Get Ready For Our Third Annual 'Summer of Recovery'

Tyler Durden asks, "If this is such a strong economy, why does this chart look recessionary?"

One way to gauge the real economy is to look at charts of the GDP, wages, household debt and the price of oil; another way is to correlate all of these on one chart. The [above] chart (courtesy of frequent contributor B.C.) plots these four metrics thusly: GDP/(wages/household debt)/price of oil.

Wait. Just. A second. I zoomed the right side of the graph, like, a thousand times.

I marked the green shoot with a nice, pretty arrow!

Shhh... no one tell the idiot legislators in California: job growth 52% higher in states with low business taxes

Governor Moonbeam hardest hit.

An executive looking for a place to locate his company might do well to consider Wyoming. That state is the most business-friendly in the country, at least when it comes to taxes, according to a new study.

The study, released by the Tax Foundation on Wednesday, found that when all the taxes businesses pay are factored in, Wyoming's rate is less than half the national average. The state is one of three — Nevada and South Dakota are the others — that doesn't have a corporate income tax.

Pennsylvania, meanwhile, wins the dubious distinction of imposing the heaviest tax burden on its businesses, with an overall effective rate that's 45% above the national average.

The study, titled "Location Matters," looked at a range of business taxes — corporate income, sales, property, unemployment, gross receipts and others. The accounting firm KPMG collaborated on the report with the Tax Foundation.

Among the most-populated states, California ranked 34th, Texas 12th, New York 42nd, Florida 19th, and Illinois came in 45th. Ohio, which came in 5th, imposes a low-rate gross receipts tax instead of a corporate income tax...

...A separate analysis by IBD found that states imposing the lowest tax rates on both new and existing businesses produced more jobs during the economic recovery than those states with the highest tax burdens.

You mean stealing more money from businesses -- to fund a bloated, unaccountable public sector -- leaves companies with less money to hire workers?

Gee, that logic is sooo difficult to comprehend. That is, if you're a Democrat or an idiot. But I repeat myself.

Breaking: Democrats urge more dependence on foreign oil. Seriously.

Is there a more malevolent Statist hack in Congress than Chuck "Schmucky" Schumer (which is the nickname he prefers, I hear)?

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) urged Saudi Arabia to pump more oil yesterday. This comes after his party has repeatedly stifled energy production here at home...

Senate Republicans are bashing Sen. Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) call for increased Saudi Arabian oil production to help ease prices, alleging it shows that Democrats are weak when it comes to boosting North American energy supplies and jobs.

Schumer on Sunday urged Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to press Saudi officials to expand production, noting that the kingdom is producing well below its capacity of 12.5 million barrels per day.

Republicans are hopeful that the letter provides a political opening to undercut Democratic and White House energy policies.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office on Monday circulated a press release headlined “Top Democrat Senator Demands Increased Energy Production, Jobs In Saudi Arabia Rather Than Increasing American Energy And American Jobs.” ... Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, also doesn’t want Schumer’s letter to go unnoticed.

“Rather than approve the Keystone pipeline, the Democrats’ energy plan now calls for the most powerful nation in the free world to politely ask other countries for more oil and cross our fingers,” he said in a statement.

Not only did President Obama block the monstrous Keystone XL pipeline -- which would have helped reduce America's dependence on foreign oil -- but Schumer himself has helped block drilling throughout the United States.

Consider this blast from the past. Mr. Peabody, set the Wayback Machine to April of 2008:

Now, yesterday ... [President Bush] made a presentation on energy and said much of the same thing you just said here; and Senator Schumer from New York went out and responded to it and said, "If we started drilling in ANWR today we wouldn't have a drop of oil for ten years." Well, of course, Bill Clinton vetoed the first time this came up in 1994. We could have been at this four years according to his ten-year plan. He also said something that mathematically doesn't make sense. He said that this million barrels a day that ANWR would produce would reduce the price of gasoline or oil -- I forget which one he specified -- by a penny. Well, that's absurd, because when the price of oil... When we lose a million barrels in the supply, does the price only go up a penny? They're using scare tactics, here. We need resources. We need our oil, and you got Schumer out there saying, "No, it wouldn't matter," and they're misleading people thinking that there's a substitute for it right around the corner when there's not.

They've been saying that drilling doesn't matter for over 20 years now. They're lying. They've been saying it would take 10 years to develop a new oil field. They're lying.

Democrats are provably wounding America's economy -- and its national security posture -- through their defective, Utopian schemes.