QandO

The most recent release of unemployment data has raised some questions, namely, how can we lose 20,000 jobs in the same month that the unemployment rate declined to 9.7%.  The answer is simple: The unemployment rate is essentially a made-up figure.  And I can give you a much more accurate way to measure the unemployment rate.

First, let’s take a brief look at how the monthly Employment Situation figures are compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The BLS combines two surveys to compile the Employment Situation.  The first survey is the Establishment Survey.  That’s a pretty accurate survey, because it consists of asking businesses to provide hard payroll data on the number of existing jobs.   The second is the Household Survey, which is where the train runs off the rails.

For the Household survey, they ask if you are employed.  If the answer is “No”, they then ask if you if you’re actively looking for a job. If the answer is no, then they just simply take you out of the labor force.  They don’t care whether you aren’t looking for work because you know there are no jobs available, or whether you’ve retired and are planning to sail a sloop across the Pacific.  If you aren’t actively looking for work, you aren’t part of the labor force.  So, the official unemployment rate generally understates–sometimes substantially–the real level of unemployment.

Fortunately, there is a better way to calculate the rate of real unemployment, and the BLS web site conveniently provides you with all the data you need to do it.  From here, we only need three items: The Civilian Noninstitutional Population, the Participation Rate, and the number of Employed.

The first thing we need to do is figure out the Labor Force Participation Rate during the most recent period of full employment.  If you take the average monthly labor force participation rate from the 70 months between Jan 04 and Oct 08, you get a participation rate in the labor for of 66% of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population.

Next, you multiply the Civilian Noninstitutional Population by 0.66.  That gives you the size of the normal labor force at full employment.

Next, you take the number of Employed, and calculate the actual rate of unermployment using the following equation:

1-(Employed/Normal Labor Force)=Unemployment Rate.

So, with this method, we can compare the unemployment level of Oct 08, right before the economy cratered, to last month.  When we do so, we get the following results:

OCT 08:
Civilian Noninstitutinal Population: 234,612,000
Participation Rate: 66%
Labor Force: 154,843,920
Employed: 145,543,000
Unemployment Rate: 6.0%

Jan 10:
Civilian Noninstitutinal Population: 236,832,000
Participation Rate: 66%
Labor Force: 156,309,120
Employed: 136,809,000
Unemployment Rate: 12.5%

Note that this calculation for Oct 08 is very close to the official unemployment rate of 6.1%.  But as the economy gets worse the official employment rates show greater and greater variance.  In other words, the official unemployment rate becomes progressively less accurate as the Employment Situation worsens, substantially understating the actual rate of unemployment.  This is, by the way a feature of the BLS’s method, not a bug.  It is no coincidence, as our Soviet friends used to say, that discouraged workers fall out of the labor force calculations.

Now, this measure I’ve explained doesn’t tell us anything about people who are working only part-time, when they’d prefer a full time job, so it doesn’t tell us much about underemployment.  But it does tell us, based on the recent historical labor force participation rate, what the size of the labor force should be.  Once we know that, it becomes very easy to see what the actual rate of unemployment is in real terms, rather than the notional terms provided by the Household Survey.

According the BLS, however, the Civilian noninstitutional population has increased by 2,220,000 people  from 234,612,000 to 236,932,000, while, at the same time, the civilian labor force has shrunk by 2,055,000 people  from 155,012,000 to 153,455,000.  Using the BLS numbers, then, the labor force participation rate is 64.6%.  That kind of demographic change might be expected in a couple of years when the baby Boomers begin retiring in large numbers, but for right now, it seems…counter-intuitive.

In any event, 12.5% unemployment is a far more realistic number than the BLS estimate of 9.7%.

A bunch of interesting polls have emerged today.  One finds Obama at his lowest job performance rating yet.  Of course, as you might expect, Republicans mostly  disapprove of his job performance.  Democrats, on the other hand, generally approve.  But what gets his job approval rating to 44% approval, 47% disapproval in this Marist poll are the independents.  They’re very dissatisfied with his performance – only 29% approve while almost twice that number, 57% disapprove.

Remember it was the independents who put Obama over the top in 2008. Also remember it was they who put Scott Brown over the top in MA and were key in the elections in VA and NJ.

