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Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools. The following year, students of any income will be eligible for mini-vouchers that they can use to pay a range of private-sector vendors for classes and apprenticeships not offered in traditional public schools. The money can go to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others. Every time a student receives a voucher of either type, his local public school will lose a chunk of state funding.

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co will cut nearly a quarter of its U.S. pension obligation by transferring the management of its pension plans for 118,000 white-collar retirees to a third party and offering lump-sum buyouts. The two moves unveiled on Friday will cut $26 billion from the automaker's massive U.S. pension liability of nearly $109 billion. GM's pension overhang is a top concern for investors. It was one of a handful of issues left untouched during GM's U.S.-financed bankruptcy restructuring three years ago. GM retirees represented by the United Auto Workers union are not affected by Friday's announcement. Hourly...

Even in the bluest of blue states, he’s now treading water at 48 percent, still comfortably ahead of Romney but unable to grab a majority even in Cali. Big deal or no? Banish the thought from your mind that Romney has a chance of winning there. He doesn’t — although don’t hold me to that if we get another three or four jobs reports that look like today’s. No, the potential significance of this and the reason why there’s some buzz about it among righties on Twitter is that it’s circumstantial evidence that The One might be starting to collapse...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- A top Argentine official denied on Friday that the government plans to devalue the peso amid rumors that drastic official actions are looming. "We are not going to take any explosive measures," Deputy Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said at a news conference. Argentina's economy is under pressure from rising inflation and slowing trade, and people have been increasingly trading their pesos for U.S. dollars to shelter their earnings.

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued the following statement after the Labor Department announced that the U.S. economy added 69,000 jobs in May. "This report is a sharp reminder that Democrats and Republicans should be working together to strengthen our economy, create jobs, and put the middle class ahead of partisan politics. "If Republicans worked with us, we could pass legislation immediately to cut taxes for small businesses, prevent student loan rates from doubling and ensure women get paid the same amount as men for performing the same work. We could provide incentives to companies to create...

Another month or two of downbeat jobs reports like Friday's, and the 2012 electoral advantage will shift to Mitt Romney. At the moment, the election is still a coin flip.  But even before the latest evidence of slowing job growth, President Obama was no better than a 50-50 pick to win reelection (as noted Democratic pollster Peter Hart put it recently).  And with economic storm clouds building, it’s easy to imagine that Obama could be the underdog before too long. “If the May report is a harbinger of what's coming, Romney’s message that ‘We can do better, but Obama can't’...

Every month Doug Short at Advisor Perspective writes an excellent report on GDP. With today's release of the Q1 GDP Second Estimate, Doug Short has a new column worth a good look: Will the "Real" GDP Please Stand Up? (The Deflator Makes Big a Difference). How do you get from Nominal GDP to Real GDP? You subtract inflation. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) uses its own GDP deflator for this purpose, which is somewhat different from the BEA's deflator for Personal Consumption Expenditures and quite a bit different from the better-known Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation gauge, the Consumer...

The nation is adrift between two confidences. Confidence in what the Obama administration wants you to believe, reported as truth by their sycophants in the media, and reality. For example on May 20 when the Consumer Sentiment index was released by Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan the media was happier than wood peckers in a lumber yard. Headlines screamed ‘confidence is back’ as found at Bloomberg: Consumer Sentiment Climbs To Highest Since 2007. Across the nation the purported good news was blathered by every liberal talking head playing news reporter.Quoting Bloomberg: “ A record number of households said they’d heard better...

So after a nervous night, Enda Kenny will be relieved by the 60% margin of victory in the Irish referendum on the fiscal pact. The Taoiseach's measured welcome for the result reflects his knowledge that this is not the end of Ireland's austerity, nor even the beginning of the end, although like Winston Churchill, Mr. Kenny might hope this is at least the end of the beginning. Having delivered the German Chancellor Angela Merkel a rare bit of good news, Dublin will hope Europe's leaders might reward their decision to stay within the fiscal stability pact with a reciprocal degree...

It has been several weeks since we last looked at the trend in the number of new jobless claims being filed in the U.S. each week. Our chart below shows how things stand through the initial report for 19 May 2012, which has about a 98% chance of being revised upward later today:   The good news is that the number of initial unemployment insurance benefit claim filings since 11 February 2012 is rising at an average rate of 1,005 per week, but really, that's only good news in contrast to the average increase of 2,497 per week it was...

