Big Laws vs Little Laws

"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws." - G.K. Chesterton, Daily News, 7/29/1905

1. After 2012, U.S. citizens will no longer choose the type of light bulbs they buy and use. Only the florescent bulbs will be available.

2. Not content to merely outlaw the use of trans fats by restaurateurs, N.Y. Legislators are now crafting a law to prevent them from using any salt when preparing food for public consumption. This is after they prohibited the sale of pate foie gras.

3. Every state has passed adult seat belt and baby car seat laws to save lives. These laws were promoted by the same people who insist on killing babies in the womb and who openly support euthanasia.

4. Daylight savings time laws force us to change our sleep/wake patterns twice a year despite the fact that the rate of heart attacks increases 6% to 10% the first three days after the spring time change. More Americans disapprove than approve it, but it's the law in all but two states.

5. Federal BATF agents recently confiscated a shipment of toy pellet guns made of pot metal because they claimed the guns could be modified to work as machine guns. The fact that the pellets are plastic and pot metal would disintegrate before firing bullets seems to be irrelevant to the case.

6. Officials in two states have barred Christians from holding Bible studies/prayer meetings in their own homes, even though no complaints had been lodged about noise or parking problems.

7. Most Democrat Congressional Clowns are working as hard as they can to put 157 new agencies between every patient and his physician to decide when, how, and if the patient will be treated and the physician paid. There is no mention of the additional costs of the new agencies and the personnel to work in them.

8. Each spring brings a new group of lawsuits over what may or may not be said at graduation services, even by the students. Already most public schools no longer allow even a moment of silent meditation, much less a prayer, during the school day or at sporting events. Under the guise of anti discrimination laws, university level Christian organizations are being threatened with expulsion unless they agree to allow atheists to hold elected office in the group.

9. Federal regulators have developed thousands of pages of rules to "save" the environment which encroach on personal liberty even when dealing with private, not public, property. Recently they officially declared carbon dioxide (which we exhale with every breath and which plants need to survive) a menace to the environment as they prepare the Cap and Trade bill to further limit personal freedom and injure our hopes of economic recovery.

10. Other draconian environmental laws either hinder or stop Americans from engaging in ordinary production and sale of legal substances that everyone needs - oil, gas, and coal. They ignore the fact that we have so much oil that in some areas, it seeps up out of the ground and ruins the pristine beaches. So American consumers pay Muslim countries exorbitant prices for their oil while would-be American producers sit around unemployed.

G. K. Chesterton wrote the quotation above regarding government encroaching on the freedoms of ordinary citizens one hundred and five years ago. He was concerned with the growing tendency to ignore the Ten Commandments (The Big Laws) and the Judeo-Christian heritage of Western Civilization, while governments established more and more regulations that encroached into everyone's daily life. Since then the small laws have continued to grow in number and scope to such a degree that most young people have no concept of individual liberty Americans enjoyed one hundred years ago.

Conflict of Interest

The show trial that's going on in Congress over Toyota's safety engineering is a definite conflict of interest. Number one, it's unfair competition when the owner of General Motors undermines the major competition.

Number two, the relentlessness of the stories in the media indicate that Congress is catering to the UAW, not to real concerns for safety. Toyota workers have repeatedly refused to join the union which is so desperate for members that they're backing Card Check.

And then there is the sad spectacle of using questionable "experts" to denigrate Toyota. Joan Claybrook is the Carter appointee who forced automakers to install air bags despite vehement warnings that the technology was not yet developed enough. As a result, 65 deaths, mostly infants and children, occurred because of exploding air bags. Clarence Ditlow is notorious for approving the use of rocket igniters to "prove" on NBC that GM pick-ups were unsafe. These two are favorite anti-business expert witnesses. It's time the public remembered their names and protested their testimony.

On the international front, humiliating the head of the world's largest auto manufacturer on television before members of Congress is poor diplomacy. It's bad enough when the hypocritical Congressional Clowns self-righteously attack American CEO's. It's another thing altogether to do it to someone from a culture where saving face is so important that suicide is preferable to public indignity.

