Recent Employment Numbers Are A Lie

February 6, 2012

USA Watchdog

By Greg Hunter

The most recent unemployment number is a total lie, and that lie was repeated all over the mainstream media (MSM). Two sins were committed here, and I don’t know which one is worse. The report was a sham, and the MSM reported that information without a single question about its accuracy. In a story carried across the MSM spectrum, the Associated Press said, “In a long-awaited surge of hiring, companies added 243,000 jobs in January – across the economy, up and down the pay scale and far more than just about anyone expected. Unemployment fell to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years.” The report went on to say, “At the same time, the proportion of the population working or looking for work is its lowest in almost three decades. The length and depth of the recession have discouraged millions of people from looking for jobs. The better news of the past couple months has not yet encouraged most of them to start searching again.”

Here’s a headline for you. If it were not for accounting gimmicks and what the government calls “seasonal-adjustments,” the unemployment rate would have gone up, not down! In his latest report, economist John Williams from Shadowstats.com said, “January’s unadjusted unemployment rate rose to 8.8% . . . The only difference between those numbers and the headline 243,000 January jobs gain and 8.3% unemployment rate, is how the seasonal adjustments were applied. There are serious issues with the current quality of those adjustments, and extremely small distortions in those seasonals can make big differences in the resulting headline data.”

As far as “discouraged” workers who are not looking for a job, that is total rubbish put out by the government. The real story is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) simply has stopped counting more than 1.2 million of the unemployed in its report Friday. Williams goes on to say, “The issues here suggest that the headline 8.3% unemployment for January has moved well outside the realm of common experience and credibility, into the arena of election-year political shenanigans.” Williams is such a gentleman. Please take into consideration the government’s “official” or “headline” number is only based on people being out of work for 6 months or less. If the unemployment rate was calculated the way BLS did it in 1994 and earlier, the unemployment and underemployment would be 22.5%.

Click here for the full report from USA Watchdog.

Man Fined $5,000 for Growing Vegetables

September 17, 2010

The Sovereign Independant

By The Avalon Round Table

A Georgia resident who has been an organic farmer for years is now facing $5000 dollars in fines for growing too many vegetables on his OWN land. That’s right.

Steve Miller, who has sold some of his produce at local farmers markets, as well as growing food for himself, is likely the victim of an Online Aerial Invasion of Private Property. This invasion of property is probably due to the fact that unless visited or inspected by an official, there would be no way for there to be an accurate or factual accounting of what was going on at Mr. Millers property. The question is, “Does Steve Miller legally posses a reasonable expectation of Privacy on his own Private Property?

Recent reports of Local & State Officials and Bureaucrats using online mapping software have now become mainstream tools for assessing fines and generating money for cash strapped local & state budgets. Does it seem right that anywhere that Google Maps & Bing Maps can go is legal to use as a source of information. If a person was bathing in their pool, with every expectation of privacy, and someone peeked over a fence, wouldn’t that constitute a criminal offense?

Is the expectation of privacy something the government wants to destroy altogether?

Is government today at a point where the end justifies the means? In January and February, when he received his first citations, Steve was able to get the property re-zoned allowing him to grow his garden – a right MOST AMERICANS believe he already had. The Declaration of Independence states one’s inalienable right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Isn’t growing your own personal food supply an exercise of that right to Life and Liberty? No Constitutional Government can assess any fee for exercising theseinalienable rights.

In the recent past, Victory Gardens were encouraged. They were the pride of one’s back yard, and of a Nation that was self-sufficient. The television seriesThe Victory Garden on PBS, documents gardening and provides gardening tips and features vegetable gardens as a great personal achievement.

Historically, Victory Gardens in World War II were encouraged to keep the supply of food at a maximum – and personal growing increased the industrial supply to the military.

Are people going to let this FASCIST TAKEOVER to continue – even growing a garden in the privacy of our own personal property be taken away? If the answer is NO – then what are you prepared to do about it?

You can watch the video aired on WSBTV in Georgia – County Sues Farmer for Excessive Crops

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LA Reveals Plans For $578M High School

August 23, 2010

Yahoo News

By: Christina Hoag

Next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever.

The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of “Taj Mahal” schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities.

“There’s no more of the old, windowless cinderblock schools of the ’70s where kids felt, ‘Oh, back to jail,’” said Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University, a school construction journal. “Districts want a showpiece for the community, a really impressive environment for learning.”

Not everyone is similarly enthusiastic.

“New buildings are nice, but when they’re run by the same people who’ve given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they’re a big waste of taxpayer money,” said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. “Parents aren’t fooled.”

At RFK, the features include fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex’s namesake, a manicured public park, a state-of-the-art swimming pool and preservation of pieces of the original hotel.

Partly by circumstance and partly by design, the Los Angeles Unified School District has emerged as the mogul of Taj Mahals.

The RFK complex follows on the heels of two other LA schools among the nation’s costliest — the $377 million Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008, and the $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School that debuted in 2009.

The pricey schools have come during a sensitive period for the nation’s second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation’s lowest performing.

