From this Wall Street Journal article (which may be subscription-only) about General Motors and Chrysler (HT Kaus):

(GM CEO Fritz) Henderson said during the conference call that GM is on track to meet cash flow and cost-reduction targets, though he didn’t elaborate. GM will release third-quarter financial results in mid-November, he said. Also on schedule are plans to shrink GM’s U.S. dealership network. (On the financials, we’ll see, and it’s about freaking time.)

GM has about 10,000 more U.S. workers than it plans to have by the end of 2009 after buyout programs for hourly and salaried programs fell short. GM aims to have 64,000 workers and isn’t as far along toward that goal as it expected by this point. (That means the company is blowing through $500 million of cash a month for wages and benefits beyond what’s necessary not even 90 days after supposedly flushing out all of its past problems in bankruptcy.)

Chrysler …. (its chairman, Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne) insisted, is already pulling itself out of the mud, only five months after Fiat took a 20% stake and full management control of the company. “I can see us making money in the next 24 months,” he predicted. (These guys also went through a bankruptcy that was supposed to set the company back on course, and they MIGHT be making money in TWO YEARS?!!.)

In each case, it looks like the bankruptcy plan really consisted of the following:

• “Let’s steal as much as we can from disfavored stakeholders.” In Chrysler’s case, with the help of government intimidation, first-lien non-TARP lenders were fleeced.” At GM, it happened to the unsecured bondholders.
• “Let’s cut things back just enough to make us look like we’re serious, but not enough to be able to emerge profitably.
• “Let’s hope for a miracle in the marketplace.”

This, America, is “your” $81 billion (at least) government “investment.”

It is really sad that so many employees and other presumably good people are caught up in these two messes. But the fact remains that anyone who buys vehicles from these two companies in full knowledge of what has transpired in the past year betrays capitalism, freedom, the rule of law, and their fellow citizens.

That statement will surely offend some readers, but stealing roughly $700 from every household in America, an amount that is going to have to be paid for somehow (in taxes, inflation, or interest on funds borrowed by the government), deeply offends me and millions of others. If you’re not offended by and deeply concerned about what’s happening, you’re not paying attention.

Math-Is-Fun Update: The at-least $65 billion spent to prop up GM thus far is $1,015,625 per job allegedly to be saved.

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I’m sorry, this is just creepy (“School Kids Sing For Health Care Reform On Set Of CNN”).

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From BigGovernment.com — “Durbin Amendment Calls for Review, Audit of ACORN and Affiliates.” As explained here a couple of weeks ago, this is not good enough, unless the Comptroller General brings in the big guns from one of the Big Four accounting firms, lets them run the show, allows them to go wherever the evidence takes them, and allows FBI agents free of Eric Holder’s influence to come in on anything criminal.

Beyond that, there’s no reason anyone should trust a senator who voted against defunding ACORN mere weeks ago to come up with something that has teeth.

Durbin’s proposal is useful as a backhanded admission that ACORN’s selection of Democrat Scott Harshbarger to do its internal “review” is completely inadequate at best, and nothing but grandstanding at worst.

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Here’s a term that needs to catch on, and a problem that really needs to be addressed: “Overcriminalization.” Go here and see why. Another example has to do with the rules that have been thrown at those who hold yard sales.

Item: “Gibbs: Obama Has Only ‘Read a Decent Part’ of Health Care Bill.” That’s not possible. From what I’ve read, there is no decent part of whatever “the bill” happens to be at the moment.

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Great, a new “mommy tax” is still an element of the Baucus version of statist health care.

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On Polanski and Letterman hypocrisies, Reynolds nails it, in two words: “Transparent weasels.”

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“Higher taxes in health care bill.” Congress wants to create new taxes, i.e., new expenses, and then make them non-deductible for companies who have to pay them. It thus becomes more possible than it is already to lose money and still owe “income” tax.