As for Obama’s personal popularity, that too has suffered.

And while GOPers strive to avoid attacking Obama personally, for fear of offending voters who see him in a favorable light personally, even that aura of invincibility is wearing off. Independent voters view Obama negatively, too, by a 39% favorable to 52% unfavorable margin. All registered voters still see Obama favorably by a 50%-44% margin, but that’s down 5 points in just 2 months.

However, there’s more to this than just Obama’s job approval and personal ratings. Also found in this poll is a strong trend toward anti-incumbency:

Meanwhile, members of Congress should brace for a difficult election year. 42% of registered voters said they would back their current member of Congress, while 44% said they would support someone else — a drop of 9 points in support of the incumbent in just 2 months.

Rassmussen has a poll out that begins to flesh out why that trend is building. Three-quarters of the public, according to his latest polling data, express some level of anger at the policies of the federal government. That’s up 4 points from November. It is also why I call the Tea Parties the “tip of the populist iceberg”. There are a whole lot of unhappy voters out there.

So how does it break down? Well, not as Jacob Weisberg and the “ignorant, childish voters who want to live in Candyland” crew would have you believe.

Part of the frustration is likely due to the belief of 60% of voters that neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today. That finding is identical to the view last September, just after the tumultuous congressional town hall meetings the month before. But only 52% felt this way in November.

And, as time goes by, this trend continues to grow. Note that the leaders of both parties are identified as being clueless by this 60%.

So this week let’s revisit the comparison between the Political Class and the Mainstream (you proles in flyover land) voters. And as we saw last time we checked it out, the PC bunch is totally clueless:

The divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters, however, is remarkable. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Mainstream voters are angry, but 84% of the Political Class are not. Those numbers include 57% of Mainstream voters who are Very Angry and 51% of the Political Class who are not angry at all.

But then 68% of Mainstream voters don’t think the leaders of either major political party have a good understanding of what the country needs today. Sixty-one percent (61%) of the Political Class disagree.

By comparison, the majority of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliateds don’t believe the current political leaders have a good handle on what is needed today.

Older voters and higher-income voters share that belief most strongly.

Thus the Tea Parties and the very negative reaction by the PC to them. They simply don’t get it. Which is why we’re suffering through this spate of leftist pundit tantrums in which they damn the people, democracy, and the opposition for being unwilling to roll over and submit to their sublime enlightenment, ability to know what is good for us and benevolent despotism. We’re seeing laments about how the good old day before the damned internet, talk radio and 24 hour cable let the enlightened elite do as they wish.

Look around you my friends – to this point that’s worked out just wonderfully hasn’t it?

Rasmussen lists a bunch of reaction which pretty much outline what you’re hearing from the most vocal of the Tea Partiers:

Most voters oppose the now-seemingly-derailed health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats for months. They continue to have very mixed feelings about the $787-billion economic stimulus plan approved by Congress last February.

Looking back, most voters still don’t approve of the multi-billion-dollar government bailouts of the financial industry and troubled automakers General Motors and Chrysler.

Forty-nine percent (49%) worry the government will try to do too much to help the economy, while 39% fear it won’t do enough.

As the economy continues to stumble along, 59% of voters believe cutting taxes is better than increasing government spending as a job-creation tool, but 72% expect the nation’s elected politicians to increase spending instead.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

Voters have consistently said for months that they have more confidence in their own economic judgment than that of either the president or Congress.

Charles Krauthammer calls this “The Great Peasant Revolt of 2010″. And in a very real sense it is. What Republicans haven’t yet grasped is this revolt is pretty non-partisan. The reason Republicans seem less threatened by it is because of their fiscally conservative, limited government philosophy. Democrats, on the other hand, suffer more because of their tendency toward fiscal profligacy and government expansion. The problem for Republicans, however, is the country is no longer in a mood to see them give fiscal conservatism and limited government lip service.  If you don’t believe me, take a look at this Iowa poll:

A third of Iowans from across the political spectrum say they support the “tea party” movement, sounding a loud chorus of dissatisfaction with government, according to The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll.

Neither party has a lock on these restless advocates of limited government and fiscal control, according to the poll. However, their conservative leanings appear to give Republicans a greater opportunity than Democrats to make gains at the dawn of a volatile election year.

