James L. Paris's Blog, page 143

Almost 95 Million Americans Not Participating in Labor Force

If you have a real interest with respect to what���s going on in the economy, but don���t pay attention to something called the labor force participation rate (LFPR), you may need to change up how you look at things.

Most casual observers, when it comes to employment numbers, principally focus on the unemployment rate. Unfortunately, those numbers in a country increasingly characterized by underemployed workers���those who are plugging away at various combinations of part-time jobs, or working at full-time jobs well beneath their credentials and experience, or who gave up looking for traditional work and now try to eke out a living as a part of the ���gig��� economy���just don���t tell the real story.

The labor force participation number is awfully telling, however. The rate represents the number of Americans who are either working, or are actively looking for work. Well, in reporting by The Washington Free Beacon, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data on Friday that revealed there were 94,391,000 American citizens who did not participate in the labor force in August, yielding an LFPR of 62.8 percent, the lowest it has been since 1978.

Commenting on the significance of the LFPR, Ed Rensi, the former CEO of McDonald���s and Famous Dave���s, said, ���To get a true indication of the economy you have to dig past the topline number of today���s jobs report to see the historically low labor force participation rate���including the low labor force participation of prime age workers. When you do that you see that the economy is still not providing opportunity for everyone, something that policymakers must address by reducing the tax and regulatory burdens on small businesses.���

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

 

New Jersey Governor Christie Vetoes $15 an Hour Minimum Wage

Last week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie used the power of the veto to nix a bill passed through the Democratic-controlled legislature that would have mandated regular increases in the state���s current minimum wage of $8.38 an hour until it reached $15 an hour by year 2021.

As reported by CNN Money, Christie explained his decision this way: ���This bill would make New Jersey only the third state in the nation to adopt a minimum wage of $15, and it would trigger an escalation of wages that will make doing business in New Jersey unaffordable.���

However, Democratic leadership in both the Senate and the General Assembly has vowed to see the effort at realizing a $15 minimum hourly wage put before the state���s voters in 2017, something that happened previously when Christie vetoed a smaller increase back in 2013. In that case, voters eventually approved a bump in the state���s then-$7.25 an hour wage to $8.25, with future increases to be indexed to inflation.

In a statement, National Employment Law Project executive director Christine Owens said, ���Over one-third (34 percent) of New Jerseyans earn under $15 per hour, and many have to rely on public assistance to make ends meet. Over 634,000 New Jersey workers and their children are enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP to afford medical care, and 159,000 use food stamps to put food on the table.���

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

ESPN Personality Issues On-Air Apology for Saying America Does Not Oppress Black People

SEC Network analyst and radio host Paul Finebaum, who also shows up on ESPN in various capacities, said during his own show (The Paul Finebaum Show) last Monday, in a discussion about San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick���s refusal to stand for the national anthem, that the ���country is not oppressing black people.��� At the time, he was chatting with black co-host and former college/NFL player Marcus Spears, who actually agreed with Finebaum, saying, ���I don't think its oppressing black people; it's the under-service of the community. It's a different issue.���

The next day, Tuesday, while appearing as a guest on ESPN���s College Football Live, Finebaum essentially doubled-down on his overall take on Kaepernick, saying, ���Usually people protest when they���ve been oppressed, when they have a legitimate stake in the action. I don���t know where Colin is coming from. What���s his beef with society, other than he���s upset with how, in his mind, people are being oppressed in this country?���

Well, that did it. The Thought Police clearly took hold of Finebaum and quickly ran him through re-education camp, because there he was, on Wednesday, making an appearing on ESPN���s popular SportsCenter show to offer an apology. Here is some of it:

���I could spend the rest of my life trying to talk my way out of it, but I can���t. I blew it. I simply did not have a good grasp of the situation. I know better. I���ve lived in this country. I see what is going on all across the country from north to south, east to west. And I have no excuse. I can���t explain why I articulated the words the way they (sic) did. But I did. And there���s a public record of it. And there���s a natural reaction. And I respect that. And all I can say is I made a terrible mistake. In trying to express a feeling that I probably ��� not probably ��� I had no right to express.���

A great reaction to Finebaum���s apology was recorded by Mark Tapson of Truth Revolt:

���He was absolutely correct and he articulated the words just fine. This country does indeed have serious race issues, but the notion that people of color are being ���oppressed��� is demonstrably false. We have a black President and a black Attorney General. People of color occupy positions of power at every level in every arena of society. While racism certainly exists -- among all races -- there is no systemic, organizational ���oppression��� of non-whites.���

For my part, I hear more and more from those who struggle with what, for them, is the disconnect between their everyday experiences as ���regular��� citizens of the United States, and the broad narratives channeled throughout new and old media outlets. You can include me as one of those now perpetually puzzled. Everywhere I go, I see people of all races treated the same���in stores, in doctors��� offices, in banks���everywhere; and yet, according to what is now the popular public opinion (we���re told), here, in 2016, whites like me walk around with tremendous privilege, while people of color exist only in a state of oppression.

