What the Obama's Aren't Saying in Commencement Speeches

Michele and Barack Obama have each given commencement speeches this year.  Both have injected politics into those speeches.  However, what neither of them are saying to these newly minted college grads, is that thanks to the bad economics under this presidency, the chances of getting a good paying, college-level job right out of college, aren't too great.

In fact, even though the actual unemployment rate is 5%, this country's underemployment rate sits at 14.5%.  In other words, we have 22-1/2 million people working below their skill and education levels and/or working part time when wanting full time positions.  The pre-recession rate of 2007 was around 8%, and usually, it is below 10%.

So, here's the truth as Newsweek puts it: "Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless".  That's what is really facing this year's 1.8 million bachelor-degreed graduates.

References:

Michelle Obama Injects Politics Into Commencement Speech: http://collegeinsurrection.com/2016/04/michelle-obama-injects-politics-into-commencement-speech/

Obama swipes at Trump in commencement address - PressReader: http://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-washington-times-daily/20160516/281578059886674

Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless: http://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/millennial-college-graduates-young-educated-jobless-335821.html

Current Underemployment rate: https://www.google.com/search?q=underemployment+rate&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Underemployment rates 1994 to 2010: http://www.economytrack.org/underemployment.php

Fast Facts:  Education enrollment and graduation numbers: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

Out-of-Work Coal Miners and Hillary's Caracol, Haiti Project

Hillary Clinton lost West Virginia because she blurted out that she was going to put a lot of coal miners out of work.  Then she tried to soften it by saying that she had a plan to budget $30 billion to create small businesses and retrain the unemployed of Appalachia and elsewhere.  At the same time, she would use that money to protect the coal miners pensions and health benefits.  That's asking a lot from just $30 billion. To be fair though, this sounds better than what President Obama promised.  In his case, he simply told them to "take welfare".

But, if you're a soon-to-be-unemployed coal worker, I wouldn't count on Hillary to do much about it and I would certainly take Obama's advice.  One only needs to look at Hillary's failed Caracol, Haiti project for an example of her incompetence at job creation.

Following the 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010, around 40% of that nation's 4+ million workers became unemployed.  That's about 1.7 million. Then, Secretary of State Clinton toured the rubble as she and her team put together a plan to spend millions in U.S. aid to build a nice new industrial park just north of a remote, tin-roofed fishing village called Caracol.  The target was to create a total of 65,000 jobs in a country where 1.7 million were unemployed.  Again, we can already see the lack of competence.

In order to build the park, 640 acres were needed and hundreds of subsistence farmers were "coaxed" off the their land in order to provide the required acreage.  The park was also too remote for access to the power grid, so a power plant was built.  Today, 95 percent of the vacated land is still vacant.

By 2015, Caracol had been open for 3 years.  Only 11,300 of the promised 65,000 jobs were created.  A $70 million expansion of the park by 2018 may add another 6,800 jobs.   Oh, and Bill Clinton and the Clinton foundation managed the project for which it and he were well compensated. Of course, Bill Clinton is the person who Hillary claims she will put in charge of jobs and the economy, if she is elected President. God help us all!  Of course, this is also an obvious admission that the economy has been horrible under Obama's watch.

The sad and simple truth is that Hillary is inept and has little knowledge of how jobs are created.  Nor does she understand the coal business, and how entire towns exist only because of coal. No amount of job training or small business creation is going to put those towns back on their feet.  Again, she has no idea what she was doing; just as in Caracol, Haiti.  

References:

Fact Check: Hillary Clinton And Coal Jobs: http://www.npr.org/2016/05/03/476485650/fact-check-hillary-clinton-and-coal-jobs

Obama Costs Miners Their Job — Tells Them Take Welfare: http://www.libertynewsnow.com/obama-costs-miners-their-job-tells-them-take-welfare/article1446

A glittering industrial park in Haiti falls short: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/a-glittering-industrialparkfallsshortinhaiti.html

Hillary’s Half-Baked Haiti Project: https://www.google.com/search?q=Hillary%E2%80%99s+Half-Baked+Haiti+Project&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Hillary Clinton says she'll put Bill 'in charge' of fixing economy: http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/16/news/economy/hillary-bill-clinton-economic-job-growth/

The Obama Created Student Loan Mess

In 2010, President Obama began a program of federalizing student loans in order to eliminate the banks, whom he saw as merely expensive middlemen, from the process.   However, instead of saving money, as he implied this would do so, student debt has zoomed up 71% since he took office; going from $0.7 trillion to $1.2 trillion.  In the same time period, inflation rose only 10%.