Is the GOP listening?

It should be clear to both sides that we’re moving into an era of “do what you say or be gone”. The days when incumbents only left office when they assumed room temperature, as did Jack Murtha today, are coming to an end.  What the Tea Parties signal is a much more connected, networked and activist population which has been empowered by the communications technology of today – much to the chagrin of the elitists.

The fun is just beginning. Barack Obama and the Democrats may not realize it, but the era of big government is over.

UPDATE: Gallup also has polling numbers out today. They run different approval ratings for Obama on 9 different issues.

At 36%, Americans give President Barack Obama his lowest job approval rating yet on his handling of the economy. By contrast, the president’s 51% approval rating on handling foreign affairs is up slightly from last month.

As I’ve noted any number of times, the foreign policy’s crisis is yet to come.  2009 was a year of checking out the new president and assessing his strengths and weaknesses.  2010 will be the year that actually tests his foreign policy skills and abilities.

On domestic issues, Obama’s approval rating is in the tank  at 36%.

Most interesting though was the fact that in the list of 9 issues, both foreign and domestic, independents did not once give Obama a majority approval rating, again making the point that indies are not at all happy with his administration.

~McQ

Interest rates are at record lows and literally trillions of hastily printed dollars have been pumped into the economy by the Federal Reserve in an effort to stem an even deeper recession. While it is debatable as to whether or not it has really accomplished that goal, what isn’t debatable is at some point, the Fed has to wring that excess money from the economy or risk all sorts of dire consequences.

The Wall Street Journal carries the Bernanke plan for doing so. The centerpiece of that plan is found in the interest rate the Fed pays banks on the reserves it keeps. Right now, that’s .25%. The plan is to gradually raise that rate with the assumption that such rate raises will give an incentive to banks to keep even more money on reserve and thus out of circulation. This “interest on excess reserves” then is the primary vehicle the Fed plans to use to begin to pull money out of circulation.

But that’s a process fraught with risk. Because the immediate effect of any such interest rate increase will be to tighten credit. And depending on the strength of the economy, it has the potential to affect it negatively. Says the WSJ:

Extricating itself from these actions [low interest rates and trillions of infused dollars] will require both skill and luck: If the Fed moves too fast, it could provoke a new economic downturn; if it waits too long, it could unleash inflation, and if it moves clumsily it could unsettle markets in ways that disrupt the nascent economic recovery.

It’s pretty easy to drop interest rates and pump money into a down economy. But going the other way is not at all as easy. “Skill and luck” are understatements. Timing will have to almost be perfect. The problem is, should markets get skittish because of moves by the Fed that it sees as having a negative effect, things could break negatively quickly and spiral out of control. While the Fed would like everyone to believe this is a piece of cake – and will continue to tell us it is – it’s not at all an easy thing to do. The desire of those talking positive about the ease of draining the monetary swamp is to bolster confidence and allay fears if possible so a panic which could undermine the whole plan doesn’t develop. That, however, is going to be extremely difficult:

The nature of its exit from today’s unusually low interest rates will affect everything from mortgage rates and what companies pay on short-term borrowings to the rates savers earn. The timing and sequence of the steps are the subject of intense speculation in financial markets.

At the risk of boring the living hell out of you, I want to stress that this plan may be one of the most important plans in quite some time. If it isn’t executed perfectly, we could see a quick slide back into recession or rampant inflation. Read the whole article if you get a chance. The Fed has some other contingencies and plans as well. But as you’ll see as you read through them, all present the possibility of having a very negative downside if the strength of the economy is misread and/or the execution of each portion of the plan isn’t almost perfect.

The economic high-wire act – without a net – the Fed is about to embark upon is a very difficult one. Yes, it’s necessary and, in fact, critical – but it isn’t going to be easy. And if screwed up, could be pretty devastating to a recovering economy.