Like Tapson implicitly asks in his article, where are the examples of this oppression? I���m not talking about incidents of bias or discrimination, mind you���but examples of a social and physical environment of oppression, which, we���re told, is the standard condition in which black and brown people are forced to persist in America today.

Anyone?

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Trump Reportedly Considering Using Seized Drug Cartel Money to Pay for Wall

According to an article over at LifeZette.com by Jon Conradi, the Trump camp is giving consideration to the idea of funding The Donald���s much-touted wall on the southern border with money seized from Mexican drug cartels.

Trump has been famously declaring since the beginning of his campaign for president that not only would a wall be built, but that Mexico will pay for it. Many have been curious as to how, precisely, he might coerce the Mexican government into paying for the wall, but perhaps the truth is that it will not be the government or the law-abiding citizens of Mexico that pay for the wall���but the drug cartels.

According to the LifeZette article, those who support the idea of paying for the wall in this fashion see it as a win-win, in the sense that not only does the wall get built, but its construction would be paid for by the worst elements of Mexican society that make both that country and U.S. so dangerous for so many people. The cartel payment idea also provides an additional benefit, in the form of allowing each country to hold to their respective positions while saving face, to some degree; from the Mexican government���s perspective, while some Mexicans might be said to be technically paying for the wall, it is not the government or the taxpayers doing so���and from Trump���s vantage point, using the assets of the cartels to foot the bill is not a complete walk-back of his pronouncement that ���Mexico��� would pay for the wall.

The LifeZette article points out that cost estimates for building the wall range from $15 billion to $25 billion, although Trump has said he believes he could build it for something in the range of $8 to $10 billion. The article further quotes a figure of $8.7 billion to represent the value of the Justice Department���s seized assets forfeiture fund for 2015, but that number does not include any of the money seized by the Mexican government from the cartels, which could find its way to the border fund, as well (and give further validity to Trump���s claim that Mexico would be paying for the wall).

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

���Catholic��� Georgetown Hires Hindu Priest as Chaplain

Georgetown, founded in 1789, is the oldest Catholic university in the United States, but its Catholic and Jesuit traditions were clearly no obstacle to the school���s recent decision to hire Brahmachari Vrajvihari Sharan, a Hindu priest, as chaplain.

According to The Washington Post, Sharan���s primary responsibility is ���bringing Hindu tradition to Georgetown University, in a youth-savvy voice.���

The move by the school to appoint a Hindu chaplain is just the latest in a series of actions that have called into question its supposed Catholic orientation.

This past April, the head of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, was given a platform by Georgetown to ���preach��� about so-called reproductive rights to students���and this was many months after the Center for Medical Progress���s undercover videos came to light.

At that time, according to The Daily Caller, Georgetown Right to Life president Michael Khan bemoaned the appearance of Richards on campus, saying, ���Her message is so contrary to our Georgetown values and the dignity of each human life.���

As it turned out, Richards��� speech was well-received by the students in attendance, prompting Khan to remark, ���We���re probably the most liberal Catholic university in the nation. Many of our students and faculty aren���t Catholic and are very hostile to Catholic doctrine and Jesuit and Catholic values.���

When Georgetown defended the appearance of Richards in April, the school issued a statement that read, in part, ���Our Catholic and Jesuit identity on campus has never been stronger.���

And now, in what will surely be absurdly spun as an effort at further strengthening the school���s Catholic and Jesuit identity, Georgetown has hired an American university���s first Hindu priest.

 By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

The Donald Goes ���Full-Trump��� on Immigration in Energetic Arizona Speech

Apparently, The Donald is back.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has exhibited a somewhat muted tone over the last couple of months in comparison to the firebrand style that initially made him so popular, clearly made a return to his ���roots��� in a speech this past Wednesday in Arizona, wherein he reiterated that there will, indeed, be a wall on America���s southern border, and that, yes, Mexico will be paying for it.

