I go through the headlines and news stories in over one-hundred publications daily. I do this so that I can view multiple sources on some of the same stories. Doing this allows me to formulate what is fact and what is disingenuous spin; propaganda meant to trick the public into thinking one way instead of another. Make no mistake, both ideological prospective do it. It’s the art of modern political war. But the Progressive Left has myriad vehicles to attack the ideological Right, where the Right has many fewer (thank you uber-stingy money people on the Right).
A perfect example of the Left’s disingenuous attack on the Right’s information sources comes in an article in the Huffington Post by Jack Mirkinson titled, FOX News Really Doesn’t Want to Talk About the Good Jobs News, where he writes:
“Quick! Can you find Fox News’s coverage of the latest job figures?”
He includes some main page screen shots.
“Still can’t find them? OK, we’ll help you out. What if we zoom in?…OK, OK, we’ll show you! The link is that little one right in the corner there…For some reason, FOX News appears to want to downplay the very good job numbers. For good measure, the network also downplayed the figures on its airwaves as well.”
He then goes on to show how the far-Left mainstream media outlets dutifully took the Obama Administration’s spun numbers touting them as miraculous by supplying one – one – example: a screen shot of CNN’s breaking news on the numbers.
The good numbers that Mr. Mirkinson points to are the BLS statistic that 288,000 jobs were created last month. Is that good news? Yes. Is it the miraculous news Mr. Mirkinson suggests? No.
Throughout the Obama Administration the majority of the jobs “created” have been either service industry jobs or part-time jobs. College graduates remain woefully under-employed and those experienced in the workforce who have been downsized or otherwise screwed out of a job find it almost impossible to find work. And if you are over 50 and have been out of work for a period of time, you might as well come to grips with the fact that you have become unemployable under Mr. Obama’s economy.
Where the Obama Administration and its sycophants want everyone to believe that the creation of 288,000 jobs is the greatest news since sliced bread, the facts remain…and they are not good.
▪ The U3 unemployment rate hovers at 6.1%. The U3 rate measures the unemployment of people who are without jobs and who have actively been looking for work within the past four weeks.
▪ The U6 unemployment rate hovers at 12.1%. The U6 rate reflects “discouraged workers,” or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them; “marginally attached workers,” or “loosely attached workers,” or those who “would like” and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently; and part-time workers who want to work full-time, but cannot due to economic reasons.
▪ The Labor Force Participation Rate is stuck at 62.8%.
These statistics mean that in a country of 318 million legal citizens, 92.2 million eligible for employment are without work. Almost one-third of the population is unemployed.
Further, the rate of those not in the labor force has exploded since 2000. Over the past 14 years – and predominantly during the Obama years – we have removed 14,022,376 from the labor force who are eligible to work. That’s over 1 million eligible workers removed from the workforce each year, on average.
So, understanding the reality behind the unemployment data – disingenuously termed the “jobs numbers” by the talking heads, when more accurately they should be referred to as the “jobless numbers” – how can anyone celebrate the creation of 288,000 menial and part-time jobs when we add one million people a year on average to the under- and unemployed demographic?
The American free-market Capitalist system is the only economic system to have ever – ever – created a Middle Class in the history of man. In its purest form it made the United States of America not only the world’s preeminent superpower, it made the United States the “land of opportunity.” Today, that is hardly the case. The Middle Class is disappearing are a rapidly increasing rate and opportunity is disappearing from our economic lexicon. Why, you ask? The answer is simple: the government manipulation of the American free-market Capitalist system.
Special interests in government have saddled the small business sector with an overwhelming number of regulations, while newer and more intrusive mandates continue to smother the job creators, literally stealing food from the mouths of the hungry in the form of disappearing opportunity.
Obamacare, environmental zealotry, socialism in the form of labor union oppression, manipulation of free commerce, all of these economy-stunting and job-killing maladies are introduced into the American free-market Capitalist system by government and the big-money, well-organized special interest groups that see success and American exceptionalism as a cancer, not a cure. Sadly, today, these creatures of negativity and societal destruction are in power…and on both sides of the governmental political aisle. Unless we shift the political paradigm radically back towards true limited government, it is only a matter of time before our Republic is lost.
So, Mr. Mirkinson, the jobs news is good? Please. The jobs news sucks.
As we celebrate the 238 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should all be willing to look at the chains upon our wrists and ankles. We have allowed ourselves to become slaves to an oligarchic elite and their special interest benefactors. They feign concern about unemployment as they try to tell you they are just like us. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Case in point: Mrs. Clinton’s comment about being “flat-broke” when she and the former President left the White House. How does someone who is flat-broke acquire a multi-million dollar mansion in Chappaqua, New York and maintain two “summer cottages” in Ireland being flat-broke? It’s a lie, and one meant to deceive.
The good news it this. We can remove those chains and get back to good. We can free ourselves of the disingenuous and elitist oligarchs with which we are currently saddled. We have the power and it is a power that begins with the ballot box and navigates the seas of prosperity through limited government.
The time is now. Let us not be faint of heart.