The report, “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis,” used the official White House calendar,Politico’s comprehensive presidential calendar, and media reports through March 31, 2013 to calculate its results.
GAI’s findings may actually understate Obama’s recreational hours.
Last year, Obama told CBS News that playing golf is “the only time that for six hours, I’m outside.” But instead of six hours, GAI counted a round of golf as taking just four hours. Likewise, for presidential vacation hours, researchers attributed just six hours of any day of vacation to leisure activity.
That seems to be what AP scribe Bob Lewis wants everyone to think, anyway. Here’s the lede to his story about the effects of Obamacare on part-time faculty:
RICHMOND, Va. — Many adjunct instructors at Virginia’s 23 community colleges will see their hours cut starting this summer thanks to Virginia’s response to the new federal health reform law, a change that could cripple or kill livelihoods teachers like Ann Hubbard worked hard to build.
The Affordable Care Act mandates that employers with more than 50 workers provide coverage for any full-time worker, with full-time defined as 30 hours a week or more. This has presented a problem for many large employers. It’s not just Virginia that’s slashing hours; many big companies are doing the same thing.
As USA Today reports, “Many businesses plan to bring on more part-time workers next year, trim the hours of full-time employees or curtail hiring because of the new health care law, human resource firms say.”
Granted, all of these are “responses to the new federal health reform law.” By the same token, a stampede for the exits is a response to a fire in a movie theater. But the stampede is only a proximal cause. The ultimate cause is the fire. And the ultimate cause of the hour-cutting is not Virginia’s response — it is Obamacare.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released jobs numbers for January Friday showing that nonfarm payroll employment increased by 157,000 and the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent.
Lost in these headline numbers was another rise in the number of people not in the labor force.
This number now stands at a staggering 89 million, up from 80.5 million when President Obama took office.
This means that there are currently 8.5 million more Americans not in the labor force than just four years ago.
Also, the U-6 measure of unemployment which is viewed as a more accurate measure because it takes into account part-time workers and those who left the labor force, has unemployment at 14.4%
So the number the White House and the media jump on is 7.9% because it’s smaller. But if you take into account all the people who want more hours, any hours, or people who have given up on their search for work, the number spikes to 14.4%.
Obama in 2006: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government cannot pay its own bills.”
Obama in 2013: “To even entertain the idea of this happening [not raising the debt ceiling], of the United States of America not paying its bills, is irresponsible. It’s absurd.”
There’s been lots of discussion lately regarding the minting of a “trillion dollar platinum coin.” The scheme was first promoted by Krugman less than a week ago, and has been discussed heavily the last few days - with “progressive” statists diligently supporting the cause.
House Speaker John A. Boehner said Wednesday that the House will pass his bill that would raise taxes on millionaires but extend tax cuts for everyone else, and said it’s then up to President Obama to either accept that plan or be responsible for a tax increase on everyone.
“The president will have a decision to make. He can call on the Senate Democrats to pass our bill, or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history,” Mr. Boehner said as he briefly appeared before reporters to respond to Mr. Obama’s press conference earlier in the day.
I don’t think people fathom how much taxes need to go up in order to accomodate our “new normal” of spending levels. Let the tax rates go up on millionaires so that in 2 months we can get back to talking about the 17 trillion dollar debt, 2 trillion dollar annual budget deficits and exploding entitlement spending. This tax increase solves nothing even though it’s the largest one in American history (referring to the tax increases following the sequestration in the event of a no “compromise” solution). This “compromise” bill Boehner is bragging about is a drop in the bucket.
The stimulus cost American taxpayers 831 billion dollars and allegedly “created” about 2.5 million jobs. If these numbers are true then the federal government spent approximately $332,400 per job created.
And supposedly that’s a wonderful success for America. To me that’s an incredible failure.
While the figures themselves have been gloomy enough, there is considerable debate over whether the Labor Department’s headline numbers present the true picture.
A measure that takes into account those who have stopped looking for jobs as well as those working part-time for economic reasons has hovered near 15 percent. The so-called “real” unemployment rate, or U-6 measure, is above 20 percent in Nevada and California.
On a national level, that more encompassing rate edged higher to 15.0 percent.
The number of women unemployed in June was 5,785,000, an increase of 780,000 from when Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009 – at that time, the number of unemployed women in the United States was 5,005,000.
The number of unemployed is for women ages 16 and older in the civilian work force and is seasonally adjusted, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The BLS data also show that the unemployment rate for women in June was 8.0 percent, up from 7.9 percent in May. That’s also up from 7.0 percent in January 2009 when Obama became president.
Here’s a far-from-exhaustive list (we could have filled every month’s quota using nothing but gaffes from Vice President Joe Biden) of insane, disinformed, spectacularly wrong statements from Obama’s ever-shrinking brain trust, with a sprinkling of mots justesfrom the commentariat.
One quote per month, followed by that month’s rate of U-3 unemployment and labor force non-participation:
I went through and picked out my favorites, but give the whole article a read. It really puts into perspective that famous Hayek quote, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
March 15, 2009: Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke: “We’ll see the recession coming to an end probably this year.” (8.7 percent, 34.4 percent)
January 27, 2010: President Barack Obama: “And after two years of recession, the economy is growing again.” (9.7 percent, 35.2 percent)
September 14, 2010: Ben Smith, Politico: “The Troubled Assets Relief Program … [has] succeeded far beyond expectations.” (9.5 percent, 35.4 percent)
January 25, 2011: President Barack Obama, State of the Union address: ”We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” (9.1 percent, 35.8 percent)
July 21, 2011: Obama spokesman Jay Carney: “That’s why he is focused every day, he wakes up every day and goes to sleep every night thinking about the fact that he will not rest, he will not cease in his efforts to grow the economy and create jobs until he knows that every American who’s looking for a job can find one. And that will undoubtedly remain true throughout his first term.” (9.1 percent, 36 percent)
Testifying before the House Budget Committee today [February 16th], U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Chairman Paul Ryan the following: “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”
Actually, President Obama sort of did have a definitive solution. He created a debt commission, which devised a long-term debt reduction plan. Which the president rejected. And instead, we get this new budget proposal, which makes no effort to deal with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—the long-term drivers of U.S. federal debt. The debt curve never gets bent, as the above White House (!) chart shows. (Yes, the chart comes from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.) It just goes up and up and up—until the heat death of the universe or the economy is struck by a Greek-style debt crisis.
![Testifying before the House Budget Committee today [February 16th], U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Chairman Paul Ryan the following: “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”
Actually, President Obama sort of did have a definitive solution. He created a debt commission, which devised a long-term debt reduction plan. Which the president rejected. And instead, we get this new budget proposal, which makes no effort to deal with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—the long-term drivers of U.S. federal debt. The debt curve never gets bent, as the above White House (!) chart shows. (Yes, the chart comes from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.) It just goes up and up and up—until the heat death of the universe or the economy is struck by a Greek-style debt crisis.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m53oq8mPKj1qbogplo1_500.jpg)
