Despite doctored unemployment numbers the direction of claims is moving in the right direction…
Comments »State of the Nation: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures
America Shows No Increase in College Graduation Rates over the last 30 Years
State of the Union: Cash Strapped States Do Spring Cleaning
Markets Disappointed as Fed Sees No Need for Cocaine
High Gas Prices Have Not Hurt Consumer Spending…….YET
The Trade Deficit is Reported to Be Worse Than Originally Thought; 1.3 Million Jobs May Have Been Lost
“If you go by the official data, U.S. workers have benefited from international trade in the past few years. The reported deficit in the trade of goods fell 25 percent from 2007 to 2011, adjusted for price changes. A shrinking trade gap is good for workers because it means more Americans are being kept busy producing things for domestic and foreign consumption.
But what if those trade numbers are wrong? After all, the U.S. lost 2 million manufacturing jobs from 2007 to 2011. A new research report from the Democratic-leaning Progressive Policy Institute says the trade deficit isworse than officially stated. It says the government is understating how much of what Americans consume is actually produced abroad, particularly in such low-cost nations as China. Report authors Michael Mandel and Diana Carew calculate that rising imports account for the loss of about 1.3 million American jobs from 2007 to 2011, or about one-third of all the job losses in the private sector outside construction over that period.
Mandel and Carew say the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis underestimates the value of imports from low-wage nations because of an “import price bias.” They say when a U.S. company switches to a cheaper supplier—such as a Chinese company—and its import bill falls, the government mistakenly assumes the American company is buying fewer items, rather than getting a lower price per item. So it understates imports.
I have asked the Bureau of Economic Analysis about this issue in the past, and it has responded that, while the phenomenon is real, it is not as big as Mandel makes it out to be. Mandel, a former chief economist atBusinessweek, and Carew present case studies from apparel, furniture, autos, communications equipment, and computers to bolster their case. I asked the government for comment on the latest report today and will update this article if I hear anything.”
Comments »Supreme Court Ruling Allows Strip-Searches for Any Arrest
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: April 2, 2012
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.
Read the rest here.
WTF: Student Loans Plague Senior Citizens
Greedy Mega Millions Woman Refuses to Share $105 Million Jackpot with Fellow $MCD Workers
“I was in the group, but this was separate. The winning ticket was a separate ticket,” the single mother of seven said as she and her fiancé left her home in the squalid Westport neighborhood to attend church.
Comments »Social Security Revenue Unexpectedly Jumps Past Pre-Recession Levels
“Social Security (SS) has released estimates for both payroll tax revenues and benefits paid for April. The results are adjusted for the 2% payroll tax reduction. (The Treasury pays SS monthly for the shortfall.) The numbers tell an interesting story.
Revenues from FICA and SECA taxes are up significantly in the first four months of 2012.
A look at the actual income and the percentage change:
I’m surprised by the extent of this improvement. These numbers appear to be too good. The Jan. – Apr. results suggest that total employment has now exceeded the levels that prevailed in 2008. But that is not the case based on other information.
According to the BLS data, the number of people who are employed rose from 139.6m to 142.1m from Feb. 2011 – Feb. 2012. The increase of 2.5m workers translates into $5B of additional revenues at SS for the Jan. – Apr. 2012 period. (This assumes average annual income of $50,000) The $19B YoY improvement at SS suggests that there are many more people now working then the reported BLS data. There are some reasons why this discrepancy is so large:
-Annual adjustments to SS’s reported income.
-Quarterly adjustments to SS’s reported income.
-Many workers received bonus payments in Jan. and Feb. 2012. Therefore they have already maxed out their annual SS contributions. (The max = $110,500 of income.)
-SS data covers all workers; BLS data only covers Non Farm workers. It’s possible that more people are finding employment outside of the areas that the BLS covers.
I think that taken together these factors can only account for half of the increase in payroll tax revenue. The other half is a function of more people working. The data suggests there are 1-2 million more people working than the BLS is reporting.
