BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Two years ago, Elizabeth Warren told David Corn that she'd rather stab herself in the eye
than go back to Washington. On Tuesday, the Harvard Law professor and
creator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ate her words,
knocking off Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass) in one of the most closely
watched—and at times nastiest—races of the 2012 cycle. Warren's win
isn't just a case of a Democrat winning in Massachusetts; perhaps no
candidate, President Obama included, inspired as much enthusiasm from
progressives across the country. (She raised more money than any other
Senate challenger in the country, much of it from out of state.) NBC
News called the race shortly after polls closed in Boston.
Warren did it largely by sticking with what made her a political star in the first place—a fierce defense of the social contract, which led Republican to dub her "Matriarch of Mayhem" for her support of Occupy Wall Street:
For Republicans, a what-might-have-been remains the campaign finance truce
Warren and Brown agreed to, which barred outside groups from buying TV
ad time in the Bay State (per the agreement, any independent expenditure
would have to be offset with a chartiable donation from the campaign).
Given the extent to which Republican outside groups outspent Democratic
groups in 2012, that bargain almost certainly ended up working in
Warren's favor. It also meant that the fiercest attacks on Warren's
character—hitting her, for example, for identifying as Cherokee at
Harvard—came from Brown himself, eroding his largely positive image
in Massachusetts.
For the 53-year-old Brown, this is likely not the end of his
political career. With Sen. John Kerry rumored to be a top choice to
replace retiring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, there's a
possibility a new seat could open up as early as December. In that case,
Brown would be a heavy favorite for the Republican nomination, and with
a comparably weak Democratic bench in the state, stand a decent shot at
getting his old job back. Alternatively, with Democratic Gov. Deval
Patrick term-limited after 2014, he might just opt to try his luck
closer to home. This post was originally published based on inaccurate
reports that the race had been called for Warren. The race has since
been called by CBS and NBC.
The Harvard professor became a populist hero by taking on Wall Street. Now she's aiming for the GOP incumbent's Senate seat.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/elizabeth-warren-scott-brown-massachusetts SEN ELECT ELIZABETH WARREN'S MESSAGE TO THE PCCC (PROGRESSIVE CHANGE CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE) 8NOV12
You were there from the very beginning. Actually, PCCC members were with me before there was a beginning.
We fought together for Wall Street reform. We fought to set up the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And when I was considering a run
for Senate, PCCC members showed me the enthusiasm that would be there if
I ran. We campaigned together for more than a year, and we won our
race in Massachusetts because we stuck to our values and worked our
tails off to advance bold progressive change.
As I said Sunday on a call with PCCC volunteers, this race was about
what kind of a country we want to be and what kind of a people we are.
The Republican vision is clear: "I’ve got mine and the rest of you are
on your own." I believe we’re a better people than that.
I believe that together we can create something stronger than any of
us could alone. We can help our students, we can protect our seniors, we
can put more people back to work. Together, we can build a better
future.
I offer a very sincere thanks to the many PCCC members who made 574,570 calls
for my campaign in recent days, contributed more than $1 million to our
effort, and contributed in so many other ways as well. Your support
meant so much to me.
The campaign is over, but our fight together for middle-class families goes on.
Thank you so much.
-- Elizabeth Warren
P.S. You can listen to my Sunday conversation with PCCC members by clicking here.
ANOTHER article showing the public campaigning mitt robme romney and the governing mitt robme romnney when he ran for and was elected governor of Massachusetts. He was the public campaigning (not the 47% video) mitt robme romney at the first presidential debate Wednesday night, and if the electorate bought that romney and he is elected we are in trouble. More on romney campaigning and after being elected at Mitt Romney's Role as Mormon Bishop Shows His Extremist Religious Beliefs 15SEP12
http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/mitt-romneys-role-as-mormon-bishop.html
and at Mitt Romney Won the Debate. But Why? 4OKT12
http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/mitt-romney-won-debate-but-why-4okt12.html A big fact that screams for an explanation from mitt robme romney is if he was such a great governor why is he loosing the vote in Massachusetts????? This from the New York Times.....
BOSTON — He came into office with a mandate to shake things up, an
agenda laden with civics-book reforms and a raging fiscal crisis that
threatened to torpedo both. He sparred with a hostile legislature and
suffered a humiliating setback in the midterm elections. As four years
drew to a close, his legacy was blotted by anemic job growth, sagging
political popularity and — except for a landmark health care overhaul bill — a record of accomplishment that disappointed many.
That could be the Barack Obama that Mitt Romney depicted in Wednesday’s presidential debate
as an ineffective and overly partisan leader. But it could also be Mitt
Romney, who boasted of a stellar record as Massachusetts governor,
running a state dominated by the political opposition.
