Turnout today is epic.  Usually at our precinct there are about 10-12 people in line; last election there were only about 1200 votes cast in total.  Today at 10AM the line snaked around the lobby of the polling place twice- there were probably a couple of hundred people in line.  Precinct workers told me it was the heaviest turnout they’d seen in the 12 years they’ve been working at this precinct.  Voter traffic has been heavy all day.

I noticed that most of the people had Republican voter guides in their hands.  At least at our precinct, things are looking terrific for Romney.

1.  Suspended all OSHA inspections of factories because of the “more important need to enable employers to focus on job creation instead of costly compliance.  It’s the right thing to do.”

2.  Suspended all EPA inspections of power plants for emissions violations because of “grave concerns over the unsettled nature of the science of climate change”.  “We need to do the right thing, but we have to move with all due care in order to avoid mistakes on such an important issue.”

3.  Approved all pending oil and gas permit requests without further review because of the “strategic and economic urgency to secure our energy independence.  It’s the right thing to do.”

4.  Stopped all federal funding of alternative fuel research and production because “we need to do a full cost benefit analysis before committing this great nation to funding what may be wasteful spending.  It’s the right thing to do.”

5.  Required new, time-consuming and detailed review of all Justice Department enforcement actions related to discriminatory actions by employers, individuals or states because of “concern that Justice Department actions need to properly ensure that adequate protections are provided for the most vulnerable among us.  It’s the right thing to do.”

6.  Stopped indefinitely all IRS audits in order to develop and implement new training and processes for the conduct of audits because of “the litany of complaints against overzealous agents”.  “It’s the right thing to do.”

7.  Ordered that all EPA reviews of environmental impact statements can take no longer than two months because of “the importance to support job-creating new projects for all Americans”.  “It’s the right thing to do.”  No, better than that- two weeks.  Ah heck- why not two hours?

8.  Announced plans to construct improved border security measures, including fencing and electronic surveillance, to be implemented immediately without delay for any environmental or other considerations.  Funding would be taken from the budget of the Labor Department.  “I’m forced to take this action because of instructions in legislation from Congress to secure our borders.  It’s the right thing to do.”

9.  Announced the end of all project labor agreements for federal construction projects because of the “need to minimize costs and time for completion of our major national priorities.  It’s the right thing to do.”

10.  Required that all labor unions performing work for the United States government provide monthly reporting of all political spending, and also all contacts with any elected official.  It’s the right thing to do.”

11.  And last but not least, stopped any and all spending for anything related to Obamacare, pending a “full review of the alternatives to a centralized control over such an important aspect of everyone’s life.  The review would take into account full cost benefit analysis, review of alternative technologies, comparative analysis of health care solutions of other countries, and of course, for the first time, a full reading of the Obamacare legislation.  The review would take about 100 years, because it’s all so complicated.  It’s the right thing to do.”

 Last week, we observed “Real income declined month-over-month in the latest [Department of Labor] report, which is very much at odds with the job creation figures unless that job creation reflects extraordinarily low-paying jobs. Real disposable income growth has now dropped to just 0.3% year-over-year, which is lower than the rate that is typically observed even in recessions.” It wasn’t quite clear what was going on until I read a comment by David Rosenberg, who noted that much of the recent growth in payrolls has been in “55 years and over” cohort. Suddenly, 2 and 2 became 4.

If you dig into the payroll data, the picture that emerges is breathtaking. Since the recession “ended” in June 2009, total non-farm payrolls in the U.S. have grown by 2.32 million jobs (establishment survey, or 2.03 million using Household survey figures). However, if we look at workers 55 years of age and over, we find that employment in that group has increased by 3.04 million jobs. In contrast, employment among workers under age 55 has actually contracted by nearly one million jobs, regardless of which survey you use. Even over the past year, the vast majority of job creation has been in the 55-and-over group, while employment has been sluggish for all other workers, and has already turned down.

