My Beauty Best Teacher

This post is going to attempt to tie together commentary of FDR, Green Jobs, the Michigan 21st Century Investment Fund, and Jeff Daniels... I hope it makes sense.

As a teacher, I always become annoyed when students repeat the myth that FDR saved us from the Great Depression. It is now such a widely accepted myth that when I voice my doubts, the students think that I must be joking. It is like claiming the world is flat they think- after all, look at all the jobs that FDR created to fight the Great Depression. Look at all the never-done-before government actions, and the massive expansions in federal power that he shoved through during an unprecedented 4 terms in office. Surely he saved us, because after all, massive government action must be good, right?

Wrong. It is a myth that FDR saved us from the Great Depression. Excellent information this can be found in the essay Great Myths of the Great Depression. In fact, FDR's New Deal program was an economic failure that likely stretched a usual downturn in the economy (albeit a bad sharp one) into a depression that the US did not truly emerge from until after FDR was dead. Roosevelt’s formula of substituting government programs for a normal business recovery did not create the high unemployment. FDR's idea of extracting tax dollars from individuals and corporations to fund government programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a bad idea. The WPA hired workers to pick up trash, cut down trees, and build roads, bridges, and schools- but even though the government was 'creating jobs,' in reality they merely transferred jobs from the productive private sector to the inefficient public one. For more yet, see this site.

This myth does not die though. In Michigan, our government has dramatically increased the amount of money that it spends on two 'job creation programs' that are the centerpiece of Granholm's economic recovery program for Michigan. In fact, during her campaign, these two 'job creation programs' featured prominently, and obviously people bought this myth, because she won re-election over a real job creator in Michigan, Republican Dick DeVos. As michiganliberal.com put it "Granholm announced the creation of funding for new companies that will help diversify our economy and keep people and ideas in this state," buying into the myth that the government can tax productive companies and then somehow create jobs with that money.

In reality though, government can not create jobs, it can only force people from productive private sector jobs to inefficient public sector jobs. An article in the Detroit Free Press described how tax dollars in Michigan (where taxes have been steadily been raised) were used by two state programs, the Venture Michigan Fund and the Michigan 21st Century Investment Fund, to try to help bring new jobs to Michigan. These programs were created because Democrat Governor Jennifer Granholm and liberal state lawmakers believed that they could create jobs using the power of the government. The result?

According to the research, Michigan's government spent 116 million dollars and to create 40 new Michigan jobs over the last two years - at the cost of almost $3 million per 'created' job! What's even worse, liberals and government has reached the wrong conclusion- they think that this is a success (the headline of the Free Press article- 'State Venture Capital Funds Start Paying Off'). Thank you to the Michigan Taxpayers Association for staying on top of this one.

So what sent me off on this long rant and prompted me to spend 30 minutes coming up with this post? Those annoying commercials I have to listen to that are narrated by Jeff Daniels! The Michigan Economic Development Corporation has a whole library of video's that they run on TV and the radio that they have put together to tout the myth of government creating jobs. The most annoying of these are the ones that claim that the MEDC is doing great things when it uses massive amounts of taxpayer money to lure environmental companies here, and by doing so somehow creates jobs. Michigan is now fully behind the myth of government job creation- even worse, it is buying in more and more into the more specific myth of green jobs.

John Stossel destroys this myth in his recent article "The Fallacy of Green Jobs." I'm going to pull from it and edit it below:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has a great twofer pitch: "green jobs." It sounds like a winner. Politicians always promise that their programs will create jobs. The fallacy is the same in every case: Even if the program creates jobs building bridges or windmills, it necessarily prevents other jobs from being created. This is because government spending merely diverts money from private projects to government projects.

Governments create no wealth. They only move it around while taking a cut for their trouble. So any jobs created over here come at the expense of jobs that would have been created over there. Pharaohs created thousands of jobs by building pyramids. Our government could create jobs by paying people to dig holes and then fill them up. Would actual wealth be created? Of course not. It would be destroyed. It's like arguing the hurricanes create jobs. After all, the destruction is followed by rebuilding. But does anyone seriously believe that replacing destroyed buildings creates wealth?

Look at Obama's plan- it wholeheartedly buys the myth. If "green jobs" make so much sense, the market will create them. They will be created by private entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are eager to profit from winning investments. The best ideas will rise to the top, and green energy will gradually replace coal and oil. If politicians were serious about creating jobs and cleaner technologies, they would step aside and let the free market go to work.

The last thing I want to leave you with is the Broken Window Fallacy, as spelled out by French economist Frederic Bastiat. He pointed out that a broken shop window will create work for a glassmaker, but that work comes only at the expense of the cook or tailor the shopkeeper would have patronized if he didn't have to replace the window. Government taxing tax money, cycling it through inefficient bureaucracies and vast overhead, and then trying to build things inefficiently that the market is not does not create jobs- it destroys jobs.

Need proof- during the Great Depression, FDR's unemployment rate hovered around 15%. And in Michigan, under liberal Democrat Granholm's administration and her government-jobs creation program, Michigan has lurched into a one-state recession and had it's unemployment rate climb from 3.7 to 7.2%.

Pivoting away from other issues like the environment ("Bombshell" Experiment: Global Climate Change Caused by Cloud Cover) or education (More Than 200 D.C. Teachers Fired! Progress?), let's return back to jobs and the role that the government plays in job creation.

In my post Coming To Grips With a Political Economy I wrote about a class that I took in college called 'Political Economy.' The class was an attempt to indoctrinate students with the idea that government could create jobs through its actions and could create wealth through proper regulation and control over free markets. I struggled through this class, mostly because I rejected entirely the idea that government can create wealth and jobs through its actions, and today I still believe that.

Government does not create jobs. It takes wealth from those who are productive and creating wealth, cycles it through many layers of bureaucracy and 'management', and then gives that wealth to those people who are favored by the government. Some of those who are favored by the government should be- the Constitution identified those who the government can give 'jobs' to and states further have identified those who the government should give 'jobs' to. But many others who the government gives 'jobs' today in America are simply those who benefit from the kind of crony capitalism and banana republic policies that are more common to two-bit dictatorships and tyrannies.

