Friday Open Thread
It is rare you see Republican politicians, even if they view Palin as dumb, crazy or in it for profit, actually say so. But Jon Huntsman did: “There’s too much drama and theater in politics. I mean come on. You string people along. Everybody who has anything to do with politics knew she wasn’t going to get in the race. She has a profit proposition, she’s got a business. She makes money doing what she’s doing.” And thus, Jon Huntsman’s career as a Republican is now over.
The jobs picture gets a little better. The private sector added 137,000 private sector jobs. The public sector cut 34,000 jobs in the tragically stupid push for austerity. The numbers for July and August are also revised up to reflect 99,000 unreported new private sector jobs. The economy has now created 1,074,000 jobs this year, 1,343,000 jobs in 2010, for a grand total of 2,417,000 since the end of the Great Recession. But we lost 9,079,000 in the Great Recession. So we need to create 6 million more jobs just to get back to where we were in 2007. The charts show we are headed in the right direction, but the economy needs more demand. And you don’t create demand by spending cuts and laying off people. That hurts demand. Which is why the American Jobs Act is so important. We got a big hole to climb out of, and we keep kneecapping ourselves with stupid austerity cuts and public job layoffs.
The Occupy Delaware movement seems to be growing. They’re holding their second General Assembly meeting on 10/12 at 7PM at the UAW hall on Old Baltimore Pike in Newark. They also now have a Twitter feed (@OccupyDelaware), a Facebook page (facebook.com/occupyDE) and a YouTube channel, which now has the videos of the first General Assembly meeting.
I’ve seen posts on Reddit about their meetings and it looks as if the Facebook page has about 300 people paying attention. Not bad considering they just started three days ago.
My name is Maggie Campbell, and I am a social psychology graduate student at Clark University, working under the direction of Professor Johanna Vollhardt. I would like to invite you to take part in a survey concerning your beliefs about good and evil. You will also be asked about your worldviews and your opinions on social issues. The study is conducted entirely online and is completely anonymous. This study should take about 15-20 minutes to complete. All participants will be entered into a raffle for an Amazon.com gift card. The study has been approved by the Clark University Institutional Review Board. The link to participate is http://ww3.unipark.de/uc/good_and_evil. If you have any questions, please feel free to email the research at MaCampbell@clarku.edu. Thanks again you for your time.
OK I don’t really care about a survey on good and evil, so I will just do an unabashed self-interested plug in the hopes you will also update your blogroll.
The former Delaware Libertarian blog has had a different incarnation, and is now here
http://civilbutdisobedient.blogspot.com/
like, dislike, everybody is welcome even cassandra
Welcome back Steve Newton to the blogosphere. I will add it to the blogroll shortly.
Does this mean your stint at Outside the Machine is over?
Who knew the Wilmington City PUBLIC Parks are under the control of the Renaissance Corporation? They charge a fee of a $100 a day? What is up with that? Is everything being privatized?
DD
No, I will continue to post there sometimes, and maybe cross-post as long as that experiment lasts, but if I was going to do this, I had to do it in my own space and my own way.
Just released: website: http://www.occupy-delaware.com
Washington Post: Obama and Rahm eager to support Solyndra despite internal warnings the Co. was in financial stress.
I want to wish everyone an Easy Fast tomorrow. May you all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a year of health and happiness.
Unfortunately, a +103K jobs report is actually bad news. In order to keep pace with new entrants into the job market (lessened by the number of those who leave the labor market), it is estimated that the country needs to create between 125K and 150K jobs per month. If we are above 150K jobs,then it is a good number, if we are below 150K we are still losing jobs (relative to the growth of the labor pool).
Worse yet, the two upward revisions to the August and July numbers were actually bad news, because most of the revision was in the July period. This means, that while both months had increases, the drop between July and August was worse than previously thought.
This is why the market started out strong but ended up down for the day. At first glance, the Unemployment figures looked pretty good, but on closer examination, they weren’t.
6 million jobs at $50,000 each = $300 billion.
America’s corporate profit just in one quarter(the second quarter) 2011, was $1.7 trillion. In billions, that is 1,700 billion.
Meaning every out-of-work person could have been hired at $50,000 and America’s corporations would still have had $1,400 billion left over… And the rest of the other three quarters’ profits, would be pure gravy.
This figure alone shows that corporation are not fueling the economy. Why are we catering to them? What good does giving them $1.7 trillion in profit, because of lower taxes, when they refuse to hire one person? ( Unemployment remained steady)
If they won’t hire, tax them. Raise their taxes and hire government workers to work over their books and make them as miserable as are 99% of Americans today….