A Real Recovery is not Confined to Sectors, But is Ubiquitous

From Jeffrey Snider, here:

I think what is happening in oil, gasoline, electricity and energy is a microcosm of this recovery. In many ways this is not a recovery, certainly not in the sense that most people have of what a recovery is supposed to be. This is the speculators' recovery, as free money finds its way into (and then rushed out of) risky financial assets all over the world. ... 

[I]f you take the perspective of the real economy over the now long-term, what appears to be a cycling period of inflation might start to look like a single period of depression, an economy trapped in artificial financial risk, unable to awaken into a healthy long-term recovery where marginal actors freely choose to accept and welcome true risk so that any economic "success" is no longer concentrated in a few sectors.

A Nation of Renters Does Not Spend on the Nest

The Fiscal Times, here, tries to put a pretty face on the current economic situation in "Real Recovery: America's Debt is on the Decline," but the underlying facts show, as the article concludes, that there is no driver for jobs and thus nothing driving increases in real income, without which prospects for growth going forward are poor:

[A] new report from the McKinsey Global Institute says U.S. consumers are unlikely to assume their historic posture as spender of last resort for the global economy. ...

The lingering impact of the Great Recession is turning America into a “renter nation,” and that will have major implications for the rest of the economy over the next few years. ...

U.S. households have reduced their debt-to-disposable-income ratio by 15 percentage points to about 110 percent, which is a greater reduction than any of the ten largest industrial economies over the last four years. ...

The $150 billion in reduced mortgage debt – deleveraging – was more than offset by the $170 billion in new consumer credit. ...

[M]uch of the reduced mortgage debt is due to banks foreclosing on properties and writing off loans, not people paying off debts.


(image source)

Powerline Blog Says Santorum Was A Three Term Senator, Fiscal Moderate

He was a two term senator, not a three. How do you get that wrong?

But it's true Santorum lacks credibility as a fiscal hawk, and Romney is correct to go after him on that score.

The story is here.

The Inflation Quotation of the Second Millennium for the Third

"Inflation is like a banana. Once you see one brown spot, it's too late."

-- attributed to central banker Henry Wallich by Jerry Jordan of the Cleveland Federal Reserve  (source)

China's Boom is a Debt Boom, Misallocated to Real Estate

It's the same as it ever was.

This time, just like most times everywhere, cheap money in China has been massively misallocated to real estate.

Gwynne Dyer (who isn't especially alarmed about Iran) for The Japan Times, here:

People in the West want to believe that China's economy will go on growing fast because the fragile recovery in Western economies depends on it. Twenty years of 10 percent-plus annual growth have made China the engine of the world economy, even though most Chinese remain poor. But the engine is fuelled by cheap credit, and most of that cheap money, as usual, has gone into real estate.

Is there such a thing as a good commie?

Good commies would invite the rural hordes to live in all that new, mostly unoccupied, real estate.

Human nature being what it is, I wouldn't count on it. Revolution is more likely.

Obama Has Deliberately Obscured His Life-long Marxist Extremism

From Investor's Business Daily:

The videotape of Obama praising and hugging his America-bashing, Constitution-trashing law professor Derrick Bell isn't the only evidence that's been hidden from the public. A 1998 video of Obama praising the late Marxist agitator Saul "The Red" Alinsky alongside a panel of hard-core Chicago communists also exists. ...

[A] 2003 video of Obama speaking at a Chicago dinner held in honor of former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. ... [T]he radical Khalidi — a close friend and neighbor of Obama, who held a 2000 political fundraiser in his home for him — has strongly defended the use of violence by Palestinians against Israel, while expressing clearly anti-American views. ...

[W]hy did Obama disguise the name of his radical Alinsky trainer Jerry Kellman in his memoir? And why did he also try to shield from readers the identity of his Alinsky mentor John McKnight, who wrote him a letter of recommendation to Harvard? ...

[W]hy did Obama leave out his weeks-long training at Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation in Los Angeles? This station of the cross for Alinsky acolytes is strangely missing from all 500 pages of his tediously detailed memoir. For that matter, the late Alinsky is not cited by name in either of the president's autobiographies, even though leftist activists confess this father of community organizing had a powerful influence on Obama.

Moreover, if communist Frank Marshall Davis wasn't a controversial factor in Obama's life, why did Obama also mask his identity in his first memoir? If listening, spellbound, at the feet of a known subversive isn't a red flag, why keep his real profile a secret?

Obama also couldn't find room in "Dreams From My Father" to mention the most striking thing about his father's politics. Obama Sr. was a pro-Soviet socialist, who as a government economist wrote a communist tract for Kenya in 1965. If this published paper wasn't a big deal, as Obama apologists have suggested, why is it conveniently missing from the 143-page section Obama devoted to boast about his father's career in Kenya? ...

[Obama] never mentioned Bell or the Harvard strike he led on his beloved professor's behalf in either autobiography. If he wasn't trying to fool people, why leave this seminal event out?

Even more radical — and influential — than Bell was Harvard law professor Robert Unger, who taught Obama a couple of courses, including one called "Reinventing Democracy." Like Bell, Unger called U.S. jurisprudence a sham system designed to protect the rich at the expense of the poor. But Unger also taught Obama how to dismantle it. He argued for seizing all private capital and redistributing it.

Obama kept up communications with Unger long after he graduated, but those contacts stopped in 2008. "I am a leftist, and by conviction as well as by temperament, a revolutionary," Unger explains. "Any association of mine with Barack Obama in the course of the campaign could do only harm."

