February Unemployment Drops .1 to 8.9 Percent, Breaking 21 Month Record

For 21 consecutive months, unemployment had been at or greater than 9.0 percent.

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports here the headline number of 8.9 percent:

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 192,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.9 percent, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today . . ..

The number of unemployed persons (13.7 million) . . ..

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was 6.0 million and accounted for 43.9 percent of the unemployed.

Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.2 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, were unchanged in February . . ..

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 8.3 million in February . . ..

In February, 2.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, up from 2.5 million a year earlier. ... 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 average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.2 hours in February . . ..

In February, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 1 cent to $22.87. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.7 percent.

Break out the party hats and fireworks.

January Unemployment Marked the 21st Consecutive Month At or Above 9 Percent

January unemployment fell .4 point to 9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here.

Just Undo It.

http://www.thoseshirts.com/jus.html

"The Euro Crisis is First and Foremost a Banking Crisis"

"Essentially, all Germany and France want to achieve with these [austerity and bailout] measures is to protect their own banks from collapsing. Now people are beginning to realize that there is no way around rescheduling Greece's debt -- and that will also involve the banks. For this to happen, there is only one solution: Europe needs to strengthen its banks! Greece lived beyond its means, but in Ireland and Spain it is the banks that are the problem. The euro crisis is first and foremost a banking crisis. ... Europe's banks are in far greater danger than people realize."

-- Barry Eichengreen, quoted here

TSA Misses Boxcutters in Carry On at JFK

The New York Post has the exclusive story:

A passenger managed to waltz past JFK's ramped-up security ga[u]ntlet with three boxcutters in his carry-on luggage -- easily boarding an international flight while carrying the weapon of choice of the 9/11 hijackers, sources told The Post yesterday.

Read the rest, here.

Bush's DHS Planned to Test Mobile Scanning of Pedestrians

The creeping American fascist police state may have begun in earnest under Bush, but Obama is doing nothing to stop it. There are mobile scanning vans in the possession of the federal government right now. And you'd know nothing about it from Obama, either, but for a Freedom of Information Act request by EPIC.

Forbes has the story, here:

Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. ...

“When you’re out walking on the street, it’s not acceptable for an officer to come up and search your bag without probable cause or consent. ... This is the digital equivalent” [said an attorney for EPIC]. ...

[S]ecurity contractor American Sciences & Engineering ... sold more than 500 of its backscatter x-ray vans to governments around the world, including some deployed in the US. Those vans are capable of scanning people, the inside of cars and even  the internals of some buildings while rolling down public streets. ... [T]he van scans do penetrate clothing, and EPIC president Marc Rotenberg called them “one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

The Forbes story has links to the documents obtained under the FOIA request.

For a guy who won't disclose any of his academic or medical records, Obama sure does think he has the right to invade your privacy, against your will and without your knowledge.

Mubarak should have resigned? Gaddafi? I say Obama should resign, NOW.

Obama's Baked Brain Eludes Ruth Marcus

Ruth Marcus asks "Where's Waldo?"

Not about Bush . . .

But about Obama:

Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action - unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. ...

Each of these instances can be explained on its own terms, as matters of legislative strategy, geopolitical calculation or political prudence. ...

Yet the dots connect to form an unsettling portrait of a "Where's Waldo?" presidency: You frequently have to squint to find the White House amid the larger landscape. ...

[T]he White House - much to the frustration of some congressional Democrats - has been unclear in public and private about what cuts would and would not be acceptable. ...

Obama seems more the passive bystander to negotiations between the House and Senate than the chief executive leading his party. ...

Hum. Passive, startlingly missing in action, unwilling, reluctant, late . . . and unclear, a bystander . . . all that from a sympathetic liberal supporter, an honest observer, who can't quite put her finger on the problem.

You would think someone born even in 1958 could theorize psychotic effects of THC overexposure when she sees them.

Just why is it again that Obama keeps his medical records sealed? And why is it that so-called journalists just don't seem to want to know?

Come on, Ruth. You might even get that Pulletsurprise after all.

Present-a-tive Justin Amash Bucks His Freshman Peers As He Did His Party In Michigan

Politico has part of the story here:

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) voted against the class 30.1 percent of the time, including the five times he recorded himself as “present” rather than supporting or opposing an amendment outright.

