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Archive for April, 2015
April 30th, 2015 at 7:39 pm
California’s Drought Is a Failure of Water Storage to Keep Up with Population Growth

If you’re going to encourage massive immigration, you better build the infrastructure to sustain it.

That’s just one of the many insightful points in a new article by Victor Davis Hanson, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Central Valley farmer.

“A record one in four current Californians was not born in the United States, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California,” writes Hanson. “Whatever one’s view on immigration, it is ironic to encourage millions of newcomers to settle in the state without first making commensurately liberal investments for them in water supplies and infrastructure.”

Over the last forty years, California’s environmentalists – aided and abetted by once and current Governor Jerry Brown – have systematically opposed the construction of water storage facilities that would have kept pace with the state’s population boom. To make matters worse, millions of acre feet of water that should go to households instead is flushed down riverbeds and into the ocean to create more swimming space for endangered fish.

With California entering another year of drought, environmentalists are applauding Governor Brown’s decision to mandate 25 percent reductions in water usage. They claim we just don’t have the water. The truth is they refused to build the storage capacity, and now we get draconian measures.

New issue, same problem: Liberals want all the benefits of a permissive social policy, but they refuse to accept responsibility for the costs.

April 29th, 2015 at 5:58 pm
IG Warning: States May be Illegally Using ObamaCare Grants

At least 37 states have received a total of $4.8 billion to implement ObamaCare, but under the terms of the “establishment grants” those monies cannot be used to pay for overhead costs like rent, software maintenance, staffing and utilities.

That hasn’t stopped some states from trying, apparently.

“We have concerns that, without more detailed guidance from [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid], [State-based ObamaCare exchanges] might have used, and might continue to use, establishment grant funds for operating expenses after January 1, 2015, contrary to law,” writes the Inspector General at the Health and Human Services Department.

“In media reports and during our review of [states’] budget information, we have observed that some [states] face uncertain operating revenues in 2015 and future years. Because operating revenues are uncertain, there is a risk that [states] might use establishment grant funds to cover operational expenses,” warns the IG’s letter.

The IG points to evidence that the Rhode Island exchange does not have a dedicated funding source, and the Washington exchange is short $125 million unless the state legislature steps in.

In other words, ObamaCare gave seed money to start expensive new state agencies that are now supposed to be self-sustaining. At least two are not, and the tone of the IG’s letter implies that many more are suspect.

If an enterprising conservative committee chairman wants to protect taxpayers while exposing one of the failures of ObamaCare, following up on the IG’s warning letter with a detailed investigation would be a good strategy.

H/T: The Hill

April 29th, 2015 at 4:29 pm
Rep. Blackburn Introduces Important Property Rights Bill – The Protecting the Rights of Musicians Act (PRMA)
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Representative Marsha Blackburn (R – Tennessee) is perhaps the most steadfast property rights advocate in Congress.  In that vein, she has joined Rep. Anna Eshoo (D – California) in introducing another important piece of proposed legislation:  the Protecting the Rights of Musicians Act (PRMA).

Under current law, terrestrial radio broadcasters exploit a loophole that allows them to play songs without compensating artists who created and performed them.  That stands in contrast to other forms of radio transmission – including satellite and Internet radio – that justifiably pay the performers whose songs they play.  Terrestrial radio companies thus earn billions of dollars in advertising revenues largely on the basis of songs for which artists remain uncompensated, contrary to fairly straightforward concepts of fairness.

Ironically, some of the companies that own those terrestrial radio stations turn around and ask Congress to require cable and satellite providers to compensate them for retransmission of television programming of stations they own.  Fair enough that they be paid for such retransmission, but the same logic should in turn apply to their own radio programming.

Representative Blackburn’s proposed PRMA would correct that ongoing unfairness by requiring broadcasters to practice what they preach and pay performers for the works they’ve worked hard to create.