After this week we can hardly expect any other foreign companies to build plants in the US and give jobs to our countrymen.

Unexpected -- Again???

With unswerving regularity, the mass media daily headlines the "unexpected" events and data of the Obama administration. Yesterday the Associated Press used their worn out headline: "Jobless Claims Rise Unexpectedly." They must have believed Obama's promise about the infamous Stimulus Bill despite decades of history to the contrary.

Here is a graphic about joblessness. The figures are correct except the typo about January 2090 instead of 2009.

Also interesting to note is the difference between the way the media interprets jobless data. When George Bush was president, an unemployment rate between 5% and 6% was never praised and often used as proof of a Bush recession. On the other hand, throughout the Carter administration, the media frequently mentioned that 6% unemployment figure might reflect too high of an expectation in the modern era. During Obama's tenure, nearly all media outlets hype the good news if only the unemployment rate doesn't fall as much as predicted.

See Sweetness and Light if you want more information about Bush and unemployment.

We Knew It All Along

But, finally even the government bureaucrats have to admit that joblessness is much worse than previously reported -- 8.4 million jobs lost rather than 7.2 million. MarketWatch at WSJ tells the complete story that politicians were trying to hide. The most fascinating tidbit of the article is that the largest number of unreported job losses occurred during the first quarter of Obama's presidency.

The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever

The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever

(Posted using ShareThis)

Please click on the job chart link to see for yourself an unemployment chart from last July. It is frightening to see how bad the job situation was then and terrifying to know that it's worse now. And the only good news/spin the mass media can give is that the decline last month was not as bad as expected - whatever that means.

Unemployment at 20%?

It is according to Paul Craig Roberts: If measured according to the methodology used when I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the unemployment rate today in the US is above 20%. Moreover, there is no obvious way of reducing it. There are no factories, with work forces temporarily laid off by high interest rates, waiting for a lower interest rate policy to call their workforces back into production.

Read all of his article to find out why other economic measurements such as the inflation rate have become mere fictions since the 1990's.

Economic Forecast

This is the last paragraph from "All I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned in Genesis," that I read this morning...

"Running the printing presses day and night to churn out dollar bills is not going to revitalize the economy. At is most basic level every economy is about dealing with the “dust from the ground” of which we are made, with the rocks and soil of this planet. We aren’t like God, able to create ex nihilo; we aren’t angels who can sustain ourselves on “information.” The real stuff that makes an economy hum is fished or grown or mined. It is taking the raw materials of this earth, “by the sweat of your face,” and making it edible, wearable, or otherwise usable to some other human being that forms the basis of any economy. When we see growth there, that is when we will be back."

It reminds me of the maxim I learned in the fifties that all wealth is created by farming, fishing, mining, and manufacturing. All other industries or vocations merely served those wealth generating ones. Then in the late eighties, Everyone began to say that this was the Information Age and we no longer depended on that old maxim. At the same time, we began transforming farming into massive Agri-business enterprises that relied on government handouts and practically eliminated the family farms, began allowing other countries to fish our coastal waters without protest, began denigrating mining as environmentally harmful, and began shipping our manufacturing overseas. Those Everyones ignored the fact that computers and information technology was a form of manufacturing although they quickly began shipping all those related services overseas also.

We were lulled into thinking that because bankers and investment advisors were wealthy themselves, that they were creating wealth for our country's economy. Then last September, as it collapsed, that empire showed itself to be a mere house of cards as our personal wealth collapsed with it.

I pray that we have the will to rebuild the US economic base.

It's Worse Than They Will Admit

Obama supporters reported with great pride that the unemployment rate was ONLY 9.4% and they proclaimed that recession may be on the rebound. His spokesmen were honest enough to admit that although today's report was fairly good, the unemployment rate could still top 10%.

But if you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, you can observe all the different ways that unemployment rates are computed. These are the seasonally adjusted figures for July, 2009.

U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force.......................5.1

U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force....6.2

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)..........9.4

U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers...............................9.8

U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.......................10.7

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers........16.3

NOTE: Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.

Card Check!