And the 'jobs' that are created by government are inefficiently created- much wealth and property is squandered and lost and burned by having government provide these jobs because of the many layers of 'management' and bureaucracy that mark the government. This is an acceptable price to pay for fire, police, and military jobs, but for most other 'jobs' the government creates the cost to create these jobs far exceeds the useful good that these jobs provide to society.

For example, many liberals claim that Obamacare will 'create jobs'- agencies and regulatory bodies that will hire overlords and masters who supervise a once-free and vibrant economic sector and regulate, tax, and control it. But the cost of these jobs was demonstrated graphically by the reaction that businesses had to it- after the passage of this law businesses dramatically dropped their hiring of workers. The Heritage report explained why this happened:

Businesses with fewer than 50 workers have a strong incentive to maintain this size, which allows them to avoid the mandate to provide government-approved health coverage or face a penalty; Businesses with more than 50 workers will see their costs for health coverage rise—they must purchase more expensive government-approved insurance or pay a penalty; and Employers face considerable uncertainty about what constitutes qualifying health coverage and what it will cost. They also do not know what the health care market or their health care costs will look like in four years. This makes planning for the future difficult.

Yet President Obama and the modern-day Democratic Party continues to think that regulations, spending, taxes, and control over free people can 'create jobs'. They take wealth from those who have it- either through taxes or fees or by simply sucking up savings by selling debt- and give it to those who they favor and try to pretend that they have made society better. But they haven't- they have killed legitimate jobs that millions of people through their free actions wanted and needed (the unseen hand of the market) and made society less because of their actions that took away freedom and property.

In Latest EPA Rules to Cost 1.4 Million Jobs and a 12% Increase in Utility Bills I wrote about how the Washington Post reported that the new EPA rules that were recently published will cause electric bills will jump 12 percent nationally by 2016 to comply with these new policies, with residents in areas such as Kentucky and Tennessee seeing a 24 percent increase in their utility bills. These policies are project to eliminate 1.4 million jobs- real jobs that will be destroyed by the actions of government, creating people who will no longer be paying taxes any more and will now be sucking down government benefits, all thanks to these policies pushed by Democratic bureaucrats employed by a Democratic President supervised by Democrats in the House and the Senate and supported by Democratic unions and a Democratic media.

And now Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso has put together a report that showed that the executive actions of the Democrat President have put in place in July alone an additional $9.5 billion in new regulatory costs by proposing 229 new rules and finalizing 379 rules. Among those rules that are going to add to the cost of doing business, kill jobs, and make our society less productive and wealthy are rules regarding the fake issues of global warming, healthcare reform, and financial regulatory reform rules.

IN JULY ALONE A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT PUT IN PLACE $9.5 BILLION IN NEW COSTS! I don't care how many times Obama 'pivots' to talk about jobs, the heart of the matter is that he is wrong about the government being able to create jobs and wealth through its actions- government is best that governs least because when people are free and free to live their lives and free to make their own decisions and free to do with their wealth and labor as they see fit, then jobs are created and wealth is created.

Make the choice in 2012 to turn America away from tyranny and 'government-created jobs' and to freedom and 'people-created jobs'.

For more reading, try Productivity versus OSHA and EPA regulations (Research for business decisions).

During his State of the Union address on January 24, 2012, President Barack Obama offered up reasons why voters should give him a second term of office, arguing that

...In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs...

Many on the left (like Balloon Juice) are trotting out this statistic as evidence that President Obama's policies are successful at creating jobs and putting Americans back to work. Although the jobs are being created by businesses, and it could be argued that these jobs would have been created regardless of who was in office, liberals and Democrats and progressives argue that President Obama deserves credit for 3 million jobs created by him while he was President and that we should all vote for him again in 2012.

And to be fair, if President Obama's policies have been successful in creating millions of jobs for workers, then we should give him credit and a second term of office- President Clinton, who was a Democrat, deserved another term of office in 1996 on the strength of a booming economy. But also to be fair, if President Obama's policies have not been successful in creating millions if jobs for workers, let's hold him accountable and throw him out of office, because it is important to be fair.

So let's take a look at some numbers, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which are pretty unbiased (although I will point out that any likely bias to be introduced by this government agency would favor Obama). These numbers are generated here, and are not seasonally adjusted. All numbers are in the thousands.

For comparison, let's first look at President Bush, the Republican in office who preceded Obama. According to the BLS, when President Bush took office in January in 2001 the number of people age 16 or older employed in our nation was 136181K. Over the next year, that number dropped to 134177 (Jan 02). By January of 2007 the number climbed to 144275K. Democrats took over control of the House and Senate at this time. The number of employed though continued to climb, hitting 146867K in July of 2008. It is at this point that the 'crash' occurred, and on leaving office the number of people employed had dropped to 145362.

A couple ways to look at this data. Overall, 9181K (over 9 million) jobs were created during Bush's time as President. If you want to say that 'the first year doesn't count', then Bush created 11185K jobs. If you want to say that 'the first year doesn't count and the first year of the next guy's Presidency does'- in other words, count as 'Bush' the years from Jan 02 to Dec 10, then Bush created 2392K jobs. If you want to simply count by 'first three years', Bush created 1555K jobs.

Now let's look at President Obama. According to the BLS, when President Obama took office in January of 2009 the number of people age 16 or older employed in our nation was 140436K. Over the next year, that number dropped to 136809K (Jan 10). Buy January of 2011, the number climbed to 137599. Republicans took back control of the House at this time, although the Senate was still controlled by Democrats. The number employed continued to climb, hitting 139869 today.

A couple ways to look at this data. Overall, 567K (half a million) jobs have been lost during Obama's time as President. If you want to say that 'the first year doesn't count,' then Obama created 3060K jobs (or, 'over 3 million' as he bragged about in his speech). If you want to simply count by 'first three years', Obama lost 567K jobs.

So, let's go back to the earlier point that Obama was trying to make- that his policies helped us to recover from a recession and created 3 million jobs, and so he should be re-elected. In comparison to the Republican who was in office before him- a Republican who Democrats said was 'dumb' and who made 'lots of mistakes'- Obama fares considerably worse by any measure. In overall comparison, Bush created almost 10 million more jobs; in 'first year doesn't count', Bush created almost 8 million more jobs; and in 'first three years' comparison, Bush created almost 2 million more jobs. By any comparison, the 'bumbling idiot' who was in office prior to Obama did a considerably better job at being around when jobs were created by businesses.