Mr. Romney did score some successes beyond his health care legislation,
notably joining a Democratic legislature to cut a deficit-ridden budget
by $1.6 billion and revamping a troubled school building fund. Some
outside experts and former aides say his administration excelled at the
sorts of nuts-and-bolts efficiencies that make bureaucracies run better,
like streamlining permit approvals and modernizing jobs programs.
As a Republican governor whose legislature was 87 percent Democratic,
Mr. Romney said in Wednesday’s debate, “I figured out from Day 1 I had
to get along, and I had to work across the aisle to get anything done.”
The result, he said, was that “we drove our schools to be No. 1 in the
nation. We cut taxes 19 times.”
But on closer examination, the record as governor he alluded to looks
considerably less burnished than Mr. Romney suggested. Bipartisanship
was in short supply; Statehouse Democrats complained he variously
ignored, insulted or opposed them, with intermittent charm offensives.
He vetoed scores of legislative initiatives and excised budget line
items a remarkable 844 times, according to the nonpartisan research
group Factcheck.org. Lawmakers reciprocated by quickly overriding the vast bulk of them.
The big-ticket items that Mr. Romney proposed when he entered office in
January 2003 went largely unrealized, and some that were achieved turned
out to have a comparatively minor impact. A wholesale restructuring of
state government was dead on arrival in the legislature; an ambitious
overhaul of the state university system was stillborn; a consolidation
of transportation fiefs never took place.
Mr. Romney lobbied successfully to block changes in the state’s much-admired charter school
program, but his own education reforms went mostly unrealized. His
promise to lure new business and create jobs in a state that had been
staggered by the collapse of the 2000 dot-com boom never quite bore
fruit; unemployment dropped less than a percentage point during his four
years, but for most of that time, much of the decline was attributed to
the fact that any new jobs were being absorbed by a shrinking work
force.
Mr. Romney won lawmakers’ consent to streamline a tangled health and
human services bureaucracy, but the savings amounted to but $7 million a
year. He entered office considering an eight-state compact to battle climate change, but left office outside the consortium, saying it cost too much.
“He put on the table in his inaugural address, and then in his budget, a
series of proposed reforms like civil service reform, pension reform —
going right to the heart of the lion’s den,” Michael Widmer, president
of the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation,
said in an interview. But excepting health care, “he never followed up.
There was a handful of successes, but there was never a full-blown or
focused program in the sense of saying, ‘Here’s our vision.’ ”
Mr. Romney’s former aides vigorously disagree.
“That’s an overwrought type of critique,” said Timothy Murphy, the
health and human services secretary under Mr. Romney. “If you take a
look at the things the governor set out to do, we accomplished a lot.
The budgets were more than balanced — we generated surpluses.”
And, he said, “We did pass the most consequential piece of health care legislation in this state in 25 years.”
Mr. Romney was pushing on an open door on the 2006 initiative —
Democrats had long dreamed of providing health coverage to almost every
resident.
Jane Edmonds, who headed the state’s Labor and Workforce Development
agency, recounted a meeting at the start of Mr. Romney’s term in which
he handed out a list of campaign promises to his staff and ordered them
carried out within four years.
“My opinion is that he delivered on almost all those promises,” she
said. “We had 8 or 10 of them and we carried them all out.”
Some of Mr. Romney’s harshest critics concede his competence and his
grasp of Massachusetts’ problems and needs. Many of the initiatives he
took into office were arguably nonpartisan; he brought to the job the
same gimlet-eyed scrutiny of costs and revenues that he employed as an
investment manager to spot potentially profitable companies.
But in contrast to his statements in the debate, many say, Mr. Romney
neither mastered the art of reaching across the aisle nor achieved
unusual success as governor. To the contrary, they say, his relations
with Democrats could be acrimonious, and his ability to get big things
done could be just as shackled as is President Obama’s ability to push
his agenda through a hostile House of Representatives.
Mr. Romney could be appealing and persuasive, they say. But he also
could display a certain political tone-deafness and a failure to nurture
the constituencies he needed to make his initiatives succeed.
Mr. Romney promoted his record on Wednesday as a bipartisan leader by
noting that he met regularly with the Democratic leadership of the
Massachusetts legislature. But that apparently was not enough to keep
afloat a relationship that had been rancorous from the beginning.
In the opening months of his tenure, Mr. Romney vetoed a House plan to
create new committees and raise legislative pay, and the legislators
rejected his flagship proposal, a nearly 600-page plan to overhaul the
state bureaucracy. “They had a deteriorating relationship during the
first two years,” said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor and
expert on state politics at Tufts University.
