Scott Randolph – the epitome of Radicalism acts like a spoiled school boy who has violent tantrums and throws things if he doesn’t get his way. Scott is notorious for attacking his opposition with child like threats followed by intimidation and false accusations.

The Randolphs, Scott and his wife Susannah spend their spare time backing Soros funded groups like Florida Watch (a far left group) that does nothing for our Country but distract and divide. Liberty Watch seems to have tight connections to SOSP (Secretary of State Project) funded by George Soros. Liberty Watch isn’t your house wives’ little friendly neighborhood “Bunko” group – they’re out to control State votes and that’s a “No No” in a Demcratic Nation.

Randolph like Obama climbs on his soap box attacking a stay at home mom, Ann Romney. Like Hillary Rosen, Scott Randolph exposes Obama’s war on women and he’s probably next in line to get sent to his room or alienated from Obama’s House of Radicals. Scott is a tweeter with an ego problem hating anyone who disagrees with him; he’s another “weiner” problem for the Democrats because he preys on women on “Twitter.”

Here’s his latest tweet against Ann Romney, a stay at home mom. “How many house servants did “stay-at-home-mom” Ann Romney have to raise her kids. Just b/c u don’t have job doesn’t make u stay-at-home mom?” It’s really none of your business Randolph what mothers choose to stay at home do 24/7. Scott exemplifies the Democrats hatred of women regardless of race or class.

He turned on a fellow Democrat Democratic Rep. Daphnee Campbell an African American freshmen in the Florida House of Representative. Daphne, a nurse believes in ultra sound prior to an abortion – Scott was violent in his reaction to Daphne’s here is what he said to her.

“Randolph, who has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood and Equality Florida, told Campbell “You are a traitor…I swear, you will not be re-elected. I will get an opponent.” Now that’s a threat with vicious intent!

Randolph is one of those squirrly human beings with low self esteem that needs to get a day time job and find out what balancing a budget means. He needs a refresher course on the Constitution and needs to learn what being a good steward of taxpayer’s money entails. He’s but one more extreme radical hell bent on destroying America; he needs to go and tomorrow isn’t soon enough to remove this person from Florida’s House of Representatives.

Obama isn’t a happy camper for Scott Randolph and Hillary Rosen have exposed his “War on Women” and women are starting to look at Obama as the problem not the solution to our Nations economic and social problems.

May God Bless America
As Always,
Little Tboca

Score One For Crony Capitalism

With the term “fairness” being used approximately 12,235 times in his State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama laid out his basic concept of government and its involvement in the lives of American citizens: government’s basic responsibility (to him) is to make life “fair” for its citizens. The funny thing is, the word “fairness” can be defined in various ways. For example, as the book “Confidence Men” clearly lays out, the White House is more closely allied with Wall Street and its interests than any previous Administration. This is demonstrated by the sheer volume of sweetheart deals being given out to prominent supporters and contributors.

Of course, the very first sweetheart deals were the government takeover of our auto manufacturers, blatant give backs to the auto workers unions which were such strong supporters of the Obama candidacy, deals which were at the expense of retirees and state employee pension funds which owned bonds issued by General Motors in particular. Following those blatant give backs, we had the green energy deals where the Obama Administration gave hundreds of millions in either direct investments or loan guarantees to already failing green energy companies which happened to be owned by major contributors.

Now comes the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project, much hated by tree huggers and much loved by anyone faintly interested in economic growth. Oddly enough, after the president blocked its construction it came to light that one of the biggest beneficiary of the decision was a railroad which happened to be owned by President Obama’s wealthiest supporter, quixotic Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett.

We are working feverishly both day and night to understand just how it is that giving kickbacks and favorable deals to campaign contributors could ever be construed as “fair” or change that anyone could believe in, but it’s also up to the Republican candidates for president to make this case to the American people.

Paging Mitch Daniels

Speaking of presidential candidates, Dick Armey says that it isn’t too late for Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels to enter the race.

The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol says that Governor Daniels was the actual winner of Monday’s GOP debate.

Political Push Moves a Deal on Mortgages Inches Closer

Nope, no political motivation whatsoever behind a planned forced write down of mortgages which could begin taking place just months before a national election.

More Americans Uninsured in 2011

Yay for ObamaCare. Just wait until the tax increases designed to pay for this decrease in coverage take effect, after the election of course.