~McQ

Did you happen to catch the Audi commercial during “The Big Game” last night (btw, congrats Saints)?  It is, I suppose, an attempt at humor.  And it’s a good commercial, I guess, because I remember which product it was pushing.   But in reality I found it to be a bit scary.  Why?  Because it foretells something which I would hope is unlikely, but – at least at a state level – I believe couldbe entirely possible in some places.  Don’t forget, California was talking about drive-by thermostat monitoring and restricting car colors that could be sold in the state.   So this isn’t at all beyond the possible at some future date in a state near you:

~McQ

When the NY Times entitles anything, especially an editorial, starting with “The Truth About …”, you should be immediately suspicious.  As Arnold Kling says, that normally means “The liberal elite narrative about …”.  And it’s editorial, “The Truth About The Deficit” is no exception.  The first part of the editorial is spent on a selective history lesson which makes all of our troubles, as you might imagine, something brought on by the GOP’s focus on tax cuts for the wealthy.  Nevermind that they were across the board marginal cuts – this narrative won’t die.

The entire bit of revisionist history (with the normal “blame Bush” tautology) is aimed at justifying this paragraph:

Americans should be anxious, for reasons including the huge deficit. But the cold economic truth is this: At a time of high unemployment and fragile growth, the last thing the government should do is to slash spending. That will only drive the economy into deeper trouble.

What the NYT and the Krugman’s of the world believe is government spending can be substituted for private spending and have the same result – economic growth. And that economic growth, spurred by this spending, will create jobs. But if you think about it, unless the government is buying goods and services produced by the private sector, that’s most likely not going to happen, is it? Temporary jobs located in “infrastructure improvement,” unemployment benefit extensions and jobs “programs” don’t create jobs. Private sector growth does. And when government is borrowing .40 cents for every dollar it spends, it starts to dry up the private credit market. That means if there is a desire to expand, the credit isn’t as readily available as it would be if the 800 pound credit hog weren’t in the market.

Then there’s this:

To truly tame deficits will require serious health care reform …

To which Kling replies:

In Washington, serious health care reform means “fixing” private health insurance. But our deficits are caused not by problems in private health insurance. They are caused by the structure of Medicare and Medicaid. That is where we need reform. But the Times and other liberal mouthpieces need to create a narrative that makes it sound as though unsound government programs are the fault of the private sector.

Spot on. This has been the most irritating part of the “health care reform” issue. It is the public programs – which neither party will touch – that are breaking the bank, yet we continually hear politicians on the left talk about “greedy [private] insurance companies” as the sole reason health care costs or so high. In fact, without private health care insurance to pay the difference, Medicare and Medicaid would have foundered long ago. But the point is the deficit problem is not one caused by private insurance.  It has no effect on public debt.  That is caused by the mismanagement of the government programs. And other than a passing wave at “stopping waste, fraud and abuse” – the promise of every politician since the inception of those programs, and accomplished by none of them – this “reform” package ignores the real problem while attacking the private market.

But back to the primary point of the NYT’s attempt to persuade you that deficit spending – massive deficit spending – is a good thing:

Here is an unpopular but undeniable fact of life: When private sector demand is weak, the federal government must serve as the spender of last resort. Otherwise, collapsing demand sets in motion a negative, self-reinforcing spiral in which lack of demand — for goods, services and new employees — leads to ever deepening economic weakness.

And here’s the undeniable economic truth about the snake oil they’re peddling:

The narrative is that we are suffering from a shortfall in demand. The reality is that the private sector has decided that workers should be hired on the basis of profits, rather than on the basis of debt. The government may choose to make a different decision, of course, but that will not necessarily strengthen our economy.

One of the many economists not at all in agreement – despite President Obama’s claim to the contrary – with the prescription that deficit spending is not only good, but necessary. And while they can blame the situation on anyone they choose, the decisions being made to run up this massive debt based on some pretty flaky economic logic are theirs and theirs alone.

~McQ

In this podcast, Bruce, Michael  and Dale discuss the unemployment numbers and Sarah Palin.  The direct link to the podcast can be found here.

The intro and outro music is Vena Cava by 50 Foot Wave, and is available for free download here.

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The Super-Bowl Half-Time (or blowout) Podcast

Subject(s):

Unemployment: What are the real numbers? Will it pick up or are we, as many fear, in a jobless recovery? Or are we in a recovery at all?

Tea Party Convention: Birthers and profit and Palin, oh my! Is the movement being co-opted? Is it a true populist movement?