Read the complete op-ed here.

The Tyrant Fears His Own: All His Life Long He Is Beset With Fear

"He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Plato's Republic, Book IX

Feds Want You To Believe The Hutaree Guy Who Lived Here Was A Threat . . .

. . . to the Federal government of The United States.

Right, just like the kid who draws pictures of guns in grade school is a threat to the snot-nosed mouth breather sitting next to him.

"No tolerance." Same as "I'm too stupid to think. I have no ability to put things in proper perspective. 'Proportionality' might as well be Greek to me. So we go immediately to DefCon1."

An eight week federal trial for someone who can't even afford to live in a real trailer park?

Feds Try To Establish Link Between Opposition To ObamaCare And Hutaree Conspiracy

The Hutaree were arrested within days of the passing of ObamaCare and in the wake of protests over it around the country, alleged threats of violence and even isolated acts of vandalism.

To some, such as Monica Crowley and to us, it seemed the arrests were conveniently timed to quell the anger, a shot across the bow of the people that they should expect to be met by federal force if necessary.

And what is ObamaCare if not federal force? You will either buy health insurance, or pay a fine.

The Detroit Free Press has the full story here, with this interesting detail:

According to trial testimony, health care is one of the issues that fired up the Hutaree.

As defendant Joshua Stone said in one recording played in court Monday: "I look forward to us shootin' this fall ... cause if they push that health care, we're goin' in."

The Stock Market: Bernanke's Fed Invites You To Look, But You Really Shouldn't

The Many Say 'Snuck In', The Few Say 'Sneaked In', But No One Calls It Dishonest

Least of all the sneaker, indeed quite the opposite, here:

Valdez snuck into the U.S., from Mexico, as a teenager and found work picking grapes. He got amnesty during the Reagan administration. Today he owns a vineyard management company and the winery. “This is the beauty of the U.S. --if you’re a hard worker and good and honest you can do it,” he said.

His wine made it to The White House in 2010.

Voter ID Laws Are Under Attack By Obama: Fraud Is Easy In 19 States, DC And Territories

The latest example of fraud is in Vermont (story here).

There is an excellent interactive graphic map showing the status of voter ID requirements, and pending, passed and challenged legislation throughout the US and its territories at the website of the National Conference of State Legislatures, which you can use by going here:

Bank Failures Since 2008 Have Cost The FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund $83 Billion

Based on data gathered here.

The three worst months of the crisis were July 2008, August 2009, and April 2010 when the FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund had to shell out $8.8 billion, $7.5 billion and $9.4 billion respectively.

Interactive Maps of US Bank Failures Since 2008

PortalSeven.com/banks/ here has outstanding bank failure data for every year and every state during the crisis, and before.

Here's an example showing the twelve failures in Michigan from 2008 to date (Georgia and Florida have had the most failures, with 77 and 60 respectively), with the majority concentrated around Detroit:

In Michigan 18 more banks remain on an unofficial list of banks with problems, based on publicly available information. The Feds do not disclose their list of banks with problems, for obvious reasons.

In April 2008 Obama Said High Gas Prices Were A Huge Problem, Bordering On Crisis

It's six minutes long, but worth listening to now because Obama was complaining then about $3.60 a gallon being nearly a crisis. Four years later we're knocking on the door of $4.00 a gallon, and probably higher, which I'm sure he'd say borders on a catastrophe if he were not in charge.

See it here, from a speech in Indianapolis on April 25, 2008:

Obama Withholds Disaster Funds From Republican Southern Illinois

Harrisburg, IL, in Saline County not only didn't get John McCain for president in 2008, now it's not going to get disaster funds from FEMA after the recent tornado flattened the joint.

Gee, I wonder why?

Lots of counties in southern Illinois, including Saline, went for Republican John McCain in 2008 (in blue).

(source)

Story here: seven dead, 100 injured, 100 homes destroyed, hundreds more damaged.

Fix it yourself.

Norway's AUF Leader Eskil Pedersen Fled Utoya Like A Coward While Breivik Shot Youths

So charges "Norway, Israel and the jews" on March 5, 2012 here:

But Eskil Pedersen is not the most solid man in the world – a few minutes after the dreadful shooting started at Utøya on July 22, he and 8 other leaders who were in charge of the safety of the many hundreds of fantastic kids who participated in the traditional summer camp, took the official AUF ferry, which easily could have picked up and saved another 41 frightened and injured kids who were hiding amid rocks and under trees to avoid being killed. This they did as owners of small boats came to the rescue, subjecting themselves to lethal danger in order to pick up kids who in their desperation were swimming across the fiord to escape bullets. Rather than help picking up the kids, they took the decision to go further out the fiord, away from land, even as kids were seen swimming in the waters.

One Year Out, Radiation in Futaba Japan 5 km from Nuke Accident Remains Dangerous

Here's a screen shot from Fukushima Diary showing recent, very high radiation readings measured at ground level and in a car in Futaba town, 5 km north and west from the melted-down reactors at Fukushima:

If you reduced a typical American's exposure to radiation in a year from all sources, including medical and flight sources, to an hourly level it would be 0.7 microsieverts per hour. The air level in the car to the left is nearly 45.0, and next to the soil 518.2, nearly 12 times worse, both far in excess of safe. Just breathing the air there for less than two years would give you more than a single lifetime's exposure.

(source)

Here's a map showing the nuke plant on the coast at the lower right and Futaba's Town Office to the northwest of it marked by the green arrow:

The Last Real American?

Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-2)

The Opposite of Transparency: Obama Regime Claims GSEs Exempt from FOIA

From an editorial on the subject here:

Judicial Watch sought those documents because the FHFA claimed in a separate lawsuit against the 17 firms that losses on securities were caused by material misrepresentations the firms made to Fannie and Freddie. Finance industry experts claim Fannie and Freddie officials were more than sufficiently knowledgeable about the mortgage industry to realize the risks involved in such securities. By putting all Fannie and Freddie documents about such transactions beyond the reach of FOIA requesters like Judicial Watch, the Obama administration is making it difficult, if not impossible, for independent evaluators to determine who bears responsibilities for the losses [$150 billion and climbing] now being covered by taxpayers.

Adam Smith: Crony Capitalism is a Powerful Force Against Freedom

From Sheldon Richman, here, quoting Adam Smith:

"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [that is, 'those who live by profit'], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

Smith grew up under mercantilism and knew well of what he wrote. America grew up largely under mercantilism and its cousin, Hamiltonian-Lincolnian corporatism. In this respect advocates of the freed market should embrace Smith’s understanding of political economy: that a powerful force against freedom emanates from where they might least expect to find it.

Worst Employment Recession Since WW2: After 4 Years, Jobs Recovery Not in Sight

The unemployment report yesterday shows some job gains, but the overall rate of unemployment remains unchanged from the month before at 8.3 percent, and jobs recovered have retraced only a small portion of the territory lost.

In every other jobs recession since the Second World War jobs recovered to the starting point in every case but one within 2.7 years. Bush's relatively mild job recession took 3.9 years to fully recover.

We are 4.1 years out and job losses are still at the severe depths last reached in the recessions of 1948 and 1957, as shown here.

America once knew how to bounce back quickly.

Not anymore.

Bank Failure Friday: The 13th in 2012. FDIC Covered Institutions Decline 13 Percent.

# 13 was New City Bank, Chicago, Illinois, costing the FDIC $17.4 million. No buyers for this one.

As of this date, FDIC coverage extends to 7,359 bank and savings institutions.

When IndyMac Bank of Pasadena, CA, failed in July 2008, there were 8,494 insured institutions.

The number of banks covered by the FDIC has thus contracted by over 13 percent in consequence of the depression of 2008-2009.

It took until March 2009 to complete the sale of IndyMac, which was originally estimated to cost the FDIC between $4 billion and $8 billion. In the end, its failure cost the FDIC $10.7 billion.

Justice is blind to every loyalty

 

Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always therefore represented as blind.

-- Joseph Addison, from "Justice", contributed to The Guardian

Obama and Romney Defend Progressive Taxation, But It's an Attack on Property and Justice

So says John Chapman, here:

To prove the moral case for progressivity — that, in President Obama’s exact words, the rich should pay “their fair share”, it would have to be shown that the marginal utility of the last $100,000 of income for the millionaire was providing less satisfaction than the last $1,000 for the worker making $10,000 in income.

To say this colloquially, Messrs. Obama and Romney feel that the millionaire should feel as much pain from losing his last 10% of income — should bear as much burden from this loss — as does the worker who loses his last 10%.  President Obama and evidently Governor Romney both posit that this is not the case with flat-rate taxation; they believe that the loss of the last 10% is not equiproportional for both without progressive rates.  But there is of course no way to know that empirically, and indeed, there are sound reasons to think the opposite is true — that progressive taxation is “unfair” to the higher-income earners by taking an “unjust” amount of their property from them, that ultimately harms the economy as a whole. ...

For steep progressivity is, at root, an attack on both property and blindness in the application of law.  Marginal rates of taxation now approach 60% in states like New York, and “the rich”, rather than acquiesce to Mr. Obama’s concept of paying their “fair share”, are simply vacating the state and/or ceasing in the taxable production of goods and services: chronic deficits leading to fiscal collapse then appear on the horizon in such cases.  Greece is a current exemplar of the extreme end to which this situation leads, and no amount of moralizing about “fairness” is relevant on the streets of Athens today.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu Praises Chevy Volt, Owns No Car, Wife Drives Beemer!

Her car uses premium gas, as reported here.

Greeks Violate Contract Law Just Like ObamaCare Does in America

Obama and the Democrats have violated hundreds of years of contract law in passing ObamaCare because the law forces Americans to enter into health insurance contracts on penalty of fine or even imprisonment. For contracts to be valid in a court of law, however, contracts must be entered into willingly, not under compulsion.

Now we learn here that the Greek Parliament, having thrown out people who won't vote the correct way, has interfered with bond contracts, rewriting the terms after the fact in order to get what it wants:

The Greek parliament's retroactive law last month to insert collective action clauses (CACs) into its bonds to coerce creditor hold-outs has added a fresh twist. These CAC's are likely to be activated over coming days. Use of retroactive laws to change contracts is anathema in credit markets.

Add to this the US housing MERS scandal which has violated the ancient principle of traceable registered property documentation and I'd say we have a trinity of cases demonstrating a complete and utter repudiation of The West by The West.

What A Shock: The New Republic Defends Crony Capitalism

Michael Kazin for The New Republic here argues that crony capitalism isn't really that big a deal because it is pretty much as old as the old Republic itself, except he skips the founders and begins in the nineteenth century.

It doesn't occur to him that perhaps crony capitalism suggested itself to so many Americans because they drank from the well of monarchy for so long. No thoughtful person who respects the founders imagines they were inoculated from the failings attendant upon all natures mixed with good and evil. The left delights in pointing this out, whereas the true right mentions it as a cautionary tale.

