An Employment Lament

Tens of thousands of physically able persons of employable age left the Michigan workforce during the age of Obama. While it isn't entirely fair to blame this all on Obama (lets face it, Jennifer Granholm did a reasonably good job of pushing them toward the employment door) it does seem peculiar, does it not, that the unemployment rate can actually fall as fewer jobs are created? Yet this is what happened for many months.

Indeed, the national and state unemployment rates have been on a slow decline over the past couple of years even though slogging job seekers were enjoying little success looking for employment. And, while I'm thinking about it, many of those lucky workers who found work found themselves underemployed by education and fractionally employed when measured against a forty hour work week. Yet, the unemployment rate fell.

And the press celebrated.

Wannabe workers wore out shoe soles beating the pavement. Their distant relatives developed carpel tunnel syndrome filling out their unemployment claims. Businesses that hired did so reluctantly. Many other businesses reluctantly didn't hire as they waited out the uncertainty brought on by a burgeoning regulatory bureaucracy.

None of this did the unemployed much good and they tired of looking for work. They became qualified for disability in record numbers. They retired early in record numbers. They decided they actually could survive on government benefits in record numbers. They started watching Alice reruns.

While the falling unemployment rate was celebrated by the media and helped a benevolent government lay plausible claim to a warming economic climate, people suffered. One hundred thousand newly created jobs month after month became "positive evidence of an expanding economy for the country." First time weekly jobless claims of 350,000 or so were again signs of a strengthening economy. Neither of these numbers is at all positive yet they were represented as such by a left leaning media adherent to government worship.

Unemployed Masters of Business Administration became Masters of Burger Flipping. Former sales managers became sales clerks. On the bright side, those with Women's Studies majors remained unemployed but now have more leisure time in which to protest a paternalistic society's war on women.

Now we are seeing the flip side. The underrepresented unemployment rate is beginning to rise even though a relatively larger number of jobs are being created, all this because the discouraged are once again seeking work.

Obama has already been reelected and many of his policies still aren't done damaging the work force. Obamacare is going to be disastrous, the EPAs war on coal and oil is going to be a brutal punishment for anyone trying to pay the bills and buy food on his own dime, while overarching intrusions into other formerly free markets will (and have) needlessly chill profits and their greatest byproduct--private sector jobs.

More people are already on public assistance than at any other time in American history and poverty rates are rising even as that unemployment rate begins to creep up again.

More road signs than ever point to Greece.

Self Explanatory Picture Assesses the State of US Foreign Policy

I found this little gem over at Doug Ross's place.

A Sleeker Rat Hole

I travel on a budget. I have to. My expense account will only pay for so much while I'm in the great city of Atlanta.

When I first began traveling here my expense account was even smaller than it is now and it required of me some great maneuvering (and a bit of a strong stomach) to survive without picking up something questionable.

The worst horror story I have is of a place called the Austell Inn, now, thankfully, under new management. I had stayed there on two prior occasions and each time had told myself I would never come back. So, of course, there I was on my third visit.

I had the misfortune of visiting during the week of transition from a horrible and perhaps nonexistent management team to a team of naivete so beyond its capabilities it would today make John Kerry look magnificent in his duties of Sec. of State.

Anyway, it was the final night of my stay and after working a typical twelve to fourteen hour day in the fair city I got back to my room to find no towels, no bathroom tissue, and the bed stripped with the bedding laying in a pile on the bed. I immediately marched down to the management office to claim a refund and, just so that you know I was marching on the moral high ground, I didn't even plan to complain about the spilled Chinese delivery in the elevator that had been there for two days or the disposable baby diapers that were hanging from the tree in front of my room that had been there for the duration of my stay. After all, this wasn't the Loews Anatole.

I entered the office with steam coming from my ears and began lodging my list of complaints. Bedding, blah, dirty shower, blah, towels, blah, toilet tissue, blah blah.

I was assured that management was truly sorry and that, when I came back next time, I wouldn't be subjected to the same poor conditions. Oh, he was sorry to say, the room rate was going up about $120 per week. Incidentally, there was no refund.

Which brings me to Detroit's newest favorite dope, the swill peddling Rep. Gary Peters who wants to assure the federal government that the next time his fair city receives a bunch of federal grant money that the city will change its ways and spend that money wisely. If they will only give the city one more chance and spend some money on Detroit the habitual dysfunction will be miraculously replaced with efficiency.

To assure this transition all the federal government has to do is create a federal interagency task force to watch the dollars so they don't just disappear in a puff of smoke like most of the last few billion did.

I want to make sure I have this straight...a government now behind on its bills some $17,000,000,000.000.00 (if you don't count the $80,000,000,000,000.00 or so in unfunded liabilities) will become, if Peters has his way, the actuary-savior over Detroit's malfeasance. Or, put another way, removing local responsibility and control and transferring it hundreds of miles outside the city limits will somehow make it easier to scrutinize the next sludge removal contract while improving the preventative maintenance program for city ambulances, fire trucks and police cruisers. Or, put even another way, that same government $17,000,000,000,000.00 in debt and hundreds of miles away from the city of Detroit, will help create more efficiency and cost effectiveness by growing larger and throwing money down a sleeker rat hole.

