Who would have predicted this.

While Nation Sputters on Jobs, Wisconsin Economy Begins to Hum

[Madison, WiscÂ…] Earlier this month, analysts were dismayed by the nationÂ’s anemic job creation numbers. On Thursday, state officials were pleased as they released data that showed more than half of the net new jobs added in the US in June came from Wisconsin.

“We have made difficult decisions in our state, but they are beginning to payoff,” said Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R). “The national job figures remind us that we can not rest after one month of good news; while there will be ups and downs along the way, we must help lead the nation to recovery.”

You know who this benefits? Mitt Romney Rick Perry.

The claim will be made that Texas' job creation record is just some kind of fluke. Or that it's just the oil and gas industries. (Perry was on Cavuto a while back refuting just that; he said job growth was spread out among all industries.)

Perry, of course, would like to claim that Texas has fared well during this Great Recession due to the basic conservative economic policies he's pushed.

In this context, Wisconsin's sudden "hum" of economic activity is confirmatory for Perry's position. If something is magic or just plain luck, it can't be replicated, and there's not really any sense trying.

On the other hand, if an economic strategy, like a scientific experiment, results in reproducible results, replicated in various other "laboratories" when attempted, that tends to prove that it wasn't dumb luck or special circumstances at all, but instead a general principle of wide applicability.

It may look like Walker's success in leading Wisconsin out of the darkness is bad for Perry as it suggests Perry isn't so special; Walker can manage that feat too. But then, we're conservatives, and we never believed that any politician was actually Magic in the first place; this distinguishes us immediately from liberals.

We never thought Reagan was magic. We thought he had the guts and insight to bring the right thinking to the job and the results her produced were not magical, but mechanical, flowing almost inevitably from the scheme of incentives and conditions he favored.

So, Perry isn't magic. But the basic strategy of low taxes and controlled and limited expenditures by, and regulations imposed by, government is magic.

Well, not magic. Better than magic. Magic only works for Chosen Ones.

It's science, that works for everyone who tries it.

Wait, I'm Contradicting Myself Some: If it works for whoever tries it, then, it should favor any economically conservative candidate, which is most of them, I suppose.

True, but there''s always the question of whether you can back up theory with test results. Perry has that big ace to play -- half (or more) of all jobs "created" by Obama just happened to be created in Perry's state of Texas.

Oh: What a dunce. I'm sitting here looking at the national picture and ignoring the much more obvious Wisconsin picture.

We have active recall elections going on.

This will tend to undermine calls for recalls of the Republican senators who bravely stood up for the job-creators, won't it?

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (181)
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Update: Boehner has tweeted that this NYT story is false:

False. Senate should pass #CutCapBalance. RT NYT NEWS ALERT: Obama and Boehner Close to Major Budget Deal, Congressional Leaders Are Told

The NYT had previously claimed -- probably relying on Obama's people as sources -- of an imminent deal between Bammy and Boehner.

The Obama administration has informed Democratic Congressional leaders that President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner were starting to close in on a major budget deal that would enact substantial spending cuts and seek future revenues through a tax overhaul, Congressional officials said Thursday.

With the government staring at a potential default in less than two weeks, the officials said the administration on Wednesday night notified top members of Congress that an agreement between the president and Mr. Boehner could be imminent. The Congressional leaders, whose help Mr. Obama would need to bring a compromise forward, were told that the new revenue tied to the looming agreement to increase the debt limit by Aug. 2 would be produced in 2012 through a tax code rewrite that would lower individual and corporate rates, close loopholes, end tax breaks and make other adjustments to produce revenue gains.

Officials knowledgeable about the conversations between the administration and Congressional leaders said the details of the potential package remained unknown but they presumed it would include cuts and adjustments in most federal programs, including Medicare.

Obama's people did this once before, claiming a deal was about to be struck when that wasn't true at all. Is this some kind of tactic on their part?

As for the deal suggested: This is interesting. A commenter -- forget who -- suggested that rather than the typical screw-over of tax hikes upfront and supposed cuts later (which tend not to happen), why shouldn't we insist on the opposite timing? Cuts first, and then promises of tax hikes? And then decide later if we feel like doing that.

Now that doesn't mean this is a good deal. I doubt it is. Assuming it's based on the Gang of Six plan, Dick Morris and others are calling it a fraud. Not only does the plan likely call for the elimination of big-ticket deductions (mortgage interest, charitable contributions, state and local taxes)...

