Even the Unions are unhappy with Obama....Maybe we have the unions on the run...Let's hope so....
Union Leaders Adjust to New Reality Under Obama
Published September 04, 2011 | Associated Press
In this Aug. 4, 2010, file photo President Barack Obama stands with AFL-CIO Presidet Richard Trumka after speaking about jobs and the economy in Washington.
WASHINGTON -- In the early days of the Obama administration, organized labor had grand visions of pushing through a sweeping agenda that would help boost sagging membership and help revive union strength.
Now labor faces this reality: Public employee unions are in a drawn-out fight for their very survival in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states where GOP lawmakers have curbed collective bargaining rights. Also, many union leaders are grousing that the president they worked so hard to elect has not focused enough on job creation and other bold plans to get their members back to work.
"Obama campaigned big, but he's governing small," said Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union.
Labor remains a core Democratic constituency and union leaders will stand with Obama in Detroit this Labor Day, where he will address thousands of rank-and-file members during the city's annual parade on Monday.
But at the same time, unions have begun shifting money and resources out of Democratic congressional campaigns and back to the states in a furious effort to reverse or limit GOP measures that could wipe out union rolls.
The AFL-CIO's president, Richard Trumka, says it's part of a new strategy for labor to build an independent voice separate from the Democratic Party.
Union donations to federal candidates at the beginning of this year were down about 40 percent compared with the same period in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Last month, a dozen trade unions said they would boycott next year's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., over frustration on the economy and to protest the event's location in a right-to-work state.
"The pendulum has swung a long way," said Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. "In the next year, I think all unions can really hope for is to keep more bad things from happening and to get as much of a jobs program enacted as possible."
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Obama....All Talk....No Action
Obama's been talking about JOBS for three years now...in his state of the union address in 2009 it was going to be his #1 Priority...but what's he done....NOTHING except he's made the environment for hiring significantly worse....He really doesn't have a clue what he needs to do to create jobs....He's got to GO in 2012...This cartoon is representative of what's happened....he's missed the mark repeatedly on the Economy and Job Creation...
Friday, September 2, 2011
There they go AGAIN....Blame Bush!...It's getting Old!
There they go again blaming Bush AGAIN.....when will Obama take responsiblity???? America is laughing at this Administration....If it's not Bush's fault, it's the earthquake in Japan...the ATM machines....etc, etc....Again he's a Blamer in Chief....
From today's Heritage Foundation's Morning Call....
Zero New Jobs in America
President Obama enters this Labor Day weekend with a serious problem on his hands. For all intents and purposes, the economy appears to be stuck in neutral, with news out today that the U.S. economy created a grand total of zero jobs in August. This followed two months of near zero growth. Not surprisingly then, the unemployment rate in August remained at 9.1 percent, virtually unchanged since April. In fact, it was completely unchanged, and for the first time since 1945, no new jobs were created—Zero.
America now has the weakest labor market in a generation, and the American people know it. In a new CNN/ORC poll released this week, 65 percent of Americans say they disapprove of how President Obama is handling the economy. And even the White House has downgraded its expectations for the United States' economic future, as The Hill reports:
When the 'substantial' economic 'turbulence' of the last two months are [sic] considered, the administration expects the economy to grow as little as 1.7 percent in 2011 compared to last year. That is down from a rosier projection of 2.7 percent growth, made in February.
In truth, even a 1.7 percent growth rate would be remarkable at this point, given that the economy grew at an annualized rate of about 0.7 percent in the first half of the year and has since slowed. A 1.7 percent growth rate suggests a remarkable acceleration beginning immediately. More than remarkable, that's incredible.
But none of this is should be shocking news. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office's mid-year assessment of the budget and economic situation, based on data through June and thus ignorant of the recent further slowdown, predicted that the jobless rate will fall only to 8.9 percent by the end of this year but remain above 8 percent until 2014.
If Americans want to return to full employment, which means unemployment would be around 5 percent, then they'll have to wait until 2018 if employers are infused with a new confidence and began hiring at the same average rate they did during the 2003–2007 expansion (+176,000 jobs per month). But 176,000 jobs per month is a far cry from the zero new jobs reported today.
And while the U.S. economy is creating no net new jobs, President Obama is offering no new ideas to fix the problem. In a speech to a joint session of Congress next Thursday, the President is expected to rehash the same expensive, ineffective policies he has tried since his presidency began. And it's an economic philosophy that America has come to know all too well. The President hopes that through the sheer force of spending taxpayer dollars, he can turn the economy around. It isn't working—and neither are nearly 14 million Americans.
