barry and his minions are.....

[chefdennis]

Celebrating and Capitalizing on Our Misery

As the GDP shows some growth, Democrats are now admitting that they like their miserable POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy.


October 29, 2009
by Tom Blumer
Pajamas Media Celebrating and Capitalizing on Our Misery

The economy, as measured by growth in the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), finally grew again in the third quarter. That bit of decent news only papers over an otherwise dreadful situation.

Of course, compared to the alternative, the positive GDP report is welcome. Barring drastic subsequent downward adjustments, it brings an end to the recession as normal people define it. Whether it concludes the recession as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which was inexplicably allowed to hijack the dictionary and substitute their arbitrary judgment as to what an “official” recession is decades ago, is anyone’s guess.

NBER’s alleged experts “determined” that the current recession really began in December 2007, during a quarter when the economy grew at an annualized 2.7%. The NBER-defined recession somehow continued during the second quarter of 2008 while GDP was growing at an annualized 1.5%. If the group ultimately declares that the recession ended during the past quarter, it will be the first time it has done so while the economy was shedding so many seasonally adjusted jobs (768,000, or almost 0.6% of the workforce, pending possible adjustments).

While GDP is up, many economic metrics that matter more to the average person are down, so much so that it’s probably fair to say that the economy as most Americans experience it is still shrinking. This explains why, despite the “it’s not that bad” hymn the choir known as the nation’s establishment press continues to sing, the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell sharply in October and is below where it was in September 2008.

The most obvious problems are soaring unemployment and growing underemployment.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in September was 9.8%. Even that horrid figure, which Christina Romer of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers expects not to change much between now and the end of 2010, masks how bad things really are. That’s because many potential workers are dropping out.

If you compare the sum of the civilian labor forces of all 50 states and the District of Columbia at this Bureau of Labor Statistics table as of September 2009 to a year earlier (separately calculated here), you’ll find that the workforce shrunk by almost 600,000. Take out Texas and the shrinkage is almost 900,000. Perform the same operation on this seasonally adjusted table (again shown here), this time comparing September 2009 to July, and you’ll see a decline of 351,000 in just two months (almost 400,000 if you again take out Texas). Meanwhile, during the past year the nation’s 16-and-over population has increased by almost two million. It’s clear that a lot of people who would prefer to be working have taken themselves out of the job market, thus disappearing entirely from the government’s jobs analyses.


This trend has already twisted the impact of official state and local employment reports. In Ohio, for example, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped from 10.8% to 10.1% in September. Big deal; the change occurred not because more people found work, but because more people dropped out.

Beyond that, those who are still working are on average working less and taking home less. The average work week, at 33 hours, is at a record low. The government’s September index of real average weekly earnings was down 1.9% from December.

One quarter of positive GDP growth hardly makes up for all of this. That there is a palpable sense of misery permeating this economy — and that it is not dissipating — is undeniable.

Now that this malaise has arrived and appears likely to remain in place for a while, many members of the Democratic Party are glad it’s here. That’s because they believe that the currently awful economy will help them pass government-controlled health care and other elements of their statist agenda.

I’m not saying it; they are ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/u..._r=2&scp=1&sq=democrats see a positive&st=cse ), up to and including the president himself:

The bad economy is good for President Obama and Democrats as they try to reinvent the health care system with scant Republican support.

… Congressional Democrats … say that economic insecurity and high unemployment stoke public support for their proposals to guarantee insurance for millions of Americans. …

[Washington Congressman James McDermott said that] “in 1993, we were talking about the uninsured as ‘them.’ Now it turns out this is for us. When a bank like Washington Mutual in Seattle lays off 3,000 people, they lose health insurance. Millions of people with insurance are asking, ‘What if I lose my job?’”

Mr. Obama is doing everything he can to highlight this sense of insecurity as he tries to persuade people with insurance that his proposals would help them. Worries about insurance are “keeping more and more Americans awake at night,” he said last month.

The fate of health legislation may hinge on whether those anxieties trump concerns about the effects of the Democratic proposals.

Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, sensing a historic control-enhancing opportunity, is doing his part to capitalize on the widespread economic stress. Recently on MSNBC, the Frank said that in regards to the nation’s financial system, “we are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area.” This comes from a guy who for the past year has stood idly by while the Federal Housing Administration has proactively (I would argue deliberately) repeated the mistakes that sent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the cliff to the tune of what will ultimately be hundreds of billions of bailout dollars.

Thus, the very people who over a year ago brought about what I have since July 2008 been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy now want to capitalize on it to enact their power-hungry, commerce-crippling agenda.

