California Unemployment Rate Falls to 11.3 Percent! Break Out the Champagne!

I'm being facetious.

But I can't help it. Look at this ridiculously enthusiastic headline at the Los Angeles Times: "California's Jobless Rate Falls for Fourth Month in a Row! The State Unemployment Rate Declines to 11.3% in November, a Sign That the Labor Market is Slowly Recovering!"

That's the real headline. All I've added is the exclamation point! But seriously. You'd think it's HAPPY DAYS AGAIN! by the looks of the newspaper, and remember I still get the rag in hard copy!

And it only takes a quick glance at Google to see that the state's still mired in depression-like conditions in many parts for state, the California Central Valley, for example. See the Turlock Journal, "Good news, bad news in local unemployment rates":

The latest figures from the Economic Development Department reflect some good news for Stanislaus County and some not so heartening news.

Stanislaus County posted an unemployment rate of 15.5 percent in November, just slightly up from the revised October rate of 15.3 percent. This marked the third month in a row that the county has had an unemployment rate below 16 percent, something that has been a rarity during these troubled economic times.

A small uptick in November's unemployment rate hasn't been seen since November 2007, and bucks the trend of the past few years, said EDD labor market analyst Nati Martinez.

In November 2007, the unemployment rate went from 8.2 percent to 8.8 percent. In 2008, it rose from 11.2 percent to 12.1 percent in November. In November 2009, the rate grew from 15.9 percent to 16.7 percent and last year it jumped from 16.1 percent to 17.2 percent in the same time frame, according to the EDD.

Stanislaus County's November unemployment rate for this year was well below the year-ago estimate of 17.2 percent.

However, the gains reflected in the EDD's report are tempered by the fact that less people are reporting that they are looking for work. Stanislaus County's labor force, which stood at an estimated 237,300 in October, fell to 233,200.

I added the italics, since for all the "great" news about declining unemployment --- nationwide and in California --- the fact is huge numbers of people are discouraged and remain so unhappy about their prospects that they've simply given up looking for a job. When that happens, they drop off the statistics for the "active" labor force, and in fact the unemployment rate improves. As always, official unemployment statistics systematically undercount the unemployed.

More on all of this later. When the national unemployment rate falls to 6 percent I'll pop a bottle of champagne. And 8 percent in California would be worth a little celebration.

RELATED: At New York Times, "As Wars End, Young Veterans Return to Scant Jobs."

FDR Prolonged the Great Depression

From the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

Michelle Fields narrates:

RELATED: At The Other McCain, "‘F– Michelle Fields!’ — Interview With Reporter Harassed at Occupy DC Protest."

Scott Brown Faces Tough Challenge From Elizabeth Warren

At Wall Street Journal, "Scott Brown's Strategy":

This week Senate Republicans blocked President Obama's nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Only two Republicans broke ranks -- Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts -- and both senators are up for re-election next year.

Ms. Snowe should win handily if she isn't toppled by a primary challenger. Mr. Brown's re-election prospects, by contrast, are shakier. Two new polls show the GOP freshman trailing Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who helped establish the CFPB and is expected to be the Democratic nominee. The University of Massachusetts-Amherst gives Ms. Warren a four-point lead and a University of Massachusetts-Lowell/Boston Herald poll has her up by seven points. Three months ago, most polls showed Mr. Brown slightly ahead. The senator's approval rating has also fallen by eight points to 45%, though his favorables are still in positive territory and exceed Ms. Warren's.

While the poll results may be disconcerting for Mr. Brown and Senate Republicans, they're not unexpected. Ms. Warren's campaign has spent $1.5 million on an ad that portrays her as a defender of the middle class. And the League of Conservation Voters has dumped $2 million on spots that tar Mr. Brown as a Washington insider. The real surprise is that Mr. Brown still leads Ms. Warren, 53-37, with independents. Because Republicans constitute less than 15% of the Massachusetts electorate, Mr. Brown will probably have to win more than two-thirds of the independent vote and probably pick up some Democrats as well.