Trump had just come back from visiting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City when he arrived in Phoenix. The rather impromptu meeting with Pena Nieto clearly caught many in the mainstream media off-guard, particularly when it turned out that the confab was anything but a sideshow; according to Trump, the pair engaged in a ���substantive, direct and constructive exchange of ideas,��� and no news agency has managed to uncover evidence that it was anything else.
The get-together with Pena Nieto was earlier that day on Wednesday, and Trump followed it with what many are calling a triumphant return to the U.S. that also signaled a triumphant return of the ���old��� Donald.

In his Arizona speech, Trump told the crowd that his first priority, with respect to illegal immigration, would be deporting the estimated 2 million ���criminal aliens��� presently here.

Trump also used the speech to silence any whispers that he may have been in the midst of assuming a somewhat less rigid posture on the matter of no amnesty, declaring, ���There will be no amnesty.���

���For those here illegally today, who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and one route only. To return home and apply for reentry like everybody else under the rules of the new legal immigration system I outlined above.���
The feisty Trump even took a swipe at his general election opponent, Hillary Clinton, when discussing his plan to rid the country of criminal aliens; referring to those who had ���evaded justice,��� Trump said that Clinton had also managed to sidestep justice, and so ���maybe they���ll be able to deport her, too.���

Trump additionally used the speech to strike at what many see as the heart of the problem when it comes to immigration: the unwillingness of those who migrate to the U.S. to assimilate into American society and embrace traditional American values. On that, Trump pointedly said, ���It���s our right as a sovereign nation to choose immigrants we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish and love us.���

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr.

Death or Other Absence of a Presidential Candidate Could Doom Election Outright

As presidential elections go, this has already been one for the books, and general election season is just hitting its stride.

One of the more prominent, election-related ���what ifs��� that���s been kicked around for months now has to do with what might happen if one���or both���of the two major party candidates is unable, or unwilling, to finish the journey to November 8.

Anyone who has even remotely paid attention to the news this year likely knows why this has been such a consideration. On the Republican side, Donald Trump has faced a great deal of opposition from within his own party, much of it that continues to this day. Additionally, there have been whispers, not entirely unfueled by Trump himself, that perhaps he was not really interested in actually being President of the United States.

On the side of the Democrats, while Hillary Clinton has not faced quite the same level of internal dissent as Trump (although it has certainly been significant), there has been some real concern about the state of her health.

An article appearing over at U.S. News & World Report (usnews.com) outlines the possible options for handling a scenario where at least one major party candidate cannot fulfill his or her obligations as candidate, options that include everything from the selection of new representative candidates by the members of the Democratic and Republican National Committees, respectively (a more likely resolution), to the Electoral College convening without a general election being held, and making the decision without any direct input in the form of a popular vote from the citizens.

Addressing the possibility, law professor John Nagle of the University of Notre Dame says, ���There's nothing in the Constitution which requires a popular election for the electors serving in the Electoral College.���

���It's up to each state legislature to decide how they want to choose the state's electors. It may be a situation in which the fact that we have an Electoral College, rather than direct voting for presidential candidates, may prove to be helpful.���

While it���s not clear how truly ���helpful��� that would be, what is clear is that such a turn of events could very well take place.

Just something of which to take note.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

 

Bond Investing Legend Bill Gross Says Fed Has Mastered Market Manipulation

Bond legend Bill Gross, in comments reported by CNBC (cnbc.com), has gone after the Federal Reserve in no uncertain terms, accusing the U.S.���s central bank of deliberately taking steps to manipulate the markets, and harming capitalism itself, in the process.

Gross, in his September letter to clients that serves as the actual source of his reported comments, made Fed Chair Janet Yellen the principal target of his grievances, saying that her policy of keeping interest rates artificially low has had the effect of deferring ���long-term pain for the benefit of short-term gain.���

Gross has long been a critic of Fed policy on interest rates, and in his July letter, he advised clients to stay away from stocks and bonds, and instead stick to gold and other, more tangible assets.

���Capitalism, almost commonsensically, cannot function well at the zero bound or with a minus sign as a yield. $11 trillion of negative yielding bonds are not assets ��� they are liabilities. Factor that, Ms. Yellen into your asset price objective,��� said Gross in his September missive.

