“We celebrate the life of a hero, Nelson Mandela. May you rest in peace and may your legacy live on in the hearts of many “ MUHAMMAD ALI
FROM MUHAMMAD ALI:
I am deeply saddened by the passing of Mr. Mandela. His was a life filled with purpose and hope; hope for himself, his country and the world. He inspired others to reach for what appeared to be impossible and moved them to break through the barriers that held them hostage mentally, physically, socially and economically. He made us realize, we are our brother’s keeper and that our brothers come in all colors.
What I will remember most about Mr. Mandela is that he was a man whose heart, soul and spirit could not be contained or restrained by racial and economic injustices, metal bars or the burden of hate and revenge. He taught us forgiveness on a grand scale. His was a spirit born free, destined to soar above the rainbows. Today his spirit is soaring through the heavens.
He is now forever free.
—Muhammad Ali
History of Nelson Mandela
The South African activist and former president Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) helped bring an end to apartheid and has been a global advocate for human rights. A member of the African National Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he was a leader of both peaceful protests and armed resistance against the white minority’s oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa. His actions landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the antiapartheid movement both within his country and internationally. Released in 1990, he participated in the eradication of apartheid and in 1994 became the first black president of South Africa, forming a multiethnic government to oversee the country’s transition. after retiring from politics in 1999, he remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own nation and around the world until his death in 2013 at the age of 95.
Controversial utility poles to be installed
Saturday, December 7, 2013
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
The Record
RIDGEWOOD — Crews from Public Service Electric and Gas will return to Ridgewood next weekend, despite months of objections from village officials and residents.
Work will resume to install new utility poles on Hope Street and Spring Avenue on Dec. 14 and Dec. 15. The work is scheduled to commence at 8 a.m. and continue through 5 p.m. on each day.
More poles will then be installed Dec. 28 and Dec. 29 in front of Ridgewood High School, as part of PSE&G’s efforts to connect substations in Fair Lawn and Paramus.
The work will resume less than a month after the state’s Board of Public Utilities denied a request from the village, seeking the continuation of a moratorium on the pole installations.
The board’s decision cleared the way for the project to continue; work has been on hold since the summer, when residential opposition first began.
Residents of Hope Street and Spring Avenue in July complained to village officials, saying the poles — which, at 65 feet tall, soar above the neighborhood’s treetops — would diminish property values and pose serious health and safety considerations.
Representatives from PSE&G met with the village on Wednesday morning, to offer up a timeline on when the project would continue.
On Monday, poles will be installed on Maple Avenue.
US spying fuels popularity of secure messaging app Wickr
By Hannah Kuchler in San Francisco
Wickr, the secure messaging app that positions itself “halfway between Snapchat and Snowden”, is set to raise more funds and launch a major update on Monday after its popularity soared following revelations of a US mass surveillance programme.
The Silicon Valley start-up enables encrypted peer-to-peer communications from email to instant messaging while keeping no data whatsoever. It plans to rival Skype by rolling out secure and private international video calling next year.
According to a person familiar with the matter the company has raised its funds from Gilman Louie, a venture capitalist who used to run the CIA fund In-Q-Tel. The company’s advisory board includes Ambassador Joseph De Trani, who used to work for the CIA and was a special envoy to the North Korean peace talks.
Nico Sell, co-founder and chief executive of Wickr, said the year-and-a-half-old company had seen an extreme spike in interest after revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programme were published earlier this year.
Privacy-conscious users including some journalists had adopted the app but the number of downloads more than doubled after the leaks from Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor.
“George Washington would be rolling over in his grave right now,” said Ms Sell, adding many of her friends who used to think she was paranoid about security were now leaving social networks such as Facebook.
U.S. disability rolls swell in a rough economy
By Michael A. Fletcher, Published: September 20
MILLINOCKET, MAINE — The huge mills along the Penobscot River roared virtually nonstop for more than a century, turning the dense Maine forests into paper and lifting the thousands of men who did the hot and often backbreaking work into the middle class.
But the mills have struggled in recent years, shedding thousands of jobs. Now this area, whose well-paying jobs provided an economic foothold for generations of blue-collar workers, has become a place where an unusually large share of the unemployed are seeking economic shelter on federal disability rolls.