Continue reading.

VIDEO HAT TIP: Los Angeles Times, "Elizabeth Warren blasts 'ridiculous' charge in ad by Karl Rove group."

Big Oil Companies Are Shifting Their Focus Back to the West

A great piece.

At Wall Street Journal, "Big Oil Heads Back Home":

Big Oil is redrawing the energy map.

For decades, its main stomping grounds were in the developing world—exotic locales like the Persian Gulf and the desert sands of North Africa, the Niger Delta and the Caspian Sea. But in recent years, that geographical focus has undergone a radical change. Western energy giants are increasingly hunting for supplies in rich, developed countries—a shift that could have profound implications for the industry, global politics and consumers.

Driving the change is the boom in unconventionals—the tough kinds of hydrocarbons like shale gas and oil sands that were once considered too difficult and expensive to extract and are now being exploited on an unprecedented scale from Australia to Canada.

The U.S. is at the forefront of the unconventionals revolution. By 2020, shale sources will make up about a third of total U.S. oil and gas production, according to PFC Energy, a Washington-based consultancy. By that time, the U.S. will be the top global oil and gas producer, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia, PFC predicts.

That could have far-reaching ramifications for the politics of oil, potentially shifting power away from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries toward the Western hemisphere. With more crude being produced in North America, there's less likelihood of Middle Eastern politics causing supply shocks that drive up gasoline prices. Consumers could also benefit from lower electricity prices, as power plants switch from coal to cheap and plentiful natural gas.

RTWT.

Save the U.S. Postal Service!

Last week we were studying bureaucracies in my American government course. We discuss the various types of bureaucratic organizations, including government corporations. There's really not that many, but the United States Postal Service is certainly the most prominent. As I usually do, I stop while discussing the Post Office to see how students like it. Do they mail letters? Do the ship packages? And if they do, how do they like the service? Of course, the Post Office is on the way out --- or at least, the Post Office that we grew up with, the one that guaranteed mail delivery whether rain, sleet or snow. I hardly check the mail anymore, except to get magazines and academic journals. And some of the household bills still come by mail, and we need to check for those. Other than that, it's mostly junk.

In any case, I looked for a recent article during one of my classes the other day, and didn't really see anything. It was mostly local news stories about communities struggling to keep open their local branches. But it turns out the New York Times has a new article on the Post Office, and perhaps I can use it in class, picking up where we left off last week. See, "The Junking of the Postal Service":

A FEW weeks ago a petition appeared next to the mailboxes in my building’s lobby in Upper Manhattan. It read: “Save Saturday Delivery! ... Save the U.S. Postal Service!” Over the next 24 hours signatures poured onto the sheet of paper.

I will not say whether I signed. But I will tell you what arrived in my mailbox that Saturday: two credit card offers; a Linen Source catalog for someone who used to live in my apartment; a notice of a sale on running shoes; some coupons for 10 percent off on pizza delivery; three promotional letters about colleges; and a bank letter about changing terms on my son’s high-school checking account for 2012.

As junk mail multiplies and the United States Postal Service struggles for financial survival, experts are increasingly asking the question, do Americans need Saturday mail delivery ... or daily mail delivery ... or a state-run postal service at all? Should mail be a guaranteed government service — like primary education — because it is essential to our well-being? Or has this once hallowed institution, like pay phones, outlived its utility?

Continue reading.

There is a case for continuing the Postal Service, but it'll be drastically changed from earlier eras.

The Death of European Socialist Welfare States

A massive state sector requires a robust economy, and the peripheral states of the EU can't sustain the socialist project. It's not the end of European socialism, but the left is being pummeled by events, and good thing too.

