Junking this antique would aid an economic recovery.

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Note: This item was posted at Pajamas Media and teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday.

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Inside the Beltway, the world seemingly turned rosy last week. Establishment media outlets got all excited about the Labor Department’s report that the unemployment rate dropped to 10% in November, and that the month’s 11,000 seasonally adjusted jobs lost was the lowest such figure in almost two years.

But a closer look at the not seasonally adjusted job gain/loss numbers during the past three months — that is, what has actually happened on the ground — reveals that the “good news” is more than a little illusory:

Comparing 2009′s monthly actuals to the average of 2003-2007, when the economy was doing well, you will see that after some improvement in October, the situation actually worsened in November:

• September 2009′s 389,000 jobs actually added were over a quarter million shy of the 643,000 average added in September 2003-2007.
• October 2009 showed significant improvement. The 708,000 jobs added that month were only 81,000 fewer than that month’s 2003-2007 average of 789,000.
• But in November, virtually all of October’s improvement disappeared. November’s 80,000-job pickup was, as in September, over a quarter million jobs short of the November 2003-2007 average of 331,000.

November’s seasonally adjusted job loss of 11,000 was artificially influenced by how truly awful November 2008′s job loss was in the wake of Obama’s presidential victory. Because the past year or so has been so bad, and because the seasonal adjustment calculations weigh more recent years more heavily, wild gyrations in the reported seasonally adjusted numbers may continue for a while. People who really want to understand what’s going on in the employment market are going to have to pay much more attention to the not seasonally adjusted numbers for the foreseeable future.

Beyond all that, Americans continue to withdraw from the workforce. Since June 2008, at about the time when what I have been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy began, after five years of barely budging, what the government calls “the labor force participation rate” has dropped from a seasonally adjusted 66.1% to November’s 65.0%. That may not seem like much, but as a result over 2.5 million fewer people are working or looking for work than if that rate had held steady. (These people are, by the way, not considered in the primary unemployment rate calculation.)

Where did all these people go? Many of them retired for Social Security benefit collection purposes. A December 7 Wall Street Journal article noted that fiscal 2009′s 21% increase in the number of Social Security retirement applications was well above the 15% uptick the Social Security Administration expected. Many who began collecting benefits clearly did so earlier than they would have liked because they lost their jobs and their immediate employment prospects were so grim. Though they did so knowing that they would collect less in monthly benefits, I suspect that many of them had no idea that finding even part-time work might jeopardize part or all of those reduced benefits. But that is indeed the case, thanks to the remnants of an anachronism known as the Social Security earnings penalty.

Though it was much more onerous before it was partially repealed in the late 1990s, the earnings penalty is still a brutal disincentive to new or continued full-time employment. Straight from the Social Security Administration itself, here is how it works against work (FRA, or Full Retirement Age, is between 66 and 67 for most non-retired readers):

Those affected who are unaware of the penalty and attempt full-time, year-found work experience an effective tax rate of 50% on annual earnings above the small amounts noted above. They also still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes of 7.65% (15.3% if self-employed) on their earnings, as well as any federal, state or local income taxes. Subtract commuting and other related costs, and these people quickly figure out that they’re working virtually for free. So they stop working when they hit the annual limit or shortly thereafter, and try to start over the next year. That’s obviously not a way to keep one’s skills or work ethic sharp.

Repealing the earnings penalty effective January 1, 2010 would encourage early Social Security retirees who want or need to work to find year-round employment that will pay well. It will give employers who are dying to find something they can count on in this uncertain economy a pool of as many as a few hundred thousand proven, productive and talented people who will help businesses and the economy as a whole return to legitimate, sustainable growth. Growing businesses should in relatively short order be able to hire others to do work that needs to be done. It’s even possible that total tax collections at all levels of government could actually increase as result of repeal.

Passing repeal should be a no-brainer. I can’t think of a single credible reason why anyone would oppose this. The only conceivable objection is that it might shut some younger people out of the workforce.

