee, and by implication, the US economy, where, as we’ve shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks than to work. The best manifestation of this, the number of people not in the labor force, which in March alone grew by 663,000. They want to tell us that there were 88,000 new jobs in March, when the number is 663,000. Over a half million people dropped out of the labor force. That means they either lost their jobs or stopped looking for one.

What is this 88,000 people found work? Compared to the 663,000 who dropped out. A record 90 million Americans are no longer even looking for work. I don’t even want to get into whether it’s their fault or not. Folks, everybody has to eat, and they are. The Democrat Party’s seen to it. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January of 2012, when the Bureau of Labor Stats did its census recast of the labor numbers. Even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged to the lowest level since 1979.

But, in a perverted way, that many people leaving the workforce shrinks the universe, and it makes it possible to say that unemployment’s improving. I’m not kidding you. Even Mr. Durden makes the point. If you shrink the universe, then the percentage of people not working gets smaller, and you can say, “We added 88,000 jobs, not like we want, but we’re working at it. We’re adding 88,000 jobs. The unemployment number is coming down.” And as far as low-information Americans are concerned, that’s it, and that’s all there is to know.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Drive-By Media, State-Controlled Media is either pretending that the March jobs report is good news — some of them are. Some of them out there are actually trying to pump up 88,000 new jobs as a sign of Obama’s robust recovery and his expertise. Others are saying it’s bad news and it’s the fault of the sequester. If you want to say it’s the fault of anything and you want to get that specific, you’d have to look at the payroll tax holiday ending first.

But this is all happening because of the policies the president. There’s no argument about that. I mean, I know that people still want to blame Bush, and I know that the president — the Limbaugh Theorem — is running around still trying to fix all this. None of this is his. People don’t attach his policies to this. Amazingly, the low-information population still views the president as working tirelessly to fix all this, trying to come up with something that’ll work, ’cause he cares about everybody. But this has nothing to do with sequester. It has nothing to do, really, with the payroll tax cut.

END TRANSCRIPT

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Written

on August 7, 2012

OPEN LETTER TO ALL VENTURE CAPITAL COMPANIES IN THE UNITED STATES

Because the President Obama Administration, along with the Democratic Party and their willing media partners, have labeled all of you as “VULTURE” Capitalist, and because they have demonized what you do, lied about how you function and dehumanized the profession as being thieves taking from the poor and giving it to the rich, I propose the following:

Immediately stop all work with companies you are trying to save who are in States Governed by Democrats, especially those that have joined the bandwagon to bad-mouth all of you.
Go immediately into States governed by conservatives who appreciate all the companies you save, and therefore, all the jobs that are associated with those companies.
Look into Canada. They will welcome you with open arms.
Look into other countries who are going bankrupt. They will appreciate all the taxes you generate when you save companies and make the prosper.
As you leave each Democrat State, let the government know that they can be expecting more unemployment because you are taking your own money to States that are governed by those that understand what you do, and what you have to do in certain cases to save a company the their employees. Also let them know that because you are leaving, their tax revenues will drop dramatically.
Let the employees of those companies you are leaving to the Democratic Government that President Obama and the entire Democratic party feels their pain as they stand in line for unemployment.

That should make everyone happy because the Democratic governance can be free of you and your “vulture capitalism”. It will give them an opportunity to lie about something else.

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Posts tagged ‘unemployment’

BY: MARK WARREN | DECEMBER 29, 2022

Millions of Young Men Doing Nothing All Day

Social and Spiritual Solutions

Form a Small Band of Brothers

Mark Warren is the coauthor of “Power of 4: How Christian Men Create Purposeful Lives By Not Going It Alone.”

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Commentary by C. Douglas Golden June 9, 2021

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CBS News declared: “Sweden becomes an example of how not to handle COVID-19.”

Similarly, the University of Virginia Health System issued a news release titled: “Lack of Lockdown Increased COVID-19 Deaths in Sweden.”

Taking a stab at prognostication, Newsweek said: “Sweden COVID-19 Deaths Linked to Failure to Lockdown as Country Prepares for Second Wave.”