Mr. Romney proved to have a taste for vetoes, killing legislative
initiatives in his first two years at more than twice the rate of his
more popular Republican predecessor, William F. Weld, The Boston Globe
reported in 2004.
Some seemed almost designed to rankle legislators: one rejected an
increase in disability payments to a police officer who had slipped on
an ice patch. Others reflect his ramrod-straight views on ethics and
government waste — knocking down a special pension deal for a state
legislator; rejecting a subsidy to Medicaid payments so nursing homes could provide kosher meals to Jewish residents.
“He seemed to take great delight in vetoing bills,” recalled his
director of legislative affairs, John O’Keefe. "Some of the bills we
would chuckle when we wrote the veto message.”
By 2004, the second year of his term, Mr. Romney was provoked enough to
mount an unprecedented campaign to unseat Democratic legislators,
spending $3 million in Republican Party money and hiring a nationally
known political strategist, Michael Murphy, to plan the battle.
The effort failed spectacularly. Republicans lost seats, leaving them
with their smallest legislative delegation since 1867. Democratic
lawmakers were reported to have been deeply angered by the campaign’s
tactics.
On close scrutiny, some of the bipartisan successes that Mr. Romney
claimed in the Wednesday debate turn out to by peppered with asterisks.
On education, Mr. Romney was correct in stating that Massachusetts
students were ranked first in the nation during his tenure. Students in
grades four and eight took top honors in reading and mathematics on the
2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
However, educators largely credit an overarching reform of state schools
10 years earlier under Governor Weld. The reforms doubled state
spending on schools and brought standards and accountability to
administrators and students.
“Governor Romney does not get to take the credit for achieving that No. 1
ranking,” said Mike Gilbert, field director for the nonprofit Massachusetts Association of School Committees, “but it did happen while he was in office.”
Mr. Romney’s claim that he was responsible for 19 separate tax cuts is
also technically accurate, but not the full story. In 2005, for example,
Mr. Romney’s administration wrote legislation refunding $250 million in
capital gains taxes — but the bill came only in response to a court
ruling that the taxes had been illegally withheld in 2002.
Many of the other tax cuts were first proposed by the legislature, not
Mr. Romney, and others were routine extensions of existing tax
reductions or were one-day sales tax holidays.
THE headline should have continued God saves Himself and escapes!!!! A
post on AlterNet gives us a warning of what mitt robme romney might be
like as a mormon president. The beliefs of the mormon church, it's
members adherence to them & judgements by the church are issues for
the church to deal with. BUT we must be wary of mitt romney's claims
that mormonism will not control his presidency for three reasons. First,
consider what he has said about the separation of church and state.
“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom, ” Romney
asserted in a major 2007 speech. THAT is not an endorsement of the
separation of church and state and you know who's religion he is
referencing in that speech. Second, consider his campaign for governor
of Massachusetts and his governing of Massachusetts (explained in
AlterNet http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/mitt-romneys-role-as-mormon-bishop.html ). He told the voters what he knew they wanted to hear and then
governed according mormonism. Third, the mormon church teaches it is OK
to lie if it benefits the faith and mitt romney has proven, through his
record and gov of Massachusetts and throughout his presidential campaign
that he is a great believer in and practitioner of this mormon
teaching. Think a church wouldn't OK lying, deception, misrepresentation
and manipulation? Check out Mormon Insider Reveals Insights on Romney
& Exclusive: Brigham Young’s Great-Great-Granddaughter on Mormonism
and Mitt Romney 7AUG12
The mormons aren't the only "religious" people
using lies to promote the romney campaign. The evangelical "christian"
right wing is using lies, deception and manipulation in their voter
guide being distributed in their churches and via cell phones. For more
on this most unchristian campaigning by romneys "religious" supporters
see 3 Big Lies in Religious-Right 'Voter Guide' Hitting 13 Million Cell
Phones ( http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/3-big-lies-in-religious-right-voter.html ) THERE
has to be somebody in a leadership position in the Christian Church who
can address the issue of Christians deliberately lying about political
candidates they oppose or support, and about Christians distributing
election information about candidates that are filled with deliberate
lies, deception, and misinformation to manipulate the Christian vote.
Protestant denominations that allow distribution of such material to
their congregants are tarnishing the reputation of Christianity and the
leadership of each individual church that allows such material to be
distributed in their church, to their members, is committing the same
sins as those who have produced this material. The God I grew up
believing in and that I still believe in has never asked anyone, and
will never ask anyone, to lie for HIM.
The Bible tells us not to bear false witness against one's neighbor. Ralph Reed apparently never got the memo.
When Mitt Romney mentioned the “Creator” in the debate Wednesday, he owned it. “We’re all children of the same God,” he said.