Investor Guide: The Ten (10) Commandments Of Commodity Investing

Looking to bolster your portfolio with commodities? Read this first.

Greed is Good

That line was made famous in a film made by anti-capitalist hack and presidential assassination scholar Oliver Stone, who intended it as a declarative statement of what he saw as being wrong with our American system of free enterprise. Ironically enough, Stone relies on the very system that he frequently attacks in order to make a living, but hypocrisy in Hollywood isn’t exactly limited to Mr. Stone.

The reality is that greed is a good thing, and it is greed alone which makes it possible for each and every one of us to have food on our tables, just as Adam Smith pointed out when he famously wrote:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

For any liberals who happen to be reading this, what Smith was talking about was greed, pure, unadulterated and selfish greed. Neither the farmer nor the grocer provide food for your family because they actually care about you personally, but because they are interested in the financial compensation which is received in return. This is not to say that such people have no regard for their end customers or the communities they serve, but the reality is that they engage in their businesses in order to make enough profit to provide for their own families.

This basic lesson in capitalism 101 seems necessary in light of all of the recent attacks on Mitt Romney’s time with Bain Capital, which should be interpreted as an attack on the basic system which runs our nation. Such attacks should be rebuffed at every opportunity, and some good ammunition is provided by The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger, in a piece entitled “Bain Capital Saved America“:

Not only did Bain Capital save America, but no matter what turn Mitt Romney’s political career takes, Bain Capital may stand as the best of Mr. Romney’s lifetime contributions to the nation’s economic well-being. If only he’d tell the story.

We are of course putting forth “Bain Capital” as not merely the Romney private-equity house but as the stand-in for the period of American economic history that ran from 1980 to 1989. Back then it was called the Greed Decade, with asset-stripping barbarians at the gate. Virtually everything about this popular stereotype is wrong. Properly understood, the 1980s, including Bain, were the remarkable years when an ever-resilient America found a way to save itself from becoming what Europe is now—a global has-been.

After centuries of First World status—and all the perquisites of prestige and power that came with it—Europe is watching its economic status slide inexorably toward new national powers in the East and elsewhere. Because of the modernizing change that Bain and others like it forced on U.S. corporations in the 1980s, we are not fading. Not yet.

Standard & Poor’s credit downgrades aren’t the biggest news about Europe’s fallen status. A larger historic change became clear in the first two weeks of 2012, as national treasuries brought sovereign debt issues to market. The new world order was made plain in a Jan. 12 Wall Street Journal headline: “Reversal of Fortune in Debt Market.” The story told how global investors who routinely bought the debt of Italy or Spain were now buying the 25- and 30-year bonds of Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa and other so-called “emerging market” nations.

Pimco global fund manager Curtis Mewbourne was explicit about the changing of the global guard in Barron’s this past weekend: “There are a couple of very important changes going on. One, which is pretty broadly accepted, is that we are seeing a very significant shift of economic importance, away from the developed economies into the developing economies.”

Read through S&P’s justification for last week’s downgrades of nine European countries. Along with the expected dumping on those countries’ fiscal profligacy, one finds as well a blunt recognition of Europe’s moribund “fundamentals,” meaning their ability to produce “strong and consistent” economic growth.

If not for Bain Capital and the other, bigger players who commenced a decade of leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers in the 1980s, the odds are that the U.S.’s “fundamentals” would be similarly weak. Instead, the U.S. corporate sector remade itself during the Bain years.

In a comprehensive 2001 re-examination of the buyouts and takeovers of the 1980s, economists Bengt Holmstrom of MIT and the University of Chicago’s Steven Kaplan made clear (as have others) that the results were far from the stereotype of zero-sum pillage revived last week by economic historian Newt Gingrich and un-Texan Gov. Rick Perry (“vulture capitalism”), and sure to be promoted in grainy, tear-soaked campaign ads by the Obama team.

How Much is Enough?

Apparently, Democrats in Washington are planning to anoint themselves as arbiters of fairness.

Kodak Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Sad news about one of America’s industrial icons. It should be noted that Kodak originally developed (no pun intended) digital photography back in 1975n, but the company’s management rejected the technology for fear that it would hurt it’s sales of film rolls.

Seth Godin with his take.

A Bleak Future for Regional Airlines

A look at how new and proposed regulations could hurt small airlines and the communities that they serve.