But that objection disappears when you consider the supposed current mindset of Congress and the administration. Despite the evidence presented earlier, they really seem to believe that happier or at least less unhappy days are here again in the employment market. If so, they need to put up or shut up. Getting skilled, experienced people back into the economy will get it moving on a more permanent basis. After that happens, expanded opportunities for the younger and less skilled will come soon enough. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid simply need to set aside enough time from their statist health care machinations and their carbon-based obsessions to kick this relic of the FDR-Depression era to the curb once and for all.

From Washington:

Dec 12, 2009 / 10:47 pm

Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor who co-authored the popular Manhattan Declaration, has explained that the document was intended to speak at a time when “important decisions” are being made concerning the sanctity of human life, the nature of marriage and religious freedom.

Speaking in a Dec. 1 interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online, George said the statement’s backers wanted to bear witness to “three foundational principles of justice and the common good.”

These three principles were the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the union of husband and wife, and religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

George explained that in the view of the signers, important political and cultural decisions are now being made concerning these principles.

“These decisions will either uphold or undermine what is just and good. There is no avoiding the issues or evading the decisions,” he told National Review Online.

Explaining why the Manhattan Declaration was intended only for Christian signatories, George said that Catholicism, Evangelical, Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy have failed to speak with a “united voice” despite their “deep agreement” on moral issues.

“The Manhattan Declaration provided leaders of these traditions with an opportunity to rectify that. It is gratifying that they were willing — indeed eager — to seize that opportunity,” he added.

George clarified that the foundational principles defended in the Declaration are not unique to the Christian tradition as a whole.

In the words of Cardinal Justin Rigali, they are principles that can be “known and honored by men and women of goodwill even apart from divine revelation.”

According to George, so many Catholic bishops signed the document because “they understand the profound truths it proclaims and the urgency of proclaiming them” and they understand the importance of “standing shoulder to shoulder with leaders of other Christian traditions in a common witness.”

He added that signatories are happy to join members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), Jews, and people of no particular faith who affirm these principles and want to join in defending them.

Discussing characterizations of people as liberals or conservatives, George noted that several signatories are politically liberal and many of those called conservatives today were liberal activists in the 1960s.

“They are today ‘conservatives’ and no longer ‘liberals’ because mainstream liberalism has embraced a combination of statism and moral libertarianism that they regard — rightly in my view — as deeply misguided,” he commented.

Prof. George said he hoped that President Obama will understand the determination of Manhattan Declaration signatories to defend human life, marriage and religious freedom.

“On these issues, they cannot compromise, and they will not remain silent,” he added. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

Has anyone else noticed how chilling it has been during the past few days? Not chilly (though it’s been that too). Chilling.

On Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared, in the Associated Press’s words, that “greenhouse gas emissions are a danger and must be regulated.”

The AP, in the item just linked, and many other news outlets carried U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donahue’s warning that regulations based on EPA’s declaration could lead to “a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project.”

Two days later, in an item carried at FoxNews.com that says it was the result of contributions by Fox’s Major Garrett and The Associated Press, a White House official confirmed the legitimacy of Donahue’s stated fear (bolds are mine):

Administration Warns of ‘Command-and-Control’ Regulation Over Emissions

The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn’t move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a “command-and-control” role over the process in a way that could hurt business.

The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity, came on the eve of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s address to the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

…. while administration officials have long said they prefer Congress take action on climate change, the economic official who spoke with reporters Tuesday night made clear that the EPA will not wait and is prepared to act on its own.

And it won’t be pretty.

“If you don’t pass this legislation, then … the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area,” the official said. “And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.”

Climate change legislation that passed the House is stuck in the Senate, but the EPA finding Monday was seen as a boost to the U.S. delegation in Denmark trying to convince other countries that Washington is capable of taking action to follow through with any global commitments.