We are monarchy's lesser children because of people like John Locke, who was at pains to remind us that "is" does not always mean "ought", else we should, for example, beget and raise children to sell them into slavery because it was done, sometime, somewhere, in the past. Reason is necessary. Respecting ancient practice is not the essential meaning of conservatism, try as the left does to reduce it always to such a formulation. They are the terrible simplifiers still.

The greater children of monarchy are the strong men of Europe who drank deeply from the well of Marx after centuries of experience with kings and queens. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were thus hyperbolic, aberrant, monarchists, and insofar as leftists like Wilson and FDR reinfected America with their example was to no good purpose, no matter how much The New Republicans say so to the contrary.

Mike Shedlock's Political Whopper of the Day: Republicans Hold The Senate

Here's today's political whopper from Mike Shedlock, aka Mish:

"I expect Republicans to hold the Senate, and probably the House regardless of who wins the 2012 presidential sweepstakes."

Excuse me, but to hold the Senate, you have to win it first.

He writes as if he doesn't know that Democrats, not Republicans, currently hold the Senate, and that they stymie every bill coming out of the US House of Representatives, which the Republicans won and currently hold. He complains of gridlock, but doesn't seem to grasp the political reality which is causing it:

"Sadly, a divided do-nothing electorate is the best outcome one can reasonably expect at the moment."

This is an embarrassingly stupid choice of words, unless we the people who elect our representatives and senators are really the do-nothings. Use your dictionary app, Mish.

It's also an especially stupid thing to say since he just said he expects Republicans to have majorities in both House and Senate, in which case a President Obama would be isolated politically, unlike now. Control of the Senate still gives Obama leverage, whereas Republican control of the House since 2010 has taken away his free hand. A politically isolated Obama would represent progress over what we have now, especially if a Republican Congress has enough votes to override his veto.

Mish's ignorance is appalling, and embarrassing. But it's also fairly typical, which is why we have the government we currently have.

The Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate of 63.7 Was Last This Low in May 1983

The pinnacle in this metric was reached in the first four months of the year 2000 at the level of 67.3 percent. Data viewable here.

This is a picture of a society which has lost its driver for jobs.

That driver was debt, mostly in the form of housing. Then government decided under Bill Clinton, Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich to let you extract the built up capital in housing, skimming the operation like a casino operation.

It was fun while it lasted! At least the Japs had savings to get them through.

Now it's just beans and rice, and rice and beans.

If we had some beans.

If we had some rice. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Since this is trending on Dec 13, 2021, here's the latest chart showing the 2020 average for CIVPART at 61.7%, a level last seen round about 1976. Things have only gotten worse. The level in Nov 2021 is 61.8%. I include a chart for the sputtering debt engine as well.

We had beans and rice tonight, by the way.

 

 

Curley Practising "The Mussolini" in 'Movie Maniacs' (1935)

(see it here)

Gingrich Increases Delegates Over 200 Percent With Super Tuesday Wins

Here's the delegate snapshot from The Wall Street Journal, showing the new totals for each candidate after Super Tuesday.

Romney's lead is making all the headlines, but Gingrich's surge yesterday was the most significant. But can Gingrich keep it going?

Gingrich went from a total of 33 to 105, a gain of 218 percent.

Romney went from a total of 203 to 415, a gain of 104 percent.

Santorum went from a total of 92 to 176, a gain of 91 percent.

Paul went from a total of 25 to 47, a gain of 88 percent.

Gingrich is as vulnerable as Romney on the individual mandate. Newt has believed in it at least since 2006, and famously agreed with Romney in a Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas last October that they both got the idea from the so-called conservative Heritage Foundation (source of following transcript):

MR. ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.


MR. GINGRICH: That's not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.


MR. ROMNEY: Well, it was something - yeah, we got it from you and the - you - got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.


MR. GINGRICH: No, but - well, you - well, you - (inaudible) -


MR. ROMNEY: But let me - but let me just -


MR. GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true.


MR. ROMNEY: Well, I thought -


MR. GINGRICH: You did not get that from me.


MR. ROMNEY: I think you -


MR. GINGRICH: You got it from the Heritage Foundation.


MR. ROMNEY: And - and you've never - never supported -


MR. GINGRICH: I was - I agree with them, but I'm just saying what you've said to this audience just now plain wasn't true. That's not where you got it from.


MR. ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask - have you - have you supported in the past an individual mandate?


MR. GINGRICH: I absolutely did, with the Heritage Foundation, against "Hillarycare."


MR. ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?


MR. GINGRICH: Yes, sir.


MR. ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That's what I'm saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.


MR. GINGRICH: OK. Little broader. (Laughter.)


MR. ROMNEY: OK.

In 2009 Romney specifically argued for the individual mandate in this USA Today op-ed as an acceptable alternative to the public option as embodied in Nancy Pelosi's version of ObamaCare which passed in the US House. Since then Romney has flipped on this issue, claiming repeatedly that he has been against imposing a RomneyCare-like plan on the whole country.

The Senate version of ObamaCare, which eventually became the law but is now going to be challenged before the Supreme Court, represents what Romney hoped for: government compulsion in healthcare insurance which kept government out of the insurance business itself (public option) while preserving the system of private, free-enterprise, health insurance more or less as it exists.

Historically, Republicans have been against a government-sponsored health insurance enterprise because of the perception that government has an unfair advantage against which private business cannot hope to compete and succeed. A case in point today would be Fannie and Freddie, the failed government mortgage giants without whom, alas, few people today can hope to get a mortgage. If you want a vision of failed government healthcare in about ten years, consider the miserable failed condition of those GSEs today.

