While I don’t think tax payers should be subsidizing other people’s home purchases, this is what happens when the government’s games catch up with them. They are trying to prop up the housing market from the mess they created, but at the same time they are looking at contradictory policies that will harm the housing market.

Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, plans to ask Congress on Wednesday to raise the cap on the annual insurance premium that the FHA can charge borrowers. In testimony before a congressional panel, he will also outline steps the agency is considering to set minimum credit scores, to require home buyers to put more money down, and to make lenders more accountable for loans that the agency insures.

Those measures are designed to begin rebuilding the agency’s depleted capital reserves. An independent audit last month said that the estimated value of those reserves had dropped to $3.6 billion, or about 0.5% of the $685 billion in loans the FHA has insured.

But any sharp crackdown could limit the pool of potential home buyers. Many rely on FHA-backed home loans.

“We have to replenish the reserves and we have to be prepared for a market outcome that may not be as favorable” as one that was forecast by the auditor, said David Stevens, the FHA’s commissioner, in an interview Monday. The audit estimated that the agency wouldn’t need any funds from the U.S. Treasury next year.

Raising insurance premiums could help avert the need for a taxpayer bailout of the agency, but the move would raise borrowing costs for home buyers. The FHA charges an upfront insurance premium of 1.75% of the loan amount. Borrowers pay additional annual premiums of either 0.5% or 0.55%.

The FHA will also limit the amount of money that sellers can provide for closing costs on home sales to 3% of the home price, from the current level of 6%. The agency is also finalizing plans to set a minimum credit score for borrowers, possibly by requiring those making small down payments to have higher credit scores.

via FHA Considers Ways to Boost Its Reserves – WSJ.com.

Many people are calling for a second decline in housing. It’s not hard to figure out why. FHA is looking to make it harder to get an FHA insured loan. Also, come April of next year, the tax rebate will expire and those who were going to buy will have already done so. There will be a decline at that point in buyers. The government should have just stayed out of the housing decline in the first place. The decline would have been quicker, and it would have stabilized leaving a bottom to build on. Instead, it is doing as it always does. It’s delaying the bottoming and leading to a new decline shortly in the future. So, it won’t prevent the eventual bottoming, and it leaves us with massive debt as a reminder of their failed policies.

If you wonder why Obama believes only government can cure all our ills, this chart tells you all you need to know.

A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report. It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.

via Help Wanted, No Private Sector Experience Required « The Enterprise Blog.

The Wall Street Journal had an article about how construction companies are going to be laying people off as the stimulus money projects run out.

WASHINGTON—Highway-construction companies around the country, having completed the mostly small projects paid for by the federal economic-stimulus package, are starting to see their business run aground, an ominous sign for the nation’s weak employment picture.

Tim Word, vice president of Dean Word Co., a heavy-construction company in New Braunfels, Texas, said his income is now coming mostly from projects that are winding up. He said that in normal times he has about $100 million of signed contracts in hand. But that number has fallen to $30 million, and the pipeline is empty.

via Job Cuts Loom As Stimulus Fades – WSJ.com.

This is why stimulus does not create jobs. It does not create permanent jobs, because it does not create wealth. Where does the government get the money? It must take it from one area of the economy whether through taxes or borrowing, and it gives it temporarily to another area of the economy. This is temporary, and businesses aren’t stupid enough to fall for it. Yeah, the businesses who receive the money love it. They aren’t going to turn it down. But the other businesses that don’t receive it are either laying off or not hiring because of it. They either don’t have the money to hire because it was taxed away, or they are competing with the government to borrow money. The more money the government is borrowing, the harder it is for small businesses to borrow. After all, who is considered the safest bet when lending, and if the government keeps demanding more money in a slow economy, wouldn’t it be best to lend them the money?

This whole story highlights several things. The government cannot create jobs, create wealth, control the economy, fix economic problems, or help you in anyway that doesn’t hurt you more in other ways.

