Continued High Unemployment -- A Manufactured Crisis to be Exploited

The on-going recession began in mid-2008 due to a housing bubble and financial instability brought on by the federal government's and Federal Reserve's easy money policies, which had been pricked by the needle of the 2007 sharp increase in energy prices.  Throughout the recession, which according to government numbers is falsely said to have ended in mid-2009, the government has continued to pursue the easy money policies that caused the recession.  What is more, it has selectively decided that some individuals and companies will not pay the price for bad decisions they may have made, albeit with much encouragement from the government.  This has heaped all of the costs of the recession on those who bore no or little responsibility for the recession or on a few responsible actors the government does not like for one reason or another.

To be more precise, the economy was rebounding from the recession in the latter part of 2009 and in early 2010.  But then ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" bills were passed and the Democrats clearly wanted massive tax increases.  These actions and many strange and arbitrary regulations created an avalanche of business uncertainty to add to the lingering uncertainty of the earlier bailouts and company asset thefts by the government. The second dip of the recession started in the latter half of 2010.  Then, once again, perhaps due to the extension of many of the Bush tax cuts, the economy showed some signs of recovery in the first quarter of this year.  But, continuing government ineptitude mixed with deliberate destruction of the private sector, caused the second quarter of this year to slip back into recession mode again.  This fact was hidden by the unrealistic measures of price inflation, which ignored large fuel and food price increases and over-emphasized some improvements in technology values.  Apparent increases in GDP were likely just artifacts of the understated inflationary effect on goods and services of the huge stimulus spending and the two Quantitative Easings.

Each month, I calculate the real unemployment rate and the number of missing jobs in comparison to January 2000 when most anyone who wanted a good job could find one.  In the belief that were good jobs available, as large a fraction of the population would be wanting to work today, one can calculate the needed jobs and the missing jobs.  The latest numbers based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report for May 2011 follow:

There actually was a nanoscale improvement in the number of missing jobs relative to April 2011.  The bad news is that the improvement in jobs creation ought to be much, much better at this time after the mid-2008 start of the recession if we were really seeing any improvement of the economy.  There were 693,000 more missing jobs in May 2011 than there were in May 2010!  A new crop of high school and college graduates is emerging and there are no jobs for them.  This is now a three-year old recession!  Recessions of the private sector never last this long.  Only government can make such an extended recession.  This is truly the Great Socialist Recession.

We are mired in the doldrums and there is no wind in sight.  The business community expects the Obama administration and the Democrats to continue making systematically awful choices with respect to the business of business and job creation.  It is true that Congress is doing less harm since the Republicans gained control of the House, but that has only invigorated the administration's determination to cause as much harm as possible through executive branch agencies.  Some of this is incompetence in business and economic matters, but some is very likely an effort to simply make many Americans dependent upon big government.  The plan is to make many individuals so destitute that they will think government is their only salvation.  It is to put many companies so at risk in the hands of regulators that they will bow and scrape before government to save their heads from the chopping block. 

What is better than a crisis of no growth, inflation, and joblessness for government to aggrandize its power?  This is well-understood by those many Democrat Socialists who hunger always to expand the scope and power of government, while making the private sector tremble in fear.  They well remember how the Great Depression grew government and gave the Democrats the initiative in politics for decades.  Some of the most influential Democrats are hoping the present crisis will give them the same power, if only they can make this recession into a long-lasting depression or at least something close to one.  These supreme power-lusting Democrat Socialist leaders are a minority of the party, but they are in control of the party policy.  The Great Socialist Recession is very unlikely to end until Obama is no longer occupying the White House and the Democrats no longer control the Senate.

Obama Creates Jobs and Congressional Districts

Obama's Recovery.gov website claims to document the number of jobs the Stimulus Bill has created or saved.  It reported that 640,329 jobs were created or saved and was helpful enough to break those jobs down by congressional district.  The Washington Examiner has now added up the numbers of as-yet known fictitious jobs saved or created and has reached a number of 76,779.