That’s about 85 percent of the country he was talking
to. That should have been President Obama’s constituency but he let
Romney have it as he let Romney have the debate.
Citing
the Declaration of Independence, Romney said: “Second, is that line
that says we are endowed by our Creator with our rights, I believe we
must maintain our commitment to religious tolerance and freedom in this
country. That statement also says that we are endowed by our creator
with the right to pursue happiness as we choose. I interpret that as,
one, making sure that those people who are less fortunate and can’t care
for themselves are cared by -- by one another.”
This is a
religious country. Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a
belief in God, even if you are not Christian.. We’ve got the Creator in
our Declaration of Independence. We’ve got “In God We Trust” on our
coins. We’ve got “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. And
we say prayers in the Senate and the House of Representatives to God.
An atheist could never get elected dog catcher, much less president. (Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California is a nontheist but doesn’t talk much about it).
Up until now, the idea of being American and believing in God were synonymous.
When the Republicans tried to take away the flag it took a long time
for the Democrats to realize they had been hijacked. For years,
Democrats were wary of wearing flag pins for fear of seeming to pander.
They finally got the message.
Now it’s God. The
Republicans have claimed God as their own this entire campaign, each
candidate trying to out-Christian the other. Even Obama, though 17
percent of registered voters think he is a Muslim, has talked about being a Christian as often as he can.
Still, none of Obama’s references have been in a debate. And there was
Obama-- grim faced, nervous, fumbling his words and wearing his
American flag pin -- letting Romney, confident and aggressive and in
control, roll right over him at every turn.
But the
God thing clinched it. If Obama wants to win the next debate, he needs
to wear God, as much as it offends him to do so, the same way he
captured the flag for this one. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/romney-captures-the-god-vote-at-first-debate/2012/10/04/e897f44c-0de3-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_print.html
WHAT more can one expect from the repiglican / tea-bagger candidates? Maybe they realize they are going to loose big time in November and so are showing their true colors in a desperate attempt to motivate like minded racist to turn out and vote. The from NPR.....
by Padmananda Rama
Elise Amendola/AP Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., speaks during a news conference in Boston last Friday.
The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation
is calling on Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., to apologize for a video that
allegedly shows members of his staff imitating "stereotypical 'war
whoops chants.'"
As WBUR's Curt Nickisch reported Tuesday for All Things Considered, Brown's supporters were filmed imitating
"tomahawk chops" at a rally in Dorchester, Mass., over the weekend. The
antics were apparently directed at Elizabeth Warren, Brown's Democratic
opponent in the Senate race; Warren has been criticized for telling previous academic employers that she has Native American heritage.
Now,
Brown and the GOP are under fire for supporters' actions that "goes far
beyond what is appropriate and proper in political discourse," Cherokee
Chief Bill John Baker said in a statement Wednesday.
"The
use of stereotypical 'war whoop chants' and 'tomahawk chops' are
offensive and downright racist," he said. "It is those types of actions
that perpetuate negative stereotypes and continue to minimize and
degrade all native peoples."
Early Tuesday, Brown said he didn't condone the action at the rally. The Boston Globe has reported that two of the people in the video were Republican staffers, "including a member of Scott Brown's U.S. Senate office." The New York Timesreports that Warren called the video "appalling." A second video originally posted by the Chatham Republicans and reposted by the Blue Mass Group on Wednesday shows Brown speaking at a rally this summer about Warren's heritage as "war whoops" can be heard.
Baker said Brown's comments Tuesday didn't go far enough, and called for a full apology:
"We
need individuals in the United States Senate who respect Native
Americans and have an understanding of tribal issues. For that reason, I
call upon Sen. Brown to apologize for the offensive actions of his
staff and their uneducated, unenlightened and racist portrayal of native
peoples."
NOT what the country needs right now, and one has to wonder just how much of this is political and not economic. For all his kow-towing to the wall street and bank-financial cabals they have no love for the Pres Obama, and I fear they will manipulate the economy to any extent to destroy his chances of re-election. The real losers are the poor, working and middle classes, we will suffer lower wages, higher prices, increased unemployment, more home foreclosures and decreased retirement accounts. Still, mitt romney has nothing on Pres Obama's record of job creation, see my earlier post Paul Begala:What's Mitt Romney Hiding in His (ECONOMIC) Record as Governor 30APR12 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/paul-begalawhats-mitt-romney-hiding-in.html From NPR.....
Horrid. Lousy. Awful.
Those
are just three of the words economists are using to describe the news
that just 69,000 net jobs were added to public and private payrolls last
month — and that the nation's jobless rate edged up to 8.2 percent from
April's 8.1 percent.
The news has raised fears that the hoped-for strengthening of the economy may not materialize.