This is Santorum's opportunity, but many of us wonder whether he's got the right stuff to ride this issue to the presidency. And it might become a moot point after the Supremes rule on ObamaCare by this summer.

Gingrich for his part has tried to change the subject to jobs and growth viewed through the lens of energy independence. It is a good strategy, but it leaves many voters who are worried about the growth and intrusion of the State with a nagging question unanswered: how is Newt really different from Romney philosophically if he's been willing to flirt with mandates?

To Date Republicans Prefer A Conservative To Romney, 3.8 Million to 3.2 Million

The only problem is, they are divided over which conservative.

For every Romney voter to date in the Republican primaries, another 1.2 voters prefer either Santorum or Gingrich.

Santorum has the edge with 1.9 million voters to Gingrich's 1.8 million, as shown here:

Everything You Need To Know About Gerald R. Ford

"Reagan’s uncommon good sense extended to sound judgments about controversial people who were similarly outspoken and principled—and thus unpopular if not under constant fire. He was an early supporter of Pat Moynihan’s courageous efforts to end decades of hypocrisy at the United Nations—at a time when even many Republicans still viewed the institution as a sacred cow. Jeanne Kilpatrick’s contentious, but insightful distinctions between Stalinists and right-wing dictators abroad won over an unabashedly supportive Reagan. He praised Soviet dissidents—even as a cautious Gerald Ford refused to meet with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. When William Bennet was taking a beating for his unsettling honest talk about the corruption in our schools and universities, Reagan brushed off worries that his Education Secretary was becoming a political liability."

-- Victor Davis Hanson, here

The American Working, Middle and Upper Classes By Income

The working class pulls in about $2 trillion annually and includes all earned compensation up to $45,000 per year. This group forms the broad base of the American people, numbering nearly 107 million strong, or 71 percent of all workers in 2010.

The middle class also pulls in about $2 trillion annually and includes all compensation from $45,000 up to $100,000 per year. This group is represented by 34 million individuals, or 23 percent of all workers in 2010.

The upper class, too, pulls in about $2 trillion annually and includes all compensation from $100,000 to $50 million and beyond! 9 million individuals represent this group, which is just 6 percent of all workers in 2010.

GOP Delegate Snapshot Going Into Super Tuesday: 437 Delegates At Stake Today

From The Wall Street Journal, here:

Obama's Indonesian Nanny Was A Man Who Thought He Was A Woman

As reported here by ABC News:

And so it was, at a cocktail party in 1969, that she met Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's mother, who had arrived in the country two years earlier after marrying her second husband, Indonesian Lolo Soetoro.

Dunham was so impressed by Evie's beef steak and fried rice that she offered her a job in the family home. It didn't take long before Evie also was 8-year-old Barry's caretaker, playing with him and bringing him to and from school.

Neighbors recalled that they often saw Evie leave the house in the evening fully made up and dressed in drag. But she says it's doubtful Barry ever knew.

"He was so young," says Evie. "And I never let him see me wearing women's clothes. But he did see me trying on his mother's lipstick, sometimes. That used to really crack him up."

When the family left in the early 1970s, things started going downhill. She moved in with a boyfriend. 

A Depression in Full-Time Jobs: Over 6 Percent Fewer Than in 2007

Full-time jobs reached a peak measurement on November 1, 2007, at 121.875 million.

On January 1, 2012, full-time jobs had declined 8.03 million to 113.845 million, a fall of 6.6 percent.

The last time full-time employment stood at a similar level to today was November 1, 2003 when 113.892 million people had full-time work.

View the graph and data here.

Part-Time For Economic Reasons Still Over 97 Percent Higher Than in 2007

Part-time employment for economic reasons reached an all-time high of 9.25 million persons as measured on September 1, 2010.

On January 1, 2012 the level still stood at 8.08 million persons, over 97 percent higher than the level measured as recently as February 1, 2007, when the measurement stood at 4.09 million persons.

View the graph and data here.

Part-Time Employment Has Fallen Over 7 Percent From 2007 Peak

Part-time for non-economic reasons reached a peak measurement on March 1, 2007 at 19.75 million persons. On January 1, 2012 the measurement stood at 18.29 million.

View the graph and data here.

Romney in 2009 Openly Favored Tax Penalties To Make People Buy Health Insurance

Romney's op-ed from USA Today is reproduced here.

The relevant portion below is argued in opposition to strong efforts at the time, particularly in the US House under Nancy Pelosi, to pass a healthcare reform bill which included the public option, or government insurance.

Romney's idea, as with RomneyCare in Massachusetts, was to shun the public option in favor of mandated purchase of privately supplied health insurance, under penalty of a tax, which is what we got with the Senate version of healthcare reform now known to us as ObamaCare, under which the tax is called a fine in order for the president to be able to claim that he does not raise taxes on ordinary Americans:

"Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn’t cost the government a single dollar."

As many have been maintaining, Romney's reasoning shows no essential disagreement with ObamaCare. Romney favors government compulsion in healthcare.

Real 2011 GDP Finally Exceeds Real 2007 GDP, But Only By 0.83 Percent

The data were found at the Bureau of Economic Analysis here:

YEAR   REAL GDP (2005 chained dollars)

2007       $13.21 trillion

2008         13.16

2009         12.70

2010         13.09

2011         13.32

And On What Will Santorum Run If The Supremes Find The Mandate Unconstitutional?