The economic official explained that congressional action could be better for the economy, since it would provide “compensation” for higher energy prices, especially for small businesses dealing with those higher energy costs. Otherwise, the official warned that the kind of “uncertainty” generated by unilateral EPA action would be a huge “deterrent to investment,” in an economy already desperate for jobs.

“So, passing the right kind of legislation with the right kind of compensations seems to us to be the best way to reduce uncertainty and actually to encourage investment,” the official said.

It seems to me that an administration threatening “command and control,” with its echoes of authoritarian regimes throughout history — an approach that an opponent predicted would occur, and which has now been promised — might be, well, I don’t know, know, news at establishment media outlets other than Fox. But, with rare exceptions, it’s not (and spare me the prattle about sourcing to a single anonymous person, which the establishment press employs whenever it sees fit).

At the New York Times, the only relevant result of an advanced search on “command and control” (not in quotes) is a December 8 editorial referring to Donahue’s quote.

At the Associated Press, a search on “command and control” (also without quotes) comes back with nothing relevant besides the industry reaction item mentioned at the beginning of this post.

A Google News Search on [EPA "command and control"] (typed exactly as indicated between brackets) for December 9-12, sorted by date, comes back with 50 items. Other than two items in the Wall Street Journal from Kim Strassel and James Taranto, plus editorials in the Charleston (WV) Daily Mail and New York Post, no establishment media outlet has recognized the existence of Fox’s Major Garrett-AP “command and control” report.

It almost goes without saying that if a Bush 43 or Bush 41 “White House” official had promised “command and control” regulation of any aspect of American life, anonymously sourced or not, that phrase would have been all over news outlets everywhere. But when an official of this administration makes a specific promise that a type of regime normally associated with tyrants will be imposed on the entire economy if Congress doesn’t impose its own version of that type of regime, there’s stone silence from the establishment media’s self-styled defenders of freedom.

Oh, and I almost forgot to note that an APB has gone out on the far left for any and all information that might discredit the Chamber’s Donahue.

It’s going to take more than adding another sweater to do something about this government-driven, media-complicit chill.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Houston:

Event designed to help families become self-sufficient
11/14/09 4:50 PM EST

Astros icon Jeff Bagwell couldn’t help but notice a large group of people lined up to get supplies outside a homeless shelter next to Minute Maid Park as he made his way to the ballpark on Saturday morning for a charity event.

“You don’t have to take but two seconds and drive around Minute Maid Park and figure out what’s going on around here,” Bagwell said.

That’s why Bagwell and current Astros sluggers Lance Berkman and Hunter Pence, as well as new manager Brad Mills, were eager to participate on Saturday in an event designed to help 20 families who are transitioning from homelessness to self-sufficiency with the assistance of local agencies.

The event, called “Take A Minute,” marked the beginning of national Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The families were treated to a Thanksgiving meal, a tour of the ballpark, a meet-and-greet with the players and Mills and had a chance to run the bases.

“It’s pretty inspirational to see these families,” Pence said. “They’re happy and they’re working hard and converting from homeless to getting back on their feet. That’s what I think the program is about. It’s about helping those families find homes, and I think the biggest thing is the awareness and to understand the average homeless family is a female with two kids under the age of six.

“That’s kind of heart-wrenching, and it’s good to be here and see them working to get things together.”

Pence was the favorite of 9-year-old Kevin Cooks, whose mother and siblings took part in the event. Cooks and the other participants got a chance to get autographs from the players and pose for pictures.

“When I watch the games, it seems like he hits a lot of home runs,” Cook said of Pence.

Bagwell, the Astros’ all-time leader in home runs, said most Houstonians can’t relate with the hardships these families have been going through. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

In his coverage of Uncle Sam’s November Monthly Treasury Statement released yesterday, the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger reached the wire service’s usual quota of errors and misstatements. But what’s remarkable is that the AP reporter’s article seems to betray a belief that the country is still in a recession. Fascinating.