We posted on the news and followed with details from the report and reaction to it. It's now 11:22 am. ET, here's our original post and earlier updates:
The
nation's unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent in May from 8.1 percent
in April as just 69,000 jobs were added to public and private payrolls, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said this morning.
Both numbers are disappointments.
Economists had expected BLS would say the jobless rate had stayed at 8.1
percent and that payrolls expanded by at least 150,000 jobs.
We'll
be adding to this post as we gather more data from the report and
reactions to it, so hit your "refresh" button to be sure you're seeing
our latest updates. Update at 11:20 a.m. ET: "Jobs slowdown adds to global fears," The Wall Street Journal says. Update at 11:10 a.m. ET. Have Hopes Been Dashed?
Nigel
Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, writes that "2012 is
beginning to look horribly like 2011 — initial high hopes that the
recovery was kicking into high gear, subsequently dashed." Update at 9:54 a.m. ET. Weak, Lousy, Horrid; Pick Your Word:
Reuters rounds up reactions from some economists here. Among the words they use for the news:
— "Weak."
— "Pretty horrid."
— "Lousy."
— "Awful."
— "Ugly." Update at 9:45 a.m. ET: White House Says Economy Is Still "Fighting Back" From Crisis:
"We
are still fighting back from the worst economic crisis since the Great
Depression," the president's top economic adviser, Alan Krueger, writes on the White House blog.
"There is much more work that remains to be done to repair the damage
caused by the financial crisis and deep recession that began at the end
of 2007."
And he makes the case that
"it is critical that we continue the president's economic policies that
are helping us dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the
severe recession." Update at 9:34 a.m. ET: "Stocks Drop On Weak Jobs News." Update at 9:26 a.m. ET. On The Political Impact; A "Gut-Punch For Team Obama":
"Why is this presidential race close? And why might it get closer?" asks MSNBC's First Read blog. "Look no further than today's jobs report for May, which is a gut-punch for Team Obama." Update at 9:20 a.m. ET. Romney Calls Report "Devastating News," Blames Obama's "Failed" Policies.
The
political repercussions are staring to be felt. Republican presidential
candidate Mitt Romney's campaign just sent this statement to reporters:
"Today's
weak jobs report is devastating news for American workers and American
families. This week has seen a cascade of one bad piece of economic news
after another. Slowing GDP growth, plunging consumer confidence, an
increase in unemployment claims, and now another dismal jobs report all
stand as a harsh indictment of the president's handling of the economy.
"It
is now clear to everyone that President Obama's policies have failed to
achieve their goals and that the Obama economy is crushing America's
middle class. The president's re-election slogan may be 'forward,' but
it seems like we've been moving backward. We can do so much better in
America. That's why I'm running for president."
Update at 9:11 a.m. ET. "An Awful Recovery":
Our colleague Jacob Goldstein this morning looked at "Three Years Of An Awful Recovery," over at the Planet Money blog. Update at 9:07 a.m. ET. Income, Consumer Spending Figures Also Weak:
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says
Americans' personal income rose just 0.2 percent in April from March
and that consumer spending grew by a modest 0.3 percent. The income
gain, the slowest in five months, raises concerns "about the ability of
Americans to keep spending in the future," The Associated Press writes. Update at 9:04 a.m. ET. "Marginally Attached" Workers Also On The Rise.
Another sobering detail from the report:
"In
May, 2.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force,
up from 2.2 million a year earlier. ... These individuals were not in
the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a
job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as
unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks
preceding the survey."
Update at 9:01 a.m. ET. There Are 5.4 Million "Long-Term Unemployed": According
to BLS, "the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks
and over) rose from 5.1 to 5.4 million in May. These individuals
accounted for 42.8 percent of the unemployed." Update at 8:58 a.m. ET. What's Going On? "Broad Uncertainty":
Here's how The Wall Street Journal is summing things up:
"Nearly
three years after the recession ended, the economy has failed to gain
traction amid broad uncertainty related to Europe's debt crisis, the
potential for steep U.S. tax increases and spending cuts next year, and
signs of slower growth in developing countries."
Update at 8:55 a.m. ET. Stock Futures "Plummeting."
From The Associated Press:
"U.S.
stock futures are plummeting after the release of a report on the job
market that was far weaker than economists expected. Dow Jones
industrial average futures, which were down 100 points before the report
came out at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday, dropped an additional 100 points
within minutes."
Update at 8:49 a.m. ET. A Vicious Cycle?