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Wow — Until now, Old Medea Benjamin has at least been consistent (consistently wrong, but at least consistent) in her opposition to wars in general, calls for immediate withdrawals regardless of the consequences, and non-stop appeasement of rogue regimes. That has just changed (“Code Pink rethinks its call for Afghanistan pullout”; HT Weasel Zippers via Hot Air Headlines). This exposes Old Medea as what she has probably been all along — an opportunistic, hard-leftist, partisan shill. This should make us doubly grateful that Old Medea, along with Old Media, were defeated when our troops achieved victory in Iraq.

The AP just dutifully updated its AP-GfK health care poll by cooking the books.

Supposedly, the situation has gone from 49-34 opposed to “the health care reform plans being discussed in Congress” to a breakeven 40-40.

But most of the alleged 15-point swing was accomplished by:

• Changing the Democrat-Republican mix from 39-33 to 43-32.
• Increasing the strong Democrats polled by three points vs. the Republicans.
• Increasing the not employed component to 45% from 42%. That 45% is at least 4 points higher than it should be based on the labor force participation rate of 65% minus the percentage of those participating who are unemployed (.65 x .902 = about 59%, translating to 41% not employed).
• Decreasing the home ownership percentage by 6% (you won’t know that unless you also go to the previous poll; AP omitted this and many other comparables).
• Increasing the student component from 8% to 10%.
• Increasing those who say they are not born-again evangelical Christians by 4%.
• Reducing the percentage of whites polled to 75% from 79%.

Obviously, there’s a lot of overlap, but it’s safe to say that roughly 10% of the 15% swing has everything to do with the mix of those interviewed, and nothing to do with changing views.

That would leave what is probably a legitimate 5-point swing in the statists’ favor. That reflects what I believe is a troubling reality of self-fulfilling prophecy, in that support for statist health care, and statist “solutions” in general, will tend increase as the economy gets worse. It is thus quite convenient, and perhaps not coincidental, that the worse things get for us, the better the prospects become for those who would impose such statist solutions. Those who have brought us the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy of the past 15 months are surely pleased.

One of the many things that could (and should) stop statist health care is the nation’s ugly fiscal reality. Though Uncle Sam’s September Monthly Treasury Statement won’t come out until next Monday, here is a near-final look at Treasury receipts during fourth quarter (July-Sept.) of this year compared to last:

The overall total is based on actual July and August results plus an estimate of $210 billion in receipts during September; the figures in the second chart are rounded to the nearest billion dollars; the individual line items are best estimates.

This horrid decay follows a smaller year-over-year decline from 4Q07 to 4Q08 of 2.8% (link opens in a new window). Not coincidentally, 4Q08 was the first full quarter of the POR Economy, now the POR Recession/”Repression” As Normal People Define It, and the first full quarter in many years in which year-over-year quarterly receipts declined.

Everyone except the feckless fulminators inside Congress and the White House knows that statist health care will be woefully expensive for the taxpayers and painful for Medicare providers and recipients. Thus, everyone with a thinking cap and a familiarity with the situation knows we can’t afford this.

An important Boston Globe story by Farah Stockman on the State Department’s defunding of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) has been noted at Hot Air, the Corner, and Instapundit.

The Globe’s subheadline at the story’s web page is revealing:

US funds dry up for Iran rights watchdog

Obama White House less confrontational

…. But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that – for the first time since it was formed – its federal funding request had been denied.

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,” said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. “I was surprised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.”

Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran ….

Why in the world would we ever want to “promote democracy”? (/sarcasm)

The IHRDC’s mission, according to its web site’s English home page is to:

• Establish a comprehensive and objective historical record of the human rights situation in Iran since the 1979 revolution, and on the basis of this record, establish responsibility for patterns of human rights abuses;
• Make such record available in an archive that is accessible to the public for research and educational purposes;
• Promote accountability, respect for human rights and the rule of law in Iran; and
• Encourage an informed dialogue on the human rights situation in Iran among scholars and the general public in Iran and abroad.

News consumers can be forgiven if they believe that the protest movement in Iran has died own, because establishment media coverage of events within that country has been virtually non-existent.