We had the other part, here, on February 27:

In Michigan Amash's record meant that he went against his own party almost 36 percent of the time (472 votes), which makes perfect sense of the rhetoric to get more Democrats and independents into the Republican Party (without the singular "libertarian" votes, Amash voted against his own party 30 percent of the time). His election night remarks in that regard were jarring and startling in a year marked by one of the biggest partisan Republican victories nationwide in decades, but play well in a district full of Democrats and independents and union members. The clarion call of the Tea Party was not bipartisanship, but that's often the ploy of libertarians, whose small numbers keep them forever in need of allies. It's smart politics, not but it's not principled conservatism.

Amash promoted himself as consistent, principled and conservative in his campaign for the MI-3 House seat. So far, he's batting a thousand on consistent. The question is whether the voters will decide next time that consistency is, after all, merely the proverbial hobgoblin of little minds if he too often sacrifices his conservatism, and his principles, to it.

We've Already Got a Democrat Stoner Schizophrenic as President, We Don't Need a Republican One

With more and more people realizing that repeated use of the weed is bad for your health, a new study in the news links marijuana use to various mental problems like schizophrenia:

Sir Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at Kings College London, said: "This study adds a further brick to the wall of evidence showing that use of traditional cannabis is a contributory cause of psychoses like schizophrenia."

Among the signs and symptoms which schizophrenics may exhibit are these behaviors not often firmly attributed to habitual use of marijuana as a cause of the mental illness:

. . . disorganized thinking and speech. The latter may range from loss of train of thought, to sentences only loosely connected in meaning, to incoherence known as word salad in severe cases. Social withdrawal, sloppiness of dress and hygiene, and loss of motivation and judgement are all common in schizophrenia. There is often an observable pattern of emotional difficulty, for example lack of responsiveness.

The American people should think about that paragraph and ask themselves:

Why does Obama rely so much on his teleprompter, even in the smallest of settings?

Why did Obama exhibit such an inappropriately light mood in his first public comments after the Ft. Hood terrorist incident?

Why did it take Obama so many days to respond to the Fruit of Kaboom bomber incident?

Why was Obama the last world leader to come out and condemn Gaddafi?

And then they ought to think about this from Jacob Sullum for Townhall.com, here, about Indiana's Republican Governor and presidential hopeful, Mitch Daniels:

But like many pot smokers who became politicians, Daniels -- a potential contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination -- seems to have two standards of justice: one for him and one for anyone else who does what he did.

Although Daniels was caught with enough marijuana to trigger a prison sentence, he got off with a $350 fine. Yet he has advocated "jail time" for "casual users" -- a stark illustration of the schizophrenic attitudes that help perpetuate drug policies widely recognized as unjust.

According to the Princetonian, "officers found enough marijuana in (Daniels') room to fill two size 12 shoe boxes." Under current New Jersey law, possessing more than 50 grams (about 1.8 ounces) of marijuana is a felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison. Given the amount of pot Daniels had, he easily could have been charged with intent to distribute, which under current law triggers a penalty of three to five years.

At the time of Daniels' arrest in May 1970, New Jersey's marijuana penalties were even more severe.


Not exactly your daddy's Republican.

I Guess That British Kid Who Told Obama He was a Pussy was Right

Matthew Franck weighs in here with an excellent discussion of Obama's concession to judicial supremacy in the case of DOMA:

Obama is the "un-Lincoln," a president who would rather hint, and wheedle, and pine for an eventual Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, than forthrightly assert the equal standing of each branch of government to act on its own understanding of the Constitution. He makes no challenge to the reigning doctrine of judicial supremacy. Obama is instead the Court's courtier, surrendering the dignity of his office, and the legislative power of Congress, to a hope that the Supreme Court too will "evolve" in its view, change the effective meaning of the Constitution, and foist same-sex marriage on the American people with an authority more difficult to challenge than that of a mere president.

Mr. Franck rather likes Mr. Lincoln. But even if olde Abe was an acute practitioner of a constitutional departmentalism now lamentably in decline, the War Between the States proves that correct interpretations of some things do not always protect us from fanatical interpretations of others. There's only one Trinitarian monotheism.

