Libertarian Paul Ryan, disgusting traitor, advances immigration bill to bypass cap on guest workers in order to employ Obama's illegal hordes

From the story here:

'The cap exemption on the H-2B expired in 2007. At the time, it doubled the number but it could as much as quadruple, legislative sources told WND. This is the same way the total number of existing H-1B visa workers got so much higher than the annual inflow. The H-2B visa program, though referred to as a “seasonal” guest worker program it is not an agricultural guest worker program. “These are explicitly non-farm jobs, often for lower-skilled work but also middle class jobs,” the source told WND. “Of course, because we don’t have a visa-tracking system and the president is not enforcing over-stay rules, it increases another avenue to add to the illegal population.”'

Rush Limbaugh: 94 million not in labor force are ALL on welfare, ALL have an EBT card, ALL getting food stamps, ALL getting disability

Today, here, with the right's version of The Big Lie:

"We don't have 5% unemployment. We've got 20% unemployment.  Bob, we have 94 million Americans not working, not in the labor force.  They're all on welfare, Bob, one way or another.  You are talking about vandals basically coming in and ripping you off at the laundromat.  Half of this country is on welfare, Bob. That's another reason why people aren't talking about it.  Half the country that votes is on welfare, and they vote for Santa Claus, Bob. And to them, you're Santa Claus.  And you're...

"I can understand exactly why you want to sell the business and get out of there.  It's probably being stolen from you.  Customers in there get harassed by people that want to commit vandalism or crime in there.  I have total understanding, relatability, sympathy for what you're going through.  But we've succeeded in letting so many people... Bob, 94 million Americans not working, and they all have an EBT card. They're all getting food stamps. They're all getting some form -- many of them -- of disability."

Rush Limbaugh thinks the 46 million on food stamps are the U-3 "counted" unemployed, many of whom actually can and do work

Yesterday, here:

"Today, there are 46 million Americans unemployed, and 94 million not working. Now, these 46 million people, these are the counted unemployed. This is the U-3 number. The counted unemployed represent 14% of the population."

Limbaugh somehow gets this convoluted mess from here, which he cites but which clearly states the 46 million are those on food stamps, not the U-3 "counted" unemployed:

"The reason you don’t see huge lines of people waiting in soup lines during this Greater Depression is because the government has figured out how to disguise suffering through modern technology. During the height of the Great Depression in 1933, there were 12.8 million Americans unemployed. These were the men pictured in the soup lines. Today, there are 46 million Americans in an electronic soup kitchen line, as their food is distributed through EBT cards (with that angel of mercy JP Morgan reaping billions in profits by processing the transactions). These 46 million people represent 14% of the U.S. population." 

In the latest Employment Situation Summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for September, those actually counted as unemployed are listed at 7.915 million (2.5% of the population) and the not counted as unemployed at 1.9 million:

"In September, the unemployment rate held at 5.1 percent, and the number of unemployed persons (7.9 million) changed little. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 0.8 percentage point and 1.3 million, respectively. (See table A-1.) . . . In September, 1.9 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, down by 305,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)"

U-3 is not a number in millions as Limbaugh says but a rate, the percentage of the labor force which is unemployed (7.915 million / 156.715 million), namely 5.1%.

Limbaugh doesn't understand that lots of employed people get food stamps. Individuals grossing up to $15,312 annually can still qualify for assistance.

Almost 49 million individuals made up to but not more than $15,000 annually in 2014.

The unemployed in Sept. 2015 numbered 7.9 million

U-3 is a percentage

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 97% of those 94.6 million not in the labor force aren't lazy bums after all

They're the 92 million who are in high school, college, and graduate school full-time, or who are raising the kids at home, or are disabled, or are over 65 years of age, retired and drawing Social Security.

Just 3% don't fit into any of those categories, or about 2.8 million people, that's it.

These are the  truly "marginally attached" who aren't counted as unemployed.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says about them:

"These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey."

The BLS estimates they number 1.9 million in September. This analysis puts them about a million higher than that. Both can't be right but the margin of error is only 1%.

The government's estimate is close enough, I'd say.

