Signs of the Times

by Thomas Sowell


If you could spend vast amounts of other people's money just by saying a few magic words, wouldn't you be tempted to do it? Barack Obama has spent hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money just by using the magic words "stimulus" and "jobs."

It doesn't matter politically that the stimulus is not actually stimulating and that the unemployment rate remains up near double-digit levels, despite all the spending and all the rhetoric about jobs. And of course nothing negative will ever matter to those who are part of the Obama cult, including many in the media.

But, for the rest of us, there is a lot to think about in the economic disaster that we are in.

Not only has all the runaway spending and rapid escalation of the deficit to record levels failed to make any real headway in reducing unemployment, all this money pumped into the economy has also failed to produce inflation. The latter is a good thing in itself but its implications are sobering.

How can you pour trillions of dollars into the economy and not even see the price level go up significantly? Economists have long known that it is not just the amount of money, but also the speed with which it circulates, that affects the price level.

Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that the velocity of circulation of money in the American economy has plummeted to its lowest level in half a century. Money that people don't spend does not cause inflation. It also does not stimulate the economy.

The current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek has a feature article about businesses that are just holding on to huge sums of money. They say, for example, that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer is holding on to $26 billion. If so, there should not be any great mystery as to why they don't invest it.

With the Obama administration being on an anti-business kick, boasting of putting their foot on some business' neck, and the president talking about putting his foot on another part of the anatomy, with Congress coming up with more and more red tape, more mandates and more heavy-handed interventions in businesses, would you risk $26 billion that you might not even be able to get back, much less make any money on the deal?

Pfizer is not unique. Banks have cut back on lending, despite all the billions of dollars that were dumped into them in the name of "stimulus." Consumers have also cut back on spending.

For the first time, more gold is being bought as an investment to be held as a hedge against a currently non-existent inflation than is being bought by the makers of jewelry. There may not be any inflation now, but eventually that money is going to start moving, and so will the price level.

Despite a big decline in the amount of gold used to make jewelry, the demand for gold as an investment has risen so steeply as to more than make up for the reduced demand for gold jewelry, and has in fact pushed the price of gold to record high levels.

What does all this say? That people don't know what to expect next from this administration, which seldom lets a month go by without some new anti-business laws, policies or rhetoric.

When you hire somebody in this environment, you know what you have agreed to pay them and what additional costs there may be for their health insurance or other benefits. But you have no way of knowing what additional costs the politicians in Washington are going to impose, when they are constantly coming up with new bright ideas for imposing more mandates on business.

One of the little noticed signs of what is going on has been the increase in the employment of temporary workers. Businesses have been increasingly meeting their need for labor by hiring temporary workers and working their existing employees overtime, instead of hiring new people.

Why? Because temporary workers usually don't get health insurance or other benefits, and working existing employees overtime doesn't add to the cost of their benefits.

There is no free lunch-- and the biggest price of all is paid by people who are unemployed because politicians cannot leave the economy alone to recover, as the American economy has repeatedly recovered faster when left alone than when politicians decided that they have to "do something."

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Thomas Sowell's Biography

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.

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'Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil'

DEAL OF THE DAY

Author exposes how 'radicals sell us corruption disguised as freedom'

© 2010 WorldNetDaily.com


It's the book credited with changing the way Americans see the "culture war."

From abortion-on-demand and same-sex marriage to multicultural madness to banning God in school, millions of Americans today accept ideas and behaviors that horrified all previous generations. Why?

There is just one book that completely and clearly explains how all this is accomplished – how lies are packaged as truth, corruption disguised as freedom, godlessness sold as liberation – and how we can free ourselves from the deception that surrounds us.

In the age of Obama, more than ever, Americans need to read David Kupelian's modern classic, "The Marketing of Evil," and today only WND readers can get a hardcover, autographed copy for only $4.95 – an incredible $20 discount!

"The Marketing of Evil" has been widely praised by everyone from Dr. Laura Schlessinger to David Limbaugh to Michelle Malkin, with reader-reviewers often claiming they have been "forever changed" and "had their eyes opened" by reading the controversial book.

