Saturday, October 03, 2015
Unemployment Remains Steady At 5.1% For September
The Labor Department released its unemployment figures for the month of September yesterday. It showed that 142,000 new jobs were created, but the unemployment rate remained at 5.1% (the same rate it was in August). Unfortunately, there were fewer people employed in February (149,036,000 in August and 148,800,000 in September). That's 236,000 fewer employed workers, and the only reason the unemployment rate remained steady was because the size of the civilian work force also shrank (from 157,065,000 in August to 156,715,000 in September).
President Obama praised the September numbers, but said we could be doing much better if it wasn't for the austerity imposed by the Republican Congress. He is right. In a sluggish economy with too many people out of work, what is needed is to pump more money into the economy -- not take money out of the economy as the GOP austerity has done.
This austerity has cut funding for everything except subsidies for the rich and corporations and money for the military-industrial complex (they only things they care about, and would never cut).Until this austerity is dumped, and we return to a fairer economic policy, I'm afraid it will be very difficult to get the unemployment rate down to where it needs to be -- around 4%.
Here are the relevant numbers for September:
SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORK FORCE:
156,715,000
NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:
7,915,000
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
5.1%
OFFICIAL DEMOGRAPHIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATES:
Adult Men...............4.7%
Adult Women...............4.6%
Teenagers (16-19)...............16.3%
Whites...............4.4%
Blacks...............9.2%
Hispanics...............6.4%
Asians...............3.6%
Less than HS diploma...............7.9%
HS graduate...............5.2%
Some college...............4.3%
Bachelor's degree or more...............2.5%
NUMBER OF MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (unemployed, but no longer counted):
1,921,000
MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:
9,836,000
MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
6.3%
NUMBER OF UNDEREMPLOYED WORKERS (working part-time because they can't fin full-time work):
6,036,000
NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED/UNDEREMPLOYED WORKERS:
15,872,000
UNEMPLOYMENT/UNDEREMPLOYMENT RATE:
10.1%
Rubio Rises While Fiorina Falls In New National Poll
It looks like there is still a lot of volatility in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. This new poll shows that while Trump still has a good lead, things are changing underneath him. Marco Rubio has jumped into second place with 16% (in a virtual tie with Ben Carson at 15%). Ted Cruz finished fourth with 9%, and Carly Fiorina has dropped all the way to fifth with only 8%. Jeb Bush finished sixth with 7%.
Last week I brought you a poll showing Bernie Sanders with 38%, and only 7 points behind Hillary Clinton. The poll had a small sample, and at the time I suspected it might be an outlier (a poll disagreeing with all other polls), and this new poll shows that may well be true. The numbers in this poll are far more in line with what other polls have been showing.
This survey has Hillary Clinton with 48% support, and Bernie Sanders with 25% support -- a difference of 23 points. And that's if Biden was in the race. Without Biden, Clinton's points over Sanders increases.
These charts reflect the numbers from the new YouGov Poll -- done between September 25th and 29th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 4 points. No margin of error was given for just Republicans or just Democrats.
First Rule Of "Hillary Fight Club"
A Second Poll Shows Clinton And Trump Leading In Texas
These charts show the results of a new poll in Texas. It is the Texas Lyceum Poll. It was done between September 8th and 21st of a random sample of 1,000 Texas voters, and has an overall margin of error of 3.1 points. No margin of error was given for just Democrats or Republicans.
GOP Rep. Admits Benghazi Comm. Is Just To Smear Hillary
The House Committee supposedly investigating the tragedy at Benghazi has droned on for over 72 months now (longer than any other committee hearing in congressional history), even though it was long ago established that there was no wrongdoing by our government. Why does it go on? Well, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (who is likely to be the next Speaker of the House) inadvertently told the truth -- that it is nothing more than a GOP effort to smear the good name of Hillary Clinton. Evidently he forgot the first rule of Republicanism -- never admit any of the lies being told.
Here is how McCarthy's slip of the tongue is reported by Politico:
After months of being dogged by the controversy surrounding her private email account, the 2016 Democratic contender and her supporters are taking the offensive against her congressional nemesis: the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Story Continued Below
They’re seizing on comments from Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in which he boasted on national television that the panel’s work has hurt Hillary Clinton in the polls — a statement her supporters say vindicates their view that the panel is a politically motivated effort to damage her campaign.
Already, Republicans are distancing themselves from McCarthy’s remarks, even as he’s leading the race to be the next speaker of the House, and defending the panel they formed to investigate the 2012 attack on the Libya consulate. Democrats, on the other hand, have demanded that the panel be dissolved, with some Clinton allies even calling for McCarthy to abandon his bid to become speaker. . . .
