Consumer Confidence Continues To Fall

For months now, we have been hearing that the worst of America’s financial crisis is over, the President’s economic stimulus package is creating millions of new jobs, we are pulling out of the recession, and so forth.

We will come back to the lies about job creation for another time.

Unemployment figures continuing to hover around ten percent show that we are still losing more jobs than are being created.

In a sign that we ar far from being out of the woods yet, Wal Mart just posted it’s first ever drop off in quarterly sales.

In the important holiday quarter ending on January 31, net sales at Walmart’s 3,400-plus US stores fell 0.5 per cent year-on-year.

The first three quarters were good for Wal Mart, largely due to the fact that it was attracting a new class of budget-minded shoppers who had not previously been part of their lower-income customer base.

Now even those folks are cutting back.

Not a positive sign.

Liberals Test Positive For Stupid

Jim Yardley on Pajamas Media makes the case that liberal progressives don’t have the common sense that God gave to a goldfish.

My son and his wife just had their first child, and he recently asked me what books he should get to read to his son.

I thought about it for a minute, and suggested the works of a renowned thinker who lived around 600 B.C. Before you say that ancient philosophy would be wasted on a child, I told him to get a children’s version of the works of Aesop.

Even though our liberal/progressive/Democrat (LPD) friends continue to insist that we have evolved as a species, reading Aesop will show any but the most obtuse observer that we really haven’t. Aesop continually shows us that there is a strain of humanity that “wants what it wants, when it wants it” and assumes that making such a statement is equivalent to postulating a law of nature. And just reading any recent news reports illustrates his point.

The new and current LPD “natural law” is illustrated in the “spread the wealth” mantra. But it hearkens back to two of Aesop’s fables. The fable about the ant and the grasshopper comes to mind, as does the one about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

It’s the latter that demonstrates beyond any doubt that the LPDs have tested positive for stupid.

In 1819, in McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall agreed with Daniel Webster when he stated “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Now we have a Congress dominated by LPDs, who show that they also have tested positive for stupid. Taxes, higher taxes, and still more taxes (even when misnamed as fines or penalties) is a guaranteed formula for economic collapse, followed shortly by societal decay and national disaster.

They are, as so imaginatively illustrated by Aesop, trying to kill the golden goose. And in this reality, the golden goose is the real engine of wealth creation — small businesses. Without the engine that creates wealth, there will be no wealth to spread around, regardless of how anyone thinks that is supposed to happen.

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If At First You Don’t Succeed, Spend More Money

The latest “economic stimulus” package is only a tenth of the size of the last one.

That means Washington is learning it’s lesson.

If something utterly fails to work, you don’t spend as much for it next time.

Another huge waste of money that we don’t have.

I’ll bet that the Chinese hope it works.

Seeing as how it’s their money.

Senate Democrats circulated a jobs bill Tuesday that’s light on new initiatives on boosting hiring and heavy with provisions sought by lobbyists for doctors and the satellite broadcasting industry.

The 362-page measure is still in draft form and has not been officially released. It has bipartisan backing but very few new ideas for creating jobs, other than a $10 billion plan to exempt companies from paying the employer’s share of Social Security payroll taxes for new hires if they are unemployed and hired this year.

The idea, by Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is regarded as more workable than President Barack Obama’s plan for tax credits of up to $5,000 for new hires.

The rest of the measure is mostly comprised of last year’s unfinished business, including renewal of business tax breaks that have expired, an extension of unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies and forestalling a cut in Medicare payments for doctors.

The jobs bill is politically important for Democrats seeking to respond to public anxiety about the economy. But the measure also has a lot of pull with an assortment of lobbying groups seeking to extend a raft of tax breaks and other benefits that expire at the end of the month.

The measure ignores some of Obama’s ideas, including the per-job tax credit, a $250 payment to Social Security recipients and $25 billion in help for cash-strapped states.

Instead, the cornerstone of the plan would exempt companies from paying the employer’s share of Social Security payroll taxes for new hires—as long as those people had been unemployed at least 60 days.

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Ten Rules For Republican Radicals

One of President Obama’s favorite books is Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals.

As we pointed out here recently, it is even on the list of recommended reading on the recruitment applications that the members of Obama’s Army, Organizing For America, are passing out to high school students.

So if the leftists can follow the Socialist views in Alinsky’s book, it’s only fair that conservatives have their own set of rules to live by.

1) Always try to decentralize power as much as possible. The further power is removed from the people, the less it serves them. That’s why anti-government radicals should always look for ways to push power downhill. From the federal government to state governments, from state governments to local governments, from local governments to the people — the more power that can be shifted away from the government towards the people, the better.

2) Earmarks are corruption. Earmarks may be a small part of a deficit, but they’re responsible for a large part of the corruption in Congress. That’s because earmarks have turned into a way for members of Congress to pay off campaign contributors, political allies, and family members with our tax dollars. Until we get a handle on earmarks, we’re not going to have honest government in this country.

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Employment Situation News Release

The latest Employment Situation news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://bls.gov:

The unemployment rate edged down to 10.0 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-11,000). In the prior 3 months, payroll job losses had averaged 135,000 a month. In November, employment fell in construction, manufacturing, and information, while temporary help services and health care added jobs.

October Mass Layoffs

The latest Mass Layoffs news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://bls.gov:

In October, employers took 2,127 mass layoff actions involving 217,182 workers. Mass layoff events decreased by 434 and associated initial claims by 30,824 from September. Over the month, the number of manufacturing events, at 619, decreased by 237, and associated initial claims, at 70,572, decreased by 26,494.

The national unemployment rate was 10.2 percent in October 2009, seasonally adjusted, up from 9.8 percent the prior month and from 6.6 percent a year earlier. In October, total nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 190,000 over the month and by 5,504,000 from a year earlier.

Quarterly Data Series on Business Employment Dynamics

The latest jobs data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://bls.gov:

From December 2008 to March 2009 the number of job losses from closing and contracting establishments remained essentially unchanged at 8.5 million. The number of job gains from opening and expanding private sector establishments fell from 6.7 million to 5.7 million, the lowest level since the series began in 1992, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

 Gross job losses exceeded gross job gains in all but two industry sectors: utilities and education and health services.

Quarterly Extended Mass Layoffs

Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://bls.gov

Employers initiated 1,776 extended mass layoff events that resulted in 277,924 job separations in the third quarter of 2009. The total number of events reached a record high for any third quarter. Nine major industry sectors had a record high number of events for a third quarter.

Employment Situation

The latest unemployment numbers issued today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

In October, the unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000). The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade.

Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers in October, 2009 is 17.5 percent.

September Mass Layoffs Report

Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://bls.gov

In September, employers took 2,561 mass layoff actions
involving 248,006 workers. Mass layoff events decreased by
129 and associated initial claims by 11,301 from August.
Year-to-date events and initial claims reached new program
highs at 23,745 and 2,410,208, respectively.

The national unemployment rate was 9.8 percent in September 2009, seasonally adjusted, little changed from 9.7 percent the prior month and up from 6.2 percent a year earlier. In September, total nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 263,000 over the month and by 5,785,000 from a year earlier.

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