[ And idiots like Vitterd, DaFinch and AkPhiDelt are going to vote for this cluster-fuck again... ]
Economy lost more than 200,000 small businesses in recession, Census shows
Published July 26, 2012
FoxNews.com
More than 200,000 small businesses vanished between early 2008 and 2010 -- a period covering the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath -- taking with them in excess of 3 million jobs, according to Census figures which illustrate the depth of the country's economic hole.
Data is only available until 2010, but the U.S. Census Bureau stats reveal a startling slide for America's businesses. While the country boasted 5.14 million firms with up to 99 employees as of March 2008, that number dropped to 4.92 million by March 2010 - representing a loss of roughly 223,800 businesses and 3.1 million workers.
The Obama administration notes that the trend has since reversed, and that the country has seen 28 consecutive months of private-sector job growth.
But a recent slowdown in private-sector hiring has raised questions about the direction and strength of that recovery. And amid an escalating campaign trail battle about President Obama's recent remarks on businesses, a new poll shows American business owners are harboring serious doubts.
The Gallup poll released Thursday showed business owners are among those with the most negative views of the Obama administration. The national poll showed just 35 percent of them approve of Obama's job performance, while 59 percent disapprove. Among all workers, participants in the survey were split 47-47 percent.
A definitive figure on how many small businesses closed during the recession is hard to come by. While the recession technically started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, the Census figures only count the number of businesses starting in March of each year. If one looks at the stretch between March 2007 and March 2010, the loss of businesses with 99 workers or fewer is even more pronounced -- with a loss of 273,316 firms. The definition of a "small business" is also flexible, but FoxNews.com looked at those with fewer than 100 workers.
The Obama administration frequently says that despite modest growth since 2010, the economy still has a long way to go to recover from the pain of the recession.
Republicans, though, have hammered the administration for policies they claim have hurt, or will hurt, America's businesses including environmental regulation and the health care overhaul.
The president's recent "you didn't build that" remark has also stoked accusations that Obama is giving too much credit to government and relying too much on government to revive the economy.
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help," Obama said earlier this month. "There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
The president claims his remarks have been taken out of context and that he was just referring to the fact that businesses didn't build roads and bridges.
Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told Fox News that Obama has a record of fighting for small businesses, and he was only talking about the importance of working together.
"The proof is really in the pudding here. What has he done? What does his record say about how much he cares about making sure small businesses and entrepreneurs ... are getting the help that they need?"
But for days, Romney and other Republicans have hammered the president and claimed he was talking about the businesses themselves.
The Romney campaign released two new web videos Thursday focusing on the remarks. In one, a Nevada business owner challenges Obama over the comments. The other includes several business owners sharing their stories about businesses they started.
"I think the reason that the Obama campaign is responding ... is because they believe that he screwed up and really told the truth about what he truly believes," Romney senior adviser Kevin Madden told Fox News.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...sses-in-recession-census-shows/#ixzz21wJ54IBV
Economy lost more than 200,000 small businesses in recession, Census shows
Published July 26, 2012
FoxNews.com
More than 200,000 small businesses vanished between early 2008 and 2010 -- a period covering the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath -- taking with them in excess of 3 million jobs, according to Census figures which illustrate the depth of the country's economic hole.
Data is only available until 2010, but the U.S. Census Bureau stats reveal a startling slide for America's businesses. While the country boasted 5.14 million firms with up to 99 employees as of March 2008, that number dropped to 4.92 million by March 2010 - representing a loss of roughly 223,800 businesses and 3.1 million workers.
The Obama administration notes that the trend has since reversed, and that the country has seen 28 consecutive months of private-sector job growth.
But a recent slowdown in private-sector hiring has raised questions about the direction and strength of that recovery. And amid an escalating campaign trail battle about President Obama's recent remarks on businesses, a new poll shows American business owners are harboring serious doubts.
The Gallup poll released Thursday showed business owners are among those with the most negative views of the Obama administration. The national poll showed just 35 percent of them approve of Obama's job performance, while 59 percent disapprove. Among all workers, participants in the survey were split 47-47 percent.