In one chapter, for example, eight abortion clinic doctors and nurses expose that industry as "barbaric," "evil" and comparable in some ways to the Nazi Holocaust. In another, the marketing vanguard of the modern gay rights movement tells in their own words exactly homosexuality and every other form of sexual anarchy are being mainstreamed.

Depending on their worldview, readers tend to experience powerful aftershocks upon reading "The Marketing of Evil." Here are a few words from critics:

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"'The "Marketing of Evil' is one of the more vile right-wing hack jobs to come along lately."

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Analyst: Obama has U.S. economy in 'death spiral'

ON CAPITOL HILL

'Simple math' confirms unemployment won't be solved by government hiring

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily


A new analysis of the U.S. economy shows that since 2007, the private sector has lost 10.5 million jobs while the public sector has added 720,000 jobs, creating a "death spiral" for the nation's economy.

The study comes from The Free Enterprise Nation, a nonpartisan national membership/advocacy organization for individuals and businesses that make up the private sector.

The analysis was done using statistics about employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Don't wait until a collapse happens, get "Killing Wealth Freeing Wealth: How to Save America's Economy and Your Own" now!

The recession of the last two years exacerbated the larger problem that already was in place, it revealed.

Among the changes were California's loss of 665,800 jobs in the private sector. But government in the Golden State added 163,800 jobs.

Also, Michigan lost 791,700 private-sector jobs, a "staggering" 20 percent. Government bureaucracies, however, kept all but 7 percent of their positions.

Jim MacDougald, president and CEO of The Free Enterprise Nation, recently appeared on the Fox News Channel to talk about a new campaign called "I own you."

Among the changes were California's loss of 665,800 jobs in the private sector. But government in the Golden State added 163,800 jobs.

Further:

North Carolina showed a 10-year loss of 138,200 private-sector jobs, or 4 percent of its private-sector workforce, while adding 127,100 government jobs, a 20 percent increase.

Colorado's population increased by 17 percent in the past decade while losing 3 percent of its private-sector jobs. Government employment increased by more than 17 percent during the same time frame.

Tennessee lost 157,300 private-sector jobs while adding 13,900 in government agencies.

While Texas added 616,000 private-sector jobs, it also added 295,200 government jobs, almost one bureaucratic position for every two positions in private enterprise.

Florida also added private-sector jobs overall – 39,600. But it also added 127,100 government positions.

Massachusetts lost 168,700 private-sector jobs but still found the need to add 7,500 government jobs.

Wisconsin lost 149,400 private-sector jobs; added 22,300 to government payrolls.

"The consequence of this employment shift is that a smaller number of private-sector employers and workers are saddled with the tax burden of financially supporting a growing government workforce," said MacDougald.

"Since public-sector workers are paid more on average in compensation and benefits than private-sector workers, it is financially unsustainable for the government to continue to grow while the private-sector workforce shrinks," he said.

He explained to WND that while the problem is massive, there is the potential for a solution.

"There are 89,000 taxpayer-supported entities that make up the 'public sector,' and no one is in charge of their collective efforts. About one-half of the 22 million public-sector workers are in public education. (And only about one-half of the people employed in public education are teachers!)" he said.

"It is possible that the federal government thinks it can solve the unemployment problem by hiring more people, but, if so, it would be another indication of just how far removed from reality the federal government's economic policies are," he said.

"Our population grew by 25 million from 2000 to 2010. We needed to create at least 20 million new jobs. Instead, we lost 3 million in the private sector. The 'shortfall' of 23 million jobs could not possibly be made up by government hiring, as they would have to double in size in order to do so," he said.

The real problem is not necessarily with the number of government jobs but the cost of their "huge pensions, early retirement and health-insurance benefits."

"That is where the real 'cost of government' is," he continued. "As numbers of workers in the private sector decrease, and public-sector hiring increases, it places an impossible burden on those individuals and businesses left who actually pay taxes.

