Freedom Line Blog

Zero.  That’s the number of net jobs created in America last month according to the Labor Department’s monthly update, and the unemployment rate remained at 9.1%.

We are now more than two years since the recession officially ended in June 2009, and at the stage where the Obama Administration predicted that his trillion-dollar deficit spending “stimulus” would reduce unemployment to approximately 6% after topping out at 8% all the way back in the fall of 2009.  Instead, we suffered a post-war record number of months over 9%, and it continues to fester there.  By way of background, keep in mind that economists generally agree that a minimum of 150,000 to 200,000 jobs must be added to the American economy each month just to keep pace with natural population growth.  Also consider that economists had forecast a rise of somewhere near 100,000 jobs for July.

In contrast, in the same 30-month period following the effective date of President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in January 1983, unemployment plummeted from 10.4% to 7.4%.  We know what economic policies actually work.   What hath the opposite approach wrought?

This defines cognitive dissonance.  The Obama Administration continues to scratch its collective head, wondering why its record deficit spending “stimulus” and big government onslaught has failed to create jobs.  Meanwhile, its own Department of Justice sues an iconic American company that creates them.

Just today, AT&T announced that it is relocating thousands of jobs from overseas back to American shores.  But also today, the Obama Department of Justice – you know, the one ultimately behind the disastrous “Operation Fast and Furious” – sued to block the proposed private merger between AT&T and T-Mobile.  Ponder that irony for a moment.  The Obama Administration, which has done so much to interfere with job creation since the recession officially ended all the way back in June 2009, is suing an employer that at this very moment is orchestrating the return of thousands of jobs to the United States.

Perhaps we shouldn’t find this surprising.  After all, the Obama Administration is also in the process of persecuting Boeing, America’s largest exporter, simply for electing to locate a manufacturing plant in South Carolina.  But that doesn’t make its behavior any less despicable or destructive.  If Obama truly wants to prove to the electorate that he seeks economic recovery, he must reverse this policy course within his administration.  Immediately.

Even for Barack Obama’s supporters, this has to be getting old.

Today, responding to a question about an American economy still struggling after almost three years of deficit-driven Obama “stimulation,” he went back to the “Bush Card” with radio host Tom Joyner:

George Bush left us with a $1 trillion deficit, so it’s a lot harder to climb out of this hole when we don’t have a lot of money in the federal coffers.”

There are several problems with President Alibi’s rationalization.  Among other things, (1) the recession officially ended all the way back in June 2009, (2) the money in those “federal coffers” to which he refers actually reached an all-time high under Bush in 2007 (several years after the Bush tax cuts and well into the Iraq and Afghan wars that Obama now scapegoats) and (3) nothing seems to have stopped him so far from spending trillions of dollars that we don’t have.

But forget about those realities for a moment.  On a more basic moral level, what does it say about Obama as a man that this is what he continues to offer the nation to justify his performance and his request for a job extension?

According to a new poll from Gallup, Americans rate the “Computer Industry” most positively among 25 business and government entities, with the “Internet Industry” close behind.  That’s no surprise – few innovations in human history have transformed our lives as rapidly and profoundly as the tech sector.

But here’s an irony.  The federal government, which constantly interferes with tech sector innovation via such bureaucratic assaults as so-called “Net Neutrality” and interference with the private proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, is rated least favorably by Americans.  Only 17% of Americans rate the federal government positively, which 63% rate it negatively.  In contrast, the computer industry is rated positively by a 72% to 10% margin, and the Internet industry is rated positively by a 56% to 16% ratio.

Perhaps we’d all be better off if the tech sector began monitoring the federal government, rather than the converse.  It certainly appears that most Americans would agree.

You’ve heard of “flash mobs,” the growing phenomenon of thugs descending upon, assaulting and robbing convenience stores or vulnerable people on the street? Well, “flash elections” are Big Labor’s economic version of flash mobs.