Michael Ledeen has been following events in that country closely, and can attest that protests are still plentiful, boisterous — and possibly game-changing. What he reported on October 1 in the second half of his Pajamas Media post about how the protesters are still bravely holding their own puts an exclamation point on how outrageous the State Department’s decision really is:

While he (President Obama) stews, Divine Providence has offered him a miracle: the Iranian regime is on the edge of doom. The events of the past few weeks demonstrate that the Iranian people will no longer accept repression, and the security forces are no longer able to shut down the demonstrations. On “Quds Day,” there were too many people in the streets, and the Revolutionary Guards and Basij could only stand by. This week, there have been student demonstrations on major campuses in Tehran and Shiraz, and nothing was done to shut them down. Every night, millions of Iranians shout “Death to the Dictator” from their rooftops.

If the regime falls, two of Obama’s toughest decisions–and some others as well–will magically improve. Deprived of Tehran’s finances, weapons, intelligence, training camps and safe havens, our enemies in Afghanistan will be weaker, and our chances of success improved. The leader of the opposition Green Path of Hope, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has long said that any government he heads will terminate support for terrorism and open the country’s nuclear facilities to international inspection, thereby ameliorating all three of Obama’s major headaches with Tehran. For extras, Hezbollah–the world’s most effective and murderous terrorist organization–will be gravely weakened, as will Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, which provides much of the territory from which Hezbollah operates. And the mullahs’ new friends in South America will be weakened as well, as will Russia’s ability to forge an international alliance against the United States.

A miracle indeed. And all it requires for fulfillment is an administration that does what any normal American would do in the circumstances: support the democratic opposition in Iran. It does not require any bombs or bullets, nor does it risk the body and soul of any American soldiers. It only requires Obama, Hillary, Dennis Ross, William Burns and the others to call for a free Iran, to begin any negotiation with the mullahs by reading out a long list of political prisoners and insist they be released, to cry out for equal rights for Iranian women, and to appoint a staff at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that will redouble their efforts to bring the real news about their own country to millions of Iranians.

But Obama does not seem to recognize the golden opportunity that has fallen into his lap.

Today’s decision shows that the Obama administration and the Clinton State Department aren’t only missing the golden opportunity. Instead, they’re right on the edge of working to ensure that the democratic opposition fails, signaling to the existing terror-sponsoring regime that there will be no skepticism as to whether it truly represents the Iranian people, and actively demoralizing that regime’s opponents.

This should be getting more establishment media attention. Odds are that it won’t.

Cross-posted at Newsbusters.org.

In early July, following the very first month after Chrysler LLC emerged from bankruptcy, the Associated Press, in an unbylined report about changes in the company’s board, saved this little nugget for the last of its eight paragraphs:

Chrysler’s poor June performance also casts doubt on whether the U.S. government’s $7 billion allocation will be enough to get the automaker through the U.S. sales slump, which is projected to last into next year.

Those doubts are growing. In a report on Chrysler’s just-announced management shakeup, AP auto writers Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin began their report by ringing the alarm (bolds are mine):

With sales down sharply and pressure to start generating cash before government loans run out, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne shook up his executive team Monday, replacing two of his brand managers after just four months and splitting Dodge into car and truck units.

The changes show Marchionne’s penchant for moving quickly and demanding performance, industry analysts say. But it’s also a sign that all is not well inside the company’s sprawling headquarters complex in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills.

I mention the AP reports because they support what might otherwise be dismissed as hyperbole coming from a blog for auto buffs. But even if AP hadn’t taken notice, there are plenty of other reasons not to dismiss what follows out of hand, not the least of which include Chrysler’s continued string of steep sales declines, its apparently politicized and possibly reverse discrimination-driven decisions about which dealers it would keep after emerging from bankruptcy, and the financial health of Fiat, its supposed savior.

Kevin DiOssi at Mopar Muscle Magazine’s blog (HT Doug Ross) elaborates (bolds are mine):

Chrysler May Not Make it Another Year!
Financial woes.

Rumors, credible rumors, are beginning to circulate in the car industry and the automotive press, that Chrysler may not make it another year primarily due to its falling sales and growing financial losses at partner Fiat.