I didn't go back to the Austell Inn even though it was under new management. For all I know the linen is still stacked on the bed some three years later. And Detroit doesn't deserve one more federal dollar and no sane individual on Earth would ever write it another check. But in all fairness to Peters, he isn't suggesting that individuals give the city any more money. No, he is suggesting that the federal government borrow huge amounts of additional dollars in the name of those individuals to send to his city to be overseen by the likes of that dope Gary Peters.

Somehow that makes it okay.

Syria...a short reflection

By golly, that's the kind of foreign policy I want my country to pursue, a backtracked sleep induced befuddlement that ends up perfectly parked in front of the Motel 6 that even Clark Griswold would be proud of. And Jugears is there in the front seat declaring "we've made good time."

We don't want any more war. We certainly don't want any more war where our armed forces are required to fight on the side of al Qaeda. No national interest apparent. No unwavering proof that Assad has actually used chemical weapons (though certainly our supposed allies in this fight will use them if given the chance on those filthy Jews living just across the border.) Not. Going. To. End. Well.

We've made good time here indeed. Only one week out from shooting off a couple bottle rockets across the Syrian border in an attack of "unbelievably small" proportions, Vladdy Putin has managed to shove our Fearless Leader into a lunch sack size room of maneuverability. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Lurch is busy scurrying around trying to find someone else's medals to toss into the White House grass while Eric Holder, for his part, will settle at suing Texas.

It's as if a kindergarten class was placed in charge of our foreign policy just before nap time.

Putin, a classic tyrant of historic proportions is able to spout his KGB styled propaganda across American newsprint because our Commander in Chief is totally out of his element. Elections do matter after all. Even beyond the economics and the racial divide, beyond the fascism and central planning, beyond the tyranny and a departure from the rule of law, this country is being laughed at by the biggest ass on the world stage.

An "I told you so" at this point is totally gratuitous. Besides, Putin already said it.

What a sad day.

Your tax (and tuition) dollars at work

Methinks rape does not mean what he thinks it means.

Full professor William Penn of MSU has made his judgment about Republicans. He has labeled them racist, rapists, userers and, come to think of it, he isn't too impressed with their complexions either. To the degree that they are human at all, GOPers have become neo-zombies having sucked their ill begotten wealth from its planet victim.

It is an odd judgment coming from someone who can put in a 15 hour work week huddled warmly amongst like minded (and like challenged) peers pulling down $150,000 a year while also collecting some of the best employment benefits known to modern man.

Penn teaches creative writing--a lofty profession to be sure. (Hey, I like me some fancy sugar-coated words as good as the next guy that happens to survive on three part time jobs while sending two kids to the same university at which Penn arrogantly scales his glittery soap box of judgment.) It's just that, well, perhaps Penn's students would be better served if he concentrated a bit more on the teaching writing aspect of his job and a bit less on glandular economics.

But let's give Penn his due credit. He is, if nothing else, a brave, brave man. Just like those patriots of old who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in face of pure evil, he will not hesitate to jump in to offend whatever straw man he creates though, understandably, only outside of class. No offense is intended inside those hallowed halls.

Well practiced college professors can look particularly brave when facing off against persons half their own age in an environment in which they have total control--just like George Washington!

Incidentally, our academic hero isn't a scaredy cat either when it comes to bravely slathering himself with the riches created by those for whom he believes he holds in such utter contempt.

What Penn labels rape is the creation of wealth that for the first time in human history has produced societies capable of purging starvation, eliminating disease, providing reliable heat and indoor plumbing in all of our homes, and creating cool apps for my droid--it can even finance the misguided economics lectures of creative writing professors who hopefully write better off the cuff than they speak in its absence.

Make no mistake, the history of man on this planet is famine, starvation, pestilence, disease, tyranny, warmongering, human degradation and perhaps worst of all, Alice reruns.

Wealth, what Penn seems to consider the fruit of rape, has virtually eliminated what we used to think of as poverty in this country. Sure, Bridge Card buyers might be malnourished, but its remarkable how many ill conceived calories a bag of greasy chips can contain sans any real nutritional value.

It doesn't end there. Housing assistance. Utility assistance. Government provided daycare. Mass transit. Medicaid. Educational assistance. Obamaphones. A recent survey showed that 35 states provide welfare recipients more dollar value than they could get for themselves working 40 hours per week at minimum wage. When poverty used to mean no food in the cupboard and no food on the plate, poverty now more often means meals eaten in front of a big screen television while the kids text their friends.

The working poor get poorer financing the dreams of regulators and benevolent overlords, the non-working poor lose what little incentive there ever was to do that old 9 to 5, all the while a barely working elitist at MSU can bravely call me a rapist while securely enshrouded within the impenetrable walls of tenure. (That would be 'tuition paying rapist' to you, Sir!)

Tuition, to help put this in perspective, is over $350 per credit hour at that fine university which means, roughly, that each student in Dr. Penn's class gets to spend about $23 per hour listening to Penn espouse laughable economics and identity politics with, hopefully, a little creative writing thrown in.

Meanwhile the university is on the hook for approximately $200,000 in salary and benefits for a tenured professor whose carcass it couldn't dispense with even if it wanted to, which, of course, it doesn't--bird of a feather and all that.

Danny Guthrie, the soft porn photography professor might be gone these days, and so too might be a closet Marxist here and there after serving a lifetime in academia working for the movement, but Penn will remain employed by the tax and tuition payers of Michigan for as long as he feels compelled to rape those for whom he is committed to serve and, uncomfortably, sometimes to offend. (Though once again, only out of class!)

Its the new American way.