Flash elections, or “ambush elections,” reference a proposed rule that would shorten the election window in union organizing campaigns to as little as 10 days.  Big Labor, which we noted this week elevates its own political power over American jobs and employee welfare, loves the ambush election proposal and is currently pushing it within Barack Obama’s  rogue National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  Ambush elections are dangerous for many reasons, including the fact that they would drastically limit employers’ free speech window and ability to present both sides of the story to employees.  In contrast, union bosses would have many months to present their skewed arguments to employees without even allowing employers to become aware that a union organizing campaign was underway.  Moreover, ambush elections are a toxic “solution” in search of a problem, considering that the current median election time is 38 days, and 95% of elections already occur within two months, hardly an eternity.

Accordingly, CFIF is proud to announce that it has joined the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and 275 other employers and associations in petitioning the NLRB to withdraw this destructive proposal.  Big Labor and the Obama NLRB have already killed enough jobs.  We simply cannot afford to lose even more due to their ideological shenanigans.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

–  4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST:  George Landrith, President of Frontiers of Freedom – End of the Space Shuttle Age;

–  4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST:  Anna Rittgers, Senior Fellow, Independent Women’s Forum – Obamacare; and

–  5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST:  Greg Brown, Santa Rosa County Property Appraiser – TRIM Notices and Navarre Beach Lawsuit.

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

So almost three years after Barack Obama was elected President, he promises to unveil a “specific jobs plan” next month.  Very gracious of you, Mr. President.  Apparently, one of his brilliant ideas is to create an entirely new bureaucracy within the federal government, a “Department of Jobs.” Never mind that we already have a Labor Department, a Commerce Department, and so on.

But here’s something for Obama to ponder.  As noted today in The Wall Street Journal, “Over the past five years, Texas has added more net new jobs than all other states combined.”  Naturally, Team Obama and the desperate political left are already attempting to discredit Texas’s economic success.  But the facts, unsurprisingly, refute their claims.  For instance, for all of the attempts to mislabel those new jobs as low-wage, the Bureau of Labor Statistics “pegs the median hourly wage in Texas at $15.14, 93% of the national average, and wages have increased at a good clip:  in fact, the 10th fastest state in 2010 at 3.4%.”  Keep in mind the lower cost of living in Texas, where those wages therefore go further.

So as Obama ponders a “Department of Jobs” during his extended Martha’s Vineyard vacation while the economy stumbles, perhaps he will experience an epiphany.  Namely, that he should do at the federal level what Texas has done at the state level – bring legal reform, reduce taxes and allow the private sector to flourish.

President Obama has fallen to a new low in public approval as measured by Gallup, with only 39% approval and 54% disapproval.  Even more troubling for Obama and his supporters, no President has won reelection with ratings this low at this point in their tenure.

According to Gallup, President Truman’s approval/disapproval stood at 55%/29% at approximately this stage, President Eisenhower possessed a positive 71%/16% ratio, President Nixon’s approval outweighed his disapproval by a 49%/38% margin, President Reagan remained barely underwater with a 43%/46% ratio, President Clinton possessed a 46%/43% positive edge and President George W. Bush held a positive margin of 59%/37%.  All of these Presidents won reelection, and it should be added that President Reagan, unlike President Obama, was on a steadily upward approval trajectory that had him enjoying a 53%/37% approval surplus just three months later in November 1983.  The nation’s economy was accelerating throughout 1983 following the arrival of his tax cuts that January, whereas our current economy continues to stagnate.  Additionally, although President Kennedy was assassinated before he could face reelection, he enjoyed a 56%/29% approval edge at this point, and his Vice President Lyndon Johnson won in 1964.

In terms of Presidents who did not win reelection, President Ford actually enjoyed a 45%/37% approval balance, whereas President Carter found himself in a negative 30%/55% hole, while President George H. W. Bush still maintained his post-Gulf War approval rating of 74%/19%.