Economists
sometimes talk about "virtuous" and "vicious" cycles. Basically, once
the economy gets on a roll it can continue to expand as confidence,
incomes and jobs all rise and build on each other. Conversely, when
things aren't going well that can create a downward spiral. Bloomberg News writes that:
"Bigger
job and wage gains are needed to jumpstart a self- sustaining increase
in hiring and consumer spending that will boost the expansion. At the
same time, a looming recession in the euro area and slower growth in
China and Brazil may prompt American companies to reduce headcount until
they see more evidence the U.S. economy isn't faltering."
Update at 8:47 a.m. ET. A "Sputtering" Economy?
Here's how The Associated Press sums up the news: "The dismal jobs figures could fan fears that the economy is sputtering." Update at 8:46 a.m. ET. Sharp Slowing From First Quarter:
According
to BLS, in the first quarter the average monthly gain in payrolls was
226,000. But payrolls grew by just 77,000 in April and 69,000 in May. Update at 8:44 a.m. ET. Number Of "Discouraged Workers" Remains High:
In
another sign of the labor market's weakness, BLS says "there were
830,000 discouraged workers in May, about the same as a year earlier." Update at 8:39 a.m. ET. Sharp Downward Revision Of April's Gain:
BLS initially thought payrolls grew by a net 115,000 jobs in April, but now says just 77,000 positions were added that month. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/06/01/154131119/unemployment-rate-8-2-percent-in-may-as-just-69-000-jobs-added?sc=nl&cc=brk-20120601-0838
Stock prices fell on Wall Street today as investors digested the much-weaker-than-expected report on job growth in May.
The damage? The Dow plunged 274 points or 2.2 percent. The Nasdaq fell 80 points or 2.82 percent. CNN Money reports the Dow had the worst day of 2012, erasing "all its gains for the year." Update at 4:23 p.m. ET. 'A Little Over Done'?
Our Newscast unit just spoke to James W. Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, who said the market may have overdone it a bit, today.
He
said investors reacted to weak job reports but if you look at the
average job gains throughout the whole year, "we're still doing
decently."
"The economy is in better shape than these numbers," said Paulsen.
If
you look at retail sales, consumer spending, housing prices and
consumer confidence, you get a picture that is not nearly as weak as the
latest job numbers — and the revisions — will have you think.
Four or five times this year, Paulsen said, we've seen the market plunge only to rally later.
Paulsen set up a positive vision, where the market pulls back for a little bit setting itself up for a late-summer rally. Update at 4:50 p.m. ET. Another Opinion:
Beth Ann Bovino, deputy chief economist at S&P, has a less cheery view of the economy.
Essentially
she said the markets were already teetering, wondering whether the
uncertainty with Greece and the Spanish Banks would affect the U.S. What
the job numbers may tell us, Bovino told our Newscast unit, is that
maybe those problems have already landed on our shores.
"The
worry here now — and unfortunately it's becoming increasingly real — is
that the U.S. economy has started to slow," she said.
And,
yes economist expected slower job growth after a warm January
accelerated hiring, but the slow-down has been more severe than
predicted.
The question now is whether this slow-down is just a summer lull or whether it marks the beginning of a more serious downturn. Our earlier updates continue: Update at 4:10 p.m. ET: The Dow has closed 274 points down (2.2 percent). Update at 3:30 p.m. ET: A half hour, before close, the Dow is down 263 points or 2.1 percent. Update at 3 p.m. ET: With an hour to go before trading ends in New York City, the Dow is down about 275 points (2.2 percent). Update at 2:30 p.m. ET: The Dow's down about 250 points (2 percent). Update at 2 p.m. ET: Down further: The Dow's off about 265 points (2.2 percent). Update at 1:30 p.m. ET: The Dow's down about 235 points (1.9 percent). Update at 1 p.m. ET: The Dow's down about 220 points (1.8 percent). Update at Noon ET: The Dow's down about 210 points (1.7 percent). Update at 11:30 a.m. ET: The Dow's still down about 220 points (1.8 percent). Update at 11:25 a.m. ET. Related Wall Street Journal headline: "Dow's Gains For 2012 Disappear." Update at 11 a.m. ET: The Dow's down about 220 points (1.8 percent). Update at 10:30 a.m. ET: Over the past 30 minutes the Dow stayed down at least 150 points. Now, it's off by just over 200 (or, about 1.7 percent). Update at 10 a.m. ET: The Dow's down about 200 points (1.6 percent). http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/06/01/154134531/stocks-drop-on-weak-jobs-news?sc=nl&cc=brk-20120601-1617
mitt romney will make much of the report from the Dept of Labor today, but he isn't going to discuss his economic record in Massachusetts because it was anything but a miracle. This from The Daily Beast.....
What’s Romney hiding in his record?