A definitive figure on how many small businesses closed during the recession is hard to come by. While the recession technically started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, the Census figures only count the number of businesses starting in March of each year. If one looks at the stretch between March 2007 and March 2010, the loss of businesses with 99 workers or fewer is even more pronounced -- with a loss of 273,316 firms. The definition of a "small business" is also flexible, but FoxNews.com looked at those with fewer than 100 workers.
The Obama administration frequently says that despite modest growth since 2010, the economy still has a long way to go to recover from the pain of the recession.
Republicans, though, have hammered the administration for policies they claim have hurt, or will hurt, America's businesses including environmental regulation and the health care overhaul.
The president's recent "you didn't build that" remark has also stoked accusations that Obama is giving too much credit to government and relying too much on government to revive the economy.
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help," Obama said earlier this month. "There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
The president claims his remarks have been taken out of context and that he was just referring to the fact that businesses didn't build roads and bridges.
Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told Fox News that Obama has a record of fighting for small businesses, and he was only talking about the importance of working together.
"The proof is really in the pudding here. What has he done? What does his record say about how much he cares about making sure small businesses and entrepreneurs ... are getting the help that they need?"
But for days, Romney and other Republicans have hammered the president and claimed he was talking about the businesses themselves.
The Romney campaign released two new web videos Thursday focusing on the remarks. In one, a Nevada business owner challenges Obama over the comments. The other includes several business owners sharing their stories about businesses they started.
"I think the reason that the Obama campaign is responding ... is because they believe that he screwed up and really told the truth about what he truly believes," Romney senior adviser Kevin Madden told Fox News.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...sses-in-recession-census-shows/#ixzz21wJ54IBV
She Feels Your Pain – Michelle Obama Sports $6,800 Jacket to London Soiree …Update: Jacket Cost More Than What Average US Family Makes in 1 Month
Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, July 29, 2012, 7:51 AM
The liberal media was all upset that “elitist” Ann Romney wore a $990 top during a May interview on “This Morning.” Yet this same media cheered the fashion and style of Queen Michelle Obama whose taste in sweaters cost her over $2,000 a pop.
But, yesterday Michelle Obama outdid herself.
Michelle Obama wore silver-and-white J Mendel for the evening soiree at Buckingham Palace. (Daily Mail)
The Embroidered Cap Sleeve Jacket costs $6,800.
Just a drop in the bucket.
Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, July 29, 2012, 7:51 AM
The liberal media was all upset that “elitist” Ann Romney wore a $990 top during a May interview on “This Morning.” Yet this same media cheered the fashion and style of Queen Michelle Obama whose taste in sweaters cost her over $2,000 a pop.
But, yesterday Michelle Obama outdid herself.
Michelle Obama wore silver-and-white J Mendel for the evening soiree at Buckingham Palace. (Daily Mail)
The Embroidered Cap Sleeve Jacket costs $6,800.
Just a drop in the bucket.
Let's Be Clear, The U.S. Economy Is Just Awful
+ Comment now
"The latest GDP numbers tell a terrible story, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The answer is 4% growth. Here’s how to get it."
Our economy “continues to heal,” said the acting secretary, Rebecca Blank. We’ve now had “12 quarters of consecutive GDP growth.” Anyway, if we’re not growing much, it’s not our fault, since the economy faces “headwinds,” namely a decline in state and local spending and those pesky problems in Europe. Therefore, we’ve got to push for President Obama’s policies “by ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas,” etc., etc.
The acting secretary also trumpeted upward GDP revisions for the last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. She didn’t mention downward revisions for the first half of 2010 that brought GDP to a little over 2%. Prior readings were nearly 4%
The truth is that the latest statistics show an economy that is just awful. When President Obama was elected, the unemployment rate was 6.8%. When he took the oath, it was 7.8%. The next month, the rate cracked the 8% mark and has been there ever since.
This is the worst recovery from a recession in at least 30 years – and, according to some, including Stanford’s Edward Lazear, the worst in all American history. While apologists argue that the recovery’s anemia is a function of the recession’s severity, they haven’t read history.
Normally, a sharp, deep recession leads to a sharp, big recovery. The analogy is a rubber band: the more it’s stretched, the more powerfully it snaps back. Shallow recessions breed shallow recoveries. Normally, the economy regains everything it loses in a recession, and then some. If it loses a lot, then it will typically gain a lot. That’s not happening this time around.
