It’s the economy, stupid:
This Labor Day will be particularly difficult for President Obama’s spinners, they now own this economy, their economic stimulus package and various social engineering attempts have been implemented, and the jobless rate is at 9.5 percent, a far cry from the 8 percent ceiling they forecasted if the stimulus was passed. The blame Bush card has been maxed out.
Given this sensitivity, the Administration will be trying to eke out any good news from the latest report. An example of this type of spin showed up last month when President Obama called July’s increase of private sector payroll employment by 71,000, “a good sign” for future growth. Of course, this “good sign” fell far short of the 100,000 jobs a month that the economy needs to add just to keep up with population growth. So, the “good sign” actually fell 29,000 jobs short of the break-even point to keep the jobless rate stable.
Expect the Administration to be running some key data through the spin cycle this Labor Day weekend. When BLS representatives meet with Secretary Hilda Solis and her team at 8 a.m., they will first look at the top-line number — the unemployment rate. This measures what percentage of those who are actively seeking jobs can’t find one. This rate has been 9.4 percent or higher for the past year, and any movement downward from the current 9.5 percent will be hailed triumphantly by the Administration regardless of the reason.
Many analysts were initially surprised when the rate dropped from 9.9 percent in April 2010 to 9.5 percent in June 2010, in spite of 336,000 fewer people being employed during this two month period. The drop occurred because almost a million people left the workforce during those two months as the civilian labor force dropped from 154,715,000 to 153,741,000. In this two month period alone, the labor participation rate in our nation dropped a full half a percent from 65.2 percent to 64.7 percent. So, the drop in the unemployment rate had nothing to do with the strength of the economy, and in fact was more of a reflection of its overall weakness as almost a million people chose to leave the labor market.
Another particularly troublesome group of people who will be counted by BLS are those who are known as “discouraged workers.” BLS defines discouraged workers as those people who are not currently looking for work because they don’t believe there are any jobs available to them. In July, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers up by almost 400,000 people from one year before. These discouraged workers essentially are providing a giant vote of no confidence to the economy and the Administration’s attempts to bolster it. If this group of people continues to increase, Secretary Solis might find herself to be the only Administration spokesperson available for media interviews on Labor Day, as everyone else will be in hiding.
Going into hiding isn’t really the problem. The problem is, they don’t stay hidden — which is how we wind up with the kind of legislation that cripples economies in the first place.
Numbers I find impossible to account for.
And history is kinder, especially when the follow on guy is obviously screwing up. I assumed this would happen over time, but I did not think it would be this quick.
The only hope we have over the next 2 years is that Barcky will go golfing even more.
they now own this economy
RAAAAACIST!
You just want to return to Bush’s failed policies, none of which I can enumerate nor explain how they led to the disaster.
Predictably, this is never a sign that managed economies/government spending are part of the problem and not the solution; it’s always evidence that they haven’t managed/spent ENOUGH.
I would love for at least one of the current Holy Trinity of Government (Pelosi, Reid, Obama) would just give a “you fucked up – you trusted us” speech, perhaps as part of their concession. The first part is pure wishful thinking, but hopefully the idea of any/all of the above giving a concession speech in the near future is not.
It’s enough to make you long for the honesty and transparency of FDR. If, as he and his administration did, you add “looking but can’t find work” to “not looking ’cause it’s futile”, you get a number a lot closer to 20% than 10% — and that reflects the reality I see around me.
Even that fails to account for the anti-employed — those members of the “caring” alphabet agencies who go in every day fired with zeal for seeing to it that as few people as possible besides themselves should get a job offering a paycheck. Their effect could perhaps be approximated by counting their numbers, tripling, and adding the result to “unemployed”.
Regards,
Ric
this “good sign” fell far short of the 100,000 jobs a month that the economy needs to add just to keep up with population growth
I don’t believe anymore that anyone has the foggiest idea how many jobs a month the economy needs to add just to keep up with population growth
this number is an ass-pull
it’s usually higher when an R is in the White House is all I know
call your broker now if you want in on the ground floor!
The lawyers and environmentalists won. What did they expect was going to happen.
Washington has created the most anti-business situation possible, and they think that somehow the economy is going to grow like gangbusters?
Insanity is not a good policy.
