My Newest Fox News Piece: Yes, the Economy Is Growing But Obama's Policies Are Not Helping

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

The economy grew slightly faster during the third quarter. But the newly released numbers mean that for the year GDP has only grown at an incredibly slow 1.4 percent, barely keeping pace with population growth.  The change in per capita GDP so far this year is essentially zero.

Normally the more severe the recession, the faster is the recovery.  During the Reagan administration, for same three quarters, GDP grew at 4.8 percent.  Since the Obama recovery started in June 2009, GDP growth has averaged 2.5 percent, compared to 6 percent over the same time period under Reagan.  The quarterly growth rates for the two recoveries are available here. 

Obviously, more people working would result in more income.  The slow GDP growth is tied to the continued record high unemployment. Unemployment has remained at least at 9 percent for 27 months and counting, a post World War II record.  While the unemployment rate during the recession in the early 1980s went higher, reaching 10.8 percent, the high rates did not last as long, staying above 9 percent for a relatively short 19 months. . . . 

Texas Unemployment Miracle

Appearance on Aug. 23, 2011 at 12:35 PM.

Newest Fox News piece: The S&P Downgrade Is a Wake Call for All Americans

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

When Standard & Poors downgraded Spain's bonds from AAA to AA+ in January 2009, its interest rates increased from 4.1 to 4.3 percent.
When the same ratings agency downgraded Ireland's from AAA to AA+ in March 2009, their interest rate rose by about 0.4 percentage points.
So what does that mean for Standard & Poors in terms of downgrading the U.S. bond rating?
With our $14.6 trillion in national debt, raising the U.S. government interest rates by the same amounts would eventually add about $29 to $58 billion a year in increased interest costs -- small change when we are already facing a $1.63 trillion deficit this year. And not all of that increase would be immediately felt since we only face the higher interest rate on newly issued bonds.
The problem with these downgrades is that they have a tendency to quickly spiral out of control. . . .

Newest Fox News piece: The Debt Deal's Three Biggest Winners and Losers

My newest piece starts this way:

With a debt ceiling agreement finally in place and the Senate on track to approve it today congratulations are being handed out all around. 

Armageddon and catastrophe has supposedly been averted. And politicians are rushing to put the best face on the deal. 

Unfortunately, the new agreement does not accomplish as much as many had hoped, or as much as it should have, in terms of curbing spending and continued deficits. This explains why stock markets continued to fall despite the supposedly "good" news. The reason is because, once again, politicians are continuing to push the problem to the future. 

Here's a look at the winners and losers in the aftermath of the "catastrophe" that's just been averted: 

The Winners:

1. Stimulus Recipients and Big Government: President Obama’s “Stimulus” was supposed to just be temporary. Alas, the debt agreement locks in big government and the extra spending President Obama initiated will continue. 

After government spending soared by 28 percent from 2008 to 2011, the debt deal only starts cutting a meager $22 billion next year. That is an incredibly trivial cut -- just 0.6% of expenditures planned for next year. The cuts agreed on are heavily back-loaded towards the end of the 10 year budgeting cycle, when President Obama and many members of Congress will be out of office. 

Short of a constitutional amendment mandating balanced budgets, . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Seven Myths About the Looming Debt-Ceiling 'Disaster'

My newest piece starts this way:

If Congress and the president don't raise the debt ceiling, the consequences will be disastrous, politicians and pundits tell us, -- the equivalent of an economic Armageddon. And President Obama warns that the consequences are so dire that he cannot possibly tolerate any delay in making an agreement. He announced yesterday that any debt deal must be completed by today, July 15th.
According to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, failure to raise the debt ceiling limit will cause the United States to default and "cause a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only now starting to recover.”
On Thursday, he renewed these warnings. And President Obama alarmed retired Americans this week: "I cannot guarantee that those [Social Security] checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it."
But the list of terrible things to come, if the government is stopped from continued deficit spending, goes on. Failure to raise the ceiling, it is warned, will dramatically raise mortgage interest rates, cause housing sales to plunge, create panic on world financial markets, and destroy the value of the dollar.
Austan Goolsbee, Obama's head of his Counsel of Economic Advisers, went so far this week as to blame the continued slow economic recovery on those few politicians who are against raising the debt ceiling. "[I]t's important we remove this wet blanket of uncertainty that is permeating the private sector where they don't know that the government -- there are people actively advocating that the government declare it's not going to pay its bills," he told MSNBC. Yet, the slow recovery has been going on for over two years, well before Republicans obtained control of the House of Representatives.
A new CBS News/New York Times poll finds that Americans oppose increasing the debt ceiling, by a 69 to 24 percent margin.
Mr. Obama dismissed this finding recently and, as usual, he believes he knows better. According to him, Americans just don't understand the complexities of the arguments: "Let me distinguish between professional politicians and the public at large. The public is not paying close attention to the ins and outs of how a Treasury (bond) auction goes. They shouldn't. . . . They've got a lot of other things on their plate. We're paid to worry about it. . . . Now, I will say that some of the professional politicians know better. And for them to say that we shouldn't be raising the debt ceiling is irresponsible. They know better."
But the general public is right. There is an overload from all the doomsday predictions. Earlier this year, before the debt limit was hit on May 21, the Obama administration already used the same scare tactics.
Here's a look at seven myths that the Obama administration is pushing on the American people: . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Who Has the Best Plans to Rescue America from the Budget Crisis?

My newest Fox News piece starts out this way:

Who has the best plans to fight the budget crisis? Well, it seem that the Democrats do not even have a plan, or perhaps they secretly have one but are embarrassed to release it. Either way, Democrats are stubbornly refusing to release any budget plan. Instead, they just complain about the two that have been presented so far. 

Thus when the Senate voted on budget plans this week, Senators considered two options but neither one received a single yes-vote from a Democrat. 

One proposal, the House Republican budget, the so-called "Ryan plan," was attacked by Democrats as "draconian” or “unconscionable." 

The other option was President Obama's plan from February. But as The Hill newspaper reported: “the Democratic caucus would not support the [president’s February] plan because it has been supplanted by the deficit-reduction plan Obama outlined at a speech at George Washington University in April.” 

So why not vote on the April plan? . . .

New Fox News piece: Where Are the Jobs, Mr. President? The Jobless Obama Recovery Continues

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

There has been no recovery in the job market during the Obama recovery. Despite all the cheerleading by the Obama administration and the media, job creation has been horribly sluggish. The jobs created recently are noteworthy only in comparison to the lack of jobs created during the rest of the “recovery.” In contrast to other recoveries over at least the last half century, job creation has never been more anemic.

When the new employment numbers came out on Friday, Austan Goolsbee, the head of the President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, boasted about "the solid pace of employment growth in recent months" and that "The overall trajectory of the economy has improved dramatically over the past two years." Headlines in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times were equally glowing, trumpeting "solid growth" and "strong growth." 

During the 23 months since the Obama recovery started, an average of 23,000 jobs a month have been created. The same 23 month period into the Reagan recovery saw that an average of 285,800 jobs were added each month. 

So what about the last three months? . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Don't Single Out Standard & Poor's for Being 'Political'

My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

If you think it's hard now to balance the budget, just wait until our credit rating gets trashed. Monday’s warning from the Standard & Poor’s rating agency -- that the U.S. government’s credit rating could be revised downward -- produced a firestorm in Washington. Republicans called it a "wake-up call," while the Obama administration's chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, lambasted Standard & Poor’s actions as purely "political."
Credit ratings aren’t just a matter of national pride. Less dependable, risky borrowers have to pay a higher interest rate to get people to buy their bonds. Right now the our government only has to pay 3.4% annual interest to borrow money for 10 years. But for countries who have had trouble paying their debts, interest rates are much higher. Portugal is forced to pay 9.1%, Ireland 9.8%, and Greece 14.6%.
But America's financial problems are catching up to what these other countries face all too quickly. . . .