Jae C. Hong / AP Photos
In
his speech on April 24 kicking off his general-election campaign,
Romney began, sensibly enough, by promising to tell us a little bit
about himself. He bragged about his picture-perfect family. He spoke
with pride of how his father had lifted himself from struggling salesman
to CEO and governor. Then he recounted his time as a businessman,
helping build companies like Staples and Bright Horizons. Finally, he
launched into how Barack Obama couldn’t organize a one-car parade and
how he (Romney) would make a much better president.
Wait
a minute, Mitt. You missed something. Family: check. Wealth: got it.
Gonna be a keen president: right. Wasn’t there something else on the
résumé? Oh, yeah: Mitt Romney served as governor of Massachusetts.
It’s
weird. Most governors who seek the presidency can’t shut up about how
great their states are. Right now, there’s an even-money chance that
Bill Clinton is telling someone that Hope, Ark., produces the biggest,
juiciest watermelons in the world. But not Mitt. In the most important
speech of his presidential campaign thus far, he ignored the only time
he has ever held public office.
That
is a mistake. Romney should be defining his record in Massachusetts
before his opponents can define it for him. Two days before Romney’s
kickoff speech, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Obama
strategist David Axelrod began carpet-bombing the Massachusetts record,
noting that Romney is touting his business acumen, but also that he did
the same when he ran for governor. “He said, ‘I’m going to get the
economy moving again. I’m a businessman. I know how to create jobs.’
[The state] went from 37th in the nation in job creation to 47th in the
nation in job creation. So we’ve tested the Romney acumen when it comes
to creating jobs, and he’s been found wanting.”
Perhaps
that’s why Romney doesn’t dwell on his record as governor. His state
really was 47th in job creation, behind only Ohio and Michigan, both of
which were being ravaged in the manufacturing meltdown, and Louisiana,
which had been devastated by Katrina. Romney even trailed Mississippi
and Alabama in job growth, breaking the iron law that Mississippi and
Alabama have to be last in pretty much everything except cockfights and
kissin’ cousins. While the country as a whole enjoyed 5 percent growth,
Romney’s Massachusetts grew at 0.9 percent.
It
wasn’t supposed to be that way. Romney sold himself to the voters as a
turnaround artist—a CEO who could lure jobs to the Bay State. He pledged
to use his business skills to “encourage businesses to come grow and
thrive in the most robust portion of the economy, Massachusetts.” Not so
much.
Romney’s
economic failure in Massachusetts is especially problematic because the
central premise of his presidential campaign is the same as it was when
he ran for governor: that he can apply his business skills to our
economic problems. Massachusetts was the guinea pig for Romney
economics. The results weren’t pretty. In addition to almost zero job
growth, the state saw a modest decline in real median income, meaning
that the folks who had jobs were bringing home less.
Romney
did close the $3 billion budget gap he’d inherited (although he then
left a projected shortfall of up to $1 billion). The methods he used are
instructive. He slashed higher education, cut revenue to local
governments, and raised fees on everything from college students to
mortgages, from buying a boat to opening a bar.
Romney’s
cuts to education and job training were especially severe. Fees for
university students shot up 63 percent as Romney hammered college
funding. Robert Karam, former chair of the UMass Board of Trustees, was a
Romney backer. But no more. “I think higher education really stood
still” under Romney, he has said. Romney even annoyed the business
community—his core constituency—by cutting job training, workforce
development, and trade assistance.
The
Romney recipe of cutting education and job training, forcing higher
fees on the middle class, and protecting the rich from tax hikes didn’t
work in Massachusetts. But his approach to health care did.
Paradoxically, the best thing Romney did as governor—and it was a great
thing—is the one thing he dares not talk about as a presidential
candidate. Too bad, because a solid 62 percent of the folks who actually
live under Romneycare—and its dreaded individual mandate—say they like
it.
The
Romney record in Massachusetts suggests that Romney’s campaign has it
backward: instead of talking up jobs and running away from health care,
Mitt ought to be bragging about Romneycare and avoiding scrutiny of the
one time his economic theories were actually put to the test.
The unemployment rate dropped a notch to 8.1 percent in April, the
Labor Department reported on Friday, but the pace of job growth has
fallen off, amid other signs that the economic recovery may be losing
momentum.
The economy added 115,000 payroll jobs last month, a meager showing
compared with earlier this year when the jobs tally was rising at twice
that rate and sowing optimism about the nation’s economic prospects.
Some
of the most quoted figures from the jobs report suggested good news.
The unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent in April from 8.2 percent
the month before, and the number of unemployed people declined to 12.5
million from 12.7 million.
But at least part of the reason for the
decline in the ranks of unemployed is that many people decided to stop
looking for a job. People who have stopped looking for work are no
longer counted as unemployed.