China: Is the rhetoric heating up? Do they feel they have us over a barrel and now’s the time to assert themselves? Can they be counted on to support tougher sanctions on Iran?

I certainly wouldn’t put much confidence in the claim that relations have improved between the US and China.  In fact, despite Obama’s claims, it appears they’re much worse.  Recent actions by the US have riled the Chinese to the point that they’re being anything but subtle about their feelings and certainly not  keeping those feelings out of state sanctioned publications.  According to the UK’s Sunday Times, 55% of Chinese agree that “a cold war will break out between the US and China”.

What has spurred this turn of events?

The finding came after battles over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, climate change, internet freedom and human rights which have poisoned relations in the three months since President Barack Obama made a fruitless visit to Beijing.

You’ll most likely remember how the administration touted the visit as one which significantly improved out relations with China. Apparently the administration was the only one which saw it that way:

During Obama’s visit, the US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, claimed relations were “really at an all-time high in terms of the bilateral atmosphere … a cruising altitude that is higher than any other time in recent memory”, according to an official transcript.

The ambassador must have been the only person at his embassy to think so, said a diplomat close to the talks.

“The truth was that the atmosphere was cold and intransigent when the president went to Beijing yet his China team went on pretending that everything was fine,” the diplomat said.

In reality, Chinese officials argued over every item of protocol, rigged a town hall meeting with a pre-selected audience, censored the only interview Obama gave to a Chinese newspaper and forbade the Americans to use their own helicopters to fly him to the Great Wall.

President Hu Jintao refused to give an inch on Obama’s plea to raise the value of the Chinese currency, while his vague promises of co-operation on climate change led the Americans to blunder into a fiasco at the Copenhagen summit three weeks later.

Diplomats say they have been told that there was “frigid” personal chemistry between Obama and the Chinese president, with none of the superficial friendship struck up by previous leaders of the two nations.

And, if you can believe it, it has gone downhill from there.

An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama’s decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.

“We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela,” declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference.

He added: “We have nothing to be afraid of. The North Koreans have stood up to America and has anything happened to them? No. Iran stands up to America and does disaster befall it? No.”

Apparently they’re on to the new but unspoken motto of the Obama administration “speak a lot, but do nothing”. What is being sensed by these military leaders in China is weakness. And such weakness is never left alone or ignored in international politics – it is always, in some way, shape or form exploited. While some may see this as nothing more than saber rattling, knowing the Chinese, it’s much more than that.  It signals a significant change in our relationship:

Chinese analysts think the leadership, riding a wave of patriotism as the year of the tiger dawns, may go further.

“This time China must punish the US,” said Major-General Yang Yi, a naval officer. “We must make them hurt.” A major-general in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Luo Yuan, told a television audience that more missiles would be deployed against Taiwan. And a PLA strategist, Colonel Meng Xianging, said China would “qualitatively upgrade” its military over the next 10 years to force a showdown “when we’re strong enough for a hand-to-hand fight with the US”.

Chinese indignation was compounded when the White House said Obama would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, in the next few weeks.

“When someone spits on you, you have to get back,” said Huang Xiangyang, a commentator in the China Daily newspaper, usually seen as a showcase for moderate opinion.

If that’s the moderate opinion, you can imagine what the more hawkish among China’s opinion makers are saying.

This is what happens when amateurs play at foreign policy and those they’re dealing with sniff out weak (or non-existent) leadership. As I mentioned quite some time ago, 2009 would be a year of relative calm as other nations took the measure of the new administration and what they could expect. Once that was done, 2010 would most likely be the year when they’d act – and frankly, given this from China, it’s most likely not going to be a pleasant year for US foreign policy.

Oh, and if you think China is willing to back the US on new sanctions against Iran – as the administration has been claiming – I’d be willing to take that bet and give odds that no such backing will ever be given by China.

~McQ

Jacob Weisberg of SLATE goes on a rant pretty typical of those on the left these days,  casting about for a reason why his chosen one is having such difficulty changing the world.  As I’ve pointed out before, one of the new favorite words the left has been slinging around is “ungovernable”.   Ungovernable, to mean those of us who resist the left’s attempt to pass legislation which has been their dream for decades.   Centuries even.