If you have not read my previous post, Thanksgiving, Statism and Life Outside the Matrix, you may want to do so first. This will be my first post where I will challenge the assumption of public education, which is what provides us our programming to live within the Matrix.

As I said in my previous post, both sides of the Matrix structure argue about how to best improve public education. One argues for more money. The other argues for more localized control. Neither side questions the existence of government controlled education, the results over the long term, or whether we’d be better off with no government education.

To start, why do statists claim we need a public school system? They claim that all children need an education, and only government can make sure all children regardless of race, class, and gender receive an education. That sounds reasonable, but are the children, especially the poor really getting educated? According to The Daily Beast, 7,200 students drop out every day. In some cities (usually ran by socialists), it’s even worse. In Detroit, only 25% of students graduate. According to CNN, the nationwide dropout rate is 16% or over 6 million students.

Every single school day, more than 7,200 kids, on average, drop out of high school—1.3 million each year. In many American cities, including Miami, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Minneapolis, most public school students don’t graduate. In Detroit, the unhappy poster child for American industrial decline, a study from last year showed that a mere quarter of students earn high school diplomas.

via America’s Dropout Crisis – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.

Nearly 6.2 million students in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 in 2007 dropped out of high school, fueling what a report released Tuesday called “a persistent high school dropout crisis.”

The total represents 16 percent of all people in the United States in that age range in 2007. Most of the dropouts were Latino or black, according to a report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, Illinois.

via ‘High school dropout crisis’ continues in U.S., study says – CNN.com.

As you can see, the groups most affected by the dropout rate are the groups that socialists claim to champion. Students are dropping out left and right, which does not provide them many options for the future. Then again, why worry? We have a “safety net”. You know if you don’t go to school, you can at least live off the government dole. On top of that, you can partake in criminal activity and receive tax free income. “Cash only please for all drug and stolen good purchases”.

“Yeah, OK Prof, but literacy was horrendous.” Well, let’s take a look at the “improving” literacy. As we all know, slaves were systematically prevented from learning to read and becoming educated, so we can’t really count their literacy under slavery. We can look at how quickly they became literate after slavery ended.

Although the black literacy rate soared from 20% in 1850 to nearly 80% in 1890, blacks were still having a difficult time finding work.

via ljonespage4content.

Wow, that’s damn impressive. Black literacy reached 80% in 1890. Well, what is it now? Hmmm, under our socialized, secular government ignorance programs, it stands at about 60%.

Six decades later, at the end of the twentieth century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled.

via Intellectual Espionage – John Taylor Gatto.

White literacy was near 100% at the beginning of the 20th century, and as you can see, it is now at about where the formers slaves were in 1890. According to John Quincy Adams, only 4/10ths of 1 percent of New Englanders were illiterate. Also, I think everyone would agree the books that were read back then were much more challenging.  Isn’t progress wonderful?

How about math and science scores? Well, according to international testing, American children are not what they used to be. The bad news is the longer they are in school, the worse they get.

At science and math, American students trail those in other advanced democracies. The longer students are in school, the worse things get. Among fourth graders, U.S. students rank high on the International Test of Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Despite this head start, by eighth grade, American adolescents have slipped to the midpoint on the TIMSS; by age 17, their scores trail all but those in a few developing countries

via Hoover Institution – Hoover Digest – The Decline and Fall of American Education.

So as you can see, the public schools in our country have failed as all government planned goods and services do. The debate then goes straight to “how do we make them better?” This is the debate that rages inside the statist Matrix. Both sides argue back and forth about how to improve it. The cheerleaders hooray their side and boo the other side, and it’s completely incomprehensible to them that maybe the government should not be forcing people into government schools. All coercive monopolies are bad, and government is a coercive monopoly. If you do not believe so, try to “choose” to keep your children out of government approved schooling. See how long before you go to jail.