In 2014, the Federal student loan debt went up 517%, to over $740 billion dollars under Obama.  This means that he was able to federalize 62% of all student loans in that year.  No data yet on how much the federal government was carrying in 2015. But, beyond federalizing loans, it appears that the default rate on those loans has risen to 27% after falling for decades to lows under 6% in the years 1999 to 2006.  With default rates as low as 4.5% in 2003 and 4.6% in 2005.  Also,  27% is the highest rate that this country has seen since 1987 when in 1990 default hit a record 22.4%.

The reality here is that the private sector was doing just fine in managing student debt.  The restrictions they placed on borrowing resulted in less debt and less defaults.

The President's free-wheeling federalization of debt has produced the opposite effect because, as usual, the last entity you want involved in managing money is the federal government, who can't even manage its own massive debt problems.  Just think about that when you hear Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders touting debt-free, tuition-free college.

References:

Chart Source: Fortune.com: Obama's Economy in 7 Charts: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: http://fortune.com/2016/01/12/obama-economy-charts/

Obama's Balloon: Federal Student Loan Debt Up 517% in 5 Years: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/obamas-balloon-federal-student-loan-debt-517-5-years

Obama’s $1.2 Trillion Student Loan Program Is Falling Apart: http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/obama-student-loan-program-is-falling-apart/

Study: 27% of Student Loans in Default: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/15/study-over-27-of-student-loans-are-in-default/

Student-Loan Defaults Are Still Soaring Thanks to Washington's Neglect: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/student-loan-defaults-are-still-soaring-thanks-to-washingtons-neglect/280158/

Venezuela: Another Socialist Utopia Falls Asunder

Socialists always believe that government is the best way to control the destiny of mankind. They believe that without complete government control over people's lives, income inequality will rule and that the rich will get richer and the poor, poorer.

Such was the case in Venezuela.  Hugo Chavez in 1998 -- when elected President -- was to turn Venezuela into a socialist utopia with the working class and the poor finally enjoying a better life in a country he felt only served the rich.  All of this would would be based on a revolutionary movement that he founded in 1982 called the "Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200".

Properties were seized and given to the poor.  He took control of the media and the supreme court to insure that there was no insurrection while he did what he needed to do to bring Marxism to his country.  He even managed to make himself "El Presidente" for life. Even though Chavez died young in 2013, his dream was continued by his successor President Maduro -- his former Vice President.

Today, Venezuela is an economic mess.  There is no food on store shelves. Even toilet paper is in short supply. Inflation is completely out of control, and this year is expected to exceed 700%; well up from last year's 180% and 172%.  That means that prices went up 1000% in just 3 years.  Not exactly the ideal inflation rate of 2 to 3%.  Because the country is so dependent on oil export revenues, the extreme fall in oil prices has further crippled its economy.

On top of everything else, electricity is in short supply because they were too dependent on hydro-electric power, This, in a country that is awash with oil.  In order to conserve electricity, government workers have recently had their workweek cut to two days -- Thursday and Friday.  As it is, the country's 2 million government workers had already had the workday slashed to 6 hours.  This latest move by Maduro means that the government workers will only work 12 hours a week.  This simply means that the country will fall into more turmoil as government services are even more severely curtailed. 

Once again, this proves that Socialism does not work.  And, I believe that Venezuela will again see another upheaval that will overturn the Chavez-designed Marxist government; and, it could be a violent revolution. The truth is, it may be too late to do anything to fix the country since it has been damaged so much in the last 18 years.  The legacy of Hugo Chavez is that Venezuela may wind up being the poorest country in South America.  Just the opposite of his original utopian dream.

References:

Hugo Chavez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez

Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Bolivarian_Movement-200

Nicolas Maduro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro

Shortages in Venezuela - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_in_Venezuela

Venezuela Inflation: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/inflation-cpi

IMF Sees Venezuela Inflation Rocketing to 720 Percent in 2016: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/imf-sees-venezuela-inflation-rocketing-to-720-percent-in-2016

Venezuela enforces public sector leave on three weekdays: https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuela-enforces-public-sector-leave-three-weekdays-230119339.html?ref=gs

U.S. concern grows over possible Venezuela meltdown - officials: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-usa-idUSKCN0Y42MT

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The Obama Con Game

It wasn't even two years ago that we found out from the ObamaCare architect, Jonathan Gruber, that the healthcare law was sold based on the belief that the American voter was stupid.  To that point, here are a few quotes from Gruber:

"Lack of transparency is a huge advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever. But basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass."