Importantly, the legislation would also interrupt broadcasters’ effort to force tech companies to include an analog FM radio chip in smartphones and other mobile devices.  If device manufacturers wish to include FM chips in their products, that’s all well and good.  Indeed, many already do.  And if consumers demand products that include them, then the market will respond accordingly.  But it’s simply not something the federal government should be dictating.

By the way, that FM chip mandate proposal is also a sneaky way for terrestrial broadcasters to expand their exploitation of playing songs without compensating artists.  After all, as noted above, Internet broadcasters must pay artists under current law.  But by asking the federal government to compel FM chip inclusion, terrestrial broadcasters would be able to expand their loophole to mobile devices.

That is the epitome of crony capitalism.

We at CFIF remain strong defenders of property rights, including intellectual property rights for artists and musicians.  Accordingly, we applaud Rep. Blackburn for her leadership on this issue, and encourage our supporters and activists to ask their own elected representatives to stand alongside her.

April 28th, 2015 at 7:37 pm
On Entitlement Reform, Are Republicans All in This Together?

Recent statements by likely GOP presidential candidates indicate the answer may be no.

“Republican governors across the country, including several conservatives, couldn’t resist the siren song of federal dollars and chose to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare,” writes Stephen F. Hayes at The Weekly Standard. “The federal government promises to fully fund Medicaid expansion for three years, after which the federal dollars are phased out and states will be responsible for paying for the expanded program themselves.”

Those governors include John Kasich of Ohio and Chris Christie of New Jersey. Both argue they made the best of a bad policy situation. Former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas could also be added to the mix, since he has recently distanced himself from Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s entitlement reform package ahead of an anticipated presidential bid.

After three years of party unity – broadly speaking – on entitlement reform, Republican leaders seem to be charting different paths on how to tackle the issue. This can and should be a healthy exercise in deliberation and persuasion, precisely the kind of policy-centric debate so necessary in the primaries.

That is, if the conversation stays on topic. Kasich, for example, has already shown a willingness to demonize critics instead of responding with a better argument. To wit, when health policy expert Avik Roy asked Kasich how he could be against ObamaCare’s “top-down government” but support Medicaid’s version of the same, Kasich retorted, “Maybe you think we should put them [the poor] in prison. I don’t.”

Hillary Clinton’s attack machine couldn’t have said it better. For the good of the conservative movement, Kasich and the rest of the presumptive GOP presidential field should.

April 28th, 2015 at 9:42 am
Ramirez Cartoon: The Cheshire Candidate
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

April 27th, 2015 at 2:29 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Lineup
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Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT:  Peter Roff, Contributing Editor at U.S. News & World Report – Trade Promotion Authority;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Mac Zimmerman, Director of Policy at Americans for Prosperity – Why Congress Must Allow the Export-Import Bank to Expire;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  David Keating, President of the Center for Competitive Politics – Five Years After Citizens United, Wisconsin’s Attempt to Criminalize Political Speech, and Nevada Express Advocacy Case; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  Quin Hillyer, Contributing Editor for National Review Online and Political Commentator  What Hillary Clinton’s Past Scandals May Mean for 2016.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.


April 23rd, 2015 at 3:19 pm
Obama Admin Also Pressuring Kansas, Tennessee to Expand Medicaid or Lose Funds

First Florida, then Texas, and now Kansas and Tennessee have been told by the Obama administration that unless they expand Medicaid under the rules laid out in ObamaCare the federal government will withhold payments from local hospitals.

Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott is so angry at the move he’s promised to sue the Obama administration for violating a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the feds from conditioning Medicaid funding on ObamaCare expansion.

Yet this is precisely what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is doing. According to Kaiser Health News, CMS “confirmed Tuesday that it gave officials in [Kansas and Tennessee] the same message that had been delivered to Texas and Florida about the risk to funding for so-called ‘uncompensated care pools’ – Medicaid money that helps pay the cost of care for the uninsured.”

“Medicaid expansion would reduce uncompensated care in the state, and therefore have an impact on the [Low-Income Pool], which is why the state’s expansion status is an important consideration in our approach regarding extending the LIP beyond June,” a CMS official warned.