What is the solution? Well, let’s start off by agreeing that we should not stick a gun to people’s heads and tell them they are either going to send their children to government schools, or else they will go to jail. Can we agree that is the moral thing to do? I’m sure some will argue that some parents just are too stupid to make sure their kids get educated, so government must stick a gun to your head. The argument goes that because a small group isn’t responsible with their children, the government should stick a gun to everyone’s head and force their kids into public schools. Pro-government school people argue it’s child abuse to not let your child get an education, but then have no problem with the abuse government schools are inflicting on our children at increasing rates as the statistics above show. Let’s not even get into the lunch programs they inflict on children.

Next, let’s let people choose how they want their kids to be educated. If you do not want to send your child to a government school, there is no reason you should have to pay for government schools plus a private school. Do you think this has something to do with why poorer students are worse off? Their parents cannot afford to pay for public and private schools, so they suck it up and send them off the the ignorance factories. You should be able to keep your money. At the very least, you should be able to take your tax dollars to the school of your choice.

Then the government should allow the free market to deliver education options. They should not set standards, because their standards are pretty much useless. They deliver horrible results. Private schools will have to deliver to the parent’s liking, or they will automatically be punished with lost tuition. Government, on the other hand, has no accountability. If you don’t like the results, you still pay for it. If you try not to pay for it, well you know what happens.

Why is it so hard to imagine a world without public schools? It’s hard to imagine because it’s part of your programming. You were brought up in public schooling and taught that you must have public schools. It’s like most of society in the early 1800s, who couldn’t comprehend how former slaves and former slave masters could live in the same society if slavery was abolished.  Instead of admitting it was immoral, abolishing the institution, and letting free men figure their own way out of it, the government legalized slavery every step of the way. They couldn’t see outside the Matrix in which they were living. If the government had not enforced slavery through fugitive slave laws, it’s hard to believe slavery would have lasted long at all. It would have cost plantation owners too much money to chase slaves down when they escaped. They were only able to do so, because government (really the tax payer) ate the cost of chasing them down and returning them. It would have actually been cheaper for plantation owners to hire the slaves or any other workers had they not forced the cost of fugitive slave laws on the society as a whole. What I am saying here is just because you can’t imagine something other than government schools, because you have been programmed to only see it that way, doesn’t mean it’s not possible and better.  When men are free to make choices in their best interest, society progresses more quickly. It is not happenstance that the least regulated areas in our life are all the fast growing and evolving areas, and there is no reason education cannot be the same.

It’s very easy to see how education if unleashed from government shackles could quickly skyrocket in the success it delivers. It’s not hard to envision bountiful options to meet the needs of all children. Does your child excel in math? How about a school that focuses on math, engineering, and computers? Has your child always loved being the center or attention? How about a school that focuses on the arts? Does your child love to fix things and find out how they work? How about a tech school? Do you want your child to focus on reading, writing, and math? How about an elementary school that focuses exclusively on fundamentals? Does your child have special needs? How about a school that specializes in teaching kids with the same needs as your child? Does your child have many interests? How about a school that brings in great teachers from around the country via video conferencing? Better yet, if your child goes to any of the other schools mentioned, how about those schools bringing in the best teachers in their focused area via video? How about sending your child to a school whose competitive advantage is small class sizes? How about a retired NASA scientist being able to teach students without a teaching degree? How about parents, who know their kids best, deciding what school is best for their child. It is not hard to imagine options and schools opening all over the place.

Why would so many schools open? Because there are greedy profiteers out there, and guess what. They have to deliver a quality service in the private sector. According to the 2007 census, the average cost per student in public schools was $9,000. Do you think for one second there wouldn’t be businesses competing for that $9,000 per pupil and driving the cost down? It happens in every other sector of our economy. Well, it does until the government gets jealous and decides to jump into the game.

While I’m sure the diehard statists can never imagine education without Uncle Sam forcing us into a one size fits none system, I hope some of you question your assumptions about our supposed need for public schools. Hopefully, when you hear politicians debating more funding for education, higher national standards, or any other top down school program, you will question it more deeply. You will ask why they would do that in the first place. How does that open up choices? Does not having choices provide better results? Who benefits from this?

