Immigration Policy Changes to Prevent Deportations

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement department issued new policies that aim to stop deportation hearings on any illegal with a legal US relative. The policy would not apply to illegals convicted of a crime or involving things like fraud. It will, however; likely prevent a significant number of the nearly 17,000 cases pending from resulting in a deportation. This is basically a pass that lets anyone that is related to a legal US resident enter the US illegally without fear of deportation. They basically get rewarded for violating our laws. If they have relatives here then let those relatives sponsor them to enter the nation legally.

Texas Economy Holds Up Well

The national economy seems to be slowing again. Fears of a double-dip recession are growing - but the economy in Texas seems to be holding up a little better. The question for Texas is how long can its economy hold up if the national economy continues to soften. So far Texas has been a relatively bright spot in the national economic picture, but for how much longer.

Economic Downturn Reduces Birth Rates?

The birth rate in the U.S. has been declining for sometime, but apparently is down a little sharper over the last year or so. Some think that economic conditions might be making people decide not to have children or to delay having them. There are many other factors that affect birth rate, but perhaps this deep recession we are in is having an unusually strong impact.

China and Others Stop Buying Treasuries

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that China and other central banks have all but stopped their purchases of treasuries. While this is likely not a long- or medium- term change because China is so intertwined with the U.S. that it would suffer great economic pain if it tried to cut itself off from treasuries. It is a reminder that our current level of borrowing is unsustainable and if other countries really lost faith in our creditworthiness we would be in dire trouble.

More Quotes...

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.
-Colin Powell

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
-Peter Drucker

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
-Georg C. Lichtenberg

The Dismal Jobs Picture

Unemployment has been one of the major problems with the current economic malaise. The government projected that the unemployment rate would hit 8% if we didn't do stimulus - so we did stimulus and the unemployment rate peaked at ~10% and now has settled down around 9.5%. The breadth and depth of job losses are hard to comprehend, but a picture is worth a thousand words:

The chart below shows the depth and length of job losses (in percentages) over the last half century. You can see the original at: http://calculatedriskimages.blogspot.com/2010/08/employment-recessions-aligned-at-bottom.html.

That is one scary picture!

Don't worry it gets worse. Obama's economic policies should have been generating 292,000 new jobs a month beginning in Feb. 2010 in order for the nation to hit a 5% unemployment rate by 2015! We are not even close to this level of job growth...in fact almost all the recent job growth was temporary Census workers. It seems very unlikely that the unemployment rate is going down anytime soon.

U.S. May Sell F-15s to Saudi Arabia

The Obama administration is planning to sell $30 billion of arms over ten years to the Saudis including advanced F-15 fighters. I think the U.S. should think very carefully about who and how it sells arms to other nations. We trained the Taliban and equipped Iraq during the cold war when we would basically give money, training, and arms to anyone that didn't like the USSR. Now we are paying the price for those mistakes. The Saudis are relatively friendly to us now, but the whole region is unstable so maybe we should stop shipping weapons there.

Students Told Not to Sing at Lincoln Memorial

Apparently singing is forbidden if you are too close to the Lincoln memorial - even singing the national anthem. The explanation the park police give is that the memorial is to remain "content neutral." I struggle to figure out how any sort of speech, song, or conversation could really be truly content neutral?

Quote

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, "Man in the Arena" Speech given April 23, 1910
26th president of US (1858 - 1919)

Recovery Stalled?

Has the recovery stalled out? The changes in the jobs market may indicate it has...the unemployment rate has held steady at 9.5%, but mostly because of a quirk of how the government calculates the number. As people stop looking for jobs they drop out of the calculation. The private sector simply isn't generating enough jobs to sustain the recovery. Perhaps the reason for the slow jobs growth is the increased use of technology to replace workers.

Balance the Budget - DIY

Think you know what it takes to get the federal budget in line? Then give it a try and see how you do...I managed to get debt to GDP down to 60% by 2023 - a little later than the goal of hard-core fiscal conservatives. If you try it leave a comment with how you did so others can see.

Chevy Volt

The true costs of an American-made electric hybrid are insane. The car will apparently cost just over $80k per unit by the time you factor in subsidies and grants from the federal government. The government is spending more money it doesn't have to fund an electric car as a "green alternative" to gasoline.

Except here's the catch - since about 70% of our electricity is generated from coal which is dirtier than gasoline engines we're not actually helping the environment, but possibly making it worse. Not mention the fact that our nation's electric grid couldn't support a major shift to electric cars. You never hear anyone talk about that on the news!

AZ Immigration

A federal court granted an injunction blocking the enactment of several key provisions of the AZ immigration law that was recently passed. The same judge also denied a request by AZ to have their appeal hearing date moved up. The push from the left to kill this law has so far failed, but it has certainly delayed it's taking effect and removed some of the teeth from the bill. Unfortunately for the Democrats supporting the efforts to block the law it is extremely popular in AZ leading to protests following the ruling. It's also relatively popular with the general national public and this injunction may be just one more reason the Democrats will struggle in November. At least that is a positive.