The reason states have resisted expanding Medicaid under ObamaCare is that it transforms a program currently helping discrete populations – e.g. pregnant women, the disabled, elderly, blind, and children from needy families – into a universal, taxpayer-funded health insurance program for every person earning less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level. That change translates into large amounts of new spending that will eventually lead to increased state taxes.

By making a state’s refusal to expand Medicaid a factor in deciding whether Medicaid dollars will continue to flow, the Obama administration is directly flouting a prohibition handed down by a 7-2 Supreme Court majority (liberal Justices Kagan and Breyer sided with their five more conservative colleagues). If the Supreme Court wants to ensure that its rulings will be taken seriously, it should fast-track Florida’s lawsuit and let the Obama administration know it must follow the law.

April 23rd, 2015 at 11:18 am
Why the Fight Must Continue Against the FCC’s “Net Neutrality” Order
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Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs, discusses why the fight to overturn the FCC’s so-called “Net Neutrality” Order should continue, litigation surrounding he Order, and why this isn’t just an issue for the telecommunications industry.

Listen to the interview here.

April 22nd, 2015 at 5:57 pm
What Will Republicans Do If Supreme Court Strikes Down ObamaCare Subsidies?

Sometime in June, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to publish its opinion deciding whether the Obama administration acted outside the law in extending federal subsidies to citizens in states without a local ObamaCare exchange.

If the Court’s ruling adheres to the rule of law, the subsidies will be disallowed. Predictably, this is making some Republicans nervous that Americans getting the ObamaCare the Democrats passed will blame the GOP.

And so, there are a growing number of proposals to overrule the Court, at least until 2017 when (hopefully) a Republican president will be in office.

The latest plan in this line of thinking was unveiled Tuesday by U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI). “Johnson’s plan would allow people to keep their ObamaCare plans and their subsidies until August 2017,” reports The Hill. “The bill would also repeal ObamaCare’s mandates for individuals and employers to provide insurance…”

Of the proposals currently available, Johnson’s is the only one that makes no change to ObamaCare as it currently is. All it does is ensure the program lasts until about eight months into the next president’s first year in office.

The question is: What’s the point? If Johnson’s bill were to become law, it would put large numbers of Republicans on record as saying that despite the plain meaning of the statute, ObamaCare’s subsidy scheme is simply too important to be governed by normal legal rules. If that’s true, then why not make things easier and introduce a bill that just amends the disputed section and grant subsidies to everyone?

If Senator Johnson and other Republicans are fearful of voter backlash, then he and others should propose specific policy alternatives. Overruling the Supreme Court for making the correct legal decision is not justified by political calculations of what might happen at the ballot box.

Voters deserve statesmen, not politicians that hedge their bets. If Senator Johnson wants to be reelected next year, he needs to earn the privilege by either embracing ObamaCare for the long-term or putting forward a specific alternative.

April 22nd, 2015 at 11:20 am
Conservatives Urge Passage of Trade Promotion Authority
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The Center for Individual Freedom yesterday joined a coalition of 20 free market, taxpayer advocacy, and limited government grassroots and public policy organizations on a letter urging Congress to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA).

TPA is a necessary step to get Congress moving on a long-stalled trade agenda,” the letter reads. “Without it, there is little hope that this Congress will make any progress on advancing free trade, a conservative public policy goal which all our organizations support.”

Read the full letter here.

April 21st, 2015 at 6:48 pm
What It Takes to Prove Global Warming Exists

Lost amid the charge of “inconvenient truths” and “hockey stick” graphs is a clear notion of what it would take to prove that global warming is real, man-made and alterable.

Robert Tracinski has an answer.

“We don’t know whether current warming departs from natural variation, nor have scientists proven the underlying mechanisms by which humans could cause such an increase,” writes Tracinski at The Federalist. “But even if we did know these things, we would have to be able to forecast with reasonable accuracy how big the effect is going to be. A very small warming may not even be noticeable or may have mostly salutary effects, such as a slightly longer growing season, whereas the impact of a much larger warming is likely to cause greater disruption.”