Los Angeles is not alone, however, in building big. Some of the most expensive schools are found in low-performing districts — New York City has a $235 million campus; New Brunswick, N.J., opened a $185 million high school in January.

Nationwide, dozens of schools have surpassed $100 million with amenities including atriums, orchestra-pit auditoriums, food courts, even bamboo nooks. The extravagance has led some to wonder where the line should be drawn and whether more money should be spent on teachers.

“Architects and builders love this stuff, but there’s a little bit of a lack of discipline here,” said Mary Filardo, executive director of 21st Century School Fund in Washington, D.C., which promotes urban school construction.

Some experts say it’s not all flourish and that children learn better in more pleasant surroundings.

Many schools incorporate large windows to let in natural light and install energy-saving equipment, spending more upfront for reduced bills later. Cafeterias are getting fancier, seeking to retain students who venture off campus. Wireless Internet and other high-tech installations have become standard.

Some pricey projects have had political fallout.

After a firestorm over the $197.5 million Newton North High School in Massachusetts, Mayor David Cohen chose not to seek re-election and state Treasurer Timothy Cahill reined in school construction spending.

Now to get state funds for a new school, districts must choose among three designs costing $49 million to $64 million. “We had to bring some sense to this process,” Cahill said.

In Los Angeles, officials say the new schools were planned long before the economic pinch and are funded by $20 billion in voter-approved bonds that do not affect the educational budget.

Still, even LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines derided some of the extravagance, noting that donations should have been sought to fund the RFK project’s talking benches commemorating the site’s history.

Connie Rice, member of the district’s School Bond Oversight Committee, noted the megaschools are only three of 131 that the district is building to alleviate overcrowding. RFK “is an amazing facility,” she said. “Is it a lot of money? Yes. We didn’t like it, but they got it done.”

Construction costs at LA Unified are the second-highest in the nation — something the district blames on skyrocketing material and land prices, rigorous seismic codes and unionized labor.

James Sohn, the district’s chief facilities executive, said the megaschools were built when global raw material shortages caused costs to skyrocket to an average of $600 per square foot in 2006 and 2007 — triple the price from 2002. Costs have since eased to $350 per square foot.

On top of that, each project had its own cost drivers.

After buildings were demolished at the site of the 2,400-student Roybal school, contaminated soil, a methane gas field and an earthquake fault were discovered. A gas mitigation system cost $17 million.

Over 20 years, the project grew to encompass a dance studio with cushioned maple floors, a modern kitchen with a restaurant-quality pizza oven, a 10-acre park and teacher planning rooms between classrooms.

The 1,700-student arts school was designed as a landmark, with a stainless steel, postmodernistic tower encircled by a rollercoaster-like swirl, while the RFK site involved 15 years of litigation with historic preservationists and Donald Trump, who wanted to build the world’s tallest building there. The wrangling cost $9 million.

Methane mitigation cost $33 million and the district paid another $15 million preserving historic features, including a wall of the famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub and turning the Paul Williams-designed coffee shop into a faculty lounge.

Sohn said LA Unified has reached the end of its Taj Mahal building spree. “These are definitely the exceptions,” he said. “We don’t anticipate schools costing hundreds of millions of dollars in the future.”

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Consumer Confidence Falls, Lowest Since January

July 27, 2010

CNBC

By: Reuters

U.S. consumer confidence sank in July to its lowest since February on job market worries, underscoring the slow path to economic recovery, and home prices rose in May but without signs of a sustained rebound, reports released Tuesday showed.

The Conference Board, an industry group, said consumer attitudes worsened this month as did their expectations about jobs being hard to get.

The group’s index of consumer attitudes fell to 50.4 in July from an upwardly revised 54.3 in June, below the median forecast of 51 in a Reuters poll.

“There have been quite a few headwinds — the fiscal stimulus is fading, the European situation certainly did have an impact on consumer confidence and inventories are being brought more into line,” said David Sloan, economist at 4Cast in New York. “But clearly the big problem for consumers is jobs.”

U.S. Treasuries trimmed losses and stocks pared gains after the dim consumer confidence reading as investors bought safe government assets.

“Concerns about business conditions and the labor market are casting a dark cloud over consumers that is not likely to lift until the job market improves,” said Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center.

U.S. single-family home prices rose more than expected in May, still reflecting robust spring sales spurred by now-expired homebuyer tax credits, Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller home price indexes showed on Tuesday.

May is a strong seasonal period for home sales, S&P said, and buyers who rushed to sign contracts by the April 30 deadline for up to $8,000 in tax credits have until Sept. 30 to close loans.

Home prices have essentially moved sideways over the past seven months, however, and are likely to bounce around the bottom for the foreseeable future, S&P said.

“For me, a double-dip is another recession before we’ve healed from this recession … The probability of that kind of double-dip is more than 50 percent,” Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University and co-developer of the price index told Reuters Insider.

The 20-city composite price index rose 0.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in May after an upwardly revised 0.6 percent gain in April, topping the 0.2 percent rise forecast in a Reuters poll.

Prices on an unadjusted basis jumped 1.3 percent in May, after a 0.9 percent April gain and falls in the six prior months. The index was 4.6 percent lower than last May, S&P said.