My Newest Fox News piece: "Paul Ryan Is Right About the Budget -- Americans Cannot Afford Another Decade of Massive Government Spending"

Please leave comments and click the "recommended" link at the Fox News website. My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

The deficit is a spending problem. That's the simple truth. If federal government spending after President Clinton's last budget had simply grown fast enough to keep up with inflation and the growth in population, the 2012 budget would be running over a $70 billion surplus. Instead, federal expenditures more than doubled from $1.86 to $3.82 trillion in the ten years from 2001 to 2011, causing this year’s enormous $1.65 trillion deficit.

During President Obama's first three years in office the government's deficits are adding up to over $4.3 trillion. And there is no let up in sight. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the President Obama's budget plans will add another $10.4 trillion in deficits over the next decade from 2012 to 2021.

Americans can't afford to ignore this problem. The pricetag for that expected addition to the federal debt over the next decade comes to over $134,000 for a family of four. That doubles the debt the CBO expects that families will already face by the end of this year. . . .

Newest Fox News piece: The Truth About Obama, Democrats and Budget Cuts

My newest piece starts out this way:

With major budget votes set for Tuesday, Senate Democrats spent the weekend dismissing House Republicans' plans to cut the budget as “ideological, extremist, reckless." President Obama advocated “a government that lives within its means,” but he also charged “there’s nothing responsible about the Republican budget cuts.

Following the same script, news headlines described the House Republicans cuts as "dramatic" and "outrageous."

The magnitude of this year’s deficit might be hard for many to appreciate. But the monthly budget deficit for February of $223 billion is larger than the $160.7 billion deficit for all of 2007, the last time we had a federal budget that was approved when Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and presidency.

Democrats say that they can only come up with one-thirteenth the deficit cuts that the Republicans have put forward – just $4.7 billion, though Obama claims that these cuts meet the Republicans “halfway.” Democrats assert that there is not even enough waste in the federal budget to cut it by two-tenths of one percentage point. . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Illinois Gun Info Plan Is Misguided and Dangerous

My newest Fox News piece starts off this way:

Suppose you or your family are being stalked by a criminal who intends to harm you. Would you feel safer putting a sign in front of your home saying "This home is a gun-free zone"? Would it frighten criminals away?

Most people understand that guns deter criminals. But, despite strong opposition from the Illinois State Police, Democrat Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan seems determined to publicly identify gun and non-gun owners across the state. For some unknown reason, The Associated Press made a Freedom of Information Act request to the police.

One would think that people in Illinois of all places would understand this problem. . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Another Mistake in The New York Times

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

Since the tragedy in Tucson, the New York Times has started an all-out campaign for gun control, with a relentless number of pieces -- news, editorials, and op-eds. In its advocacy, even the news stories are heavily biased by selectively quoting only academics who support pro-gun control positions. These seemingly unbiased sources are then contrasted with opposing views from clearly biased people on the other side, such as an NRA spokesman or a right-wing politician. The implied conclusion: scientific evidence favors gun control, but self-interest stands in the way.

Take two recent news stories by Michael Luo (here and here). He quotes seven academics who agreed with the New York Times position, but no one on the other side was even interviewed. Talk about misrepresenting academic opinion. The overwhelming majority of studies actually supports the claim that more guns mean less crime. Among peer-reviewed studies in academic journals, criminologists and economists studying right-to-carry laws have produced 18 national studies showing that these laws reduce violent crime, 10 indicate no discernible effect and none finds a bad effect from the law. One would never guess that 294 academics from institutions as diverse as Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania, and UCLA released an open letter to Congress during 1999 warning that new gun laws were “ill advised.”

