---Democratic Party Scoreboard---February 5, 2012---Rasmussen House Generic Poll: 41%---Democratic Voter Affiliation: 32.5%---Fundraising: Democratic National Committee Cash On Hand: $09.5 Million---DNC Debt: $06.5 Million---House Committee Cash On Hand: $05.3 Million---House Debt: $6.6 Million---Senate Committee Cash On Hand: $7.8 Million---Senate Debt: $4.6 Million---Current U.S. House Of Representatives Democratic: 192---Vacancies: 1---Current U.S. Senate Democratic: 51---Affiliated Independents: 2---Current Democratic Governor: 20---Current State Senate Democratic: 0,885---Current State House Democratic: 2,460---Voter Trust On Issues---On Education: 42%---Health Care: 44%---Economy: 40%---Social Security: 40%---Iraq: 43%---Taxes: 39%---Afghanistan: 42%---National Security: 39%---Immigration: 38%---Government Ethics: 39%---

---Republican Party Scoreboard---February 5, 2012---Rasmussen House Generic Poll: 40%---Republican Voter Affiliation: 35.9%---Fundraising: Republican National Committee Cash On Hand: $30.1 Million---RNC Debt: $13.5 Million---House Committee Cash On Hand: $10.6 Million---House Debt: $0.0 Million---Senate Committee Cash On Hand: $9.0 Million---Senate Debt: $0.0 Million---Current U.S. House Of Representatives Republican: 242---Vacancies: 0---Current U.S. Senate Republican: 47---Affiliated Independents: 0---Current Republican Governor: 29---Current State Senate Republican: 1,031---Current State House Republican: 2,918---Voter Trust On Issues---On Education: 40%---Health Care: 42%---Economy: 47%---Social Security: 41%---Iraq: 42%---Taxes: 46%---Afghanistan: 41%---National Security: 48%---Immigration: 47%---Government Ethics: 36%---

Silver Cloud With A Big Gray Lining

The 243,000 Jobs Is Like The 98 Pound Weakling Bench Pressing A Fifty Pound Barbell, But 1.3 Million People Giving Up Hope Is Tragic

Campaign Friday-February 3, 2012
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The Blog Of Michael P. Borgia

It's the first Friday and time for the monthly unemployment report. At least you can give the Obama Administration this much. At least now the news is not all bad.

The report shows that this month, payrolls grew by 243,000. Now compared to how they were doing before, like back in August when the first estimate of job growth clocked in at zero, this is an improvement. But we've just come out of the deepest recession since the early 1980's. During that recession, created by Democrats refusal to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the economy lost jobs at a peak rate of about 600,000 to 700,000. During the 2008-09 recession, the economy lost jobs at a similar rate. But after the 1982 recession, with Reagan's tax cuts fully phased in, the economy gained jobs back at about the same rate it lost them. Obama has yet to achieve that, in fact his recovery has not even come close.

So its mildly amusing to see Democrats dancing around with glee over 243,000 jobs. And for those 243,000 people, the importance of those jobs should not be diminished. When the class weaking bench presses fifty pounds for the first time, his family and friends applaud. That's what this performance represents. For Obama, its a big deal because this level of bleak prosperity is the best his policies can come up with. But its not nearly what should be happening at this point in the recovery.

The unemployment rate also fell this month, from 8.5% to 8.3%. That would seem like good news, until one realizes just why the unemployment rate fell. The 243,000 jobs is just barely enough to keep up with the number of new workers entering the labor force. So for the unemployment rate to fall, since not enough jobs are being created, it's neccesary to reduce the number of workers. And in January, the number of workers fell by an astonishing amount. In January, a total of 1.3 million workers left the labor force. A total of 1.3 million people just gave up looking for work. And so the government stops counting them.

The Labor Participation Rate is the measure of the percentage of working age Americans (16-67) who are either working or actively seeking work. That number fell by a shocking 0.3% in Jaunary to a thirty one year low of 63.7%. The rate has not been this low since Jimmy Carter was president. Now in America at that time, it was far less common for women and older Americans to work. So a 63.7% rate was considered normal then. Now many more women work in many professions they never did before. At it's most recent peak under Presidents Bush and Clinton, it ran about 67.1%. As the work force gets smaller, the amount of people remaining that are unemployed gets smaller as long term unemployed are no longer counted. So the unemployment rate falls, not because more people are working, but because we've stopped counting the people who aren't working.

To put it into context, the unemployment rate fell not because we created so many jobs, but because we simply stopped counting more than one million Americans as being part of the work force. If we had the same number of workers in January as we had in December, the unemployment rate likely would have risen by 0.2% instead of having fallen by that amount.

For Obama and his campaign, the 243,000 pounds represent an epic achievement...for them. For the rest of us, while its nice to see the class weakling making progress, you're not going to hire that kid when you need heavy furniture moved around the house. For the Republicans, its essential to continue to remind people about the way things should be after a severe recession, and to remind them of how Republicans once brought the nation back from a deep recession and unleashed nearly three decades of virtually uninterrupted prosperity. And that Republican policies...and Republican policies only...can bring the nation back to prosperity.

You have been assimilated.

Don't Judge A Book By It's Cover

Romney's Opponents Claim There's No Space Between Obamacare And Romneycare. But There's A World Of Difference Between The Two

Issues Tuesday-January 31, 2012
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The Blog Of Michael P. Borgia

How many of you have refused to buy a book because you don't like the cover? No one doubts that superficially the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in 2010 and the Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care Act passed by the Massachusetts legislature and partially signed into law by Gov. Mitt Romney in 2005 resemble each other in objective, form and function.