Between 2000 and 2012, the number of people in Penobscot County receiving Social Security disability benefits skyrocketed, rising from 4,475 to 7,955 — or nearly one in 12 of the county’s adults between the ages of 18 and 64, according to Social Security statistics.
The fast expansion of disability here is part of a national trend that has seen the number of former workers receiving benefits soar from just over 5 million to 8.8 million between 2000 and 2012. An additional 2.1 million dependent children and spouses also receive benefits.
The crush of new recipients is putting unsustainable financial pressure on the program. Federal officials project that the program will exhaust its trust fund by 2016 — 20 years before the trust fund that supports Social Security’s old-age benefits is projected to run dry.
No taper brings back talk of currency war
Published: Wednesday, 18 Sep 2013 | 11:09 PM ET
By: Katie Holliday | Writer for CNBC.com
The Federal Reserve’s shocking decision not to taper, despite broad expectations for a $10-20 billion reduction of its monthly asset purchases, has reignited talk of a global currency war.
Risk-on currencies like the Australian dollar, the euro and the British pound soared in response, while the greenback dropped across the board. Now some analysts say the Fed’s decision could prompt other central banks to devalue their currencies in an attempt to retain a competitive edge.
“We are on the verge [of a currency war]… especially if the Fed does not taper in October or December…” said Boris Schlossberg, MD of BK Asset Management.
The other G10 countries will have to react and the only thing they can do is provide “even more accommodative policies in order to try and equalize all these currency differentials,” he added.
Ridgewood residents address utility board with concerns over tall poles
Monday September 9, 2013, 11:46 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
The Record
More than 30 Ridgewood residents attended a hearing of the state Board of Public Utilities on Monday night to complain about the recent installation by the Public Service Electric & Gas Co. of taller utility poles in the village.
The hearing, which was held in the Bergen County Administration Building in Hackesnack, came two months after residents first complained about the 65-foot wooden poles, which soar above the treetops along Spring Avenue and Hope Street.
PSE&G officials say the new poles are necessary to connect high-voltage lines from a Fair Lawn substation with one in Paramus. They can handle wires transmitting up to 69,000 volts of electricity, PSE&G officials claim.
The BPU, which regulates all utilities in the state, scheduled Monday’s hearing last month in response to a petition signed by Ridgewood officials. Residents and members of the Village Council members say they are concerned that the new poles will pose a health hazard and that they will diminish property values in Ridgewood.
Some residents said they were concerned about the health effects of a chemical preservative coating the new poles. Alyssa Steinberger, said the poles give off a strong odor and that a number of residents, including children, have had bloody noses and exhibited bronchitis-like symptoms since the poles were put in place.
N.J. board has received Ridgewood petition over large utility poles
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
The Record
RIDGEWOOD — The state Board of Public Utilities confirmed this week it has received the Village Council’s petition, seeking a hearing regarding the installation of higher electrical poles in town.
The BPU, which regulates utilities, including electricity, water, natural gas and cable television, is also in receipt of a response to Ridgewood’s request, filed by attorneys for Public Service Electric & Gas Co.
That puts the BPU in the middle of what has become a very public battle over the large poles, which soar above the treetops along Spring Avenue and Hope Street.
Residents on both blocks contacted the council soon after the 65-foot poles started going up more than a month ago. Ridgewood officials contacted the utility, which implemented a self-imposed moratorium on the installations.
Census: Non-English Language Use has Tripled
by Elizabeth Sheld
Census bureau data released yesterday shows that the number of people speaking a language other than English has nearly tripled over the past three decades, out pacing the population growth.
While Spanish remains the most widely spoken language after English, other languages, particularly those from South Asia and Africa, have also soared in use, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report.
One in five people aged 5 or older spoke a language other than English at home in 2011, compared to 1980 where the number was 1 in 11, an increase of 23 million. The bureau calculates that over three decades there was a 158% rise, while there was only a 38% increase in overall US population.