Along the way, Crutsinger omitted the fact that November’s deficit came in a bit higher than the Congressional Budget Office estimated several days ago, failed to report that receipts from corporate income taxes went negative for the second month in a row (i.e., refund checks issued exceeded cash collections), and betrayed more than a little lack of understanding of how the government has chosen to account for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Here are selected paragraphs from the AP report:

The federal deficit for the first two months of the new budget year is piling up faster than last year’s record imbalance.

….. The November deficit totaled $120.3 billion, the Treasury Department said Thursday. That’s less than analysts had expected and down from a $176.4 billion imbalance in October. It was a record 14th straight monthly deficit.

Even with the improvement, the deficit is 5.7 percent higher than the first two months of the 2009 budget year when it hit a record $1.42 trillion. The Obama administration expects the 2010 deficit will set a new record at $1.5 trillion.

In a sign of the recession’s depth, the government said individual income tax collections totaled $63.9 billion in November, less than the $70.5 billion the government collected in Social Security taxes and taxes for Medicare and disability insurance programs.

Analysts said it is not unusual for individual income taxes to fall sharply during a recession because the volatile category not only reflects the number of people working, but also bonuses and individual investment earnings that plunged during the downturn.

The amount of revenues that reflect Social Security and Medicare taxes, while down because fewer people are working than a year ago, are not subject to such large swings.

The flood of red ink reflects the downturn’s effect (on) the government’s books. Both individual and corporate tax receipts have been cut sharply, while government spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps and other programs surged.

In addition, the deficit reflects heavy spending from the $700 billion financial bailout fund to stabilize the financial system, and the $787 billion economic stimulus program to jump-start growth and prevent the Great Recession from turning into another Great Depression.

Here are my comments on the bolded items in order of their appearance:

• The reported $120.3 billion deficit may be less than what “analysts” predicted, but it’s more than the $115 billion the Congressional Budget Office thought it would be in their Monthly Budget Report last week.
• The second and third bolded items refer to the recession as if it’s still occurring, and seems to accept the idea that the third economic growth, currently pegged at an annualized 2.8% but subject to a late December revision, was as artificial as observers such as Investors Business Daily have claimed it is.
• The item about receipts is interesting on two levels. First, nobody “cut” individual or corporate tax receipts; they just didn’t come in, and thus have fallen sharply. Second, corporate income tax receipts have fallen so much that they were negative for the second month in a row, this time by $2.1 billion. October’s and November’s combined net corporate income tax refund total is $6.6 billion. More to the overall point, if the third quarter economy was so good and we’re in the midst of a real recovery, individual income tax collections should also be in the process of recovering. But instead, they went from $61.2 billion in October to $47.9 billion in November (both months mostly do not contain estimated payments from individuals who make quarterly or periodic payments), and on a combined basis are down over 25% from November-December 2008.
• Concerning the financial bailout fund’s effect on the deficit — Since its inception in early October 2009, the government as a whole has run a deficit of over $1.7 trillion (last year’s 1.417 trillion plus this year’s $297 billion so far). Crutsinger’s writing appears to imply that all TARP money that has been spent out of its $700 billion authorization included in the deficit. In fact, since Treasury values TARP “investments” on a Net Present Value (NPV) basis (explained in detail here earlier this year), only a relatively small percentage of all funds spent are treated as “outlays.” His last paragraph says that Treasury “now projects that the losses from the $700 billion government financial rescue fund will be $141 billion over the next decade, $200 billion lower than it forecast in August.” If Treasury has actually recognized those losses in its Monthly Treasury Statements (NPV accounting dictates that known and estimated losses should be recorded in the year they are recognized, but it’s not at all clear that it has), that $141 billion would be only about 8% of the deficits run up in the past 14 months.

But the most interesting element in Crutsinger’s work is his implicit recognition of a still-present recession. Who knew?

Image found at Fine-Tuned Finances.com.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

I mean really, what right do we have to expect anything from the world’s best golfer except the world’s best golf?

