Where Do People Go When They Drop Out of the Labor Force?

Brad Plumer

In March, the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent from 8.2 percent. But that wasn’t because the economy added an enormous number of jobs.

Rather, as Sarah Kliff pointed out, it was largely due to the fact that 164,000 fewer people were actively looking for work — and they don’t count in the unemployment tallies. That raises the perennial question: Where did all these people go?

The Atlantic’s Matthew O’Brien passes along some handy survey data from Barclays that sheds a little light on this mystery. About 35 percent of the people who have dropped out of the labor force since the recession began in 2007 do want a job, but they’ve become too discouraged to fire off resumes. That’s not good. The other 65 percent are people who have left the labor force and don’t want a job. Some of them are young and perhaps decided to go back to school. But the biggest chunk, by far, seems to be composed of Baby Boomers who have decided to retire early.

Read the rest here.

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By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries

Apps on Facebook can gather many types of personal information if you allow them to. But there are steps you can take to limit their access.

Controlling what gets shared with apps starts on Facebook’s “privacy settings” page. To get there, click the little arrow to the right of the top blue bar on Facebook and select “privacy settings.”

Read the rest here.

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Posted by William A. Jacobson   Saturday, April 7, 2012 at 1:29pm

The latest wildfire spreading through the media and blogosphere is that armed neo-Nazis are patrolling Sanford, FL, in anticipation of trouble if George Zimmerman is not charged in the killing of Trayvon Martin.  In what has become a prime example of media malpractice, none of the major publications spreading the rumors bothered to check with local law enforcement.  I did, and the Sanford Police deny any indication of neo-Nazi patrols.

It all started with this blog post in The Miami New Times, Armed Neo-Nazis Now Patrolling Sanford, Say They Are “Prepared” For Post-Trayvon Martin Violence:

Neo-Nazis are currently conducting heavily armed patrols in and around Sanford, Florida and are “prepared” for violence in the case of a race riot. The patrols are to protect “white citizens in the area who are concerned for their safety” in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting last month, says Commander Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement. “We are not advocating any type of violence or attacks on anybody, but we are prepared for it,” he says. “We are not the type of white people who are going to be walked all over.”

Because nothing diffuses racial tension like gun-toting racial separatists patrolling an already on-edge community….

The patrols are comprised of between 10 and 20 locals and “volunteers” from across the state, including some from Miami, he added. He couldn’t go into specifics on what kind of firepower, exactly, the patrols had with them.

The blog post quotes someone from a supposed neo-Nazi group in Detroit, and contains photos of armed patrols not in Sanford, but in Arizona.  The author of the blog post provides no confirmation that such patrols actually are taking place.

The blog post already has generated over 1100 comments, and was picked up with reckless abandon by the usual suspects, including Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs:

You know all that rhetoric about “race war” that’s showing up at Breitbart.com and many other right wing sites these days? It’s not just rhetoric. There are some people in Sanford, Florida right now who are taking it very seriously indeed

And Pam Spaulding at Firedoglake:

And the right wing said it wasn’t about race (on their side), didn’t they? Neo-Nazis have never been affiliated with the left; they’ve always been on the fringe anarchist/chaos/gov’t overthrow wing of the GOP, because there’s no way these white supremacists would vote Dem. After all, that party is polluted with black, brown…you know, the Mud People….

I thought the police department was there to protect all of Sanford’s citizens (when it’s not torpedoing its own bad police work/f’ing up cases involving black folks as victims), but as there’s nothing like having this paramilitary crowd with strong views on race stepping in to do the job. You know, like the KKK, it’s not intimidating at all.

A writer at Mediaite joined in [note:  Mediaite has updated its post with a link here, and also has published a separate post on the Sanford denial]:

And just so we’re clear, the Neo-Nazis have no official position on the Martin case, because remember, George Zimmerman isn’t even white. But the Neo-Nazi commander is trying to assure everyone that they are trying to protect everyone, because “if something were to touch off a race riot, we’d already be in the area.”

Well said! Because whenever there’s a race riot, my first question is always, “Where are the armed racists when you need them? They’ll put a stop to all this violence!”

HuffPo and The Daily Beast are helping spread the story.

It even has spread to The NY Daily News [note:  The NYDN story changed tonight. after I contacted the writer, and now acknowledges police denial; the following is from the original story] :

The Trayvon  Martin case is getting even more heated as armed neo-Nazis are reportedly  patrolling the streets of Sanford, Fla.-where the black, unarmed teen was shot  and killed.

A representative for the Detroit-based National Socialist movement told  the Miami New Times that his group of roughly 10 to 20 volunteers aren’t there  to start trouble, but are prepared to protect the “white citizens in the area”  in the event of race riots.

