Unemployment Idea

So this idea came to me a few days ago, and it strikes me as odd that this hasn’t been tried.

It’s very simple, and I can’t help but thinking that it will be very cheap AND increase employment in Temp Agencies, even ignoring the companies that contract with them. Here is the idea…

Every time someone applies for unemployment the unemployment office for that state takes down all of the person’s work experience and refers that person’s name and job experience straight to a list of approved Temp Agencies. By approved agencies I mean they do not have a significant number of negative charges such as harrassment, embezzlement etc. against them (yes I actually know of an agency with some of those problems).

The Temp Agencies then have an increased number of names going to them to fill with their contracted companies, and will most likely also need to hire more people themselves to deal with the massive increase in referrals. Since I know of quite a few companies that use temp personnel as a way of selecting qualified people for full-time positions this then helps unemployed people get a foot in the door.

Of course, if the person turns down a Temp job they are qualified for they would then no long qualify for unemployment. If the Temp job pays less than what they would be receiving in unemployment (for whatever reason) the state government could then make up the rest of the tab until that person finds a permanent position at the company (and/or until they would no longer qualify for unemployment due to time), or is referred to a higher paying Temp position.

Curious what other people think, and how well you think it might work.

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America, Going Forward

You would think that people would be smart enough to notice which countries in the world are actually recovering. Canada and Switzerland. What’s their corporate tax rate again? Oh yea, 16%. Meanwhile our political “leaders” here keep wanting to raise ours to over 40%. Even China’s corporate tax is only 25%.

We’re not trying to survive 8 years of Obama, we’re trying to survive 16 years of socialist policies (I’m looking at you GW, and the Republicans that supported that crud) destroying our national economy. A nation does not survive $1 trillion/year deficits for very long. Has nobody been paying attention to countries like Greece where they have all these same programs our politicians have been trying to implement for the last 20 years? CALIFORNIA ALONE has more debt than Greece does.

If Obama had the guts to return to the Clinton tax rates and budget I would be cheering for him myself, but he doesn’t, and neither does the rest of the Democrat party. Everybody forgets that Clinton got lucky with the technology boom during his term, but they also forget that it was the Republicans that wrote “his” surplus budget. At least Clinton had the guts to work with the other side rather than demonizing them for disagreeing with him.

Obama will not work with Republicans, and neither will Harry Reid, who straight told the world that he would never work with Romney if Romney had won.

History’s Relevance To Today’s Election

“The media misconception today is that what we need to speed up economic recovery is to end gridlock in Washington and have bipartisan intervention in the economy. However plausible that may sound, it is contradicted repeatedly by history.

Unemployment was never in double digits in any of the 12 months following the stock market crash of 1929. Only after politicians started intervening did unemployment reach double digits — and stay in double digits throughout the 1930s.

There is nothing mysterious about an economy recovering on its own. Employers usually have incentives to employ and workers have incentives to look for jobs. Lenders have incentives to lend and borrowers have incentives to borrow — if politicians do not create needless complications and uncertainties.”

Thomas Sowell

History, I’ve noticed, is an annoying thing to some people. It presents facts that cannot be argued against, when it’s actually presented truthfully in the first place. People constantly attribute the post-Depression recovery to FDR, yet they always ignore the fact that it carried on even through a major World War because of his policies (and his constant fighting to ignore the Constitution by the way). What ended the Depression in reality was actually the massive number of people returning from war, combined with the influx of immigrants from wartorn Europe and one other major item… The fact that after WWII we were the only industrialized nation in the world to survive unscathed. We had all of our factories, nearly all of our international shipping, and everyone with real skills was coming to us because we allowed financial advancement for those who were not part of the European “in” crowd.

Our current president is claiming his policies have created 5+ million jobs, while ignoring the jobs destroyed because of his war on coal, or the ones not created because of his policies such as numerous small business owners (and even large corporations) who will not add jobs because nobody knows exactly what he will do in the future to tear away the wealth they have earned through hard work (nevermind the Keystone pipeline’s 10,000 or so permanent jobs because he wanted to make his buddy Warren Buffet a bit more cash).

If President Obama’s policies were so great with those millions of created jobs then we would not be seeing HIGHER unemployment today than when he went into office. If the increased oil production we see today (all from private lands, just so you know) were having such a huge effect then we would not be seeing gas at an average of $1.50 higher nationally than when he was sworn into office (national average at the time was $1.84/gallon). We would not be seeing national employment numbers down at 67% (this number includes people retired as well as those no longer looking for work) because so many people have stopped looking for work. We would not see 47 MILLION people on food stamps. We would not see 18.1 million people (~5.8% of the total population) applying for disability because they have no other way of getting income.

Amusingly we have former President Clinton reminding us we wouldn’t want a liar in the Office of the President, mere weeks after the Bhengazi cover-up boondoggle where people all up and down the current administration have been lying over who knew what and when, slowly releasing information hoping people won’t piece it together or ask any more questions (Sandy helped distract people from that). Heck, if President Obama is such a great leader then why is his direct intervention in the Sandy cleanup producing results similar to what Bush got blamed for during Sandy when he didn’t get in the way? Nevermind his buddy Bloomberg turning the New York National Guard away from helping in NYC because he doesn’t want anyone by NYPD to have guns in his city.