The recession officially ended in June 2009. After last week’s revisions, the economy’s decline in 2008 and 2009 has been calculated at 3.1% instead of 3.5%, a bit shallower than before but still devastating. In 2010, the effect of stimulus spending turns out to be even worse than we had thought. Growth in that year was revised down last week to 2.4% from 3% by the Commerce Department (though you’d never know it from Ms. Blank’s press release). Growth in 2011 was revised upward by one-tenth of a point to a miserable 1.8%, and that appears to be the path on which we are stuck. Growth from April to June this year was just 1.5%.
These minuscule numbers would seem to reduce to fantasy the title of the book the Bush Institute has just published,The 4% Solution. The book makes the case that the U.S. can increase its rate of growth from a post-World-War-II average of 3% to a sustainable, real rate of 4%. Can we really do it?
Again, it’s normally not much of a problem for an economy, coming out of a bad recession, to accelerate to 4%. For example, we grew at 5.4% in 1976 after the 1974-75 recession and at 7.2% in 1984 after the 1982 recession. But the best we’ve done so far in a calendar year after this one is 2.4%.
So the United States really has two problems: first, it hasn’t recovered sufficiently to get back aboard the trend line after the 2008-09 recession, and, second, even if we do have a recovery spurt, we don’t have the policies to get us to sustainable 4% — much less 3% — growth. The Congressional Budget Office, whose projections have been way too optimistic over the past few years, has forecast 2% growth for 2012 and 1.1% for 2013
But we could have policies that will get us growing again. Growth of 4% is a blood-quickening aspiration, but it is also a practical goal.
Those policies begin with two principles:
First, growth must be the focus of all economic policy. Growth lowers unemployment, lowers deficits and debt, raises opportunity. Every policy change should be judged by the question, “Does it increase growth?” If not, forget it.
Second, the role of government is to help create an environment that fosters growth. Government cannot, on a long-term basis, create growth or jobs. But it can enact the policies that allow the private sector to create them.
The 4% Solution is a serious, non-partisan book with a foreword by President Bush and 21 chapters, five by Nobel Prize-winning economists and the rest by experts in their fields, that propose ways to get to 4% growth. In interviews about the book, I have been asked frequently what we should do first. What gets the biggest, fastest bang for the effort?
Here are my answers:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesglassman/2012/07/31/lets-be-clear-the-u-s-economy-is-just-awful/
+ Comment now
"The latest GDP numbers tell a terrible story, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The answer is 4% growth. Here’s how to get it."
Our economy “continues to heal,” said the acting secretary, Rebecca Blank. We’ve now had “12 quarters of consecutive GDP growth.” Anyway, if we’re not growing much, it’s not our fault, since the economy faces “headwinds,” namely a decline in state and local spending and those pesky problems in Europe. Therefore, we’ve got to push for President Obama’s policies “by ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas,” etc., etc.
The acting secretary also trumpeted upward GDP revisions for the last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. She didn’t mention downward revisions for the first half of 2010 that brought GDP to a little over 2%. Prior readings were nearly 4%
The truth is that the latest statistics show an economy that is just awful. When President Obama was elected, the unemployment rate was 6.8%. When he took the oath, it was 7.8%. The next month, the rate cracked the 8% mark and has been there ever since.
This is the worst recovery from a recession in at least 30 years – and, according to some, including Stanford’s Edward Lazear, the worst in all American history. While apologists argue that the recovery’s anemia is a function of the recession’s severity, they haven’t read history.
Normally, a sharp, deep recession leads to a sharp, big recovery. The analogy is a rubber band: the more it’s stretched, the more powerfully it snaps back. Shallow recessions breed shallow recoveries. Normally, the economy regains everything it loses in a recession, and then some. If it loses a lot, then it will typically gain a lot. That’s not happening this time around.