Always eager to bravely embrace the status quo, The New York Times ran a piece headlined: “Sweden Tries Out a New Status: Pariah State.”

Finally, Business Insider reported: “Sweden’s coronavirus death toll is now approaching zero, but experts are warning others not to hail it as a success.”

First, it is clear that the expert class in America whom the left appeals to at every turn (aren’t you sick of hearing “scientists say” or “experts find”?) is worth substantially less than we pay them.

Second, Sweden succeeded using an approach that left people free. The response they got from the U.S. media complex, however, wasn’t celebration and an urge toward duplication. It was derision and aspersion.

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Reported By Karista Baldwin | January 27, 2019 at 10:32am

Do you agree with Marcus about socialism?

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Much has been said and written about the use of polls and polling data over the past few years, particularly as it related to candidate-turned-President Donald Trump and typically in regard to how poll samples are skewed to disfavor him and marginalize his support.

A breakdown of the issues shows where Trump’s support is strong, as he cleared the 50 percent approval threshold on a number of incredibly important issues, including the economy (57-39), employment and jobs (59-35), dealing with the Islamic State group (58-35) and taxation (52-42).

Even on the hot-button issue of immigration, Trump came out ahead with a rating of 50-47 percent in his favor.

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Reported By Benjamin Arie | May 9, 2018 at 2:22pm

When Donald Trump won the presidential election, the doomsayers came out in droves. “Experts” predicted the worst: A crashing economy. Skyrocketing unemployment. Years of joblessness. Instead, the exact opposite is now happening.

“The United States now has a job opening for every unemployed person in the country, a sign of just how far the nation has turned around from the recession that cost so many Americans their jobs nearly a decade ago,” The Washington Post reported.

“The Labor Department reported Tuesday there were 6.6 million job openings in March, a record high — and enough for the 6.6 million Americans who were actively looking for a job that month,” The Post continued.

“The jobless rate for African Americans and Hispanic Americans is at an all-time low,” The Post explained.

“Companies are revising their hiring practices to ensure that they do not rule out any potential good workers, especially those who might not have a college degree or people who have criminal histories and have served time in jail,” the newspaper reported.

“The people looking for work don’t always have the right skills or live in a place where there are a lot of opportunities to get hired,” summarized The Post.

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BY: Ali Meyer June 7, 2016

Nearly half of Washington, D.C. employers said they have either laid off employees or reduced the hours of employees to adapt to the District of Columbia’s minimum wage hikes since 2014, according to a report from the Employment Policies Institute.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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Reported by Jack Davis April 18, 2016

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Posted by A.F. Branco Monday, September 7, 2015 at 7:30am

Happy Labor Day!

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BY: Ali Meyer July 27, 2015

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Obama Train

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Backyard Police with Barry Fife

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Posted By Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream On May 27, 2015

Police say 29 people were shot, 9 of them killed over this weekend, adding to the record-breaking violence.

The shooting didn’t stop on Monday night after a 9-year-old boy and another man were both injured by gun fire in the 2900 block of Arunah Avenue. Police say the child was shot in the leg and another man suffered a graze wound to the head.

Twelve people were killed and at least 43 — including a 4-year-old girl — were wounded in shootings across Chicago this Memorial Day weekend, police said.

Urban unrest expert Dr. Max Herman says that the United States is on the “cusp” of a wave of domestic disorder and that the country will see more race riots.

Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology at New Jersey City University, told the New Republic’s Joel Gillin that the economic downturn, in addition to incidents of police brutality, have provided fertile conditions for civil unrest.

He sees the re-emergence of a 60’s-style “protest ideology” amongst black communities which will lead to more disorder.

“It’s very clear from studying history that these things tend to run in cycles,” said Herman, adding, “I think we are at the cusp of another cycle.”

Recent busts of murderous MS-13 gangsters put the lie to President Obama’s sympathetic amnesty narrative of illegal immigrants as “workers who mow our lawns, make our beds (and) clean out bedpans.”

Charlotte police discovered the rat’s nest of foreign gangsters after some of them started shooting up local nightclubs and bars.

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Posted By -NO AUTHOR- On 05/04/2015

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Obama Economy