That was the argument made Wednesday by “Married Jake” of Glamour Magazine at Yahoo’s “Shine” site.

The item is called “Why Is Everyone Disappointed in Tiger?” (HT Instapundit). In it, jaded Jake jabs at a substantial portion of the public because, silly us, we thought that the guy was what he and his handlers portrayed.

Here is a graphic cap of Jake’s first three paragraphs. The “Related” insert isn’t his, and seems more than a little ironic in the circumstances:

Jake apparently needs to start taking more B vitamins to assist his memory, because there are at least two very good reasons why the public belief that Tiger was a faithful husband was mostly reasonable. You see, on two separate occasions, Tiger announced that he was taking time away from golf for family-related issues:

• The less directly relevant of the two was Woods’s nine-week hiatus in 2006 from the PGA Tour to be with his ailing father who was battling prostate cancer. The April 21, 2006 Washington Post reported that “He did not give specific details of his planned break, except to say he would not start playing ‘for a while,’ and the failing health of his father, Earl, would have a major influence on his future schedule.” Earl Woods died on May 3.
• Much more to the point, Woods specifically took time off to be with his wife Elin in June 2007 when their first child Sam was born. This decision prompted a wave of favorable media coverage (example here) with supportive opinions offered by Woods’s fellow PGA professionals.

Of course these items created the expectation that Tiger was devoted to his family. And of course, his shrewdly promoted, seemingly singular obsession with continually improving his golf game when it was already clearly the best on the planet led people to believe that he had no time for or interest in anything else besides his family (remember the commercial about him hitting practice drives during a driving rain storm, because he said — paraphrasing — “you can never take a day off”?).

Look, though I have little sympathy with the argument, you can assert that athletes aren’t supposed to be role models, and that involuntarily shouldering them with that responsibility isn’t right or fair. But this is about more than that, because Woods and his peeps for years have cultivated a public image that all of them had to recognize at some point was wildly at variance with reality.

So sue us, Jake. Yeah, we’re disappointed. We’re allowed to be. In fact, we should be. In fact, thank goodness we still are.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Sunday morning (link won’t work until then) when the blackout expires.

This is the FDR-Era remnant that needs to be banished to the Museum of Awful Ideas:

From New York City:

Dec 11, 2009 / 04:53 am

At the Mass marking the 30th Anniversary of Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s death, Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan thanked God for the life of the “magnetic” television and radio personality. He said Sheen’s talent and wisdom were at the service of his key goal of getting himself and the world to heaven.

In attendance at the Mass, celebrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, were many of Sheen’s friends and admirers who still look to him with “love and gratitude,” Archbishop Dolan said in his homily.

Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, representing Sheen’s home diocese, was present as was Msgr. John Kozar, who succeeded Sheen as national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

In his homily Archbishop Dolan noted that Pope John Paul II had embraced Archbishop Sheen and praised him as “the preacher to the world” in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on October 2, 1979. Sheen himself was interred in the crypt below the main altar, beside Ven. Pierre Toussaint and the previous archbishops and bishops of New York.

“As members of a supernatural family, the Church, we gather to thank God for him, eager to swap stories about a particular episode, a witty comment, a word of advice, a particular quote, his hypnotic eyes, his soothing yet challenging voice, or an occasion when we were with him,” the archbishop’s homily began.

Archbishop Dolan recounted his own meeting with Archbishop Sheen while a seminarian in Rome. Walking through St. Peter’s Square, the seminarian saw a crowd gathered around Sheen.

Sheen told the crowd he had come from an audience with Pope Paul VI. Asked what the Pope had said to him, he “blushed a bit” and replied:

“The Holy Father looked at me, took my hand, and said, ‘Fulton Sheen, you will have a high place in heaven.’”

Someone in the crowd asked him what he said back.

According to Archbishop Dolan, Sheen replied with “that familiar sparkle and grin.”

“I replied, ‘Your Holiness, would you mind making that an infallible statement?’”

