The Romney campaign is highlighting the record of the Obama administration on employment for women. The following graphs illustrate the record. Click on the graph for a larger view.

Graph showing female unemployment rate in the US 1992 to March 2012. Created by Charles Simmins from BLS data.	This graph shows the unemployment rate for women age 20 and older from January 1992 to March 2012.
Graph showing female unemployment rate in the US 1992 to March 2012. Created by Charles Simmins from BLS data.	This graph shows the unemployment rate for women age 20 and older from January 2000 to March 2012. Note the record low during the last Clinton term in 2007.
Graph showing female unemployment rate in the US 2006 to March 2012. Created by Charles Simmins from BLS data.	This graph shows the unemployment rate for women age 20 and older from January 2006 to March 2012. The graph illustrates the onset of the recession and female unemployment rates during the Obama administration.
Graph illustrating the number of unemployed women in the US from 2000 to March 2012. Graph prepared by Charles Simmins using BLS data.	Graph illustrating the number of unemployed women in the US from 2000 to March 2012. Note the record low number and compare it to the number of women unemployed in March 2012. Over three million more women are unemployed now.
Graph illustrating the number of women employed in the U.S. from 2000 through March 2012. Prepared by Charles Simmins from BLS data.	This graph illustrates the number of American women over age 20 employed from 2000 through March 2012. Note the record number employed in June 2008. The loss of employment from June 2008 to March 2012 is 759,000 women.

The increase in unemployed women coupled with a net loss of women in the work force is dramatic. Couple that with the fact that 34 percent of Americans living in poverty live in a household headed by a woman and you can see the damage that the current economy has done to women.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) keeps track of the average retail price for a number of common items as a U.S. city average. Let’s take a look at a few. We used the price for the month President Obmam was inaugurated, January 2009, and the last month of data available, December 2011. The items are sorted in descending order by the percentage increase of the price during the Obama administration.

		Obama		Obama
Item	Unit	Jan 2009	Dec 2011	I/D	Perc
Gasoline, unl reg	gal	$1.787	$3.278	$1.491	83.44%
Fuel oil, #2	gal	$2.509	$3.777	$1.268	50.54%
Ground beef	lb	$2.357	$2.921	$0.564	23.93%
Sugar, white	lb	$0.569	$0.703	$0.134	23.55%
Bacon. Sliced	lb	$3.730	$4.550	$0.820	21.98%
Cookies, Choc chip	lb	$3.114	$3.682	$0.568	18.24%
Spaghetti & macaroni	lb	$1.131	$1.306	$0.175	15.47%
Eggs, A lrg	doz	$1.850	$1.874	$0.024	1.30%
Electricity	kwh	$0.126	$0.127	$0.001	0.79%
Lettuce, iceberg	lb	$0.944	$0.947	$0.003	0.32%
Milk, whole	gal	$3.575	$3.565	-$0.010	-0.28%
Potatoes, white	lb	$0.676	$0.666	-$0.010	-1.48%

Now, we are told repeatedly that inflation is low. We looked at the Consumer Price Index data at the BLS.

The increase for all items works out to be 6.9 percent for the period.

The increase for food prices during the period works out to be 4.7 percent.

Something just doesn’t seem right here. How can the CPI show so little increase when compared to some individual items?

Really? OK, so we went to the BLS page with the item data, copied it to a spreadsheet, and deleted unnecessary columns. Here is the BLS list of price changes from December 2010 to December 2011, sorted by percentage change. Two pages of items with price increases year over year and about a half page of price decreases. Take a look and use the comments to comment.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a great deal to say about the November 2011 unemployment numbers and the October numbers from the metro areas. The unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent from 9 percent in November. In October, the unemployment rates fell in 281 of the 372 metro areas the BLS watches.

The pictures tell a far more discouraging tale. These graphs are from the BLS site, using their data. None of the graphs present any sort of encouraging picture for those who are unemployed or those who have given up. And, lots of folks have just given up.

The graphs were built to show both the current record or near record “bad” numbers as well as their opposites from the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Fewer people are working and more people have dropped out of the labor force. That is the tale of November 2011.

In September 2008, TransCanada began the process of obtaining all the various clearances and permits to build an oil pipeline from northeastern Alberta Canada to the oil refinery region of eastern Texas in the area of Houston or Port Arthur. The Province of Alberta claims that the oil sands contain the third largest proven crude oil reserve in the world. The Athabasca deposit in Alberta is the largest developed oil sand production site on the planet.

The Keystone Pipeline plan was developed in stages and much of the pipeline is now in operation, carrying oil to refineries in the American Mid-West. The remaining stages would build a new pipeline in a straighter course across the Great Plains and also connect the existing pipeline with new construction to the Gulf Coast.

The pipeline remains in limbo. The U.S. State Department is the first agency to have to approve or disapprove the project and it has yet to complete its work. The project faces significant opposition from environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation.

The existing pipeline is a mix of new construction and repurposed natural gas pipeline. It is 2,147 miles in length and runs from Hardisty, Alberta, to refineries in Wood River and Patoka, Illinois. It began operation in June 2010. A second leg of 291 miles, from Nebraska to the oil storage and pipeline hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, was opened in February 2011.

The Keystone XL portion of the pipeline is estimated to cost about $7 billion. The entire system is designed to transport 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day from Canada to the United States. In a site published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the creation of up to 20,000 construction jobs and property tax revenues to state and local governments of $138.4 million are among the reasons given to approve the project.

Opposition is generally based on environmental grounds. The Friends of the Earth cite the pollution created by production from tar sands, the effects on global warming, the threat of pipeline spills and the pollution created by the refining process. The new pipeline will cross several large rivers, including the Missouri, and travel through some of the United States’ most productive agricultural acreage.

Reuters reported on November 2, 2011, that President Obama had told a Nebraska media outlet that he would make the final decision on approving the pipeline. The Washington Post, in an editorial dated October 10, supported the project while a New York Times editorial on August 21, 2011, opposed it. In march, 2011, the Congressional Research Service produced a report titled Keystone XL Pipeline Project: Key Issues, which covers many of the pro and con arguments in detail.

Is a lack of health insurance in America a problem? According to Washington, it is. The Census Bureau has released the 2010 report on poverty in America. Table 8 on page 26 covers some of the data on those without health insurance. Here’s what caught my eye.

The Census Bureau estimates that 16.3 percent of those living in the United States have no health insurance.

45% of all non-citizens have no health coverage. Of the 49.9 million people in the United States without health insurance, 19% are non-citizens.

792,000 people over age 65 have no insurance. Why not? Medicare is designed for that age group.

16.2 million people earning less than $25,000 per year have no health insurance. Why not? Medicaid is designed for low income folks. 28.5 percent of those uninsured did not work at least one week in 2010, again the people Medicaid was designed for.

2.6 million calling themselves “disabled” have no insurance. Why not? Both Medicare and Medicaid are available to those folks.

Table 10 on page 29 shows the breakdown by type of plan. 14.5% of Americans were on Medicare and 15.9% on Medicaid.

9.5 million people earn $75,000 a year or more and have no health insurance. It’s just an assumption, but shouldn’t many of those people be able to afford coverage IF THEY WANT IT?

49,904,000
less non-citizens 9,667,000
less half of those eligible for Medis 8,479,000
less top earners 9,473,000
= 22,285,000

Over half of those that the Census Bureau reports as without health insurance coverage are eligible for coverage and don’t have it or don’t want it, or are non-citizens. Do we have a health insurance coverage problem in America?