Sen. Santorum believes the issue of this election season is authoritarianism in government, as quoted here in The Weekly Standard:

". . . Obamacare. That is the biggest issue in this race. It’s an issue about fundamental freedom. It’s an issue about whether you want the government to take your money, and in exchange, give you a ‘right’….But, of course, when the government gives you a right, they can take that right away. And when the government gives you that right, they can tell you how to exercise that right. And they do — not just what doctors you can see and what insurance policies [you can buy], or how much you’re going to get fined if you don’t do what the government tells you to do, but even go[ing] so far as to tell you how to exercise your faith as part of your health care....If the government can go that far with Obamacare, just think what’s next.”

"The Whole Community Should Mutually Accuse and Come to Blows With Each Other"

Just one of the many ways a tyranny maintains itself in power, according to Aristotle.

In our case, bring up women's rights and "health" and make them an issue when they weren't.

A house thus busy being divided against itself is a house which cannot unite in revolt against its master. And what better way to divide the house than according to nature, the division between the sexes?

Another form of Locke's "crossing nature".

Santorum Bashes Everyone But The Prime Culprit: George W. Bush

Here.

Why bash John McCain, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush?

I don't recall any of these claiming to redefine the Republican Party like W did. And all three of them served honorably in war, one as a prisoner of war, one maimed by war, and one a practised parachutist under fire. W did none of that. And neither did Santorum. 

OK, maybe Herbert Walker came close to an ideological make-over with that kinder, gentler, shtick, but we all know he didn't really mean it. He was not really into that vision thing. But W was full of hubris and said the conservative movement was OVER and that HE would establish a new meaning for it going forward, which boiled down to nothing more than personal loyalty. He must have learned that from the Democrats.

And I don't recall any of these also-rans abandoning free market principles to save the free market like W did. You can rightly say the objects of Santorum's ire represented tax collection for the welfare state, but at least they made a show of being capitalists. George W. Bush, a failed capitalist before he became president, ended his presidency the same way.

W was a knee-jerk liberal on immigration, welfare for the poor and for seniors, and on exporting the American way. A real conservative ought to say so. Rick Santorum never will.

A Lovely Question: Why Is Interest Income, Perhaps 10 Percent of GDP in the Past, Trivial to Savers but Ever So Important to Banks?

Jeffrey Snider wants to know, here:

I think everyone understands that credit is vital to businesses, but they also intuitively understand that customers are probably more vital (and the largest problem for businesses of all sizes since 2008). I don't think Chairman Bernanke can claim that interest income is trivial and therefore not really a consideration, both in an empirical sense (the numbers don't bear that out, especially at the margins) or, perhaps more importantly, in the perceptions of the voting public. If he does, then why is such a trivial amount to savers so important to banks? It cannot be the money multiplier effect since bank net income (the pivot in this trade-off) plays no role in that presumed multiplier - ZIRP is a technique of expanding bank balance sheet capacity. It is the method of circulation that is at issue here, and the Fed and its global central bank cousins are placing all their chips on circulating money indirectly through credit creation. If that is a superior option, then they should be able to demonstrate it.

Obama's New Campaign Slogan

A Volt in every garage and a condom in every pocket.

ObamaCare Inspires Fear For The Sake Of Making A Contract, Violating The Law

This is what ObamaCare does: It threatens with a fine the person who fails to make a contract with an insurance company.

"[I]n the freedom of choice there ought to be a kind of equality between the contracting parties. ...[N]o fear should be unjustly inspired for the sake of making the contract, or, if such fear has been inspired, that it should be removed."

-- Hugo Grotius, On Contracts, The Law of War and Peace, Book 2, 12, X (1625)

ObamaCare Violates Centuries of Contract Law: The Mandate is Equal to Duress

It's so simple a child could tell you that, but to date no legal wizard from Harvard, Yale, Chicago, or Stanford has been able to put his finger on it quite so well as this wonderful stroke of genius distilled in a newspaper from the American heartland of genius, Virginia:

From Hugo Grotius in the 17th century through William Story in the 19th and up to the present, legal doctrine has held that contracts are not valid unless they are entered into by mutual assent. If one party signs a contract as the result of fraud or under duress, it cannot be valid. But if Congress compels people to buy insurance policies — not as a precondition of exercising a privilege such as driving, but as a consequence of having been born — then, the [I]nstitute [for Justice] argues, this would undermine centuries of contract law.

All those law degrees, wasted.

If they were smart they would ask for their money back.

Now why didn't The Heritage Foundation realize this back in 1989 and save us from all this trouble from HillaryCare through RomneyCare and ObamaCare?

After all this time America is still little more than a backwater in the intellectual history of the West. Progressivism. Bah! Humbug!

This is an Unpaid Ad for The True Born Sons of Liberty

GO TO HELL, BARACK.

Oil Price To Crash By Fourth of July?

Chris Cook thinks so, maybe even to $60, here:

In my analysis, absent a massive, and sustained, shortfall in oil supplies – which I cannot see occurring, since all involved have every interest in ensuring it does not occur – the oil price will, as I have already forecast, fall dramatically by the end of this year’s second quarter at the latest. It’s not a matter of if, but when it will happen.

That implies gold at $900 the ounce.

I can wait four months.

Q4 2011 GDP, Second Estimate, Up .2 to 3.0 Percent, Q3 at 1.8 Percent

So reports the Bureau of Economic Analysis, here.

The revision up does not move the needle up on overall 2011 GDP, which was a pathetic 1.7 percent.