Conservatives Against Capitalism

There was a time when liberals could be counted on to be reliably anti-capitalist, with no better example than our current president. In fact, one could argue that the one primary divider between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party was on the issue of economics, specifically fiscal prudence and support of the free market (for Republicans). That was until the 2012 Republican presidential primary.

Enter this brilliant commentary from NRO’s Jay Nordlinger:

The last two presidential election cycles have revealed a stinking hypocrisy in conservatives: They profess their love of capitalism and entrepreneurship, but when offered a real capitalist and entrepreneur, they go, “Eek, a mouse!” And they tear him down in proud social-democrat fashion. In the off season, they sound like Friedrich Hayek. When the game is on, they sound like Huey Long, Bella Abzug, or Bob Shrum.

Last time around, Mike Huckabee said Romney “looks like the guy who laid you off.” Conservatives reacted like this was the greatest mot since Voltaire or something. To me, Romney looked like someone who could create a business and hire the sadly unentrepreneurial like me.

Others said, “He looks like a car salesman,” or, worse, “a used-car salesman.” Ho ho ho! Commerce, gross, icky, yuck. Better Romney looked like an anthropology professor.

As I say in Impromptus today, I was watching a clip of Romney tangling with an “Occupy” protester last week. Romney was defending corporate profits. I was astounded. I don’t think I had ever seen a candidate do this. When the subject comes up, you’re supposed to denounce corporate profits or say, “Hey, nice weather we’re having, huh?”

Phil Gramm once explained to Bill Buckley why he never talked about free trade on the stump — he, a professor of economics and a free-marketeer: It wasn’t worth the trouble. “Free trade benefits almost everybody,” said Gramm. “But they don’t know who they are. Free trade hurts a few, and they all know who they are.”

That last quote from former Senator Phil Gramm is quite instructive. Few are willing to defend free market capitalism any longer, even those who are the most qualified to do so. The fact of the matter is that the 2012 presidential contest is shaping up to be mainly about two philosophies: capitalism and big government, and Republicans would be foolish to get behind anyone who refuses to defend the core belief that has made the United States the greatest nation to have ever existed.

From Bain to Main

An excellent piece from Bill Kristol on the contrast between public and private sector experience.

FCC’s Regulatory Overkill Kills 96,000 Jobs in Blocked AT&T, T-Mobile Merger

Why did an administration that claims to have focused on job creation kill nearly 100,000 new ones?

Spirit Eyes New Heights With Unique Low-Fare Strategy

Read about this airline’s creative approach to pricing it’s fares.

A New Battleground for the “Right-to-Work” Fight

Support for so-called “right to work” laws tends to fall along partisan lines, with Democrats (and their very influential labor allies) strongly against in contrast to the near-universal support from Republicans. Several states have passed such legislation in recent years, which prevents unions from requiring membership as a condition of accepting a private sector job, with Wisconsin becoming a heated battlefield last year over it.

Indiana is poised to become the latest state to take up the fight in its upcoming legislative session. What makes this state unique is its location squarely in the heart of America’s manufacturing area and its workforce is still primarily dedicated to this union-heavy sector. But in recent years, Republican Mitch Daniels has earned accolades for his staunch fiscal conservatism, leading Indiana from budgets deep in the red and stifling unemployment to budget surpluses and an overall economy that is the envy of its neighbors Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. Now he’s chosen right-to-work as his final battle before leaving office in 2013 due to term limits.

The New York Times has an article giving a good overview of both sides of the Indiana battle.

National Review with a look at what happened the last time right-to-work came before the Indiana Legislature.

UPDATE: Indiana Democrats begin legislative session by walking out and depriving the Republican majority a quorum.

Workers of the World, Unite!

Conservative *cough* columnist David Brooks on the blue collar roots of presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

Nobody Understands Debt

Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, with a column sharing his newest revelation. Here’s the Princeton economics professor contradicting that viewpoint in a column dating from 2003 (when there was a Republican in the White House).

H/T: JustOneMinute

Why Does Iowa Go First?

Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein explains why here.

Black Gold

Here’s some welcome news with oil hovering around $100 per barrel.

The Most Anticipated IPO of 2012

The Wall Street Journal has a closer look at it here.

2012 Will Be More of the Same

2011 has been a rough year for the American economy by anyone’s standard. Spiraling deficits, rising commodity prices and stagnant unemployment figures are making everyone look to 2012 for signs of recovery.