With the recent upturn, prices still are 29.1 percent lower than the peak four years ago. A record inventory of foreclosed properties is widely seen preventing much of a price upturn in the near term.

“While May’s report on its own looks somewhat positive, a broader look at home price levels over the past year still does not indicate that the housing market is in any form of sustained recovery,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s, said in a statement.

Seven of the 20 largest metro areas still reported lower prices than a year earlier.

Payback from the federal tax incentives went beyond most expectations and some reports have started to show some stabilization from historic lows.

Sales of new homes in June, reported on Monday, surged 23.6 percent but remained at the second-lowest level since the Commerce Department started keeping records in 1963.

High unemployment and wage cuts are keeping many potential buyers at bay.

The government is expected to report on Friday that gross domestic product growth slowed to a 2.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter from a 2.7 percent pace in the first.

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Obama Approval Drops To 28% In AZ

July 19, 2010

Arizona Daily Star

Most Arizonans no longer think Barack Obama is doing a decent job as president.

A new Behavior Research Poll released Sunday shows that nearly four out of every 10 Arizonans now rate Obama’s performance as poor or very poor. That’s up 5 points from the same survey taken in January.

What’s different is that the number of those who think he’s doing an excellent or good job has plummeted.

Three months after taking office, fully 51 percent of Arizonans gave Obama positive ratings, even though the state went for hometown favorite John McCain in the 2008 election.

A year into office, that had slid to 40 percent. But by the time pollster Earl de Berge conducted this latest survey, between June 30 and July 11, only 28 percent of Arizonans were willing to say they like the job he’s doing.

According to de Berge, much of that slide tracks with a separate poll he does asking Arizonans about their views on the economy and current job market conditions.

“As might be expected, those who think the job market is static or worsening have the least favorable view of his performance,” de Berge said.

But the survey also was taken about the time it became clear that the Department of Justice, asked to look at Arizona’s new immigration law, intended to file suit. In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview with a television station in Ecuador, spilled the beans early in June.

That all became official when the Obama administration went to federal court on July 6 – right in the middle of the polling – asking a judge to block the statute from taking effect as scheduled July 26.

The law, which spells out when police have to ask those they have stopped about their immigration status, is popular in Arizona, with every single survey showing it’s backed by more than half of residents.

Obama maintains his popularity with Democrats, 52 percent of whom still have a positive assessment of his work. Still, that’s down from 85 percent in April 2009.

His positive rating among independents, which was 54 percent in that first post-election survey, now has dropped to 22 percent. And 8 percent of Republicans now score his performance as excellent or good.

The survey of 800 adult heads of households has a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

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Jobs Report Shows Recovery Is Still Distant

June 4, 2010

CNBC

Job creation by private companies grew at the slowest pace since the start of the year, as a wave of census hiring lifted payrolls by 431,000 in May.

The unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent as people gave up searching for work.

The Labor Department’s new employment snapshot released Friday suggested that outside of the burst of hiring of temporary census workers by the federal government many private employers are wary of bulking up their work forces.

That indicates the economic recovery may not bring relief fast enough for millions of Americans who are unemployed.

Virtually all the job creation in May came from the hiring of 411,000 census workers. Such hiring peaked in May and will begin tailing off in June. By contrast, hiring by private employers, the backbone of the economy, slowed sharply.

They added just 41,000 jobs, down from 218,000 in April and the fewest since January.

Click here for the full report.

Economic Recovery Slower Than Reported

May 27, 2010

My Way

By Jeannine Aversa

WASHINGTON (AP) – The economic rebound last quarter turned out to be slower than first thought, one of the reasons unemployment is likely to stay high this year.

The economy grew at a 3 percent annual rate from January to March, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was slightly weaker than an initial estimate of 3.2 percent a month ago. The new reading, based on more complete information, also fell short of economists’ forecast for stronger growth of 3.4 percent.

The reasons for the small downgrade: consumers spent less than first estimated. Same goes for business spending on equipment and software. And, the nation’s trade deficit was a bigger drag on economic activity.

In a separate report, the Labor Department said Thursday that the number of newly laid off workers filings claims for unemployment benefits fell by 14,000 to 460,000 last week. The decline came after claims had risen by a revised 28,000 in the previous week, the largest gain in three months.

The latest level of claims is slightly higher than it was at the start of the year. That shows the nation’s workers are still facing tough times even though the overall economy is growing again.

During normal times, growth in the 3 percent range would be considered healthy. But the country is coming out the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression. So economic growth needs to be a lot stronger – two or three times the current pace- to make a big dent in the nation’s 9.9 percent unemployment rate.

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The Kevin Trudeau Show: 2-17-10

Today, Kevin explains why he is in court today and the real reason he didn’t get fair coverage from the mainstream media. Plus, more predictions! You won’t want to miss this vital information!!

Foreclosures Reach 315,000 in January
Corporations Have No Interest In Your Safety
Updates to Mental Health Disorders Manual
Speaking of New Made-Up Disorders…
Anti-Depressant Drugs No More Effective Than  Placebos
Household Cleaners May Cause Breast Cancer

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