Is this possible? “Yes”, is the answer. The BLS puts the work force at 142m. Could its numbers be wrong by 1%? Sure they could. The BLS conducts its surveys by land-line phone. It does not attempt to contact households that exclusively use cell phones. In 2010, 27% of all households exclusively used cell phones. The exclusion of a quarter of all households makes the BLS numbers very suspect.
Note: The observation that there may be 1-2 million more people working (including part time) runs counter to other information that I look at, so I’m a bit confused by the result. The data can be found here. I’d be interested in any alternative theories as to why the numbers appear so strong.
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The Bad News
The double whammy of inflation and 10,000 new people a day getting SS checks is causing costs to soar at SS. The payout has been averaging $4B a month higher than a year ago:
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A basic metric for measuring SS is payroll tax income minus benefit payments. This chart looks at the results for the Jan. – Apr. periods: “
Comments »Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street’s Secrets?
William D. Cohan
Getting what should be public information about major Wall Street firms can be maddeningly difficult.
Bloomberg News discovered this in its ultimately successful effort to get information on the $1.2 trillion in “secret loans” the Fed doled out during the financial crisis. And I’ve had no small experience of it myself.
As I started each of my three books — about Lazard Freres, Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) — I submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the appropriate government agencies (the Securities Exchange Commission, the State Department and the Federal Reserve) to obtain whatever documents, memos and e-mails they had about these companies and their senior executives.
I was hoping to find, among other nuggets, details of enforcement actions, or settlements that were reached where the firms “neither admitted nor denied” guilt, or other documentary evidence of the coziness that has for too long existed between Wall Street and Washington.
Sadly, getting this information in anything like a timely basis — say, before my books were finished and published — has been nearly impossible. At first, when I asked the SEC about documents related to Lazard’s role in the Hartford-Mediobanca scandal starting in 1968 and ending in 1981, the agency told me it could not release the information. When I reminded the FOIA administrator that the SEC had already released the information, years before, to another journalist, the agency dug up the 40 boxes of unindexed, unorganized documents and invited me to a warehouse in Pennsylvania to take a look. After an hour or so, the clerk asked me if I was done with my review. (Eventually, I persuaded the SEC to ship the boxes — at my expense — to its office in Manhattan, where I spent months poring over them.)
Read the rest here.
Comments »No April Fool’s Day: Ashton Kutcher to Play Steve Jobs in Movie
State of the Union: Back to Square One….Don’t Pass Go
“After more than 30 years working with autistic teens and deaf senior citizens, 53-year-old Susan Cherry, who is deaf herself, was looking for a change.
Her dream had always been to work in a medical lab, but her high school teachers had warned Cherry against it because of her hearing disability.
But when she recently learned that the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology offered medical classes, Cherry decided to return to school full-time to get a second bachelor’s degree.
The only problem was that in order to fulfill her graduation requirements, she’d have to do something that’s atypical for a 50-year-old: complete a 10-week unpaid internship.
RELATED: The 10 Best Cities for Middle-Aged Workers to Find Jobs
Cherry is just one of many older people in the U.S. doing something that would’ve been largely unheard for those nearing retirement age in generations past: taking steps to reinvent herself, rather than preparing to retreat from the professional world.
“There have always been mature workers who simply enjoy work and don’t wish to fully retire ’til much later in life,” says Ryan Hunt, senior career advisor for CareerBuilder.com. “But in this economic climate, it’s clear many are applying for new jobs due to financial constraints.”
In addition, increased longevity and changing notions of aging are causing more Americans to look for new professional opportunities as they enter into their 50s, 60s, and even 70s. Plenty, like Cherry, are seeking out internships or entry-level jobs to help them get to the next stage of their lives….”
Comments »More on the Bifurcated Recovery
“Luxury retailers are smiling. So are the owners of high-end restaurants, sellers of upscale cars, vacation planners, financial advisors, and personal coaches. For them and their customers and clients the recession is over. The recovery is now full speed.
But the rest of America isn’t enjoying an recovery. It’s still sick. Many Americans remain in critical condition.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the economy grew at a 3 percent annual rate last quarter (far better than the measly 1.8 percent third quarter growth). Personal income also jumped. Americans raked in over $13 trillion, $3.3 billion more than previously thought.