See Jonathan Blitzer, at The New Republic, "Has the Euro Crisis Killed Off Social Democracy For Good?":

Madrid – Outgoing Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, of Spain, had until recently been the beneficiary of propitious circumstances. Party infighting enabled him to outmaneuver the establishment favorite in the 2000 primaries. Four years later, he eked out an eleventh hour victory in national elections when a terrorist bombing mere days before voting turned the tide against incumbent conservatives. As he took office, a booming economy—which enjoyed the second largest budget surplus in Europe as late as 2007—paved the way for an ambitious social agenda, which rallied his progressive base.

But if a flair for the unexpected studded his ascent, it was a bruising inevitability that brought him low. A rapidly worsening economic crisis left him with little choice but to announce, in April, that he would not stand for re-election. After months of daily flaying by an emboldened conservative opposition, early elections came as a relief for Zapatero, even as his party blamed him when it was trounced, as expected, two weeks ago.

But Zapatero didn’t fall alone: Center-left governments in Portugal and Greece have also fallen in recent months. All in all, it’s a long-standing trend. Leftist governments in Europe have been teetering now for over a decade. Ten years ago, social democratic governments were at the helm in half the countries of the EU. That number has since dropped to three. But their recent plight is their most dire. The sovereign debt crisis has done more than batter incumbent socialists out of office; it may well have stripped the social democratic movement of its soul in the crisis zone.

Continue reading.

Romney Goes Up With New Ad in New Hampshire

At the New Hampshire Union-Leader, "Romney goes positive, features Ayotte, in new TV ad."

Medical Marijuana Target of U.S. Prosecutors

At New York Times, "Medical Marijuana Industry Is Unnerved by U.S. Crackdown."

UKIAH, Calif. — An intensifying federal crackdown on growers and sellers of state-authorized medical marijuana has badly shaken the billion-dollar industry, which has sprung up in California since voters approved medical use of the drug in 1996, and has highlighted the stark contradiction between federal and state policies.

Federal law classifies the possession and sale of marijuana as a serious crime and does not grant exceptions for medical use, so the programs adopted here, in 15 other states and in the District of Columbia exist in an odd legal limbo. While federal agencies have long targeted Californians who blatantly reap illegal profits in the name of medicine, or who smuggle marijuana across state lines, the Justice Department said in 2009 that it would not normally pursue groups providing marijuana to sick patients, in accordance with state laws.

But in the last several weeks, federal prosecutors have raided or threatened to seize the property of scores of growers and dispensaries in California that, in some cases, are regarded by local officials as law-abiding models. At the same time, the Internal Revenue Service has levied large, disputed tax charges against the state’s largest dispensary, threatening its ability to continue.

In a hint of the simmering federal-state tensions, Kamala D. Harris, the attorney general of California, described in pointed terms the Oct. 7 announcement by four United States attorneys of their tough new campaign against many dispensaries, which they called commercial operations that violate the intent of California law as well as federal statutes.

“It was a unilateral federal action, and it has only increased uncertainty about how Californians can legitimately comply with state law,” Ms. Harris said in an interview. Since federal authorities do not recognize that marijuana can serve medical ends, she said, “they are ill equipped to be the decision makers as to which providers are violating the law.”

Kamala Harris is a blithering idiot. The Feds know exactly what's going on, which is that medical marijuana's a scam. Some patients may benefit, but otherwise the whole agenda is about stealth legalization.

And since I'm on this, I've been meaning to post Melanie Phillips' killer essay, "Drug legalisation? We need it like a hole in the head.

Melanie Phillips provides the essential conservative argument on the legalization debate (and she devastates the case of Portugal, which is widely cited by legalization enthusiasts as the "successful model" of decriminalization). But compare to David Swindle, "Our Deceitful Marxist President’s Cruel War on Sick Medicinal Marijuana Patients." It's a winding piece, but I'm still not convinced pot smoking's not counter-cultural. Or, let's just say that the tea party folks --- who I've been protesting with for over two years --- aren't down with it. But the Occupy folks are: "Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries." (Also, federalization of drug policy by itself doesn't make a conservative argument on marijuana legalization, and the federal government does indeed have authority to regulate "which of the plants God set growing on this earth" --- it's called the Commerce Clause, which kicks in when drugs and drug-related inputs are bought and sold across state lines. Besides, as I always say, drugs are for losers.)

