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Spread the Wealth: Job Growth 52% Greater for Foreign-Born Workers Under Obama

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obama_foreign_workersUnder President Barack Obama, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released today, the increase in the number of foreign-born people employed in the United States has been 52 percent greater than the increase in the number of native-born people employed.

In January 2009, when President Barack Obama first took office, says the BLS, there were 21,375,000 foreign-born people employed in the United States. In August 2013, there were 23,833,000 foreign-born workers employed in the United States. That means that since Obama took office the number of foreign-born people holding jobs inside the United States has increased by 2,458,000.

By contrast, in January 2009, there were 119,061,000 native-born Americans employed in the United States, and, in August 2013, there were 120,676,000—an increase of 1,615,000.

The 2,458,000 increase in foreign-born workers since January 2009 is 843,000 (or 52 percent) greater than 1,615,000 increase in native-born workers.

Read more from this story HERE.

August Jobs Report: We’re ‘Dead in the Water’

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Obama_jobsOne of the first economists I read after the monthly, “official” jobs report comes out is James Pethokoukis of AEI’s public policy blog.

Pethokoukis has a nice way of breaking through all the spin and revealing an employment picture that goes inside the numbers to tell us the true nature of the jobs market.

After August’s horrible numbers, Pethokousis doesn’t seem optimistic.

How do you know the August jobs report was pretty bad? When the best thing you can say is that it might have met Wall Street expectations if not for a temporary shutdown in the porn industry last month. (The motion picture and sound recording industry lost 22,000 jobs in August, according to the BLS.) Sure, the White House can argue, as economic adviser Jason Furman did right after the report’s release, that the “incoming economic data broadly suggest that the recovery continues to make progress.” But consider the following:

1. This was the jobs report that was supposed to reflect an economy kicking into higher gear. Goldman Sachs, for instance, was looking for 200,000 net new jobs. And whisper estimates were even higher. Instead, the economy added just 169,000 jobs vs. the 180,000 consensus forecast. HERE.

ObamaCare Cuts Low-Wage Workweek Near Record Low

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Photo Credit: DUCKofD3ATH

Photo Credit: DUCKofD3ATH

Here’s something worth paying attention to this Labor Day: The workweek in low-wage industries has fallen back to the historic lows seen at the depths of the recession.

The White House and like-minded economists have disputed the notion that ObamaCare is having a meaningful impact on work hours by noting that the private-sector workweek has recovered pretty much back to where it was in 2007, before the economy tanked.

But that view from 40,000 feet overlooks what is happening in industries likely to feel the brunt of ObamaCare’s employment impact: those in which wages are modest and the ranks of the uninsured are high.

A more rigorous analysis of monthly industry data from the Bureau of Labor Statitics reveals a stark contrast between workers in low-wage industries and the rest of the private sector.

For the 30 million workers in industries where nonsupervisors average about $14.50 an hour or less, the workweek has been shrinking pretty steadily for the past 18 months, reversing a fledgling recovery in work hours.

Read more from this story HERE.

Union: EPA Carbon Regulations Costing Jobs

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Pennsylvania local union officer argued last week that hundreds of families will lose their jobs due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) anti-coal agenda, according to the Pittsburg Post-Gazzette.

Raymond C. Ventrone, business manager of the Boilermakers Local 154 union, explained that the coal industry has already invested millions of dollars in clean air technology. Even though coal usage tripled in the last 30 years, sulfur dioxide levels fell by 56 percent thanks to this new technology.

However, according to Ventrone, the EPA disregarded these innovations by the coal industry.

Read more from this story HERE.

Study: Welfare Pays More than Work in Most States

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Looking for a good paying job? Well, look no further.

No, really, stop looking. In 35 states, welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job, according to a new study by the libertarian Cato Institute, and in 13 states welfare pays more than $15 per hour.

“One of the single best ways to climb out of poverty is taking a job, but as long as welfare provides a better standard of living than an entry-level job, recipients will continue to choose it over work,” said Michael Tanner, senior policy analyst and co-author of the study.

The study is an updated version of one Tanner put out in 1995 that estimated the full value of welfare benefits packages across the states. The 1995 study found that such tax-free welfare benefits greatly exceeded the poverty level and “their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job.”

Despite efforts to curb welfare spending, many welfare programs and benefits have continued to outpace the income that many workers can receive for working an entry-level job, which disincentivizes work, according to the study.

Read more from this story HERE.

39 Percent of Unemployed Workers Have Been Out of Work Longer than 27 Weeks

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Of the 12.2 million Americans who were unemployed as of December 2012, 39 percent (4.7 million) had been out of work for 27 weeks or more, according to a new report from the Urban Institute.

These 4.7 million workers are known as the long-term unemployed, and are among the worst consequences of the Great Recession of 2008.

