UPDATED: Tiny Employment Uptick (& Tricky Statistics)

Business, Economy, Labor

According to the government’s say-so, “the economy added 200,000 jobs in December, double November’s pace and all of it coming from the private sector.” Given that “the sectors that added the most jobs was transportation and warehousing” and “courier services such as UPS,” the employment uptick is realistically a “seasonal swing.” Either way, it’s safe to say that if not for the Obama administration’s heavy handed interventions, the growth in private-sector employment would have been greater.

Better news is that “governments have continued to shed workers. Public agencies cut 12,000 workers in December, with most of those cuts at the local level.” This is a drop in the bucket, given the size of the US oink sector, and the degree to which it impinges on the private economy. (By way of an example, here’s an ad for a parasite for hire: and “Invitations Coordinator” paid for by taxpayers.)

In Francis Wilkinson’s optimistic assessment—he’s a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board—“The jobs gap is still 12.1 million jobs. At a rate of 208,000 new jobs per month, it will take slightly more than 12 years to close that gap, according to the Hamilton Project, a public policy group started in 2006 by the Brookings Institution. For the unemployed, the U.S. labor market remains the worst since the Great Depression.”

UPDATE: Tricky Statistical Tactics, via Paul Craig Roberts (and BAB contributor below):

The official unemployment rates (U3 and U6) no longer measure all of the unemployed. The Clinton administration ceased counting as unemployed workers who had given up looking for a job for one year or longer. No discouraged workers are included in the widely reported U3 measure. The U6 measure includes workers who have been discouraged for less than one year.
In other words, the longer an economy is in the doldrums, the less the official unemployment rates are reliable measures of the extent of unemployment. The unemployment rate in December as measured by U3 is 8.5%; as measured by U6 which includes short-term discouraged workers (less than one year) is 15.2%. John Williams’ measure which includes the long-term unemployed is 22.4%.
In other words, the real unemployment rate is 2.6 times the widely reported U3 rate, which is the rate emphasized by policymakers and the financial press.

UPDATED: The Despot’s Bag of Tricks

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Military, Terrorism, The State

In apartheid South Africa, denial of due process very often took the form of detention without trial. But, as I observed in Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, the South-African model of detention-without-trial is slowly becoming a fixture of the American legal landscape.

Via the Tenth Amendment Center:

Congress just passed, and the President just signed, a bill that gives legal authority to the President to kidnap and perpetually imprison persons, including American citizens, without the benefit of due process. …

The relevant sections of the bill are 1021 and 1022.

* Section 1021 asserts the President’s authority to arrest suspected (not convicted) terrorists and gives him the option to choose whether or not they even get a trial, and if so, what kind of trial.

* Section 1022 requires that a certain class of terrorist get no trial. Instead they must be held in military prisons, for as long as this President, or any future President desires.

SECTION 1021

Section 1021 is very expansive in its reach. It “includ[es] any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

* Who is “any person?”
* What is a “belligerent act?”
* What is “direct support?”

One could be safe in assuming these words mean whatever a creatively-minded prosecutor, a flexible judge, and an ignorant jury define them to mean — EXCEPT THAT, UNDER THIS ACT, ONE MIGHT NEVER GET AS FAR AS A COURT HEARING.

These terms will be defined by the bureaucrats in power.

Note who the bill’s co-sponsor is: McMussolini.

UPDATE: RT: “He will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”

These harsh words come courtesy of the executive director of the ACLU, formerly a supporter of the president but also just one of the many dissenters who have since grown disillusioned with an administration tarnished by unfulfilled campaign promises and continuous constitutional violations.

UPDATED: The Cause Ron Paul Should Champion (Defer to the Tenth)

Christian Right, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, IMMIGRATION, Republicans, Ron Paul, States' Rights

“The Cause Ron Paul Should Champion” is my new WND.COM column. Here’s an excerpt:

On his website, tricky Dick Morris, former adviser to Bill Clinton, claims comically to be fighting for the soul of the Grand Old Party. Morris has dubbed a potential contest between Republican presidential contender Ron Paul and President Barack Obama as “the biggest [Republican] wipeout in American history.”