Mort Zuckerman: A Jobless Recovery Is a Phony Recovery
More people have left the workforce than got a new job during the recovery—by a factor of nearly three.
By MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN
In recent months, Americans have heard reports out of Washington and in the media that the economy is looking up—that recovery from the Great Recession is gathering steam. If only it were true. The longest and worst recession since the end of World War II has been marked by the weakest recovery from any U.S. recession in that same period.
The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government’s Household Survey reported that since the start of the year, the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000—but there are jobs and then there are “jobs.” No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time. The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000—three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007.
Posted on July 10, 2013 at 12:41 pm by Simone Sebastian in Crude oil, Production
We all know oil production in Texas has soared in recent years. But putting the rise in graphic form shows just how phenomenal the energy turnaround has been: The surge looks exponential.
In March, Texas oil production reached its highest level since 1984. That month, the Lone Star State pumped more than 74 million barrels of crude from the ground, which means if Texas were a country, it would be one of the 15 largest oil producers in the world.
Bergen leads N.J. surge in auto sales
Saturday July 6, 2013, 11:41 PM
BY HUGH R. MORLEY AND ADAM OFFITZER
STAFF WRITERS
The Record
With Bergen County leading the way, new-vehicle registrations in New Jersey are soaring to heights not seen since the start of the recession, and both car-industry insiders and economic experts say it’s a clear sign of a big improvement in the overall economy.
Spurred by a pent-up desire to replace their aging cars and continued low interest rates, customers are flocking to new-car lots, boosting the hopes of dealers that they have finally put behind them the bad times that sent the industry into a recession-fueled downward spiral of bankruptcies, dealership closings and limp sales.
By the numbers
After slumping during the recession, auto sales by North Jersey dealers showing signs of reviving.
Sources: R L Polk & Co., Dave Sheingold/staff analysis
New Jersey registered about 198,000 new cars and trucks in the first five months of this year, a pace that, if it continued through December, would total about 475,000 in 2013 — just short of the 498,000 registrations in pre-recession 2006.
Sales in Bergen are up 14.6 percent in the first two months of 2013 over the same period in 2012, the biggest increase in the state.
Memorial Day Barbecue Costs Likely To Rise This Year Due To Boost In Beef Prices
Posted: 05/25/2013 4:23 pm EDT
Your stomach may be fuller, but your wallet will likely feel lighter after your Memorial Day barbeque this year.
Wholesale beef prices soared to an all-time high last week, which could result in record-setting prices for shoppers looking to grill up some burgers and steaks this Memorial Day weekend, the Wall Street Journal reports. That’s because the number of cattle in America has dropped to its lowest level in 60 years due to widespread drought in the biggest cattle producing states.
Coping with high holiday weekend barbecue costs is sadly nothing new for shoppers. Last year consumers struggled as beef, chicken and pork prices shot up, fueled by similar factors as this year’s price jump.
Six Bipartisan Entitlement Reforms to Solve the Real Fiscal Crisis: Only Presidential Leadership Is Needed
By J.D. Foster, Ph.D. and Alison Acosta Fraser
November 30, 2012
Abstract: The United States faces a real fiscal crisis, and the impending fiscal cliff of massive tax hikes and spending cuts in January is only the first act. In early 2013, the federal government will exhaust its ability to issue debt legally. Yet as large and as major a concern as federal budget deficits are today, they are of secondary consequence compared with the fiscal quagmire of unaffordable entitlement spending in the next decade. Fortunately, the entitlement problem can be resolved by six simple reforms to improve the fiscal future for Social Security and Medicare. But to implement these reforms, President Barack Obama must lead.
A high-stakes fiscal policy debate of unique size and import has just begun. Absent congressional action to the contrary, a massive slate of tax hikes and spending cuts will take effect on January 1, and that is only the first act. The second act will occur early in 2013 when the federal government will exhaust its ability to issue debt legally. Both acts need prompt solutions.
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R–OH) made the first move. After congratulating President Barack Obama upon his reelection, Boehner promised a willingness to work with him, giving Obama the additional revenues he desired through pro-growth tax reform accompanied by reforms in entitlement programs.[1] President Obama’s counter, while unsurprising, was unhelpful because he focused exclusively on fiscally meaningless and economically harmful tax hikes on upper-income taxpayers. The President repeatedly has argued for a balanced approach, but he has yet to offer a single meaningful proposal on spending reductions.