"Unfortunately, the current approach is to charge more taxes to those who actually pay federal income taxes (one-half of tax filers), and businesses. Businesses (employers) have no choice but to reduce overhead, which means fewer domestic workers. A death spiral," he warned.

The solution would be a hard pill to swallow for many, he warned.

Among the moves that would help would be to terminate all government pension plans, "vesting everyone 100 percent in benefits accrued to date." Pensions could be replaced with a type of 401(k) retirement plan that is funded by employer contributions.

Then there would be need for a hard look at what government actually does.

"Do we NEED government to do that for us? If not, stop doing it," he said.

Next would be to ignore – or better yet banish – public-sector unions.

A "zero-based" staffing and budget plan would require officials to review what work is required and how many workers are needed to do it.

"Public policy-makers must ask: How many people do we NEED to do what we are hired to do? Do we really NEED one administrative/management employee for every teacher? Once those questions have been asked and answered, we must rebuild each public-sector entity from scratch," he said.

"We have to 'reinvent' the public sector, based on a fundamental requirement that it serves the taxpayer, not the other way around. It is a huge job to do, and it will take years. There is no silver bullet. But it can be done," he said.

WND columnist Dan Mangru also has criticized the government's "fuzzy math".

And longtime top-rated radio talk-show host Roger Hedgecock said more and more federal spending just depresses the economy.

"Three professors at the Harvard Business School, in a study titled 'Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?' have concluded, based on 40 years of data, that federal government spending does not stimulate local business spending. In fact, the opposite occurred. The more federal spending, the less corporate spending," he reported.

"And the same results show up whether the state is large or small, whether the firms are large or small over a period of 40 years. In fact, the study shows the results 'most pronounced in geographically concentrated firms and within the industries that are the target of the spending.' In plain speech, federal 'bacon' is toxic to economic growth in the private sector," he wrote.

Hyper-Partisan Elena Kagan’s Road to the High Court

by Gary Bauer


In introducing his last Supreme Court nominee 13 months ago, President Obama gushed forth like an out-of-control oil spill about what he saw as Sonia Sotomayor’s main qualification—her “wisdom accumulated from an inspiring life's journey.”

Obama lavishly praised her “distinguished career,” which included having worked “at almost every level of our judicial system.” All this courtroom time, he assured us, provided Sotomayor “with a depth of experience and a breadth of perspective that will be invaluable as a Supreme Court justice.”

“Walking in the door,” he continued, “she would bring more experience on the bench and more varied experience on the bench than anyone currently serving on the United States Supreme Court had when they were appointed.”

Not surprisingly, in introducing Elena Kagan as his nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, Obama spent a great deal less time touting her judicial experience—that’s because she has none. Obama did, however, refer to Kagan as a “trailblazing leader.”

And in one sense, he’s right. Kagan would be a pioneer of sorts, at least among the current justices. She would be the first Supreme Court justice who has spent his or her life not applying the law but rather crassly manipulating it for political ends.

Remember the to-do about John Roberts’ wife’s affiliation with the non-partisan Feminists for Life? Well, Kagan’s resume overflows with left-wing politics.

She’s worked in academia and as an advocate and policy advisor in two Democratic administrations and on Democratic political campaigns. And, as the Boston Herald put it, she’s been a “faithful Democratic donor over the past decade, lavishing nearly $15,000 on candidates from Barack Obama to Al Gore.”

Kagan’s professed heroes include Barack Obama as well as unabashed judicial activists Thurgood Marshall and Aharon Barak, the former Israeli Supreme Court president.

Given her partisan background, it is not surprising that Kagan spent all week promising that as a Supreme Court justice she would set her political views aside. “My politics would be—have to be—separate from my judging,” she assured Judiciary Committee senators on Tuesday.

No senator on the committee can believe her claim is credible. A justice Kagan would be a vote for same-sex marriage, a vote against the 2nd Amendment, a vote against religious freedom and a vote upholding Obama’s take-over of healthcare. She will vote this way not because the Constitution demands it but because her left-wing ideology does.