Beltway Democrats’ detestable, ghoulishly opportunistic, and barely disguised euphoria over how bad it is for so many of us is enough to make you wonder if they set out to create this mess in the first place. The way they are now attempting to take advantage of it lends strong credence to that belief, almost to the point where you don’t really need to wonder any more. After all, if taking down the economy wasn’t their original goal, you would expect that they’d be reacting very differently now — and they’re not. Our national nightmare is Rahm Emanuel’s and his party’s dream come true.

 

[chefdennis]

Democrats See a Positive in a Bad Economy

By ROBERT PEAR
Published: October 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/u..._r=2&scp=1&sq=democrats see a positive&st=cse

WASHINGTON — The bad economy is good for President Obama and Democrats as they try to reinvent the health care system with scant Republican support.

That is the conclusion of many Congressional Democrats, who say that economic insecurity and high unemployment stoke public support for their proposals to guarantee insurance for millions of Americans.

Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, said this was one of the biggest differences between the health care wars of 1993-94 and the battle today. When Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for universal coverage, Mr. McDermott said, the economy was on an upswing, in the early stages of a 10-year economic expansion, which proved to be the longest in American history.

Today, by contrast, the economy is weak. Americans have struggled through the worst recession in decades. The unemployment rate is at a 26-year high.

“The mentality in the country is different,” said Mr. McDermott, a psychiatrist who has served in Congress for two decades. “In 1993, we were talking about the uninsured as ‘them.’ Now it turns out this is for us. When a bank like Washington Mutual in Seattle lays off 3,000 people, they lose health insurance. Millions of people with insurance are asking, ‘What if I lose my job?’ ”

Mr. Obama is doing everything he can to highlight this sense of insecurity as he tries to persuade people with insurance that his proposals would help them. Worries about insurance are “keeping more and more Americans awake at night,” he said last month.

The fate of health legislation may hinge on whether those anxieties trump concerns about the effects of the Democratic proposals. Republicans say “Obamacare” would kill jobs by imposing new taxes and destabilize the employer-based system of insurance on which 170 million Americans depend.

The latest Census Bureau figures show that 15.4 percent of Americans — 46.3 million people — were uninsured in 2008. But a recent Treasury Department study said many more people had reason to feel insecure.

Based on data from 1997 to 2006, the study said, 48 percent of Americans under the age of 65 can expect to go without health insurance for a month or more in the next decade, and 41 percent can expect to be uninsured for six months or more. Among young people, Mr. Obama said, the risk is even greater, as more than half of people under 21 today will be uninsured at some point in the next decade.

A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services, titled “Insurance Insecurity,” hammers home the point. One in three working-age adults had a gap in coverage for at least one month in 2006 or 2007, it said, and “one in six Americans with employer-sponsored insurance in 2006 lost that coverage by 2008.”

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, held a hearing recently to show that middle-class families with health insurance were filing for bankruptcy because they could not pay their medical bills.

Democrats say a government-run insurance plan is the best way to allay fears about the loss of private insurance. Private insurers can increase premiums or withdraw from markets, they say, but a government plan will always be available and affordable.

And Democrats have hit upon a new sales pitch: To make the cost of the bill smaller, they need to make government’s role bigger.

Liberal Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi say that a public plan would put competitive pressure on private insurers to hold down premiums and costs.

To save money, they say, the public plan should use Medicare rates as a basis for paying doctors and hospitals. Private insurers negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, which have substantial bargaining power. The Medicare rates, set by law and regulation, are lower.

The risk of setting rates too low is illustrated by the formula used to pay doctors treating Medicare patients. Doctors return to Capitol Hill year after year begging Congress to spare them from cuts in their Medicare fees.

The House and Senate health care bills would cut hundreds of billions of dollars from projected Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers.

Richard S. Foster, chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the estimated savings were unrealistic because they were based on overly optimistic assumptions about gains in productivity in the health care industry.

Under these proposals, Mr. Foster said, health care providers “could find it difficult to remain profitable and might end their participation in the program, possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries.”

The fight over a government health plan may seem arcane, but its outcome could help determine whether the legislation succeeds in expanding coverage and reducing costs, health economists said. At issue is the appropriate balance between public and private insurance — the same question Congress faced when it added a drug benefit to Medicare in 2003.

The drug benefit is delivered by private insurers under contract with the government. Insurers, seeing a lucrative business opportunity, rushed in to the Medicare market and compete aggressively. The program has worked better than many Democrats predicted, and the costs have been lower than expected.

Republicans trusted private insurers. Democrats do not.

“If you’re going to mandate that people must buy insurance,” Ms. Pelosi asked, “why would you throw them into the lions’ den of the insurance industry without some leverage with a public option?”

Democrats have also found that they can hold down the cost of their bill by significantly expanding eligibility for Medicaid.

It is less expensive for the federal government to cover low-income people under Medicaid than to provide them with subsidies to buy private insurance. Medicaid pays doctors and hospitals much less than private insurance, and states may eventually be required to pick up some of the cost — a prospect that alarms many governors.