Take the Red pill, and ask yourself, “If I could disregard all laws related to education, what would I choose for my child or for myself when I was a child? Would I send them to government schools, or would I send them to schools who must prove themselves in order to get my money?”

PS. Please ignore all spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. I learned those in public school.

Thanks to Obama’s economic policies and bail outs, you no longer have to be concerned about Wall Street execs not being able to afford their lavish lifestyle.

Conspicuous consumption is making a comeback on Wall Street. But no one wants to admit they’re doing it. As traders and investment bankers near the finish line of what looks like a boom year for pay, some are spending money like the financial crisis never happened. From $15,000-a-week Caribbean getaways to art auctions to $200,000 platinum wristwatches that automatically adjust for leap years, signs of the good life are returning. “What we’re seeing in the last four to eight weeks is a fairly substantial uptick” in demand for extravagant purchases as Wall Street employees grow more confident that the market’s

via Wall Street Starts Spending Again – WSJ.com.

I have been so concerned. This is going to be a great Christmas for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc. Don’t you see how Trickle Up Economics works? Obama takes money from the middle class, gives it to Wall Street, GM, etc. Then when they spend money on trips, jewelry, etc, we get some of it back as employees working for the companies from who they buy. I know you didn’t get as much back, but that’s where the Trickle Up comes in.

Go figure! Business owners who create jobs everyday differ from our President, who never created or worked at a job that had a real economic value to it.

Businesses of all sizes are brimming with proposals they say would spur economic growth. The most commonly voiced are tax cuts and boosting access to credit

The White House, for its part, wants to discuss job growth in the clean-tech sector and shifting some stimulus spending to infrastructure projects. Obama aides are also eyeing a limited range of incentives for small businesses to create jobs.

Business want tax cuts without spending cuts, and Obama wants more government spending. Wonder why gold keeps going up? If businesses weren’t looking for handouts, they’d be asking for the government to get the hell out of the economy and quit “boosting access to credit”. It’s the boosting of access to credit that created the bubble that just burst and now leaves them in the predicament they are in. We really cannot expect any better from Obama than more government spending. He believes all life’s value comes from the hand of government. Besides, the media has told him repeatedly how smart his is. “He’s possibly the most intellectual President we’ve ever had.”

Another point of contention: A number of chief executives say the government should clear up uncertainty over health care, energy prices and financial regulations. “Companies large and small are saying, ‘I am not going to do anything until these things — health care, climate legislation — go away or are resolved,’ ” said Dan DiMicco, chief executive of steelmaker Nucor Corp.

Who didn’t know that government medaling is causing businesses to stand still? How about government drop all this stuff, so businesses can get back to what they do best, which is creating economic value.

“Hiring often takes time to catch up to economic growth,” said Valerie Jarrett, an adviser on business issues to President Barack Obama.

Thanks Commissar Jarrett! When will we have economic growth?

Among those invited are the chief executives of Boeing Co., AT&T Inc. and FedEx Corp., along with the heads of many smaller companies.

Oh boy. I’m sure these big companies will not ask for government money. Do they bring their own money jars, or does Obama hand them out at the door?

For small businesses, the No. 1 issue is credit, which remains tight despite the billions spent by the government helping ailing banks.

Yeah, but just imagine how much worse things would be if we didn’t give almost $1 trillion to Obama’s buddies. Right! We bailed out Wall Street in order to bail out Main Street. I don’t think credit is going to make a dimes worth a difference when you have the Federal governments foot pressed firmly down on your neck. Again, easy credit lead to this mess. Expanding credit will not fix the problem. It will just setup the next bubble followed by more disaster down the future. Then again! The government can step in and take more control when the next bubble bursts.