Case in point: President Obama's "sunshot" initiative–his proposal to dump taxpayers' dollars into alternative energy projects with the goal of creating green jobs. It has failed, by all accounts. Even The New York Times reported that the President's promise to create 5 million green jobs over 10 years has proven to be nothing more than "a pipe dream." And this week, California-based solar panel manufacturer Solyndra went bankrupt, despite receiving a $535 million taxpayer-funded loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. End result? About 1,100 people out of work. But during his jobs tour across the Midwest, the President continued speaking of the promise of the green economy.
There's another old idea being bandied about, too–infrastructure spending. Remember the President's $780 billion stimulus, which included infrastructure spending on “shovel ready projects” all across the fruited plain? Despite the government infusion of cash into the economy, no jobs were created in August. As the President joked, "Shovel-ready was not as ... uh .. shovel-ready as we expected."
Yet an "infrastructure bank" rumored to be endowed with up to $30 billion, appears to be a central component of the President's jobs plan next week, and more spending on building roads and bridges is one of Big Labor's favorite subjects, too. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka this week called for America to spend $400 billion a year over 10 years on public works projects--and that money, conveniently, would directly benefit his union membership at the expense of the U.S. economy. Whether we need additional government spending on infrastructure is a debate unto itself. What is clear is that $30 billion spent over some number of years in an economy 500 times greater cannot make much difference.
The two-and-a-half-year Keynesian experiment of flooding the economy with taxpayer dollars has failed, yet the President and his union allies continue to peddle the myth that the only way to save the economy is to spend more. There's another way to go: freeing America's small businesses from the day-to-day shackles of existing over-regulation, freeing families and entrepreneurs of the threat of higher taxes, and cutting spending to eliminate the constraining fear of America's debt crisis. Zero job growth does not have to be America's reality, but changing course will mean ditching the dream that more government spending will save the day.
President Obama enters this Labor Day weekend with a serious problem on his hands. For all intents and purposes, the economy appears to be stuck in neutral, with news out today that the U.S. economy created a grand total of zero jobs in August. This followed two months of near zero growth. Not surprisingly then, the unemployment rate in August remained at 9.1 percent, virtually unchanged since April. In fact, it was completely unchanged, and for the first time since 1945, no new jobs were created—Zero.
America now has the weakest labor market in a generation, and the American people know it. In a new CNN/ORC poll released this week, 65 percent of Americans say they disapprove of how President Obama is handling the economy. And even the White House has downgraded its expectations for the United States' economic future, as The Hill reports:
When the 'substantial' economic 'turbulence' of the last two months are [sic] considered, the administration expects the economy to grow as little as 1.7 percent in 2011 compared to last year. That is down from a rosier projection of 2.7 percent growth, made in February.
In truth, even a 1.7 percent growth rate would be remarkable at this point, given that the economy grew at an annualized rate of about 0.7 percent in the first half of the year and has since slowed. A 1.7 percent growth rate suggests a remarkable acceleration beginning immediately. More than remarkable, that's incredible.
But none of this is should be shocking news. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office's mid-year assessment of the budget and economic situation, based on data through June and thus ignorant of the recent further slowdown, predicted that the jobless rate will fall only to 8.9 percent by the end of this year but remain above 8 percent until 2014.
If Americans want to return to full employment, which means unemployment would be around 5 percent, then they'll have to wait until 2018 if employers are infused with a new confidence and began hiring at the same average rate they did during the 2003–2007 expansion (+176,000 jobs per month). But 176,000 jobs per month is a far cry from the zero new jobs reported today.
And while the U.S. economy is creating no net new jobs, President Obama is offering no new ideas to fix the problem. In a speech to a joint session of Congress next Thursday, the President is expected to rehash the same expensive, ineffective policies he has tried since his presidency began. And it's an economic philosophy that America has come to know all too well. The President hopes that through the sheer force of spending taxpayer dollars, he can turn the economy around. It isn't working—and neither are nearly 14 million Americans.
Case in point: President Obama's "sunshot" initiative–his proposal to dump taxpayers' dollars into alternative energy projects with the goal of creating green jobs. It has failed, by all accounts. Even The New York Times reported that the President's promise to create 5 million green jobs over 10 years has proven to be nothing more than "a pipe dream." And this week, California-based solar panel manufacturer Solyndra went bankrupt, despite receiving a $535 million taxpayer-funded loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. End result? About 1,100 people out of work. But during his jobs tour across the Midwest, the President continued speaking of the promise of the green economy.
