Category: Forward!

7 Year Recovery Watch Remains On High Alert

Tom Blumer;

During the past several months, business scribes and broadcasters have largely pretended that all is well, constructing and maintaining a Potemkin-like facade of a prosperous economy, even as the vast majority of hard-number economic indicators turned in performances ranging from middling to awful. To prop up their false image, they concentrated most of the commerce-related news they delivered to low-information voters and low-awareness news consumers on the job market, the economy’s one supposedly strong area, and positive consumer and corporate sentiment surveys.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors

Just another day in Hopeychangistan;

Two years after being completed, $8-million-worth of solar panels at a Little Rock, Ark., Veterans Affairs hospital have never been turned on, and now the hospital is tearing down some of the panels.
A chunk of the roughly 7,000 inactive solar panels outside the Little Rock Veterans Affairs Hospital was recently dismantled to make way for a new parking garage…

Related: VA Hospital Wait Times Still Extreme

The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire

TaxiCab Depressions;

I wake up every day around two or three in the afternoon, make a cup of coffee and turn on the news, just waiting for the day when it finally happens, the day that something finally snaps, and I am listening to Sheppard Smith breathlessly trying to describe shaky video of a mob of 500,000 or 800,000 pissed off taxpayers that has invaded Washington and are lining every street in D.C., armed to the teeth, and erecting scaffolding on the National Mall.
Actually, that’s not how I think it is going to go, but I promise you… what can not go on, will NOT go on.

A worthy rant.
h/t David

How’s That Hopey Changey Thing Working Out For Ya?

Tom Blumer.

The nation’s political and media elites were quite pleased with themselves when the November 2006 elections brought about that result, largely because their daily hostility to all things Republican and/or conservative contributed mightily to it. They were absolutely ecstatic when Barack Obama, Mr. Perfectly Creased Pants, won the November 2008 presidential election and took office in January 2009.
As will be seen shortly, the former event marked the beginning of the U.S. economy’s worst eight-year stretch since 1945-1952. Obama’s presence in the Oval Office until January 2017 virtually ensures that we’ll have at least two more years of the policies which brought on that miserable result.

Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?

Rick Moran;

The Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is warning that the new regulations governing the internet which will be voted on later this month, will grant government control of the net, increase taxes, and require hidden fees that will make the internet less free, more expensive, and less innovative.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued a statement on Friday that highlighted some of the changes in the internet being sought by the government. Indeed, some of the details are alarming.

More: The FCC’s Big Internet Power Grab Comes Directly From the White House

How’s That Hopey Changey Thing Working Out For Ya?

Gallup CEO Jim Clifton:

Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.
None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job — if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks — the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news — currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment.
There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.
Yet another figure of importance that doesn’t get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find — in other words, you are severely underemployed — the government doesn’t count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.
There’s no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.

Forward, Comrade! Interest Costs Poised to Surpass Defense and Nondefense Discretionary Spending

Embargo Lifted, Fidel Alive!

Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations.
Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but ‘if these problems aren’t resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn’t make any sense.’
No way, the White House said Thursday.

With a wink.

Navigation