Archbishop Dolan remarked that this encounter showed the “key message” of Archbishop Sheen: “He wanted to get to heaven; he wanted to bring the world with him.”

Through his radio and TV shows, his “avalanche” of books and articles, his talks and conferences were all to help us discover the purpose of life, “eternal union with God.”

“Fulton J. Sheen wanted to get to heaven. Fulton J. Sheen wanted to bring all of us with him. Fulton J. Sheen wanted to be a saint. Fulton J. Sheen wanted us to be saints, too,” the archbishop summarized. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

This is the fifth year I have looked into how the establishment media treats these two topics:

• The use of “Christmas shopping season” vs. “holiday shopping season” (the AP photo at right uses “holiday” and not “shopping,” even though there is a C-C-, Chr-Chr-Christmas tree in the picture).
• The frequency of Christmas and holiday layoff references.

I have done three sets of simple Google News searches each year — the first in late November, followed by identical searches roughly two and four weeks later.

The cumulative results of all three search sets during the past four years are in this graphic.

On November 24 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that references to this year’s shopping season came up with just over 6% of references to the “Christmas shopping season,” while the rest referred to the “holiday shopping season.” That’s a 9-point, roughly 60% drop from just four years ago.

Here are the results of the relevant Google News searches done late last night compared to roughly the same date in 2005 –

• “Christmas shopping season”: 2009 – 1,184 (9.4% of total); 2005 – 1,170 (11.8% of total)
• “Holiday shopping season”: 2009 – 11,360 (90.6% of total); 2005 – 8,730 (88.2% of total)

While the decline in “shopping season” references to Christmas isn’t as steep as it was in the late November comparisons, it’s still 2.4 points, or about 25%.

Meanwhile the media’s relative non-coverage of Christmas and holiday layoffs during what virtually everyone concedes is the worst economy since the post-Carter, early-Reagan era continues to amaze.

Here’s how this year compares to roughly the same time last year and in 2007, when the unemployment rate was over five points lower, and over 7 million more Americans were working (actual searches were all without quotes) –

• “Christmas layoffs”: 2009 – 1,491 (40.5% of total); 2008 – 6,213 (24% of total); 2007- 1,032 (38.8% of total);
• “Holiday layoffs” plus “Holidays layoffs”: 2009 – 2,183 (59.5% of total); 2008 – 19,680 (76% of total); 2007 – 1,626 (61.2% of total)
• Total layoff references: 2009 – 3,684; 2008 – 25,893; 2007 – 2,658.

The search results show that the press has been and continues to be many times more likely to refer to “Christmas” in connection with stories about layoffs than in stories about shopping. This year’s 40.5% layoff frequency for Christmas layoffs is more than quadruple the 9.4% in “Christmas shopping” references.

The number of total layoff references also tells an important tale. This year’s total is down almost 86% from last year, and is only about 40% higher than two years ago. This is not because this year’s economy is 86% better than last year’s or only somewhat worse than 2007′s.

As I said two weeks ago, consider showing posts such as this one the next time someone tries to tell you that establishment media outlets play news about the economy straight regardless of who is in office. They don’t, and it’s really not arguable.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Climategate: Al Gore Falsifies the Record — Gee, you really want to give the guy even a small benefit of the doubt for intelligence, credibility, intellectual honesty, and sincerity. But when he tells an interviewer that “I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old,” when in fact the most recent e-mail is from last freaking month, and only about 10 days, not 10 years, before Climategate broke, you’ve got nowhere to go but to conclude that he’s running totally empty on the traits just named, and is either delusional or a practiced Big Liar to boot.

_____________________________________________________

Speaking of Nobel Prize winners who are totally undeserving — when the UK Guardian starts going after President Obama for snubbing the Norwegians, you know he’s got serious problems.

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John Crudele has a cutely titled column about a big jobs problem: “I was a birther before Obama’s certificate questions.”

