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More comments regarding Morsi, Egypt and Obama's support of The Muslim Brotherhood which has now crashed in flames for the time being. (See three articles in 2 below.)
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Good job news. (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
Being ever cautious, I continue watching the impact of slowing economic growth in Europe and its possible impact on our own economy and corporate earnings.
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More Mullah mush? Wake up America! "http://www.youtube.com/embed/
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For more and more does the American Dream stand to become a nightmare? (See 4 below.)
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Snowden gets offer of asylum while Obama plays golf and Kerry sails.
They are entitled to recreational activity and particularly so since they would screw things up if they worked.(See 5 below.)
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Weekend humor. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)
The Lord of U.S. Labor Policy
Lafe Solomon, acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, defies Congress and the courts on behalf of Big Labor.
By Kim Strassel
For a true expression of the imperious and extralegal tendencies of the Obama administration, there is little that compares with the Wisdom of Solomon. Lafe Solomon, that is, the acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.
Roger Boyes
Daniel Pipes: Morsi's departure leaves legacy of danger
Daniel Pipes
The End of Obama's Brotherhood Crush
Jonathan S. Tobin
The unemployment rate remained 7.6 percent. That was because more people started looking for work in June — a healthy sign. Once people without jobs start looking for one, they're counted as unemployed.
An improving job market makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will slow its bond purchases before year's end. The bond purchases have kept long-term interest rates low.
Job growth "continues to look more than strong enough to keep unemployment trending down ... and probably more than strong enough to lead to Fed tapering starting in September," said Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
Pay also rose sharply last month, the Labor Department's monthly jobs report Friday showed. Pay has now outpaced inflation over the past year.
Stocks opened higher an hour after the jobs report was released at 8:30 a.m. EDT. And the yield on the 10-year Treasury note jumped from 2.56 percent to 2.69 percent, its highest level since August 2011. That's a sign that investors think the economy is improving.
The economy has added an average 202,000 jobs a month for the past six months, up from 180,000 in the previous six. Hiring and consumer confidence have risen despite higher taxes and federal spending cuts that kicked in this year.
Friday's report showed the economy added 70,000 more jobs in April and May than the government had previously estimated — 50,000 in April and 20,000 in May. Average hourly pay rose 10 cents to $24.01, 2.2 percent higher than a year ago.
The hotels, restaurants and entertainment industry added 75,000 jobs last month. Retailers added 37,000.
The health care industry added 20,000, construction 13,000. Temporary jobs rose 10,000. But manufacturing shed 6,000.
Many of the new jobs were part time. The number of Americans who said they were working part time but would prefer full-time work jumped 322,000 to 8.2 million — the most in eight months.
Despite the solid pace of hiring, the economy is growing only sluggishly. It expanded at a 1.8 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter. Most analysts expect growth at roughly the same subpar rate in the April-June quarter.
Weak economies overseas cut demand for U.S. exports in May. That led some economists to predict that growth in the second quarter might be slower than forecast.
Still, many areas of the economy are improving. The Fed's low-rate policies have led more Americans to buy homes and cars. They also helped boost stock and home prices in the first half of the year, increasing wealth and lifting consumers' confidence to its highest level in 5½ years.
Auto sales in the January-June period topped 7.8 million, their best first half since 2007, according to Autodata Corp. and Ward's AutoInfoBank. Sales of previously occupied homes exceeded 5 million in May, the first time that's happened since November 2009. New-home sales rose at their fastest pace in five years.
Though fewer exports have hurt manufacturing, factories fielded more orders in May. And a measure of business investment rose for a third straight month.
The Fed has said that if economic growth accelerates and unemployment falls, it will likely slow its bond purchases before year's end and end them next year. A pullback in the Fed's bond buying would likely send borrowing rates up.
But Chairman Ben Bernanke has said that if the economy weakens, the Fed could delay its pullback or even step up its bond purchases again.
For a true expression of the imperious and extralegal tendencies of the Obama administration, there is little that compares with the Wisdom of Solomon. Lafe Solomon, that is, the acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.