But the most dangerous part of the proposal is that to establish a commission to monitor the deficit reduction measures to assure that they unfold as planned. Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has been pushing this idea for more than a year now hoping to equip the commission with automatic authority to cut spending and to raise taxes without legislative authorization. It would allow a tax increase without requiring any member of Congress to vote for it.

Not sure that this is what's been agreed to, though.

Dick Morris made an interesting prediction last night about the steps that would likely occur here. Since he nailed step one, maybe he's right about the later steps two.

1. Boehner and Obama announce a deal based on the Gang of Six proposal.

2. House Republicans refuse to vote for it. Now Democrats, plus some of the moderate Republican House members, could probably pass it with their own votes (they'd have Boehner, for one), but they will refuse to do so, because they don't want to take ownership of an unpopular deal.

3. So Obama is now forced to begin negotiating with Tea Party-ish House Republicans who will insist on the deal coming much closer to their line of thinking.

4. Who knows what happens here. The gap between the Establishment and Insurgency is too wide to easily paper over.

External Pressure: Frankly, I can't think of anything more helpful to our position than this.

We have two feuding political parties. Guess who acts as the "neutral, independent referee" deciding which party has the better argument?

The media, of course. That's why we can never actually win.

However, here comes a bona-fide objective third party with undeniable expertise on debt and its consequences to refute the media's narrative and say Debt must be reduced.

If an agreement is reached to raise the debt ceiling but nothing meaningful is done in terms of deficit reduction, the U.S. would likely have its rating cut to the AA category, S&P said.

“While banks and broker-dealers wouldn’t likely suffer any immediate ratings downgrades, we would downgrade the debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the ‘AAA’ rated Federal Home Loan Banks, and the ‘AAA’ rated Federal Farm Credit System Banks to correspond with the U.S. sovereign rating,” S&P said in its report.

“We would also lower the ratings on ‘AAA’ rated U.S. insurance groups, as per our criteria that correlates insurers’ and sovereigns’ ratings,” the firm said.

Gang of Six Is Rubbish: A lot of serious people -- former Bush economic advisors -- say the deal is a giant step backwards.

Keith Hennessee has a lot of reasons for panning this non-plan -- seventeen of them, in fact. I was going to quote some, as Captain Ed did, but as I read them I realized they're all deadly.

The Gang of Six is an absolutely horrible plan that capitulates to the Democrats on every single agenda item and of course then dooms the nation to ever-increasing spending and ultimate bankruptcy.

Update: A smaller credit-rating agency, Egan Jones, which is not one of the big three, has already reduced America's credit rating.

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (219)
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Ace is still haggling with his pimp business manager, and I think the other co-bloggers are busy at the homeless shelter. You know...busy. So, you know...open thread.

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Posted by: Monty at 08:32 AM | Comments (454)
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Apparently, Obama blew a big debt deal. What struck me about this piece was the passive-aggressive tone -- US News is completely in Bammer's corner, yet feels compelled to call him out on his lies. I'm seeing a lot of this kind of thing on the Left these days.

The end of the growth consensus. The relevant bit:

[P]olicy veered in a different direction. Public officials from both parties apparently found the limited government approach to be a disadvantage, some simply because they wanted to do more—whether to tame the business cycle, increase homeownership, or provide the elderly with better drug coverage.

And so policy swung back in a more interventionist direction, with the federal government assuming greater powers. The result was not the intended improvement, but rather an epidemic of unintended consequences—a financial crisis, a great recession, ballooning debt and today's nonexistent recovery.

Essentially, we decided to grow our government at the expense of the private-sector economy. Worse yet, we decided to debt-finance the growth with no plan to pay that debt off.

Wall Street is making Doomsday plans.

Dodd-Frank: Crony capitalism's triumph. Like ObamaCare, this is another law passed over GOP objections that just gets worse as more details come to light.

10% unemployment on the way. In reality, unemployment has been in the double-digits for a long time. The recent large-scale layoffs by Cicso, Borders Books, and now the United Space Alliance with the end of the Shuttle program (2,800 layoffs are expected) only exacerbate the situation. And most of these jobs are not blue-collar jobs; these are high-paying technical jobs that will be very difficult to replace in today's economy. Many of these laid-off workers are going to have a hell of a time finding work again at anything like the wages or benefits they were making before.

As Bill Gross notes at the Financial Times, economies cannot grow at "Stall Speed".

Annals of the boned: The good news? CalPERS got a whopping 21% return on their investments for the 12-month period ending in June 2011. The bad news? It doesn't come close to making up for the crappy performance for the five years prior to that. They still need a bailout. This is the grim truth of investment losses vs gains -- one bad year in the markets can take several up years to make up.