Since some people including Crudele (correction: not including Crudele — see below), are taking it further than they should, here’s a quick explanation accompanied by some interpretation:

• For years, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has included an estimate of jobs created by companies and self-employed people it couldn’t locate, and of jobs lost at smaller companies that went out of business and self-employed people who gave up their efforts. That estimate is called the Birth/Death model, and is a legitimate statistical attempt to approximate something that is very real but extremely hard to quantify.
• Based on past economic behavior during recessions, when shrewd entrepreneurs take the opportunity of a downturn to start up new enterprises and take on new people, BLS, as you can see at the link just identified, has estimated using the Birth/Death model that almost 1.2 million jobs have been created since February.
• The problem with the Birth/Death model is that it has never encountered anything like today’s POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy. The three individuals just named and their party have done everything they can to take down the economy and keep it there since the summer of last year. The uncertainty overhang they have created, their open hostility to private enterprise, accompanied by the possibilities of punitive cap-and-trade and statist health care legislation, have more than likely kept many would-be entrepreneurs on the sidelines, and have probably caused many other microbusinesses to postpone or cancel new initiatives. If that’s so, most of those 1.2 million jobs have never materialized.
• Once a year, BLS does a comprehensive review and adjusts data going back about two years. One comprehensive review that I noted back in February 2007 resulted in a net pickup of over 900,000 jobs. One factor in that huge upward adjustment was that entrepreneurs and small businesses continued to respond more positively to Bush 43′s tax and economic initiatives than BLS originally estimated.

(Note: A paragraph about Crudele’s direct knowledge of the job-loss number has been removed because it was incorrect. I regret the error. The figure in question is in the November BLS report; I was not aware that BLS does preliminary comprehensive loss estimate; HT to an e-mailer for alerting me to this.)

Additionally, based on what I’ve described here and absent other real evidence, Sean Hannity told his national talk radio audience a couple of days ago that the negative adjustment that is probably coming is evidence that BLS is (possibly paraphrasing his exact words) “cooking the books.” In doing so, he clearly made a false accusation against professionals who are attempting to do the best they can in a literally unprecedented situation.

As I’ve said before, never in my lifetime and probably never in American history has a political party done all it can — perhaps (moving towards probably) deliberately — to ruin the economy, first for the purpose of winning the presidency, and then for the purpose of rigging the entire political and economic system in an attempt to consolidate permanent power. It’s not at all surprising that BLS’s Birth/Death model would crack under the strain.

From Indianapolis:

Posted: December 6, 2009

Quick action by school nurse and police officer saves teenager with undiagnosed heart condition

Victor Venegas remembers almost nothing about what happened to him last week at Broad Ripple High School — just that he didn’t feel good, his girlfriend was walking him to the nurse’s office, and then he woke up in the hospital.

He doesn’t remember that his heart stopped beating or that his mother panicked when she arrived and saw his face was blue.

And he doesn’t remember the actions of two school employees who saved his life.

“I don’t remember it,” he said by telephone from his hospital bed Thursday. “I was just weightlifting, and my heart started hurting. My girlfriend was walking me to class, and I told her to take me to the nurse.”

He didn’t make it to the nurse’s office, but school nurse Lisa Aughe rushed to him, radioing for help when she saw the 18-year-old having a seizure.

By the time Indianapolis Public Schools Police Sgt. Mark Driskell arrived and called for an ambulance, Venegas had stopped breathing.

It turned out he had a previously undiagnosed heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, a defect in the timing of the electrical pulses that regulate the heartbeat.

Venegas had felt out of sorts early Tuesday and wanted to stay home from school, but his girlfriend persuaded him to come so she wouldn’t be at school without him.

In the end, her request probably helped saved his life: Had he had the heart attack at home alone, he likely would not have been able to call for help.

Instead, he was around people who were trained in CPR, including the nurse.

“You could tell he was turning blue,” Driskell said. “I asked if we should start CPR, and she said yes.”