An influential alderman warned Metra’s executive director on Thursday that “people are going to get hurt” if the commuter rail agency fails to bolster minority participation on a $133-million South Side railroad bridge known as the “Englewood Flyover.” Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, did not explain who he believed would “get hurt” or who the perpetrators might be. But, he was clearly referring to civil disobedience or maybe even violence at the construction site. “I’m trying to help you help yourself. When I say that, problems could arise. When you look at a community...

With four days to go – Walker leads by 7! Governor Scott Walker leads by 7 points in the latest poll going into Tuesday’s recall election. MSNBC reported: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) enjoys a 7-point advantage over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett among likely voters in Tuesday’s recall election. Fifty-two percent of likely voters said they would vote to retain Walker, according to a Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday; 45 percent of likely voters said they would support Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee. The poll suggests that Walker is heading toward victory on Tuesday, which would deliver a stinging...

I’m not a big fan of international bureaucracies, mostly because they always seem to promote bad policy such as higher tax rates. The International Monetary Fund is urging higher tax rates and pushing for nations to replace flat tax systems with so-called progressive taxation.The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has embraced Obama’s class-warfare agenda and is pushing for higher tax rates in America.The United Nations is working with statists such as George Soros and urging global taxes.Even the World Health Organization has adopted some of this activist left-wing mentality, and is pushing global tobacco taxes. To add insult to...

May 31, 2012 (HLIWorldWatch.org) - Anyone who is concerned about the influence of the homosexual agenda on reshaping traditional values must become intimately familiar with the major tactics that homophiles commonly employ in order to anticipate them and respond in charity and truth. Homophile strategists are very adept at manipulating public opinion with an arsenal of six tactics that are based upon deceptions and half‑truths: Exploit the “victim” status; Use the sympathetic media; Confuse and neutralize the churches; Slander and stereotype Christians; Bait and switch (hide their true nature); and Intimidation. One reason these tactics have worked so well is...

Anyone want to try defining “overnight” for me, just so that we have a rule of thumb going forward? On Inauguration Day, I would have accepted “2009″ or even “his first two years in office” as plausible answers. Instead, five months out from election day, somehow dawn still has yet to break. His braintrust is now actually on the cusp of arguing, in all seriousness, that it’s unfair to judge him on what’s happened in the jobs market over the course of his entire first term. What do you do when America’s just taken an economic gut punch, with a...

In its first reaction to this morning's worse-than-expected jobs report, the White House stressed that the nation is still fighting back from the recession and that the "problems in the job market were long in the making and will not be solved overnight." "There is much more work that remains to be done to repair the damage caused by the financial crisis and deep recession that began at the end of 2007," Alan Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, writes in a White House blog. "Just like last year at this time, our economy is facing serious headwinds,...

U.S. stocks erase most of 2012 gains after jobs report ReutersReuters – 42 minutes ago By Rodrigo Campos NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks erased most of the year's gains on Friday after a much weaker-than-expected jobs report added to fears about a global economic slowdown. The Dow industrials turned negative for the year and the S&P 500 was on track to close at its lowest since early January. The benchmark traded below its 200-day average for the first time in 2012. The Labor Department said employers created a net 69,000 jobs last month, the weakest in a year and...

Any hope the calendar turning from May to June would change the market's trend were dashed Friday, as stocks started the month with a resounding thud. Major averaged tumbled from the opening bell as a weak U.S. jobs report, sluggish Chinese PMI data and ongoing concerns about Europe proved a toxic brew for those long stocks. (See: May's Jobs Report Disappoints Across the Board) The Dow (^DJI) closed down 279 points, or 2.3%, and has fallen into negative territory for the year. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) was down 2.5% to 1278, breaking important support at 1284, its 200-day moving average,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, let's see. Bill Clinton said that Mitt Romney is a great businessman. So we have to stop criticizing Romney and Bain Capital, as Clinton heads off to supposedly help Obama in Wisconsin. And then Deval Patrick, "I like these Bain guys. These Bain guys really helped us out here in Massachusetts. They got a great record. I like Romney." It's Friday, folks. JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday! RUSH: Yes siree, Bob, great to have you with us, my friends, El Rushbo in person, live, behind the Golden EIB Microphone...

