Why Won't Washington Understand that Paying People to Be Unemployed Means More Unemployment? Feb. 20, 2012 by Dan Mitchell

Why Won’t Washington Understand that Paying People to Be Unemployed Means More Unemployment?

February 20, 2012 by Dan Mitchell

I’ve written periodically about the perverse incentives of the unemployment insurance system. Simply stated, there will be fewer jobs if the government subsidizes joblessness, and I even showed that this is a consensus position by citing the academic writings of left-leaning economists such as Larry Summers and Paul Krugman.
The San Francisco Federal Reserve also has produced research measuring the negative impact of unemployment insurance on the job market.
Now we have some additional academic research on the topic, and the results once again show that the unemployment insurance program causes a significant increase in unemployment.

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation program created in the summer of 2008 provided for unprecedented extensions in the duration of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. Combined with persistent high unemployment and historically long durations of unemployment during the 2008 and 2009 recession, this extension of UI has prompted renewed interest in the impact of UI benefits on job search, the duration of unemployment, and the unemployment rate. …This paper uses multiple regression analysis to estimate the impact of extended UI benefits on the unemployment rate after controlling for the severity of the recent recession. The extension of UI is found to have a positive and significant impact on the national unemployment rate… The UI benefit extensions that have occurred between the summer of 2008 and the end of 2010 are estimated to have had a cumulative effect of raising the unemployment rate by .77 to 1.54 percentage points.

If you’re trying to educate a statist friend or colleague about the relationship between unemployment insurance and joblessness, this research should help. But you may also want to share this real-world story. And here’s another powerful anecdote.
Last but not least, this cartoon does a very effective job of showing the consequences of paying people not to work.

Obama and Eric Holder Have Subverted American Freedomes, Dec. 27, 2011 By Kevin "Coach" Collins

Obama And Eric Holder Have Subverted American Freedoms

December 27, 2011 By Kevin "Coach" Collins 13 Comments

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We know that Eric Holder is a liar and a criminal facilitator based on what we have learned about his conduct in the Fast and Furious crimes.  We are now finding out Holder has been a Democrat “cleaner” and cover up artist for as far back as the Oklahoma City bombing and maybe Waco and Ruby Ridge as well. Holder is a despicable excuse for a human being and that is why Obama appointed him.
We should have recognized this lowlife’s traits when he not only refused to prosecute “his people” the armed Black Panthers who intimidated Whites attempting to vote, but hounded and harassed any of his deputies who attempted to bring them to justice.
This criminal posing as our Attorney General and his equally anti American boss in the White House have succeeded in turning the purpose of the Department of Justice (DoJ) 180 degrees away from its original mission.

What has been lost in history and smothered by the Democrat controlled media is that when the Republican controlled Congress established the DoJ in 1871 its specific purpose, as outlined by Republican President U.S. Grant, was to fight the Democrats in the Ku Klux Klan who were intimidating and murdering the recently freed African American former slaves living in the Southern States.
At that time we saw Grant, a White Republican President, appoint Amos Akerman a White Attorney General, and instruct him to use the power of the federal government against the Democrat Party’s KKK to enforce the 15^th Amendment which gave freed slaves the right to vote.
Today we see Barack Obama, a Black Democrat President, who has appointed Eric Holder, a Black Attorney General allowing and encouraging him to refuse to prosecute club wielding Black Panther thugs who were filmed in the act of intimidating White people attempting to vote. Obama is standing by and watching Holder use the power of the federal government to deny White Americans the right to vote. That both he and Holder only have the right to vote themselves is because of the sacrifice of over 360,000 Union troops on the battlefields of the Civil War means nothing to this criminal duo.
Is it hard to believe what we are now finding out about Holder’s role in the Oklahoma City murder of 168 people?
Turning things upside down is, after all, the mark of the Great Deceiver.

Why D.C. RINO's Won't Impeach Eric Holder.... By Ben Johnson..

Why D.C. RINOs Won't Impeach Eric Holder

DECEMBER 13, 2011 BY BEN JOHNSON 

One of the activists in the Clinton impeachment trial says not to believe some Republicans threatening to impeach Attorney General Eric Holder over Operation Fast and Furious. It's just a smokescreen used by Washington pols, he writes.

Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch USA, writes the fact "that House Republicans threatened only to impeach Holder if he does not come totally clean on Operation Fast and Furious" is an "empty threat" and "meaningless in the world of Washington, D.C., politics."

"When was the last time anyone was impeached?" he asked.

Klayman knows the territory. He doggedly pursued Bill Clinton's serial crimes in the 1990s on everything from Filegate to Chinese campaign fundraising to misuse of the Commerce Department. Then-Congressman Bob Barr brought Klayman in to brief congressmen who were pursuing impeachment, and Klayman introduced the panel to Dolly Kyle Browning, a former victim of Clinton's sleazy ways. (When she planned to expose their affair, Clinton's staffers responded, "We will destroy you.")

Klayman writes in WND.com that he has seen RINOs promise impeachment before as a slick political tactic:

You see, lying in the nation's capital may make for good theatre, but it's really no "big deal," whether it's Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton during her scandalous reign of terror in the White House, or anyone else, including Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush, who lied about various issues involving the lead up to the Iraq war. Threats of impeachment of Holder are just part of the overall dog-and-pony show to position Republicans for the next election – just as the impeachment of Bill Clinton was intended only to weaken Democrats for the 2000 presidential election. There never was any Republican intention to convict and remove the criminal from office, lest Al Gore assume the presidency and run as an incumbent in 2000.

Congressman James Sensenbrenner, a conservative patriot, publicly raised the specter of impeachment during Eric Holder's testimony last week. However, RINOs quickly backed away. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said he does not even want to see Holder's subordinate, Lanny Breuer, fired — insisting it "would be a loss if Lanny were to leave."

Former Bush-43 speechwriter David Frum advised Republicans to cave on the debt ceiling toavoid impeaching Obama. He's currently warning the GOP not to nominate Newt Gingrich, because it means "volunteering to spend 2012 re-arguing the Clinton impeachment."

If anyone knows impeachment's inside baseball, it is Klayman. As this author has noted, the two parties simply agree to disagree over major issues, swap seats every so often, and coalesce to hurt the average American. At the leadership level, Washington is a one-party town with two names, both dedicated to big government.

The good news is, Klayman has a solution:

It again falls to "We the People" to take action. If Holder is not indicted for perjury, should we not empanel a citizens' grand jury and charge him ourselves – a legal right under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution? And, let's not single out Sir Eric! The mainstay of the Washington, D.C., political establishment, with few exceptions, should also be indicted for destroying our country and lying to us in the process!

In fact, citizen grand juries have indicted Barack Obama. This may be the most effective way to go.