The Obama Jobs Record: Some Good News, but Only if the Bar Is Lowered

The most recent jobs report from the Labor Department contains both good news and the bad news.

If you’re a glass-half-full person, you’ll want to focus on some positive trends.

• The joblessness rate fell to 7.5 percent, the lowest level since Obama became President.
• Private-sector jobs are increasing.
• As I’ve noted before, the economy seems to do better if there’s gridlock.
• One reason for better economic performance is that the burden of government spending has been reduced, at least when measured as a share of GDP.

I made many of these points in the beginning of this interview for Real News on Blaze TV.

On the other hand, if you’re a glass-half-empty person, you might focus on these grim details.

• This is the weakest job performance for any recovery since the end of World War II.
• Unemployment is far higher than the White House predicted it would be if the so-called stimulus was enacted.
• There are headwinds that are undermining job creation, such as Obamacare, higher payroll tax rates, and the President’s class-warfare tax hike.
• The employment-population ratio is terrible, suggesting that the lower unemployment rate is really a measure of people dropping out of the labor force.

So who’s right, the optimists or pessimists? At the risk of sounding like a politicians, they’re both right.

If it sounds like I’m trying to have it both ways, that’s simply the reality of public policy. There are both headwinds and tailwinds impacting the labor market, which is why I talked about scales balancing in the interview.

But I will state without ambiguity that small government and free markets are the right formula to improve economic performance. In other words, get rid of the bad policies and adopt more of the good policies. Be more like Hong Kong and less like France.

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If You Outlaw Pencils, only Outlaws Will Have Pencils

I wouldn’t blame foreigners for thinking the United States is a bit schizophrenic.

This is a nation where you can own a tank or a machine gun, and it’s a country where there are probably more guns than people.

Yet it’s also a country where little kids get suspended for throwing imaginary grenades while playing alone on a playground. A country where cops arrest 10-year olds for having toy guns. And a country where small children get kicked out of school for pretending their hands are guns and saying “pow, pow.”

And now, apparently, it’s a country where kids can’t point a pencil at a buddy and make shooting noises.

Oh my God, It’s an assault pencil!

Here are some of the absurd details from a local CBS news report.

Two Suffolk second graders have been suspended for making shooting noises while pointing pencils at each other. Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys were suspended for two days for a violation of the Suffolk school system’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were playing with one another in class Friday at Driver Elementary. “When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,’” said Paul Marshall, one of the boys’ fathers. “It’s as simple as that.” Marshall, a former Marine, said he believes school officials overreacted. …Bradshaw said the policy has been in place for at least two decades. It also bans drawing a picture of a gun and pointing a finger in a threatening manner. Marshall said his son has good grades and no history of being disruptive in class. On the suspension note, the teacher noted that the boy stopped when she told him to do so. He said school administrators failed to use common sense.

I’m almost at a loss for words. This wasn’t just one brainless bureaucrat. At the very least, both a teacher and an administrator were involved in this farce.

These are the people we want educating our children?!?

At least the dad had the cojones to criticize the bureaucrats.

With apologies to Martin Niemöller, I can’t resist this bit of satire.

First they came for the pop tarts,
and I didn’t speak out because I didn’t care for breakfast pastries.

Then they came for the pink bubble blowers,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a bubble blower.

Then they came for the cupcakes,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a cupcake eater.

Then they came for pencils,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

By the way, the United States is not the only nation suffering from a pathetic and wimpy form of political correctness. Here are some examples of how our cousins across the ocean have gone bonkers about guns.

• A women who was being threatened by thugs got in trouble with the police for brandishing a knife in her own home.
• There was a proposal to prevent children from watching Olympic shooting events.
• A man got arrested for finding a gun in his yard and turning it over to the police.
• Starting pistols have been banned from some school races.
• There have been calls for knife bans.
• A man was arrested for shooting a burglar who invaded his house.

These are all example from my series comparing brainless policies in the United States and United Kingdom. Though I’m ashamed to say that this latest story puts the United States in the lead in this government-stupidity contest.

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