Chrysler sold a 62,197 cars in September, down 42% from the same month last year. The figure was down from 93,222 in August when traffic to dealers was pushed up by the ”cash for clunkers” program.

Chrysler’s problems may only be beginning and, if so, Fiat, the ”managing partner” among Chrysler’s owners may not be able to keep the American company intact.

…. The daily management of Chrysler is controlled by Fiat which owns 20% of the U.S. company with options which could take that amount to 35%. Fiat has not put any money into Chrysler, so if the American firm becomes a significant operational or management burden there are very few reason for the Italian company, which has sales troubles of its own in Europe, to stay long term. Fiat lost $254 million in the second quarter, so its board may eventually believe that Chrysler is a distraction and one without a future.

…. At this point, the Chrysler product line is still dominated by mid-sized sedans, SUVs from Jeep, minivans, and pick-ups like the Dodge Ram. The company has no real product in the alterative (sic) energy/hybrid segment. Chrysler’s domestic market share in September 2008 was 11.1%, according to Edmunds. Based on sales figures released by the industry today, that share is now closer to 7.5%.

…. Chrysler sales are now running at the rate of 750,000 a year. It probably does not have the capital to wait through another year of low US car sales with a market share that is almost certainly to stay below 8%. It does not have models tailored to the current market tastes. Chrysler is going out of business. The company just hasn’t made it official.

To be crystal clear, the final two sentences represent DiOssi’s opinion, not mine.

As far as I can tell, AP has thus far been virtually alone in even recognizing the existence of immediate survival issues at Chrysler. That media neglect can’t last, can it?

Given that the U.S. government holds a 9.85% stake in Chrysler and has $7-8 billion out in post-bankruptcy loans (the more recent AP report says the total lent is “roughly $8 billion”), you would think that the company might release the kind of detailed quarterly financial statements an SEC-regulated publicly held company ordinarily would, so we could see for ourselves how bad things are. Though you have to believe that the company is already reporting the gory details to the Treasury Department, I doubt that the American public will ever get to see them.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org

Remember the $1 million that ACORN founder Wade Rathke’s brother embezzled from the organization in 1999-2000? Louisiana’s attorney general says that the number was more like $5 million (HT BigGovernment.com).

Update: The New York Times has known of credible allegations concerning the higher amount for almost a year, having learned of it “just weeks before Election Day,” and did not report it. This isn’t bad journalism; it’s flat-out corruption.

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Stumbled upon this while looking into the previous item. It’s digested as follows by Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator, as follows:

ACORN founder Wade Rathke didn’t have a problem with domestic terrorists trying to kill delegates at the Republican Party’s national convention in 2008, former radical community organizer Brandon Darby suggests at Andrew Breitbart’s new website Big Government.

Nice.

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This is rich — “White House angry at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan.” Awwww. How do you think McChrsytal feels as he watches his brave men and women die while the commander in chief dithers? He’s supposed to just sit there and take it?

In the Korean War, General Douglas McArthur was “insubordinate” too, because Truman wouldn’t allow him to win.

Here’s a telling excerpt from Time Magazine, well before it became a leftist rag, from April 1951:

THE drama of MacArthur’s removal and homecoming obscures a far more important fact: President Truman has brought his foreign policy into the open.

This policy, new in the sense that it was publicly stated for the first time, denies to the U.S. the efficient use of its power, guarantees to the enemy the initiative he now has, promises that the U.S. will always fight on the enemy’s terms. The policy invites the enemy, World Communism, to involve the U.S. in scores of futile little wars or in messy situations like Iran. Up to now, World War III has been prevented by the fact that the U.S. is stronger than Communism. The new policy almost certainly brings World War III closer because it throws away a large part of U.S. strength.