The argument against why Obama should be elected to a second term is not 'things got worse under Obama', because that's going to turn out to be not true (I imagine employment will grow enough over his last year to give him a positive balance overall). The argument against why Obama should not be elected to a second term is that his policies made the road to recovery longer, tougher, and worse and that his job-killing policies, supported by a Democratic Congress, led to the loss of jobs in America versus what we could have expected from anyone else.

If the Republicans nominate a candidate comparable to Bush, whom Democrats constantly attacked as unqualified and dumb, than we can expect millions more jobs than what Obama has demonstrated that he can create; if the Republicans nominate a candidate better than Bush (someone smarter, with more business savvy, leadership skills, experience saving bankrupt enterprises, experience balancing budgets, etc) than we can hope for more jobs created than under Bush. Either way, Obama should not be re-elected.

And keep in mind I ignored for our purposes here the increase in population in our nation that has occurred (see my earlier discussion breaking down the Employment-Population Ratio, which measures number of people employed as a percentage of the population- under Bush that rate averaged around 62%, and under Obama it has hovered around 58%, even over the past 22 months of job growth that Obama is bragging about the ratio has only gone up 0.6%). Population growth should naturally lead to more jobs being created- it did under Bush, but yet it hasn't under Obama.

And also keep in mind the debt that our nation has taken on to achieve these results. Bush created 9 million jobs and added 4 trillion in debt- Obama lost 500 million jobs and added 5 trillion in debt. This means that my children and grandchildren gave up a lot of their future for nothing under Obama.

Personal insults, soaring rhetoric, and misleading claims don't stand up the force of data, information, facts, and reasoning. President Obama needs to be gone.

The domestic auto industry is on the rebound, leading to more jobs, greater protection of union jobs, rising salaries, and a better international balance of trade. But Democrats don't like the auto industry rebound and over the coming months are going to continue their attempts to punish this large and important segment of our economy.

The logic for this is quite clear- the auto industry rebound is being led by booming sales of SUV's and trucks and the rebound would have been stronger if it wasn't for the absurdly poor sales of 'green cars'. And yet Democrats in Congress and in the Presidency are continuing their attack on SUV's and trucks by pushing for higher CAFE standards and pushing for cap-and-tax, all the while promoting and subsidizing and pushing for 'green cars'.

Democrats are trying to hurt the profitable sectors of the auto companies, are trying to make people who work on SUV's and trucks to lose their jobs, and are trying to damage the salaries of everyone in these auto companies by attacking the most profitable operations of these companies. At the same time, they are trying to make auto companies build cars, at a massive net loss for everyone concerned, that people don't want, in a way that would make the communist Soviet Union proud, with the result being auto companies that are less profitable, provide less jobs, protect less union jobs, and provide lower salaries to all concerned.

SUV's and trucks are the future- they are safer, more powerful, have more utility, and look better, while 'green cars' that run on kitchen oil or batteries are the past- they are deadly, lack power, have little utility, and generally are uglier. SUV's and trucks are profitable and make money, 'green cars' don't. And yet, it is the Democrats who are pushing auto companies to build less SUV's and trucks (that are profitable) and build more 'green cars' (which are not profitable) with their regulations, taxes, and public relations stunts.

This is why auto union workers are ignorant for supporting the Democratic party- the very initiatives that are the most important to the modern day Democratic party are the very initiatives that will lead to a loss of jobs and salaries for union workers. It is rather the GOP that is best for auto workers- it is the GOP that looks to the jobs and livelihood of the auto workers and says 'I want you to build more of the stuff that sales better and less of the stuff that sales poorly and thereby make more money and have more jobs'. It is the GOP that is fighting a determined and dirty Democratic attempt to destroy the profits of the auto companies.

The numbers are clear- when the US economy did poorly, many lost their jobs, our income plummeted, and our nation lost ground on everything, it was 'green cars' that everyone talked about and focused on and that the government promoted. Now that the economy is rebounding (in spite of Obama and the Democrats efforts), now that jobs are being created, now that incomes are rising again a bit, it is SUV's and trucks that are selling again.

The lesson to me is quite clear- promote SUV's and trucks and stop promoting 'green cars', and jobs, income, and the United States will be better.

According to officials at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, their actions over the last several months ultimately saved or created over 20 Congressional Jobs. Democratic efforts mirrored their success in job creation in the economy at large, where Obama and Pelosi and Reid have bragged about saving or creating thousands of jobs through their policies.

“The margin we are beginning with is significantly lower than it might have been if the roof had been totally blown off and we hadn’t contained the damage,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the campaign committee. It was unclear to me whether he was describing the logic and reasoning that led to his party losing over 60 seats in the House in the 2010 election or whether he was describing the logic and reasoning that led to the loss of over 8 million jobs since Democrats took over control of Congress in 2006.

Being from Michigan, I watched for 8 years as a liberal Democrat, Governor Granholm, destroyed Michigan's economy. The entire time that the economy went down, she kept blaming others- Engler and then Bush- while promising that if we just enacted more of her policies and ideas then things would improve. And her policies and ideas continued to damage our economy, stunt economic growth, chase away productive businesses, and choke off progress. The harder she worked and the more she did, the worse it got in Michigan, and the whole time she claimed credit for 'saving' or 'creating' a few jobs in targeted industries while the overall picture got drastically worse. And after the election of Democrats in 2006 to Congress and of Obama in 2008 to the Presidency, we're now seeing replicated at the national level exactly what we saw in Michigan- blame, hope, promises, targeted 'jobs' saved, overall job losses.

Democratic strategists might have saved or created over 20 Congressional jobs for liberal Democrats, and may have saved or created thousands of more jobs for government employees and public servants and community organizers, but the numbers overall don't lie- liberal policies don't work, whenever enacted, either at the state level (Michigan's lost decade, bankrupt states in California and New York, etc) or at the national level (European states, USA since liberal Democrats took control, USA under Jimmy Carter, etc).