On Tuesday, McCarthy bragged to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”
The comments undermined House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) efforts to keep his panel’s work focused on the Benghazi attacks and stay above the political fray.
But on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for the disbandment of the panel, while David Brock’s Correct the Record group pounded McCarthy, demanding he withdraw his bid for speaker.
“According to the odds-on-favorite, future speaker of the House, the Benghazi special committee was put together to hurt Hillary Clinton politically,” Reid said. “This is evidence of what Democrats have said all along. … Senate Democratic Leadership sent a letter to Speaker Boehner asking that the Benghazi Select Committee be disbanded. It’s the right thing to do.”. . .
At the crux of the debate is whether Republicans created the committee specifically to hurt Clinton or to seriously investigate the deaths of four Americans at the Benghazi diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012.
Democrats, including Benghazi ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), call the entire committee a waste of taxpayer funds and "the longest and least productive investigation in congressional history." They note that several other committees have already probed the attacks and turned up nothing, and accuse the right of increasingly focusing on Clinton herself. . . .
“[B]y admitting — in fact sir by bragging — that the [committee] is little more than a partisan cudgel intended to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, you have pulled back the curtain on your own party’s abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer funds to advance a nakedly political goal,” Brock, one of Clinton’s most vocal backers, wrote to McCarthy, asking him to withdraw from the speaker's race. “It’s abundantly clear that you intend to run your office like an annex of the [RNC]. … Frankly, that is evidence enough that you are unfit to lead.”
There's no indication that McCarthy's comments would hurt his leadership campaign. Indeed, Cummings said Thursday he is "not naïve in thinking Republicans will cease their political attacks on Secretary Clinton” and stop their probe altogether.
But that doesn't mean they won't whip out the new ammo McCarthy served them. In an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton that is set to air on MSNBC this week, Clinton called the quote “deeply distressing.”
“When I hear a statement like that, which demonstrates unequivocally that this was always meant to be a partisan political exercise,” Clinton said, “I feel like it does a grave disservice and dishonors not just the memory of the four that we lost, but of everybody who has served our country.”
Friday, October 02, 2015
It's Time To Stop This E-Mail "Scandal" Nonsense
I can understand why the Republicans invented this fake scandal. They are terrified that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee, and they are trying to do everything they can to smear her name (and give their own nominee a slim chance to win the White House). That's no surprise, because lying has been an integral part of Republican campaigns in the last couple of decades.
But it's very disappointing that the mainstream media has gone along with this ridiculous fake scandal for so long. Are they trying to smear Clinton to make the Democratic race closer (and therefore give themselves more viewership), or are they just too stupid to see through the Republican lies? Either way, they should be ashamed of themselves.
And the Bernie Sanders supporters who continue to spread the Republican lies should be even more ashamed. I can't believe their candidate would approve of their gutter tactics.
Let me set the record straight one more time.
* Hillary Clinton, in using a private e-mail server, did not do anything different than past Secretaries of State have done (including Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell).
* Hillary Clinton broke no law and violated no regulation by using the private server.
* No classified information was sent over the private server.
* And Hillary Clinton is NOT being investigated by the FBI. (Instead, the FBI is trying to determine whether that server may have been hacked by outside sources -- and they have found NO evidence that it was hacked).
My plea to the media (and some Sanders supporters) is this. It is obvious by now that there is no scandal. Stop spreading the Republican LIES!
(NOTE -- The image of Hillary Clinton above is from Forbes.com.)
Will More Candidates Be Excluded From Next GOP Debate ?
There is a definite possibility that even more candidates will be excluded from the next GOP presidential debate. That's because CNBC, the sponsor of the next debate, has said that no candidate will be allowed to debate unless they have at least 3% support in the polls released between September 17th and October 21st by NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and Bloomberg. That means that while the last debate had 11 participants, the next one will have between 7 and 9 candidates.
The chart above shows the average (by RealClearPolitics) of the six polls taken in September. This shows that four candidates (Jindal, Santorum, Pataki, and Graham) would not be allowed to debate on the "big stage" -- just as before. But another four candidates (who have been allowed to debate on the "big stage") are in serious danger of being demoted to the "kiddie table". They are Rand Paul (2.3%), Chris Christie (3%), Mike Huckabee (3%), and John Kasich (3.3%).
All four are in danger of being excluded. And the latest poll released (by USA Today / Suffolk) shows that. None of the four were able to get up to 3% in it (see chart below). There's still three weeks to go, but these candidates need to start doing better.
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