10.2% Unemployment? An Historical Perspective

Would someone please inform the Associated Press that a working knowledge of American history is essential for reporters attempting to cover the nation today!

Today's report on the (shocking!) jobless rate of 10.2 percent contains numerous egregious examples of historical cluelessness. And that's the most positive spin. A more negative assessment is that the AP writer and his editors know fully well that they are disseminating partial truths and mendacious inaccuracies.

The first problem occurs in the lead sentence: "The unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983 -- and is likely to go higher."

This is not quite true. During the Clinton years the unemployment data were tweaked to separate those who recently lost their jobs from those who have given up looking for work. Before 1994 all were lumped together. So to be accurate, it must be said that the 1983 unemployment number was about 7.5 percent BETTER than today's report! The AP hides this contraction in plain sight a little later in its report:

Counting those who have settled for part-time jobs or stopped looking for work, the unemployment rate would be 17.5 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

It should also be noted that a percent of the work force today represents a lot more people than in 1983. And vastly more than 1933, which is the time-line you would have to travel to see unemployment data comparable to what we are seeing now.

Reporter Christopher Rugaber wastes no time in committing his second error: the second sentence. He echoes White House spin as fact.

Nearly 16 million people can't find jobs even though the worst recession since the Great Depression has apparently ended.

Yes, the Obama faithful are claiming the recession is over by massaging the numbers for the 3rd Quarter by ignoring the fact that Cash for Clunkers and the first-time home-buyers credit, both fully subsidized by the taxpayer, created enough of a bump to make it appear that the economy is on the mend. Government cannot spend us into prosperity when the private sector cannot obtain financing from banks wary of government meddling. The reporter's willingness to accept the Geithner/Obama spin with no qualification -- "apparently" is not a qualification, it's acceptance -- is poor journalism.

The reporter does not adequately explain to us why the economy shed 190,000 "net" jobs yet some 600,000 more Americans are out of work:

The Labor Department said Friday that jobless rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983, from 9.8 percent in September. The economy shed a net total of 190,000 jobs in October, less than the downwardly revised 219,000 lost in September, but more than economists expected.

The jump in the jobless rate reflects a sharp increase in the tally of unemployed Americans, which rose to 15.7 million from 15.1 million. The net loss of jobs occurred across most industries, from manufacturing and construction to retail and financial. That tally is based on a separate survey of businesses.

It isn't so much of an explanation but acceptance of the government's use of the lesser figure.

But Rugaber does gives us some humor as he quotes Dan Greenhaus.

"It's not a good report," said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for New York-based investment firm Miller Tabak & Co. "What we're seeing is a validation of the idea that a jobless recovery is perfectly on track."

Jobless Recovery. Another innovation from our current administration.

The fourth egregious lack of historical context occurs as Rugaber does not do a followup on this next quote:

"You need explosive growth to take the unemployment rate down," Greenhaus said in an interview Thursday.

The economy soared by nearly 8 percent in 1983 after a steep recession, Greenhaus said, lowering the jobless rate by 2.5 percentage points that year. But the economy is unlikely to improve that fast this time, as consumers remain cautious and tight credit hinders businesses.

In 1983 President Ronald Reagan twisted the arms of a Congress controlled by Democrats to lower tax rates and open up domestic energy production. An economic boom began that, even though tempered in 1986 by higher tax rates when the Progressives in Congress struck back, continued largely through the '90s.

Instead, we see the Bush tax cuts about to disappear next year, and new rounds of tax hikes in the pipeline as Obama and the Progressives push for expensive new programs on health care and energy.

But the AP's economics writer leaves these facts undisturbed and his younger readers in the dark.

So you have to ask: Is the AP treatment by accident or design?

Either way, it's disgraceful and unworthy of a once great news-gathering operation.

The truth of our national economic crisis is buried near the end of the article:

October was the 22nd straight month the U.S. economy has shed jobs, the longest on records dating back 70 years.

There are records that go back beyond 1939, but apparently the reporter does not want to use them. He doesn't even use "1939" as a benchmark. My guess is that he doesn't want to remind anyone that we are in "Great Depression" territory.

But we are.

More Clunky Economic News

What are we to make of today's economic news that foreclosures were up in July, retails sales on everything but cars were down in July, and jobless claims for the last week jumped over a half million?

The Associated Press would like us to think that we need more "Cash for Clunkers" type stimuli.

While autos, helped by the start of the Cash for Clunkers program, showed a 2.4 percent jump -- the biggest in six months -- there was widespread weakness elsewhere. Gasoline stations, department stores, electronics outlets and furniture stores all reported declines.

Some of Europe's largest economies also benefited from government programs to support the auto industry. Germany and France returned to economic growth in the second quarter, raising hopes the recession in the 16-country euro area may end sooner than thought. Europe's two biggest economies each grew 0.3 percent from the previous three-month period, surprising analysts and technically ending their worst recession in decades.

The Euro-version of "Cash for Clunkers" has grown into a permanent plan, which has to be much appreciated in France where militant jihadists are burning hundreds of cars every month. But anyone with half a brain, even a government economist, knows that you aren't actually producing anything when you take one set of taxes (or borrowed funds, in our case) and redistribute it to another group. You temporarily alter behavior, true, but you produce nothing. In fact, you destroy since you are taking vehicles off the road that have serviceable life in them. That is waste, pure and simple.

Even with clunker cash, retail sales overall fell .1 percent in July. Spin that, Pillsbury Spokes-Boy!

There is much official hand-wringing over consumers' stubborn behavior of paying off debt and increasing their savings, which are historically laudable activities. Naturally you can expect our government to despise this trend.

There was one quote of which I approve:

"Households are in no position to drive a decent economic recovery," Paul Dales, U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients.