Occupy Portland Vandalizes Two Banks and a Starbucks

Anti-capitalists, they call themselves:

Police said they received an e-mail that said it was from "Some Of Those Responsible" and read in part, "about an hour and a half ago (around ten pm, Tuesday night) a group of anticapitalists rolled up on the US Bank at SE 39th and Main and smashed out its windows and ATMs." ...

Police said a second e-mail was received after the Key Bank branch and Starbucks locations were vandalized, which read in part, "wherever capital chooses for its bunker, we will be there to attack it in the night." It was signed "For freedom, for equality, for anarchy".

Story, here.

A Chase branch and a Wells Fargo branch were vandalized last November (story here).

Santorum Voters in Michigan Heavily Self-Identified as Democrats

By a margin over Romney voters of 35 points, according to FoxNews exit polling here:

Santorum voters were also union members by 15 points over Romney voters.

Only 24 percent of Santorum voters thought abortion should be legal, and 77 percent of Santorum voters thought of themselves primarily as abortion issue voters, with only 13 percent of Romney voters seeing themselves that way.

Deficits and the economy mattered more to Romney voters than Santorum voters by 16 and 17 points.

Despite Santorum's view that mainline Protestants aren't really Christians, Romney and Santorum pretty much split that vote with Santorum winning Protestants by two points. But Santorum lost the Catholic vote by a 7 point margin.

Romney excelled among females, the over 65 demographic, those making over $200,000 a year, college graduates and post-grads, the somewhat conservative, those somewhat opposed to the Tea Party and those favoring legalized abortion.

Self-identifying moderates went for Romney 45 percent to Santorum's 31 percent. The somewhat conservative went for Romney by an even larger spread, 50 to 32.

The Washington Post here reported that 1 in 10 Republican voters yesterday self-identified as Democrats:

Early exit polls in Michigan seemed to show that the negative campaigning had weighed on the state’s Republicans. Less than half of voters there said they backed their candidate “strongly.” About one in seven said they made their choice because they dislike the other options — four times the proportion that said so in this political season’s first votes, at the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

The polls also showed that a large number of Democrats had, in fact, crossed party lines in Michigan. About one in 10 of Tuesday’s voters identified themselves as Democrats in exit surveys. That was a higher figure than in any of the other early GOP contests.


About 978,000 votes were cast in Michigan's primary yesterday.

Wins in Michigan and Arizona Give Romney 2 to 1 Lead in Delegates over Santorum

The Wall Street Journal here provides a handy delegate tracker:

Hey Romney! Is Obama's An Extreme Left-Wing Crusade To Bankrupt Us Or Not?

Sen. John McCain couldn't bring himself to talk this way in 2008, but he had to in 2010 to get re-elected to the US Senate:

"President Obama is leading an extreme left-wing crusade to bankrupt America,'' McCain says in one of the radio ads his campaign is airing.

Romney Views Republican Base As Angry Mob With A Beef Against Obama

Except he's not going there.

Remarks quoted here:

“It’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments,” he told reporters. “We’ve seen throughout the campaign that if you’re willing to say really outrageous things that are accusatory and attacking President Obama, that you’re going to jump up in the polls. You know, I’m not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support.”

But you already knew that:

O’Reilly: Is he a socialist?
Romney: You know, I prefer to use the term that he’s just over his head.
O’Reilly: Yeah, but you got to look at his economic plan. An economic plan that’s top down, federal leadership, getting us out of the recession--- he spent trillions of dollars on that. And people say, Listen, the guy’s a socialist — it’s class warfare that’s what he’s gonna wage against you if you get the nomination: You’re a rich guy, you’re out of touch. Is he a socialist?
Romney: Uh, you know, I consider him a big-government liberal Democrat. I think as you look at his policies, you conclude that he thinks Europe got it right and we got it wrong. I think Europe got it wrong. I think Europe is not working in Europe. And I’ll battle him on that day in and day out. But I’m probably not going to be calling him names so much as calling him a failure.


Like John McCain before him, who refused to criticize Obama or even question his political beliefs, Romney is out of step with the American people, the majority of whom believe "socialist" is a fitting moniker for President Obama:

Rick The Chameleon Santorum: Slams Cross-Overs in January, Courts Them in February

What a difference a few weeks can make, as reported here:

In stark contrast to his campaign's more recent courtship of Democrats, in January Santorum told Democrats that if they wanted to vote for a Republican, they should switch their party affiliation.

"It's the Republican nomination, not the independent nomination or the Democratic nomination," he said on the call. "If you're a Democrat and you want to be a Democrat, then vote in the Democratic primary, not the Republican. If you want to vote in the Republican Party then become one."

At the time, Santorum's main criticism was of Romney's success in the New Hampshire primary, where 53% of Republican primary participants did not identify themselves as Republicans. In the weeks following Romney's win in the Granite State, Santorum repeatedly cited that statistic in arguing that his rival's supporters was [sic] out of step with the mainstream GOP electorate. Now Santorum is hoping non-Republicans will help give him the edge in Romney's home state [of Michigan].

Rick The Snake Santorum Wants MI Democrats To Pick The Republicans' Candidate

So reports The Detroit News today here, claiming Santorum is making robocalls to Michigan Democrats to get them to turn out and vote for him:

"Michigan Democrats can vote in the Republican primary on Tuesday," said an unidentified man on the call, which Talking Points Memo said was left on someone's answering machine in Trenton. "Why is it so important? Romney supported the bailout for his Wall Street billionaire buddies, but opposed the auto bailouts. That was a slap in the face to every Michigan worker, and we're not going to let Romney get away with it. On Tuesday, join Democrats who are going to send a loud message to Massachusetts' Mitt Romney by voting for Rick Santorum for president.