And it's not because liberals are idiots, or fools, or bad people, or evil, or anything like that- it is because raising taxes, regulating businesses, redistributing wealth, punishing productivity, erratically changing laws, violating established customs, weakening national defense, and enabling enemies of the state shockingly don't improve things. They will achieve successes, but the overall picture will get worse whenever these policies are put in place.

The Social Security Administration just released figures taken from payroll taxes that track the number of workers in the United States and their median pay. These figures come from the Medicare tax database at the Social Security Administration, which processes every W-2 wage form. All wages, salaries, bonuses, independent contractor net income and other compensation for services subject to the Medicare tax are added up to the penny.

Since this blog deals with politics and government, I have taken the liberty of dividing the bar graph into 5 time periods based on which political party was in charge of our nation at that time. Hopefully this will add some clarity to the analysis.

From 1999 to 2001, with Democrat Bill Clinton as President and a Republican Congress, an increase in both the number of people with jobs in our nation and their median pay. That's a good thing- give credit to Clinton and the GOP Congress inspired by the 1994 conservatives for doing some right things for our economy. The imminent election of Bush in late 2000 seemed to only add to the increase in median pay.

From 2001 to 2003, with Republican George W Bush as President and a divided Congress (House was GOP, Senate was Democrat), the number of workers and their pay remained flat. This is probably where the whole 'Bush's recover was jobless' rhetoric comes from, since once a liberal gets a view in their head, facts usually can't change it later on. It isn't good, but it isn't awful either, so let's see what happened after Democrats lost the Senate and see if that changed anything regarding Bush's term.

From 2003 to 2007, with Republican George W Bush as President and a full Republican Congress, there was a dramatic increase in the number of workers in our nation and (over time) a rise in the median pay for workers as well. This is a great thing- more people with jobs and the median pay of jobs also going up means a larger tax base, more people making goods and providing services, and America is better. The key variable here appears to be less a matter of Bush and more a matter of Republicans running Congress- and those Republicans from 2003 to 2007 weren't even especially conservative, principled, or driven by any sort of Tea Party ideals, they were just sort of Democrat-lites. 2007 was the peak in our nation in both workers and median pay, so putting back in charge whatever party did so well back then seems a reasonable assumption.

From 2007 to 2009, with Republican George W Bush as President and a full Democratic Congress, there was a slight drop from 2007 to 2008, and then in 2008 the bottom just fell out on our nation and we lost a ton of workers and the median pay for those workers who were still employed plunged. The massive bailouts, TARP, and other big government programs implemented by Bush late in his administration appear to have been considerable failures. The Democrats came roaring into Congress in 2007 on a platform of change and especially in 2008 began to really pass their agenda through Congress, so I would contend that the Democrats in Congress appear to be the key to destroying jobs and pay in an economy. The imminent election of Obama in late 2000 seemed to only add to the remarkable decrease in America's jobs and pay.

From 2009 to 2010, with Democrat Barack Obama as President and a full Democratic Congress, there was a slight drop in the number of workers in our nation, but another stunning drop in media pay. This data includes massive stimulus bills and spending programs that added stunning amounts of debt. The addition of Obama to the situation appeared to lead to a considerable drop in the median pay for our nation and did not bring any more jobs. I blame the Democrats in Congress more so than him at this point.

My prediction is that we will see another dip in jobs and median pay from 2010 to 2011, all of which Democrats can be said to be responsible. And it is too early to speculate on what effect the Republican take-over of the House in 2011 did to these numbers- after all, 2011 isn't even over. To be fair though, the steep drop in pay and workers should at the very least slow with this new divided Congress, as the data seems to fairly conclusively demonstrate that the more Republicans are in charge of Congress, the more workers we have as a nation and the more they are paid.

UPDATE: One loyal reader wanted me to pass on this caveat: "we must acknowledge the overriding influences on such data of the dot.com bubble of the 1990's which made everybody look good as 2000 approached and the real estate bubble of the early 2000's which made everybody look good until the crisis beginning in 2007. Both bubbles resulted in unsustainable highs which should not be considered new standards..."

On this labor day - many workers will have very little to celebrate with some 6.9 million jobs being lost since the recession. It is reported that August 2009 unemployment rates reached as high as 9.7 % and millions of workers have seen their hours, wages and health care cut.

TOTAL JOBS LOST DURING THE RECESSION: 6.9 MILLION

• New jobs needed per month to keep up with population growth: 127,000
• Jobs lost in August 2009: 216,000
• Construction jobs lost in the recession: 1.4 million (19%, nearly one in five construction jobs)
• Mass layoffs (50 or more people by a single employer) in July 2009: 2,157; jobs lost: 206,791

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE: 9.7%

• Number unemployed: 14.9 million (up from 7.5 million in December 2007)
• Underemployment rate: 16.8%; Share of workers un- or underemployed: roughly 1 in 6
• Under- and unemployed, marginally attached and involuntary part-time workers: 26.4 million
• Unemployment rate, ages 16 to 24: 18.2%
• Male unemployment: 10.9%; female unemployment: 8.2%
• White unemployment: 8.9%; black unemployment: 15.1%; Hispanic unemployment: 13%
• Unemployment rate, young college graduates: 5.9% (2nd worst on record); Worst recorded unemployment rate for young college graduates: 6.2% (1983)
• Traditional ratio of young college grads’ unemployment to overall rate: 50%; Current ratio:70%
• Portion of unemployed who have been jobless more than six months: one third
• Average weekly unemployment benefit in July (including additional $25 per week from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act): $332

STATES WITH DOUBLE-DIGIT UNEMPLOYMENT IN JULY, 2009: 16; WHEN THIS LAST HAPPENED: 1983

• Highest unemployment rate: Michigan, 15.0%; lowest: North Dakota, 4.2%
• When California’s Hispanic unemployment surpassed black unemployment: 2nd quarter, 2009

INCREASE IN AVERAGE U.S. WORKER’S PRODUCTIVITY, 2000-07: 19.2%

• Decrease in all prime-aged worker’s real median weekly wages, 2000-2007: $1; Decrease forAfrican Americans: $3
• Annual growth rate of private-sector workers’ wages, last three months: 2.6%
• Annual growth of wages in managerial, professional, and related occupations, 2009, 2nd quarter:0%
• Ratio of average CEO’s pay to typical worker’s pay in 1979: 27 to 1; Ratio in 2007: 275 to 1