Only Gateway Pundit asked the obvious question:

Is there any evidence that this is actually happening in Sanford?

Did anyone bother to contact the Sanford Police?  I did, and the Sanford Police deny any indication of Neo-Nazi groups patrolling in Sanford.  Here’s the e-mail exchange:

Read the rest here.

 

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April, 6, 2012 — nicedeb

In what is certain to cause him election year migraines, the Bank of America has filed suit against Missouri Rep. Emanuel *Spittlegate* Cleaver, seeking repayment of $1.5 million from Cleaver, his wife and The Cleaver Company for a 20 year loan that originated in 2002 at a 6.25% interest rate. Cleaver has received three (3) forbearances over the ten year period.

Jacob Turk, Cleaver’s opponent in the District 5 2012 House race, noted on his Facebook page, today, that  Cleaver voted on September 23, 2010 for H.R. 5297 which ‘increases the government guarantees on SBA 7(a) loans from 75 percent to 90 percent’, in essence, putting taxpayers on the hook for his bad debt.

The Kansas City Star reports:

The bank that loaned the Kansas City congressman and his wife $1.3 million in 2002 to buy the Grandview Auto Wash at 12204 Blue Ridge Extension is now demanding payment of more than $1.5 million, after the Cleavers repeatedly fell behind on repaying the loan.

The suit, filed last week in Jackson County Circuit Court, said the demand for repayment came after three attempts to delay foreclosure. Bank of America also is seeking attorney’s fees and a receiver to protect collateral.

“The Cleaver Company failed and refused, and continues to fail and refuse, to pay the outstanding obligations due and owing … under the note and other loan documents,” the lawsuit said.

In an email statement, Cleaver said, “This is a business dispute. The business has been run by an outside manager for years.” He said because it was a legal matter, he would have no further comment.

According to court documents, the outstanding principal totals $1.2 million with interest totaling $240,545 as of March 6. Late fees have reached $54,587. Both Cleavers had personally guaranteed the debts, according to the suit.

The loan was originally part of a Small Business Administration program. It was not clear Thursday how much money, if any, taxpayers will have to provide if the loan defaults.

The Bank of America lawsuit documents are here.

Read the rest here.

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Like Rathergate, Edit-Gate is a New Media-driven story pushed so hard (including here at the Bigs) that the mainstream media can no longer ignore it.

The result has been some action on the part of NBC News, but nowhere near enough. But hey, if NBC prefers death by a thousand paper cuts as opposed to biting the bullet and simply doing the right thing, that’s fine by me.

At first NBC News thought they could make us go away by admitting the “error.” The “error,” of course, being the malicious, race-baiting edit of 911 audio in order to make a private citizen, who is currently in hiding for fear of his life, look racist.

Then NBC News thought an apology might end the growing firestorm.

Then, finally, just like a White House with something to hide about Fast and Furious, news was leaked late Friday that NBC had finally fired the producer responsible for this unpardonable act.

The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, who has been the mainstream media exception in doing a superb job of covering this scandal, put the news of last night’s firing this way:

Yet it’s not sewn up. We still don’t know the name of the dismissed producer; we don’t know if the network gave any consideration to apologizing directly to Zimmerman; we don’t know if warnings were issued to other NBC employees; and so on.

NBC could have headed off this story sprawl by publishing a fuller account of the incident ealier [sic] this week. Since it failed to do so, this scandal will have a life well beyond Easter.

Yes, that’s right, just for starters, NBC News refuses to name the fired producer responsible.

And that, by any reasonable standard, is nothing more than a cover up.

To think that this biased, irresponsible, race-baiter can now freely move about the cabin and get a job anywhere in the news business, free from public scrutiny, is a cover up.

Moreover, if NBC won’t name the producer, how in the world are we supposed to know someone has actually been fired?

But the biggest problem for NBC News is that a single unnamed sacrificial scapegoat doesn’t begin to pay for the deliberate crime of throwing gasoline on a racial fire that was already raging.

Edit-Gate didn’t occur in the fever swamps of MSNBC. This happened on the oh-so-storied “Today Show,” which means that there are only two ways this was allowed to happen:

Read the rest here.

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After wading in barrels of the Scotch and Irish drams, it’s time to turn our attention homeward, to that quintessential American spirit: good old bourbon whiskey. We’ll look today at what makes bourbon unique, how it’s made, and how it came to be.

Read the rest here.