As most of us who read pundits on the left have come to realize over the years, they don’t have a very high opinion of the proletariat. In fact, truth be told, they’re pretty sure we should all just be glad they’re around to save us from ourselves and should shut up and let them do it. And when we’re not compliant in that regard, we get rants like this which Weisberg penned entitled, “Down With the People” and which he further subtitles, “Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis.”

You really don’t need to read the article to understand the thesis involved here. But to give the devil his due, there’s a kernel of truth to it – certainly some of our problems stem from “the people.” The left for instance. Those who don’t pay anything into the system for another. Both of those groups have forever been fans of more government, more spending and more goodies. And those desires have been enabled by their politicians (with, admittedly, help from some politicians on the right).

Anyway, Weisberg tries to justify his thesis on the back of polls he finds contradictory at best. For instance:

Anybody who says you can’t have it both ways clearly hasn’t been spending much time reading opinion polls lately. One year ago, 59 percent of the American public liked the stimulus plan, according to Gallup. A few months later, with the economy still deeply mired in recession, a majority of the same size said Obama was spending too much money on it.

A couple of points here. One – Obviously 41% of the American public didn’t like it from the beginning. My bet is they didn’t represent the left or those who had no tax skin in the game. It’s easy to be for “stimulus spending” when paying for the resultant deficit created by that spending isn’t going to come out of your pay check. And that is a class of people the Democrats have judiciously created, nurtured and expanded over the years. So that is a political result, isn’t it Mr. Weisberg?

Secondly – it became obvious fairly quickly even to the “no tax skin” group that what was being called “stimulus spending” wasn’t stimulating anything. Consequently when they saw no direct benefit coming their way – like that of not having to pay taxes on their income they presently enjoy – they quickly abandoned their support.

Tim Cavanaugh, at Reason’s Hit and Run, has an even more pointed rebuttal:

If Weisberg is looking for consistency, he might look to an earlier debate over massive government intervention in the private sector: the $700 billion bailout plan that eventually became the Troubled Asset Relief Program. A large majority of Americans continue to oppose this bailout, just as they opposed it at its inception — a time when Weisberg, and a good two dozen guys exactly like him, were welcoming the TARP proposal as a respite from the ravages of capitalism.

And the auto bailout. And the Wall Street bailout. Etc. Weisberg, much like the East Anglia CRU, is engaged in a little cherry-picking of data to support his premise. Had it been the majority of the people and not the politicians who had their way, TARP and the “stimulus” would have never happened and GM, Chrysler, Wall Street and a good number of banks (plus Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) would be emerging from bankruptcy right about now – or not.

Much of the rest of the article is more poll quoting along the same vein and with similar rebuttals. Cavanaugh spends sufficient time properly ripping the arguments apart that I don’t have to waste mine.

All of that is only a prelude to the real reason for the Weisberg article:

The politicians thriving at the moment are the ones who embody this live-for-the-today mentality, those best able to call for the impossible with a straight face. Take Scott Brown, the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts. Brown wants government to take in less revenue: He has signed a no-new-taxes pledge and called for an across-the-board tax cut on families and businesses. But Brown doesn’t want government to spend any less money: He opposes reductions in Medicare payments and all other spending cuts of any significance. He says we can lower deficits above 10 percent of GDP—the largest deficits since World War II, deficits so large that they threaten our future as the world’s leading military and economic power—simply by cutting government waste. No sensible person who has spent five minutes looking at the budget thinks that’s remotely possible. The charitable interpretation is that Brown embodies naive optimism, an approach to politics that Ronald Reagan left as one of his more dubious legacies to Republican Party. A better explanation is that Brown is consciously pandering to the public’s ignorance and illusions the same way the rest of his Republican colleagues are.

You have to love the “pivot” and the projection.  Classic.  Barack Obama and the Democrats have just introduced budgets and deficits which, in Weisberg’s own words “threaten our future as the world’s leading military and economic power” and it’s Scott Brown’s fault. And he has the further audacity to then claim Brown “is consciously pandering to the public’s ignorance and illusions the same way the rest of his Republican colleagues are.”

Really Mr. Weisberg? Are they the ones saying “deficit reduction is important, but not now” as President Obama said in the State of the Union address? Is it Scott Brown and the Republicans who are responsible for the planned deficits we see in the chart below? Is it really they who are “consciously pandering to the public’s ignorance and illusions” by claiming we can have these massive deficits now and our cake later?