While the President prepares to start his second term, he should set about negotiating in good faith with Republicans, especially in the House where Republicans were returned to office in the majority with expectations of cutting spending without increasing taxes. The voters, we are told, expect it. This means the President cannot sit back and just harp on revenues. He needs to address spending and in particular entitlements.
Fortunately, the President has occasion and opportunity to lead by proposing some simple yet transformational reforms in two of the prime sources of the nation’s fiscal problems: Social Security and Medicare. Better yet, many such reforms have already been thoroughly considered and enjoy broad bipartisan support, lacking only the moment and the leadership to become a reality. These proposals will not resolve either program’s key structural flaws—they constitute a start of the reform journey, not the conclusion—but they would be a powerful start that would markedly alter the nation’s fiscal trajectory.
At the start of a President’s second term, the political stars are in the best possible alignment for solving big problems. All the President needs to do is seize the moment. This is the moment; President Obama must lead.
Fiscal Cliff: By Design, Not by Chance
Many events arrive by chance, but the present fiscal spectacle is not one of them. The fiscal cliff results from explicit actions by Congress and the President to push difficult fiscal policy issues past the recent election. In this, they succeeded, although it took a series of legislative acts to accomplish it. With regard to taxes:
The payroll tax cut, extended in the spring of 2012, will expire on December 31, 2012.
The extension of the Bush tax cuts, signed into law in December 2010, will expire at the end of the year.
This same law also established a new structure for the death tax with a 35 percent rate and a $5 million exemption per spouse, which will expire at the end of the year.
Various Obamacare tax hikes begin at the start of 2013.[2]
The same pattern holds for the spending cuts. For example, the sequester slated to gouge defense spending while making modest cuts—such as a 2 percent across-the-board cut to Medicare providers—reflects the final leavings of the earlier Budget Control Act, which created the failed “supercommittee.” Early in 2012, Congress also prevented deep and disastrous reductions in Medicare provider payments, but this “doc fix” remedy expires at the end of the year.
In May 2011, the federal government exhausted its legal authority to finance deficit spending by issuing debt. The U.S. Department of the Treasury exercised its typical but limited authorities for temporarily creating more room under the “debt limit,” allowing policymakers to postpone action until early August. A brutal and economically risky political battle ensued, eventually resulting in legislation that raised the debt limit by $2.1 trillion, sufficient to fund the federal government past the November election.
Projections now suggest that the government will reach the debt limit late in 2012, after which the Treasury will again deploy its limited authorities. This will trigger what could be another difficult negotiation for Congress and President Obama—a negotiation that will be heavily influenced by what happens with the fiscal cliff.
No Time for Distractions
President Obama clearly believes in raising taxes on upper-income taxpayers, and he is willing to weaken the economy, slow job growth, and constrain wage growth to do so. It is difficult to fathom his acceptance of this trade-off of economic security for an ideological doctrine of social justice, especially considering that this long-standing debate likely will rage indefinitely. However, these tax hikes are a distant sideshow in the present context, a political distraction that diverts attention from the central fiscal issue of runaway spending, which gives rise to persistent and economically dangerous deficits.
In his own budget, the President proposed to extend the Bush tax cuts except for those making $250,000 or more, raising $836 billion over the next 10 years. His companion proposal to limit the value of deductions for upper-income taxpayers would raise another $574 billion, for a total of $1.4 trillion. In absolute terms, that is a lot of revenue. However, even allowing for all the other budget gimmicks and tax hikes in Obama’s budget, the federal debt would rise by $7.7 trillion over the next 10 years including these tax hikes and by $9.1 trillion without them.
Obama’s tax hikes would reduce the rise in federal debt over the next 10 years by about 15 percent. The President is silent about the remaining 85 percent. The numbers confirm that President Obama’s tax hike demands are at best tangential to attaining a balanced budget.