Not so fast, at least according to Investor’s Business Daily:

The U.S. economy has built up momentum in recent months, but stagnant income, political stale mate and a European recession may keep 2012′s growth modest.

Thursday’s reports on pending-home sales, jobless claims and Midwest manufacturing add to evidence to a strong finish to 2011. But most analysts say the current strong patch will give way to another sluggish year.

“It’s not going to look all that different,” said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets. “It’s better than the alternative.”

He expects the U.S. economy to expand 1.7% in 2012 vs. a rough consensus of 2%. Growth of 2% or less likely would mean unemployment wouldn’t come down significantly. The recent drop to 8.6% was partly due to people leaving the labor market.

Were the Mayans on to something?

Along those same lines, The American Spectator has a rather pessimistic outlook for 2012.

Fannie and Freddie Delinquency Rates Basically Unchanged

From Calculated Risk:

Fannie Mae reported that the Single-Family Serious Delinquency rate was unchanged at 4.00% in November. This is down from 4.50% in November of 2010. The Fannie Mae serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 5.59%.

Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate increased to 3.57% in November, up from 3.54% in October. This is down from 3.85% in November 2010. Freddie’s serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20%.

These are loans that are “three monthly payments or more past due or in foreclosure”.

November (unchanged for Fannie) is probably seasonal. The serious delinquency rates have been declining, but declining very slowly. The reason for the slow decline is most likely the backlog of homes in the foreclosure process.

The “normal” serious delinquency rate is under 1%, and at this pace of decline, the delinquency rate will not be back to “normal” for a long time.

Tax Benefits From Options as Windfall for Businesses

This will do nothing to assuage the paranoia of Occupiers:

The stock market’s rebound from the financial crisis three years ago has created a potential windfall for hundreds of executives who were granted unusually large packages of stock options shortly after the market collapsed.

Now, the corporations that gave those generous awards are beginning to benefit, too, in the form of tax savings.

Thanks to a quirk in tax law, companies can claim a tax deduction in future years that is much bigger than the value of the stock options when they were granted to executives. This tax break will deprive the federal government of tens of billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade. And it is one of the many obscure provisions buried in the tax code that together enable most American companies to pay far less than the top corporate tax rate of 35 percent — in some cases, virtually nothing even in very profitable years.

In Washington, where executive pay and taxes are highly charged issues, some critics in Congress have long sought to eliminate this tax benefit, saying it is bad policy to let companies claim such large deductions for stock options without having to make any cash outlay. Moreover, they say, the policy essentially forces taxpayers to subsidize executive pay, which has soared in recent decades. Those drawbacks have been magnified, they say, now that executives — and companies — are reaping inordinate benefits by taking advantage of once depressed stock prices.

Keynes Was Right

As is our custom, we bring you Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate. Read his post before reading Leonard Reed’s classic “Great Myth’s of the Great Depression“.

Capitalism and the Right to Rise

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush left office in 2008 with sky-high approval ratings and a well-earned reputation for being an innovator. Popular among both Hispanic and Jewish voters, he left behind a legacy of being a serious and thoughtful politician.

That reputation should be enhanced with an opinion piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal in which he does what the current crop of Republican presidential candidates are failing to do: make an eloquent defense of capitalism, the sworn enemy of the Obama Administration.

As Governor Bush writes:

That is what economic freedom looks like. Freedom to succeed as well as to fail, freedom to do something or nothing. People understand this. Freedom of speech, for example, means that we put up with a lot of verbal and visual garbage in order to make sure that individuals have the right to say what needs to be said, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular. We forgive the sacrifices of free speech because we value its blessings.

But when it comes to economic freedom, we are less forgiving of the cycles of growth and loss, of trial and error, and of failure and success that are part of the realities of the marketplace and life itself.

Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand “Do something . . . anything.”

That last sentence explains in a nutshell the struggle that conservatives have in explaining the free market. So many people see struggle and the inefficiency of the free market and demand corrective action, not understanding that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is often the best engine for change. Along comes a politician (often disguising themselves as a forward thinker, or “progressive”) who promises immediate action. Unfortunately, such corrective action is the iron fist disguised inside the velvet glove of “change”, as so many entrepreneurs have learned over the past three years.

Advancing the cause of liberty and free markets requires an eloquent prophet, something that is currently in short supply. Kudos to Governor Bush for stepping to the plate.