Ron DeFeo, CEO of Terex Corp., a maker of heavy construction equipment, said tight credit is hurting his customers. “Small businesses are having a tough time capitalizing any piece of equipment.” Terex has laid off 4,000 people over the past 15 months. Mr. DeFeo said he would “hire 100 people right now” if the government offset a portion of the new hires’ salary with tax incentives.

via White House, Business Leaders Split on How to Create Jobs – WSJ.com.

Is this supposed to be a reason to go more in debt? This guy says he’d hire 100 people right now if the government would give him more money? That simply means the employees can’t produce enough value to justify paying them. The only way they can justify paying them is with a government subsidy. While I am all for getting rid of taxes, just saying I’ll hire with tax incentives is ridiculous. What he is saying is all the other average Joes out there should give him money so he can make those jobs justifiable. I wonder if this guy pays for health benefits. Would dropping health benefits provide enough to justify the positions? Has he looked into HSA for his employees? Does he have ancient equipment that makes employees less productive, thus making it harder to justify paying them? Who knows. The point is we should not just hand out money to anyone to justify creating jobs. We don’t know if the jobs are worth creating.

If you want real job creation, the government needs to get out of job creation. The free market when left alone creates good jobs for everyone. The jobs are long term, because they can justify themselves. If a job generates profits, it’s justified. If it cannot, it should not be created. If the government would get out of health care, corporate welfare, entitlement programs, environmental frauds, etc, the cost of each job would go down. Guess what happens? Many more jobs then become justifiable, and then they are created.

If you truly think there are property rights left in America, you sure must have your head firmly in ground or up your a**.  Here is the most recent example of the government taking property from the little guy to give it to their rich buddies. Oh yeah, and these just so happen to be liberals, who claim the love the poor and the down trodden.

The case, Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corporation, dealt with plans by developer Forest City Ratner to build a new arena for the Nets as well as snazzy apartments and offices on land currently occupied by homes and businesses. To make way for the sports complex, the state declared the property “blighted” and used its power of eminent domain to hand it to the developer.

Such unabashed takings have an unfortunate history in New York state, where the political class has a habit of using its powers on behalf of well-connected private interests. Caught under the wheels are average citizens whose only recourse is to try to defend their property rights in court.

So much for that. In allowing the property seizure, the Court of Appeals dodged some of the central challenges to the condemnation, including whether the Empire State Development Corporation’s designation of blight in the Atlantic Yards area was applied after the stadium project had already been planned, making it a “pretext.” Nor did the court take on the question—at the heart of eminent domain law since Kelo—whether economic development may be considered a public use under the New York Constitution.

Instead, the majority argued that because the state had designated the area as blighted, the takings were therefore a “public use,” and it was not the place of the court to interfere. Nevermind that the determination of blight was based largely on a study funded by . . . the aspiring developer.

Courts in New York have been famously hostile to eminent domain challenges, but 43 states have adjusted their laws since Kelo to provide stronger protections for property owners. The New York ruling vindicates Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s prediction in dissent in Kelo that “the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.” Q.E.D.

via New York Appellate Court Rules in Favor of Basketball Arena Developers – WSJ.com.

Not only does the government take your property whenever it feels like, for whatever reason it feels like, try to not pay your property taxes and see if you really own your property. Property taxes have turned us all into renters. You have to pay the local government your yearly rental fee, which they raise periodically just like all landlords. If you don’t pay, they evict you and take back the property. Then they sell the property to some one else who is under the illusion that they own the property.

So, basically you only have “rights” to the property until the government decides you no longer have the right. You can fool yourself all you want, but really eminent domain has turned into imminent domain.

Over Thanksgiving dinner, my brother and I began our normal debates of politics, war, health care, etc. This year was  a little different.

I’ve always been the typical conservative, who believes the government is a necessary evil that wants to control us more and more with healthcare, welfare, net neutrality and on and on, but we need to maintain a strong military and remain on the offense in the war on terror.