The recession officially ended in June 2009. After last week’s revisions, the economy’s decline in 2008 and 2009 has been calculated at 3.1% instead of 3.5%, a bit shallower than before but still devastating. In 2010, the effect of stimulus spending turns out to be even worse than we had thought. Growth in that year was revised down last week to 2.4% from 3% by the Commerce Department (though you’d never know it from Ms. Blank’s press release). Growth in 2011 was revised upward by one-tenth of a point to a miserable 1.8%, and that appears to be the path on which we are stuck. Growth from April to June this year was just 1.5%.
These minuscule numbers would seem to reduce to fantasy the title of the book the Bush Institute has just published,The 4% Solution. The book makes the case that the U.S. can increase its rate of growth from a post-World-War-II average of 3% to a sustainable, real rate of 4%. Can we really do it?
Again, it’s normally not much of a problem for an economy, coming out of a bad recession, to accelerate to 4%. For example, we grew at 5.4% in 1976 after the 1974-75 recession and at 7.2% in 1984 after the 1982 recession. But the best we’ve done so far in a calendar year after this one is 2.4%.
So the United States really has two problems: first, it hasn’t recovered sufficiently to get back aboard the trend line after the 2008-09 recession, and, second, even if we do have a recovery spurt, we don’t have the policies to get us to sustainable 4% — much less 3% — growth. The Congressional Budget Office, whose projections have been way too optimistic over the past few years, has forecast 2% growth for 2012 and 1.1% for 2013
But we could have policies that will get us growing again. Growth of 4% is a blood-quickening aspiration, but it is also a practical goal.
Those policies begin with two principles:
First, growth must be the focus of all economic policy. Growth lowers unemployment, lowers deficits and debt, raises opportunity. Every policy change should be judged by the question, “Does it increase growth?” If not, forget it.
Second, the role of government is to help create an environment that fosters growth. Government cannot, on a long-term basis, create growth or jobs. But it can enact the policies that allow the private sector to create them.
The 4% Solution is a serious, non-partisan book with a foreword by President Bush and 21 chapters, five by Nobel Prize-winning economists and the rest by experts in their fields, that propose ways to get to 4% growth. In interviews about the book, I have been asked frequently what we should do first. What gets the biggest, fastest bang for the effort?
Here are my answers:
- Enact comprehensive tax reform: lower rates, broaden the base by eliminating deductions and exemptions, tax consumption rather than income and investment, and make the Tax Code simpler. These ideas have broad support among all kinds of economists. There is a deal here that parties can reach. (Short of broad reform, do two things: extend current tax rates for 10 years and cut the corporate rate to 20%.)
- Cut government spending. Several of the book’s contributors, citing important research, show that federal spending cuts increase growth in the long run by leaving more dollars in the pockets of businesses and individuals. (David Malpass has a great idea: get rid of the debt ceiling and replace it by a statutory glide path to get the U.S. to much lower deficit/GDP and debt/GDP ratio in five years.)
- Expand energy resource development at home. Abundant energy (and the U.S. has more such resources than any other country) lowers the cost of economic growth. (Simple steps: approve the Keystone pipeline and make it clear government won’t stand in the way of fracking for natural gas.)
- Rationalize immigration policy. Stop bringing smart foreigners to the U.S. to be educated and then sending them back to their home countries. If they stayed, they could be among our greatest sources of entrepreneurial strength. (Immediately, offer a green card to any foreigner who gets a graduate degree in the United States.)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesglassman/2012/07/31/lets-be-clear-the-u-s-economy-is-just-awful/
Ann Romney slammed for $990 Shirt, Michelle Obama praised for $6,800 jacket
Back in May, Ann Romney, wife of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, wore a $990 Reed Krakoff silk shirt for a media appearance. The item of clothing set off a media firestorm, with the Romneys widely accused of being “out of touch” with average Americans.
In particular, the Washington Post wrote that the $990 blouse “will not help her husband change those perceptions, no matter how many Laundromat photo ops are on the campaign’s itinerary.”
Fast forward to last Friday, when First Lady Michelle Obama attended an Olympics reception for heads of state at Buckingham Palace, donning a J. Mendel cap sleeve jacket from the 2013 Resort collection.
The price-tag? $6,800.
This time, the Washington Post simply described the intricacies of the jacket and noted that Mrs. Obama has previously been criticized for “not dressing up enough for Queen Elizabeth II, so she stepped up her game.” No snide remarks, no outrage over the cost, no suggestion she was “out of touch.”