Think about that.  It means that since the “recovery” began, the ONLY GROUP for whom employment is up is that group which has been driven to desperation by government policies.  For everyone else, employment has not risen.  It has FALLEN.  Stunning.

What does this mean?  Hussman explains how the elderly have been impacted in recent years:

FIRST, the Fed has kept interest rates at ridiculously low levels.  So savers can’t earn any income.  (Note that the Fed has FULL CONTROL over short term rates.)  Essentially, the Fed has engineered it so that we earn nothing on savings, despite the fact that inflation is running at 2-3%, and despite that fact that the federal government is borrowing enormous sums every year.  This is a massive stealth tax on people who do the “right thing”- who save.

SECOND, the value of home owned by the elderly has crashed.  The housing boom was caused largely by misguided government policy, and for sure the length and depth of the bust has been directly due to government policies.

THIRD, investment portfolios of the elderly have gone essentially nowhere in recent years.  The DOW was at about 12,900 in April of 2007; five years later it is at the same level.

I might add a fourth reason why the elderly are going back to work.  They know that federal and state governments won’t be able to meet their commitments to pay pensions in the amounts and durations that they have promised.

But beyond the why, the FACT is that employment for those under 55 has FALLEN during this recovery.  The only group for whom employment has risen is the group of desperate retirees forced back to work.

BTW, the CEO had a background in commodities trading and property management.  Clearly, Steve Chu has serious skills as a venture capitalist!

See here for more.

For instance, what’s to stop a newly empowered EPA to require individuals to purchase carbon insurance?  The idea is that we need to insure against the possible health and economic impact of global warming.  The argument would be that requiring individuals to buy carbon insurance has unique and compelling justification.  First, it’s a proper use of federal power because carbon consumers engage in interstate commerce and their emissions cross state lines, and because of the precedent of Florida v. HHS.  Second, if we don’t regulate carbon effectively the world will end.  Third, it’s now possible for individuals to freeload, imposing the effects of excessive carbon use (such as flying in planes, driving trucks, living in big houses…) on others.  Fourth, if we wait until the effects of carbon emitting are obvious, it’ll be too late.  Fifth, everybody knows global warming is real, it’s established fact, end of discussion.

Of course, since it’s insurance, the government will be able to tailor the policy purchase requirements to meet additional compelling social needs, namely to achieve further transfers of wealth; to create a new, fraud-ridden trading market controlled by the Usual Suspects on Wall Street; to transfer additional wealth to other countries (especially China, which would further tilt an already uneven global trade playing field); and to fund the growth of a global rule-making and fee-collecting organization which would further clamp down on… well, whoever and whatever it wants.

Further, the insurance fees could be required to favor various interest groups and, especially, minorities.  After all, there is a disparate impact of carbon pollution on minorities, because they tend to live in cities which suffer more from carbon pollution.  We need to compensate particular minorities for the relatively excessive consumption of carbon by nonminorities in the early, unfortunate history of our Republic.  Farmers should be exempted because they grow all that corn for ethanol, and so on.

Use of the funds will be to subsidize green technology companies; to improve inner-city infrastructure because of the heavier impact of carbon emissions there; to develop the information systems necessary to track all of the carbon-emitting activity of individuals; and to hire the legions of federal workers needed to enforce the essential insurance mandates.

Isn’t it time to ask why said memo has avoided the notice of the diligent Democrat drones at the Justice Department?

Maybe we should wonder why Bradley Abelow, who one might reasonably conjecture may have been involved in the fraud, should be acting as an advisor to Louis Freeh, who is supposed to be liquidating the assets of MF Global.

I wonder if it’s proper to wonder why anyone in his right mind would want to pay bonuses to Abelow, rather than, say, locking him up?

(By the way, I wonder who chose Abelow to act as a senior advisor to the EPA?)

Is it proper to wonder why George Soros bought the Greek bonds formerly owned by MF Global at a discount to their market value at the time of the sale?

Isn’t there a Democrat Party scandal here somewhere?