Bankers Seek to Debunk Attack on Top 1%

Not sure any of us would appreciate being vilified for all of the world’s wrongs, but it appears as if some bankers are beginning to fight back:

Jamie Dimon, the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks, turned a question at an investors’ conference in New York this month into an occasion to defend wealth.

“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO told an audience member who asked about hostility toward bankers. “Sometimes there’s a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole.”

It should be noted that Mr Dimon was a vociferous supporter of Barack Obama in 2008.

Announcing the “2011 Lie of the Year”

According to Politifact, it’s ‘Republicans voted to end Medicare’:

“PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.

Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year.

It’s the third year in a row that a health care claim has won the dubious honor. In 2009, the winner was the Republicans’ charge that the Democrats’ health care plan included “death panels.” In 2010, it was that the plan was a “government takeover of health care.”

A complicated and wonky subject with life-or-death consequences, health care is fertile ground for falsehoods. The Democratic attack about “ending Medicare” was a pervasive line in 2011 that preyed on seniors’ worries about whether they could afford health care.”

If I Were A Poor Black Kid

With so much focus on the economy and what are (or are not) the fundamental flaws underlying it’s decline, we came across an excellent piece by Forbes’s Gene Marks which does a fantastic job of laying out what is required for anyone to rise from poverty. Here’s an excerpt:

President Obama gave an excellent speech last week in Kansas about inequality in America.

“This is the defining issue of our time.” He said. “This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.”

He’s right. The spread between rich and poor has gotten wider over the decades. And the opportunities for the 99% have become harder to realize.

The President’s speech got me thinking. My kids are no smarter than similar kids their age from the inner city. My kids have it much easier than their counterparts from West Philadelphia. The world is not fair to those kids mainly because they had the misfortune of being born two miles away into a more difficult part of the world and with a skin color that makes realizing the opportunities that the President spoke about that much harder. This is a fact. In 2011.

While one could certainly disagree with Marks’s assessment of the president’s speech (we found it to be full of the president’s standard class warfare rhetoric for our liking), the rest of his piece provides an extremely credible roadmap to accomplish what President Obama is calling for, except Marks doesn’t mention things like “more spending on education” or any increase in entitlement spending. In fact, Marks doesn’t seem to advocate for much in the way of government intervention at all. Instead his plan relies on old-fashioned ideas such as taking responsibility and being proactive, ideas that today’s generation increasingly rejects.

Realtors: We Overcounted Home Sales for Five Years

File this one in the “oops” category, with Reuters reporting:

Data on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating a much weaker housing market than previously thought.

The National Association of Realtors said a benchmarking exercise had revealed that some properties were listed more than once, and in some instances, new home sales were also captured.

“All the sales and inventory data that have been reported since January 2007 are being downwardly revised. Sales were weaker than people thought,” NAR spokesman Walter Malony told Reuters.

“We’re capturing some new home data that should have been filtered out and we also discovered that some properties were being listed in more than one list.”

House Passes Extension of Cut to Payroll Taxes

After much wrangling and partisan bickering, the House on Tuesday successfully passed an extension to the cut in payroll taxes for some 160 million Americans. However, don’t get too excited: there’s a likely chance that President Obama will veto the mostly bi-partisan bill, even if it manages to pass the Democratically-controlled Senate. Why? Because there’s a measure in the bill that would speed construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would deliver crude oil from Canada to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Stay tuned to this fight.

U.S. Mint Halts Production of $1 Coins

We’re not sure how the kiosks in Post Offices nationwide will function after this announcement.

Democratic Balanced-Budget Amendment Fails in Senate

Interesting. We always thought that “Democratic Balanced-Budget Amendment” was an oxymoron. Shockingly, this proposal (which failed miserably), “…forbids cutting taxes for the wealthy except in times of surplus and shields Social Security from being used to balance the budget.”

Labor Board Drops Case Against Boeing

The National Labor Relations Board has dropped it’s highly-controversial (and many would argue “politically motivated”) lawsuit against aerospace giant Boeing, a decision which comes on the heels of Boeing’s new contract with the machinist union that had asked the Federal agency to bring the suit.

The complaint alleged that Boeing had moved a significant portion of its manufacturing to South Carolina (which happens to be a right-to-work state) as a response to a long history of antagonism between Boeing management and its unions.
According to The New York Times, the machinist’s union “has engaged in five strikes against Boeing since 1977, including a 58-day strike in 2008 that cost the company $1.8 billion.”

