OMB's Absurd Jobs and Deficit Predictions

Obama’s Office of Management and Budget predicts the deficit to be $1.47 trillion for 2010, falling to $1.42 trillion for 2011. They are puffing this up as an indicator that things are headed in the right direction. It probably helps them to make this prediction in that Congress refused to pass a budget for FY 2011 (which starts October 1st) and thus you can paint whatever picture you like. It also helps if you just lie stupidly and hope that no one notices. Most people haven’t – but over at Zero Hedge, they have. That deficit number is based upon a number of rosy scenarios – not least of which is OMB’s predictions on the job market:

…just the natural growth of America will have added 8.6 million vacancies to the labor force from December 2007 through the end of 2015. And since the economy is already in the hole to the tune of 7.5 million jobs from the 2007 peak, the OMB is effectively stating that it can bridge the shortfall of 16 million jobs in the next 5 years. Why, sure they can – if they can somehow create 245k jobs each month for the next 66 months. Alas, as the data demonstrates, the only time during the tenure of the Obama administration where there was a positive NFP number, is when the census fudge factor added hundreds of thousand of (potentially double-counted) positions, which have now been unwound. And obviously each month that does not create a net positive add to the economy, means more and more jobs have to be back-end loaded. In a few months, the economy will need to be adding 300k a month to get to the OMB projection, then 400k… then 500k…

And if we don’t get those jobs, then deficit predictions are out the window because fewer jobs means lower tax revenue and high expenditures on unemployed people. So, unless we’re about to go gangbusters on job creation, OMB’s prediction isn’t worth the paper its printed on.

My only guess here is that they are just hoping that something turns up. That some how, some way the economy will recover and thus allow Obama to get re-elected in 2012. Because if the numbers don’t come together, then by 2012 we’ll be at record high deficits and very high unemployment. Not exactly the change we can believe in.

Until reality sets in or an economic miracle occurs, we can just expect the Administration to keep churning out stupid information such as this. It is best ignored – unless you start seeing a consistent creation of 250,000 jobs starting this month, just bank on it that OMB is merely trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

Liberal Tolerance

They don’t want to debate – the left never does. This is because the left cannot admit that non-left views might have validity. Debate and compromise would lead to a world which is not 100% governed by leftist ideology, and that is unacceptable to the left.

So, they engage in these tactics. In fact, of course, they have always engaged in these tactics. The difference between the past and today is that now we have the New Media to expose these fanatics, and thus generate the opposition which will destroy them.

Miss Me Yet?

From Gay Patriot:

The latest RealClearPolitics average has President Obama’s approval dropping to 46.4. (Gallup has the Democrat at 46.) Julie Mason reports that “Former President George W. Bush has a 45 percent favorability rating … 10 percentage points higher than last year.”

Vindication is a wonderful thing.

The People vs the Ruling Class

Clearly defined in a Rasmussen survey:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy. Just 14% think a government managed economy is better while 11% are not sure…

…America’s Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin…

The reasons for the Ruling Class feeling like that are quite simple:

1. Government running the economy means more power for the Ruling Class.

2. The Ruling Class is convinced they are individually and collectively smarter than the people, and thus can better decide on the allocation of resources.

It is hard to find someone who would want to go in to government to essentially force the government to do nothing or, at least, do far less than it is doing. Here in Nevada, Harry Reid is hammering Sharron Angle over her completely reasonable – for a non-Ruling Class person – opinion that as a Senator, it wouldn’t be her job to provide jobs for Nevadans. Of course it’s not – the job of a Senator, properly understood, is to ensure that just laws are passed which protect the rights of the State and people of Nevada. Do that, and plenty of jobs will be created by the hard working people of Nevada.

But that doesn’t make for as good a campaign commercial – and it doesn’t allow for a whole series of bribes and kickbacks among various factions of the Ruling Class. Angle wants to be our Senator; Reid wants to be our master.

For a very long time, such opinions as Angle’s probably would have been the kiss of death – but I don’t think they will be in 2010, and the linked poll shows this. The people are on to the scam of the Ruling Class.

Healing Our Nation

He’s just got to win – we need men like him, now more than ever.

Go donate to his campaign, if you can spare the money, at all.

Poll: Sarah Palin Leads 2012 GOP Field

From Conservatives for Palin:

This week’s Economist/YouGov poll finds Governor Palin leading the 2012 presidential race:

Sarah Palin 28%

Mitt Romney 18%

Newt Gingrich 17%

Mike Huckabee 13%

Mitch Daniels 4%

Tim Pawlenty 1%

Mike Pence 1%

Haley Barbour 1%

John Thune 1%

No preference 17%

Curiously, neither Jindal nor Christie is listed – and those two governors are the only people, I think, who can de-rail a Palin run for the GOP nomination (Christie much more than Jindal, at the moment, but if Jindal keeps up the passion he’s been showing of late, then he could become just as formidable on the trail as Christie).

Clearly, though, Palin’s use of donations and endorsements coupled with her so-far dead-on use of Facebook and Twitter to intervene in the national debate has paid off. It really now just comes down to, will she run? I simply don’t know – she’s doing what she needs to lay the ground work, but she’s also keeping just far enough away from the fire to keep all of her options on the table.