So while Obama can state that he isn’t as bad as Carter, he cannot point to a single instance in which a President with his current Gallup approval/disapproval margin won reelection.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled, correctly, that the “individual mandate” of ObamaCare is unconstitutional.  That stands to reason.  The Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution to ensure liberty through a federal government of strictly limited powers.  One aspect of that effort was to restrict federal authority to regulating actual “interstate commerce.”  But since ObamaCare’s individual mandate effectively declares that a citizen’s inactivity somehow amounts to “interstate commerce,” upholding ObamaCare would have rendered the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause meaningless.  Accordingly, it follows that if one explicit portion of the Constitution can thus be rendered meaningless, what would be the logical limit restraining government from declaring any other Constitutional clause meaningless at whim?

This is a moment for grateful celebration, even if only temporary.  The broader battle continues, eventually at the Supreme Court level.

Updating yesterday’s comment on the Verizon landline employee strike, in which the union up and walked away from negotiations, picketing workers are now alleged to have vandalized company equipment.  Strikers have also openly admitted stalking and harassing other Verizon workers during service calls.  According to striking technician Richard Aulicino of CWA Local 1109, “We cannot stop them from doing their job, but we can harass them while they are on the job.”

Stay classy, union thugs.  Sounds like a guy who truly cares about his trade or his job.

And some people wonder what could go wrong with proposed card-check legislation, which would eliminate the secret ballot in union elections and allow union representatives to stalk employees even at home?

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

–  4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST:  Iain Murray, Competitive Enterprise Institute – “Stealing You Blind:  How Government Fat Cats are Getting Rich Off of You”;

–  4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST:  Stacy Mott, President of Smart Girl Politics – 2012 election;

–  5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST:  George Landrith, President Frontiers of Freedom – end of the space shuttle program; and

–  5:30 p.m. CST/6:30 p.m. EST:  Sam Kazman, General Counsel, Competitive Enterprise Institute – new fuel economy standards.

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

Yesterday, the union representing 45,000 northeastern and mid-Atlantic Verizon Communications employees walked away from the negotiating table and went on strike.  So what’s the problem?  Unsurprisingly, the union simply refuses to acknowledge today’s fiscal and technological realities.

It’s no secret that traditional copper wire communication – the division of Verizon in which the striking employees work – is a declining industry.  In many homes today, a copper wire telephone looks like a quaint throwback to a bygone era, just as a dial phone looked 30 years ago with the arrival of push-button phones.  That helps explain why wireline services are a declining part of Verizon’s business, and why most of Verizon’s profits come from wireless, not wireline, communications anymore.  Stated simply, cellular phones and Voice over IP (VoIP) provide more advanced services more competitively.

Yet the CWA and IBEW refuse to acknowledge reality, and refuse to negotiate any attempt to share healthcare costs.

Other Verizon employees, including those in its fast-growing wireless phone and high-speed Internet divisions, already share a portion of their healthcare costs.  In fact, 130,000 Verizon employees already do.  This is simply a fact of modern life.

Across America, every employing entity in the United States is adapting to today’s economic and technological environment.   Cities are dropping police and fire departments in favor of coordinating with adjoining cities.   States are reviewing their employment practices and work rules to more accurately reflect the pressures of lower revenues and higher pension costs.   Major companies are re-tooling not just their factories, but their production methods and business lines to more closely adapt to changing customer demands and new technologies.  To that end, every business – from the smallest mom-and-pop stores to the largest telecommunications companies – must deal with the ever-growing cost of health care.  Most Americans recognized long ago that individuals have to help bear the burden of growing healthcare costs.  For its part, Verizon can hardly be said to be abandoning its employees’ healthcare needs, as the company spends about $4 billion per year on healthcare for employees, retirees, and their families.

So it is no small irony that wireline workers’ unions are least interested in evolving to allow their employer to continue to provide high-paying, long-term jobs to their employees and excellent services to their customers.

In a rare moment of candor yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney admitted, “the White House doesn’t create jobs.”  That’s a refreshing contrast from Obama’s previous “jobs saved or created” nonsense, but he can certainly say that again.