Report author Josh Mitchell noted that “relative to currently employed workers, the long-term unemployed tend to be less educated and are more likely to be nonwhite, unmarried, disabled, impoverished and to have worked previously in the construction industry and construction occupations.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Political System Offers Choice Between Lesser of Two Evils, Results In Evil of Two Lessers

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Photo Credit: Irish Central As the country lurches from scandal to scandal, an unending budget impasse, a new norm of part time jobs and unemployment of over 7% …Many of us ask how did we get here?

The political forces in this country serve us up “choices” on the ballot for candidates that many of us feel are distasteful and unqualified. Yet we are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils in order to cast a vote. Or worse, it estranges millions of voters from the system, who stay home and don’t vote at all.

Because of this, notoriously inept candidates can tell the voters to hold their nose and vote for them, because their opponent is even worse.

Some candidates don’t have to excel or have accomplished anything of note besides being slick talking politicians, or community organizers groomed for political office. They can bypass executive skills or real life accomplishments that should qualify a candidate for the office.

When was the last time a majority of American citizens enthusiastically went to the ballot box and voted for a presidential candidate of their choice? The last time was when Ronald Reagan swept 48 states to win in a landslide for his 2nd term.

Since that time we have been faced with a choice between carefully scripted, flawed candidates, who never live up to their glossy campaign brochures…And our country is suffering as a result.

From presidential candidates on down to the mayoral races, the scenario is repeated…..Really, in a city of 8.3 million the current crop of mayoral choices are the best and brightest New York can come up with?

Perhaps it’s time to grab hold of an idea that can completely change the political landscape in our country. An idea that would turn millions of apathetic voters into enthusiastic voters willing to get involved in the system again and force the political system give us candidates that we WANT to vote for, for a change.

It’s time to put a new choice on all of the ballots in America. This choice would be the 500 lb gorilla in the living room. The choice is called “NONE OF THE ABOVE”

With just the threat of “none of the above” hanging over their heads, political parties would have to be very careful about who they put on the ballot, because we have a new option: A morning after pill for the American voter.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Where’s That 5% Unemployment Rate Obama Promised by Now?

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On the surface, the July jobs report — the unemployment rate dipped to 7.4% last month thanks to a shrinking workforce as the economy added a disappointing 162,000 net new payrolls — is just another dismal data point in America’s “new normal” recovery. But it’s also an important milestone and metric for judging the Keynesian fiscal experiment known as Obamanomics.

In January 2009, Team Obama economists put together a report – half quantitative analysis, half sales pitch — outlining the potential economic impact of the proposed $800 billion stimulus. (See above chart from that report.) If Congress passed the plan, the report forecasted, the economy would generate enough additional demand, output, and employment that two big things would happen:

First, the unemployment rate would never reach 8%. Unfortunately, we hit 10% unemployment in October 2009. Failure number one.

Second, the unemployment rate would return to its long-term “natural rate” of 5% by July 2013 (a jobless rate, it should be noted, above the low points of the Bush and Clinton presidencies). Labor markets would be back to peak health. The Great Recession would truly and finally be over.

Mission accomplished by this jobless report.

Read more from this story HERE.

Newspaper Editor Who Wrote, “Take Your Jobs Plan and Shove it, Mr. President,” Fired

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Photo Credit: Twitter The Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial page editor who criticized President Obama’s jobs plan courtesy of a Johnny Paycheck song is now out of a job.

Drew Johnson’s editorial, titled “Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President: Your policies have harmed Chattanooga enough,” went viral and drew national attention earlier this week when President Obama visited the city.The newspaper released a statement Thursday saying Johnson had been fired for “placing a headline on an editorial outside of normal editing procedures.”

“The headline was inappropriate for this newspaper,” the statement read. “It was not the original headline approved for publication, and Johnson violated the normal editing process when he changed the headline.”

Johnson, who had been with the newspaper for just over a year, addressed his firing on Twitter.

“I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper’s most-read article,” he tweeted.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama on Stupid: “More Government Workers Mean More Tax Revenue”

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama – citing the job losses since he took office — said “the economy would be much better off,” unemployment would be 6.5 percent and the national deficit would be in decline if there were more federal, state and local government workers.

“If those layoffs had not happened, if public sector employees grew like they did in the past two recessions, the unemployment rate would be 6.5 instead of 7.5,” Obama said. “Our economy would be much better off, and the deficit would still be going down because we would be getting more tax revenue.”

Obama spoke Tuesday at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Chattanooga, Tenn., where he promoted plans he said would help the middle class such as corporate tax reform, increased federal spending on infrastructure, more education spending, public-private partnerships and rolling back the sequester.

“Instead of using a scalpel to get rid of programs we don’t need and keep vital investments that we do, the same group has kept in place this meat cleaver called the sequester that is just slashing all kinds of investments in education and research and our military,” Obama said.

Read more from this story HERE.