There's another old idea being bandied about, too–infrastructure spending. Remember the President's $780 billion stimulus, which included infrastructure spending on “shovel ready projects” all across the fruited plain? Despite the government infusion of cash into the economy, no jobs were created in August. As the President joked, "Shovel-ready was not as ... uh .. shovel-ready as we expected."
Yet an "infrastructure bank" rumored to be endowed with up to $30 billion, appears to be a central component of the President's jobs plan next week, and more spending on building roads and bridges is one of Big Labor's favorite subjects, too. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka this week called for America to spend $400 billion a year over 10 years on public works projects--and that money, conveniently, would directly benefit his union membership at the expense of the U.S. economy. Whether we need additional government spending on infrastructure is a debate unto itself. What is clear is that $30 billion spent over some number of years in an economy 500 times greater cannot make much difference.
The two-and-a-half-year Keynesian experiment of flooding the economy with taxpayer dollars has failed, yet the President and his union allies continue to peddle the myth that the only way to save the economy is to spend more. There's another way to go: freeing America's small businesses from the day-to-day shackles of existing over-regulation, freeing families and entrepreneurs of the threat of higher taxes, and cutting spending to eliminate the constraining fear of America's debt crisis. Zero job growth does not have to be America's reality, but changing course will mean ditching the dream that more government spending will save the day.
Even the Democrat, Liberal Media Types are Calling Obama and Amateur...
Even the Democrat/Liberal State-Run Media Types are calling Obama an amateur...and who does Piers Morgan think he is expressing his political opinions?????...Go back to Great Britain Piers and start tapping into everyone's phones illegally like you did when you were there last...
More Wasted Taxpayer Money.....what part of "ILLEGAL" does this Administration NOT UNDERSTAND?
Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 09/02/2011
Undocumented workers got billions from IRS in tax credits, audit finds
By Lisa Rein
The Internal Revenue Service allowed undocumented workers to collect $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits last year, a new audit says, almost quadruple the sum five years ago.
Although undocumented workers are not eligible for federal benefits, the report released Thursday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration concludes that federal law is ambiguous on whether these workers qualify for a tax break based on earned income called the additional child tax credit.
Taxpayers can claim this credit to reduce what they owe in taxes, often getting refunds from the government. The vagueness of federal law may have contributed to the $4.2 billion in credits, the report said.
The IRS said it lacks the authority to disallow the claims.
Wage earners who do not have Social Security numbers and are not authorized to work in the United States can use what the IRS calls individual taxpayer identification numbers. Often these result in fraudulent claims on tax returns, auditors found.
Their data showed that 72 percent of returns filed with taxpayer identification numbers claimed the child tax credit.
The audit recommended that the IRS seek clarification on the law and check the immigration status of filers with taxpayer indentificaion numbers.
IRS officials, in response to a draft of the report, agreed to consult with the Treasury Department on the law. But they said they have no legal authority to demand that filers prove their legal status when the tax agency processes returns.
Changes to tax law are partly to blame for the explosion in refunds for additional child tax credits in recent years, auditors found. Before 2001, filers needed to have three or more children to qualify — and to owe more Social Security taxes than earned income credits.
But those requirements have been eliminated and the allowable refund for each child doubled. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 also made the refund easier to get, auditors found.
Undocumented workers got billions from IRS in tax credits, audit finds
By Lisa Rein
The Internal Revenue Service allowed undocumented workers to collect $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits last year, a new audit says, almost quadruple the sum five years ago.
Although undocumented workers are not eligible for federal benefits, the report released Thursday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration concludes that federal law is ambiguous on whether these workers qualify for a tax break based on earned income called the additional child tax credit.
Taxpayers can claim this credit to reduce what they owe in taxes, often getting refunds from the government. The vagueness of federal law may have contributed to the $4.2 billion in credits, the report said.
The IRS said it lacks the authority to disallow the claims.
Wage earners who do not have Social Security numbers and are not authorized to work in the United States can use what the IRS calls individual taxpayer identification numbers. Often these result in fraudulent claims on tax returns, auditors found.
Their data showed that 72 percent of returns filed with taxpayer identification numbers claimed the child tax credit.
The audit recommended that the IRS seek clarification on the law and check the immigration status of filers with taxpayer indentificaion numbers.
IRS officials, in response to a draft of the report, agreed to consult with the Treasury Department on the law. But they said they have no legal authority to demand that filers prove their legal status when the tax agency processes returns.
Changes to tax law are partly to blame for the explosion in refunds for additional child tax credits in recent years, auditors found. Before 2001, filers needed to have three or more children to qualify — and to owe more Social Security taxes than earned income credits.
But those requirements have been eliminated and the allowable refund for each child doubled. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 also made the refund easier to get, auditors found.
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