The teen who collapsed in the stairwell is popular with the school staff, who describe him as a funny boy, a wrestler and the kind of guy who helps the younger kids learn to use the weight room.

The principal made an announcement over the PA system, placing the school in lockdown. Venegas’ mother rushed to the school from her job at Lowe’s at Glendale Town Center.

Driskell and Aughe had been trained in CPR, but neither had ever used it before that Tuesday. They say they’re not heroes but that they did what they had to do.

“Call it fate or luck or lot,” Aughe said, “but it is just part of the job.”

When medics arrived, they shocked Venegas’ heart four times with a defibrillator to revive him and took him to St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital.

There, doctors told his parents that if he hadn’t received immediate CPR, he would have died.

“If it wasn’t for them,” said Maria Venegas, his mother, “I would have lost him that morning at the school.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

What did Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan know about this, and when did he know it? It would appear that the answers are NOT “nothing” and “never.”

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Speaking of Duncan, it’s more than a little odd that this February story has, as far as I can tell, never gone beyond CBS2 Chicago (video is at link):

Hundreds of students have allegedly been beaten by teachers, coaches and staff at Chicago Public Schools. 2 Investigator Dave Savini continues his ongoing investigation involving the illegal use corporal punishment.

….. An exclusive CBS 2 investigation discovered ….. (that) at least 818 Chicago Public School students, since 2003 ….. allege being battered by a teacher or an aide, coach, security guard, or even a principal. In most of those cases – 568 of them – Chicago Public School investigators determined the children were telling the truth.

….. The 2 Investigators found reports of students beaten with broomsticks, whipped with belts, yard sticks, struck with staplers, choked, stomped on and pushed down stairs. One substitute teacher even fractured a student’s neck.

But even more alarming, in the vast majority of cases, teachers found guilty were only given a slap on the wrist.

CBS 2 informed former Chicago Public School CEO Arne Duncan of our investigative findings shortly before he was promoted to U.S. Secretary of Education.

“If someone hits a student, they are going to be fired. It’s very, very simple,” Duncan said.

Before heading to Washington, he vowed to take action.

“Any founded allegation where an adult is hitting a child, hitting a student – they’re going to be gone,” Duncan said.

But that’s not what happened under Duncan’s watch. Of the 568 verified cases, only 24 led to termination. Records show one teacher who quote “battered students for several years” was simply given a “warning” by the Board of Education.

And another student was given “100 licks with a belt.” The abuse was substantiated, but the records show the teacher was not terminated.

Does anyone believe that a conservative educator who presided over what appears to have been and may still be a culture of corporal punishment — a practice that has been illegal in Illinois since 1994 — would be getting a pass over this? Apparently in Obamaland, it’s a basis for promotion.

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There is an obvious point being missed in the UK Guardian’s coverage of the latest goings-on in Copenhagen — coverage that is presumptively suspect because the Guardian was the orchestrator of the loony-tunes Chicken Little editorial that 56 papers worldwide published earlier this week.

The Guardian’s report claims that Copenhagen’s climate talks are in “disarray” because of arguments over whether developing countries should be working to limit CO2 emissions.

Given that the “science” behind alleged human-caused global warming has been discredited, no countries should be entering into any kind of binding agreement that would limit their carbon emissions. Period.

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Social Security Train Wreck Update — I observed in early October that it’s at the station. Yesterday, Chuck Blahaus at the E21 blog (HT Hot Air) noted that the locomotive is still accelerating. Benefits paid and administrative costs outstripped incoming tax collections for the sixth straight month (Note: Graph should be labeled “Monthly Cash Surpluses/Deficits”):

It seems all but certain that November and December will show cash deficits. Given the continued deterioration in cash collections and the administration’s grim determination to do more of what hasn’t worked to meaningfully influence job creation, 2010 promises to be even worse, and is an even bet to show a cash deficit for the entire fiscal year.

To the extent that cash deficits occur, “general revenues” coming from a government that is otherwise over $12 trillion in debt are funding today’s Social Security benefits.