That same New York Times article has the following summation:

“This case was never about the union or the N.L.R.B. telling Boeing where it could put its plants,” (N.L.R.B. acting general counsel Lafe) Solomon said. “This was a question for us of retaliation, and that remains the law.” And, not backing down, he said that if the labor board were ever faced with a similar situation, “we might well issue a complaint.”

Mr. Solomon said it was always the board’s goal to promote — and settle matters by — collective bargaining, and he said that filing the case against Boeing helped lead to a settlement through collective bargaining.

A problem if Mr. Solomon had proceeded with the case was that the labor board will drop to two members from the current three, when the term of a Democratic recess appointee, Craig Becker, expires at the end of this month. The Supreme Court ruled last year that when the board, which has five seats, dwindles to fewer than three members, it no longer has the power to rule on any cases.

New York Fed Blames Investors for Housing Bubble

Did so-called “flippers”, inspired by reality TV shows, fuel the recent housing bubble? The New York federal Reserve thinks so.

Europe’s Disastrous Summit

The European Union secured an historic treaty in order to bring about deeper economic integration. Felix Salmon explains why this a disaster of historic proportions.

Also, don’t expect the Chinese to come to Europe’s rescue.

Microsoft Predicted To Buy Netflix, LinkedIn In 2012

Will one of the worl’d largest tech companies grow even larger?

All the G.O.P.’s Gekkos

Read this post from Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate before you read this post, which easily refutes it.

Jobless Rate Unexpectedly Falls As Workforce Shrinks

Unemployment figures were released last week and in an odd twist, the unemployment rate was down while the size of the workforce shrank.

Here’s the good news:

• The overall net gain in jobs for the month was 120,000 and the private-sector gain of 140,000 (20,000 public sector jobs were lost).
• The household survey (which is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to create it’s unemployment rate) showed an increase of 278,000 jobs, making November the fourth consecutive month with a gain.
• The average monthly job gain for 2011 is about 132,000, just slightly ahead of the pace required to keep up with population increases.

Here’s the bad news according to Investor’s Business Daily:

But the share of Americans in the workforce fell to 64% in November, just above July’s modern-era low of 63.9%. It hit a record-high 67.3% in early 2000.

Part of November’s declining labor force is due to people getting too old to work or running out of unemployment benefits, noted LPL’s Canally.

A broader unemployment rate that includes discouraged and in voluntary part-time workers also fell to a more-than-two-year low of 15.6%. But that’s still high.

Unemployment was 13.2% for those without a high school diploma and 15.5% for blacks.

The average duration of unemployment rose to a new all-time high of 40.9 weeks.

More detailed analysis from Seeking Alpha.

Does Washington D.C. Need a New Sheriff?

Pinal County Arizona elected a new sheriff in 2008, the first Republican in the nearly 140-year history of the county. Paul Babeu has since been named America’s 2011 “Sheriff of the Year,” as by the National Sheriff’s Association. He’s been tough on border security, dedicated to cleaning up public corruption and is looking to do the same things in a new zipcode, 20004, which covers Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Visit www.sheriffpaul.com to learn more about this fearless leader.

Senate Democrats Shrink Payroll Tax Cut to Lure GOP Support

According to The Hill:

Democrats have reduced the $265 billion extension and expansion of the payroll tax cut, which failed last week in a vote largely along party lines, to a new proposal totaling $180 billion.

The new proposal will extend and expand the payroll tax cut for workers, giving average families an extra $1,500 next year. Democrats have “reluctantly” decided to cut the payroll tax break for employers because of Republican concerns over its cost, said the official.

If it passes, workers would see their payroll taxes drop another one and a tenth percentage points, cutting the tax by 3.1 percentage points compared to 2010.

Encouraged by Sen. Susan Collins’s (R-Maine) vote for the Democratic payroll tax proposal last week, Democrats will keep their plan to pay for it by taxing income over a million dollars. In a concession to Republicans, however, Democrats have decided to shrink the surtax on millionaires’ income from 3.25 percent to less than 2 percent.

Dodd-Frank Rules Will Crush Employment, Banks Warn

On the heals of Friday’s unemployment report comes this disturbing report on the potential impact of the Dodd-Frank legislation on job growth.

Big Bank vs Credit Union

Should you switch from your big bank to a credit union, even if you’re perfectly happy?

Send in the Clueless

The latest partisan hack-job from Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate.