My Blog

Tag: Obama

  • Teens Employment Lowest Since WWII – Obama Not Helping

    This article was published yesterday about the same time that Obama was in the Rose Garden making the situation worse:

    Fewer than 3 in 10 American teenagers now hold jobs such as running cash registers, mowing lawns or busing restaurant tables from June to August. The decline has been particularly sharp since 2000, with employment for 16-to-19-year olds falling to the lowest level since World War II.  …

    The drop in teen employment, steeper than for other age groups, is partly a cultural shift. More youths are spending summer months in school, at music or learning camps or in other activities geared for college. But the decline is especially troubling for teens for whom college may be out of reach, leaving them increasingly idle and with few options to earn wages and job experience.Older workers, immigrants and debt-laden college graduates are taking away lower-skill work as they struggle to find their own jobs in the weak economy. Upper-income white teens are three times as likely to have summer jobs as poor black teens, sometimes capitalizing on their parents’ social networks for help.

    Overall, more than 44 percent of teens who want summer jobs don’t get them or work fewer hours than they prefer.

    via HeraldNet.com.

    Holy Cow!!  Three passages worth repeating:

    [T]he decline is especially troubling for teens for whom college may be out of reach,
    leaving them increasingly idle and with few options to earn wages and job experience.

    Just who are these kids who are now left with few options?  My guess is urban city kids.  In the country there’s always work on the farm.  But in the city & suburbs we have thousands and thousands of idle kids.  Hanging around with noth’n to do; just look’n for trouble.

    Older workers, immigrants and debt-laden college graduates are taking away
    lower-skill work as they struggle to find their own jobs in the weak economy.

    Isn’t this the truth.  Have you ever been to a Wal-Mart where the greeter was under 50?  And now everywhere you go, every single stinking fast food place, sit-down restaurant, Target, Wal-Mart, grocery store, and nearly everywhere else has adult immigrants working there.  In the ’70s and ’80s these jobs were good (great) jobs for kids to get.  Two people I know very well worked at Jewel when they were in high school.  One put herself through college; the other bought a Camaro.

    With the new (unconstitutional) Obama plan on immigration the job market will now have another few million young people who are eligible to work … but will struggle to find decent employment.  It serves no one when you just set people up to fail.

    Upper-income white teens are three times as likely to have summer jobs as poor black teens….

    This is what I wrote yesterday; inner city kids are going to be one of the biggest losers in the immigration debacle.  Contrary to what some people believe, one cannot just walk into a job that pays $100,000 per year.  Everyone has to start somewhere.  Usually that means that kids bus tables at a local restaurant, caddie, work retail, mow lawns, wash cars, whatever.  These jobs are important because they teach critical lessons necessary to move up in the world: show-up on time, look nice, smile, how to deal with conflict, how to deal with a boss, etc.  You can’t just wake-up one day and think you’re going to get a job as a banker without having decent people skills.

    Obama is dooming generations of inner city kids to lives of and on government sustenance.  These kids will never reach their full potential because they have so many factors stacked against them: poor educational systems, uneducated parents, no access to jobs, and a president who’s bargained their futures for political gain.

  • Obama’s Hand Forced on Illegal Immigration Issue

    Yesterday, a/k/a Thursday:

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency charged with guarding the U.S. borders, has written a secret draft policy that would let its agents catch and release low-priority illegal immigrants rather than bring them in for processing and prosecution.

    The policy, which has not been signed off on, would be the latest move by the Obama administration to set new priorities for the nation’s immigration services, and would bring CBP in line with other Homeland Security Department agencies that already use such “prosecutorial discretion.”

    via Washington Times.

    Today, a/k/a Friday:

    For years the administration had said it didn’t have the authority to make such a move, saying it couldn’t decide to stop deporting wide categories of people on its own without approval from Congress.

    But on Friday President Obama says administration now interprets the law to give it the discretion.

    “Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people,” Mr. Obama said in an appearance in the White House Rose Garden. “Over the next few months, eligible individuals who do not present a risk to national security or public safety will be able to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization.”

    via Washington Times.

    Looks to me like the Washington Times was doing some journalism — printing something that someone did not want printed — and may have forced the issue.  Obama may have wanted to hold this under his hat for a few more days, weeks, or months.  Although slipping in the polls (and needed the Latino vote) a Friday afternoon may not be the best time to announce this program.  He’s going to get torn apart on the Sunday morning shows.

    How do we know this is going to backfire?  Because even the MSM can’t help but call it what it is; from the AP:

    The Obama administration will stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives. The election-year initiative addresses a top priority of an influential Latino electorate that has been vocal in its opposition to administration deportation policies.

    via Deseret News.

    It’s simple pandering. Obama will let your families stay in the country as long as you get him reelected.

    The biggest losers here are of course those who are those who happen to be poor, uneducated.  It’s not a stretch to say that most Latino illegal immigrants are not college educated; but they are willing to work.  The jobs they take come directly at the expense of American citizens who should get priority over someone who’s not even supposed to be here.

    Further, the financial impact of hiring Latinos — who send massive amounts of money home — instead of American citizens — who would spend nearly all the money here in the U.S. — is staggering.

    Lastly, we live in a country with three branches of government.  One cannot overstep the other.  This action today is most likely illegal and will end up being settled by the courts well after the election.  Obama, a former constitutional law professor, knows this.  But he doesn’t care.

    This is all about his winning in November.

  • The Media’s Unholy Relationship with Obama

    On the evening of Tuesday, June 30, 2009—just five months into his administration—Barack Obama invited a small group of presidential historians to dine with him in the Family Quarters of the White House. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, personally delivered the invitations with a word of caution: the meeting was to remain private and off the record. As a result, the media missed the chance to report on an important event, for the evening with the historians provided a remarkable sneak preview of why the Obama presidency would shortly go off the rails.  …

    Over the two-hour dinner, Mr. Obama and the historians discussed several past presidents. It wasn’t clear from Mr. Obama’s responses which of those presidents he identified with. At one point, he seemed to channel the charismatic John F. Kennedy. At another moment, he extolled the virtues of the “transformative” Ronald Reagan. Then again, it was the saintly Lincoln…or the New Deal’s “Happy Warrior,” Franklin Roosevelt….

    Mr. Obama told the historians that he had come up with a slogan for his administration. “I’m thinking of calling it ‘A New Foundation,’ ” he said.

    Doris Kearns Goodwin suggested that “A New Foundation” might not be the wisest choice for a motto.

    “Why not?” the president asked.

    “It sounds,” said Goodwin, “like a woman’s girdle.”

    via Fox News.

    Absolutely amazing the collusion between  these “historians” and a sitting President.  How can they claim to be objective when they participate in such pandering?  Why doesn’t the media point out the obvious problem with these sorts of meetings?  …

    That last one I can answer.

    Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed:
    everything else is public relations.
    ― George Orwell

    There continues to this unholy relationship between the media and Obama specifically and politicians generally.  The media wants, no needs, access to the pols and the pols need access to the media.  It’s a symbiotic relationship where each benefits the other.

    The New York Times was just last week busted printing stories whereby national secrets where “leaked” from the White House.  What we have is a major news organization dishing out exactly that the White House wanted printed.  That’s not journalism; that’s public relations.

    Thankfully the internet is killing the mainstream media faster than the plague raced across Europe.  At least with citizen journalists the bias is out in the open.  People can make up their own minds considering the source.

  • Stripping Chicago Spending, Bare Down

    “What do a Chicago strip club
    and the President’s campaign fund have in common?    ”

    ANSWER:  BOTH were paid- with public funds- as “VENDORS” to the City of Chicago.
    _______________________________________

    Yesterday, OpenTheBooks.com upgraded it’s transparency portal to include the City of Chicago checkbook from 2002-2011.

    It contains $74 billion in vendor payments. Last year 69,800 entities received checks.

    Here’s what I found while scanning the data…

    The City of Chicago approved checks to both The Admiral Theatre Inc, a Chicago strip club, and Obama For America, the president’s campaign organization. According to data received, both share the same “vendor code.”  Yet, neither organization exists in Chicago’s current transparency portal: click here and here.

     

    The Admiral Theatre strip club received $5,197.78 in City of Chicago checks. Sixteen checks range from $1.20 to $1,900. A buck twenty?

    See a database of City payments to The Admiral here.

     

    The check to Obama for America raises more questions. The campaign received a $1,000 check on August 28th, 2007. For some reason, theydidn’t disclose this to the Federal Election Commission: click here, and Open Secrets- here.

    Click here for my Freedom of Information Act Request seeking more information. See the detailed accounting data surrounding the check: vendor code, transaction id, PO#, fund, department, amount, check number, and date.

     

    Surely, the City will have some sort of explanation. Because, public funds used for campaign purposes violates federal and state law. And, we know that no Illinois or city worker would ever violate those laws, right?

     

    The City has five days to respond to our request for additional information. I can barely wait for the naked truth.

    You can search for yourself at www.openthebooks.com

    Sincerely,

    ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI
    Chairman | For The Good of Illinois PAC

     

  • Obama Has More Fundraisers Than Previous Five Presidents Combined

    I offer this by way of observation only; make up your own mind as to what it means.

    More from the Brits:

    Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined, according to figures to be published in a new book.

    Obama is also the only president in the past 35 years to visit every electoral battleground state in his first year of office.

    The figures, contained a in a new book called The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign by Brendan J. Doherty, due to be published by University Press of Kansas in July, give statistical backing to the notion that Obama is more preoccupied with being re-elected than any other commander-in-chief of modern times.

    Doherty, who has compiled statistics about presidential travel and fundraising going back to President Jimmy Carter in 1977, found that Obama had held 104 fundraisers by March 6th this year, compared to 94 held by Presidents Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined.

    Since then, Obama has held another 20 fundraisers, bringing his total to 124. Carter held four re-election fundraisers in the 1980 campaign, Reagan zero in 1984, Bush Snr 19 in 1992, Clinton 14 in 1996 and Bush Jnr 57 in 2004.

    via Daily Mail.

    Yowza!  That’s a lot of fundraising.

  • We’re Dying — Another 5.4 Million Get SS Disability

    Yesterday I re-wrote about Tytler:

    A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.

    The post when on to cite recent news about how we’re nearing this point.  We have a record number of folks on food stamps, approaching a majority.  We also have a record number of folks who do not pay any taxes… also approaching a majority.  Therefore we are at the point whereby the majority will vote in their own self interest and sink the entire country.

    Today this story comes along:

    A record 5.4 million workers and their dependents have signed up to collect federal disability checks since President Obama took office, according to the latest official government data, as discouraged workers increasingly give up looking for jobs and take advantage of the federal program.  …

    Since the recession ended in June 2009, the number of people who’ve signed up for disability benefits is twice the job growth figure. (See nearby chart.) In just the first four months of this year, 539,000 joined the disability rolls and more than 725,000 put in applications.via Investors.com.

    Incredible.

    For those that don’t know, disability is something you’re on forever… as in until you die.  You basically become a drain on everyone else in society.  The story goes on:

    This is straining already-stretched government finances while posing a long-term economic threat by creating an ever-growing pool of permanently dependent working-age Americans.

    A long-term economic threat indeed!!

    As a result, by April there were 10.8 million people on disability, according to Social Security Administration data released this week. Even after accounting for all those who’ve left the program — mainly because they hit retirement age or died — that’s up 53% from a decade ago.

    We need everyone to understand that for every person doing nothing collecting a check we need 15, 20, or 30 people out there working and paying taxes for those that don’t.  Further, for every government worker, you need another 20, or 30 workers to pay for their salary and benefits.

    Our ratios of workers to non-workers and workers to government employees is out of whack and unsustainable.  Those who do can no longer support those who don’t (and those who do but do so for the government.)

    Big BIG trouble ahead.

  • Prescient or Racism?

    Again, a UK paper carries a story no U.S. media outlet would touch.

    In his three years as U.S. president, Barack Obama has been dogged by claims he is not patriotic enough.  …

    Now it emerges that similar fears were expressed about his father, who was categorised with others as ‘anti-American and anti-white’ when he moved to the United States in 1959.

    A memo … released today by the National Archives in West London …  sets out their concerns about the young Kenyans.

    Dated September 1, 1959, it says: ‘I have discussed with the State Department.  They are as disturbed about these developments as we are.  They point out that Kenya students have a bad reputation over here for falling into the wrong hands and for becoming both anti-American and anti-white.’  …

    Mr Obama Snr was among 100 or so Kenyan students brought to America by the African American Students Foundation.U.S. and British officials were deeply suspicious of this outfit, observing that the AASF – though backed by singer Harry Belafonte and actor Sidney Poitier – had links to a Kenyan nationalist leader.

    ‘The motives behind this enterprise, therefore, seem more political than educational,’ warned a letter from the British Embassy in Washington.

    It added: ‘The arrival here of these students, many of them of indifferent academic calibre and ill-prepared for the venture, is likely to give rise to difficult problems.’

    Mr Obama Snr, who died in 1982, is not singled out for concern in any of the documents.

    via Mail Online.

    My first blush at this is that it’s nothing more than racism.  A bunch of upper-crust government types don’t are much for a bunch of African kids polluting their fine universities.

    Further though makes me wonder though, we know what kind of life Barack Sr. (and Barack Jr.) made for himself.  But we don’t know how any of the other students did.

    The comparison I’m thinking of is where a law school (or other academic institution) will let in a student based on race who’s not performed well in the past  (i.e. affirmative action.)  It is sad but true that some (not all but some) of these students simply cannot handle the rigors of law school and end up dropping out.  Sometimes affirmative action is education is just setting someone up to fail.  That’s not helpful to anyone.

    So maybe it’s not racism, it’s a sense that having these African kids is not helpful to anyone.  It’s not helping them do anything in Kenya.  It’s not helping us with any issues we’re having.  And further it denies the spot to someone who could really use it to make the world a better place.  i.e.  It’s not serving the greater good.

    But then maybe… just maybe…  these government types back in the 50’s weren’t like the fools we have today.  Maybe the government knew that these kids were really up to no good.  That they were just biding their time, working the system, until the moment was just right when they could make their play.