By the way, $400 million divided by 180 workers equals $2.2 million per job.

There’s also an interesting article in Technology Review about Alta Devices, a solar company that’s doing it right.  Since 2007, Alta has been working on ways to scale up production of solar cells made of gallium arsenide, which is incredibly good at turning sunlight into electricity.  Unlike other companies such as Solyndra or Abound, Alta has decided not to spend enormous amounts of money building production capacity before they are sure that they can scale up production cost-effectively.  The problem is that if you build production capacity before you know if you can be successful scaling up, you risk losing everything.

Alta has raised $120 million, but it knows that it would take a lot more- up to $1 billion- to build a factory to produce solar cells with their technology.  Their investors- 100% private- are not interested in taking that kind of risk, at least not yet.  It’s only companies that invest other peoples’ money (taxpayers’ money, that is) which so far have been willing to bet everything on outcomes with a very low probability of success.  It’s still early stages for solar research.

DOE funding was motivated by desire to deploy a lot of money quickly and hopefully create (a few) jobs in alternative fuels.   Alta’s objective has been to achieve real success building real solutions.  Alta has raised several rounds of funding, and is now building a $40 million test production facility.  Meanwhile, another DOE client bites the dust…

Fisker has received a loan guarantee of $528 million from US taxpayers, and has built 1,500 cars of which “several hundred” have been sold.  That works out to a cost of $350,000 per car built.  And nobody wants to buy them!  But that’s all OK, all the money went to Finland, anyway!  Hard to understand why an $88,000 car which can only go 50 miles on a charge won’t sell…

A123, by the way, was awarded a taxpayer grant of $250 million.

To be precise, it seems that the total cash drawn by the two companies is less than the maximum amount of the grants.  If they both went under today, taxpayers would only lose about $325 million-  a bargain!

Not so fast.  In 2008, Mormons were about 27% of the vote.  Romney won 95% of the Mormon vote.  This time around the turnout was light, and (according to the AP) Mormons were at least 25% of the turnout again.

Running some numbers, it turns out that if the Mormon turnout was the same this time as last, and that if Romney won 95% of the Mormon vote again, then you can calculate Romney’s share of the non-Mormon vote.  The answer:  Romney won 31% of the non-Mormon vote.

Now, if we assume that Newt, Paul and Santorum split the Mormon and non-Mormon votes in the same percentages, then we can compute how much of the non-Mormon vote they won.  Turns out that Newt won 31% of non-Mormons; Paul won 25%; and Santorum won 15%.

Romney also arguably underperformed relative to the last time around, in 2008.  In 2008, he won Nevada with 51% of the vote.  Turnout was 44,000, despite the fact that many Republicans crossed over to vote in the Democrat primary (Operation Chaos!).  The total vote count from yesterday’s primary, with 1305 out of 1805 precincts reporting, was 24,000 (as of 5:30 EST Sunday).  Maybe the turnout will match that of 2008 when the other precincts report, but news articles said that turnout was light.

So if I were a Republican strategist, I would have three thoughts:

1.  Newt and Romney tied for the non-Mormon vote.

2. Newt extended his lead over Santorum, while Paul held steady.  (It was a really bad day for Santorum.)

3.  There could be an enthusiasm gap developing.   Remember that the Republicans did so well in 2010 because Tea Party voters were enthusiastic.  Republican strategists say that Newt would doom chances to win the Senate and maybe hold the House.  Is this really true?  Or could Romney create such an enthusiasm gap that Republican turnout will fall?

A win is a win, and congratulations to Romney for it.  But it’s not correct to say that this win was a confirmation of his inevitability, unless one anticipates that Mormons will be 27% of the electorate in the remaining Republican primaries.  My conclusion is that Newt has once again bounced back, and that if he is able to stay positive and recognize that Romney and others will try to bait him to go negative, then Newt has an excellent shot, still.  My other conclusion is that this result was a very weak one for Santorum.