I am still feeling the tax sting this year as new rates and taxes gouge our tiny company. The result – had to lay someone off. Yep, when it comes down to paying taxes or paying employees the tax man wins out. Sequestration is causing government programs to freeze up as they try and find [...]

The country is need of a wake up call. A brutal, ice-bucket-in-the-face, wake up call. The country needs to hit the fiscal cliff – which is just a way of facing the fact we need to deal with our out-of-control spending and the cost to all of us on getting right. I have not been [...]

So, AJStrata is not posting as much as he used to. Why? What’s he up to? What’s happened to the Strata Sphere? Where’s AJStrata? To be honest, he is (I am) very busy with Holiday activities with the family (preparation & celebration), end of year activities for the business, a new phase on an ongoing [...]

Hard to believe this, but after a lot of thought I think the best path forward for this nation is to let Harry Reid and President Obama have their way and let sequestration go into effect. The Tea Party/Libertarian in me has concluded that another round of deficit spending and kicking the can down the [...]

Both Italy and California experience that wonderful Mediterranean Climate that people wish to live in. And they both produce some of the world’s finest wine, as well as being renown tourists magnets. But they also are two of the areas in which leftist, socialist policies have made financial promises the tax base just cannot support, [...]

America is in bad shape, thanks to the irresponsible and naive leftist policies that were rushed into place under Obama, Reid and Pelosi starting in 2009.  Sadly, one of the three is still in control of a major portion of the  legislative process, so while 2010 brought us one of the most historic political drubbings [...]

It was only a matter of time. As our federal government bloated outward under liberal naivete regarding the true source of societal growth, evolution, innovation and progress, it was only a matter of  time. In the silly liberal world view, these attributes of society come from bureaucrats who are supposedly devoid of human foibles, and [...]

One thing that always amazes me with the left is their idiotic drive to believe in a biased number over brutal reality.  Last week the monthly unemployment numbers came out and we are supposedly on a glide path to economic repair because the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1%. The fact is the 8.1% unemployment number [...]

I think one of the deep nagging problems with this election cycle is how we are experiencing the demise of big-government intervention as we collectively realize there are no easy (or cheap) answers to be found in the mythical magic of government as our savior. Government has a role to play, but as been shown [...]

OK, the only thing I get out of this story (besides heart burn that my family is going $70K in debt simply because Obama is in office) is to wonder how incompetent you have to be to not control your spending, so you avoid looking to the entire world like you can’t control your spending: [...]

All you need to know about the latest unemployment numbers is here. It is the same dodgy data I have pointed to for almost a year (see here, here, here and here for example, note sometimes I forgot to update the month label on the charts, but the data is up to the last month). [...]

I always marvel at people who think PR is more powerful than reality. The bureaucrats in DC are a prime example of this weird belief system. They put out dodgy unemployment numbers and expect everyone suffering from a poor job market to suddenly think everything is OK! It’s clearly magic wand time in DC again. [...]

With the Christmas season now over, I expect to see the weekly jobs picture start to slide back into the danger zone as the holiday part time work load disappears. And we can see that already in this week’s job data (which data reports through 12/24/11): In the week ending December 24, the advance figure [...]

I had to read this liberal’s epiphany and laugh a sad laugh: But today, the most important sentence isn’t a report on something that just happened, but a fresh look at something that’s been happening for the last three years. In particular, it’s this sentence by the Financial Times’ Ed Luce, who writes, “According to [...]

Update: Hot Air notes someone else did another calculation – 11% – end update One thing this recession has taught a lot of us is the fact that some federal statistics simply suck. Take the unemployment rate. People honestly think this is the number of people who want a job and don’t have one. But [...]