Category Archives: The Economy

The “declining unemployment” shuck

Posted on May 3, 2014 | 3 comments

If you believe the feds, and Associated Press apparently does since it doesn’t even bother to source its claim of 6.3 percent unemployment until the fourth paragraph, things are looking up:

“Employers added 288,000 jobs across industries from manufacturing to construction to accounting. Even local governments hired. The unemployment rate sank to 6.3 percent, its lowest point since 2008, from 6.7 percent.”

You’d be better off reading the DrudgeReport which gives the AP/Feds claim third place after “92,594,000 Americans Not Working Hits Record” and “Women Not In Labor Force Hits Record High.”

The first is from cBS’s DC affiliate, which notes: “The [6.3 percent] occurred because the number of people working or seeking work fell. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count people not looking for a job as unemployed.”

Isn’t that convenient?

The second headline is from the Media Research Center’s CNS News: “This means that there were 55,116,000 women 16 and older who were in the civilian noninstitutional population who not only did not have a job, they did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. That is up 428,000 from the 54,688,000 women who were not in the labor force in March.”

An increase of 428,000 unemployed women alone is a bit higher than the AP/Fed’s 288,000 rosy uptick glow.

Does anyone trust the feds anymore?

UPDATE:  The new D.C. Walmart got 23,000 applications for 600 jobs.

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Posted in Obamalot, The Economy

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Whatever happened to Peak Oil?

Posted on May 1, 2014 | 4 comments

Fracking seems to have slain this resources issue, once and for all.

Or maybe not. Some Peak Oilers, enablers of the hottest meme of 2005, are still out there. They’re just biding their time, sure as shootin’ that their pet issue will return to haunt humanity and send us all back to the horse-n-buggy era: few medicines and consumer goods made of wood and paper.

Environmentalism is a religion, you know?

Via Instapundit.

4 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, Science/Engineering, Texana, The Economy

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Those solar power satellites

Posted on April 29, 2014 | 3 comments

SPS09 You may recall the concept, but you may not have realized that it would entail the creation of a major American industry, employing thousands of astronauts in geosynchronous orbit around the earth and many thousands more people on the ground. NASA, of course, has studied it in detail.

There’s even a pretty good scifi novel about the rigors of the orbital work on something similar. Not that we should expect the First Church of Environmentalism  and their political cronies to support it. On that score, the greenie weenies are in bed with the oil & gas companies who would almost certainly oppose it as well.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Space, The Economy

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Texas entry requirements

Posted on April 27, 2014 | 8 comments

J.D., over at Mouth of the Brazos, has a cool idea to help winnow out some of these refugees from the Democrat economy who keep flooding into Texas—especially, for me, the Californicators:

“I have been daydreaming lately about mandatory criteria to move to Texas. I would welcome any additions to my nascent list.

“1. Watch or read the mini-series or book series of Lonesome Dove. Written, closed-book, exams will be done at the driver’s license bureau. If you make less than 50% on the quiz – no license.”

My suggested “No. 2. Explain the history of the Revolution, especially the timeline of the Alamo and Travis’s letters, and have the Victory or Death one memorized. Extra points for timelines of Goliad and San Jacinto. Less than 80% – no license.”

Any other suggestions out there?

UPDATE:  Here’s one newcomer who can skip these requirements. Considering that Toyota is bringing its own jobs along.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Texana, The Economy

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The United States of Envy

Posted on April 20, 2014 | 5 comments

Wormtongue has proven to be a great divider, instead of the uniter his supporters claimed he would be way back in the (relatively) low-unemployment days of 2008, before his party got both their hands on taxation and business regulation. While his political bashing of the “rich” and other “class warfare” games may appeal to some who should know better, it’s a perilous temptation:

“Voters who will [this fall] hear the Obama call for envy and redistribution should ask themselves and others: Would you prefer to live in an America where the market is dynamic and opportunity abounds, or in France, where unemployment is high and tax rates are crushing? Don’t you prefer opportunity to envy?”

You’d better. Because the Worm’s peddling of envy is just another of his many lies. He knows, as Charles Murray and others have said that the U.S. increasingly is becoming an oligarchy whose government is run mostly for the benefit of the rich and powerful who can afford to grease the palms of the bureaucrats and the pols who do the running. Politicians like the Worm depend on the “rich” for campaign contributions and, indeed, for their political futures.

And the “rich” don’t worry about his threats. They know they’re empty. They know he wouldn’t dare cross them. Even if he really tried to, they could shelter their investment income from his proposed taxes while what’s left of the dwindling American middle class takes the hit in their payroll checks.

Murray and others say the only way to reverse this oligarchy is by a cultural shift in which the pols stop looking for bribes and other graft and start really serving the people. The only way to get pols like that is to be careful who you vote for and, for starters, ignore the ones who peddle the phony rhetoric of envy and redistribution.

Via Instapundit

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Posted in The Culture, The Economy

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The carbon dioxide shuck

Posted on March 30, 2014 | 2 comments

“Almost every global environmental scare of the past half century proved exaggerated including the population ‘bomb,’ pesticides, acid rain, the ozone hole, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops and killer bees. In every case, institutional scientists gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than the extreme voices had argued. Global warming is no different.”

—Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist and member of the British House of Lords.

Meanwhile, Wormtongue, the shuck’s most prominent proponent, is siccing his cronies on “deniers.”

UPDATE:  And the Dictator’s Club’s favored alarmists are getting shriller than ever.

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Posted in Obamalot, Science/Engineering, The Economy, Weather/Climate

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Crony capitalism

Posted on March 25, 2014 | 1 comment

TechDirt has a notion that an honest journalist (there are some) could use to start investigating public-employee corruption: Cities that ban ride-sharing to protect their licensed taxi companies. Such as lefty Seattle.

Crony capitalism (as opposed to free-market capitalism) is about bribing pols to get them to outlaw competition—or favor one group over another. Much like Worm’s handouts to those wind and solar companies which promptly went belly-up. It’s fair to assume some of their money went back to him and his cronies or was so explicit in the deal that the money never left their pockets.

Not that we’ll likely ever know. There’s a limit even to “honest” journalism. Fear of being labeled “racist,” for instance. And worse, when their fellow Democrats are involved.

Via Instapundit.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The Economy

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