Yet it’s almost a certainly that all the gains went to the top 10 percent, and the lion’s share to the top 1 percent. Over a third of the gains went to 15,600 super-rich households in the top one-tenth of one percent.
We don’t know this for sure because all the data aren’t in for 2011. But this is what happened in 2010, the most recent year for which we have reliable data, and there’s no reason to believe the trajectory changed in 2011 or that it will change this year.
In fact, recoveries are becoming more and more lopsided.
The top 1 percent got 45 percent of Clinton-era economic growth, and 65 percent of the economic growth during the Bush era.
According to an analysis of tax returns by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Pikkety, the top 1 percent pocketed 93 percent of the gains in 2010. 37 percent of the gains went to the top one-tenth of one percent. No one below the richest 10 percent saw any gain at all.
In fact, most of the bottom 90 percent have lost ground. Their average adjusted gross income was $29,840 in 2010. That’s down $127 from 2009, and down $4,843 from 2000 (all adjusted for inflation).
Meanwhile, employer-provided benefits continue to decline among the bottom 90 percent, according to the Commerce Department. The share of people with health insurance from their employers dropped from 59.8 percent in 2007 to 55.3 percent in 2010. And the share of private-sector workers with retirement plans dropped from 42 percent in 2007 to 39.5 percent in 2010.
If you’re among the richest 10 percent, a big chunk of your savings are in the stock market where you’ve had nice gains over the last two years. The value of financial assets held by Americans surged by $1.46 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2011.
But if you’re in the bottom 90 percent, you own few if any shares of stock. Your biggest asset is your home. Home prices are down over a third from their 2006 peak, and they’re still dropping. The median house price in February was 6.2 percent lower than a year ago.
Official Washington doesn’t want to talk about this lopsided recovery. The Obama administration is touting the recovery, period, without mentioning how narrow it is.
Republicans would rather not talk about widening inequality to begin with. The reverse-Robin Hood budget plan just announced by Paul Ryan and House Republicans (and endorsed by Mitt Romney) would make the lopsidedness far worse – dramatically cutting taxes on the rich and slashing public services everyone else depends on…”
Comments »Surprise: See Where the Wealth and Income Go During Recoveries
The Clinton recovery saw 45% of the income go to the top 1%.
Bush had 65% go to the top.
Obama’s recovery funneled 93% to the top 1%…
The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States
Comments »Stop Panicking About Bullies
Childhood is safer than ever before, but today’s parents need to worry about something. Nick Gillespie on why busybodies and bureaucrats have zeroed in on bullying.
Despite the rare and tragic cases that rightly command our attention and outrage, the data show that things are, in fact, getting better for kids. When it comes to school violence, the numbers are particularly encouraging. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between 1995 and 2009, the percentage of students who reported “being afraid of attack or harm at school” declined to 4% from 12%. Over the same period, the victimization rate per 1,000 students declined fivefold.
When it comes to bullying numbers, long-term trends are less clear. The makers of “Bully” say that “over 13 million American kids will be bullied this year,” and estimates of the percentage of students who are bullied in a given year range from 20% to 70%. NCES changed the way it tabulated bullying incidents in 2005 and cautions against using earlier data. Its biennial reports find that 28% of students ages 12-18 reported being bullied in 2005; that percentage rose to 32% in 2007, before dropping back to 28% in 2009 (the most recent year for which data are available). Such numbers strongly suggest that there is no epidemic afoot (though one wonders if the new anti-bullying laws and media campaigns might lead to more reports going forward).
The most common bullying behaviors reported include being “made fun of, called names, or insulted” (reported by about 19% of victims in 2009) and being made the “subject of rumors” (16%). Nine percent of victims reported being “pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on,” and 6% reported being “threatened with harm.” Though it may not be surprising that bullying mostly happens during the school day, it is stunning to learn that the most common locations for bullying are inside classrooms, in hallways and stairwells, and on playgrounds—areas ostensibly patrolled by teachers and administrators.
