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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: joseffy who wrote (58240)	11/3/2012 10:11:20 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Obama's Unprecedented Record of Failure on Jobs President Obama wants four more years because, he says, things are getting better and this is no time to turn back. And the latest jobs report to be released before the election appeared to hold good news, showing the economy created 171,000 jobs in October. But you don't have to look very hard to see that Obama has the worst jobs record of any president in modern times. Despite 40 months of economic recovery, the number of payroll jobs today is just 0.1% above where it stood when Obama took office, and it's still 4.3 million below the previous peak. What's more, in the 44 months Obama has been in office, the unemployment rate has been below 8% in just two, and it was at or above 9% for 29 months. No president since the Great Depression has produced unemployment rates that high for that long. Worse, aside from the meager gain in jobs, every other employment indicator is worse today than it was in January 2009. • A higher unemployment rate. Right now, the jobless rate stands at 7.9%, which is higher than when Obama took office and higher than it was when voters tossed Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush out of office. • More unemployed. There are 209,000 more people out of work today than in January 2009. That's a stunning statistic, considering the fact that the recession ended five months after Obama was sworn in. • More long-term unemployed. Unlike other economic recoveries, this one has created a bigger pool of long-term unemployed, with 2.3 million more people who've been out of work 27 weeks or longer than there were in January 2009. To put that in perspective, just the number of long-term unemployed added under Obama is bigger than the total number of long-term unemployed in all but a handful of months since 1948. • More people out of the labor force. Obama has also presided over an unprecedented explosion in the number of people who've dropped out of the labor force. Some 7.8 million Americans have stopped looking for work. Because these people don't get counted as unemployed, that has the effect of making the unemployment picture look better than it is. In fact, had the labor force participation rate not dropped under Obama, the unemployment rate today would be 10.6%. • More people who can't find full-time jobs. The vast pool of part-time workers also masks the country's unemployment crisis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 1 million more workers today are working at part-time jobs because they can't find full-time jobs than there were in January 2009. That is hardly a sign of progress, but instead is a sign of a country falling further behind because Obama's stagnant economy can't lift any boats. • Fewer people working as a share of the population. Today, less than 59% of the adult population is working. That, too, is below where it stood when Obama took office, even though this figure normally climbs during a recovery. This is also a sign of the growing dependency culture that Obama has encouraged. The rise in dependency has shown up in separate government reports finding an explosion in the number of people in poverty, families relying on food stamps and workers signing up for long-term federal disability benefits. • Lower wages. Earnings also have gone in the wrong direction, BLS data show. Real median weekly earnings have dropped 5% since Obama took office four years ago on the promise of peace and prosperity. No president in modern times has asked voters to grant him four more years based on such a breathtakingly dismal record. And the only reason Obama even has a chance of getting a second term is because the media have been so derelict in their duty to point out any of this

To: joseffy who wrote (58240)	11/4/2012 9:06:13 AM
From: greatplains_guy	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

$1.5B contract in Iraq for Biden’s little brother exposes Obama ahead of debate Joel Gehrke October 22, 2012 \| 3:00 pm Mitt Romney has criticized President Obama for giving green energy subsidies to campaign donors, but a new report out ahead of the debate tonight shows that this White House’s crony capitalism has a foreign policy angle. HillStone International won a coveted government contract in part because the company has “the little brother of the vice president as a partner,” as David Richter, president of HillStone’s parent company explained to investors in a recent meeting reported on by Fox Business today. “Since November 2010, James Biden has been the executive vice president of Hill International’s housing subsidiary despite little if any documented work history in residential construction,” Fox explains. “And if the company’s projections are accurate, both Hill and Biden are on the verge of a huge payday, beneficiaries, some analysts believe, of James Biden’s connections to the Obama Administration through his older brother.” In the Fox report, a former Hill executive who worked on getting the project had this to say about HillStone: “You have to realize that these guys are relentless businessmen and they have the right connections.” Romney has already proven himself willing to go after Obama for crony capitalism, as he did during the first debate. “[T]he place you put your money makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is,” Romney said. “Ninety billion dollars. And these businesses, many of them have gone out of business. I think about half of them — of the ones that have been invested in have gone out of business. A number of them happen to be owned by people who were contributors to your campaigns.” The housing contract in Iraq is expected to generate $1.5 billion for James Biden’s HillStone, according to Fox, so the report could pave the way for an awkward moment for the president in tonight’s debate on foreign policy. washingtonexaminer.com