And therein lies the trillion dollar question: If meteorologists can’t consistently predict the weather from day-to-day, how on earth can humanity justify spending vast amounts of money on temperature predictions that fluctuate from “global cooling” to “global warming” only to settle on “climate change”?

As Tracinski says, “Given the abysmal record of climate forecasting, we should tell the warmists to go back and make a new set of predictions, then come back to us in 20 or 30 years and tell us how these predictions panned out. Then we’ll talk.”

April 17th, 2015 at 1:32 pm
A Market-Based Solution to California’s Water Shortage

California’s water crisis – and Governor Jerry Brown’s draconian response to it – could go a long way toward uniting middle class and elite urbanites in a revolt against political favoritism run amuck.

As Shikha Dalmia explains, “The best — and most sustainable — solution to California’s water woes would be full-bore markets in which prices can rise and fall with supply and demand. Under such a system, depleting water reserves would have led to price increases long ago, producing an automatic incentive to conserve. More importantly, this would have clearly signaled growing scarcity, spurring new technologies for affordable water generation. All of this would have allowed consumers and businesses to make small adjustments over time without letting the shortage reach a crisis point.”

“Moving overnight to a system of market-based water pricing is probably not doable,” she continues. “But if California has to make emergency cuts, it would make sense to impose the biggest cuts on the biggest users — which means the deepest cuts for fish-rescuing environmentalists, followed by water-hogging farmers, followed by residential users. Instead, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is doing the exact opposite.”

The constituencies being hit the hardest by Brown’s mandatory water usage reduction order are rich enclaves like Beverley Hills and Newport Beach, and middle class urban residents who already pay the highest rates for water, but use the least when compared to other groups.

Those outside California may not remember that what ultimately led to Governor Gray Davis’ successful recall was his support for tripling the annual vehicle license fee. Californians will put up with a lot from politicians, but making it exorbitantly expensive to enjoy basic comforts like driving and water consumption could be just the disruption it takes to break the liberal stranglehold on state government and implement the kind of market-based reforms Dalmia is promoting.

We’ll see if Governor Moonbeam gets the hint, or sacrifices millions of people’s well-being for the sake of his beloved environmental movement. If he indulges the latter, there could be an opportunity for another California taxpayers’ revolt like the one that put a stop to annual property tax spikes in the 1970s.

April 16th, 2015 at 6:57 pm
California’s Water Wars Heat Up

A fight is brewing in California between state regulators and local water suppliers over how to cope with mandatory water usage reductions ordered by Governor Jerry Brown.

California’s State Water Resources Control Board received more than 200 letters from cities, counties, and water districts balking at the proposed regulatory structure for monitoring compliance.

Criticisms include:

  • Monthly water usage rates are “meaningless” because varying temperatures and rainfall fluctuate dramatically during the year
  • Lack of credit given to water agencies that have already reduced their usage rates through local conservation programs or locally financed desalinization projects
  • Farmers outside the Central Valley – the state’s agricultural hub – being treated the same as urban districts which do not get an exemption
  • Failure to subject public school and college campuses to the same water use restrictions imposed on cities, since the former often are able to “override local building and zoning codes”

Everyone in California is feeling the pinch of decades’ worth of neglected improvements to water storage capacity.

Thanks to ‘green’ environmentalism, much of California may soon be brown.

H/T: L.A. Times

April 13th, 2015 at 2:20 pm
Music Equity: Fair Play Fair Pay Act Introduced in Congress
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We at CFIF strongly support free markets and property rights.  That includes the rights of music writing and recording artists, who deserve to enjoy the fruits of their labor, which should not be affected by the means via which their creations are transmitted.  Unfortunately, however, current law leaves them with no effective rights when it comes to terrestrial radio.