President Obama has shelled out more in federal spending than the five presidents that came before him. A new chart by the Comeback America Initiative (CAI), a non-partisan group dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility by policymakers, shows federal spending by president as a percentage of GDP, and it doesn't reflect well on Obama. "There has been a dramatic increase in spending under the Obama administration," David Walker, Founder and CEO of CAI, told Whispers. "Most of it is attributable to year one of his presidency and the stimulus... but President Obama has continued to take spending to a new level."Federal...

Welfare, like greed, has many faces. Thomas Jefferson warned us that as soon as people learn they can vote themselves money from the treasury, it will signal the end of our republic.  The occupiers talk about the 1%. Americans point fingers at Wall Street. Ron Paul tells us to audit the Fed.  All are bemoaning the same prediction Jefferson warned us about. A most insidious “get rich quick” scheme may just be the use of the ballot to tap into the public treasury and separate citizens from their wealth. The new business model is simple. Pull together a few wealthy,...

It’s not just the US, which is a point that Barack Obama will likely seize in the same manner a drowning man clings (bitterly?) to a life preserver in a storm-tossed ocean. The EuroZone hit a 17-year high unemployment rate this spring at 11%, and the rate in the larger European Union rose to 10.3%: The jobless rate in the 17-nation euro zone reached 11 percent in March and April, the highest since the start of the data in 1995, Eurostat, the European statistical agency said in Luxembourg. The previous record had been 10.9 percent in February, Eurostat said, after...

Today’s employment report is very discouraging. Analysts had expected employers to create around 150,000 net jobs — a bit more than needed to keep up with population growth. We got fewer than half that many: just 69,000 net new jobs. Updates also showed we created almost 50,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in May and April. Job growth was weak almost across the board. Most sectors showed little to no improvement, with the main exceptions being healthcare (+33,000), transportation and warehousing (+36,000). Manufacturing edged up slightly (+12,000), as did wholesale trade (+16,000). Government employment fell (-13,000), as did construction (-28,000)....

One day soon, America could wake up to a dozen eggs costing $8 or more. And unless you are involved in some aspect of farming or agriculture, you would never know that egg prices are about to skyrocket or the reason why. With food prices already increasing due to high grain and fuel costs, extraneous so-called animal welfare regulations are being imposed on U.S. food producers, large and small, by the animal rights powerhouse known as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

Fresh off a disastrous jobs numbers report, 8.2 unemployment and only 69,000 jobs added, the President traveled to Minnesota where he explained to voters how an extra “$3,000 a year” could be used to help Americans buy more "thingamajigs"...

So it starts. "Taking down the US growth projection has almost become a summertime ritual, and in keeping with tradition we are shaving our 2012 GDP outlook (Q4/Q4) from 2.3% to 2.1%. Over the first five months of the year the labor market has steadily lost momentum and we are now confronted with a global growth slowdown which will provide a further headwind to the economy. As such, we are taking Q3 growth from 3.0% to 2.0%, with much of the downward revision accounted for by an expectation that the pace of export growth will slow. We are leaving our...

When Hillary Rosen said that Ann Romney had "never worked a day in her life," it was among the better days of the Romney campaign. For Rosen -- present whereabouts unknown -- both revealed the feminist mindset about women who choose to become wives and mothers and brought Ann Romney center stage. Before a Connecticut audience recently, Mrs. Romney spoke of her reluctance to see her husband pursue the presidency a second time and said she resisted, until she got an answer to one critical question. "Can you fix it?" she asked Mitt. "I need to know. Is it too...

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the...

With indications that the Dow will open more than 170 points lower, the NYSE has invoked Rule 48. Specifically, the NYSE and NYSE MKT cash equities exchanges will invoke Rule 48 for this morning's opening. Mandatory opening indications are therefore not required. Overview of Rule 48:. Rule 48 provides the Exchange with the ability to suspend the requirement to disseminate price indications and obtain Floor Official approval prior to the opening when extremely high market-wide volatility could cause Floor-wide delays in opening of securities on the Exchange. Rule 48 is intended to be invoked only in those situations where the...

Blaming GOP obstructionism for the lingering jobs crisis, Democratic leaders on Friday called on House Republicans to bring a long-term highway bill to the floor. The Democrats — led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) — noted that Friday's dismal jobs numbers included a steep decline — by 28,000 jobs — in construction employment. Reauthorizing transportation spending for two years, they argued, would help put those workers back on payrolls and stabilize the economy.