Today, the Labor Department reported that unemployment remained essentially unchanged last month at 9.1%, with only 117,000 new jobs created.  Keep in mind that the economy needs approximately 125,000 new jobs per month just to keep the unemployment rate steady, and 200,000 per month to reduce the rate by a single percentage point over an entire year.  In other words, the economy continues to create far too few jobs to significantly reduce the unemployment rate.

Also keep in mind that Obama promised in February 2009 that if we passed his “stimulus,” unemployment would top out at 8% back in the fall of 2009, and be down to around 6% by now.  Instead, we have witnessed a post-war record number of consecutive months at or above 9% unemployment.  Over the same 30-month period that have passed since Obama’s “stimulus” promise, Ronald Reagan’s policies reduced unemployment from 10.4% to 7.1%.

The White House may not create jobs, Mr. Carney, but history shows that its policies can foster growth or, in your case, wreak havoc.

Michael Barone and our own Quin Hillyer, among others, remind us that conservatives are winning the broader debt limit debate.   But that’s not the only battle in which we conservatives are winning.

A Gallup survey released today shows that we also continue to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.  According to the poll, more Americans again identify themselves as “conservative” (41%) than “moderate” (36%), and almost twice as many call themselves conservative than “liberal” (21%).  For two decades now, conservatives and moderates have battled for the plurality, but each could consistently claim twice as many adherents as liberalism.  For the third consecutive year, however, conservatives can claim greater numbers than moderates.

That certainly isn’t the sort of change that Barack Obama might have predicted on January 20, 2009.

Barack Obama and liberals fraudulently claim that their massive spending binge “prevented another Great Depression.”

It’s more accurate to say that their spending and regulatory onslaught stifled our natural cyclical recovery and heaped more debt upon the American people.

Today’s economic growth report card from the Commerce Department provided the latest evidence of that reality, as if any additional clarity was necessary.  For the second quarter of 2011 (April through June), American gross domestic product (GDP) only grew 1.3%.  That fell substantially below the expected 1.8% rate, which itself constitutes sluggish growth.  Moreover, first quarter GDP was revised shockingly downward to 0.4% from its initial 1.9% estimate.  That is simply pathetic and unacceptable.

In comparison, the American economy jolted to life after Ronald Reagan’s very different response to the early 1980s recession (which was actually worse than the most recent recession, despite liberals’ persistent claims to the contrary).  According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in the eight quarters since Obama’s wasteful “stimulus” in 2009, we’ve witnessed growth rates of 1.7%, 3.8%, 3.9%, 3.8%, 2.5%, 2.3%, 0.4% and now 1.9%.  That’s an average of just 2.5%.  But in the eight quarters following the effective date of the Reagan tax cuts, GDP exploded at rates of 5.1%, 9.3%, 8.1%, 8.5%, 8.0%, 7.1%, 3.9% and 3.3%.  That’s an average of 6.7%.

Today’s depressing report simply shows once again that lower taxes and less government create prosperity, while bigger government and more spending create stagnation.

This week, CFIF joined dozens of employers, entrepreneurs and groups spanning the political spectrum on Capitol Hill to ask Congress to help put a stop to online theft by rogue websites that steal jobs and cost American businesses $135 billion annually.  In this era it is rare to find an issue that achieves almost complete consensus among ideologies and interest groups, but this is one.

Rogue websites steal intellectual property (IP) through counterfeiting, knockoff goods, piracy and misappropriation of movies, music, books and software.  Such thieves don’t pay taxes, they don’t follow American laws, they cut into American exports at a time of enormous trade deficits and they cut into our jobs and earnings.  Astoundingly, such sites constitute approximately 25% of all Internet traffic (53 billion visits per year), deceive honest customers, spread malware and even threaten lives and health with counterfeit pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

Simply put, there is no justification or defense whatsoever for rogue websites.  So what to do?

