Jobs: More Cover-Up Than Recovery

Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Labor

Although “The labor force participation rate, which measures workers and those looking for jobs … fell to a 32-year low of 63.5%, tied with where it stood in August 2012”—Mark Hanna at Euro Pacific gives out a “better than expected employment report”:

* The government reported a net 236,000 new jobs as the unemployment rate fell to 7.7%. Economists expected the 160,000 new jobs in February and the unemployment rate held steady at 7.9%.
* Service industries led the gains with 73,000 new jobs, while construction added 48,000 and health care provided 32,000. Retail also added 24,000.
* There was a downward revision in January’s data, from an initially reported 157,000 down to 119,000. December’s numbers, though, were revised up from 196,000 to 219,000.
* Average hourly earnings rose four cents to $23.82 an hour, while the average work week edged higher to 34.5 hours.

By Paul Craig Roberts’s assessment, this is “The Missing Recovery.” He pulls the curtain back on a declining “U.3 measure of unemployment rate”; declining “because it does not count discouraged job seekers who have given up looking for a job.”

AND:
• An “expansive monetary policy of bond purchases to maintain negative real interest rates continues 3.5 years into the recovery.” This comes “at the expense of interest income for retirees on their savings accounts, money market funds, and Treasury bonds.”

PBS admits too that, while unemployment dropped because people found work, “some 130,000 others stopped looking for work, so they were no longer counted.”

Robert Wenzel’s EPJ (Economic Policy Journal) has it right: This is a Ben Bernanke manipulated uptick.

We’re floating on a confetti of funny-money. How can we tell what’s real and what’s not real?

CPAC Sheds A Heavy Weight; Gains Light-Weights Galore

Bush, Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, Intellectualism, John McCain, Neoconservatism

As was mentioned a few posts back, Chris Christie will be conspicuous by his absence from this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, which will commence on March 14.

New Jersey’s popular Republican governor is getting his comeuppance. He campaigned for the Democrat Barack Obama throughout October of 2012. Now the governor has not been invited to partake at CPAC. “He’s not … conservative,” offered Al Cardenas, who is chairman of the American Conservative Union that sponsors CPAC.

CPAC has hosted countless unconservative members of the establishment, one of them was the Republican’s presidential nominee for 2008, John McCain.

As part of the unholy McCain-Kennedy-Specter trinity, McCain worked to legalize 20 million illegal immigrants. He blessed George W. Bush’s deficit spending and obscene stimulus package. By National Review’s count, McCain voted for higher taxes 50 time. And like any good liberal, he disparaged Mitt Romney for making it in the private sector.

The Conservative Political Action Conference would be acting less incongruously were they to blackball dough ball Christie for being the consummate backstabbing, slimy, opportunistic politician. Republicans who are not conservative are the norm.

For example, Jeb Bush. This year brother Bush will be a featured speaker at CPAC. Bush junior is hardly much of a conservative. Jeb Bush’s new book, “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution,” advocates further liberalization of US immigration policy. However, so liberal has the GOP become on immigration, since November 2012, that Bush’s book is being rejected as too hawkish.

Fear not. Substituting, at CPAC, for the absence of one heavy weight governor—and the reference is not to Christie’s intellect—are plenty lightweights. See for yourself.

The Survivalist’s Guide to ‘Obammunism’ & Beyond

Classical Liberalism, Debt, Economy, Government, Healthcare, libertarianism, Political Economy, Regulation, Socialism, The State, Welfare

“The Survivalist’s Guide to ‘Obammunism’ & Beyond” is the current column.

“No statist lies are safe from his scrutiny,” writes Lew Rockwell about economist Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s latest book. What follows is an excerpt from my conversation with professor DiLorenzo about, ”Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government,” and the timeless truths to which it speaks.

5. ILANA MERCER: You write: “At the heart of the U.S. government’s continued takeover of the health care sector of the economy was a law passed during the Obama administration that would eventually drive the private health insurance industry out of business and transform it into a de facto nationalized industry.” Elaborate. Since, as you repeatedly warn, the natural laws of economics cannot be repealed, what will these health care exchanges achieve? How will they invariably be funded? What will be the cost to business? To the millions who’re losing coverage? Who will ultimately fork out for the per-head fee imposed on medical plans?

