President Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address

Governor Palin's address at the National Tea Party Convention yesterday had striking similarities to many of President Reagan's themes. One that both Palin and Reagan stressed was the need to ask for divine help. Another was the belief that real heroes are found among common Americans. It is they, not government, who will fix our current woes, with God's help. And the fixing must begin in government as it begins in individual and family life: living within our budget and not mortgaging our children's future by borrowing and debt.

Reagan's first inaugural address speaks to the same issues we have today.

UPDATE: Here's Sarah Palin's Tea Party address:



H/T Conservatives4Palin (for the Reagan video link)

824,000 Jobs Will Disappear on February 5th

So, reports Bloomberg. That means that about 824,000 jobs that have been reported as lost recently will be presumed to have been lost 10 to 22 months ago. So, the really bad news was THEN not NOW. Thus, from April 2008 to March 2009, though we thought we had lost 4.8 million jobs, we really lost 5.6 million. Wow, we should have been crying a lot more back then!

You see the Bureau of Labor Statistics is using a, er, "revision" modeling program that "assumes most of the time jobs created at new companies make up for losses at companies that close." It also assumes the economy and employment are bound to grow.

In other words, employment reality, unlike with the global climate, is assumed to remain stable to slightly positive no matter what happens in our little anthropogenic environment. So, in climate terms what reporting agencies need to do is spread the global warming (or cooling) back so it won't have inconvenient waves and troughs.

And the really cool thing is that it will take another year or so for current figures to be revised up or down to align with BLS assumed reality. Which means right now that the model has to account for 824,000 jobs lost in the April 2008 to March 2009 cycle, by assuming that an offsetting 990,000 jobs were created between April 2009 and March 2010.

Unfortunately, if BLS assumptions don't jive with job reality, we may finally find out in 2011 that we didn't really gain almost a million jobs. Maybe we even lost some. Which will mean a another huge negative revision for April 2009 to March 2010 with an even larger (1.8 million?) assumed gain in jobs from April 2010 to March 2011.

Until employment reality starts to line up with BLS assumptions, the job reporting swings could get kind of wild.

H/T OregonGuy

Ronald Reagan--One of Our Greatest Presidents

Today is Ronald Reagan's birthday. He was born 99 years ago on February 6, 1911.

Reagan's last day as president was 21 years ago. During his eight years as president Reagan set the course of winning the four decades long Cold War that had distressed the seven presidents preceding him. All, as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher noted, "without a shot being fired,"

His economic policies also brought the country out of the deep recession of the Carter years. Some statistics on Carter's economy and Reagan's:

unemployment:
7.18% - Carter (1980 - last year in office)
5.49% - Reagan (1988 - last year in office)

inflation:
13.58% - Carter (1980 - last year in office)
4.08% - Reagan (1988 - last year in office)

misery index:
20.76 - Carter (1980 - last year in office)
9.57 - Reagan (1988 - last year in office)

Just for comparison with the economic problems Reagan faced, the misery index for George W. Bush's last year and Barack Obama's first year were:
9.61 - Bush (2008 - last year in office)
8.92 - Obama (2009 - first year in office)

Reagan confronted a misery index more than twice what either Bush or Obama have contended with. The economy was in a mess after Jimmy Carter's presidency.

Reagan had to deal with a nation in economic crisis as well as the Cold War with the prospect of nuclear destruction of the U.S. and the world. No other president has overcome such a dire threat to the nation and the world.

Ronald Reagan is already regarded by historians as one of the top 10 presidents. As political biases fade with the years, I predict he will rise to the top 4 along with Washington, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

Washington and Lincoln have to be in the top two because the nation's existence was at stake. FDR faced a worse economy than Reagan, but the military threat to the U.S. was not as great in World War II (military attacks) as it was during the Cold War (total physical destruction). And over 400,000 Americans lost their lives in the course of winning World War II not to mention strict economic rationing imposed on the entire nation. In that context, Reagan's winning the Cold War without a shot being fired and with a flourishing civilian economy is quite an accomplishment.

His political critics called him a B-grade actor and laughed at his falling asleep in meetings and lack of ability to spew out facts and statistics. But Ronald Reagan had courage, insight and wisdom that none of them had. And he had vision. Fortunately for all of us, he (and we) have had the last laugh.

A Few Photos of Vista House and the Gorge

I went up to Portland Women's Forum Viewpoint a couple of times last week and got some nice photos. Tuesday, nearing sunset, the lighting was incredible.





Wednesday the moon peeked out of the clouds over Vista House for about 50 seconds.



Mighty pretty country!

Oregon Again #1--in Unemployment Claims Increase

The Associated Press reports that Oregon has again garnered the dubious distinction of leading the states in highest increase in jobless claims in the U.S.

Among the states, Oregon reported the largest increase in claims, with 4,336. Puerto Rico and Hawaii also reported increases.

And indeed, according to today's Oregon Employment Department release, Oregon's jobless claims went up almost 1% again last week, after climbing more than 1% just the week before.

More than 217,000 claimed benefits, up more than 2,000 from the previous week and more than 65,000 from the same time a year ago.

A tiny bit of positive news is that the average unemployment check dropped $2.00 from the week before's $295.43 to last week's $293.39.

H/T Drudge Report

48% Increase in Oregonians Receiving Unemployment

More than 215,000 Oregonians were receiving unemployment as of January 23, 2010. This compares with about 145,000 in the same week of January, 2009. That's a 48% increase in a year.

It's also up 1% from the previous week's 212,249.

On the positive side, telephone wait time at unemployment insurance centers has dropped from an average of 40 minutes last year to 10 minutes this year.

US Judge Grants Political Asylum to German Couple Facing Persecution

Because of official government policy which views homeschoolers as a "parallel society" that needs to be stamped out, Germany is persecuting homeschoolers not only with excessive fines and imprisonment but by taking their children.

"'There is no safety for homeschoolers in Germany,' [Mike] Donnelly [staff attorney and director of international relations for Home School Legal Defense Associaton] said. 'The two highest courts in Germany have ruled that it is acceptable for the German government to ‘stamp out’ homeschoolers as some kind of ‘parallel society.’ The reasoning is flawed. The fact is that homeschoolers are not a parallel society. Valid research shows that homeschoolers excel academically and socially. German courts are simply ignoring the truth that exists all over the world where homeschooling is practiced. They need to look beyond their own borders.'"

The Associated Press reports that a German couple threatened with the loss of their children was recently granted political asylum by a U.S. immigration judge in Tennessee.

Uwe Romeike, his wife and five children fled to the U.S. after being hit with fines totaling about $10,000 in the space of two years. Worse than the financial impact was the threat that the German state would seize the Romeike's children. So the Romeike's sought asylum in the U.S. in 2008.

German law requires that children attend a state approved school whether public or private. Even though the quality of the children's education was never an issue, in October 2006 German officials came to the Romeike home and forced the three oldest children to attend public school.

Unfortunately, the threat from the German government to stamp out homeschooling has already resulted in the removal of another homeschooling family's children.

This isn’t the only case of a German family facing the wrath of state sponsored schools negating the rights of parents to guide their own children’s education. In 2009 the Wunderlich family had their children seized by French officials at the behest of German authorities for the family’s violation of official German schooling policies.

Though the French are cooperating with the German crackdown, the ruling by U.S. Judge Lawrence Burman has put an obstacle in the path of the German attempt to break up German homeschool families.

The echoes of German statism of the 1930's and 40's in this policy are a bit too real for comfort.