The 40% of those who’ve consistently objected to the profligate spending, increased programs and expanding government are those who actually do have “tax skin” in the game. The problem for Democrats and the left is these polls now show that it is they who are gaining allies out here due to their opposition and not the left. That obviously has Weisberg and his cronies all but apoplectic and casting around everywhere for an acceptable scape-goat.

That scape-goat are the people, who don’t know what’s good for them, and the Republicans, who haven’t had the power to even stop the leftist juggernaut in Congress if they tried. Of course the latter is a simple fact of numbers and has been for a year – and we don’t need polls to tell us that.

Perhaps Atlas is finally shrugging. Those that pay the freight – and you see them represented in the tip of the iceberg known as the Tea Parties – are standing up and saying “no”.  No more. We’re done with this.

That means both Democrats and Republicans – even Scott Brown if he can’t figure it out – are starting to be held to account. And while it doesn’t appear that Weisberg understands that building dynamic, it is clear that a demoralized and scared Democratic party heading into midterm elections is beginning too.

I agree with Weisberg in one respect – politicians “who embody this live-for-the-today mentality” need to go. The difference is I see more in Mr. Weisberg’s chosen party than I see in the GOP. Those of both parties need a pink slip.

That said, blaming where we are on the people has some cache – after all, the politicians aren’t in a position to do what they do without the people’s support at the ballot box. And, even when they’re obviously corrupt like Jack Murtha, they’re left in office, year after year after year. That can indeed be laid at the feet of the people, at least in that district. But when he spouts off inclusively about “the American people”, Weisberg ignores a good 40% if not half of this nation which doesn’t, has never and will never support the tax and spend nonsense that has gotten us to this point. Pretending that’s not so doesn’t make it true.

Democratic politicians are now trying to pass legislation that a frustrated Weisberg and the left want but, per the polls he likes to quote, the people don’t. They’ve sent very clear messages to national politicians via votes in VA, NJ and MA to remind them for and at whose sufferance they work. Weisberg prefers to call that the actions of a fickle, ignorant and childish public. Instead, thankfully, it is a system actually working as it was intended to work – and just in the nick of time.

UPDATE: Kathy Kattenburg at The Occasionally Moderate Voice doesn’t appear to understand what’s been written here and thereby gets it wrong – as usual.

~McQ

The population of Britain is apparently finally catching on to the scam that’s been perpetrated by the man-made global warming crowd, and skepticism is thankfully on the rise:

“It is very unusual indeed to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period,” Populus managing director Michael Simmonds told BBC News.

“The British public are sceptical about man’s contribution to climate change – and becoming more so,” he added.

“More people are now doubters than firm believers.”

A definite “deficit of trust” developing about the “science” of global warming – particularly that trying to hang the blame on the activities of man.

And in more “deficit of trust” news, India has declared it will form it’s own scientific panel to study climate since it finds the IPCC unreliable:

The Indian government has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own leading scientist Dr R.K Pachauri.

[...]

“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses… they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.

“I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA),” he said.

I think India picks up the fatal problem with the current “science” – it’s more of a form of evangelism than it is real science, and “facts” are manipulated (or made up) to fit.

The Dutch government is also “not amused”. The Dutch environment minister, Jaqueline Cramer, has called for a complete investigation of the 2007 IPCC report. A Dutch magazine uncovered the fact that it incorrectly states 55 percent of the country lies below sea level:

When Cramer heard of that blunder she wrote a letter to the IPCC, saying she was “not amused” there were mistakes in the scientific report she bases the Dutch environmental policies on. Now she is confronted with errors in the data about her own country. “This can’t happen again,” the minister told reporters in The Hague on Wednesday. “The public trust in science and politics has been badly damaged.”

Ya think?

Cramer puts her finger on the problem governments are now confronting given the errors, some relatively trivial and some profound, in the IPCC’s report. When will that sort of concern surface here? As recently as the SOTU, President Obama still holds to the alarmist line that the “science is overwhelming” when, in fact, the “science” is being overwhelmed by revelations of data manipulation, fraud and made-up “facts”.

~McQ