President's Approval Rate Down Again

After a brief lift from the aftermath of the Osama bin Laden assassination, Obama's approval rating is back in the tank.  What I would love to know is who ARE those 23% of the people who strongly believe Obama is doing an acceptable job as POTUS?

It would appear from these numbers that America is still discontent with leadership at the top. If change is what Obama promised, then he can only be judged as a roaring success. Change in America is exactly what he has delivered. The only problem is that it wasn't the kind of change Americans were pining for.

We're now embroiled in three costly foreign wars. He's still in denial, however, refusing to call Libya a "war." Debt has escalated on his watch. Deficit spending is out of control. There is absolutely no willingness to consider looking at the entitlement programs to reduce spending. Instead of boosting worldwide confidence in America, Obama has induced fear and uncertainty in the hearts and minds not only here at home, but among our greatest allies, Israel being the prime example.

It's obvious to me that we cannot endure another four years of similar domestic and foreign policies. The leader of the Democratic Party the other day proudly boasted, "We own this economy." She actually believes the country is on the path to recovery, and so does Obama. If this is what their definition of economic recovery looks like,  there will be a majority of voters in November 2012 who will vociferously disagree and demand a change from what we've seen.

That's indicated by the huge spike up in this polling data among those who strongly disapprove of the job the President is doing. I loved Donald Trump's answer to the question, "What has President Obama done right?" He said, "He got elected."

Breaking the Debt Ceiling Cycle

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT)

It's amazing how the "flip-flop" label never seems to stick to Barack Obama, but the debt ceiling debate is where it is most obvious.

While a junior senator from Illinois, he regaled George W. Bush when he proposed hiking the ceiling. He said Bush lacked the leadership to resist spending more. What a laugher! Now as POTUS, he insists that it has to be done or the U.S. faces "catastrophic consequences."

There is at least one U.S. Senator, the junior Senator from Utah, Mike Lee, who is determined to stop the cycle before it gets any worse than it is. Today, he penned an online article for the National Review Online. All it takes is 66 more Senators of like mind and he will veto-proof the proposed Hatch-Lee Balanced Budget Amendment and send it out to the states for ratification.

There's a report I just saw today from the International Monetary Fund in The Wall Street Journal predicting the end of U.S. dominance in the world as early as 2016. The IMF is saying China will overtake the U.S. as the world's number one economy. A forecast is not infallible, but it indicates one thing -- the sharks are circling the blood in the water. When I was in business school the 10-year Treasury note was considered to be the benchmark for risk-free investment. How much longer can that perception last unless the U.S. gets its fiscal house in order?

What's at stake? In just the last three years the national debt load has burgeoned from 64% to 93% of the GDP. Mike Lee and the other 46 Senators in the Senate Republican caucus are absolutely right in their refusal to vote for an increase in the debt limit without insisting on the BBA. So far it looks like he's got 5 Democrats who have agreed to go along, leaving the need for 5 more to sign up for the veto-proof majority. Don't rule it out. There should be no doubt what the people back home are expecting their elected representatives to do, and that's to stop the presses printing more worthless currency and issuing more Treasury notes. Investors in Treasuries are already cooling off, and it won't be long before the perceived adjusted risk will push interest rates for U.S. borrowing higher and higher.

That's why we sent Mike Lee to the Senate in place of Bob Bennett. He won't back down in the face of the forces aligned against him. Forcing the vote on the BBA will finally force Senators to declare themselves in the showdown, and that's not a bad thing for anyone.

The 2011 Budget Pie Debate

I've always believed a good picture is worth a thousand words. That's why this illustration is so perfect. It requires no further explanation (click to enlarge):

To be clear, this budget pie represents the debate over Obama's 2011 budget, and only yesterday the House introduced the 2012 budget for consideration. Neither the Republicans or the Democrats in their debate over which amount of budget cuts to adopt -- $61 Billion or $33 Billion -- is really serious yet about budget, debt and deficit reform. Those numbers are well represented here by a few crumbs.

Obama with full majorities in both houses of Congress did not even submit a budget in 2010, and the government has been operating on temporary "continuing resolutions" ever since. That is a losing strategy no one believes is sustainable, at least among conservatives.

I know the average Joe American doesn't focus on this stuff on a daily basis, which is exactly why we keep kicking the can down the road with no one stepping up to the plate and telling Americans the truth. I maintain anyone with an average education can look at this picture and completely understand what's at stake here.

But answer me this: How in blazes can the POTUS, Barack Obama, seriously believe people are this stupid? Would we ever sit still for a leader who presents a budget with a straight face and tries to tell us we can somehow conjure up 43% over and above what we're going to bring in?

And I'm not just picking on Obama -- Dick Cheney was advocating paying for wars out of money we didn't have as a nation and telling us, "Deficits don't matter." Bush forever tainted his legacy with TARP and bailouts that set the stage for what followed in multiples that have staggered us. And now explain to me how people who are screaming, "It just ain't so, Mr. President," can be considered "extremists?" If that's "extreme," then let's all enlist in the extremist category.

