Sep 03 2010
Democrats Had Their Chance – Muffed It
As the summer of 2010 ends, people are desperate to get back to work – but there are not enough jobs. Thanks to the Democrats lame, liberal fantasy about government-based stimulus spending, the majority of the economy that DOES NOT work for Uncle Sam is still struggling to get by. After 2 years of liberal madness in DC, we are over $2 trillion dollars deeper in debt and beginning to see the rise of unemployment rates again:
Private employers hired more workers over the past three month than first thought, lifting hopes for the weak economy. But the unemployment rate rose in August for the first time in four months as more people entered the market looking for work.
Companies added a net total of 67,000 new jobs last month …
Overall, the economy lost 54,000 jobs as 114,000 temporary census positions came to an end. For the first time this year, the manufacturing sector lost jobs – down a net total of 27,000 for the month. State and local governments shed 10,000 positions.
Temporary employment rose by nearly 17,000, after ticking down in July.
The jobless rate rose to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent in July.
Emphasis mine. A good fraction of the new jobs were temporary (which means low paying in many cases). I believe the stay even mark is around 300,000 jobs created per month – something we have not seen in years. As I have posted before, the real unemployment rate is now around 11%- Â assuming the work force was at its normal levels. In that post I noted how the current unemployment rate is driven by the fact there are fewer people in the work force, not by any economic growth or ‘saved’ jobs claimed by liberal leaders in DC. In that post I showed how the July work force numbers over the decade turned down in 2008, and continued to nose dive through 2009 and 2010, as people gave up (click to enlarge). There should be 2.5 million more people in the current workforce right now given the last decade’s working population growth. That work force size equated to 10.9% unemployment (U3) in July, which means we hit 11% now in August.
The people who had stepped out of the economy are now coming back in at a rate that is dwarfing this pathetic growth. 67,000 jobs may have been created in August, but the work force size grew by 369,000 from July to August. That is why the overall unemployment rate went up – more people looking for basically the same number of jobs.
Here’s the graph showing the failure of the Democrat economic policies to turn the economy around since they took office in January 2009 (source data – click to enlarge).
We have experienced unemployment rates greater than 9% since May 0f 2009, meaning we have been stuck in this rut for most of the time the liberals in DC fiddled around with playing doctor and wrecking our health care system (effecting at least 3 million senior citizen plans!). The underemployment rate (U6) is even worse, edging up to 16.7%. It is too late for the distracted Democrats to fix things now, even if they did wake up and realize their Keynesian policies were no match for tried and true broad tax and spending cuts, they have stubbornly refused to admit they screwed up.
It is now the turn of the American voter, and we will fix things. I would wager the post popular headline on November 3rd, 2010 is going to be ‘Can You Hear Us Now!!’. No more excuses, no more spin, no more blaming others. DC – your fired!’
Update: Here’s some more bad jobs news. While 369,000 workers joined the job hunt from July to August, 283,000 jobs were lost during the Obama administration’s “Recovery Summer”. Â So folks – did all the liberal self aggrandizing really help? Did the Baghdad Bob approach to facing the economic problems succeed in making America better off?
Obama and his team are thinking about targeted tax breaks that pundits say are hard to understand let alone apply for. When all Obama needs to do is create certainty.
Our government needs a budget.
We need to know what the taxes on work are going to be. Up or down Mr. President?
We need to know what the regulations and health care obligations are going to be for job makers. The problem is that even the rule makers didn’t know because the rules aren’t made and the effects and unintended problems are not known and won’t be worked out for years. Really, how smart is it to pass legislation that is not written and won’t be finished until 2014, yet will impact every worker and every employer?
The one thing we need is CERTAINTY……it is the one thing that Obama has never understood.
AJ,
This is the “good reason” that Democrats are losing the Senate races on Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Democratic domestic policies kill job creation, and working class people want jobs, not broken promises.
See:
http://dailycaller.com/2010/09/03/battleground-senate-races-in-ohio-and-pennsylvania-slipping-from-democrats/
…Republican Senate candidates in the battleground working class states of Ohio and Pennsylvania have begun to build big leads in the last few weeks over their opponents.
.
Republican Rob Portman’s polling lead in Ohio over Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher has grown from an average of 1.8 percent in mid-August to 6.7 percent, as of Thursday evening. Just in the last week, Portman has gained two points in the Real Clear Politics average.
.
And in Pennsylvania, former Republican Congressman Pat Toomey has gone from just 2 points up on Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak in mid-August to now being 8.5 percentage points ahead. Like Portman, Toomey gained two points just in the last week.
.
and
.
“Conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer. The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low,†Sabato wrote.
>Obama and his team are thinking about targeted tax breaks
>that pundits say are hard to understand let alone apply for.
Obama’s people are out to create a campaign fund raising oopportunity for Democrats.
Do you have the information on tax revenue? I never trust a lot of these aggregate government numbers like UI and GDP because they’re based on samples. But they can’t lie about the revenue coming in to the Treasury.
You gotta just shake your head at how Reuters spun this news this mornig as “Unexpectedly Good Unemployment News!” They don’t even try to make their lies believable anymore – they are pulling all of the upper decks off their ship and throwing the wood into the boiler, just to try and keep it going for a few more months.
Reuters and the rest of the MSM don’t seem to realize, or care, that there is no path back from the place that they are heading to. They are throwing away everything, and gaining nothing. Perhaps this is how all once-great organizations die, but it’s still shocking to watch.
for Paul – the problem with tax revenue is that reliable numbers typically lag badly – it can be up to a year sometimes before the govm’t really knows what it collected in any given time period. A lot of businesses may owe money but put off paying it for a couple quarters; conversely treasury may think they owe it and find out a year later that they really didn’t. Yeah, it’s cliche to say that it sure ain’t run like a business, but that’s the way it is.