But beneath the covers, the two pieces of legislation and the programs they created are in fact very, different from each other in terms of what they do, what they require and how President Obama and Governor Romney acted and performed in their creation. The differences between the two are subtle, yet sufficient enough to require Republican primary voters be provided a "look inside the covers" to see just how different the two concepts are.

The first difference is sheer bulk. Obamacare famously clocks in at more than 2,700 pages. Most of the sheer bulk of that is in amendments to a one page House bill the Senate used as a carrier for all the tax increases, since the Senate cannot originate a bill that raises taxes. The government in turn has already promulgated more than 6,000 pages in new regulations to support it. Romney Care is enabled by a piece of legislation that is only seventy pages long. Obama Care also carried with it two unrelated pieces of legislation, an overhaul of the student loan program and a new long term care benefit. Romney Care was a clean bill, carrying no unrelated legislation with it.

Romney Care was written out in the open, in public hearings open to all. Republicans and Democrats took part together in writing it together. Obama Care was written by a group of about a dozen Democratic Senators, who locked themselves away from the public for weeks while crafting a bill in secret that could hold all sixty Senate Democratic votes to overcome a fillibuster. Republicans were offered no opportunity whatsoever to take part in the writing of Obama Care in either House of Congress.

MItt Romney played a highly active role in the writing of Romney Care, starting with a model offered by the Heritage Foundation. I don't know if you're familiar with the people who run that operation, but I assure you that you wont find any of them around an Occupy rally/riot. Barack Obama played virtualy no part whatsoever in the crafting of the bill, so afraid was he to have any firm position associated with him or his administration, leaving Congress to do the dirty work. Democratic leaders at times were left wondering what the President actually stood for.

When the legislature in Massachusetts went off the tracks, Romney stood up to them and cast eight line item vetoes against the Act. All eight were eventually overridden, including a provision to give free health insurance to the poor (Romney wanted everyone to pay at least something) and a provision providing free dental care to many poor. Romney lost a fight he couldn't win, but he had the courage to fight it. Obama stood idly by and did nothing while Sen. Harry Reid negotiated the infamous Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback.

Romney Care is in keeping with the United States Constitution, the state's power to enact it being derived from the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Obama Care is flagrantly unconstitutional, since it clearly exceeds the limits of Congress' power as derived by Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. The moral authority to enact Romney Care is derived from the longstanding principle that the states are laboratories of democracy, a principle originally defined by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. The moral authority behind Obama Care is based upon the values of the socialist welfare states of Europe. The very nations like Greece that we are watching implode before our very eyes, in part because of universal health care. Those are values that have no place in our national consciousness.

Because Romney Care was written in the open and passed with the support and knowledge of the people, it was and remains extremely popular. Polls consistently show that more than eighty percent of Massachusetts citizens support the law. Obama Care was passed in shadows and in secret. Because of that, it was and remains highly unpopular. Routinely, large majorities of Americans have been consistently in favor of repeal of the law.

Before Mitt Romney signed the Massachusetts law, he made sure it would not create deficits in the Massachusetts budget. And he made getting the state's budget into balance a condition of getting his support for signing any part of the legislation. Obama Care was written with only a minimum regard for its impact on the federal deficit. On paper, it created the smoke and mirrors illusion of not adding to the federal deficit. But it does so by counting ten years of revenue against only six years of benefits. But after ten years of benefits, Obama Care is in fact a major addition to the federal budget hole.

Speaking of benefits, who provides them? Romney Care provides its benefits by enlisting the private sector and giving subsidies to poor people to help them buy private policies. The expansion of health coverage in Obama Care is obtained by forcing people into an expanded version of the already crippled and dying Medicare program.

Romney Care was paid for without raising any taxes, without creating budget deficits and without gutting any other state program. Obama Care is funded by more than a half billion dollars in new taxes, mostly on middle class tax payers...unless of course you belong to a union. Then its likely that the Obama Administration provided your union with a waiver from certain requirements. Obama Care also cuts Medicare by $500 billion over ten years. By the way, Harry Reid and his Senate cabal left it to some future Congress to actually vote for those specific cuts. We all know those cuts will never happen. With the cuts, Obama Care would reduce the federal deficit by some $35 billion over ten years. But without them, the deficit grows by $465 billion.

Finally there is the matter of the individual mandate. Under Obama Care, you are required to purchase health insurance. At no time in American history has this ever happened. As a condition of your existence, you must buy health insurance acceptable to the government. Romney Care also requires that you purchase health insurance, but there is an important caveat in the law Romney signed. If you decide not to buy health insurance, you don't have to but you must sign an agreement to compensate the state for any health care expenditures on your behalf. It is true that after Romney left office, Gov. Deval Patrick signed a revision that requires residents who fail to purchase insurance to forfeit their $219 annual state personal income tax deduction.

But if you really don't like Romney Care, the fine does not matter. You can escape from it. There are forty nine other states in which you can live, none of which have Romney Care. And most of them offer a warmer climate. Hate Romney Care? Vote with your feet. Hate Obama Care, you better vote at the ballot box in 2012. You've only got one chance to get it right, because if you don't there will be no place you can go where the Stars And Stripes flies to escape the crippling clutches of Obama Care.

Romney Care and Obama Care at first glance look alike on the cover. But beneath the binding are two wildly different pieces of legislation. One draws its origins from conservative ideas, the other embodies the darkest elements of the far left. One was written in the political sunshine, the other written in secret behind a locked door. One is light weekend reading, the other cannot be read because it might cause physical injury to lift it. One raises taxes on the middle class while the other does not. One keeps a budget balanced while the other blows holes in the budget. One gives you options to escape if you don't like it, the other traps and imprisons you wherever you go.

Those campaigning against Mitt Romney on the basis of Romney Care will try to slap an Obama Care sleeve over the binding. But don't judge a book by it's cover.

You have been assimilated.