Al Franken began his Senate career by becoming a co-sponsor of the totally misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (S. 560), better known as Card Check. That is no surprise since he received almost $300,000 from unions in his campaign to win that seat in a state where only 16% of the workforce is unionized. Membership in unions has been declining drastically in all states, so union leaders desperately want Card Check to pass so they can hold on to their power.

Americans for Tax Reform has several articles discussing the effects on our economy if Card Check passes. But the best one is an interactive game, Get Card Checked!, complete with documentation for each decision chosen during the game. I highly recommend you play it, then send it to your Congressional Clowns.

The Real Recession (As Opposed to The One The Media Tried to Whip Up for Six Years)

It may take awhile to get back to normal economically. Even the Washington Post has admitted this week that the “Stimulus” is not working. Unfortunately, the knee jerk reaction by some politicians is to start demanding a second “Stimulus” bill.

I think the better reaction would be to pass a bill making it a felony for any Congressional Clown to vote on a bill he has not read. If anyone had bothered to read it before passing the blasted thing, they would have understood that is was nothing more than a conglomeration of Democrat pet projects cobbled together with no real regard for stimulating the economy.

Unemployment continues to rise everywhere except Washington, DC. The official figure, based on people filing for unemployment checks, is 9.5%. According to a Wall Street Journal article last week, the real unemployment figure may be closer to 16.9%. That percentage also includes those who no longer receive unemployment checks, either because they accepted part time jobs in lieu of full time work or gotten out of the job market all together.

Then there is an insightful article in yesterday’s American Thinker about the states with big deficits. When the talk centers on mere numbers, the figures vaguely seem bad, but when taken as a percentage of state budgets, one gets a much better understanding of the crisis. For example, California’s deficit of $53,700,000,000 represents 58% of its budget. According to AT, the reason for the deficits is that tax revenues are down. In fact, tax revenues have dropped more than they did during the Great Depression.

"Stimulus" Prediction VS "Stimulus" Reality

Have you succumbed to a mind numbed from constantly hearing big numbers? Watch this new penny visualization from YouTube about the jobs lost WITH the "Stimulus" bill. After a short minute and a half, you'll have a much better understanding of the problems of unemployment.

Don't Read The Headlines!

Journalists discovered ages ago that most people only read the headlines in a newspaper before heading to the comics, lifestyle, or sports section. The next most frequently read portions are photo captions and opening paragraphs. Some will read the final paragraph, but few will read the entire article no matter how important the story is. Radio and television news, because of time contraints, usually consist of mere headlines and leads (opening paragraphs).

Today's journalists carefully craft their headlines, captions, and leads to promote the message they want the public to remember. The Media Rule (I think we're up to four now) for today is: Always be suspicious of headlines and leads in this era of unbridled bias in major media outlets.

For example, throughout the Bush administration, most economic reports were couched in negative terms. Even a tiny rise in unemployment was often accompanied by a story about a newly homeless person or a family facing foreclosure because of job loss. Little attention was paid to the times when unemployment rates were well below what had been considered normal (6%). The R word for recession was bandied about until most people thought we were in the middle of one two years before it actually began.

Now that Obama is in office, the unemployment stories feature people who gladly use the opportunity to vacation, do volunteer work, or garden instead of those in dire financial straits. They even coined a new word, "funemployment" instead of unemployment, to describe the situation.

Friday's unemployment news stories were classic examples of "lying though headlines." By today practically everyone knows that the rate of new applications for unemployment slowed for the first time since September. Most quickly concluded that the recession will soon be over.

Hardly anyone knows that although the rate slowed, the percentage (9.4%) is now the highest in 27 years. Buried in the middle of an AP story is this sentence:
If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.4 percent in May, the highest on records dating to 1994.*

*Although the sentence above is technically correct, it hardly gives an accurate portrayal of the facts. The highest recorded unemployment rate since 1948 is 10.8% in November and December of 1982. The unemployment rate in 1994 ranged between 5.5% and 6.6%. Go to this Department of Labor statistics page to see the official tabulations. And don't forget that 16.4% is higher than any year listed in the table.