Greece (and maybe Europe as a whole) edges closer to the abyss. Fancisco Giavazzi and Anil Kashyap respond: Small enough to be allowed to fail under certain circumstances. A taste:

This plan would be unpopular in Germany and in the other stronger economies that would be the main contributors to the stability fund. A selling point would be that unlike the plans put forward so far, the taxpayers of contributor nations would be protected by collateral. If things go badly, the stability fund would effectively own the banking systems in the countries that donÂ’t come up with a private solution. These assets would have value because they would be limited to those countries that are poised for growth.

UPDATE 1: From the sidebar, "Layoffs Deepen Gloom". Obama has broken the mighty US jobs engine, and the results are going to be very bad indeed if we don't fix it pretty damned quick.

UPDATE 2: The bicycle overlords.

UPDATE 3: If this isn't a signpost on the way to DOOM, nothing is: Laura Ingraham's baggage robbed at NJ airport. (In Newark. I might have known. That joint is an utter pisshole.)

UPDATE 4: Via Andy: Not everything in the economy is in the dumper. Sex toy sales are doing just fine. Stay-cation, baby!

UPDATE 5: Paul Ryan brings the DOOM.

UPDATE 6: Keith Hennessey delivers the verdict on the "Gang of Six" plan -- it sucks.
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Posted by: Monty at 04:54 AM | Comments (418)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:31 AM | Comments (121)
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I watched ABC network news for July 20th. They had a story on Bachmann's migraine kerfluffle. John Karl reporting - he said this.

"... common practice for more than a generation has been that presidential nominees from the major parties release extensive medical records going into their entire medical history..."

For contrast, McCain had a detailed release. 1500 pages in 1999.

So I ask the assembled Morons - does John Karl have no memory or no shame?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:26 PM | Comments (57)
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I couldnÂ’t pick a theme for tonightÂ’s OOT, so I settled on a smorgasbord format. IÂ’ve got a little bit of fun for everyone.

Do you remember reading about that angelic underage Neo-Nazi band Prussian Blue? HereÂ’s a visual reminder.

But their mother, April, is holding out hope that ths liberalism thing is just a phase:

But April, who is working to create an “intentional” white community in their area, called Pioneer Little Europe, also suspects her daughters’ liberal turn may be a passing phase. “They’re 19,” she said. “I think when they have children of their own, they’ll come to the same conclusions I have.”

Yeah, that makes total sense.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:00 PM | Comments (518)
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42 years and a little while ago, a man stepped onto the moon.

I was nine years old, and my dad let me and my oldest kid sister stay up to watch this amazing broadcast, grainy, black and white... on and off. The culmination of America's 8 year quest to reach that solitary satellite. We lived in Huntsville, Alabama, dad was a telecommunications engineer who worked on the program for Von Braun's company, "Brown Engineering". It was way past my bedtime. Sometime that summer, I remember dad filling up at a Texaco station, and he bought me one of those paper "tab a slot b" models of the LEM.

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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:00 PM | Comments (61)
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Cieling? i before.. no wait, ok "ceiling."

Voters were asked to imagine being a lawmaker in Congress who had to cast an up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling. The poll found 35 percent would vote in favor of increasing the limit, while 60 percent would vote against it.

Registered voters. The kind of people who get polled that politicians pay attention to.

On the question of increased revenues taxes:

A 63-percent majority of voters thinks raising taxes during an economic downturn is a bad idea. ThatÂ’s down from a high of 80 percent who thought so two years ago (August 2009).

I suspect the change is a result of the building argument over extending the Bush tax cuts, but I can live with a 63% majority.

This was an interesting tidbit:

On the whole, the word that best describes how voters feel about the deficit situation is “concern” (40 percent), followed by “anger” (23 percent), “embarrassment” (13 percent), “indifference” (10 percent), “despair” (5 percent) “shock” (4 percent), "kinda funny in the pants" (3 percent), "verklempt" (2 percent), and "I got a raging deficit boner" (1 percent).

Those last three well within the margin of error.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:54 PM | Comments (129)
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No way, you say. How can that be? From The Daily Caller:

A Politico reporter who often penned stories about Sarah Palin and other Republicans has quit journalism to work with the Democratic Party in Arizona, sources tell The Daily Caller.

That reporter, Andy Barr, has covered national politics for the publication since 2008. Barr leaving to help elect Democrats will likely fan the flames of critics who say Politico has a liberal bias.

ItÂ’s not exactly clear what his new job duties are. Barr wouldnÂ’t say . . . .

I bet we can pretty much guess.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 04:05 PM | Comments (92)
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