…. But when Truman needed (or thought he needed) a defense for firing MacArthur, he turned to Acheson for a brief. Acheson gave him one, prepared several days before for the purpose of defending Acheson’s general viewpoint. Revised for the special situation, this speech was admirably suited to the purpose Truman had in mind—charging MacArthur with trying to extend the war. Apparently, it did not occur to Truman or Acheson that the speech could have another—and far greater —effect: giving Communism worldwide possession of the strategic initiative. The new policy is an attempt to elevate Truman’s absence of policy in Korea to the dignity of a principle with worldwide applications.

The weakness of Truman in Korea emboldened communists for decades, including at least one brush with World War III.

I don’t like the echoes I’m hearing. Soviet communism may have been defeated by the Reagan-Walesa-John Paul-Thatcher alliance in the 1980s, but the Chinese version thrives.

On top of that, thanks to Obama, worldwide terrorism is on the verge of regaining the same kind of initiative ascribed by Time to communism.

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Cash for Clunkers post-mortem — Epic fail. This is from a Sunday Wall Street Journal editorial:

Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.

The basic fallacy of cash for clunkers is that you can somehow create wealth by destroying existing assets that are still productive, in this case cars that still work. Under the program, auto dealers were required to destroy the car engines of trade-ins with a sodium silicate solution, then smash them and send them to the junk yard. As the journalist Henry Hazlitt wrote in his classic, “Economics in One Lesson,” you can’t raise living standards by breaking windows so some people can get jobs repairing them.

In the category of all-time dumb ideas, cash for clunkers rivals the New Deal brainstorm to slaughter pigs to raise pork prices. The people who really belong in the junk yard are the wizards in Washington who peddled this economic malarkey.

The establishment media meme all along was that is was wildly successful. I still can’t get over the idea of how little opposition there was to the idea that destroying hundreds of thousands of perfectly usable vehicles was considered superior to donating them to places like Goodwill or other charities.

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Chrysler is already in serious trouble. In reporting on the company’s management shakeup the AP confirms it:

With sales down sharply and pressure to start generating cash before government loans run out, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne shook up his executive team Monday, replacing two of his brand managers after just four months and splitting Dodge into car and truck units.

…. The U.S. Treasury Department allocated roughly $8 billion for Marchionne and Fiat to keep Chrysler going until it can become profitable again, but its sales can’t seem to rebound with a slumping economy and the current poor-selling model lineup. Last year, under different leadership, the company lost billions and went into bankruptcy protection.

Treasury Department officials have said there will be no more government cash for Chrysler, but also have said they “stress-tested” the $8 billion and it was enough to keep Chrysler going after its Chapter 11 restructuring until it can make money again. Chrysler so far has received a total of $15.5 billion from the U.S. government.

The company emerged from bankruptcy four whole months ago.

Chrysler, partially owned by U.S. taxpayers, should release financial statements like any other “publicly held” company. I doubt very much that we’ll ever see that happen. General Motors thinks it’s doing us a favor by doing so, and even GM decided that we don’t need to see what happened in the second quarter (not the third, the second) until early- to mid-November, if then.

From New York City:

Oct 3, 2009 9:02 am US/Eastern

Horia “Billy” Cretan Meets Briefly Friday Night With Little Boy He Pulled From Burning Parkchester Apartment

A Bronx man hailed a hero was reunited Friday night with the little boy he saved from a burning apartment.

The meeting happened hours after 4-year-old Christopher Ramcharran was released from Jacobi Medical Center. Doctors ordered Christopher to go straight home and rest. But his family could not resist taking him for a very brief visit to the man who saved his life.

The brave and speedy actions of store owner Horia “Billy” Cretan made all the difference Wednesday when a blaze gutted a fourth-floor apartment in Parkchester.

Cretan, who owns the shop on the first floor, smelled the smoke and heard the cries. He dashed up a ladder where a firefighter handed over Christopher, limp and unconscious. Glass was falling around them and Cretan used a curtain to shield the boy.

Seeing the boy so close to death then and now up and walking around warmed Cretan’s heart.

“He’s looking good and I’m happy he’s recovering fast. He’s walking now and that’s the moment we’ve been waiting for,” he said Friday.