    Maybe it would have been better to not allow students selected by a national socialist political leader into our system if for no other reason than to separate politics from higher education.  We know locally that when politics and higher education mix it’s with bad consequences.

    We may never know what motivated the memo back in ’59.  But it is odd that not one U.S. media outlet covered this story.

  • How to Make More ‘Makers’

    Joey Hudy, a young “maker” from Phoenix went to the White House this week to show off his project, the “Extreme Marshmallow Cannon.” When President Obama saw it, he told Joey: “Let’s try it.” Joey set up the air cannon, which uses a bicycle pump to build up air pressure, and put a marshmallow down the barrel. When he pressed the trigger, a single marshmallow was shot out across the room to the delight of everyone, but especially the president.

    via  CNN Blogs.

    This is a great story about how we need more young people (kids?) to be able to think creatively, differently.  This is especially necessary in our inner city school which appear to have a more homogeneous population.

    Over at Chicago News Report a bunch of hate-filled racists took over the comment section of an otherwise civil blog.  Among the filth was an observation:

    Almost every black teen has the same carbon copy personality….  There’s almost no black goths, or nerds, no black metalheads, they quash any difference within their community and make them fall in line … or else they get beat down or even killed.

    I don’t know if that’s true — but if so, it’s a problem.

    We need to encourage all children to take things apart just to see if you can put them back together.

  • Countries Move to Isolate the U.S.

    Are other countries planning for a U.S. demise?

    “I was in Australia earlier this month and there, as elsewhere on my recent travels, the consensus among the politicians I met (at least in private) was that Washington lacked the will for meaningful course correction, and that, therefore, the trick was to ensure that, when the behemoth goes over the cliff, you’re not dragged down with it. It is faintly surreal to be sitting in paneled offices lined by formal portraits listening to eminent persons who assume the collapse of the dominant global power is a fait accompli. . . . Greece’s total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of treasury bonds every month — or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India — every year. And those numbers don’t take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College-debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy — tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.”

    Same page there’s this:

    I’m a Canadian, and you might be interested to know that the Harper government are working very hard (in the background) along the same lines as the Aussies. They are doing everything possible to diversify Canada’s export markets away from the US as fast as possible, for example the pipeline to move Alberta and Saskatchewan oil to world markets via the sea, not to the US. Ditto aeroplanes, rail cars, fibre-optic electronics, robotics, lumber, and a wide range of other products.

    The quiet back-room planning is driven by the alarming extent to which the Obama administration has already deeply damaged the US economy (compared to Canada) with its policies, actions, and insane deficits. The Harper government are now moving to shut down US environmentalist activity in Canada — “We’re not going to be your National Park.” says the PM — and are already developping scenarios for maximum-possible disconnect from the States in the event Obama and his crew are returned to power in the coming elections.

    via Instapundit.

    Hummm… not good.  Not good.

  • Labor Unions and Politics

    On March 10 there was this story in the LA Times I meant to write about:

    Labor unions rethinking their role in politics
    As top union leaders gather in Florida on Tuesday to determine labor’s political strategy this year, the influential AFL-CIO appears poised to endorse President Obama’s reelection — despite some lingering dissatisfaction with his record.

    But the way in which unions back him and other Democrats this year is likely to take a very different form than in past campaigns.

    Concluding they need to be more independent of the Democratic Party, many unions are increasingly financing their own efforts instead of writing large checks to candidates and the party.

    via Los Angeles Times.

    I was simply thinking how labor unions don’t really help working people and how laughable it is that “they need to be more independent of the Democratic Party.”  They are dying and it is the Democratic Party who’s keep the life support machines plugged-in.

    Then, three days later, March 13:

    Leaders of the influential AFL-CIO  labor federation announced Tuesday it voted “proudly and enthusiastically” to endorse President Obama’s reelection effort.  …

    The vote, among the AFL-CIO’s 57 member executive council, was unanimous.

    Labor leaders had in the past been vocal about dissatisfaction with the Obama White House on a host of issues, from Obama’s compromise in extending the George W. Bush tax cuts to perceived shortcomings in the administration’s stimulus and healthcare reform packages.

    But AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said he had been heartened the administration’s renewed push on jobs and combating inequality, a pivot that occurred around Labor Day last year.

    via Los Angeles Times.

    How embarrassing it must be to have to endorse and carry water for a guy who really hasn’t helped you one bit.  On a unanimous vote the union agrees that the AFL-CIO and the Democratic party are in a symbiotic relationship; each would die without the other.

    These stories actually appear out of order.  The endorsement story should be first — describe how Obama has not done everything the unions have wanted and yet they have no where else to turn.  Then, as a result of their lack of options politically, the union(s) will seek other ways to engage in outreach and influence besides giving directly to candidates.  Well of course they will… they have no other choice.