On the British kid, see here.

The Party of Nyet in WI and IN Merits Universal Condemnation

So says Nolan Finley, Editorial Page Editor for The Detroit News, in a scathing editorial entitled "AWOL Dems Defy Ballot Box" for February 27, 2011, here:

AWOL Dems defy ballot box

NOLAN FINLEY

American-style democracy holds together because no matter how nasty the political game gets, the players honor a few inviolable rules. We obey the laws, even the ones we disagree with. We respect the ballot box. And after even the most bitterly contested election, the loser accepts the results, works within the system and awaits another chance to prevail with voters.

These guidelines kept the nation from shearing apart in 2000, when supporters of Al Gore (wrongly) believed the presidential election was stolen by George W. Bush. A tense period of uncertainty ended when Gore, in perhaps his finest moment, conceded and urged his backers to work to heal the country.

But what's happening in Wisconsin and Indiana breaks that tradition and puts a crack in our democratic foundation.

Democrats in those states, as in most others, were shellacked in legislative races last fall, giving Republicans majority control of their legislatures.

Republicans interpreted their overwhelming victories as a mandate to change the course of the states. Specifically, they set about undoing decades of laws put in place by Democrats to favor labor unions over taxpayers.

Instead of staying on the field to defend their positions, Democratic lawmakers in both states fled to neighboring Illinois, where they hope to win with their absence what they couldn't at the ballot box — namely, the right to control policymaking.

Without the Democrats, the legislatures don't have the required quorums to pass budget measures, including cutting pay and benefits for public workers.

The lawmakers in exile call this a defense of democracy. In truth, it's a step toward anarchy. If it catches on as a practice, it will officially end government by, of and for the people.

It's part of a disturbing trend by Democrats to embrace a by-any-means-necessary approach to governing. We saw it during passage of Obamacare, when the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate blew up the rules to block a filibuster. In Massachusetts, Democrats used after-the-fact law changes in a failed attempt to keep a Republican from succeeding Ted Kennedy.

Obama trashed bankruptcy law to move the United Auto Workers ahead of General Motors' and Chrysler's secured creditors. And his regulatory agencies are bypassing Congress to enact policies he knows the elected representatives would never approve.

The strategy exposes the arrogant liberal conviction that they are justified in imposing their will on the people, because only they know what's best for America.

These Democrats in Indiana and Wisconsin merit universal condemnation.

What they are saying is that the people no longer have the right to use the ballot box to decide the direction of their government.

That's a rule change our system can't survive.

Obama is Deliberately Making Americans Poorer

So says Richard T. Rahn, here:

The Obama administration’s policies are causing Americans to pay far more for gasoline and other fuels than necessary. America is awash in fossil-fuel energy sources with almost 30 percent of the world’s coal and 80 percent of the world’s oil shale - which contains an estimated three times the recoverable oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. ...

The United States should be an energy exporter. ...

The Obama administration has a hatred of fossil fuels and is determined to reduce their use despite the economic damage. ...

[T]he Obama administration has stopped the new oil-production process in the Gulf of Mexico, even in the face of a court order requiring it to issue permits. The administration, through executive orders, has denied oil and gas producers access to millions of acres where large deposits of oil and gas are known to exist. The administration also is holding up permits for many new power plants, pipelines and industrial plants, all of which are costing Americans jobs and driving businesses to other countries.

A Re-Run of 2008?

Deflation, depression, inflation, recession, oh my.

Claus Vistesen for CreditWriteDowns here thinks we're in for a re-run of 2008.

Accidental Death Insurers Use ERISA Law as Shield to Deny Payments

So says an important story which appears here at Bloomberg.com, detailing the unintended consequences of the 1974 legislation.

The story, focusing on the lucrative $25 billion business for accidental death insurance purchased by employees through their employers' group plans, discusses notable cases involving MetLife, Prudential, and AIG.

Outrageous. 

Now Add "Shorters" to "Truthers" and "Birthers" in Conspiracy Theory Pantheon

I kid you not:

Another economic warfare tool that was linked in the report to the 2008 crash is what is called “naked short-selling” of stock, defined as short-selling financial shares without borrowing them.