The reunion lasted less than five minutes. There will be a longer visit later. Christopher’s family said its gratitude will last a lifetime. Pharbodial Ramcharran, the boy’s father, said “He put his life on the line to save my son. I would do anything for him.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

Oh, the establishment press will just loooooove this — not.

From BigGovernment.com (HT Mark Levin over the airwaves this evening):

Beverly Gossage, Research Fellow for Show-Me Institute and founder of HSA Benefits Consulting wondered which insurance companies rejected the most claims.  She found her answer in the AMA’s own 2008 National Health Insurer Report Card (fairly large PDF).

I’m curious. Was it Aetna? Humana?

A chart showing the major carriers and how Medicare compared to them in the study follows:

Well, well.

The Medicare denial rate found in the study was, on a weighted average basis, roughly 1.7 times that of all of the private carriers combined (99,025 divided by 2,447,216 is 4.05%; 6.85% divided by 4.05% =1.69).

You would Medicare’s sheer size might enable it to have smoother procedures with its providers that would enable it to turn down a lower percentage of claims. But no, this is the government we’re talking about.

So who’s the most “heartless” now? And why should Americans accept the idea of gradually being forced into a government-run system when, based on documented government experience, they will be more likely to see their claims denied?

And I didn’t even get to the idea of refusals to treat in the first place, something that is present to some degree in virtually every state-run system, but is currently against the law in hospital emergency rooms in the U.S.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

The economy, according to a composite of the Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing indices, is finally expanding.

Manufacturing’s September reading came in at 52.6% last Friday, a slight dip from August’s 52.9%, after a string of 18 straight sub-50% performances.

The Non Manufacturing Index showed its first expansionary reading (above 50%) since October of last year, at 50.9%. The economy’s combined reading, weighting the indices 85-15, is 51.2%, the first time the combined number is over 50% since August of last year. That month eked out a 50.2% weighted-average reading.

It was the Non Manufacturing Index’s “totally unexpected” drop into contraction in June of 2008 that, combined with June 2008′s employment report, that confirmed my satisfaction that Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid had launched the POR Economy.

Maybe we’re out of the woods in the sense of the economy finally starting to grow again, but Pelosi, Obama, and Reid shrunk it by about 3.8%. There’s a lot to make up, and one decent quarter, if that’s indeed how the third quarter turned out, does not a turnaround make.

And of course, the employment situations remains pathetic, and may stay that way for years to come.

Note: This post originally appeared earlier this morning, and has been carried to the top, because of the importance of the topic and the possibility of light blogging for the remainder of the day.

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Based on the data, the current job situation for teenagers in America is the worst on record.

According to Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• Seasonally adjusted teenage unemployment hit 25.9%. That is the highest rate in the nearly 62 years BLS has been reporting this number. The previous record was last month’s 25.5%. The record before that was 24.1% in November and December of 1982. A graphic of the complete history of the teenage unemployment rate that will open in a new window is here.
• Unemployment among black teens not enrolled in school is over 50%.
• The rate among 20-24 year-olds is also alarmingly high at 15.1%.

Almost alone among establishment media publications — and even then in an editorial, not a regular news report — the Wall Street Journal commented on this distressing set of circumstances, identified the most likely cause of the problem, and worried about its longer-term consequences:

Washington will deny the reality, and the media won’t make the connection, but one reason for these job losses is the rising minimum wage.

Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.

The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months.

…. The biggest explanation is of course the bad economy. But it’s precisely when the economy is down and businesses are slashing costs that raising the minimum wage is so destructive to job creation. Congress began raising the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour in July 2007, and there are now 691,000 fewer teens working.

…. Congress and the Obama Administration simply ignore the economic consensus that has long linked higher minimum wages with higher unemployment. Two years ago Mr. Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 academic studies on the impact of the minimum wage. They found “overwhelming” evidence that the least skilled and the young suffer a loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased. Whatever happened to President Obama’s pledge to follow the science?

…. Study after study reveals that there are long-term career benefits to working as a teenager and that these benefits go well beyond the pay that these youths receive. A study by researchers at Stanford found that those who do not work as teenagers have lower long-term wages and employability even after 10 years. A high-wage society can only come by making workers more productive, and by destroying starter jobs the minimum wage may reduce long-term earnings.