Dealership Closing - Please Explain

I cannot understand the excuses being given to justify the closing of automobile dealerships and I am especially concerned with the rumors that the ones chosen for extinction donated to the Republicans not the Democrats.

Dealerships are profit centers for the auto manufacturers, not cost centers. Detroit gets paid immediately when cars to Joe Blow’s dealership are shipped. So why should Detroit care about competition between Joe Blow’s and Sam Sixpack’s dealerships?

That concern rightly belongs to the local banks who lend money to Joe and Sam to cover their costs until the cars are sold. Since the banks also need plenty of business right now, those loans make money for them too. If either Joe or Sam go out of business, it remains a local concern, not one belonging to the Oval Office.

When local banks lose business and local dealerships are shut down by imperial decree, employees in two firms lose their jobs. That adds demand for government assistance through food stamps and unemployment income while reducing tax money sent to D.C. USA Today says that $1 out of every $6 spent now comes from government largesse. How long can this continue before collapse?

So who’s benefiting from this?

Recommended Reading

Actually, I highly recommend Randall Hoven's article, "Here's What's Happening on the Economy," at American Thinker. It provides an explanatory timeline for those of us who are suffering from the constant battering of bad news, bad decisions, and bad political moves of the last few months.

Things Will Get Worse in July

Unless Congress has the courage to change in the minimum wage law that it passed in 2007, the minimum wage will increase in July from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour. When that happens, especially during a recession, people on the bottom of the economic ladder will lose jobs or never get hired for them. It happens every time. Yet the Democrats seem to be wedded to the notion that increasing the minimum wage will help the “poor.”

The biggest impact will be on the small business owner, the very entity that tends to hire more new workers than large concerns. So many new workers will never get the chance to earn money and learn job skills, so they can move up the career ladder. Instead, many of them will end up staying home playing video games waiting for someone to help them.

Orator???

I hate to be the naysayer in the crowd, but I find it hard to admire Obama's eloquence when he repeatedly lies to emphasize his point. To me, that demeans the speaker and destroys the message. For example, he has said numerous times that we are in the worst condition since The Great Depression. But, both the misery index and unemployment were higher during the Carter administration than they have been at any time in the last four years. The year that Carter took office, the Misery Index was 13.55% and when he left office, it was 20.76. The index, a sum of unemployment rate and inflation rate, during Bush's two terms ranged from 7.37 to 9.61.
The unemployment rate in 1932 was 23.6%, on February 4, 2009, it was a mere 7.6, quite similar to the rate during the Carter years. Except for the last four months of Bush's two terms, the unemployment rate was below 6%.

Now We Know . . .

In the last couple of days, as more information has come to light about the “Stimulus” Bill, we finally see how it will create some new jobs -- the new federal infrastructure to monitor and control health services in America.

Using Tom Daschle’s book as a blueprint, the new department will access all medical records for every person in the U.S. The same party that railed against monitoring phone calls from Al Quaeda suspects to people in the US as an invasion of privacy now wants federal office workers checking out your weight, blood pressure, and medications. It doesn’t take much to imagine “accidental” leaks of embarrassing information, given the proper situation.

Other functionaries will keep tabs on the physicians to be sure they quit acting like solo practitioners, concerned only with the health of their patients, and train them to accept the federal guidelines for practicing medicine. Direct intervention by the government in the management of every patient will be easy with the records available online.

Statisticians will be employed to figure out the cost effectiveness of each treatment on each patient. If the cost compared to what they decide is your expected longevity is too high, then the proposed treatment will be denied.

In other words, the emergency "Stimulus" Bill brings us socialized medicine by stealth.

Drill Here. Drill Now. Create Jobs. Boost Economy.

My pain free solution to the economic malaise is to start allowing Americans to make use of the natural resources that we already own. If sanctions against drilling for our own oil, building nuclear power plants here, mining and processing our own oil shale, and using our own coal were immediately lifted, the economy would surge. Think about the number of jobs that would become available, not to mention the increase in consumer and investor confidence. Understand that we would become far less vulnerable to foreign attacks or blackmail because we would be energy independent.

Frivolous lawsuits would have to be disallowed or settled within six months. This is no time to fight the energy companies.