Tell me why it seems so hard to get it figured out among elected representatives of the people who are sick and tired of politics as usual?



Kudos to Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and others who are telling it straight!

Utah Digging Out of Recession

The Associated Press August 24, 2010, 8:14AM ET

SALT LAKE CITY

Utah is adding jobs faster than it is losing them for the first time in several years, state economists said Monday.

Utah's unemployment rate remained steady at 7.2 percent in July amid signs the state is digging itself out of the recession.

Utah added 17,200 jobs over the past year, with the state work force expanding by 1.5 percent to 1.19 million jobs, according to the state Department of Workforce Services.

The recovery, however, is slow. And the unemployed are filing more than 2,000 jobless claims a week, double the historic average, said Mark Knold, chief economist of the Department of Workforce Services.

Those claims were as high as 5,000 a week at the start of 2009.

Signs of job growth are encouraging, although the survey data is subject to revision and could backslide, Knold said.

Utah is still playing catch-up. About 75,000 jobs have been removed from the state economy over the past three years, he said.

Three of Utah's economic sectors are still showing net job losses -- manufacturing, construction and government.

Knold said the construction sector could stabilize by year's end. Utah has lost a third of its construction jobs since July 2007, and it could take another 10 years before the state returns to the previous high mark in that industry, he said.

During the recession, Utah manufacturers scaled back employment by 4,100 positions to 20,000 -- the worst-hit industry in the state, Knold said.

Other employment sectors made modest gains over the past year.

The department said nearly 98,000 people in Utah were considered unemployed in July.

Utah's July unemployment rate was well below the national figure of 9.5 percent.

* * *

Now that school has begun and the fall season is upon us, we have a better handle on what the unemployment situation is.  I'm using the number of attendees at our Monday morning networking meeting as the gauge here.  Last January the room where we meet was filled to overflowing.  We were seeing around 175 -180 participants every Monday monring.  I have joked that we would only hold that meeting for as long as it took to get the numbers down to the size where we could meet in a phone booth.

The drop since January has been gratifying.  We've got the only job in the Church I know of where you succeed if no one shows up for the meeting. . .  For the last several months we have seen the number of participants decline to 70 or 80 each week.

Even when David Checketts was our featured speaker a couple of weeks ago and I expected to see some "ringers" who weren't really unemployed show up to hear him speak, the number only ticked up slightly to 95.  A year ago, David spoke to a standing-room-only audience in excess of 200.  His stake in New Canaan, Connecticut, had 120 heads of household out of work last year.  This year he reported that number is down to 10.  Despite what the gloomy national statistics are telling us, improvement is discernable and real but still slower than necessary.

Growth is slow because of government intervention.  Get government out of the way and the economy will take off.  Free markets hate uncertainty, and no one has injected more uncertainty into the equation more than the President of the United States and his majority leadership in both Houses of Congress.  Force feeding a fast diet of economic fat fueled by debt, sugar-filled programs, regulatory bills filled with new agencies designed to bypass Congressional oversight and debate, coupled with expanded entitlement spending has been disastrous.

Despite all that, there is significant evidence I can point to that Utah is leading the way out of this recession.  Because Utah's constitution mandates balancing the budget each year, businesses here are hiring, growing and defying the odds.  The growth is slow but discernable and sustainable despite the malaise in evidence in other parts of the country.

There, I delivered some good news.  And there's more. . .

It was reported earlier in the week that 14 Utah businesses are in this year's list of the Inc. 500's fastest growing companies, further evidence Utah is rising above the recession doldrums.  Funding Universe leads the way in Utah at number 34.  And what's the business model for Funding Universe you ask?  Matching angel investors with budding entrepreneurs and their startup businesses. 

Now if we can just reverse the disturbing effects of socialism, entitlements, bailouts and handouts, we'll progress even faster.

David Brooks wrote a thoughtful piece in the New York Times this morning comparing Germany's approach to the financial crisis with America's.  Under conservative leadership in Germany, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany elected to spend significantly less on stimulus borrowing as a percentage of GNP, and their unemployment numbers are back down to pre-crisis levels.  Germany's economy is expanding right now at a blistering pace.  However, America's bloated experiment with massive debt and unbridled spending has frozen economic recovery by contrast.  Germany rejected the thinking of America's "best minds" on economics and has proven their case.  She has shown the example to America -- if you're the government, you can't borrow and spend your way out of a recession.  Hip, Hip, Hooray for capitalism, Ms. Merkel!!

Let's hope Americans have seen enough data to reverse course in November and follow the example of Germany.  I never thought those words would come out of my cyber pen, but there you go. . . America should take an economic lesson from Germany.   

Unthinkable. . . until now.