…. If Congress won’t suspend its recent minimum wage hike, it should at least create a teenage wage of $4 or $5 an hour to help put hundreds of thousands of teens back to work. White House chief economic adviser Larry Summers has endorsed this in the past. Without this change, expect the teen unemployment to remain very high for a long time.

The wonder of it all is that liberals still call “progressive” a policy that has driven the wages of hundreds of thousands of the lowest skilled workers down to $0.00.

The chances of a teen minimum getting through Congress, let alone being signed by the president, are unfortunately slim and none. The objection to the idea in the 1970s was that it would encourage employers to “fire the father and hire the son.” Perhaps that fear was slightly justified in the case of interchangeable blue-collar jobs decades ago, but it’s hard to believe that it would be a problem in today’s much more technical and skill-based economy.

The Journal is virtually alone in noting the teen unemployment/minimum wage hike correlation. A September 23 AP report, while noting how ineffectual federally funded teen job-finding efforts were this summer, doesn’t even mention the minimum wage. A September 4 story on the topic at the New York Times by Catherine Rampell devotes all of one sentence to the possibility that minimum-wage hikes might be largely to blame (“Increases in the minimum wage may have made employers reluctant to hire teenagers, said Marvin H. Kosters, a resident scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute”), and doesn’t even bother to evaluate it. Instead, Rampell tries to pin the blame on older workers reluctant to retire (even though there has been a dramatic spike in workers retiring to take Social Security benefits this year), and the higher percentage of kids in college (that shouldn’t affect summer or Christmastime availability).

One possibly valid point Rampell raises is that “the ability of more young people to rely on family may allow them to be pickier about jobs and therefore to stay out of work longer than they did in previous recessions.” My interpretation of this is that “too many overprotective parent are shielding their kids from the ‘mean, cruel world.’” More kids than ever aren’t taking their first job, even in good times, until they have stopped going to school either after high school or college. Part of the blame should probably also go to high school extracurriculars that demand what I believe are often excessive summertime commitments (e.g., band, sports). I’m not sure that parents, or the schools, are doing kids any favors by keeping them away from the early lessons one can learn in exposure to the working world.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

As Team Obama dithers, our position in Afghanistan withers. While Chicago Olympic bidders cried, more U.S. troops died.

Monthly coalition deaths in Afghanistan in the past 3-plus months have averaged 78 (243 total since July 1, including 20 already in October at the time of this post, divided by 3.13 months). That annualizes to 932, which is a higher number than in any year in Iraq except 2007. The Afghanistan deaths are on a troop level of about 85,000, while total coalition troop strength in Iraq in 2007 was about 170,000.

Soldiers in Afghanistan are dying at roughly twice 1-1/2 to two times the per capita rate compared to the worst periods in Iraq. Yet the U.S. press is mostly quiet, and our president is coming off as indifferent.

(Update: The numbers are different, but the math is similar. According to this UK Telegraph article, there are “68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces.” Since American soldiers are doing the vast majority of the dirty work, their per-capita death rate is still 1-1/2 to two times that of their counterparts in Iraq.)

President Obama had better learn that being allergic to the word “victory” has serious consequences — and quickly.

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Joseph Curl at the Washington Times recites some of the “distractions” that are apparently keeping Obama from paying proper attention to Afghanistan and carrying out his primary role as Commander in Chief:

In the past month, the president has found the time to play golf – four times. He’s had links legend Arnold Palmer and other top golfers over to the White House. He’s shot some hoops with friends and yukked it up with hockey’s Pittsburgh Penguins.

He’s celebrated Ramadan at the White House, eulogized newsman Walter Cronkite in New York City, attended several fundraisers (including Thursday afternoon’s luncheon), appeared on David Letterman’s late-night show (one of eight interviews), delivered two speeches to AFL-CIO rallies and dropped by the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial for a visit with his wife and daughters.