Well, on May 12, 2011 Senators Orrin Hatch (R – Utah), Chuck Grassley (R – Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D – Vermont) along with nine other original co-sponsors  introduced S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act.  That legislation would at long last halt rogue site access to the American market and help secure the fundamental rule of law.  Because many rogue sites operate outside our borders, the Act would allow the Department of Justice or private individuals to obtain court orders halting search engine connections to sites proven through due process to be “dedicated to infringing activity.”  The Act would also require payment processors and online advertising networks to discontinue payments to rogue sites.

Chances are that you or others close to you are impacted by rogue websites causing inestimable damage to U.S. jobs and prosperity.  We can help put a stop to that travesty by supporting the PROTECT IP Act and asking our Senators and Representatives to do the same.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

–  4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST:  Adam Hasner – Candidate for U.S. Senate (Florida);

–  4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST:  John Ransom – Finance Editor for townhall.com;

–  5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST:  Paul Lockhart – Author of “The Whites of Their Eyes:  Bunker Hill The First American Army and the Emergence of George Washington”; and

–  5:30 p.m. CST/6:30 p.m. EST:  Julie Gunlock – Independent Women’s Forum, Food Nanny State.

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

Responding to this morning’s terrible unemployment report, President Obama mused, “We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do.”

No, Mr. President.  That’s precisely what the nation fears.  We’ve already allowed you to go too far and do too much, but you’re apparently not getting the clue.

For the month of June, unemployment unexpectedly rose to 9.2% and added a negligible 18,000 jobs, far below the 150,000 that economists had expected.  That means the unemployment rate has risen from 7.8% when Obama signed his massive government spending “stimulus” to 9.2% over two years later.  Keep in mind that his administration promised at the time that the “stimulus” would cap unemployment at 8% in the fall of 2009, and be down to around 6.5% by now.  Instead, it rose all the way to 10.2% and has remained above 8% for a post-war record 29 consecutive months.

Ignoring that, Obama and liberal pundits like Ezra Klein appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” claimed that what we need is even more of the same.  At what point do they finally get the signal?

Throughout the Obama Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has imposed innumerable costly regulations that threaten American jobs and impede economic recovery.  During Obama’s Twitter “townhall” earlier this week, a good question would have been, “Why does your administration continue to impose a regulatory agenda that squeezes small businesses, which create most new jobs in America?”  Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, that question did not come up.  Regardless, it’s a sad state of affairs when administrative agencies, the most hyperactive part of our federal government, do so much to recklessly increase the cost of business and to reduce economic momentum.

Now, the scientific methods the EPA employs to reach its conclusions on a wide array of new federal regulations have been called into question by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).  In a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Senators David Vitter (R – Louisiana) and James Inhofe (R – Oklahoma) from the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works cited scientific deficiencies identified by the NAS within the EPA’s assessment of alleged formaldehyde risks.  Accordingly, the Senators demanded an immediate answer on whether the fundamental scientific problems raised by the NAS warrant reconsideration of all EPA risk assessments that use the same methods.  That includes the EPA’s ongoing revision of its National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone, scheduled for release later this month.

As most Americans are beginning to realize, some fresh element of sanity is needed within the federal regulatory process to ensure that government regulations are based solely on sound science, and that American jobs and growth do not continue to be gratuitously sacrificed at the altar of the Obama Administration’s reckless partisan agenda.

The letter from Senators Vitter and Inhofe to EPA Administrator Jackson can be read in full by clicking here.

It’s easy to attribute Obama’s poor approval ratings to generic anti-government sentiment and/or ongoing economic difficulty, citing Congress’s low approval as supporting evidence.  But a recent Rasmussen poll shows something interesting.  Namely, that the most conservative portion of our federal government receives the highest approval ratings from the public.  In fact, the number of respondents stating that the Supreme Court is doing a “good” or “excellent” job (35%) is approximately double the number who rate its performance as poor (18%).

Indeed, by a 31% to 26% margin, respondents believe the Supreme Court is too liberal, not too conservative.  Interesting insight for elected officials, and especially candidates, to ponder.