"It's a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter..." 

"...if you made it explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.

Now, thanks to a profile that appeared in the New York Magazine, we find out that the Iran deal was predicated on stupidity as well.  This time the media was preyed upon as being a bunch of 27-year-old-somethings that knew nothing.

For the last 7+ years, Barack Obama and his minions have been telling us lies gift-wrapped as plausible truths and, the media and the voters have accepted them.  Hopefully, in retrospect, some intelligent future historian will sort through those deceptions for all of us to see.

References:

The guy who thinks voters are 'stupid': http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/opinion/cupp-gruber-obamacare/

Ben Rhodes Reveals How Obama Duped America Into The Dangerous Iran Deal: http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/09/ben-rhodes-reveals-how-obama-duped-america-into-the-dangerous-iran-deal/

Is Obama a Serial Liar: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/05/is_obama_a_serial_liar.html

Serial LIAR: Video Of Obama Blatantly Lying 36 Times: http://www.infowars.com/serial-liar-video-of-obama-blatantly-lying-36-times/

Obama: Serial Liar | Frontpage Mag: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/190091/obama-serial-liar-daniel-greenfield

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Where Were All of Hillary's Ideas When She Was a Senator?

If you look at Hillary Clinton's campaign "Issues" page, she lists all types of proposals that she would implement to solve what she perceives as problems in America.  She calls it "her vision for America".   Unfortunately, much of it is merely political pablum dished out only to get elected and which will never happen.

My problem with Hillary is that she has never been a leader.  When Bill Clinton was President, he appointed her to drive healthcare reform through Congress.  It was a disaster, and never happened.  ObamaCare did happen because Obama and the Democrats learned from her mistakes by making sure all the bad that their healthcare reform act  would bring was  kept hidden.  Today, the term HillaryCare is considered to be a derogatory comment pointing to Hillary's failure.

However, I think the best example of Hillary's lack of leadership skills is that, in her 8 years in the Senate, there where only 3 bills that were singularly submitted by her and passed into law:

• S. 1241: A bill to establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site in the State of New York. Bush signed the bill Dec. 3, 2004. 
• S. 3613: A bill to name a post office the "Major George Quamo Post Office Building." Bush signed the bill Oct. 6, 2006. 
• S. 3145: A bill to designate a highway in New York as the Timothy J. Russert highway. Bush signed the bill July 23, 2008. 

I do not think a monument, Post Office, and highway naming constitutes real leadership. Where were all the bills that would cure Alzheimer's, or stop sexual assaults on campuses, and all the other problems that she says she will accomplish as President? 

Hillary is a phony.  But, people who support her seem to think she will, in fact, do all the things she promises during this campaign.  Fat chance!

References:

Hillary on the Issues: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

Did Hillary Clinton have her name on only three laws in eight years as Jeb Bush says?: http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/jun/23/jeb-bush/did-hillary-clinton-have-her-name-only-three-laws-/

The Not-So-Grand, Grand Old Party

There are those in the media that see the GOP as being in complete disarray with the nomination now assured for Donald Trump.  There are some that think the party will cease to exist altogether.  Others believe that it will morph into three entities:  The Trump Party (perhaps the America Great Party), The Tea Party, and/or the traditional Republican Party; whatever the latter ever really was.   Each group would then nominate its own candidate for President; something that would surely give Hillary Clinton the presidency.

The reality is that Trump has created an amalgam of political ideas from both the political left and the political right that appear to have a large following, but not large enough to be any type of majority.  Also, his trash-talk behavior won't appeal to the nation as a whole and will only serve to make the GOP into even more of a minority than before.  As Pew Research found, 48% of the population considers themselves either Democrat or leans Democrat.  While only 39% align themselves with the Republican Party.

All of this points to a simple fact: Hillary Clinton will win; assuming she isn't indicted for jeopardizing national security.  In my opinion, the only way Trump can be the victor is if the economy falters and goes negative in the two quarters prior to the election.   Just my opinion.

Reference: Pew Research: Party Affiliations: http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/