Her career has been defined by manipulating the law for political ends. And, as research by Americans United for Life shows, it is a tendency most evident in Kagan’s handling of abortion.

Kagan’s time clerking for Justice Marshall seems to have been about the closest she’s ever been to a courtroom. But she spent much of her time with Marshall, whom she called “a hero of American law” and whose constitutional interpretation she has described as “a thing of glory,” making political calculations.

In her confirmation hearing for solicitor general, she explained that her job as a clerk for Marshall was not to brief her boss on the law. Rather, she said, her job was to “enable him to advance his goals and purposes as a justice.” That’s revealing given that Marshall famously believed that the role of a judge was to “do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”

In 1988, Kagan wrote in a memo to Marshall that she believed lower courts were legally wrong in holding that female prison inmates could have their abortions paid for by taxpayers. But, because she thought the law was “well-intentioned” (read: would produce more abortions), she recommended that Marshall vote against reviewing the case because it “is likely to become the vehicle that this court uses to create some very bad law on abortion.”

And for her “bad law” meant law that did not advance abortion.

Partisanship also triumphed during her time working in the Clinton Administration. She assisted Clinton on his position against the Hyde Amendment and in favor of federal funding of abortion.

And she allowed politics to trump the law on partial-birth abortion. When Clinton offered tentative support for a very limited partial-birth abortion ban, Kagan argued that if he supported a ban that didn’t include a hollow “health exception,” “the [pro-abortion] groups will go crazy.”

She also advised Clinton that though she felt the partial-birth abortion ban was unconstitutional, he should support a compromise amendment for political gain, “in order,” she wrote to her boss, “to sustain your credibility on [the partial-birth abortion act] and prevent Congress from overriding your veto.”

Most egregiously, Kagan manipulated an opinion from a select panel of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) that stated that partial-birth abortion was never necessary to protect the life or health of a woman.

The initial draft stated that the ACOG panel “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure…would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” But Kagan noted in a memo that ACOG’s statement “would be a disaster—not the less so (in fact, the more so) because ACOG continues to oppose the [partial-birth abortion] legislation.”

So, as attorney Shannen Coffin has noted, Kagan wrote “suggested options” for modifying the ACOG position statement. These included having the Clinton Administration claim that partial-birth abortion “may be the best or most appropriate” option.

That crucial language was inserted into the AGOG policy statement, which the ACOG executive board then dutifully copied—word for word—into its final statement.

Kagan’s agenda-driven past is rejected by most Americans. Polls consistently show that vast majorities of Americans want judges who follow the law and are not driven by their own agendas.

There’s been much debate over the last few weeks about whether Elena Kagan is “in the mainstream of current legal thought.” But her record indicates that her thoughts aren’t principally about the law at all. Rather, after years saturated in partisan politics, they habitually focus on how she can exploit the law for political ends.

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Former presidential candidate Mr. Gary Bauer is president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families.

Unprecedented Arrogance

by David Limbaugh

The Obama administration grows more arrogant, cavalier and fundamentally dishonest every day. Just in the past few days, we've seen a number of troubling examples. Frankly, sometimes it's hard to keep up.

In a speech in Wisconsin, Obama was bragging about how wonderful the terrible economy is. You'll recall that during both of President George W. Bush's terms, Democrats, including Obama, castigated him for destroying the economy, despite the existence of empirically verifiable robust growth during some seven of those eight years.

Now that Obama has been in office for a year and a half and his economy is failing by all objective measures, he and his Democrats demand, once again, that we ignore the empirical evidence in front of our faces and bow down to them in reverent gratitude for ensuring that things are not worse than they are.

Everyone knows Obama promised -- he was hardly tentative about his prediction -- that if the nation followed him over the cliff with his harebrained "stimulus" scheme, unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. When unemployment soared above 10 percent, he insisted we be patient to allow his plan to work. Now that it stubbornly remains in the high 9s, he tells us that if he hadn't implemented his stimulus bill, the economy would be much worse (12 or 13 or 15 percent), so we not only are forbidden from criticizing him for this disaster but also must genuflect because only three of the four wheels of the economy are teetering over the edge of the cliff.