The U.S. unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2% in May and a broader measure rose even more to 14.8%. But the increases belied a slightly positive trend. The increase in the jobless rate primarily came from people returning to the labor force. The unemployment rate is calculated based on people who are without jobs, who are available to work and who have actively sought work in the prior four weeks. The “actively looking for work” definition is fairly broad, including people who contacted an employer, employment agency, job center or friends; sent out resumes or filled out applications; or answered...

That's because the law requires health plans to cover individuals, such as adult children, that they did not cover in the past; it bars health plans from putting lifetime and annual dollar limits on benefits; and it requires plans to provide preventive care services -- including contraceptives in a few months' time -- at no out-of-pocket cost to the enrollee, Edward Fensholt told the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions.

Who makes the big bucks in America? Middle-aged white couples. We all know that income is concentrated in the United States, but Sentier Research has crunched the data to show just who has the money. Take a look at the breakdown by race:

(CNSNews.com) - The number of American women who are unemployed was 766,000 individuals greater in May 2012 than in January 2009, when President Barack Obama took office, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In January 2009, there were approximately 5,005,000 unemployed women in the United States, according to BLS. In May 2012, there were 5,771,000. The BLS derives its employment statistics from an overall number it calls the civilian non-institutional population. This includes all Americans 16 or over who are not on active duty in the military and who are not in an institution such...

The debt crisis and central bank policy responses have degraded the quality and value of debt markets and signal a "potential breaking point" in the global economy, PIMCO's Bill Gross, manager of the world's largest bond fund, said in his monthly letter to investors. In his June outlook entitled "Wall Street Food Chain," Gross said stimulus policies by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have led to riskier government bonds with lower value and paved the way for higher inflation.

AP Photo Mitt Romney arrived at the shuttered headquarters of Solyndra Inc. this morning, a surprise visit that was shrouded in secrecy and part of the presumptive GOP presidential candidate’s attack on President Obama’s record on jobs creation.“Two years ago President Obama was here to tout this building and this business as a symbol of the success of his stimulus,� said Romney, stepping off a bus and onto the public sidewalk in front of the Solyndra buildings just outside Silicon Valley. “Well you can see that it’s a symbol of something very different today.� Read More About Solyndra from ABC’s...

Recently, JP Morgan made national headlines when it announced that it was going to take a 2 billion dollar loss from derivatives trades gone bad. Well, it turns out that JP Morgan did not tell us the whole truth. As you will see later in this article, most analysts are estimating that the losses will eventually be far larger than 2 billion dollars. But no matter how bad things get for JP Morgan, it will not be allowed to fail. JP Morgan is the largest bank in the United States, so it is essentially the "granddaddy" of the too big...

SOLYNDRA For Sale Property Size Total building area is approximately 411,618 square feet (excluding mezzanine) o Manufacturing area: 287,448 square feet single story o Office building: 37,210 square feet two-story o Mechanical Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) area: 86,960 square feet usable o Expandable to 739,232 square feet Building Highlights • Highly visible world class manufacturing facility • Frontage along Interstate 880 and Kato Road • Headquarters style office area constructed to LEED Gold Standards • Construction completed in October of 2010 • The total electrical service: 22 Megawatts • Facility is backed up by 2 diesel generators each with 2...

An ongoing strike at the Coca-Cola bottling facility in East Hartford is now extending its grip to Stop & Shop supermarkets. Workers said they plan to picket the supermarkets because they said they usually stock Coca-Cola products on store shelves. But picketing workers said that Stop & Shop employees are now doing the jobs of the workers on strike. They are asking other unionized workers to not deliver to the supermarket chain. Coca-Cola workers went on strike two weeks ago after co0ntract negotiations broke down.

Top administration officials cut backroom deals with the nation’s top drug companies to win support for President Obama’s health care overhaul, threatening them with steeper taxes if they resisted and promising a better financial deal for the industry if they acquiesced, according to internal documents released Thursday by House Republicans. In some of the key deals, Mr. Obama agreed to drop his long-standing support for letting Americans buy cheaper foreign prescription drugs — something the pharmaceutical industry vehemently opposed — and the drugmakers promised to mount a public campaign to sell the public on the health care legislation. The drug...