Military Support Versus Its Lack

I think this picture about says it all when it comes to military support.

Meanwhile in New York state we see how the local Democrat run government views National Guardsmen trying to help with disaster relief vs their dog and pony shows. They kicked them out of the armory to hold a bloody Victoria’s Secret show…

Good job Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg, good job.

Prediction Models

So, for my usual pre-election amusement I was perusing various prediction models and ran across this one after a friend pointed me to this article talking about having it updated with current data (rather than data from back in May/Jun). What surprises me about it is that after looking through the other models presented this year the two professors (Kenneth Bickers and Michael Berry of the University of Colorado) actually did what should have been done with every model. Instead of using polls (which are volatile and varied depending on how skewed they are toward one side or the other) they used a number of economic issues and looked at each state individually along with a number of historical data points.

I won’t bother explaining the entire thing, they did an excellent job without me butchering their work. The end result after the recent updates however has Romney winning in a landslide 330 to 208 in the electoral college, and their model even predicted the Al Gore popular vote vs GW electoral vote win (well, showed the same results using data from that election). They’ve gone all the way back to 1980 and been correct, so I’d say even with their admitted +/- scale of 28 electoral votes that still puts Romney WAY ahead of President Obama.

It’s a good read, and they explain how their system works, I recommend it.

Romney’s Releasing TWENTY Years of Tax Info

The title says it all, along with this notice from the Romney campaign site. People can stop complaining that they haven’t released the 10 years of tax information yet.

Go Taxmageddon!

For those who think Obamacare was a great success (and those who don’t realize all of the tax increases coming down the pipe) here is some suggested reading for you. The article says it all.

IG Report Incomplete

This story says it all. The White House blocked the request for interview by the IG of one of the key players in the scandal. Also, if you read the report and then went back and looked at Eric Holder’s statements while in front of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee you’d see a serious problem between the two.

“We reviewed the wiretap affidavits in both Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious and concluded that the affidavits in both cases included information that would have caused a prosecutor who was focused on the question of investigative tactics, particularly one who was already sensitive to the issue of ‘gun walking,’ to have questions about ATF’s conduct of the investigations,” the report said.

Holder said at the time: “I’ve looked at these affidavits. I’ve looked at these summaries. There’s nothing in those affidavits as I’ve reviewed them that indicates that gunwalking was allowed. Let’s get to the bottom line — so I didn’t see anything in there that would put on notice a person who was reviewing either at the line level or at the deputy assistant attorney general level, that you would have knowledge of the fact that these inappropriate tactics were being used.”

Whole article pointing this out is here.

Hmmm, nothing huh? Only with a Democrat in office does the MSM ignore things like this.

Insurance and the Affordable Healthcare Act

I feel kind of bad pointing out the missing information to a 12-year old, but since his letter was printed on Huffington Post I felt that some things should be clarified.

First of all, I feel bad that his sister was born with serious medical conditions, it’s not something anyone really has any control over. The thing is, when the letter starts pointing out why his family lost coverage it shows the lack of information he has, either because his parents never explained it to him, or his parents (and most people I know for that matter) don’t even realize or think about. The thing about using company policies is that you run the risk of losing coverage if you lose your job, thus putting yourself in the situation of having to find another insurance carrier that doesn’t want to be put under the additional financial burden of dealing with pre-existing conditions (or didn’t before the AHCA, but more on that later).

Companies have been using insurance benefits for years as a way to lure in potential employees, and it has gotten to the point that many people just expect the company they work for to include healthcare benefits as part of their pay (many would actually let you opt out in return for a slightly higher paycheck btw). Most people never even thought of the risk inherent in such a system if they were to lose their job or go find a better one for themselves elsewhere, having to go to a new carrier. What they COULD have done was purchase a private insurance policy. That would have cost them more money true, but it would also have given them the freedom of not feeling chained to a single company in order to retain coverage. Of course, as more and more government regulation got involved it also forced those payments upward to make it harder for individuals to pay for their own plans.

Because of the AHCA requiring insurance companies to cover people even if they have pre-existing conditions people have been watching their insurance premiums go up because the insurance companies now have to cover people for conditions that they have never paid in to have covered. And it’s only going to get worse as people opt to not pay for insurance coverage for years until a condition appears or accident occurs since most small businesses do not employ the 50+ people requiring them under the law to provide health insurance. Also, due to the ever increasing coverage costs you’re unlikely to see those same small businesses offering coverage for their employees even with the tax breaks they are provided because it still won’t cover the majority of the increased cost. The AHCA also includes such stupidity as requiring all females in a household have birth control coverage on the plan, regardless of age or medical condition (pre-pubescent, menopause, etc) which increase costs even more, and it does not make allowances for an individual’s religious beliefs.

For anyone wondering why I actually go to a place like HuffPo, it’s useful for seeing what false or incomplete information the other side is pushing.

Busy Busy

Dang it’s been a busy month, and I’m not even done yet. Will get more updated posts after I clear the current set of engagements I already have on my plate.