The report said that 30 percent to 70 percent of the decline in stock share values for two companies that were attacked, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, were results of failed trades from naked short-selling.

The collapse in September 2008 of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, was the most significant event in the crash, causing an immediate credit freeze and stock market crash, the report says.

In a section of who was behind the collapse, the report says determining the actors is difficult because of banking and financial trading secrecy.

“The reality of the situation today is that foreign-based hedge funds perpetrating bear raid strategies could do so virtually unmonitored and unregulated on behalf of enemies of the United States,” the report says.

For the complete story at The Washington Times, go here.

The paranoid style in America lives to die another day!

Spreading the Misery Around

Moreover, as we were saying before, [the tyrant] grows worse from having power:

he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first;

he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.


-- Socrates, Republic of Plato, Book IX

Presentative Justin Amash: Making the Perfect the Enemy of the Good

As if there were the remotest possibility his co-sponsored measure would get passed, when de-funding Planned Parenthood was a complete no-brainer. Puh-leeze.

From Politico.com here:

Amash also voted present on Indiana Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood and said it was “improper and arguably unconstitutional” to single out one entity. He co-sponsored a similar measure that would deny so-called Title X family-planning subsidies to any organization that performs abortions.

Textbook Nirvana Fallacy, a la Voltaire, as here.

Q4 2010 GDP 2nd Estimate = 2.8 Percent, Down from Initial 3.2 Percent

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, here.

Q3 2010 GDP rises to 2.6 percent from previously estimated 2.0 percent.

Overall, despite TRILLIONS in loans, bailouts and other government guarantees, all we've got to show for it is a huge steaming pile of new debt, millions still out of work, housing values in the toilet, foreclosures reaching new heights, smaller banks failing and the biggest banks sailing, giant GSEs on government life support, record numbers on food stamps, the Federal Reserve punishing savers and livers on fixed incomes with artificially low interest rates . . .

and GDP? Basically treading water, so that the losses of 2009 were recouped in 2010 and we're back to where we were in December 2008, a lovely time as I recall:  

Real GDP increased 2.8 percent in 2010 (that is, from the 2009 annual level to the 2010 annual level), in contrast to a decrease of 2.6 percent in 2009.

Was it worth it? WELL WAS IT?

What Did Rep. Justin Amash Do? On Funding Planned Parenthood He Was Silent.

He did not vote to fund it. He did not vote to de-fund it. He voted "present".

“And what I think is important for you all, is that when you see people standing in defense of what’s right, that you make sure that your voice is not remembered as one of the silent,” Thomas said. “Because there’s gonna be a day when you’re gonna look around and you’re gonna look at your kids and your grandkids and they’re gonna ask you a question: what happened to the great country that was here when you grew up, and why isn’t it here now, and what did you do?”

-- Justice Clarence Thomas, quoted here

Rep. Justin Amash: How About Some "Re-" In Front of That?

Politico.com has a story generating considerable interest about how Republican freshman Rep. Justin Amash (MI-3) has been voting "present" a number of times, even on some serious matters like de-funding the abortion provider Planned Parenthood:

In total, Amash has voted present on roughly 4 percent of the legislation that has come to the House floor in the 112th Congress.

Amash has voted "present" five times, which calls to mind Obama's voting record as a state senator in Illinois, where he voted "present" 129 times, about 3 percent of the votes he cast.

Obama's record attracted the attention of Nathan Gonzales in 2007 because Obama also had cast such votes on several controversial issues like partial birth abortion:

For example, in 1997, Obama voted "present" on two bills (HB 382 and SB 230) that would have prohibited a procedure often referred to as partial birth abortion. ...

[I]n 1999, Obama voted "present" on HB 854 that protected the privacy of sex-abuse victims by allowing petitions to have the trial records sealed. He was the only member to not support the bill.

In 2001, Obama voted "present" on two parental notification abortion bills (HB 1900 and SB 562), and he voted "present" on a series of bills (SB 1093, 1094, 1095) that sought to protect a child if it survived a failed abortion. In his book, the Audacity of Hope, on page 132, Obama explained his problems with the "born alive" bills, specifically arguing that they would overturn Roe v. Wade. But he failed to mention that he only felt strongly enough to vote "present" on the bills instead of "no."

