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Pruitt took a $100,000+ four-day trip to Morocco (on taxpayer dime) that was arranged by a lobbyist friend. Months later the lobbyist won a contract with the Moroccan government worth $40,000/month. Congress is investigating.
Oh and two of Pruitt's top aides have resigned in the past 24 hours
I guess maybe you have to sink to the bottom of the swamp before you can drain it?
For the record and posterity, I cited GDP statistics, Unemployment, and Government Employment figures that come from official government sources. Geezer hasn't presented ANY source data whatsoever to back up his hot takes. It's based more on "gut instincts", homilies like "trust your eyes", and sensible conclusions reached after listening to Mark Levin.
Geezer's contention that Obama nudged down unemployment figures by rapidly expanding employment in do-nothing govt jobs is contradicted by the conservative think tank AEI's own article.
No. What I am saying is that the traditional ways of measuring goods and services produced in an economy become less and less valid when bureaucrat salaries entitlements and welfare sums paid are counted toward GDP.
But I notice you don't go anywhere near trying to explain negative interest rates in most of the world during the Obama years, and zero rates in the US. Why did that happen? JB and DSL have no answer because the normal alt-left sources of their news simply ignore the matter. I'll give you a clue: there were/are a lot of people who had a nest egg saved for retirement, or just saved period in programs like an IRA or 401(k). The secular interest rate has always been around 5% in real terms, but during the Obama administration, the rate was roughly .2% in nominal terms and -1% in real terms because inflation was around 1.2%.
Again, why the negative interest rates? It is because they reflect a decline in actual production of goods and services. That is all it could be. So why do traditional ways of measuring GDP show reasonable growth rates? Because they measure government salaries and welfare as if they were "production" in the classic sense. Of course, teachers and firemen salaries measure production. Welfare doesn't. Nor does the salaries paid to EPA officials who view their job as stopping production of anything that varies from green orthodoxy. Would you count the destruction of dams that are producing hydroelectric power to be includable in GDP when the only reason for their destruction is to "protect" fish?
But, in the interest of comity, I do want to wish DSL, SLF and JB a Happy May Day!! You and your fellow intellectual travelers really should have your day to celebrate all the successes of statism.
DSL, stop using those alt-left stats of GDP and Unemployment Rate, you Commie. It's all fake news. Stick with hard facts like "what do your eyes tell you?".
No. What I am saying is that the traditional ways of measuring goods and services produced in an economy become less and less valid when bureaucrat salaries entitlements and welfare sums paid are counted toward GDP.
But I notice you don't go anywhere near trying to explain negative interest rates in most of the world during the Obama years, and zero rates in the US. Why did that happen? JB and DSL have no answer because the normal alt-left sources of their news simply ignore the matter. I'll give you a clue: there were/are a lot of people who had a nest egg saved for retirement, or just saved period in programs like an IRA or 401(k). The secular interest rate has always been around 5% in real terms, but during the Obama administration, the rate was roughly .2% in nominal terms and -1% in real terms because inflation was around 1.2%.
Again, why the negative interest rates? It is because they reflect a decline in actual production of goods and services. That is all it could be. So why do traditional ways of measuring GDP show reasonable growth rates? Because they measure government salaries and welfare as if they were "production" in the classic sense. Of course, teachers and firemen salaries measure production. Welfare doesn't. Nor does the salaries paid to EPA officials who view their job as stopping production of anything that varies from green orthodoxy. Would you count the destruction of dams that are producing hydroelectric power to be includable in GDP when the only reason for their destruction is to "protect" fish?
But, in the interest of comity, I do want to wish DSL, SLF and JB a Happy May Day!! You and your fellow intellectual travelers really should have your day to celebrate all the successes of statism.
Got links to your evidence? Can you show me GDP measured in the terms you describe and where your data comes from? The Trump admin is measuring GDP in the same way that Obama was as far I as I can find. Does that mean the Trump GDP numbers are a sham too?
I'm not sure what you're indicating with the interest rates. The rates were obviously cut by central banks around the world to encourage borrowing and spending and avoid economic collapse. In some cases it produced stagnation instead. You seem to regard savings as "production" but spending is not? But obviously you can't make money if people aren't spending.
Also, you keep insisting that government salaries must be rapidly expanding in order to make up for the growth lost in the private sector and I provided statistics showing that under Obama's first term, total employment in the Federal govt (not including the military) did not dramatically rise above Bush's numbers, but for a brief spike for the census. Employment in state and local governments, on the other hand, significantly fell during the Obama first term, not in a small part because Republicans have been running 2/3 of the state governments for a few election cycles now.
Here's a link based on stats produced by the U of Michigan claiming there's been job growth every year in Michigan since 2010 and in fact 2017 was not as good as several of the Obama years. Manufacturing is projected by them to decline in the coming years, even if NAFTA is preserved, as hiring in that sector had slowed significantly by the end of 2017.
DSL, stop using those alt-left stats of GDP and Unemployment Rate, you Commie. It's all fake news. Stick with hard facts like "what do your eyes tell you?".
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Ha, nothing beats the ol eyeball test except maybe listening to your gut.
Ukraine has halted investigations into Manafort in order to avoid "irritating the top American officials" and secure the first shipment of Javelin missiles for their military
Overall, the Republican tax-cut bill has been good for Americans. That is why I voted for it. But it could have been even better for American workers and their families.
The central reason why it wasn’t is that in the new economy, it isn’t enough to just cut taxes; you have to cut the right ones.
During the tax-cut debate, when the rival priorities of committing fully to a 20 percent corporate income-tax rate or allowing full and immediate expensing for all business investments emerged, it was the former that won out. This choice may seem small, but it speaks volumes about where supply-side priorities were, and where they could have been.
Full expensing is a tax cut for businesses planning to make new investments in the United States, while a corporate income-tax rate cut is an across-the-board windfall for capital, no matter its use. By allowing businesses to deduct their capital investments, full expensing better increases the value of investments that are tied to American labor, while a corporate income-tax rate cut increases the return to capital regardless of its country of origin or whether it will create American jobs.
Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]? Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.
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