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This week’s Boston Phoenix cover story — Hunting the Craigslist Killer: An Untold Detective Story from the Digital Frontier — would not have been possible without access to a huge trove of case files released by the Boston Police Department. Many of those documents have never been made public — until now. As a kind of online appendix to the article, we’re publishing over a dozen documents from the file, ranging from transcripts of interviews to the subpoenas that investigators obtained from the tech companies that helped them track the killer’s digital fingerprints. We’ve also published the crime scene photos and uploaded recordings made by investigators as they interviewed the killer, Philip Markoff, and others involved in the case.

One of the most fascinating documents we came across was the BPD’s subpoena of Philip Markoff’s Facebook information. It’s interesting for a number of reasons — for one thing, Facebook has been pretty tight-lipped about the subpoena process, even refusing to acknowledge how many subpoenas they’ve served. Social-networking data is a contested part of a complicated legal ecosystem — in some cases, courts have found that such data is protected by the Stored Communications Act.

In fact, we’d never seen an executed Facebook subpoena before — but here we have one, including the forms that Boston Police filed to obtain the information, and the printed (on paper!) response that Facebook sent back, which includes text printouts of Markoff’s wall posts, photos he uploaded as well as photos he was tagged in, a comprehensive list of friends with their Facebook IDs (which we’ve redacted), and a long table of login and IP data.

Read the rest and see the subpoenaed info here.

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By Morgan Housel
April 5, 2012

In no particular order, here are 50 things about our economy that blow my mind:

50. The S&P 500 is down 3% from 2000. But a version of the index that holds all 500 companies in equal amounts (rather than skewed by market cap) is up nearly 90%.

49. According to economist Tyler Cowen, “Thirty years ago, college graduates made 40 percent more than high school graduates, but now the gap is about 83 percent.”

48. Of all non-farm jobs created since June 2009, 88% have gone to men. “The share of men saying the economy was improving jumped to 41 percent in March, compared with 26 percent of women,” reports Bloomberg.

47. A record $6 billion will be spent on the 2012 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Adjusted for inflation, that’s 60% more than the 2000 elections.

46. In 2010, nearly half of Americans lived in a household that received direct government benefits. That’s up from 37.7% in 1998.

45. Adjusted for inflation, federal tax revenue was the same in 2009 as it was 1997, even though the U.S. population grew by 37 million during that period.

44. In November 2009, the nationwide unemployment was around 10%. But dig into demographics, and the rates are incredibly skewed. The unemployment rate for young, uneducated African-American males was 48.5%. For Caucasian females over age 45 with a college degree, it was 3.7%.

43. About the same number of people was awarded bachelor’s degrees in 2010 as filed for personal bankruptcy (1.6 million).

42. According to The Wall Street Journal, “U.S. refineries are producing more gasoline and diesel than ever. And Americans’ gasoline consumption is at an 11-year-low.”

41. Americans spend an average of 1.8% of their income on alcohol and tobacco. In the U.K., it’s 4.8%.

40. In 2009, 5% of Americans accounted for 50% of all health care costs.

Read the rest here.

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Answer

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“Doubts on Romney’s Conservatism Help Santorum in the South,” reads the ABC News headline from March 13. The headline would have you believe that Rick Santorum trounced Mitt Romney in the Alabama and Mississippi GOP primaries. It obscures the fact that Santorum beat Romney by just 44-39 percent in Alabama and 42-39 percent in Mississippi. In other words, nearly half of GOP primary voters in these states voted for Romney.

The headline not only obscures the kinds of political divisions that divide the rural and more liberal urban parts of the South; it also feeds into the idea that Southern conservatives vote primarily on “family values” issues, and takes it on good faith that Romney — who has moved awfully far to the Right during primary season – is somehow the more civilized, sane, humane and/or liberal of the two.

In January, CNN contributor John Avlon wrote about the ugly stereotypes about South Carolina that he saw as that state’s primaries kicked off: “You know, the characterization of South Carolina as a swamp of sleazy politics and brutal attack ads, a Bible belt bastion of rednecks and racism, a state defined by Bob Jones University. Sometimes these stereotypes are floated in political conversations as evidence of how ‘real’ the state is in determining the true feelings of the conservative base.”

These stereotypes are nothing new. In fact, they often date back to the Civil War. They tend to denigrate the Southern poor, under-educated and rural in ways that bear striking resemblance to Republican rhetoric that demonizes the poor in general. But every election season, those of us who have spent most of our lives in the South are reminded of the devastating misconceptions that many other Americans have about us. The Right romanticizes us as the “real America” while the Left treats us a punchline. Polling organizations like Public Policy Polling design studies that target Southern states and reinforce the national sense that we are backward and dim-witted. Here are just a few of the ways in which popular political narratives distort the contemporary realities of Southern life in historical context.

Read the rest here.

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44 book recommendations from the Black Swan himself.

