The Conservative Reader

A recent story from CNBC is claiming that young job seekers are flunking job interviews because they don’t know enough to avoid sending text messages during the actual interview.

Personally I think that the story was largely propaganda to cover up the dreadful employment prospects of recent college graduates, but for the sake of argument let us assume that it is true.

Let us say that we take children from their parents at the age of four or five, lock them up for thirteen years in K-12 public school, sucker them into blowing another half-decade under the instruction of college professors, and when they can’t find jobs when they graduate it is because they don’t know how to act, and that it is their fault.…

Law school applications are declining sharply according to the New York Times, which is reporting a projected 38 percent decline from 2010 application levels.

When they failed to find jobs, law graduates took to the internet in droves to spread the word about their predicament, and finally the American Bar Association demanded more employment information from law schools. Before that, schools could count a graduate working part-time as a janitor as “employed,” and could thus report a 91 percent employment rate for their law school graduates.

No longer. The ABA now demands information regarding the type of employment; full-time or part-time, practicing law or not, law-related or not, and the numbers are terrible.

In response, law schools have shown about as much sympathy as one …

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has on its site information on the 30 occupations where the most jobs are expected to be added between 2010 and 2020. (See Table 6. The 30 occupations with the largest projected employment growth, 2010-20, or click here to see the table.)

The BLS projects that these 30 occupations will add approximately 9.3 million new positions by 2020. These positions would be completely new additions to the existing workforce and not dependent on attrition of the current workers.

They are listed in order of the number of new posts expected, with the top spot being registered nurse, which is no surprise, with an expected growth of almost 712,000 new positions. At the bottom of the list is medical assistant, with nearly …

The Commerce Department has released GDP data for the fourth quarter of 2012, and these numbers indicate a contraction of an annualized .1 percent, which wasn’t exactly a crash, but it was a contraction nonetheless.

If you read my work, you already know that I don’t think there was a real economic recovery, and that we are in a significant economic depression. If you pretend that people settling for part-time work when they used to have full-time work is indicative of job growth; and think the Fed ’s buying $40 billion per month in bonds with thin-air fun bucks is good; and ignore the college graduates who can’t find jobs because they hadn’t entered the “workforce” yet and were thus not officially unemployed – then …

I break from a majority of Republicans on the current fiscal cliff negotiations and believe the rate increases that Democrats are seeking should eventually be agreed to. More specifically I would support John Boehner signing on to taking the top bracket from 35% to 37-38% (short of the 39.6% Obama wants).

Of course the argument against doing so is the superior one—essentially that the Senate and the President want more money to spend while having not passed a budget in 3 years and having not yet put any real spending cuts or entitlement reforms on the table. But the two Parties have been at a stalemate over this issue for years and in my view the trump card is that last month they held the …

(This is Part 2 of a 2 Part Series– To Start With Part 1 Click Here)

Dollar Under Strain

There are so many dollars floating around out there, and so little American production for those dollars to chase, eventually foreign central banks will get wise and look to divest. At some point, that trickle could turn into a flood, and result in a dollar run. If that happens, life in America will be rather bleak for a time.

Police State

Obama has consistently lied about his civil liberties stances; campaigning against the Patriot Act and then supporting the renewal, and promising to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, and then signing it. There is no reason to believe he will change course now.

A …

Well, Barack Obama will be President for a second term. It is now time to take a look around, and prepare for what is likely to happen next. Based on my observations and what I’ve learned over the years, these are my predictions:

No Housing Recovery

Commentators have been calling the bottom of the housing market – and screaming with increasing urgency that it was time to buy – since 2007. The Fed has cut interest rates to nearly zero, and through quantitative easing has flooded the financial system with new money. This will continue for the near future, especially since QE-infinity was announced earlier this year. There remains no recovery in the housing market, and there won’t be a recovery.

Bad monetary policy has …

This piece was originally published at TheIowaRepublican.com.  Republished by permission.  - Ed.

After an election like Tuesday’s, conservatives might need a little distraction, or perhaps even inspiration.  I managed to get a bit of both yesterday when I had lunch with the staff at InnerVisions HealthCare in West Des Moines.

One of the things that this election taught me is that change in this country needs to come not from political battles, but by truly changing the hearts and minds of people on the issues we care about.

So, yesterday, I got to hear about how a free healthcare clinic in our community provides pregnancy tests and ultrasounds to women in need who are facing unplanned pregnancy.  They provide free STD testing to men …

I am surprised… not dismayed, but surprised.  I never expected that the results of today’s election would leave us with essentially the same political problem we’ve had for the past two years (and really four years, if you include the ineffective Democratically controlled Congress of 2009-2010).  But with a 6% approval rating, it just didn’t occur to me that the people’s decision would be to say “try again” to the team they so harshly disapprove of.

As of 11:00 PM Central Time, President Obama has been declared the winner of the election by every major news organization (although Governor Romney had not yet conceded the race).  In my home state of Iowa, we lost 1 of our 5 seats in the House in redistricting, and …