None of this is to be celebrated, of course, but it hardly paints a picture of contemporary American childhood as an unrestrained Hobbesian nightmare. Before more of our schools’ money, time and personnel are diverted away from education in the name of this supposed crisis, we should make an effort to distinguish between the serious abuse suffered by the kids in “Bully” and the sort of lower-level harassment with which the Aaron Cheeses of the world have to deal.
Read the rest here.
Comments »Documentary: Orwell Rolls In His Grave
You are still free to discover the truth. Perhaps one day that will not be.
Cheers on your pleb robotic weeknd activities…..
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80 450 300]Director Robert Kane Pappas’ “Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave” is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Asking whether America has entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth, Pappas explores what the media doesn’t like to talk about: itself.
Meticulously tracing the process by which media has distorted and often dismissed actual news events, Pappas presents a riveting and eloquent mix of media professionals and leading intellectual voices on the media.
Among the cast of characters in “Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave” are Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, Vincent Bugliosi, former L.A. prosecutor and legal scholar, film director and author Michael Moore, Rep. Bernie Sanders, Danny Schecter, author and former producer for ABC and CNN, and Tony Benn, former member of the British Parliament.
“Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave” expresses ideas that will never be heard in mainstream media. From Globalvision’s Danny Schecter: “We falsely think of our country as a democracy when it has evolved into a `mediacracy’, where a media that is supposed to check political abuse is part of the political abuse.” New York University media professor Mark Crispin Miller says, “These commercial entities now vie with the government for control over our lives. They are not a healthy counterweight to government.”
Joseph Goebbels, former head of Nazi propaganda, said that what you want in a media system- he meant the Nazi media system – is to present the ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity. From the very size of the media monopolies and how they got that way to who decides what gets on the air and what doesn’t, “Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave” moves through a troubling list of questions and news stories that go unanswered and unreported in the mainstream media.
Are Americans being given the information a democracy needs to survive or have they been electronically lobotomized? Has the frenzy for media consolidation led to a dangerous irony where, in an era of more news sources, the majority of the population has actually become less informed? Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave reminds us that 1984 is no longer a date in the future.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmNV8_VBGX0&feature=related 450 300] Comments »Red Flags Ignored by DOE Over Solyndra
“The Department of Energy was fully aware of the risks in backing Solyndra Inc., a start-up company that pocketed a half-billion dollar DOE loan but never turned a penny in profit before shutting its doors, concludes a former FBI agent hired to examine the company’s books.
The expert’s report, filed this week in Solyndra’s voluminous bankruptcy case in California, could embolden critics who say the government ignored financial red flags in supporting the solar panel maker with President Obama’s maiden green energy loan in 2009.
The $535 million loan, which bankrolled a vast new manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., was part of a broad government mission to kick-start the clean energy movement: Solyndra’s unique solar panels would cover commercial rooftops across the country, aiding the environment and boosting the economy.
Yet the company collapsed under a sea of debt and a business plan that, amid dramatic shifts in the global solar market, caused it to sell far fewer panels at far higher costs than envisioned. From 2009-11, it cost Solyndra $3.92 more per watt to make its panels than to sell them, the bankruptcy report shows.
Solyndra filed for bankruptcy Sept.6, 2011. Two days later, it faced a raid by agents from the FBI and the Energy Department inspector general. With those clouds looming, the company’s board hired R. Todd Neilson — the former federal agent and veteran trustee in bankruptcy cases — as chief restructuring officer.
Solyndra’s board wanted a CRO to not only manage its bankruptcy case, but to explore whether the company committed misdeeds on its road to collapse. “In light of the Federal criminal investigation and ongoing Congressional investigation … the Subcommittee agreed that the CRO would act in an independent capacity in determining if any improprieties had occurred with respect to the Debtors’ finances,” Neilson’s report said.
After examining tens of thousands of pages of records, Neilson concluded that Solyndra did not improperly divert funds. “The construction costs were correctly recorded in the accounting records and no material funds were diverted from their original intended use,” he wrote.
All funds drawn from the DOE loan, he found, “were spent in accordance with the relevant loan documents.”