"This call is supported by hard-working Democratic men and women and paid for by Rick Santorum for president."


Isn't Santorum's opposition to auto bailouts a slap in the face to Michigan workers?

Roy Brewer Archives Show Some of Hollywood Ten Really Were Commies

From The LA Times Magazine:

The archives shed light on another mythologized piece of Hollywood history: the hearings held by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. I grew up hearing about the Hollywood Ten—filmmakers railroaded by congressional witch-hunters in 1947, ostensibly because they were liberals.

According to that familiar narrative, they rebuked the committee when subpoenaed. If there’s a “profiles in courage” touchstone in Hollywood, this is it. Those who did testify, such as Brewer and Reagan, are regarded as Judases.

However, a letter from John Huston found in the files says this story is a well-constructed myth. And if anyone would know key facts about those days, it would be Huston, a non-Communist liberal Democrat who opposed the hearings because he believed it was unconstitutional to require a citizen to state his political beliefs.

Writing on the filmmakers who refused to answer questions from congressmen, Huston recounted, “Some of them had already testified in California, and their testimony had been false. They’d said they were not Communists, when in truth they were. To have admitted it now would have been to lay themselves open to charges of perjury.”

Huston said that at the time of the hearings, they convinced him they were standing up for principle—the “freedom of the individual,” as he put it. However, as he later learned (and wrote in the letter), “they were really looking after their own skins. Had I so much as suspected such a thing, I would have washed my hands of them on the spot.”

Don't miss the rest of this riveting account about Ronald Reagan's anti-communism by John Meroney, here.

A book is forthcoming.

Rules of the Road in Michigan

Come to an intersection and stop.

Wait a long time until you see someone coming from your left.

Then turn right, in front of said someone, and drive 10 mph slower than the speed limit, 15 if the someone tailgaits.

Union state. No sense of urgency. No sense of courtesy.

Game to Obama.

Make No Mistake About It: The Federal Reserve Is The Enemy Of The People

From another insightful meditation by Jeffrey Snider, this time on the consequences of trying to make the artificial financial economy and the real economy one:

The Federal Reserve has gone far beyond TARP into ZIRP (zero interest rate policy). ZIRP is a direct tax on savers, figuratively taking money out of the pockets of those who have acted responsibly in the real economy, transferring it to the banking system (especially the largest investment banks, the very banks responsible for most of the credit creation and monetary imbalance of the past asset bubbles) that was negligent, reckless and complicit in this disaster. Monetary policymakers, the gatekeepers to the realm of the monetary or financial economy, now intentionally and directly penalize real economy actors in favor of financial economy actors. They do so with this narrative that as the financial economy goes, the real economy will follow. Very few people seem to challenge this as backwards, certainly not anyone in a policymaking role.

Oil is Now Fairly Priced

Crude is almost $110, and gold is almost $1,774, so about 16 barrels buys an ounce of gold, just one barrel pricier than the ratio of 15:1 thought to be indicative of the historic relative fair value.

Yelling "Stop" is No Longer Good Enough

Because "Stop" preserves the damage done and doesn't roll it back.

Marxism Won In America: The New Deal and Great Society Stem From Socialism

So says R. Christopher Whalen here:

[D]espite America’s pretensions to being a free market, democratic society, the Marxian world view won the battle for ideas in the 20th Century. The New Deal and Great Society efforts to increase the scope of government in America all stem from the socialist ideas of FDR and his political heirs in both parties.

A genuine conservatism and a truly conservative Republican Party must stand for dismantling both.

"If I decide to do it, by definition it’s good policy. I thought you got that."

"I have abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."

The Whopper of the Day is from Mike Shedlock, AKA 'Mish'

He says the middle class STARTS at $100,000 (here):

I am against a VAT completely. And I certainly do not like exempting the first $100,000 [from any taxes whatsover] because the tax burden would then fall only on the middle class.

How crazy is that?

Of just over 150 million wage earners in 2010, 141 million make less than $100,000 a year. How many of them do you think would agree that the remaining 9 million who make in excess of that are in any way, shape or form "middle class"?

SocialSecurity.gov (here) shows on examination that federal taxable earned income divides pretty neatly into a lower, middle and upper class, with each class accounting for about $2 trillion of the total of almost $6 trillion in net compensation in 2010.

Americans in the lower class make up to $45,000 per year and haul in $1.9 trillion. The next tranche up, the middle class, makes up to $100,000 and hauls in $2 trillion. The upper class makes everything in excess of that, in total another $1.9 trillion.

It is a common conceit of the rich that they are middle class. The rich aspire down to it as much as the lower class aspires up to it.

Romney's Arizona Debate Statements on Plan B Drugs Fail Scrutiny

Evidence presented here indicates that Gov. Romney lied twice during the debate:

When Romney was asked in the debate if he had required Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims and had infringed on Catholics’ rights, he responded, “No, absolutely not. Of course not.” That was untrue.

When Romney said “for the Catholic Church to provide morning-after pills to rape victims…was entirely voluntary on their part”, that was also untrue.

The evidence indicates Romney came under pressure from legal counsel, under which he flip-flopped, but also that he personally embraced the idea of forcing Catholics to act contrary to conscience as the right thing to do.

How this makes him any different from Barack Obama who routinely acts in a capricious, authoritarian manner is beyond reconciliation.

A vote for Romney is a vote for Jello, every night.