Fiscal Cliff Today, Entitlement Crisis Tomorrow
As large and as major a concern as federal budget deficits are today, they are nevertheless secondary in consequence to the fiscal quagmire of unaffordable entitlements. Social Security and Medicare in particular share certain vital characteristics. Both programs are extraordinarily complicated, having been built up in complexity over the years one Congress at a time. Similarly, each program badly needs programmatic reforms. For example, the minimum benefit in Social Security is woefully inadequate to protect low-income seniors from poverty, and Medicare still lacks a catastrophic benefit. These are only some of the many shortcomings that must be addressed in fundamental overhauls of each program.
Of most immediate concern, however, is that Social Security and Medicare are unaffordable in their current forms. When this year’s kindergarteners enter college, just 13 years away, spending on these two programs plus Medicaid and interest on the debt will devour all tax revenue. (See Chart 1.)
Social Security will lack the funds to pay full benefits beginning as early as 2033.[3] Medicare’s unfunded promises in current dollars reach into the many tens of trillions of dollars. These facts are not in dispute. Solutions to our fiscal challenges are needed, urgent, and inevitable.
Carpe Diem, Mr. President
The fiscal cliff and the debt limit have set the stage, but there is also the reality of the rhythms in the American political system. There are certain windows in every four-year or eight-year cycle when bold leaders can achieve bold things. The first few months of a reelected President’s second term is one such window, but it closes fast, and lame-duck status arrives quickly.
Thus, the President must adopt the mantle of leadership, rather than brinksmanship, to steer the nation away from the fiscal cliff and all that is set to follow, and he must start with spending. However, the critical silver lining is that simple, commonsense, and thoroughly vetted solutions such as the four listed below constitute a strong start on the journey to more complete programmatic reforms remedying acknowledged flaws in these programs, and they already enjoy broad support across the political spectrum.
Raise the Social Security eligibility age to match increases in longevity. Originally set at 65, the normal eligibility age is rising two months every year until 2022, when it will reach 67. According to the Social Security actuaries, continuing to increase the eligibility age to 69 by the year 2034 and allowing it to rise more slowly thereafter to reflect gains in longevity could go a long way toward reducing Social Security’s funding shortfall.[4] While this would not reduce today’s budget deficit, it would strengthen Social Security’s finances and dissipate far more important long-term budget pressures.
Correct the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). The annual COLA benefit adjustment is determined today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI). However, the CPI, an antiquated measure, generally overstates inflation, meaning that benefits are increased a bit too much each year to offset inflation. The effect on benefits in a given year of switching to a more accurate inflation measure is minute, but Social Security spans generations.[5] Again, according to the Social Security actuaries, using a more modern inflation measure would substantially reduce Social Security’s shortfall over time.
Raise the Medicare eligibility age to agree with Social Security. Medicare has an eligibility age problem, but unlike Social Security, the Medicare eligibility age remains stuck at 65. An obvious solution is to wait five years and then slowly raise the eligibility age to align eventually with the Social Security eligibility age. While the short-term budgetary savings would be negligible, the long-term savings in Medicare would be profound.
Reduce the Medicare subsidy for upper-income beneficiaries. In 2012, the average Medicare beneficiary received a subsidy of about $5,000. The subsidy is the per capita amount of Treasury revenue that is used to fill the financial hole arising each year because Medicare’s premiums are inadequate, in conjunction with its other revenue sources, to cover Medicare’s total costs. Subsidizing Medicare benefits for low-income seniors—and perhaps for some middle-income seniors—makes sense, but upper-income seniors do not need and should not receive a $5,000 subsidy to buy Medicare health insurance. The Medicare subsidy was first cut for the wealthiest seniors in legislation signed by President George W. Bush in 2004 by income-relating premiums so that higher-income beneficiaries pay a higher share of their Medicare cost. It was cut further in Obamacare, and President Obama proposed to pare it back still further in his budget proposals of February 2012 with still-higher premiums for upper-income beneficiaries.