Just to refresh your memory, the $787 billion 2009 Stimulus Bill was said to have created or saved the 640,329 jobs at a cost of $1,229,056 in terms of the allocated money.  To adjust for the fact that the government has proven very slow in actually spending the money and will not spend much of it until after the actual recession is long gone, the government claimed to have created these jobs at a cost of $531,250 per job.  Now we can adjust this cost per job for the maximal number of jobs which may have been created, 563,550.  The cost per job is then $603,628 per job.  Wow, I am impressed.  The Obama government may be able to create one job with a sum of money that the private sector would create about 12 jobs with.  Of course as we discover that more of these created jobs are fictitious, the cost per job will go up and the private sector will look ever more efficient in creating jobs.  And we ought not forget that the biggest actual effect of the $787 billion Stimulus Bill was to discourage the private sector from hiring for fear that the heavy government deficit spending would decrease business profits over the longer run as it caused inflation, weakened the dollar, and was used by governments to cause mischief.

The Obama Recovery.gov website has also shown us that this $18 million construct creates fictitious Congressional Districts.  It has created 440 such fictitious Congressional Districts.  In reality, there are 435 legitimate Congressional Districts.  Now as I recall, Obama campaigned at one point in 57 states and thought he had one more state to get to in order to have campaigned in all of the states.  That makes 58 states.  Now, of course, my readers all know there are 50 states, so Obama inflated the number of states by only a factor of 1.16.  The number of Congressional Districts has been Obama-inflated by 2.01, so Obama is gaining skills in inflationary power as he gains presidential experience!

Just to look at the case for Virginia, which has 11 Representatives and therefore has Congressional Districts numbering from 1 to 11, Recovery.gov lists the following fictitious Virginia districts:

00, 12, 13, 17, 21, 25, 36, 51, 79, 98

This is actually a below average degree of Congressional District inflation!  But I really get a kick out of District 00 and the fact that District 98 implies that Virginia is much the most populous state in the Union!  This takes us right back to the earliest days of the Union, when the Commonwealth of Virginia was just that.

The 12th and 13th Congressional Districts of Virginia were lost after the 1860 Census, and the 17th and 21st Districts were lost after the 1840 Census!  Democrats always have been very good at getting the votes of the dead, so it should be no surprise that they are also able to resurrect dead Congressional Districts when it suits their purposes.  Interesting thought.  Does this mean that we have underestimated Obama's powers as the Messiah?  What if he is creating jobs in Virginia prior to 1860 and 1840?!!!!!  This would mean he was aiding the cause of slavery in Antebellum Virginia.

Remember that for Obama and socialists of his ilk, the truth is that which furthers the cause of socialism.  It has nothing whatever to do with reality.

The Private Health Care Option in Canada

Kim Murphy wrote a great article about the movement in British Columbia in Canada to private health care called In Canada, a move toward a private healthcare option.  The 1984 Canada Health Act established the national insurance system called Medicare in Canada.  It made most private health insurance illegal.  But, in 2005 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the laws in Quebec that outlawed private insurance were in violation of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.  In Quebec, it was a violation of human rights to force people to wait on wait lists until they died, but it was OK to die while waiting in the rest of Canada.

British Columbians are a bit more independent-minded than are many other Canadians.  As a result, a network of illegal private clinics and surgical centers has developed there to take people off the very long waiting lists for health care not considered essential in Canada.  This means health care which is not immediately life-threatening or screaming painful.  For anyone not fitting this legitimate need for healthcare, Brian Day, head of a private surgical center in Vancouver, says "What we have in Canada is access to a government, state-mandated wait list.  You cannot force a citizen in a free and democratic society to simply wait for healthcare, and outlaw their ability to extricate themselves from a wait list."

Other Canadians say "Yes, you can."  Allowing doctors and other health care workers to provide health care in private facilities only means that the wait lists will become longer, since those doctors and health care workers will not be available.  Ahh.... the logic!  Health care workers and doctors must be slaves and kept at the oars at all times.  Slavery returns to the Western Hemisphere and Canada sets the lead in this effort.