What she is doing is allowing herself the time time to come in only when she really wants to. Someone like Gingrich or Daniels will have to be pretty clear about it no later than, say, February of 2011 – they will have to start building up the national infrastructure to run. Palin’s already done that – she can now wait until even September of 2011, the deadline for filing in the New Hampshire primary. This allows her to sit back, choose her moment, build up tension and expectation and then do a huge, razzle-dazzle entry in to the race.

We’ll see how it comes out – but one thing to keep in mind: she’s probably one of the smartest people in American politics today. I know, the left (and even some of the “ruling class” right) have tagged her as a dummy…but that is because they, themselves, are idiots. Mark my words on this – she’s got depth upon depth of insight her opponents don’t even suspect her of.

Shirley Sherrod Blows It

Well, you’re no longer a victim – you’re now part of the problem, in a big way. And that is too bad, because you really had a chance to help things out, but now you’ve just turned in to another liberal accusing people opposed to your ideology of being racist.

The White House Journolist

Inevitable that this connection would come out – from Legal Insurrection:

…The “Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden” was none other than Journalista Jared Bernstein, who — thanks to a post at Volokh Conspiracy (via Instapundit)– I just learned was an adviser to the Obama campaign in 2008 when he was active on the Journolist:

One question that has arisen in the last week is how closely JournoList members, not only discussed how to shape the news to advance the fortunes of Barack Obama, but coordinated with the Obama campaign. Jared Bernstein’s position as an unpaid adviser and surrogate shows that there was at least one direct link between JournoList and the Obama campaign.

In attendance for the meeting at the White House were fellow Journolistas Matthew Yglesias (Think Progress), Tim Fernholz (American Prospect) and Chris Hayes (The Nation). One of the other bloggers in attendance was Oliver Willis, whose name has not surfaced on the Journolist, but who works for Media Matters, so he is practically an Honorary Journolista…

I used to think, “well, we know there was coordination between the Obama people and the MSM, but its not like they’re stupid enough to have anything we can use as proof”. Well, whom the gods would destroy they do, indeed, make mad…and incredibly stupid.

I guess they got sloppy – also, I figure they thought that once they won, they had won forever. No going back from another 60 years of liberal dominance, as it were. The scam only had to last until election day – and then the glories of liberalism would finally convince those idiot, bitter bible- and gun-clingers to give up their allegiance to the GOP. It hasn’t quite worked out like that.

The lesson here is that nothing coming out of the MSM as it relates to anything political (in the remotest sense) can be considered reliable. This is not to say that no truth will come out, but that anything reported or commented in the MSM needs to be taken as provisional until confirmed by at least one non-MSM source. In the MSM, they want liberals to win – all the time and everywhere. They will lie and cheat to achieve liberal victory. Only when liberal victory is not at stake can their reports be taken at face value.

No Progress on Unemployment

From Mish’s:

Tack on another month of no progress with weekly unemployment claims. The 4-Week moving average is still hovering around the 450,000 to 460,000 level where it was in mid-December 2009…

…Last week’s improvement in claims is an outlier primarily related to seasonal discrepancies in auto manufacturing workloads. The 4-week moving average smooths out such fluctuations and is still hovering above 450,000,

The numbers are consistent with an economy that is losing jobs.

The Obama Administration congratulates itself – and gives credit to the stimulus – that we are not losing 700,000 or so jobs per month, as we were in the worst part of the financial crash…but that is utterly meaningless: the jobs were lost and they are not being replaced. At best, we’re treading water. It is very likely, though, that we are actually still declining – such decline masked merely by the manner in which the BLS calculates employment (and its not a conspiracy – the BLS admits that its models are going to be inaccurate during a down economy).

Now, if the economy does go south in the second half of 2010 – as more and more people are expecting – then we might start to see towards the end of the year a sharp spike in job losses. Adding to this is the fact that cash-strapped State and local governments are starting to reduce their workforces. Unemployment might end 2010 significantly higher than we’ve seen in the past 12 months. 11 or 12% is easily possible, and its not out of the question for it to be much higher than that.

Dodging and weaving, the Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve are doing what they can do delay the crash until after the mid-terms – we’ll see if they can pull it off. But in the end, the crash must come – there is too much debt which simply cannot be paid back. Some sort of default is inevitable in State and local governments unless Uncle Sugar comes to the rescue with a bail out – and even that just moves the disaster to the federal level and increases its ultimate scope.

80 years of economic idiocy has to be paid for – the bill has come due, and we’re stuck with it.

Indian-Americans Taking Over the GOP?

Jindal in Louisiana, Haley in South Carolina – and now Vijay Kumar in Tennessee:

I am Vijay Kumar, and I am running for the 5th District Congressional seat presently held by Jim Cooper. I am an immigrant from India who has lived in Nashville for twenty-one years, and when I ran in the last election, I was blessed with winning almost a third of the vote.

I am running again because Congress has failed to take leader- ship on the issues of illegal immigration, taxation, English as our official language, our economy, healthcare reform, abortion, and the War on Terror, and I hope you share my belief that it is time for new leadership.

Did I miss a memo? Someone call a meeting of the V,RWC and not tell me? I thought we were working for Likud/Israel? I realize that I’ve been busy with the sub-plot where the descendants of Thomas Francis Patrick Noonan will take over the world, but I don’t think I’m that far out of the loop.

So, what gives? I mean, its cool – I, for one, welcome our Indian-American overlords if they’ll get rid of Obama and cut taxes.