We also support legislation to correct the historical anomaly that digital radio broadcasters pay royalties for the privilege of playing songs recorded after the arbitrary date of February 15, 1972, but not for pre-1972 recordings.

As we stated in June of last year, the anomaly is due to a quirk in federal law, one that has unfair consequences:

Recordings predating 1972 remain protected by a patchwork of state laws, whereas recordings after February 15 of that year going forward are covered under federal law.  That amounts to a historical idiosyncrasy, without any prevailing substantive logic.  But digital radio stations, some of which center entirely upon pre-1972 music, have capitalized on the legal aberration to simply stop paying for performance of the pre-1972 songs still covered by state laws.  Estimates of royalties lost as a result reach $60 million per year.

As a result, the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’” receives no payment, but Hall & Oats’s remake does.  The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is not compensated, but Devo’s remake is.  The Beach Boys get paid for “Kokomo” but not “Good Vibrations.”  This situation has also led to numerous lawsuits spanning various states, adding further legal complexity and uncertainty for artists, consumers and digital broadcasters alike.

Digital radio stations operate under privilege of federal license to broadcast, but take the position that they need not pay for pre-1972 songs that remain protected under state laws.  They profit from playing those songs, but refuse to pay accordingly.  Keep in mind that unlike contemporary performers, many of those older affected artists are no longer capable of touring, and sales of their records have diminished over the years, leaving royalties for performance of their songs as their only remaining means of continuing compensation.”

We have noted how various state courts have overturned that anomaly within their jurisdictions, but it’s time that the same fairness was extended at the federal level.

Fortunately, bipartisan legislation introduced in the House today by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R – Tennessee) and Jerry Nadler (D – New York) aims to resolve these forms of unfairness.

Entitled the “Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2015,” the bill would end the way in which federal law props up AM/FM radio and exempts them from paying artists for performance of their songs.  Also under the bill, digital radio stations that enjoy federal broadcast privileges would finally be obliged to provide royalties for songs recorded prior to 1972, in the same way they already pay for songs recorded after 1972, in order to maintain their licenses.

The Fair Play Fair Pay Act offers a corrective to years of unfairness in the industry, and it’s something that conservatives, libertarians and anyone who values property rights should support.

April 13th, 2015 at 12:37 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Lineup
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Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT:  Tiger Joyce, President of the American Tort Reform Association – Fraud and Mass Tort Advertising;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Tzvi Kahn, Senior Policy Analyst for the Foreign Policy Initiative – Iran;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  David Rivkin, Jr., Partner at Baker & Hostetler – The Senate Filibuster; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT: Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs – The Fight Against Net Neutrality and Congressional Litigation Reform Efforts.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

April 10th, 2015 at 2:57 pm
Beware ObamaCare as Tax Day Approaches

Nearly every American that received an ObamaCare subsidy to help pay for health insurance last year got the wrong amount.

“Only 4 percent of the people who signed up for ObamaCare got the correct subsidy, so a whopping 96 percent will see their tax bill adjusted, some up and others down,” writes Betsy McCaughey. “Who would design a system that’s right only 4 percent of the time?”

The main reason for the discrepancy is that a person must estimate – i.e. guess – their entire taxable income for the next year in order to find out how much of a subsidy they qualify for under ObamaCare during enrollment season. A raise or switch to a higher paying job could be zeroed out because the government gets to “clawback” the difference. Losing a job means a fatter refund.

You can see which direction ObamaCare’s incentives point to, which provides a partial answer to McCaughey’s rhetorical question – people who penalize moving up the income ladder.

April 9th, 2015 at 8:27 pm
Eradicating Marijuana Plants Would Save 63 Billion Gallons of Water in California

In 2006, the last time the Drug Enforcement Agency counted the number of outdoor marijuana plants in California, there were roughly 17.5 million.

Since then the number has likely increased significantly due to lack of enforcement by the Obama administration and the effective decriminalization of marijuana use by lax police departments.