An Arizona businessman, Melvin J. Howard, has filed a $160 million lawsuit under the North American Free Trade Agreement demanding that U.S. health care companies have the freedom to operate in Canada!  He has a consortium that wants to build the largest private health center in Canada in Vancouver.  They would provide orthopedics, plastic surgery, general surgery, and other services.

British Columbia has a $360 million shortfall in its $15.7 billion health care budget for the fiscal year ending in March.  The present waiting lists will get longer as a result.  The Vancouver Island Health Authority will reduce non-emergency MRIs by 20%.  These non-emergency MRIs are already being scheduled for March.  Vancouver Coastal Health, serving 0.25 of the province's population, will eliminate 450 elective surgeries, or 30% of those scheduled during the 4 weeks of the 2010 Winter Olympics.  If you have to cut back, you might as well let the doctors go to the Olympics, while many patients continue flopping about in front of Olympic visitors in pain below the screaming threshold required to be considered an emergency case.  In the fast-growing eastern suburbs of Vancouver, the Fraser Health Authority will close its budget gap by holding the number of MRIs to last year's number, reducing expenditures by $550,000 on services for seniors, reducing elective surgeries by 14%, and other cost reductions.

This crumbling government health care system does not want a private competitor, so it is going to court to try to put the private health care companies out of business.  Dr. Robert Woollard, has applied to be a part of this lawsuit against the private companies.  He says the public system is responsive and provides quality care to those who truly need it.  He says, "Just six or eight weeks ago, I had a patient come in who needed urgent attention to her knee.  She was in severe pain.  She was seen by a [reviewing] team within a week, and she was slated for surgery that will probably happen in the next two to three months."  Apparently this is considered great service by some!!!!

Meanwhile, Christina Woodkey of Calgary has had a problem of pain in her hip.  She was put on a wait list for a year and saw the doctor in January, who told her she had a narrowing of the spine that caused the pain.  She was put given an appointment to see a back specialist on 30 September.  Given that appointment, she asked when she might actually have surgery.  She was told it would be about one and a half years after seeing the doctor.  Despite having no insurance, it being outlawed, she went to Montana and had the $50,000 surgery done in two days.  She is very happy that the pain is now almost entirely gone, though paying for the surgery will take her some time.

So, 4 - 5 months is great for essential surgery and about 3.75 years is acceptable for non-essential surgery in Canada.  This non-essential surgery is not breast enlargement surgery, but surgery for real pain elimination.  ObamaCare's desire is to replicate this Canadian system here in the Home of the Brave, the Land of the Free.  Hogwash.  We must disobey the laws that set up any such tyranny over our right to our own bodies and fundamentally to our own lives.  We must make Gandhi and his Indian followers look like pikers as we are all marched off to jails until they overflow and then we are put into concentration camps.  This usurper must not be allowed to trample our most fundamental right to life and our beloved Constitution.

Do You Beat Your Neighbor?

In America today we have a great many citizens who either believe the government should enforce Christian Bible morality or that the leaders of the Nanny State should see to it that the helpless masses are taken care of. These people are now being joined by some who say that American law must be determined by Sharia Law, which is the only true law, the law of Allah. All of these people believe that they are good and kind-hearted people who care greatly about their fellow man, while those who believe in Constitutionally limited government, individual rights, and laissez faire capitalism are monsters who do not give a fig for their fellow man.

I have had this charge leveled against me since I was a teenager. The equation is simple: If you think you know how your neighbor should live his life and you think you can make his life choices better than he can, then you try to gain a democratic majority and impose your way to live his life upon him. If you try to do this, whether you succeed or not, you are a very virtuous person who cares about his neighbor, his fellow man. Those who resist you are bad guys. The resisters are bad whether they think that they want simply to manage their own lives or because they think that most other people are better qualified to manage their own lives than the resister is or than the government life management service is.