THOMAS DILORENZO: The Obama version of health-care socialism forces insurance companies to cover people with expensive diseases without charging them higher rates to compensate for the additional risk. This effectively will force the insurance companies to pay out billions in health care costs, and then the Obammunists will impose price controls on the industry because that’s what socialists always do once they intervene in a market by forcing businesses to offer something for nothing, thereby driving demand through the roof. The price controls will cause massive bankruptcy, at which point the argument will be made that what is needed is “single-payer healthcare,” a euphemism for health-care socialism or government-run monopoly. In the meantime, they seem to be imposing hundreds of relatively small, hidden taxes to come up with the revenue to keep the scheme going.

6. MERCER: “The Obamacare Survival Guide” is a best-seller on Amazon. The market is producing survivalist literature to help Americans navigate the treacherous shoals of this law. What does it tell you? Like me, you must know plenty of Obama-heads (doctors too) who shrugged off the idea that further centralizing health care—a modest healthcare expansion totaling $2 trillion, I believe—would cost them anything at all. As The Lancet recently confirmed, in the UK’s National Health Service funding is inversely related to patient outcomes. You speak of “inputs” and “outputs.”

DILORENZO: I cited a study by the late Milton Friedman entitled “Inputs and Outputs in Medical Care,” published by the Hoover Institution some twenty years ago. In it the Nobel laureate economist showed that, historically, as government became more and more involved in health care by taking over hospitals and funding Medicare and Medicaid, inputs – in terms of money spent – skyrocketed while “output” in terms of patients served declined. He spoke of something called “Gammon’s Law,” named after a British physician named Max Gammon, who noticed that with healthcare socialism in England, increased “inputs” in the form of massive amounts of money spent always seemed to disappear “as though through a black hole” with little or nothing to show for it in terms of health care.

7. MERCER: You touch briefly on the “private component of GDP.” Free-market thinkers get that the private economy alone produces wealth. But no. GDP is a political construct, defined, tracked and manipulated by the D.C. political machine. Unpack the GDP gambit for us, down to its deceptive components.

DILORENZO: Including government spending in the definition of GDP was a creation of John Maynard Keynes, who defined it as C (Private Consumption) + I (Private Investment) + G (Government Purchases) + X-M (Net Exports). In so doing, Keynesians concluded that the most prosperous year in American economic history – 1946 – was actually a year of revival of the Great Depression with a precipitous drop in economic activity because of the huge decline in federal government spending after World War II. Of course, this was NOT a year of depression but an explosion of private investment, consumption, and job creation.

8. MERCER: About that elusive economic recovery: My colleague Vox Day (who sadly called it a day on WND) argued that, “The Great Depression 2.0 will be worse than its predecessor.” Day chalked that up to today’s unprecedented levels of debt, consumption and credit, private and public. It’s a hunch. But I think you’ll disagree.

DILORENZO: No one can predict something like this, especially since today’s economy is vastly different from the 1930s. Capital markets are much more sophisticated, for one thing, although government regulators by the thousands do their best to destroy them – and with them what’s left of American capitalism. Predictions like this always ignore the resilience of entrepreneurs. As the Austrian Business Cycle theory of Mises and Hayek contends, it is the boom period where all the damage is done in the form of “malinvestment” – in the latest bust this was mostly in real estate. During the recession or depression is when entrepreneurs are forced to become more efficient, more inventive, more creative – or else. This is how the Japanese recovered from something much worse than a depression – long years of war and the dropping of atomic bombs on their country – in a little over a decade.

More on “sequesteria,” tax loopholes and Obamacare, at www.ilanamercer.com, where the conversation with professor DiLorenzo continues.

Read the complete column, “The Survivalist’s Guide to ‘Obammunism’ & Beyond.”

UPDATE V: Rand Paul Slaying The Drone (Political Triangulation)

Constitution, Founding Fathers, Homeland Security, libertarianism, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul

Today, Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky, donned his superhero power cape and came to the Senate floor to do battle against the Killer Drone and his bipartisan posse (Republicans generally favor the drone program).

What’s not to like about Rand slaying The Drone, albeit quixotically?

WaPo:

Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) talking filibuster against John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director is gaining supporters, and it’s now a bipartisan effort.
Paul began speaking just before noon Wednesday on the Senate floor in opposition to Brennan’s nomination, saying that he planned to speak “for the next few hours” in a rare talking filibuster.
Paul, who strongly opposes the Brennan nomination and the Obama administration’s use of unmanned aerial drones, became the first senator to make use of the procedural tactic in more than two years and the first to do so since the Senate approved a bipartisan rules reform package in January.

On a more serious note: “Rand Paul: Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?”, last week’s column, would have been better timed for this week.

And the questions the column posed still obtain: “Is this political Brownian motion—the case of activity substituting for achievement—or real Randian energy in furtherance of liberty? … Is Rand Paul an action hero, or … is he just a political performance artist?”