Medicare has many programmatic problems that demand attention, and the sooner the better, but the immediate fiscal problem is straightforward: It is the subsidy. The total cost of the Medicare subsidy—about $230 billion in 2012—will soar over time as health care costs rise and the baby boomers retire.[6] Paring back the subsidy for well-to-do retirees is an obvious step toward reducing the budget deficit today and shoring up Medicare for the long run.
Bolder Proposals
The four foregoing proposals for Social Security and Medicare meet the test of simplicity, being relatively easy to communicate to the American people, having been thoroughly vetted, and enjoying widespread support. Together, they would dramatically improve America’s fiscal future for the better. Two additional proposals, one each for Social Security and Medicare, meet the tests of simplicity and effectiveness but have not been considered as intensively. Yet they should also garner bipartisan support and consideration.
Phase out Social Security benefits for upper-income retirees. Everyone who has ever paid into Social Security is entitled to the benefits prescribed by law. However, as a nation, we need to ask whether today’s working families should pay payroll taxes so that upper-income retirees can continue to receive their checks. We need to ask why phasing out the Medicare subsidy to upper-income seniors while continuing to send them their full Social Security check would make sense. In short, Social Security should be social insurance against poverty rather than a government-run pension scheme.
Some might charge that this is redistributionism, but would anyone suggest that millionaires should receive food stamps? Food stamps and other welfare programs are specifically intended to operate as part of the social safety net, yet their existence constitutes a form of redistributionism that most Americans accept. Social Security (and Medicare) should become real insurance against poverty, meaning that only those seniors who need help should receive help. On the other hand, if Social Security remains a universal government-run pension, then it remains a vastly larger program built on an entirely different redistributionist principle: redistribution from workers to retirees, including the wealthy.
Consolidate Medicare’s elements and collect a single higher premium. Medicare is actually three distinct components, referred to generally as Parts A, B, and D, reflecting the fact that Medicare was built up over many years. This antiquated structure is confusing and inefficient. An obvious reform is to consolidate the three distinct parts into a unified Medicare program.
Medicare Parts B and D each require beneficiaries to pay a premium covering 25 percent of the cost of the programs. As the Medicare Parts are consolidated, the premium should be consolidated as well and then raised to 35 percent of the relevant costs.[7]
Conclusion
The nation’s fiscal problems, today and beyond, derive entirely from excess spending, especially entitlement spending, not a dearth of revenue. While current revenues are exceptionally low as a share of the economy, this is due almost entirely to the weak economy. As analysis by the Administration’s budget office and the Congressional Budget Office affirm, revenues will return to a more normal 18.5 percent of the economy as the economy recovers. Given these facts, President Obama’s insistence on an economically harmful tax hike for what is essentially a fiscally meaningless increase in revenues will not help policymakers navigate successfully around the fiscal cliff.
A hopeful sign, however, is that the political timing is propitious, and important policy reforms in Social Security and Medicare are simple, straightforward, and well known. These proposals, while not correcting more fundamental programmatic flaws, would materially correct the spending excesses in these programs. Better yet, these proposals are not partisan in nature, but have been supported on a bipartisan basis in the past.
All that is lacking to avoid the fiscal cliff, profoundly stabilize the nation’s public finances, and shore up these critical entitlement programs is for the President to take the lead. The nation waits.
—J. D. Foster, Ph.D., is Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy in and Alison Acosta Fraser is Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Heritage Experts Analyze Second Presidential Debate
Amy Payne
October 17, 2012 at 8:40 am
https://tinyurl.com/cj2b8fz
During last night’s debate between President Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney, Heritage’s policy experts were live-blogging their analysis of the ideas discussed. Below are some of the highlights of our experts’ reactions to the major points made.
Join us today at 11 a.m. ET for a Google hangout as Heritage experts discuss the debate with state and national bloggers. You can watch the hangout on our Google+ page. Submit questions—starting now—on Twitter with the hashtag #HeritageFan.
“Getting Tough on China”: The Truth About Trade
President Obama said during the debate that he signed three trade deals. Not true. Obama was left three free trade agreements on his desk when he took office. Those deals and many others were initiated, negotiated, and signed by President Bush. The one trade agreement that Obama has prioritized, the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) involving now 11 countries, was also initiated by President George W. Bush.