Of course there are some people who wish that others would manage their lives for them. There are not very many, but there are many elitists who think that there are many people who need to have them provide life-management services to the needy and unable. As I have often observed, it is a funny thing to consult with those whom the elite think are the dependent ones. Most of them think that they themselves are not dependent, but that there are others who are. Talk to the others who are and you find the story repeating itself in most cases. Strangely, most people would rather run their own lives, but they think that there are many more people who want help via a one-size fits all government mechanism than there actually are. But believing this and wanting to care about their fellow man, they push for laws to provide government programs to compel people to contribute their time and income to the needy recipients of the law.

The needy have a very special status. They are to be treated well and provided for. This is the means by which those who favor the laws to help them become virtuous. Meanwhile, the fact that the law requires that individuals give up their rights to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness does not make the law proponent feel like a bad person. The fact that the law requires that if any particular individual does not provide the tax money to be used or does not provide the service free or at below market cost, then government force will be used to see that he does, does not make the law proponent feel bad. Government employees will be dispatched to seize the resisters property or to garnish his wages. If the recalcitrant individual is so foolish as to try to defend his individual rights, well, shoot him! He obviously did not care about the community enough. He was obviously suffering from a severe mental illness, social Darwinism or is an anti-social sociopath.

Would anyone even think to look into this individual's life to see how charitably he treated people that he knew and cared for? Very unlikely. Almost everyone would simply say he broke the law and he had to be compelled to submit or to be put away. So, our good people who care so much for their fellow man are now fully prepared to kill their fellow man and their neighbor in the interest of The Law, despite the fact that the law was not Constitutional and was not necessary to accomplish the mission it supposedly had. After all, the mission could have been accomplished very well by private charity. Any private charity with the enthusiastic support of a majority of the voters should be able to care for a great many needy people.

So why must the people who wish to help the needy use the force of law to do so? Why do they not put their money and time into what they themselves say they believe in? Doesn't one have to conclude that they do not really believe in helping the needy enough to put much effort into it? Don't we have to deduce that they are eager to gain their virtue on the cheap? But, it is a virtue that threatens any individual who believes that he has an individual right to choose his charitable acts himself with death. How do these people who claim they are virtuous for caring about their fellow man square this with hiring government law enforcers and sending them off to kill the individualists among them. Why do they want to beat their neighbor? Why are they so violent? Yet they pretend to be good and to care. Is this not transparently false? Are these not clearly evil-doers?

If you want to help the needy, by all means go and do it. Just have the common civility not to force everyone else to commit their lives to your charity. They may not have any charity they wish to commit to. If so, that is their right. On the other hand, they may be very committed to charitable acts which are simply different from those which you have a commitment to. If you really have a commitment to helping others, then put your money and your time where your mouth is. Don't shove a gun down someone else's throat to make them give their money and their lives to your value. They have the right to choose their own values. It is by choosing our own values that we develop and manage our own lives. Without that freedom, there is a clear violation of a man's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of his happiness.

CA Attacks the Right to Teach Your Children

In California an appellate court has decided that parents do not have a right to teach their children. The case was brought against a home-school family by the teachers union. In California, the ruling has been that private school teachers do not have to be state certified teachers. Many home-schooling families have declared their homes to be private schools. The teachers union brought the case to try to force any home-schooling parents to have state teachers certification. John Stossel, of ABC News, has written a commentary on this here.

Home-schooled children do better in academic tests and in many cases seem to do even better in terms of analytical thinking skills than do the children educated by our teachers union extensions called the public schools. These teachers unions do not like home schooling for several reasons.

• It removes funding from the schools due to the missing child.
• It removes a child from the reach of their propaganda programs, which preach the superiority of socialism over limited government and group identity politics over the rights of the individual.
• The fact that home-schooled children do better in tests than do those schooled by the teaching professionals in public schools is an embarrassment. This embarrassment can be used to further limit the monopoly powers of public schools and to open the doors to more voucher and school-choice programs. It points a finger at the failure of the public schools.