A frequent claim in these recent New York Times articles has been that more guns mean more gun deaths (see also here). . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Most Americans Don't Want the Health Care Law That Was Passed and Efforts to Repeal It Must Continue

My newest piece starts this way:

Americans are unhappy with ObamaCare. The House’s 245-189 vote to repeal ObamaCare on Wednesday was never really in doubt. In fact, The latest Rasmussen survey shows that 55 percent of Americans want ObamaCare repealed, the same number that showed up in polls when people voted in early November. Seventy five percent of Americans want the law changed.

The repeal measure now goes to the Senate. But despite holding a majority in the Senate, Democrats are refusing to hold a vote and publicly support the law. The public opposition shouldn't come as a surprise as the health care law signed by President Obama bears little resemblance to the one he promised during the 2008 campaign. The law broke multiple different promises on taxes and costs twice as much as what Obama said that it would cost during the campaign. ObamaCare was sold to Americans as an essential law to reduce health care costs.

"Then there's the problem of rising costs. . . . Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing," President Obama warned . . . .

Newest Fox News piece: The Arizona Shootings, Gun Violence Research and the Facts vs. The New York Times

My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

You know you’re doing something right when two New York Times columnists, Gail Collins and Nicholas Kristof, attack your research on the same day. Kristof followed up on criticism leveled earlier in the week by others writing for The Times. I must have said something substantial enough to warrant this attention. Let us check the facts.

Gail Collins worries that law-abiding citizens carrying concealed handguns can't be trusted:

"One can only hope that Saturday's horrible attack in Tucson encourages more citizens to carry concealed handguns," wrote John Lott, Jr. . . . on Wednesday. As a model, he pointed to Joseph Zamudio, . . . Lott's theory was that Zamudio was able to lend a hand "because his legally carried 9 mm semiautomatice offered him protection." He neglected to mention that while Zamudio never fired at the gunman, he almost drew on an innocent man by mistake.

No, it was not my mere speculation. Zamudio himself told Fox News' “Fox & Friends” that he though that carrying a gun made him willing to run towards the shots while almost everyone else was running for cover. . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Obama Officials Play Chicken Little With the Debt Ceiling

My newest piece starts this way:

Two years into the Obama administration and the overused tactic of claiming crises to push legislation is becoming tiresome.

Remember, immediately after President Obama came into office, we were warned that if the massive Stimulus program wasn't passed immediately, unemployment would go up above 8.1 percent. And the health care takeover had to be passed by August 2009 or public and private health care costs would spiral out of control.

Of course, it is now obvious that neither the stimulus program nor Obamacare had any prospect of accomplishing their stated goals. And then there was the start treaty with Russia which absolutely had to be passed quickly last month or real damage would be done to US-Russian relations. Yet, in what was widely seen as a slap against President Obama, the Russians didn't see any urgency in passing the treaty, and indeed they still haven't passed it.

Now the Obama administration is warning of disaster if Congress doesn't quickly pass an increase in the debt limit. . . .

New Fox News piece: Americans very gloomy about the economy

My new piece starts off this way:

All the economic numbers being thrown around as the year draws to a close are bewildering. Some are positive, some are negative, but for many this week it is hard to get an overall feel for how well the economy is doing.
On the upside, GDP is rising, though slowly, and economists have raised their forecasts for next year's economic growth. Retail sales this holiday season increased by 5.5 percent over last year. Inflation has remained low, just 1.1 percent over the last year. And the stock market has rebounded.
Yet, there are major negatives. Most seriously, the very high and long-lingering unemployment rate. Unemployment is not only rising, but it has set a post-World War II record with unemployment remaining at least at 9.5 percent or higher for 18 months.
Adding to job-seekers' problems, the new employment consists almost exclusively of temporary service sector jobs, a poor replacement for the lost permanent ones. Home prices also fell again last month. Yale Professor Robert Shiller who collects these data, warned on Tuesday: The outlook has become steadily more pessimistic over the last few months." Huge deficits at the federal and state level add to long-run concerns.
So what do all these numbers mean for the average American? New Consumer Confidence numbers were released on Tuesday and they aren't encouraging, . . .