The labor force, defined as the number of people working or seeking work, declined by 342,000 in April, Labor Department said.
“The
decline in the unemployment rate is principally because a lot of people
gave up looking for a job in April,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S.
economist for Capital Economics. “The economy has created so few jobs
that people are disillusioned with trying to find a job and they’ve just
given up.”
The number of long-term unemployed, those who’ve been
out of work for 27 weeks or more, was little changed at 5.1 million in
April. That group makes up more than 40 percent of the jobless rolls.
The
unemployment numbers, which may be the most closely watched economics
barometer to come to bear in the presidential election, were seized upon by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who called Friday’s report “terrible and very disappointing.”
Romney suggested that job growth in a recovery should be closer to 500,000 jobs a month.
“This
is way, way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery,”
Romney said on Fox News. “It’s a terrible and very disappointing report
this morning.... We seem to be slowing down, not speeding up. This is
not progress.”
Yet an economy that is consistently adding 500,000
jobs a month has rarely been achieved in U.S. history, according to
Labor Department figures. Over the last 20 years, there have been only
two months - once in 1997 and 2010 - when the economy added nonfarm
payroll jobs at that rate.
Over the last 20 years, the average annual monthly growth in those payroll jobs has been about 200,000.
“Today’s
employment report provides further evidence that the economy is
continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great
Depression, but much more remains to be done to repair the damage caused
by the financial crisis and the deep recession,” Alan B. Krueger,
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.
Stock prices dropped with the news of the jobs report. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 56.91 points, or 0.43 percent.
While
the month of April falls well short of the trend that economists would
like to see, Krueger and other analysts suggested that taking a broader
view, the recovery seems healthy.
Over the last four months, the number of nonfarm payroll jobs has climbed 200,000 a month on average.
Economists
attributed at least part of the recent fall-off in April to the good
weather in January and February: Employers hired people then, boosting
the numbers for January and February but depleting them in March and
April, which have show relatively weak reports.
The 200,000
average monthly job gains “is actually not a bad jobs number,” Ashworth
said. “There’s no reason to think the economy just fell of the rails.”
In
April, employment rose in professional and business services, retail
trade, and health care. Transportation and warehousing lost jobs over
the month.
Staff Writers Philip Rucker, Amy Gardner and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/economy-adds-115000-jobs-in-april-unemployment-rate-drops-to-81-percent/2012/05/04/gIQAjdq70T_story.html?hpid=z1
BRAVO David Axelrod for throwing it right back in pawlenty's face...the people have the right to know, and tim pawlenty shouldn't be throwing stones from inside his glass house....from HuffPost....
WASHINGTON -- The assumption that President Barack Obama's reelection campaign will be felled by poor economic news is partially premised on the idea that the Republican alternative can offer something both fundamentally different and alluring. And so, while the president's reelection team is a bit away from running on all cylinders, top officials have been scheming to frame the top-tier Republican candidates as compromised on matters like jobs and recovery.
In an interview with The Huffington Post on Wednesday, Obama's adviser David Axelrod offered a fairly sharp criticism of Tim Pawlenty (for this early stage, at least). Axelrod was decidedly un-persuaded by the former Minnesota governor's idea that, if you could find a private company to handle a function via Google, the government shouldn't be involved.
"What he should Google is 'job growth for the last decade,'" said Axelrod, who, despite not officially being involved in the reelection at this point was huddling with top Obama advisers in D.C. on Wednesday. "What he should Google is 'what happened to income for the last decade,' when in many ways the policies that he prescribed were the governing theory. And then he should also Google 'budget deficits in the state of Minnesota.' And what he'll find is, when he left, he left a projected deficit of $6.2 billion, which doesn’t exactly qualify him as an expert on fiscal responsibility."
Pawlenty, whose campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has taken some jabbing for the "Google test." One could, after all, find private militias via Google. Does that mean he doesn't think the government shouldn't fund an army? And what of public universities, from which Pawlenty earned two degrees?
But Axelrod's comments are, perhaps, more significant for what they say about the reelection campaign than what they say about Pawlenty's gimmicky suggestion. Top aides to the president are fond of arguing that elections represent a choice, not a referendum. Certainly, with unemployment expected to remain above 8 percent by November 2012 -- the first time it's been that high during an incumbent's run for a second term -- the idea is to turn the spotlight on to the opposition.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney has already undergone this treatment. He has been criticized for both his tenure in Massachusetts, in which the state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation, and his time at Bain Capital, whose history of shipping jobs overseas served as a sticking point in his 1994 Senate loss against Ted Kennedy.
Pawlenty registers lower in the national polls than Romney. But his candidacy is growing serious enough that Obama's aides are starting to apply the same standards of scrutiny and push back.