‘Fear of the Future’ Keeps Lid on Economic Growth: Greenspan ECONOMY, INFLATION, EMPLOYMENT, UNEMPLOYMENT, MANUFACTURING, CPI, CONSUMER PRICE INDEX, JOBLESS CLAIMS Posted By: Jeff Cox | CNBC.com Senior Writer CNBC.com | 01 Jun 2012 | 07:39 AM ET Investors could revolt at a moment's notice against high government deficit levels, jeopardizing chances at a recovery and potentially sending interest rates soaring, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told CNBC. The former central bank leader — nicknamed "The Maestro" by his supporters — said he worries the current economy could be heading on a path similar to 1979, when the 10-year...

Time Bomb? Banks Pressured to Buy Government Debt CNBC, NETNET, NET NET, EUROPE DEBT, GREEK DEBT, EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS, ECB, EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK Posted By: Jeff Cox | CNBC.com Senior Writer CNBC.com | 31 May 2012 | 02:42 PM ET US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government's debt—a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says. Regulators are allowing banks to escape counting their country's debt against capital requirements and loosening other rules to create a steady market for government bonds, the study says. While that...

Problems in the job market were long in the making and will not be solved overnight. The economy lost jobs for 25 straight months beginning in February 2008, and over 8 million jobs were lost as a result of the Great Recession. We are still fighting back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Today we learned that the economy has added private sector jobs for 27 straight months, for a total of 4.3 million payroll jobs over that period. The economy is growing but it is not growing fast enough. BLS’s establishment survey shows that private businesses...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration called on Congress to do more to help the economy create jobs, with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis saying May's rise in the unemployment rate was unacceptable. "Congress has to take some action because while we see the unemployment rate where it is, it's not acceptable," Solis told the CNBC network on Friday.

Jim Pethokoukis called this a “huge miss” on Twitter, and he’s right. Analysts expected the US economy to add 150,000 jobs in May. Instead, we saw only a net gain of 69,000 jobs, and the jobless rate went up slightly to 8.2%: Nonfarm payroll employment changed little in May (+69,000), and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 8.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in health care, transportation and warehousing, and wholesale trade but declined in construction. Employment was little changed in most other major industries. The long-term unemployed jumped up by 300,000 as...

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the legacy of the Great Depression was everywhere: Dams, bridges, roads, airports, courthouses and even picnic areas and hiking trails. Leaders of that dire time — Democrats and Republicans — took advantage of the Depression to put millions of Americans back to work, building the infrastructure that we still rely on today. They had lemons, and they made lemonade.

A simple three-step chemical reaction which could herald the introduction of new sustainable feedstocks for the chemical industry has been developed by scientists at The University of Nottingham. Scientists in the School of Chemistry have developed a recyclable system for converting carbon monoxide (CO) directly into more complicated organic molecules using depleted uranium. The research, funded by the Royal Society and European Research Council, was led by Dr. Stephen Liddle, an expert in inorganic chemistry. Details of the new procedure — which can return the molecule that performs the transformation back to its start point — have been published in...

HOUSTON – A Canadian company seeking to build a pipeline to transport crude oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries has submitted a new application for the southern segment of the project that avoids sensitive wetlands in Texas. TransCanada submitted its new application in April, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns about the effect the original plan would have on wetlands along the Texas Gulf Coast and called for a more rigorous review process. Under the new plan, the company will drill under the wetlands rather than run across them, eliminating the need for EPA involvement, said Vicki...

In Ohio, President Obama has sold his programs to bolster workforce training and bring jobs back from China. In Michigan, he has promoted the bailout of the automakers. In Nevada, he talked up his proposals to help underwater homeowners stay afloat. Against a gloomy economic backdrop and a Republican opponent blaming him for it, Obama is selling his stewardship of the economy one state at a time, tailoring his message to regional conditions. He has little choice: New unemployment numbers released Friday, with a tiny shift for the worse, show the same persistently sluggish pace of much of the past...

U.S. employers created 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate ticked up. The dismal jobs figures could fan fears that the economy is sputtering. The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April, the first increase in 11 months. The Labor Department also says the economy created far fewer jobs in the previous two months than first thought. It revised those figures down to show 49,000 fewer jobs created. Weak job growth could damage President Barack Obama's reelection prospects.