SHARE OF PEOPLE NEAR RETIREMENT AGE WITH A 401(K) BALANCE UNDER $40,000 IN 2007: 50%

• Percentage of amount needed to maintain living standards that is held by average 401(k) participant approaching retirement: 20-40%
• Share of 401(k) assets estimated to be lost since 2007: 29%

WORKPLACES WITH NO CONTRACT MORE THAN THREE YEARS AFTER ELECTION IS WON: 25%

• Share of employers that interrogate workers in mandatory one-on-one meetings, 1999-2003:63%; Share of employers that threaten workers in such meetings, 1999-2003: 54%
• Increase in likelihood that firm will fail if unionized: 0%

EXPECTED NEW SPENDING (12-MONTHS) FROM THE NEW $7.25 MINIMUM WAGE: $5.5 BILLION

• Share of minimum wage workers with high school diploma in 1979: 57.5%: Share in 2008:72%
• Workers getting a raise from latest minimum wage increase: 4.5 million
• Share of affected workers with annual family income below $35,000: 57.1%; Share working at least 20 hours a week: 81.6%

AMERICANS UNINSURED IN 2007: 45 MILLION

• Drop in children covered through parents’ employers, 2000 to 2007: 3.4 million
• Share of people under 65, with incomes in the top 20%, covered by employers in 2007: 86.4%; Share with incomes in the bottom 20%, covered by employers: 21.9%
• Share of Hispanic workers who are uninsured: 39.8%
• Percentage of under-65 Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance in 2000: 68.3%; In 2007: 62.9%

Posted by The Washington Teacher, Report courtesy of Economic Policy Institute

The title of this post isn't mine- Ralph R. Reiland came up with it in his post which I will talk about. But it's a great title- in my mind, I see the American economy hitting an iceberg around 2007 and start taking on some water, enough that it badly listed by 2008 and went into a recession. The iceberg was too much federal spending that soaked up savings and investments, too many federal government policies that encouraged bubbles in investing and housing, and increasing regulations that choked off economic growth, especially in small businesses, and signaled to business owners that now was the time to play it safe and not take risks and create jobs. The tip of this iceberg of federal policy ripped a large hole in the Titanic of the US economy, and soon the boat started to dangerously take on water.

Although I'm no expert of this, I imagine that once your boat hits an iceberg and takes on water, you have two options. Option one is to continue moving forward and patch the hole- in other words, keep America's booming private economy and remove the harmful regulations and policies that caused the damage. Option two is to stop moving and widen the hole, by which I mean to attack private business and those who are successful in it and put in place more harmful policies. Oh, I guess there was a double-secret third option too, and that is to turn the boat around and try to ram the boat on the iceberg again, this time with the intent on sinking the whole thing. For a while, I thought that Obama and the Democrats were just intent on going with option 2, but it looks like they are honestly considering circling back on that iceberg with the goal of sinking the economy of the United States for good.

President Barack Obama was once named by me as Captain of the US Titanic Spending (see my complete list of Obama nicknames)- and now he's going after that iceberg again!

Here are some parts of the article by Reiland called Obama: Circling back to the iceberg:

Only 26 percent of the public approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy in the latest Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, while a whopping 71 percent disapprove. That's down from Obama's previous low point of 35 percent approval on this top issue.

The public's growing dissatisfaction shouldn't be surprising. Going back to 1890, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research, the only U.S. president with a worse record than Obama in job creation in his first two-and-a-half years in office, measured in terms of percentage change, was Herbert Hoover, presiding over the emergence of the Great Depression.

"Official unemployment is 9.1 percent," stated a New York Times editorial on Aug. 15, decrying the nation's jobs picture, "but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work." "Keeping the economy going and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," Obama said back in March. "It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."

Now, nearly six months later, the White House reports that Obama is working on a new strategy for job creation that will be unveiled after he returns from vacation. The task of coming up with a jobs plan that works shouldn't be all that terribly difficult. All Mr. Obama has to do is reverse what he's done and change what he thinks.

First, by the government's own numbers, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years.

In fact, that understates the role of small business, since the vast majority of America's medium-sized and large businesses began as small businesses. The Heinz corporation began when 16-year-old Henry Heinz grated piles of horseradish at home, using his mother's recipe, and sold the bottled product door-to-door in Sharpsburg out of a wheelbarrow.

Yet since Obama took office, employment at federal regulatory agencies has jumped 13 percent while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6 percent. Second, 39 percent of small-business owners said in a Chamber of Commerce survey in July that ObamaCare was either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring....

...Additionally, 84 percent of small business owners in the survey said the economy is on the wrong track, 79 percent view the current regulatory environment as unreasonable, and 79 percent believe Washington should get out of the way of small business, rather than offering a helping hand (14 percent).

In its first 26 months, reports The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration imposed new regulatory rules that will cost the private sector $40 billion. In July alone, reports Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., federal regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will add some $9.5 billion in new costs.

Bottom line: What's required from Obama is a complete about-face, the shelving of his flawed economic philosophy and a reversal of his counterproductive policy prescriptions.

For those who want to see which way the United States is going under President Obama and his progressive policies supported by the new progressive Democratic Party, watch this movie- Titanic (10th Anniversary Edition).

In Democratic Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm's speech, she touted that Michigan is growing and that there is opportunity here in our state. As evidence of this, she pointed to Motown Motion Picture Studios LLC as an example of how the government can help create new industry and business in a state. Although having a movie studio in the area would be really cool, and I love the fact that jobs and opportunity is being created, let's look a little bit more at the details of the deal, reported on by WWJ news:

Motown Motion Pictures LLC – The new business venture, which will be both a film studio and a production services company, plans to invest approximately $70 million in a 600,000-square-foot development with nine sound stages in Pontiac. The project is expected to create 5,139 new jobs, including 3,600 directly by the company. The MEGA board Tuesday approved a state tax credit valued at $101 million over 12 years to help bring the project to Michigan. In addition, Infrastructure Development Film and Digital Media incentives totaling $12.9 million have been approved to help support the project. Job training assistance through the MEDC and Renaissance Zone designation by the city of Pontiac are also under consideration.