Having always considered my self a free market capitalist, I was reading pro-capitalist books, websites, etc. Eventually, I found myself in a world that challenged my own contradictions. I’ve always realized that liberalism was irrational and illogical, but I always thought conservatism was rational and logical. After reading Ron Paul’s book, End The Fed, I started a debate on Mises.org, a pro-free market site founded to spread the economic ideas of Ludwig von Mises. Like most conservatives, I liked Ron Paul’s belief in the constitution and his domestic policy beliefs, but I thought his foreign policy was isolationist and unrealistic. In the forums, I said I like Ron Paul and would vote for him, but I didn’t believe in his isolationism and questioned whether he believed in a strong military. Having always laughed at liberals and all their contradictions, it was now I who seemed to be the one with contradictions.

Not being used to people debating with logic and reason, I quickly felt like I was being presented an option. The forum users were offering me the Red Pill, leading me on a path which would challenge my assumptions and the Matrix in which we live, or the Blue Pill, in which I could ignore their arguments and stay in the comfort of what I’ve always believed and had reinforced by the Matrix. Having always believed in pursuing TRUTH in spite of fear, ostracizing, or ego, I took the Red Pill. Quickly I realized I was outside the Matrix looking in.

The first thing you realize is the Matrix is constructed of two sides who are opposites of the same contradictory, statist coin. Both believe in using government force in order to compel the populace to live by their terms. One side believes in “national greatness” while the other believes in “national virtue”. Neither fulfills their stated goal, and neither believes in individual liberty. Both sides benefit from the endless debate and the “my team is best” mentality. The Matrix was not constructed over night. It was developed over time piece by piece and quickly became the known world to those who know no alternative to life inside the Matrix. Current generations have had the programming loaded into their minds through the government schools. Even if you attend private schools, you must meet certain mandated “standards”. As an adult, your programming is reinforced with TV shows, news programs, and “educational” programs that reinforce the assumptions that were programmed into you as a child.

The founding institution of the Matrix, the State, is formed by competing parties, which you are encouraged to cheer one as your team and boo the others as the enemy no matter what the topic. Debates rage with differing opinions, but never involve root causes or underlying assumptions. Both sides debate particular wars, but never discuss what caused the war or whether foreign intervention is just and in our best interest (ex: Should our military is deployed in 150 countries). We debate how to best raise the standards of public schools, but no one questions the existence of the public schools or the historical failure of them(ex: Black Americans went from 20% literacy rate in 1860 to 80% by 1890. Now, black Americans have a 60% literacy rate). They debate how to best handle retirement savings, but neither questions whether the government should be handling it at all or the consequences of their mishandling (ex: Inflating Wall Street pay via 401ks and IRAs). Currently, we’re debating health care. One side argues for national health care, and the other argues against it. Neither side debates government involvement and it’s effect on skyrocketing prices in the first place.

It’s not hard to understand why the Matrix is so hard to break free from. It’s all we’ve known. We haven’t experienced schooling without public schools, health care without insurance, a world without US policing, or life without so called “safety nets”. During the debate with my brother, who always argued with my beliefs on foreign policy when I was inside the Matrix, agreed Americans were not looking at the issue properly because they are surrounded by re-enforcing factors such as the media. The media never gives a historical perspective. They only ask what should be done about terrorism or which war we should fight. They never ask why is there terrorism or if we think punishing civilians via embargoes will help them overthrow tyranny. They never ask if we believe it creates less responsibility for Wall Street executives when the Fed drops interest rates to zero and promises to prevent bank failures. They are only asked whether we should have bailouts or not.

The funny thing was as soon as the debate turned to public education, my brother was back in the Matrix. I asked the question of why there should even be public schools, and immediately his programming took hold. “You have to have government schools. How would people get schooling? I don’t think the schools are bad. It’s our culture. Teacher unions aren’t to blame, it’s the parents. You can’t teach a child who’s parent is a drug addict. What about the poor?” On and on the debate raged, but he could not get his head around the fact that the government has created the disastrous system in the first place. He could not comprehend a world without the government. It was if nothing comes about without the government. It’s understandable. Can you imagine arguing what life would be like without slavery in the early 1800s? Surely, you would have been nuts. They were living inside their Matrix, created by generations that came before.