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 2% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work pursue graduate degrees full-time

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 13% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work stay home to raise the kids

10.4 million mothers and 2 million fathers stayed home to raise kids in 2012

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 11.5% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work are disabled working-age people

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 12% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work are in college full-time

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 13% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work are high school sophomores, juniors and seniors

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 46% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work are over 65 drawing Social Security

Rush Limbaugh expresses astonishment that Germany will accept 500,000 refugees annually

Limbaugh said in the last half hour that he looked into it and discovered Germany's birthrate is so low they're happy to have the refugees as future workers.

How long will it take this doofus to figure out that our declining labor force is the result of retirees who aren't being replaced because our birthrates were also too low for too long?

The Baby Boom between 1946 and 1966 produced 83.1 million births. Unfortunately Baby Boomers produced just 72.6 million births from 1967 to 1987, a shortfall of 10.5 million or 12.6%.

What it means is there are 500,000 fewer replacements every year on average for retiring Baby Boomers, about 85% of whom more or less survive to retirement age.

Obama's horrible, awful full-time jobs record

The numbers are out this morning and they are not pretty.

Full-time jobs for July 2015 registered at 123.142 million in the report today, not seasonally adjusted. The previous high for the measure was set, wait for it, way back in July 2007 at 123.219 million.

That means full-time jobs still have not recovered to the peak level set eight years ago. Examine the record of recessions since 1969 and you will see that full-time jobs always have bounced back to pre-recession levels after two to three years ... until now.

In fact there are today still 77,000 FEWER full-time jobs than there were eight summers ago. That means it will likely take until next summer to surmount the 2007 peak. That'll make it nine years, versus two to three normally.

Yes, there are 2.4 million more jobs today than there were eight years ago, but they are all part-time: 26.6 million part-time now vs. 24.1 million then, for an increase of 2.5 million part-time. Subtract the decline in full-time and you arrive at just 2.4 million more net jobs in eight years while the population has grown by 19 million.

Obama crows about the all the jobs he's created, but only out of the depths of their decline which he oversaw and did nothing to stop. Full-time jobs fell in a panic by 6 million in the three months from his election in 2008 to his inauguration in 2009, and by another 5 million in the next year.

Arguably all those jobs went away out of fear over what Obama would do to the economy, which after six full years of his maladministration has grown at its slowest pace in the post-war and 26% worse than for the same period under George W. Bush, a surprising outcome considering that there was nowhere to go but up once the economy had crashed.

If the Obama rate of GDP growth from the first six years of his tenure is sustained through the end of it, Obama GDP will underperform the previously worst record of George W. Bush by over 20%. And more than likely, full-time jobs will continue to suffer as a result.  

IMF signals that it cannot now participate in the third bailout of Greece

Here, which The Guardian considers a "cannonball" shot into the bailout:

Greece’s debt can now only be made sustainable through debt relief measures that go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far. ... Greece cannot return to markets anytime soon at interest rates that it can afford from a medium-term perspective. ... Greece is expected to maintain primary surpluses for the next several decades of 3.5 percent of GDP. Few countries have managed to do so. ... Greece is still assumed to go from the lowest to among the highest productivity growth and labor force participation rates in the euro area, which will require very ambitious and steadfast reforms. ... [G]overnance issues ... are at the root of the problems of the Greek banking system. There are at this stage no concrete plans in this regard. ... The dramatic deterioration in debt sustainability points to the need for debt relief on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has been under consideration to date—and what has been proposed by the ESM. There are several options ... maturity extension ... of, say, 30 years on the entire stock of European debt, including new assistance. ... Other options include explicit annual transfers to the Greek budget or deep upfront haircuts. The choice between the various options is for Greece and its European partners to decide [i.e. not the IMF].

Presidents ranked by average monthly additions to total nonfarm employment in the post war, not seasonally adjusted

Clinton: 235,000

Carter: 215,000

Reagan: 166,000

JFK/LBJ: 164,000

Obama to date: 136,000 (77 months 1-1-09 to 5-1-15)

Nixon/Ford: 115,000

Truman: 111,000 (1949-1952/drops to 87,000 going back to April 1945 when FDR died)

GHW Bush: 49,000

Eisenhower: 34,500

GW Bush: 13,500

Doug Short makes our point: Part-time surged because of the recession, not because of ObamaCare

Here:

"With regard to Obamacare and part-time employment, the surge in part-time employment was triggered by the recession, not by the Affordable Care Act, as the next chart clearly illustrates."

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After studying the issue since 2010 we first began to express doubts about the meme that ObamaCare part-timed the country in July of 2013, here.