Oddly enough, ‘feets, that sort of news makes me more likely pick up a few shares. There won’t be much irrational exuberance at work during their IPO.
there’s no shortage of other offerings what do not suffer from irrational exhuberance
which does not have an h
Truly.
GM can’t be bought and held I don’t think cause the illiterate union whores will steal your monies… it’s a trading stock I guess.
Even that fails to account for the anti-employed — those members of the “caring” alphabet agencies
Also known as The Professional Left.
Today, Neil Boortz was going on about the kitchen table meeting he’d like to see, wherein 25 families, each paying ~$10,000 in taxes per year, get to ask Obama why their hard-earned cash ABSOLUTELY MUST BE REDIRECTED to an insect museum in NC that gets 44 visitors per year and that also sponsors an annual “Hexapod Haiku Challenge.”
The lawyers and environmentalists won. What did they expect was going to happen?
They don’t expect growth: they expect to be in control. They have to pretend to be on the natives’ side until they slip the shackles on.
Oh, I wouldn’t put the bulk of my retirement monies in and then check how it all shook out in 2040.
What will be entertaining is when the street doesn’t respond to the rah rah rah and then we’ll be treated to another “unexpectedly”.
Today, Neil Boortz was going on about the kitchen table meeting he’d like to see, wherein 25 families, each paying ~$10,000 in taxes per year, get to
Yea, that gets me thinking about my outrage every time some piddly sum (Pelosi’s bar bill on her jet, for example) is dismissed as being basically insignificant – when that insignificant sum amounts to the collective tax bill of many, many families.
Relax. This is all a fiendishly clever plan to end illegal immigration, outsourcing, and the trade deficit.
Genius!
Insty collects some interesting reader comments from the Don’t Get Cocky file.
GM is the spouse caught in flagrante delicto who first says “who you going to believe me or your lying eyes?” then later crawls back on their knees saying “I’ll never do it again, trust me, really.”
Just, to extend your analogy geoff, you caught GM in a menage a trois with your ex, Chrysler, and your ex’s paramour, –big gov’t.
I’d have the UAW as the ex above.
how ’bout we just call it a fourway and agree that they all think you’re overwound bundle of inhibition and repression?
Mark Steyn has come up with an avenue of resistance against the hyper-regulating nanny state: the Alliance of Noncompliance.
Al-of-non?
I keep getting letters from my congressman about high speed rail to Detroit. It will save 15 minutes off the drive – for all those going to downtown Detroit. Of course they may have to raise county taxes – for a new station in Gary.
If the high-speed rail were one-way, running out of Detroit, it might make some money.
Think of it as taking the I-94 driving stress off of the drug trade between Detroit and Chicago.
Who exactly would high speed rail into Detroit serve? Anything that relieves the traffic on the 80/94 corridors would be appreciated though.
I thought 8% unemployment was what it would be without a stimulus, and that the stimulus was to keep it to some lower number.
Yay! A distracting news event to keep the 24hr news networks talking for the next couple of days!
They just need to figure out a way to tie an AlGore-reading EarthFirsty athiest to the Tea Party and/or Sarah Palin and they’ll be golden.
Yeah, what John said (link to foxnews.com).
Check it out: when Law & Order or Criminal Minds does their version of it, $100 bux says they change it to an anti-abortion nutjob rather than an envirowacko.
This is my favorite part of the manifesto:
Ten points to the first troll who can correctly identify the inherent contradiction, and bonus points if they decide that #3 is the way we should go.
And more. And now he is dead so that narrative will be the gold one.
TLC is the newtwork Palin’s show is gonna be on
*channel*
Thinkregress or mediamatterz or William Yelverton Plagiarist will be the first to make him out to be a reichwingnut teabagger.
“stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants”
Well, given a statement like that, you’d have to say that the guy cannot fairly be characterized as “pro-choice”. So he must be anti-pro-choice and thus a creature of the Right.
No really, just let us repeat our ‘reasoning’ a few thousand times until it’s the Conventional Wisdom!
He’s dead or just all shot and stuff?
News as I was typing that reported that he was dead but now I’m hearing just shot and in custody.
“Law & Order” I believe would. “Criminal Minds” has never turned me off like that, yet, like “Cold Case” did from the get go.
Yo, earth avenger, you’re doing it wrong. You were only supposed to Gore and his business associates money and mindlessly elect Democrats.
supposed to give Gore
Hilda Solis.