Let's do a little math- 5,139 jobs created at the cost to taxpayers of 113.9 million dollars. That is $22,163 a job. That's about $127 a person- not much, but if you let every person in our state keep that money and spend it on goods and services or invest it, it would multiply many times over, and create more jobs and economic benefits than some pie in the ski scheme like this one. For those trying to do more research on this, according to the Oakland Press, here are some more details:

"It’s good news — it’s going to be 3,600 jobs,” Republican Oakland Couny Executive Patterson said Tuesday. The local investors in the new studio are Oakland County developers A. Alfred Taubman, Gary Sakwa of Grand Sakwa Properties in Farmington Hills and Linden Nelson of Nelson Ventures in Birmingham. They’re teaming up with Raleigh Studios of Hollywood, Calif., and Endeavor Talent Agency of Beverly Hills, Calif.

Notice how the number of jobs this is going to bring to Michigan has dropped considerably now, and that several major players who are receiving this funding from Michigan citizens are from California. This company will likely receive the full amount of funding- but I wonder if taxpayers will receive anywhere near the full benefit from this venture.

U.S. investors overwhelmingly see Democrat US President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a recent Bloomberg survey. It is not a surprise then to this humble blogger that the Great Recession continues- the unemployment rate 'only' stayed at 10% in December because 661,000 people gave up looking for a job and quit applying for unemployment benefits.

The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and only one-out-of-five are confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency. Since the Great Recession began in 2007, some 8.6 million jobs have been lost and small businesses, the normal source for new jobs, are still shedding workers. Fewer than 10% added employees, while more than 20% cut back— and the cuts averaged nearly twice as many per firm as the hires at the expanding companies (source here).

Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 the recession started, although Republican lame-duck President Bush can be tagged with 2 years of the recession, and President Obama has now overseen an additional year of recession, with no end in sight. We've had recessions before, but most have only lasted 2 years before we recovered- this one is different because it has gotten worse in the last year and now looks to go on several years longer.

Bloomberg reports:

“Investors no longer feel they can trust their instincts to take risks,” said poll respondent David Young, a managing director for a broker dealer in New York. Young cited Obama’s efforts to trim bonuses and earnings, make health care his top priority over jobs and plans to tax “the rich or advantaged.”

To recover from this recession could take as many as five years or even more to recover all of the eight-plus million jobs lost since March 2007. That's because we would have to create an additional 1.7 million jobs annually beyond those for the 1.3 million new people who enter the work force every year. And jobs will not be created in a high regulation and high tax environment overseen by an anti-big-business President who's most stirring rhetoric can be summed up as 'business is bad.'

According to the Washington Post, the top 20% of the nation's households account for 40% of all spending, and now are facing a President who is determined to 'spread the wealth' and 'soak the rich'. These households, in the face of the threat of government, are now hoarding their resources and cutting back on spending, leading to a dramatic drop in economic activity in our nation.

The issues might come and go, the personal politics might come and go, and politicians will come and go, but in the end, the most important factor to consider when voting is whether to elect a President or Congressman or Governor or Commissioner who is going to encourage job creation, encourage business, and make people feel good about making money (and spending and saving and investing money). And usually, these people are not Democrats.

Tina Korbe at HotAir explains the picture perfectly:

A new report out yesterday from The Heritage Foundation shows private sector job creation dropped dramatically almost immediately after President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) into law.

From the recession’s low point in January 2009 until April 2010, when Obamacare went into effect, the private sector created about 67,600 jobs a month. After the president signed PPACA into law, that number slowed to a meager 6,400 jobs a month — a more than 90 percent decrease or less than one-tenth the previous rate.

As the report states, correlation cannot prove causation — but the change in course is statistically measurable and testing reveals a structural break between April and May of 2010. Moreover, small-business owners have said Obamacare is a deterrent to hiring. Take Scott Womack, the owner of 12 IHOP restaurants in Indiana and Ohio, as just one example. Before Obamacare became law, he had development plans in Ohio. Now, he’s worried he won’t be able to carry out his original plans unless Obamacare is repealed. Those restaurants he planned to open would provide jobs not only for his future employees, but also for everyone involved in the construction of the restaurant buildings themselves.

As the Heritage report explains, Obamacare discourages hiring in three important ways:
Businesses with fewer than 50 workers have a strong incentive to maintain this size, which allows them to avoid the mandate to provide government-approved health coverage or face a penalty; Businesses with more than 50 workers will see their costs for health coverage rise—they must purchase more expensive government-approved insurance or pay a penalty; and Employers face considerable uncertainty about what constitutes qualifying health coverage and what it will cost. They also do not know what the health care market or their health care costs will look like in four years. This makes planning for the future difficult.

Democrats once touted that Obamacare would create jobs, but the data underscore the reality that that’s not true for the private sector. The only jobs Obamacare created were within the new agencies and layers of bureaucracy the law added to the federal government.

The Heritage report recommends repeal — and comes as a welcome reminder that the health care law can’t be ignored as the president and Congress attempt to address the debt and deficit or as the nation attempts to right the still-struggling economy. Nor can it be ignored in the upcoming presidential election. Likely U.S. voters have said jobs and the economy are their No. 1 issue. That means the repeal of Obamacare should be a top priority, too.

Modern day Democrats talk often about 'progress'. If you listen to your Democratic Congressman or Senator or President talk, they'll mention how they want to move society forward, advance the ball, create or grow jobs through government spending, or in some way improve humanity by using the power of the state to hammer the backward among us into the future. Liberal blogs support Democrats by arguing and mocking conservatives and Republicans as 'backwards' and falling behind an advancing liberal society.

But the truth of the matter is that the modern day Democratic Party has betrayed the ideal of 'progress' by promoting policies of the past, policies that lock in jobs and classes and innovations and ideas of the past and act as a barrier to human progress.

President Obama demonstrated this lately when he lamented that the worsening economy isn’t his fault because of things like ATM machines and airport kiosks. He said:

There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.