In August 2013 here we realized a part-timing trend, to be real, would have to show up in the hours data and wasn't.

By September 2013 here we were calling the meme a myth, and here we identified the part-time statistics as incapable of capturing such a trend due to the high bar set by the government definition of part-time as less than 35 hours worked.

In October 2013 here we blamed the part-time explosion on the recession.

In February 2014 we noted here that The Atlantic had finally caught on.

Mish started to catch on in September 2014, here.

Now Doug Short joins the party.

Hooray.

I still want my Pulitzer.

Democrats broke nearly every promise about ObamaCare

Jack Kelly here:

Nearly every promise Democrats made has been broken. The average family pays more (some much more) for insurance, not $2,500 less. About 9 million Americans (so far) have learned they couldn’t keep the health plans they had if they wanted. Or some of their doctors.

Federal spending for health didn’t go down. It’s zoomed upward. So have emergency room visits. Overhead costs are exploding.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will lower full-time employment by 2.3 million in 2021, compared with what might have been without reform.

The ACA has hurt millions more than it’s helped. The worst is yet to come. President Barack Obama delayed or altered (mostly illegally) unpopular provisions at least 50 times. If they’re implemented fully, up to 100 million who get insurance from their employers could have their policies canceled, the American Enterprise Institute has estimated.

State budget funding gaps and low reserves are the evidence of the nation's growing poverty under Obama

Like the people in general who have experienced their median annual household income fall below 2000, 2007 and 2009 levels, the majority of states now have less to spend in real terms as tax revenues decline and have less in reserve for a crisis, having plundered their savings to make up for the shortfalls.

Bloomberg reports here:

Thirty-two states faced budget gaps in fiscal 2015 or 2016 or both, according to an April 27 report by Standard & Poors. The fiscal year ends June 30 in all but four states. ... State governments have about half the reserves that they had before the recession, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. ... A dozen states still haven’t recovered all jobs lost since the start of the downturn in December 2007 . . . Aggregate general-fund revenue and spending haven’t rebounded to inflation-adjusted fiscal 2008 levels, according to a survey by the State Budget Officers released in December. Revenue of $748 billion for fiscal 2015 would have to be $15 billion higher to match real 2008 levels, the group said.

Sixty percent of the states still collect less revenue than before the 2007 recession

From an Associated Press story here:

A majority of states have failed to climb back to their pre-recession status, in terms of tax revenue, financial reserves and employment rates, said Barb Rosewicz, who tracks the fiscal health of states for The Pew Charitable Trusts. ... Nationally, total tax revenue coming to the states has been rising, but the pace has been slow as employment continues to lag pre-recession levels in more than half the states, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew also found that 30 states are collecting less revenue than at their peak.

Obama's been in charge for going on seven years and complains there aren't enough jobs

Look in the mirror, dumb ass.

Video here:

". . . too many young people don't have hope, they don't see opportunity, there are not enough jobs . . .." 

Stephen Moore tells some whoppers: Income was FALLING long before the 2013 increase in the capital gains tax rate

From Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, here:

"When Mr. Obama entered office the capital gains and dividend tax was 15 percent. Then he raised it to 20 percent and then he added a 3.8 percent investment surtax, bringing the rate to 23.8 percent. The tax rose by more than 50 percent. ...

"Wages have stagnated under Mr. Obama as taxes have risen on capital."

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Nice try at hiding the chronology, Moore, but no cigar.

Real median household income and real gross private domestic investment crashed in tandem and in concert with the 2007 recession. The investment side rebounded quickly, but real household income did not, and still hasn't. What's more, the whole phenomenon preceded any increase in the capital gains tax rate, which didn't pass until January 2013, with Republican support by the way. 

And it won't do to talk about wages stagnating, either. Real incomes have actually fallen, and fallen big. Employers figured out that the 2008 crisis gave them the cover they needed, their golden opportunity, to shed millions of expensive workers and rehire younger, cheaper ones. It's the biggest scandal in recent history, much bigger than the lies about ObamaCare, but no one is going to talk about it, least of all libertarians who are happy that the business inputs cost less.

The incredible rebound in investment is on the backs of all this labor shed in the crisis, helped along by rock bottom interest rates for those who are first in line for the money: bankers and businesses.

So-called conservatism never looked so bad.