Lulz
And Solis was Hillary’s right hand gal. Hard core.
And Hillary got bounced by Obama to “jet lagged and pointless” over at Foggy, now Saggy, Bottom.
God. Damn.
I’ll give him this. While the rest of him may be entirely comprised of socialist fuck up, Obama’s pimp hand with the ladies is pretty strong.
Remember the PUMAs? This has got to suck for them.
Obama might need to call a moratorium on all basic cable channels until we finish an extensive safety study.
Read the comments here, guys. The very first and second:
His demands.
O shit, another item to add to the United States’ report to the UN on Human Rights violations here. Damn.
Sounds ELF-like to me.
bh: How dare you accuse the proggs of jumping to false conclusions based on the cartoon caricatures in their heads, the filthy oikophobes.
You should know better than to air the dirty laundry of your betters.
Ace just Tweeted: James J. Lee reportedly in stable, but dead, condition.
Dunno if he’s heard something or if he’s just being a clever-boots again.
Heh, I actually needed to do so, di. The comments are so hard to believe that I want secondary confirmation that I’m not hallucinating.
Check out part of this comment:
Hitler killed leftists. Therefore he could not be a leftist. All those dead nazis on the night of the long knives? Not nazis. Dead communists in Felix Dzerzhinsky’s Lubyanka? Not communists. No sir, nor them in the gulag neither, not communists. No how. No way.
Ice picks are teh suxxor.
“Save the Froggies!”
The “voluntary human extinction” whackjob made a real contribution to his cause, although, perhaps not quite the way he intended…
Obama might need to call a moratorium on all basic cable channels until we finish an extensive safety study.
Ha!
(chicken update: I spent an hour in a heavy denim outfit, creating paths through the raspberry bushes —- so she couldn’t just disappear w/o us having the ability to double-back around. We CAUGHT HER about an hour ago. she had this funny little spear tucked under wing, but I took it away from her.)
Took it away? What, are you some kind of Imperialist?
dicentra,
“Parasitic. Human. Infants.” is already a meme on some of the more “edgy” web forums.
That was fast.
Of course, the other one I’ve seen is: “Epic fail. He should have stormed Faux Noise.”
She’s tasted freedom now, Carin. I have a feeling this isn’t over.
John Bradley
They’ll figure it out. I’d guess by tomorrow morning they’ll have their talking points lined up. Probably something along the lines that the chronic masturbators at Thinkregress are thinking:
“The reichwing noise machine drove him to it.”
Hitler was a corpratist and put REAL progressives and lefites in concentration camps right next to Jews. GOD you are stupid.
Hitler: Nein, nein, nein…NEIN!!!! Only REAL progressives and lefties you dummkopf.
Actions are to be judged by the perceived effect they may or do have on the progressive cause. If an action could bring harm to the cause then it must have been done by an enemy of the cause. Wingnuts are enemies of the cause.
QED.
Bh should be flogged, in a very public manner, for posting that link to thinkregress. What a cesspool.
he’s tasted freedom now, Carin. I have a feeling this isn’t over.
She’s roosting with her nest-mates right now. Hopefully she’s not filling them in on the joys of life outside of the coop.
Bh should be flogged, in a very public manner, for posting that link to thinkregress. What a cesspool.
Was kinda fun over there though.
Learned behavior and whatnot.
An orangutan in the Dallas World Aquarium shot me the “bird” one time.
Same thing.
I laughed at both.
I think the funniest part, due to the unintentional irony, was the thinkregresser whose responses ranged from fuck off and die to go kill yourself you disgusting fucker whining about right wing hate and inciting violence.
An orangutan at the aquarium? Dallas is weird.
Shut up, bh. It’s a nice place. (open air though, smells like Indian food)
And no. The orangutan wasn’t swimming.
But there are otters.
bh,
No. Austin is weird. Dallas is merely annoying as it tries to be bizarre.
Regards,
Ric
This rare double face palm was captured immediately after the otter learned he was being transferred to Dallas.
Hey – my job was to pass out surveys of the train service between Chicago and South Bend. When I reported that I was the only passenger, the higher ups told me to get creative. I wonder if any of my reports are left?
dicentra, to make that meeting really interesting, you would have to make sure all sharp objects are removed, otherwise it would quickly devolve into “50 ways to cook bureaucratic Long Pig” which you would have to show only on Pay-Per-View.
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