And, Neilson made clear, the DOE was fully informed of Solyndra’s finances when it initially backed the company in 2009 — and restructured its loan in 2011, seven months before the bankruptcy and raid.
“The CRO has reviewed the vast level of communications and the underlying records between the DOE and Solyndra,” he wrote. “It is the opinion of the CRO that the DOE had sufficient information to understand the risks and challenges associated with the guarantee obtained from DOE and make an informed decision as to the ongoing financial condition of Solyndra throughout the loan guarantee time frame.”
In fact, records show, the Energy Department supported the Solyndra financing in the early days of the Obama administration in the face of criticism from officials within several wings of government — the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Treasury and DOE. “This deal is NOT ready for prime time,” one OMB employee wrote March 10, 2009, government emails show. Ten days later, energy officials announced Solyndra was in line to be the first company to secure a green energy loan guarantee….”
Comments »PARENTS OF MURDERED WHITE STUDENTS SLAM OBAMA FOR SILENCE
Headline via DrudgeReport.com
See video of gripping victim impact statements here
Parents of murdered British students criticise Barack Obama (via telegraph.co.uk)
The parents of two British students murdered in Florida have criticised President Barack Obama for his lack of compassion over their son’s deaths.
Image 1 of 2
Shawn Tyson
By Paul Thompson in Sarasota
3:00PM BST 29 Mar 2012
His failure to respond to three letters sent to the White House was because there was no “political value” and not worthy of a few minutes of his time.
They spoke out as teenager Shawn Tyson began a life sentence after being found guilty of the murder of James Cooper and James Kouzaris last April.
The 17 year old, who shot the men as they begged for their lives, will die in prison.
His conviction of first degree murder carries an mandatory life sentence without the chance of parole.
The powerfully built teen even looked bored as emotional DVD presentations about the dead men prepared by their grieving parents were shown in court.
Tyson, who has the word ‘Savage’ tattooed across his chest didn’t show a flicker of emotion, slumping in his seat as he was forced to watch a montage of photos showing the victims from early childhood to young men.
Two close friends of the dead men who had attended the eight day trial in Sarasota, Florida. had also delivered highly emotional impact statements to the court prior to the sentencing.
Paul Davies and Joe Hallett spoke of the “living hell” they and others who knew the men had suffered since the murders.
During the eight day trial they had been shown graphic crime scene and autopsy photos shown in court.
Later speaking after Tyson was jailed Davies and Hallett lashed out at Mr Obama saying the deaths of their friends was “not worthy of ten minutes of his time.”
Davies said:”We would like to publicly express our dissatisfaction at the lack of any public or private message of support or condolence from any American governing body or indeed, President Obama himself.
“Mr Kouzaris has written to President Obama on three separate occasions and is yet to even receive the courtesy of a reply.
“It would perhaps appear that Mr Obama sees no political value in facilitating such a request or that the lives of two British tourists are not worthy of ten minutes of his time.”
The rebuke follows Mr Obama’s personal intervention into the shooting in Florida of a young black teenager by a white-Hispanic neighbourhood watch captain.
The death of 17 year old Trayvon Martin has sparked nationwide protests with his supporters claiming he was victim of a racist attack.
Mr Obama entered the controversy last week by saying if he had a son he would have looked like Martin.
The alleged assailant in Martin’s death has not been charged with any crime having claimed he was attacked first and used Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law to shoot in self defence.
The criticism of the US President was made on behalf of the Cooper’s parents Stanley and Sandy, from Warwicks, and Peter and Hazel Kouzaris, from Northampton by Davies in a statement read outside the courtroom.
The parents of the two victims did not attend the trial but they had access to the proceedings from a live video feed.
The filmed interview of the Kouzaris’s was played to the court while a message from Sandy Cooper was read out by the prosecutor.
The victims close friends delivered an emotional impact statement with Hallett telling Tyson he hoped he would be haunted by his actions.
He told him: “Imagine them being killed. Now try to imagine that they died because someone creept up on them and shot them numerous times for no good reason. Welcome to our world. Every night you go to sleep, every morning you wake up, I want you to think of my friends who you murdered. Their images will be imprinted on your conscience up until your very last breath in life.”