Less dramatically, the Des Moines Register conceded, in the aftermath of the “the first contest of the 2012 election season,” that, while “many Iowa caucus-goers connected with Paul’s belief in less government spending and regulation, in free trade and private property rights and in opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan”—they nevertheless “worried about Paul’s prospects in the general election.”

With 21.4 percent of a volatile vote, Rep. Ron Paul came in a strong third in Tuesday’s Iowa Republican caucuses. Assuming second place, and trailing Mitt Romney by eight statistically insignificant votes, was former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, the dark horse in this race.

Still, what separates Dr. Paul from his Republican rivals is this: Whereas their national appeal is likely to plateau—coffined by militarism and social conservatism—Paul’s appeal, by contrast, has the potential to transcend the confines of the Republican Party.

For one, Ron Paul can woo Obama’s sizeable anti-war base which is sick and tired of the killer drone. (One definition of a drone is “an idle person who lives off others; a loafer, a drudge,” a Barack Obama. Another definition of a drone is “a pilotless aircraft operated by remote control,” frequently utilized by the aforementioned “idle person who lives off others” to kill others.) …

Read the complete column, “The Cause Ron Paul Should Champion,” on WND.COM.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help this cause.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher.

UPDATE (Jan. 6): DEFER TO THE TENTH. That’s what Ron Paul should do. Michael Boldin’s Tenth Amendment Center article draws the distinction between immigration and naturalization, in the context of 18th century locution:

…a common 18th century definition of naturalization was “The act of investing aliens with the privileges of native subjects”, while emigrate had a common meaning of “to move from one place to another.”
Such a delegated power over “naturalization” then, does not specifically address the power over immigration rules in any way. But, Constitutionally-speaking, one also has to then consider the common law doctrine of principles and incidents (i.e. the necessary and proper clause) to find authorization for anything not spelled out in the constitution.
I have yet to hear a convincing argument that control over who can and cannot cross a border was considered by the Founders to be an incidental (lesser and directly required) power related to the delegated power over naturalization.
But, I’m sure someone will try to make one eventually. And yes, I’m all ears! Otherwise, such power is something retained by the people of the several states to be dealt with by their state governments or not – as they see fit.

AND FROM “Tell Establishment Media A Dog Died On The Border”:

One of the finest minds on matters pertaining to immigration and the Constitution is Kris W. Kobach, a University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law professor, and an author of the Arizona law. Kobach has determined that “state police, exercising state law authority only,” may make arrests for violations of federal law”—a right Kobach anchors in a state’s status as a sovereign entity.

States are sovereign governments possessing all residual powers not abridged or superseded by the U.S. Constitution. The source of the state governments’ power is entirely independent of the U.S. Constitution. … the states possess what are known as ‘police powers,’ which need not be specifically enumerated. Police powers are ‘an exercise of the sovereign right of the government to protect the lives, health, morals, comfort, and general welfare of the people.

Paul In Black, White & Pink

Gender, libertarianism, Liberty, Multiculturalism, Political Philosophy, Race, Republicans, Ron Paul

A December 2011 poll (16-18), taken by CNN/ORC, reveals that Ron Paul’s favorability among non-whites mirrors that of other GOPers. Hence, the fantasy that minorities will flock to liberty is just that, a fantasy.

While Barack Obama takes 72- and 57 percent respectively of the non-white and female vote, Ron Paul gets 25 and 41 percent of the same constituency. All the oozing over young Paul supporters aside, these numbers are yet more evidence that females and young voters lean left-liberal and are thus a hindrance to liberty: Obama garners the support of 53% of voters aged 18 to 34, to Paul’s 47%.

What was said in “RIP GOP” obtains: As the GOP goes, so goes the libertarian movement. Smug, self-satisfied left-libertarians like to dream that their constituency is differently derived, but the demographic facts are straightforward. The upshot of continued, unfettered, mass immigration—as it is currently practiced and preached by American central planners—is the triumph of tribalism, pillage politics, and left-liberalism.