“The media’s overabundant love affair with the Obamas has become increasingly blatant as this election draws nearer. Scrutinizing Mrs. Romney for a fashion choice that cost considerably less than that of the First Lady is yet another example of the media being purely sanctimonious,” former political publicist Angie Meyer told FoxNews.com. “The media continues to relish their roles as liberal bullies, and have relentlessly bullied the Romneys from the beginning. It is pure hypocrisy at its finest.”
Glenn Selig of The Publicity Agency concurred.
“The media will not stay quiet on the issue because wealth remains a big issue with the Romneys. It is not his fault that he's wealthy, but the media is portraying it as a liability,” Selig said.
Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture for Media Research Center in Washington DC, said it’s “just the latest example of a consistent media theme that somehow Romney is too wealthy and out of touch because he's a millionaire. Except of course that Obama is also a millionaire. “
Some also highlighted the apparent hypocrisy on Twitter. “And you thought the Romneys were out of touch?” tweeted one, while another wondered who had to pay for the almost $7,000 dress, and another balked that the “jacket would put a lot of food on the table of one of the 25M unemployed people in USA.”
Not everyone’s nose was out of joint, however. Media commentator Jenn Hoffman told FoxNews.com that “Americans need to face the fact that with our current system, politicians need to have money. That is how they get into the office in the first place. If you are near the White House, you have access to serious cash and much of that cash is spent on honing your image.”
Mark Joseph, producer of “Wild Card: The Promise & Peril of Sarah Palin,” added that “Mrs. Romney's wardrobe expenses are certainly fair game, but so are Mrs. Obama's, and political reporters have got to do a better job of being even-handed."
Back in May, Ann Romney, wife of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, wore a $990 Reed Krakoff silk shirt for a media appearance. The item of clothing set off a media firestorm, with the Romneys widely accused of being “out of touch” with average Americans.
In particular, the Washington Post wrote that the $990 blouse “will not help her husband change those perceptions, no matter how many Laundromat photo ops are on the campaign’s itinerary.”
Fast forward to last Friday, when First Lady Michelle Obama attended an Olympics reception for heads of state at Buckingham Palace, donning a J. Mendel cap sleeve jacket from the 2013 Resort collection.
The price-tag? $6,800.
This time, the Washington Post simply described the intricacies of the jacket and noted that Mrs. Obama has previously been criticized for “not dressing up enough for Queen Elizabeth II, so she stepped up her game.” No snide remarks, no outrage over the cost, no suggestion she was “out of touch.”
“The media’s overabundant love affair with the Obamas has become increasingly blatant as this election draws nearer. Scrutinizing Mrs. Romney for a fashion choice that cost considerably less than that of the First Lady is yet another example of the media being purely sanctimonious,” former political publicist Angie Meyer told FoxNews.com. “The media continues to relish their roles as liberal bullies, and have relentlessly bullied the Romneys from the beginning. It is pure hypocrisy at its finest.”
Glenn Selig of The Publicity Agency concurred.
“The media will not stay quiet on the issue because wealth remains a big issue with the Romneys. It is not his fault that he's wealthy, but the media is portraying it as a liability,” Selig said.
Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture for Media Research Center in Washington DC, said it’s “just the latest example of a consistent media theme that somehow Romney is too wealthy and out of touch because he's a millionaire. Except of course that Obama is also a millionaire. “
Some also highlighted the apparent hypocrisy on Twitter. “And you thought the Romneys were out of touch?” tweeted one, while another wondered who had to pay for the almost $7,000 dress, and another balked that the “jacket would put a lot of food on the table of one of the 25M unemployed people in USA.”
Not everyone’s nose was out of joint, however. Media commentator Jenn Hoffman told FoxNews.com that “Americans need to face the fact that with our current system, politicians need to have money. That is how they get into the office in the first place. If you are near the White House, you have access to serious cash and much of that cash is spent on honing your image.”
Mark Joseph, producer of “Wild Card: The Promise & Peril of Sarah Palin,” added that “Mrs. Romney's wardrobe expenses are certainly fair game, but so are Mrs. Obama's, and political reporters have got to do a better job of being even-handed."