Trent, Obama could easily raise money for the Democrats.
All he needs is a dunking tank. Donate $100, and you get to try and dunk Obama.
Donate $1000, and we’ll fill the tank with piranah first.
What I find so totally disgusting is MSM falling all over themselves spinning the economic news to make Obama policies look not so bad. If they really wanted to help the country, they would give Obama the good thrashing he deserves, it might make it easier for him to change course. But I guess I’m asking the media to work for the public good instead of Obama.
I agree with most if not all of what you say and above all I hope you are right. If Republicans don’t sweep the board in November, this country is in bigger trouble than we are in right now, and right now is as bad as I can remember.
My one worry is that some of the candidates who are running on the Republican side are not as good as they need to be. Not all, by any means. There are some good people. The other issue is that most elections, especially congressional elections, are decided on a local issue basis. Locally, Republicans need to be doing better–or so it seems.
For example, I can’t say much about the woman running against Harry Reid, but Reid’s seat should have been a gimme. He should be down by 13 points. Instead, it’s a horse race.
The senate will not change hands if easy wins like NV become losses.
AJ,
We now have the Democratic money comittment “flaming datum” I spoke of earlier.
The Democrats are spending to try and retain control of both Houses of Congress in an all or nothing negative campaign spending strategy.
The Democratic Congressional incumbents and the DCCC have decided to drop their huge wad of campaign cash _NOW_.
Most Democratic incumbents are engaged in heavy waves of negative campaigning trying to “localize” their elections, before things get any worse.
IMO, this is an attempt to stem the Republican national wave before absentee voting starts and it is an all or nothing gamble.
If it works, they will stem Democratic losses. Retain the Senate, and possibly keep Democratic losses in the high 30’s or low 40’s
If it does not, they are going to get killed when the Business groups go all in with their October Political attack ad spending.
See this link I found over on the NRO Campaign ’10 blog:
http://www.rgj.com/article/20100903/NEWS19/
Republican Jesse Kelly was still
basking in the glow of his victory in an Arizona
congressional primary when the Democratic
congresswoman he’s trying to unseat released a
scathing TV ad branding him “a risk” who would
gamble away people’s retirement savings.
.
It took Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ campaign just hours
to start hitting Kelly on the airwaves for his stance
on Social Security. That’s because Giffords, like
dozens of other Democrats around the country
facing tough re-election bids in a political
environment that favors the GOP, was trying to score
a knockout punch against her rival before he had a
chance to introduce himself to voters.
.
It’s a time-tested tactic in political campaigns,
particularly when an incumbent is facing a lesser-
known challenger, or when a seat is up for grabs
after a lawmaker’s retirement or departure. And with
Democrats at risk of losing their grip on Congress
in the November elections, going negative early and
often is regarded as a necessity.
.
Polls show voters leaning toward the GOP –
disillusioned with President Barack Obama,
dissatisfied with the direction of the country and s
kittish about the sagging economy. So the idea,
strategists and campaign watchers say, is for
Democrats and their allies to portray Republicans as
an even worse alternative to the devil they know.
.
“Things are looking so bad for Democrats that their
only hope is to come out early and simply disqualify
the Republican,” said University of Wisconsin
political scientist Ken Goldstein, who studies
political advertising.
Excuse me, that should have been the NRO “Battle ’10” blog here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/battle10/245611/mid-day-miscellany-silver-state-elizabeth-crum
That would be the “Battle of the Bulge” strategy, Trent.
Next comes the Bridge at Remagen!
WWS,
It is more like Saddam Hussein’s “Battle of Khafji” strategy.
Advertisers don’t sell advertising to “send a message for their customer” so much as they make ads that make the people buying them feel good about themselves.
The people creating negative advertising for Democrats and their various “independent Leftist interest groups” are going to provide them with material that validates Leftist feeling.
That means towards the end of this election cycle it will include a lot of negative advertising directly attacking the general public.
You are already seeing it in terms of what the MSM talking heads are saying about the Ground Zero Mosque and Arizona’s anti-Illegal immigration laws.
And it is getting worse, see:
“American voters are a bunch of spoiled brats”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090203992.html
This will happen soon with Democratic-Leftist affiliated political advocacy groups as well.
It will be a very bad case of Democratic Party friendly fire in the last weeks of October.
[…] CNBC: It’s not the economy, stupid – hotair.com 09/03/2010 Hope and stasis? more… Democrats Had Their Chance – Muffed It – strata-sphere.com 09/03/2010 As the summer of 2010 ends, people are desperate to get back […]
They only have 30 days left before mail-in ballots begin to come in. I’m guessing that the majority of the voters vote early so that leaves them one and a half month left to change most of the voters’ minds….
Morning Bell: The Audacity of Failure
(Obama jobs deficit stands at 7.5 million)
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/03/morning-bell-the-audacity-of-failure/
excerpt:
By every objective measure, President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has been a complete failure. When President Obama was selling his stimulus plan to the American people, he promised it would save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. At the time, employment stood at about 134.3 million, according to the Labor Department’s most commonly used measure. That established an Obama jobs target for December 2010 at 137.8 million. According to the latest jobs report, total U.S. employment stood at 130.3 million in August, which means the cumulative Obama jobs deficit stands at 7.5 million.
From the song: “ya gotta know when to hold em’ and you gotta know when to fold em”…….Every business in the USA is “on hold” to see whether Obamacare costs them a fortune or is repealed.