Amen to that. And households are in no position to absorb new taxes (direct or hidden) on health care and energy. You want to watch an economy in free-fall? Just keep pushing the socialist transformation of America!

'Disappointing' Tornado Season?

Sad news for The Associated Press reporter who filed today's screed on "Tepid Tornado Season Disappoints Some."

She couldn't get anyone to ascribe this year's mild tornado season to anything horrific, like global warming.

Meteorologists are attributing the relative calm not to anything dire, like global warming, but to the shifts in the jet stream that happen from time to time.

Can you sense her disappointment? She notes that "only" 21 people have died this year. She begins her story acknowledging that fewer deadly twisters are

good news, of course, for the people who live here, but a little frustrating to scientists who planned to chase twisters as part of a $10 million research project.

Of course, being the enterprising reporter that she must be, she attempts no connection of a mild tornado season, including an unusual 17-day absence in late May and early June, to the lack of sunspot activity. If she asks the question of the meteorologists she interviews, she makes no mention of it.

Global warming, you see, is now sacred creed, and you can't question its impact. Even when it seems to have gone away.

The correlation of sunspot data with earth temperature or earth weather simply will not be allowed.

Us Poor, Fat, Old, Sick Folks in Rural America

The Associated Press, which once upon a time was a respected news gathering cooperative, apparently has a low opinion of people who live outside of cities in America.

The 25 percent of Americans who live in rural areas are poorer, older, fatter and sicker than their city neighbors. They live farther from doctors and have a harder time getting to appointments, many depending on neighbors or church volunteers if public transportation doesn't exist.

Being one of those who recently moved from "the city" to breath the fresh country air and eat fresh country vegetables, and enjoy a somewhat lower cost of living, I of course am shocked to learn that I am now poorer, older, fatter and sicker than I was 18 months ago.

I guess I am older. That couldn't be helped.

The writer, Kristen Wyatt, gives no attribution to her statement. We are to take it at face value. (Two paragraphs later there is a citation of an outfit called the National Rural Health Association, based in -- yup, you guessed it -- Washington, D.C. Maybe this is where Ms. Wyatt got her "opinion" for this news report.)

The story, written about some people living in Walsenberg, Colo., is a puff piece designed to win sympathy for passage of ObamaCare. In fact, it's worse than that. It's a propaganda piece for expanding the scope of ObamaCare so that physicians are ordered to serve rural areas.

You see, the poor people in Walsenberg, Colo., are 30 minutes away from good doctors! They have no public transportation! The horror! The horror!

When I lived in Tulsa County, it would take me 30 minutes in traffic to reach my personal physician. I had to drive my own car. I suppose if I was desperate I could've bummed a ride.

Advocacy journalism is now the norm, and I'm sure many people will be outraged that ObamaCare doesn't go far enough to transform our health care system into something more closely resembling the late, great Soviet Union.

But give it time, Ms. Wyatt. I'm sure that under socialized ObamaCare the government will very soon begin telling general practioners and specialists where, geographically, they can and cannot practice medicine.

Why they might even tell us impoverished old, fat, sick rural Americans that we have to move into the city where nice concrete block apartments have been reserved for us.

Propaganda in the Morning Paper

I guess I picked the wrong day to get out of bed.

I was browsing through one of the regional newspapers, the Ft. Smith (AR) Times-Record, and came across today's choice for their editorial cartoon, a Joe Heller composition from the Green Bay (WI) Press Gazette. I understand why many newspaper do not do their own editorial cartoons: cartoonists require paychecks and there aren't that many good ones to pick from (or so it would seem). Yet there are choices from among the many who allow their work to be used, and some of them, you might think, would be focusing on the issues of the day instead of trying to "refocus" our attention on the sins of the past:


Notice the lapel pin: GOP Spending 2001-2008.

Where do you start? First, the pin should read, 2001-2006. Since the mid-term congressional elections in 2006, the Democrats have controlled Congress AND spending. No one wants us to remember that. These are Pelosi-Reid-Bush deficits, the result of truly bipartisan pork. That includes the execrable $750 billion TARP fund that Democrats were only too eager to seek GOP support on.

Second, since the ascension of The One, we've now added over $2 trillion in new spending, anticipating a budget deficit this year alone of $1.7 trillion, which is more than four times larger than the biggest Bush deficit. Most Republicans have abstained from this spending, having discovered a latent talent for fiscal responsibility. Better late than never! What is taking place is without factual doubt clearly a work of the left-leaning Democrat party.

I would expect socialist Green Bay to applaud an editorial cartoon pinning "spending disease" and hypocrisy on Republicans. But I think the Arkansas newspaper is seriously out of step with its readership. Worse, the column beneath the cartoon by John Brummett of the Arkansas News Bureau (whatever the hell that is) dumps on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican, for telling the nation that the solution to our problems is not the bigger -- massively, humongously bigger -- government that President Barack Obama is creating. Asks Brummett:

"What's Bobby Jindal's better idea? I guess he'd cut our taxes and give us all an Ayn Rand book."

Well, Mr. Brummett, that's not such a bad idea. The tax cuts alone would provide real relief to productive Americans, and a bit of education in capitalism a la Ayn Rand would counter-act this suicidal notion currently prevailing in this country that the solution to over-spending and big government is more over-spending and big government. We cannot continue to punish those who risk and build while rewarding those who merely criticize and say "gimme."

Only those who do not understand the nature of productive work and the lessons of history can afford to be so clueless.

And I thought the Tulsa World was a bad paper.

Yes, there are those in both parties who are spending hypocrites, and each and every one of them should be removed from office, by the voters, at the earliest possible opportunity. Meanwhile, our nation's newspapers should do more than merely act as the cheerleaders for the socialists who are taking us to Destination Ugly.