He said, "There may be some roads that not only were repaired but also were linked up to create a new industrial park that would facilitate long-term economic development beyond this immediate crisis."

Can you imagine the reaction of the liberal media had a Republican president uttered such gibberish? There "may be some roads"? How's that for a non-statement? That were linked up to a new industrial park to facilitate long-term growth? How about some facts here, Mr. Intellectual? Then again, how can you blame him for citing nebulous "facts" and failed economic theory when neither the real facts nor the economic evidence substantiates his claims.

He also said that every economist who's looked at it has said that the recovery did its job. Would someone please get this man a link to The Heritage Foundation's website or any other credible conservative think tank or economist? Time and time again, Heritage scholars have not only argued but also demonstrated why Obama's economic policies don't work in theory and haven't worked in practice. As noted many times before, they have not helped avert a crisis, but have exacerbated already bleak conditions. Sure, all economists agree with him, just as all Americans agree with his socialistic policies.

Moving on, in the past few days, we've also heard from former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams, who has confirmed -- from the belly of the beast -- our worst suspicions about Obama and Eric Holder's Justice Department's dismissing a slam-dunk case for voter intimidation against New Black Panther Party members for racial reasons. This is an egregious trampling on the rule of law, an outrage that would subject any Republican president to charges of high crimes and misdemeanors, a scandal of the first order for which this administration isn't even bothering to develop "plausible deniability."

Next, we read about Obama's reaction to Sen. Lamar Alexander's reasonable suggestion that any energy discussion between the president and a "bipartisan" group of senators should include a focus on the oil spill and BP. Obama said, "That's just your talking point," and flat-out refused to discuss the subject. Is he king or what?

Finally, we've also witnessed this week another outburst from that paragon of smugness, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, whom I criticized earlier for mocking members of the press corps for their legitimate questions in lieu of attempting to answer them in good faith.

This time, this little smarmy nerd-thug mocked Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona for claiming Obama told him in a private meeting he would ont-style:italic;">not secure our borders because it would disincentivize Republicans from supporting his effort to pass "comprehensive immigration reform" (read: amnesty). Gibbs accused Kyl of changing his story and basically arguing with himself on the matter, even though Kyl has not retreated an iota from the only relevant assertion: that Obama made the statement in question. Watch the video in which Gibbs clearly intends to create the false impression Kyl had vacillated on his charge, and tell me with a straight face we're not dealing with an entirely unprecedented level of arrogance in this White House.

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David Limbaugh's Biography
David Limbaugh, brother of radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, is an expert in law and politics and author of Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party.

Rush Limbaugh: America has become 'Obamaville'

By Joe Kovacs
© 2010 WorldNetDaily


At the height of the Great Depression in the 1930s, many Americans fighting for survival ended up living in crudely built shantytowns known as "Hoovervilles," in humiliating honor of President Herbert Hoover, who many blamed for the economic distress.

Sacramento, Calif., was home to one of America's "Hoovervilles" in the mid 1930s during the Great Depression

Now in 2010, radio giant Rush Limbaugh is declaring the United States has become one giant "Obamaville," thanks directly to the policies of President Barack Obama.

"The whole country is Obamaville," Limbaugh said on his program today. "Obama is Herbert Hoover. You know they used to call those unemployment camps Hoovervilles. Well, now we're going to see Obamavilles springing up all across the nation."

"Hoover was trying to fix things. Obama's not. The only difference is Obama is doing this on purpose. Hoover wasn't."

Limbaugh took direct aim at the president's comments yesterday when Obama insisted, "The economy is strengthening, we are into recovery."

"It's the summer of recovery. How's that working out for you?" Limbaugh asked facetiously. "Thirteen thousand, 13,000 private-sector jobs added in June. If you divide 13,000 by 50, just for illustration purposes, you get 260 jobs created in the private sector per state. Two hundred sixty jobs per state. This is Herbert Hoover-type stuff."