Even so, as Ethan Epstein explains, if we take the 2006 figure as a baseline and add to it the fact that a marijuana plant soaks up about six gallons of water per day during its 150-day growing season, California could have saved 63 billion gallons of water since the start of the drought four years ago.

Imagine the savings if California officials got serious about curtailing illegal marijuana growing today.

If Governor Jerry Brown wants to find ways to reduce unnecessary water consumption he should start by uprooting the millions of illegally grown marijuana plants. Had the plants not been siphoning off a precious natural resource over the course of the drought, California could have saved 15 percent of the total Brown wants to recoup through rationing.

In other words, cut off the crooks before knee-capping the law-abiding.

April 9th, 2015 at 6:22 pm
Get the Government Out of Your… Toilet?

California Governor Jerry Brown’s new water rationing edict is giving state regulators the cover they need to impose all kinds of nanny state restrictions on law-abiding citizens.

In addition to installing ‘smart meters’ on businesses and homes to monitor water usage and impose fines, the California Energy Commission is using Brown’s executive order to increase the use of low-flow appliances. Beginning in January 2016, all toilets and faucets sold in the state must conform to higher water efficiency standards.

“Wednesday’s vote also sets a 1.28 gallon maximum water flow for toilets, putting in place a limit included in a 2007 law but never formally translated into water-efficiency regulations,” reports the Sacramento Bee.

It’s hard to believe that a state so friendly to the environmental lobby as California would have failed to implement even more restrictions when it had the chance, unless doing so would be extremely burdensome and therefore unpopular. Now, however, they can simply claim an emergency and ignore the outcry.

April 6th, 2015 at 7:25 pm
Tax Filing Deadline Extended 6 Months for 800,000 ObamaCare Users

If you are one of the estimated 800,000 Americans who purchased an ObamaCare-compliant health insurance policy for the 2014 enrollment year through Healthcare.gov – the federal exchange portal – and received the wrong tax reporting form, you now have until October 15 to file your taxes.

The Treasury Department announcement came last Friday, less than two weeks before the traditional tax filing deadline.

Credit where it’s due – this is the right call by the Obama Administration since it was the government – not taxpayers – that fouled up the process by mailing error-laden reporting forms. The six month extension relieves the pressure on taxpayers and their accountants and hopefully gives the bureaucracy enough time to fix the problem.

Nevertheless, like all of the other unilateral delays and waivers granted under ObamaCare, this development is yet another indication that the federal government bit off more than it can chew and the number one casualty is the rule of law.

April 3rd, 2015 at 10:10 am
Jobs Report: Worst “Recovery” in U.S. History Continues Under Obama
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As we’ve noted on multiple occasions, the cyclical economic recovery under Barack Obama is objectively the worst in recorded U.S. history.  Recessions and recoveries come and go, but never have we suffered one with declining median incomes, such low economic growth or this level of employment sluggishness.

Unfortunately, today’s unemployment report brought additional bad news and only serves to further cement Obama’s disastrous legacy.  Economists expected 250,000 new jobs for the month of March, but we only saw 126,000, the lowest since 2013:

The 126,000 increase was weaker than the most pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg survey, and followed a 264,000 gain a month earlier that was smaller than initially reported, the Labor Department in Washington said.  The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 245,000 advance.

‘There’s really no way to sugarcoat this.  This is a soft print all the way around, no matter how you slice it,’ said Omair Sharif, rate sales strategist at Newedge USA LLC in New York.  ‘It seems that it’s corroborating that the U.S. definitely hit a soft patch in the first quarter.'”

Making matters even worse, the labor participation rate continued it’s decline to 62.7%, the lowest since 1978, before women fully entered the U.S. workforce.

The unprecedented weakness of the economy under Obama establishes the backwardness of his policies.  Although he and his supporters remain unwilling to internalize the obvious lesson that lower taxes and less federal regulation lead to a stronger economy, the American electorate fortunately maintains the opportunity to do so as 2016 brings the opportunity to select new leadership.