Over the coming months, I will attempt to touch on some of these topics. While I am not an expert, I will present you with Red and Blue pills. The Red pill will question whether our lives our better with government involvement in all aspects of our lives. Is the government really protecting us? Could we live without government? You will have to open your mind and challenge your assumptions if you take the Red pill. On the other hand, you can take the Blue pill. You can stay in your comfort zone, fight the same old fights, assume the government is there for your protection, and live out the consequences of those beliefs. The choice is yours, but you must make a choice.

Robert Wenzel shows how the media is reporting numbers more favorable to the theme of a recovery, but when analyzed closer, things don’t look so good.

The media is reporting that for the week ending Nov. 21, the figure for initial jobless claims was 466,000, a decrease of 35,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 501,000 that has been released by the Labor Department.

But this is a seasonally adjusted number.

Without the Labor Departments special “seasoning” the number of actual initial claims under state programs totaled 543,926 in the week ending Nov. 21, an increase of 68,080 from the previous week.

Thus, the Labor Department numbers have swung the jobless claims picture by over 100,000 for the last week, from a decrease to an increase.

Which means, if you applied for unemployment last week there is a one in five chance your claim has been seasonally adjusted from the data.

Happy Thanksgiving.

via EconomicPolicyJournal.com: A Second Look at the Lower Initial Jobless Claims Number.

Some in Congress are calling for a bi-partisan panel on ways to cut the deficit. As you can imagine, I’m laughing my butt off right now. Can you imagine telling your spouse you  need to get an outside advisor to help you figure out why you are getting further into debt as you go out and buy a bunch of stuff you don’t need on your credit cards?

By JONATHAN WEISMAN and JOHN D. MCKINNON

WASHINGTON — The White House is considering a bipartisan commission to tackle the nation’s swelling deficit, as it seeks to show resolve on a problem that threatens its broader agenda.

Top White House officials, including budget director Peter Orszag, met Tuesday with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Kent Conrad to discuss establishing such a commission, which has been pushed by Mr. Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, and his Republican counterpart on the committee, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.

Chuck Marr, a budget aide to the Democrats’ former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, said some kind of commission or budget summit could be the only way to bring Republicans into the decision making in the hopes of generating support for cutting cherished programs or raising taxes.

So now the Democrats want to bring in Republicans to support cutting cherished programs. Isn’t this as they are about to pass a huge new program that isn’t supported by Republicans?

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.) and senior Democrats such as House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin have vociferously opposed delegating tough decisions to outside panels or commissions.

Taking concrete steps to cut spending and raise taxes, always politically difficult, has become even harder given the U.S. economy’s weakened condition. With projected deficits averaging more than 5% of gross domestic product over the next decade, the enormity of the task makes it more daunting. So does the looming 2010 election, when Democrats face the possibility of big losses.

via White House Weighs New Panel to Tackle Deficit – WSJ.com.

Holy crap! Who would have thought I would ever agree with Nancy Pelosi. I better reconsider my belief. I was under the impression that we elect these idiots to make the tough decisions. I didn’t think we elected them to create panels anytime things are politically tough to do. They say it’s politically difficult, but yet it seems people on all sides are complaining about the deficit. The only difference seems to be where each side thinks the cuts should come from. I have a great idea that will solve this. Cut everything. Pass legislation that will move towards the end of medicare, social security, etc while protecting those who are on it or will be on it shortly. Young people know they will not get any of these benefits, so quit robbing them to pay for a failing system. For the left, shut some damn bases down around the world. Do we really need the cost of bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc?

Was that hard? Do we really need a commission to make a report that probably wouldn’t include common sense ideas anyway? Now that this has been put out there, congress can use it. They don’t even have to pay me. Well, maybe they could let me not pay taxes for a few years.