Obama made his statement shortly after new figures indicated consumer confidence tumbled in June, sending stock markets worldwide plummeting.

"We have gone from losing 750,000 jobs per month to five months of job growth now – private-sector job growth that is obviously so important to consumer confidence and the well-being of the economy overall," Obama said.

"According to Obama, this is progress, because we're not losing 700,000 jobs a month," Limbaugh noted. "Now, consider how stupid that is. We were never going to lose 700,000 jobs per month for years and years, because we don't have enough people working age to lose 700,000 jobs every month for years and years."

The conservative host reminded listeners about "massive tax increases hitting next January."

"People are still not sure how much it's going to cost them, particularly businesses. That's why there's no hiring," Limbaugh explained. "I took heat, and in some sectors, ladies and gentlemen, I'm still taking heat for saying I wanted Obama to fail. But I wanted him to fail because I want the nation to succeed. We now see that Obama succeeding does not equal the nation succeeding, and that is a major, major thing for people to have to come to grips with."

As the U.S. heads toward a weekend celebrating its 234th anniversary since its official founding in 1776, Limbaugh lamented the political party currently in charge was "happily, apparently" presiding over the nation's decline, "which in fact may be one of the purposes."

"The 'can't dos' from our elected and appointed officials, both at the federal and state level, are piling up," he said. "Consider the following:

"'I can't suck the oil up with a straw,' said President Obama when asked what he was doing about the BP spill that began April 20. Nor could he approve the building of sand berms, or the suspension of the Jones Act, which would have let foreign skimmers into U.S. waters to help with the oil cleanup.

"'You're never going to totally seal that border,' said Janet Napolitano, making excuses for why Homeland Security has essentially ceded entire parts of Arizona to violent Mexican smuggling rings while still seeking 'comprehensive immigration reform,'" and suing the state of Arizona and joining boycotts, the federal government. That's really confidence inspiring.

"'I think the world understands now that growth in the future around the world cannot depend as much on the United States as it did in the past,' opined Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in a defeatist interview with the BBC before the G-20 summit.

"'There's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession' was how Vice President Joe Biden put it at a fundraiser for Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold. But wasn't that the reason for the $862 billion stimulus package, the $700 billion in bailouts and the takeover of the auto industry and Wall Street? Wasn't it to get back the eight million jobs that were lost?

"And now this inspiring regime says, 'Ah, sorry, can't happen, can't close the border, not gonna lead the world, not sure we want to win in Afghanistan, screw the oil leak, and not going to get those 8 million jobs back.'"

Limbaugh concluded, "This is the can't-do administration. This is the won't-do administration. This is unparalleled. Never in my lifetime has there been an administration that is so filled daily with depression, negativism, can't-doism. There is nothing that is reflective of American exceptionalism, of the great American spirit represented anywhere in this regime. It's all malaise."

As WND reported in December, residents of Colorado Springs, Colo., saw a sign reading "Welcome to Obamaville" on the site of a homeless tent camp in the city.

The sign, which was visible from the Cimarron Street ramp to Interstate 25, clearly conveyed a political jab at rising unemployment under Obama, as it read in full, "Welcome to Obamaville – Colorado's fastest growing community."

Public reaction on a local TV station's website was mixed over the sign's message:

"Lay the blame where you will, I think it is a hoot and a great historical throwback to Hooverville," wrote a reader named daman in an online comment. "These are the worst times I've seen in my 40-plus years, and I am glad my kids get to see it early. Maybe they'll learn to grow and be compassionate, yet personally fiscal conservatives."

A poster named Nick, however, was critical: "That is pretty low to use a right-wing political agenda and attack the homeless during the worst recession in a generation and especially during the holiday.

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Joe Kovacs is executive news editor for WorldNetDaily.com and author of the No. 1 best-seller that champions the truth of Scripture and reveals your spectacular, ultimate destiny that's far more glorious than just floating on clouds: "Shocked by the Bible: The Most Astonishing Facts You've Never Been Told."