And the brief jaunt to Copenhagen to buttonhole members of the International Olympic Committee on behalf of Chicago’s 2016 Olympics bid was Mr. Obama’s seventh trip out of town since Sept. 1.

Yet still no decision on strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

The rest of the establishment press constantly bellyached about George W. Bush’s “vacations” in Crawford. No such general noise is present now.

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Continuing the immaturity and incivility exemplified by Rep. Alan Grayson’s “Republicans Want You To Die Quickly” riff (no, all of this didn’t begin with Sarah Palin’s invocation of “death panels,” because unlike Grayson, who is wrong, Palin was and is right; just ask Newsweek’s Even Thomas, or more to the point, Zeke the Bleak Emanuel), Zachary Roth at Talking Points Memo wants us to think that House Republican Leader John Boehner “may” have been responsible for the death of an Oxford, Ohio woman who “appeared” to have the H1N1 virus because “people who knew her are saying she resisted treatment that could have saved her life — because she didn’t have health insurance.”

It is terrible that this woman died. I hope her friends pointed out early on that there are two treatment options listed here, neither of which include the word “hospital,” and neither of which are particularly expensive. If they didn’t, maybe it’s their fault that she died. Of course I don’t believe what I just crossed out, which is why it is crossed out, but you see where thinly-disguised innuendo-laced rants like Roth’s could take us.

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The real “Sicko” part of the previous item is that many of the same people who will cheer Zach Roth on also try to claim that Cuba’s state-run system is a wonderful thing to emulate. Uh, no — courtesy of the Miami Herald’s Myriam Marquez, who has facts about real treatment refusal instead of speculation on her side:

Maria Teresa Marcos had died, as so many Cubans do, because the communist island’s much-lauded healthcare system is an evil hoax.

For years she had been complaining to doctors about her digestive problems. For years they told her to try to get antacids from family or friends abroad. No scans were done. No blood tests were taken — until her liver was so dysfunctional it became her death sentence.

A transplant? For Fidel, sure. Maybe for a hard-core member of the Communist Party. But for my cousin, a typical Cuban who lived in a ramshackle building, where the top floor had crumbled and the water likely had amoebas, nada. At least she was able to bring new bed sheets to the hospital — the ones I had bought her and my cousins.

Teresita became another statistic, collateral damage in a revolution that promised elections and prosperity and delivered dictatorship and desperation.

The real domestic “hoax” is that the people who praise Cuba’s system want to bring its “wonders” to us.

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Anyone who watches this president and this administration knows not to take anything for granted. Accordingly, this should surprise no one:

Health care reform: Privately, Barack Obama strongly backs public option
White House discreetly labors to weave coalition on health care

Despite months of seeming ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead.

President Barack Obama has long advocated a so-called public option, while at the same time repeatedly expressing openness to other ways to offer consumers a potentially more affordable alternative to health plans sold by private insurers.

But now, senior administration officials are holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring to the Senate floor later this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides.

It’s still a moral clunker, and must be stopped.

From Seattle:

A 29-year old identity thief is headed to federal prison today, in a case in which the victim helped federal agents crack a crime ring.

Stephanie Locke was sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to bank fraud and misuse of a social security number.

In court, she actually thanked her victim for turning her in and called her an “angel.”

Locke was one of several suspects that federal agents were tracking late last year as the ring opened credit accounts using stolen identities at various retail stores. Agents had photos and video of the suspects, but couldn’t identify them.

One of the victims to whom agents showed the photos was Michelle McCambridge of West Seattle, who was also a JC Penney’s cashier at the time. In a remarkable coincidence, a few days later McCambridge saw one of the thieves in her line at JC Penney. She contacted authorities who were able to identify Locke.

At sentencing today, McCambridge said she felt “remorse” for Locke and that she understood the drug-addicted single mother had been through difficult times.

Locke, in turn, told the court and McCambridge “I’d rather be standing here than in a box somewhere,” and that drugs would have likely taken her life if McCambridge hadn’t turned her in.

Go here for the rest of the story.