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By BEN LEVISOHN

After a six-month rally, U.S. stocks are getting pricier. Experts say investors should exercise caution.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 12% during the first three months of 2012, the best start to the year since 1998. After this week’s 0.7% drop, the benchmark index has run up a stunning 27% since Oct. 3. Despite the surge, some strategists argue that stocks are still cheap, based on comparisons with bonds.

More traditional measures, however, suggest stocks at best are fairly priced, and at worst are worryingly expensive. With corporate earnings growth slowing in the U.S. and fresh fears of a European meltdown, some strategists say stocks are due for a rough stretch.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty out there, so the S&P shouldn’t be trading at a premium,” says Stuart Kaiser, an equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group GS -1.63% . “The idea that equities are cheap is not quite right when all factors are considered.”

Read the rest here.

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By BRIAN STELTER

NBC News has fired a producer who was involved in the production of a misleading segment about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida.

The person was fired on Thursday, according to two people with direct knowledge of the disciplinary action who declined to be identified discussing internal company matters. They also declined to name the fired producer. A spokeswoman for NBC News declined to comment.

The action came in the wake of an internal investigation by NBC News into the production of the segment, which strung together audio clips in such a way that made George Zimmerman’s shooting of Mr. Martin sound racially motivated. Ever since the Feb. 26 shooting, there has been a continuing debate about whether race was a factor in the incident.

The segment in question was shown on the “Today” show on March 27. It included audio of Mr. Zimmerman saying, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

But Mr. Zimmerman’s comments had been taken grossly out of context by NBC. On the phone with a 911 dispatcher, he actually said of Mr. Martin, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.” Then the dispatcher asked, “O.K., and this guy — is he white, black or Hispanic?” Only then did Mr. Zimmerman say, “He looks black.”

The editing of the segment was initially noticed by NewsBusters, an arm of the Media Research Center, a conservative media monitoring group. On March 31, NBC told The Washington Post that it would investigate.

Inside NBC, there was shock that the segment had been broadcast. Citing an anonymous network executive, Reuters reported that “the ‘Today’ show’s editorial control policies — which include a script editor, senior producer oversight and in most cases legal and standards department reviews of material to be broadcast — missed the selective editing of the call.”

Read the rest here.

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We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.

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By ANNIE LOWREY

Published: April 6, 2012

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By Tom Lauricella

In many ways, global financial markets remain lashed to the risk on/risk off seesaw that has driven trading for the last few years. But peel back the layers of the onion on the U.S. stock market and things are looking dramatically different.

Earlier this week , as part of the WSJ first quarter wrap-up, we noted that correlations between asset classes – such as the U.S. dollar and stocks – have fallen from peaks hit late last year. But cross-asset correlations remain elevated compared to history. One only had to look to yesterday’s trading, where traders hit their big shiny red “risk off” buttons following a sloppy Spanish bond auction and all the way across the Atlantic, U.S. stocks had their second-worst day of the year.

But as we also noted here at MarketBeat yesterday, data compiled by BofA Merrill Lynch show large-cap stock pickers have been having a better time of beating their benchmark. Savita Subramanian, head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy at BofA Merrill, pointed to lower correlations between stocks as a tailwind.

We were curious where correlations between stocks stood compared to longer-term trends, so we asked Subramanian for more data.

Turns out, correlations are really down a lot. A whole lot. They’re at below average levels for the last 26 years, and perhaps most eye-catching of all, they’re at levels not seen since late 2006 – in other words, before the financial crisis.

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Todd Sullivan from ValuePlays

Total N. American rail traffic came in at 686k last week. This is a pretty impressive surge, far better than what I expected. Even better is that the main reason was metal and stone products (think construction) and auto’s set yet another multi-year high. As I read the data coming out and observe the key indicators we follow I am becoming more convinced, those who “sell in April/May and go away” are going to regret that decision.

Read the rest here.

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(Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday that 2012 compensation for the chief executives of the final three firms that got exceptional bailout assistance during the financial crisis was being frozen at 2011 levels.

The ruling from the special master for executive compensation under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, applies to the leaders of AIG, General Motors and Ally Financial, which was formerly called GMAC.

Treasury also said total direct compensation for 69 other senior executives at the three firms was being cut by 10 percent from 2011 levels.

Source

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A Grad rocket has landed in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, but has caused no damage or injuries, Israeli security officials said.

District police chief Ron Gertner told Israeli radio the rocket had been fired from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

He said it struck a construction site close to a residential area shortly after midnight (21:00 GMT).

The blast took place as thousands congregated in the resort town for the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Rocket attacks from Egyptian soil are uncommon. Attacks on Eilat and the nearby Jordanian town of Aqaba in 2010 killed one person and injured another four.

Source

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgrjbFofM-s&feature=player_embedded

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