Only in the South, where you live. Politics rescued the Gipper from an acting career in ashes. Likewise, Trump ascended the ladder of failure to his biggest scam yet...Trump University, White House Campus. In other news: The World Naked Bike Ride occurs in June of every year. It is in many cities. In each city, it's on a different day in June. Here's a Bellingham article. Where will it be held in Oregon? http://www.cascadiaweekly.com/currents/bellingham_naked_bike_ride
LOL I lived Oregon until I was 40. I was in Oregon when he was President. Again, even taking completely bias liberal polls into account, Reagan finishes top 15.
Drudge has this on the home page, headline. So I don't have an issue with Obama on this. He's such a good guy, he's not good at being the attack dog. Good for him. Seriously. It also might be that his teleprompter wan't working and he panicked. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/06/wow-obama-tries-trash-donald-trump-turns-stuttering-mess/ MUST SEE VIDEO=> Wow! Obama Tries to Trash Donald Trump and Turns into a Stuttering Mess
Good to see all the usual Obama haters are maintaining their very loud crusade to make sure he gets no credit for anything ever. Keep up the good work!
I agree that obviously this recovery doesn't feel like a gangbusters recovery. But to me you are looking for problems when you try and explain away the low unemployment rate or months of continued economic growth. I will also note that many of the things I listed are essentially undisputable. Obama has been far more effective than he gets credit for. I also find it beyond silly when I hear Republicans talk about income inequality. They are the party of income inequality. That is their economic point. For a later day, a discussion about Ronald Reagan and his true legacy would be very interesting. I will admit that I didn't get his value at the time. But the GOP way over-estimates his value and true policies 30 years later.
I won't dispute some of the things on your list. He did end don't ask don't tell. I think that was good, and it's a factual statement. The ones I have disputed are not factual on your part. On the other hand, those on the left whine and howl about how republicans obstructed Obama's agenda. If that's true, how did he ever get anything passed at all? He did, so they didn't obstruct much at all. So that's a kind of outright lie on the lefties' part. Or hypocrisy. As well, since republicans did obstruct certain things, they actually prevented Obama's policies from doing further damage to the economy and nation as a whole. You can't have it both ways. Unemployment rate is a stat that needs to be taken in context. It doesn't actually measure unemployment, just the government's definition of it. The definition changes to make things look better than they really are. You also have to look at the quality of the jobs. Getting part time minimum wage jobs for highly skilled individuals is underemployment, and not a good thing. People take crappy jobs because that's all there is and they're desperate. Consider: http://www.gallup.com/poll/127538/workforce-weekly.aspx Actual survey of 30,000 households. Underemployment at 13.7%. The government's REAL UNEMPLOYMENT (their own accounting using a stricter formula, U-6) is at 9.7%. http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate U3 is the official unemployment rate. U5 includes discouraged workers and all other marginally attached workers. U6 adds on those workers who are part-time purely for economic reasons. And this from gallup's CEO: http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/181469/big-lie-unemployment.aspx Income inequality is an effect that occurs under both parties.
PBS explains how unemployment rate masks true unemployment. Something that I didn't mention in my previous post is that people took Obama's 52 weeks of unemployment benefits, rather than taking a job. When the 52 weeks ran out, they scammed the government for disability benefits. Those people are not counted as unemployed, though they are. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/do-federal-statistics-mask-the/ Do Federal Statistics Mask the True Unemployment Rate? Paul Solman: We’ve done considerable work on the unemployment statistic, Mr. Bianco. See our story, Undercounting Unemployment, which defines the different unemployment rates (called U-3, U-4, U-5 and U-6). The key points are that, compared to the way the headline unemployment rate (U-3) was officially calculated back when it hit its post-WWII high of 10.8% (1982), there have been major changes. Here they are: 1) The population is older and thus should have a LOWER unemployment rate, since older workers work more than younger ones do; 2) The number of Americans receiving government disability, virtually nil in 1982, is over 5 million today, and a significant percentage of them would presumably be unemployed if in the labor market; 3) Same for America’s prison population, which has risen by some 2 million since 1982. Estimates of unemployment among ex-convicts range up to 80% 4) Finally, the point you’re presumably making when you write about “a time restraint”: there are far more “discouraged” workers now than in the 1980s who don’t affect the unemployment rate at all. Starting in 1994, once you hadn’t looked for work for more than a year, you were officially removed from the workforce. Entirely. And that, as with items (2) and (3), above, reduces the headline rate – U-3 – and all the broader measures of unemployment as well. One more point about unemployment before touching on the CPI issue you raise. Right now (as of May’s data), the broadest measure — U-6 — stands at 16.6 percent. If you included working-age Americans who haven’t looked for work in the past year — and who WERE included back in 1982 — the number would be a lot higher. And indeed, the main reason the unemployment rate didn’t go down last month, despite the surge of Census Bureau workers, was that many of them began looking for work again, thus “rejoining” the officially counted workforce. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimpowe...s-doubled-under-president-obama/#4fd68903140b Why Long-Term Unemployment Has Doubled Under President Obama President Obama has promoted long-term unemployment by adopting policies that make it harder and more expensive for employers to hire people. He has relentlessly pushed for higher taxes, higher energy costs, compulsory unionism and, of course, Obamacare. One doesn’t need a Harvard degree to figure out that when government makes hiring more difficult and expensive, there’s likely to be less of it. Obama’s policy of extending and re-extending unemployment benefits is another culprit. Many academic studies show how unemployment benefits undermine the urgency of finding a job. People can afford to be more picky, and as a result they’re out of work longer. But the longer they’re out of work, the more out of touch they’re likely to be and the harder to find a another job. From an employer’s point of view, it’s always difficult to determine whether a job seeker will be able to do what he or she is supposed to. Calling references often doesn’t reveal much, since an employer might be sued for making candid comments about a former employee’s performance. An employer might be willing to confirm only that a particular individual was an employee at the firm. Moreover, many washouts have had glowing resumes. It’s no wonder employers seem to feel more comfortable making an offer to somebody who has a job rather than somebody who lost a job. As extended unemployment benefits finally expired, large numbers of out-of-work people have applied for Social Security disability benefits.
So, presumably, if economic policies under Obama discourage new employment and result in many unemployed dropping out of the counted workforce, there should be a major disparity in the rates of change between U-3 and U-6 over the course of the past 8 years, yes? Is there a reputable source for that data?
http://unemploymentdata.com/unemployment-rate/what-is-u-6-unemployment/ According to Shadowstats the government is really underestimating unemployment by even more than our numbers suggest since “long-term discouraged workers were defined out of official existence in 1994.” The new U-6 numbers only include short-term discouraged workers. Note that shadowstats shows the unemployment rate relatively flat since 2009 at 22 – 23% primarily because of a declining Labor Force Participation Rate.
Denny - there is neither anything untrue nor hypocritical about saying the GOP were/are obstructionists. Mitch McConnell's famously admitted that that was the plan. When the Dems controlled congress, the GOP couldn't obstruct. But when they took over, they did, big time. Hence more executive actions.
It is both untrue and hypocritical. Which is it? Obama's policies (which were obstructed) achieved whatever economic results you seem to like, or Republicans obstructing those policies led to these economic results. Which is it?
This is an awesome thread. Debating who kicked the can down the road the best. We might as well be 500000 trillion dollars in debt, and people are going to argue over which asshole was better? Fuck all of you.
I don't think I'm as inclined to give full weight to the ShadowStats rate as you are. Check out this commentary thereon. http://www.economonitor.com/dolanec...ch-of-an-alternative-measure-of-unemployment/
When they had the chance to obstruct, they did. Apparently you are the only person who can't see that.
Two points. 1) You got a graph of U3 vs U6 out of this 2) I read the commentary, in its entirety. I'm not swayed by it. Dolan mixes his terminology and confuses himself. All shadowstats is doing is counting those in the workforce who've been out of work for longer than a year. And you really should count, among those, the people who are on long term disability that aren't actually disabled.
You can make that claim. But if you do, all Obama's successes that aren't things he can do without congress are thanks to that obstruction. If Obama got his way, things would be worse. The things he got his way on have demonstrably hurt economic growth. I've shown that already in this thread. EDIT: Demonstrably thus:
I did, and thank you. Of course, I was conflating U6 with what ShadowStats tries to quantify. U6 is down significantly over the past 8 years. Shadowstats' estimate of LTDW suggests that actual unemployment hasn't decreased, but I buy Dolan's intimation that LTDW attrition is not being factored in to Williams' estimates, which is (to me) the biggest flaw in the data.