The modern day Democratic Party does not support or favor any sort of structural changes in America- they don't want America to progress in any sort of way, and this statement says just that- Obama is upset that the vision that he has of the past when he was growing up, a vision of no ATM's and bank tellers patiently waiting in the bank and long lines at the airport waiting for agents to help customers, is no longer the reality of the present and will not be the reality of the future.

Rather than embracing this change, Obama and the modern day Democrats fight against it. They think that they see these changes leading to lost jobs (even though the evidence is that there are more bank tellers than there were in the past), but what they fail to see how this progress has made the People better. By by replacing expensive bank tellers and customer service agents with cheaper automated efficient ATMS and kiosks, banks can now charge lower fees and even have free checking, and airports can lower prices for airline tickets and continue to provide quality service. The People benefit, notably the poor, by these advances in technology and innovation. It is real change, the kind that we all hoped for when Obama was elected, the kind of change and progress that defined a nation that grew from rural settlements clinging to the east coast to a superpower.

But the modern day Democratic Party doesn't like this change- they want to lock in the classes, structures, jobs, technology, and modes of travel that they know and understand and think that they can control.

In my post Nuclear Power and Manned Space Flight: Victims of Democrat's Progress Backwards? I started to advance this meme when I wrote:

America instead is collapsing on the weight of promises made to generations past, ruled over by elitist politicians who seek only to control us, and everyday our nation moves farther away from living a prosperous life in the stars in freedom and liberty, however preposterous or unlikely that future may have been.

The current leadership of our nation speaks of 'progress,' but they are abandoning nuclear power and manned spaceflight in favor of providing healthcare insurance to people who are encouraged not to purchase it and spending money they don't have to support railroads and electric motor carriages and windmills. The future that Obama, Democrats, liberals, and Republicans that go along with them is not a future full of cheap safe energy and man roaming freely in the stars- it is a future with man going backward, remembering that once, long ago, before I was born and before my students were born, man built generators that were powered by the atom splitting and man walked on the moon.

Man once walked on the moon! Nuclear power plants were once built! Say it- and then realize that these are events of the past- that the new normal and likely new future of America and the world is a long, slow slide backwards into tyranny, injustice, and confiscation of property by elites.

The modern day Democratic Party, including my Congressman Gary Peters and my Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin and my President Barack Obama, push through legislation, appointments, and executive orders energy policies that attempt to lock in the 1970's. Excessive regulations and cancelling of the Yucca Mountain project ensure that our nation will have the same number of nuclear power plants as the 1970's. Through regulations and taxes and fees they have prevented or delayed or made more expensive the building new refineries, drilling for oil, or developing new natural resources.

Modern day Democrats talk about putting in place policies that push us to walk or travel by bus or train- methods of transportation that have long since been surpassed by automobiles and airplanes, although because automobiles travel on government-built roads and because air travel is increasingly regulated by the government, both of these modes of transportation are less dynamic and innovative and efficient than they could be if Americans were as free as they could be.

None of this should be a surprise to voters, and yet it seems to be. When Obama gave a major speech on energy when he was running for President in 2008, I wrote:

As I listened to Obama talk about his energy visions for the future, I imagined what it would be like to live in a world that is cured of it's oil addiction- a world where there is no power generated by fossil fuels, and instead water and wind power the world. Ahh, indeed- the change we need... windmill from ancient Rhodes, waterwheel from Roman Spain...

Democrats are about locking in the class system that we currently had and are all about fighting any change to it. That's why they bail out banks and automotive companies- it has little to do with saving jobs and everything to do with saving jobs from people who they are friends with and who donate money to them. Democrats are all about taxing the rich, because they know that the super rich will be able to hide their money in offshore accounts or deduct it through hidden tax code provisions, but yet the upper middle class won't be able to dodge these taxes and will be forced to pay them and will sink into the lower classes which are so dependent on government help. Democrats are all about regulations and licensing and provisions and rules, all of which by their costs and difficulty in implementing help existing firms and companies, especially those large ones that are able to lobby government for waivers, but yet hurt new firms and businesses, especially small ones, who are not able to get past the barriers that the government erects to challenge the existing businesses and by so doing change our nation for the better.

While Obama might talk about how ATMs and kiosks are costing jobs, what he really is lamenting is that his vision of the past is being destroyed by advances that he didn't see coming and doesn't fully understand how to control- he is upset that his vision of the past is no longer the present now that we have had real progress in spite of Democrats efforts.

Humanity is amazing, and can remake the world in amazing ways when unleashed and freed from the bonds of government and the state through limited government, rule of law, protection of property, low taxes, low regulation, and conservative principles.

But modern day Democrats have betrayed the ideas of 'progress' and instead are now only interested in putting place policies that lock in the past.

Here is what Richard A. Epstein, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Professor of Law at New York University Law School, and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, had to say regarding the major speech that President Barack Obama (one-term Democrat) gave at Osawatomie, Kansas:

The painful ignorance that is revealed in these remarks augurs ill for the long-term recovery of America. With the president firmly determined to set himself against the tides of progress, innovation will be harder to come by. The levels of unemployment will continue to be high as the president works overtime to impose additional restrictions on the labor markets and more taxes at the top of the income distribution—both backhanded ways to reward innovation and growth.

The problem, therefore, with the president’s speech is not that it is demagogic in tone. The problem is that it is intellectually incoherent. As a matter of high principle, the president announces his fealty to markets. As a matter of practical politics, he denigrates and undermines them at every step. It is a frightening prospect to have a president who lives in a time warp that lets him believe that the failed policies of 1935 can lead this nation back from the brink. His chosen constituency, the middle class, should tremble at the prospect that his agenda might well set the course for the United States for the next four years.

In Professor Epstein's analysis of President Obama's speech, he echo's some of the comments that I have been making on liberal blogs like Balloon Juice and others- that in spite of his rhetoric and because of his economic incoherence and illiteracy, workers, school teachers, union employees, blue collar employees, the middle class, supporters of Occupy Wall Street, and related groups are going to suffer the most from President Obama's policies.