What Obama did was to delay passage of agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama that were already completed. He did so to appease labor unions and others in his political base. During the three years of waiting for the President to submit the U.S.-Korea FTA, the U.S. lost $30 billion in exports.
The United States needs an energetic, committed trade policy. We need a TPP that is truly a free trade agreement and of sufficient scale to make a major impact on the U.S. economy. That means accommodating the world’s third largest economy and U.S. ally, Japan. In means folding in other willing free trade partners like South Korea. And it means putting TPP on a timeline that gets it completed, passed and implemented as quickly as possible.
“Getting tough on China,” something both candidates claimed to aspire to, is good—as long as what is meant by that is ensuring China abides by its international trade commitments. But this is not enough—it is not a trade policy. The U.S. needs to create opportunity with trade, not just manage bad behavior.
– Walter Lohman
Chinese Currency Manipulation and U.S. Employment
Governor Romney suggested that China’s currency manipulation was related to business activity and job creation in the U.S. However, as Heritage’s Derek Scissors showed, there is in fact little to no relationship between China’s currency policy and U.S. employment:
[T]he exchange rate between the yuan and the dollar has no direct effect on American prosperity or American jobs. It never has. Seventeen years ago, China sharply devalued the yuan against the dollar. Yet American unemployment fell for years afterward. Since 2005, the PRC has been slowly raising the value of its currency, which is what protectionists say they want. And American unemployment has soared.
There are, however, other policies the U.S. President and Congress should pursue to return America to a place where businesses want to invest and hire workers. These include pro-growth tax reform, reducing undue regulatory burdens on the economy, and enabling energy exploration and production.
– Romina Boccia
Did Someone Say Libya?
The issue was raised in the debate: What did the Administration do about security before the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, and how did it respond afterward? It was the question that the President never clearly and explicitly responded to. When it comes to how the White House responded to the attack, the Administration has a lot of explaining to do. Its series of explanations was muddled and misleading.
When it comes to responding to the attack, Americans of course expect that our government will go after the perpetrators. The questions of how our government responded to the terrorist threat in Libya, however, still has to be answered.
– James Jay Carafano
Are Oil Companies Sitting on Leases?
Are oil companies sitting on leases? The short answer is no. President Obama made this statement tonight, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar routinely makes this statement. But as Kathleen Sgamma, Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for the Western Energy Alliance, recently testified:
By looking at the statistics over time, it is evident that industry has become much more efficient over the last several decades. While we used to hold 80,000 leases and produce on 24% in 1988, we now hold just 49,000 leases and produce on 46%. Secretary Salazar’s statements that this shows industry is intentionally leaving leases idle is tired rhetoric that fails to take into account the huge obstacles the federal government places in the way of oil and natural gas producers, and the fact that not every lease has recoverable oil and gas.
Just because oil companies aren’t drilling, this does not mean that no activity is occurring on that land. Environmental review, permitting, seismic research, and exploration may be occurring. But even that fails to address the real problem: The environmental review and leasing process takes entirely too long.
Rather than implementing an efficient leasing process, the Department of the Interior added three unnecessary and duplicative administrative regulations to the leasing process in 2010. Oil companies are not sitting on leases; they are simply not being issued by the DOI, or the DOI is making it more difficult to actually obtain the leases.
– Nicolas Loris
Energy Production on Federal Lands Has Fallen
While President Obama made the familiar statement that oil and gas production is the highest it has been in eight years, Governor Romney was right to point out that this was driven by production on private and state lands. Oil and gas production on federal lands is, in fact, down.
According to a recent report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), energy production decreased 13 percent on federal lands in fiscal year (FY) 2011 when compared to FY 2010. The official moratorium and de facto moratorium as a result of a molasses-like permitting process reduced planned capital and operating investments by $18.3 billion and cost the Gulf more than 162,000 jobs in just the past two years.
Federal production in the West has experienced a similar fate: The Administration’s delays on permitting oil and gas projects public lands are preventing economic activity. In Utah and Wyoming, for instance, projects held up by the National Environmental Policy Act process are preventing the creation of 64,805 jobs, $4.3 billion in wages, and $14.9 billion in economic impact every year.