RELATED: At Los Angeles Times, "L.A. council to debate whether to outlaw medical pot stores."

New Trove of Stolen E-Mails From Climate Scientists Is Released

At New York Times:

The anonymous hacker who shook the world of climate science two years ago by posting a trove of stolen e-mails delivered a new batch on Tuesday, stirring up climate-change contrarians a little more than a week before global negotiations on greenhouse gases are to begin in Durban, South Africa.

The new e-mails appeared remarkably similar to the ones released two years ago just ahead of a similar conference in Copenhagen. They involved the same scientists and many of the same issues, and some of them carried a similar tone: catty remarks by the scientists, often about papers written by others in the field.

Climate scientists said the release was likely intended to torpedo any potential progress in the Durban negotiations, though not much progress had been expected anyway given that countries have been reluctant to commit to binding emissions limits.

The University of East Anglia, the British institution at the middle of the previous hacking episode, confirmed that at least some of the newly released e-mails were authentic. The cache released in 2009 appeared to have come from a file someone obtained by hacking into the university’s computers, a crime for which no charges have been filed or suspects named. The new batch of more than 5,000 e-mails is evidently a fresh selection from the same set of records.

Continue reading.

I honestly don't pay heed to the global warming scaremongers these days, not that I ever much did in any case. The science is not settled, and it's just not even what academics call "normal science" anymore. That is, the scientific community long ago abandoned the rigorous methods of inquiry and morphed into a quasi-religious cult ready to burn heretics at the stake. Go back and read this post from October: "Dr. Martin Hertzberg Letter at the Vail Daily Skewering the Gore-Hansen-IPCC Climate Change Clique." And then check the instant classic from 2009, Steven Hayward's, "Scientists Behaving Badly," at the Weekly Standard.

And then back to the current controversy, check Watt's Up With That?, "Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular!" And James Delingpole, "Uh oh, global warming loons: here comes Climategate II!" (At Memeorandum.)

Place the Super Committee Blame Where it Belongs: On the Democrats

Look, idiot progressives are in denial, but the fact is Democrats have pushed for higher taxes all year and the GOP hasn't budged. Here's GOP Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling, at Wall Street Journal, "Why the Super Committee Failed:

Even if Republicans agreed to every tax increase desired by the president, our national debt would continue to grow uncontrollably. Controlling spending is therefore a crucial challenge. The other is economic growth and job creation, which would produce the necessary revenue to fund our priorities.

In the midst of persistent 9% unemployment, the committee could have enacted fundamental tax reform to simplify the tax code, help create jobs, and bring in over time the higher revenues that come with economic growth. Republicans put such a plan on the table—and even agreed to $250 billion in new revenue by eliminating or limiting most of the deductions, credits, loopholes and tax expenditures mainly enjoyed by higher-income Americans. We offered this to avoid the even larger tax increases already written into current law that will intensify the pain Americans are feeling during these difficult economic times.

Republicans were willing to agree to additional tax revenue, but only in the context of fundamental pro-growth tax reform that would broaden the base, lower rates, and maintain current levels of progressivity. This is the approach to tax reform used by recent bipartisan deficit reduction efforts such as the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission and the Rivlin-Domenici plan.

The Democrats said no. They were unwilling to agree to anything less than $1 trillion in tax hikes—and unwilling to offer any structural reforms to put our health-care entitlements on a permanently sustainable basis.

Unfortunately, the committee's challenge was made more difficult by President Obama. Since the committee was formed, he has demanded more stimulus spending and issued a veto threat against any proposed committee solution to the spending problem that was not coupled with a massive tax increase.

RTWT.

Jennifer Rubin places blame directly on the president: "The consequences of presidential weakness" (via Memeorandum).

Additional thoughts at Left Coast Rebel.