And should libertarians be so hard on the guy?

UPDATE I: As I wrote last week, “Rand Paul is front-and-center in mainstream media, showing what some call ‘leadership.'” Here are the many headlines Rand has grabbed just on the WaPo:

Sen. Rand Paul began the filibuster at 11:47 a.m. (AP)
Paul makes rare filibuster stand
Republican senator acknowledges his remarks won’t stop John Brennan’s confirmation vote to lead the CIA.

LIVE: Filibuster on the Senate floor
In the Loop: Filibusters ain’t what they used to be
The Fix: Rand Paul’s unpredictable streak

UPDATE II: DRUDGE: “RAND STANDS: HOUR 10.” The Drudge headline links to this Washington Times article.

UPDATE III (3/7): WINNING. Action hero it is. Rand Paul’s “Jimmy Stewart-esque filibuster over the Obama administration’s drone policy,” achieved something Chris Matthews “forgets” to mention:

The usually unresponsive potentate responded to Rand:

The U.S. government cannot target an American citizen who is not engaged in combat on American soil, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Thursday during his daily press briefing. … Carney said that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had on Thursday asked the administration if the president has the authority to use a mechanized drone against an American on U.S. soil who is not engaged in hostile activities. “The answer to that question is no,” Carney said. Appearing on CNN on Thursday afternoon, Paul declared that Holder’s response was satisfactory and that he would allow a vote on Brennan’s nomination.
“I’m quite happy with the answer and I’m disappointed it took a month and a half and a root canal to get it,” Paul said.

Not so fast. Writes Reason’s Brian Doherty: “But who is a noncombatant? What constitutes engaging in hostile activities to the White House? Does this still leave the ‘we declare you a combatant” excuse? More clarity needed.'”

Via Politico, the complete text of a letter Attorney General Holder sent to Rand Paul today. In its entirety: “It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ The answer to that question is no.”
Still: what defines “engaged in combat” to you guys? Doesn’t seem to actively apply to most victims of overseas drones. Does it mean, as Lindsey Graham suggested, just being a member of Al-Queda, a topic on which the White House will undoubtedly declare itself sole judge (and then jury, and executioner)? Also, the mechanism of the kill–mechanized drone–isn’t the sole issue at point here. It’s summary executive power to decide who to kill without charge or trial in a Forever War.

POLITICAL TRIANGULATION. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews can rise on his hind legs all he likes, in trying to bad-mouth Rand Paul’s valiant effort. Politically, Rand has triangulated—gotten some on the Left to listen, neutralized flaccid neoconservatives such as McMussolini and Sen. Lindsey Graham, and galvanized idiotic GOPers—pure partisans, who care not about the principle (they love droning dem ‘terrorists’), but see this as a blow against Obama.

UPDATE IV: Gloats Glenn Beck (who harbors no love for the GOP): “Did Rand Paul just kill the old GOP?”

Rand Paul has a long way to go to become my action hero. Let’s see him use the tactics he has applied against drones on the homegrown terrorists of the TSA.

UPDATE V (3/8): Via LRC.COM, William Grigg unpacks “What Holder Really Said”:

…Like all statements from people who presume to rule others, this brief message from Holder – – who is Nickolai Krylenko to Obama’s Josef Stalin – should be read in terms of the supposed authority claimed thereby. This means removing useless qualifiers in the interest of clarity.
What Holder is saying, in substantive terms, is that the President does have the supposed authority to use a drone to kill an American who is engaged in “combat,” whether here or abroad. “Combat” can consist of expressing support for Muslims mounting armed resistance against U.S. military aggression, which was the supposed crime committed by Anwar al-Awlaki, or sharing the surname and DNA of a known enemy of the state, which was the offense committed by Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdel. Under the rules of engagement used by the Obama Regime in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan, any “military-age” male found within a targeted “kill zone” is likewise designated a “combatant,” albeit usually after the fact. This is a murderous application of the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy,” and it will be used when — not if — Obama or a successor starts conducting domestic drone-killing operations.
Holder selected a carefully qualified question in order to justify a narrowly tailored answer that reserves an expansive claim of executive power to authorize summary executions by the president. That’s how totalitarians operate.

MORE.

[SNIP]

Will Grigg is right, but nothing Grigg says detracts from Rand’s effort. Grigg’s analysis, invaluable as it usually is, is not an argument against … putting up a fight.

I myself believe that the only fight that’ll bear fruit is the fight Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) alluded to:

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”