And finally in 2001, Obama voted "present" on SB 609, a bill prohibiting strip clubs and other adult establishments from being within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, and daycares.

It's not like people weren't warned in Amash's case, either, since he had a famous reputation here in Michigan as a state representative for reporting his votes in real time on his Facebook page, and for voting "present" now and again.

Still, you'd like to think that a guy who graduated from law school could come up with a better excuse for voting "present" than not having "a reasonable amount of time to review the legislation." (Gee, I'm sorry, Professor, my dog slobbered all over my homework at breakfast). Besides, he's getting paid an awful lot of money if all he's going to do is "present" us. How about some "re-" in front of that?

In the Planned Parenthood case, Amash said he doubted the constitutionality of the language. Well, then didn't he have an obligation to vote "No" instead of "present"?

If most Americans could go back and listen to candidate Obama on the stump talking about how he and his supporters were going to transform America, I'm sure it would elicit a shudder now, knowing what they know about the carnage his policies have wrought in America. Which is exactly what I felt when I heard Justin Amash thank his supporters on election night in November 2010:

In his victory speech at Kent County GOP election night headquarters, he said the party should work to bring more Democrats and independents into the party to "transform this state" and "transform this country."

Yep, just what we need. More transformers. More Democrats.

UPDATED Sunday February 27, 2011:

Unlike doctrinaire libertarians who think they are always right about everything but are in consequence thereof not free to admit it when they are wrong, we must retract the following:


[Amash] had a famous reputation here in Michigan . . . for voting "present" now and again.


Amash never voted "present" in the Michigan legislature.

But his voting record was noted for its "singularity." Of 1315 votes cast, there were 76 in which his was the lone vote against legislation which otherwise obviously overwhelmingly passed. That's 5.8 percent of his votes. It is useless to speculate how many of these would have been cast as "present" if he had been permitted to do so, as he is now in the US House, where, however, it is becoming clear that after just two months his record in Michigan is a kind of proxy for how his record in DC has already shaped up.

This does not mean Amash was wrong, of course, in every instance, but it does show that he marched to the beat of a different drummer. That drummer was distinctly libertarian. His singular votes often reflected an aversion to using legislative power to single out groups for special favors or penalties. Sometimes it appears to have courted the stoner vote. Other times it disdained regulatory intrusion on private industries, and otherwise steered clear of do-gooder legislation, such as protecting "endangered species" or senile old women in danger of freezing to death in their homes because they forget to pay the gas bill.

In Michigan Amash's record meant that he went against his own party almost 36 percent of the time (472 votes), which makes perfect sense of the rhetoric to get more Democrats and independents into the Republican Party (without the singular "libertarian" votes, Amash voted against his own party 30 percent of the time). His election night remarks in that regard were jarring and startling in a year marked by one of the biggest partisan Republican victories nationwide in decades, but play well in a district full of Democrats and independents and union members. The clarion call of the Tea Party was not bipartisanship, but that's often the ploy of libertarians, whose small numbers keep them forever in need of allies. It's smart politics, not but it's not principled conservatism.

Methinks thou dost protest principle too much.

With the "present" vote on de-funding Planned Parenthood, one suspects Amash is taking a page out of Obama's unprincipled playbook.

"Suddenly" coming to the conclusion that DOMA is unconstitutional, Obama has instructed the DOJ not to defend it in court. But at the same time he is going to enforce this "unconstitutional" law until the courts have done with it. Instead he should be using his own Executive power to preserve, protect and defend the constitution as one of its co-equal representatives by not enforcing DOMA, which he views as a threat to it. In this Obama plays a cowardly slave who is in thrall to the courts, and doesn't have the courage of his own convictions. He is a weak president, of very poor character, but it does shore up his street cred on the left.

Expressing doubt that voting to de-fund Planned Parenthood would be constitutional, Amash was content to let de-funding pass unopposed by him, hiding in the half-way house of "present" and putting the constitution at risk. He too is guilty of ceding his co-equal authority, in this case of the Legislative power in which he shares. It was a moment of weakness. He may have escaped the anger of the left in his constituency, but his so-called conservative principles were sacrificed.

I say it was cowardly.

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."