As Epstein wrote in his article Populist-in-Chief:

It is a good thing when plants can achieve the same output with less labor. Do we really want an America in which thousands of people work in dangerous occupations to turn molten lava into steel bars? Far better it is that fewer workers are doing those jobs. The jobs lost in that industry will be in part replaced by newer jobs created in the firms that build the equipment that make it possible to run steel mills at a lower cost and far lower risk of personal injury. The former workers can seek jobs in newer industries that will only expand by competing for labor.

And what about those ATM machines? Does the president really want people to have to queue up in banks to make deposits or withdraw cash in order to make a boom market for human tellers? Perhaps we should return to the days before automation, when phone calls were all connected by human operators. And why blast the Internet, which has created far more useful jobs than it has ever destroyed?

You see, if President Obama had his way, we would return to the Great Depression, when people were dependent on government for goods and services because government was in the business of destroying productive business around the world. If President Obama had his way, he would increase taxes and regulations on businesses while giving out subsidies and tax breaks to favored businesses, favoring those who hire lobbyists and special interest groups who redirect wealth over those who create wealth and make products or sell goods and services. If President Barack Obama had his way- a Congress of Democrats that went along with his ideas and ideals- America would be dragged back to the early 1900's, when we had a low standards of living and shorter life spans, and Obama would happily fill up dangerous and inefficient steal mills with 'workers', he would sign praises to the joy of labor while factory workers worked for low wages (compared to today) in dangerous industries, and the working class would have few goods (like cheap cars coming in from the Far East, cheap electronics built in backward nations around the world, and labor-saving devices everywhere built everywhere) just so that he could burnish his protectionist credentials.

When government gets in the business of redirecting wealth and picking and choosing the winners and losers in society, the only people who win and get wealthy are government officials- this lesson has been demonstrated over and over around the world many times over. And yet, that is exactly what Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are proposing to do- increase the power of the government to control wealth, liberty, and property in our society, and that somehow through this 'workers' and the '99%' will get more wealthy and happier. The logic is not explained, the mechanisms by which wealth is created are not explained- rather, the logic is the same logic that is found in every despotic tyranny throughout history- people have earned things that others want, and the government will get those things by playing one side off the other. Obama's magic act of wealth creation is the same sort of tyranny that the world has seen many times over- and has fallen for many times over as well.

Our nation has not only learned nothing from the Great Depression, we have learned the wrong lessons as well (see my post Lessons from Economic Recessions- Introduction and Great Depression), and are going about repeating the same mistakes that turned a recession in 1930 into a Great Depression that lasted to the 1950's (and included in it the collapse of the world into a deadly World War!). We must not allow this guy to enact those same policies- I don't care who does what with the GOP, and it doesn't matter who they are, anyone is an upgrade over this incoherent ideologue whose mind is so filled with mush and mindless platitudes and liberal bumper slogans that he is now unable to effectively design any policies that have a slightly positive effect on anyone.

President Obama, any Democrat who supports him, and any Republican who agrees with his policies needs to join Herbert Hoover on the unemployment line (or better yet, get a job somewhere in the private economy building or making or doing something useful!).

Micheal Barone, writing for the Washington Examiner, from his article The Unhappy Warrior, best sums up President Barack Obama's much touted speech on jobs yesterday:

Barack Obama looked and sounded angry in his speech to the joint session of Congress. He bitterly assailed one straw man after another and made reference to a grab bag of proposals which would cost something on the order of $450 billion—assuring us on the one hand that they all had been supported by Republicans as well as Democrats in the past and suggesting that somehow they are going to turn the economy around. He called for further cuts in the payroll tax (which if continued indefinitely would undermine the case of Social Security as something people have earned rather than a form of welfare) and for a further extension of unemployment insurance (perhaps justifiable on humanitarian grounds, but sure to at least marginally raise the unemployment rate over what it would otherwise be). He called for a tax credit for hiring the long-term unemployed (unfortunately, these things can be gamed). He gave a veiled plug for his pet project of high-speed rail (a real dud) and for infrastructure spending generally (but didn’t he learn that there aren’t really any shovel-ready projects?). He called for a school modernization program (will it result in more jobs than the Seattle weatherization program that cost $22 million and produced 14 jobs?) and for funding more teacher jobs (a political payoff to the teacher unions which together with other unions gave Democrats $400 million in the 2008 campaign cycle). “We’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it would do for the country.” Yeah, sure. Like the screening process that produced that $535,000,000 loan guarantee to now-bankrupt Solyndra. And Congress should pass the free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Except that Congress can’t, because Obama hasn’t sent them up there yet in his 961 days as president.

Obama assured us that this would all be paid for. But as far as I could gather, he punted that part of it to the supercommittee of 12 members set up under the debt ceiling bill. He now blithely charges it with coming up with more than its current goal of $1.5 trillion in savings by Christmas. Oh, and he’s going to announce “a more ambitious deficit plan” that will “stabilize our debt in the long run”--11 days from now.

In the meantime, he called for higher taxes on “a few of the most affluent citizens”—as if this could pay for all the spending he’s been backing...

...Straw men took a terrible beating from the president. He assailed “tax loopholes” for oil companies, the chief one of which is that they are treated like other companies classified as manufacturers. The administration proposal is that the five largest oil companies shouldn’t be, because—well, because we want to get our hands on more of their money. Today’s Republicans, he gave us to understand, want to “eliminate most government regulations” and “wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades.” And, he suggested, they would never have created public health schools or the G.I. Bill or research universities.

When Barack Obama says, “This isn’t political grandstanding,” you have a pretty good clue that that is exactly what it is. Lest anyone doubt that, consider this from the third-to-last paragraph. “You should pass it. And I intend to take that message to every corner of the country.”

In other words, this was a campaign speech...

When I asked my students what they thought of Obama's speech, they said it sounded good but that they wanted to see the details and felt that the price tag for this sort of 'jobs bill' was going to be way too high for our nation to afford. The students also thought that this sort of stuff has already been tried and did nothing to help and only added more debt to our nation- you see, young people frequently are concerned with the amount of debt that older people are dumping on them to live their wonderful lifestyles of leisure and retirement. Hearing comments like these give me hope for our future; on the other hand, my students are being trained to think and reason and look at things critically and are less apt to fall for the straw man and false choice rhetoric that has come to characterize the President's speeches.