���Investors should know that they are treading on thin ice. This watch is ticking because of high global debt and out-of-date monetary/fiscal policies that hurt rather than heal real economies. Sooner rather than later, Yellen's smooth shot from the fairway will find the deep rough.���

Gross also took a poke at the elitist tendencies of Yellen and other central bankers, writing that ���all have mastered the art of market manipulation and no ��� that's not an unkind accusation ��� it's one in fact that Ms. Yellen and other central bankers would plead guilty to over a cocktail at Jackson Hole or any other get together of PhD economists who have lost their way.���

 By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Women Celebrate ���Go Topless Day��� as a Means to Promote Gender Equality

So in addition to Women���s Equality Day (I did not know there was such a thing before this year), there is now something called Go Topless Day. Go Topless Day was created to be a companion, of sorts, to Women���s Equality Day, and is celebrated each year on whatever Sunday falls closest to Women���s Equality Day.

Apparently, Sunday, of all days, is considered a good day to go topless in public. Methinks the choice of day was not made by a devout Christian.

Actually, I���m not sure there���s much of a chance Go Topless Day itself is the brainchild of a devout Christian.

Anyway, if you���re not previously familiar with Go Topless Day, it is what you likely think it is: an effort on the part of so-inclined women at promoting ���gender equality��� by walking around that day without their tops on.

Go Topless Day was celebrated this past Sunday around the United States through various parades and other gatherings, all featuring lots of women with no tops.

According to the organizer of Go Topless Day, Nadine Gary, the idea is to desensitize men to the sight of women���s breasts so that they may one day go topless just as men can, without incident and without breaking any indecency laws.

Said Gary, ���This push for women to go topless in the 21st century is as strong as women wanting to vote in the 20th century.���

It is? If true, that���s awfully sad.

More importantly, in order for Gary and her ilk to get what they want in this case, there has to be complete equality of being between men and women���and that simply cannot happen. Equality of being, in its purest form, is predicated on sameness, and therein its inherent flaw may be found.

Men are not women, and women are not men, and some elements of true equality, in order for true equality to be realized, require the two genders to be the same. The very fact that they ARE two different genders means they cannot, by definition, be the same. Only the most agendized people, whose ends cannot be served without illogical, irrational thought processes, would dispute this.

Men and women don���t have to be the same in order for a representative of either gender to, say, run a bank, or fly a plane. That does not require equality of being. However, men and women playing a close, competitive game of American football against one another does require that sort of equality, which is why it cannot happen.

The same idea applies with respect to the matter of going topless. The visual of my wife walking around topless in public would not be intellectually or emotionally processed by people, in general, in the same way that the visual of me walking around topless would be processed. Again, this is not debatable to anyone but the absurdly agendized, whose intellectual disingenuousness is a necessary component to retaining their outlook.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

 

German Citizens Begin Keeping Cash at Home

It appears that folks in Germany have had enough of interest rates so low that they���ve now become negative; the rates, not the people, that is. Well, actually, both are now negative, if you want the truth. Negative rates in Germany have led to lots of negative citizens���so much so, in fact, that an increasing number of German citizens are pulling their dough out of banks altogether and keeping it at home instead, in safes.

Remember the old saying about the best place to keep your money is under your mattress? Well, in Germany, that appears now to really be the case.

Making things even worse in Germany is the recent decision by a couple of banks there to pass on negative interest rates to retail customers. Normally, during a climate of negative rates, banks eat the loss at the retail level. However, as rates continue to drop even further, banks are now beginning to charge retail customers for the privilege of keeping their money on deposit.

A recent Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) article on the subject quoted an 82-year-old German pensioner, Uwe Wiese, who said, ���It doesn���t pay to keep money in the bank, and on top of that you���re being taxed on it.��� According to Wiese, he recently purchased a safe in which to keep roughly $60,000 of his cash.

According to the article, sales of home safes in Germany are soaring. Germany���s largest safe manufacturer, Burg-Waechter, saw a 25 percent jump in sales in the first half of 2016, over the same period last year, and competitors Format Tresorbau GmbH and Hartmann Tresore AG have posted double-digit increases in sales within Germany this year, as well.

Thies Hartmann, managing director of safe retailer Hamburger Stahltresor GmbH in Hamburg, declared, ���Safe manufacturers are operating near their limits.��� He mentioned that some safe manufacturers are running 24 hours to keep up with demand.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large