– Nicolas Loris
Immigration: Finally, Debate Touches the Third Rail
For the first time in two debates, the issue of fixing our broken borders and flawed immigration system was finally addressed by the two sides that want to occupy the White House. They offered two very different approaches and a distinct choice. One approach is to change the laws to accommodate the unlawful population that is already here—an approach that will not only not fix the problem, it will just make America a magnet for more problems. The other approach is to make the laws work and create a legal system that gets employers the employees they need when they need them to grow the economy and create more jobs.
There are good answers to address these tough problems. What we need in Washington is leadership that is willing to do the job.
– James Jay Carafano
Tax Plan Details: No Taxes on Savings
Governor Romney, when giving more details on his tax plan tonight, discussed that families making $200,000 or less would face no taxes on savings. The Heritage Foundation’s New Flat Tax would deduct savings immediately from taxable personal income, and savings would remain tax exempt until spent on consumption. This would lead to greater financial security for the American middle class by providing incentives for greater personal savings.
The New Flat Tax, as outlined in Heritage’s Saving the American Dream plan, would replace today’s convoluted tax system with a simple, neutral, and transparent tax system that would allow America to achieve its full economic potential.
– Romina Boccia
The Auto Bailout and Bankruptcy
President Obama once more criticized Governor Romney for saying GM should go bankrupt. But Romney tonight finally cleared the record, pointing out that that is exactly what happened – GM and Chrysler DID go bankrupt. But, as Obama confirmed, the administration didn’t stop there – it nationalized the firms. Taxpayers are still some $25 billion in the hole and still own a quarter of the shares of GM. Bankruptcy was the right solution; a bailout was not.
Fridays Controversial Jobs data: Happy Days are here again or are they?
October 6,2012
PJ Blogger
Ridgewood Nj, Friday mornings jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is being met with heavy skepticism. The report found that, from August to September, the unemployment rate dropped from just above 8 percent to 7.8 percent. In fact, when Labor Secretary Hilda Solis appeared on pro Obama- CNBC Friday, the first two questions for her were whether the books have been cooked.
As expected the mainstream media on Que ran with the numbers and began singing happy days are hear again. Our first reaction was ,are they now counting food stamp recipients as part time jobs?
The anemic job growth survey showing only 114,000 NFP (non farm payroll) new jobs , left many economist to scratch their heads. Former Chairmen of GE Jack Welch started a fury when he commented on twitter , “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers”
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former economics adviser to John McCain and the former head the Congressional Budget Office, called the numbers on CNBC “implausible.”https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/jobs-report-met-skepticism_653731.html
But econmist Larry kudlow comments via twitter to my good friend Jack Welch, bulging household and part-time jobs brought unemployment rate down.No conspiracy. Recovery?
Larry was also quick to point out the facts ,”7.8% unemployment from 600k part-time workers and 118K self-employed .873K rise in households No conspiracy. But 114K NFP weak.2% economy ”
This was verified by Zero hedge which does a pretty good job deciphering economic numbers ,”The reason: the biggest reported jump in the number of employed people since January 2003, at +873,000 to 142,974. At least according to the Household data survey, which just happens to be used in the calculation of the unemployment rate. Just little bit off from the Establishment survey of +114,000.” https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-05/nfp-prints-114k-top-expectations-115k-unemployment-rate-tumbles-78-expectations-82
Again According to Zero hedge ,”The reason is that the number of part-time people employed for economic reasons soared by 582,000 to 8,613,000, the most since October 2011, and the largest one month jump since February 2009, when “restoring” confidence in the economy was all the rage… and just before the Fed announced the full blown QE1 in March of 2009.” https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-05/reason-todays-unemployment-rate-plunge-part-time-jobs-economic-reasons-surge-most-qe
Another words part-time Jobs for economic reasons surge most since QE1 announcement. Meanwhile the Labor force participation rate rises from 30 year lows to 63.5%. to 63.6%.,not exactly stunning. The grim facts remain the same in order to get this economy moving along the US still needs to produce 350- 450,000 (NFP) per month ,maybe even more at this point.