Mr. Solomon's wisdom was on revealing display this week, in the form of a newly disclosed letter that the Obama appointee sent to Cablevision in May. The letter was tucked into Cablevison's petition asking the Supreme Court this week to grant an emergency stay of NLRB proceedings against it. The Supremes unfortunately denied that request, though the exercise may prove valuable for shining new light on the labor board's conceit.
A half-year has passed since the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Noel Canningthat President Obama's appointments to the NLRB were unconstitutional, and thus that the board lacks a legal quorum. In May, the Third Circuit affirmed this ruling. Yet the NLRB—determined to keep churning out a union agenda—has openly defied both appeals courts by continuing to issue rulings and complaints.
Regional directors in April filed two such unfair-labor-practice complaints against Cablevision. The company requested that Mr. Solomon halt the proceedings, given the NLRB's invalid status. It is Mr. Solomon's refusal, dated May 28, that provides the fullest expression of the NLRB's insolence.
The acting general counsel begins his letter by explaining that the legitimacy of the board is really neither here nor there. Why? Because Mr. Solomon was himself "appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate"—and therefore, apparently, is now sole and unchecked arbiter of all national labor policy.
This is astonishing on many levels, the least of which is that it is untrue. Mr. Solomon is the acting general counsel precisely because the Senate has refused to confirm him since he was first nominated in June 2011. Nor will it, ever, given his Boeing BA +0.94%escapades.
Then there is the National Labor Relations Act, which created the NLRB. The law clearly says that the general counsel acts "on behalf of the Board"—a board that is today void, illegitimate, null, illegal. Mr. Solomon admits the "behalf" problem in his letter, though he says he's certain Congress nonetheless meant for him to be "independent" of the board. He says.
The acting general counsel naturally rushes to explain that—his omnipotence aside—the NLRB still has every right to ignore the courts. His argument runs thus: Because a decade ago the 11th Circuit issued an opinion that upholds recess appointments (though it didn't deal with Mr. Obama's breathtaking reading of that power), there exists a "split" in the circuit courts. The NLRB is therefore justified in ignoring any courts with which it disagrees until the Supreme Court has "resolved" the question.
What Mr. Solomon fails to note is the extremes the NLRB has gone to in order to suggest court confusion. The agency has deviated from past procedures, and it refused to ask either the D.C. Circuit or the Third Circuit to "stay" their opinions. Why? Because to do so—and to be rebuffed—would put the NLRB under enormous pressure to acknowledge that those courts have authority over its actions.
The board has likewise ignored the fact that the D.C. Circuit hears more NLRB decisions than any other, and is also the pre-eminent court for reviewing federal agency decisions. This ought to entitle that court, and its Noel Canning ruling, respectful deference from the labor board.
The most revealing part of Mr. Solomon's letter is the section cynically outlining why the NLRB continues to operate at a feverish pace. Mr. Solomon notes that this isn't the first time the board has operated without a quorum.
The NLRB issued 550 decisions with just two board members before the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in New Process Steel that the NLRB must have a three-person board quorum to operate. Mr. Solomon brags that of these 550, only about 100 were "impacted" by the Supreme Court's ruling—which, he writes, proves that the NLRB is justified in continuing to operate even at times when its "authority" has been challenged.
Mr. Solomon is in fact celebrating that of the 550 outfits harassed by an illegal, two-member board, only about 100 later decided they had the money, time and wherewithal to spend years relitigating in front of the labor goon squad. The NLRB is counting on the same outcome in Cablevision and other recent actions.
The board will push through as many rulings and complaints against companies as it can before the Supreme Court rules on its legitimacy. And it will trust that the firms it has attacked and drained will be too weary to then try for reversals. This is why the Obama administration waited so long to petition the Supreme Court to reverse Noel Canning. The longer this process takes, the more damage the NLRB can inflict on behalf of its union taskmasters.
Right now, the NLRB is the only weapon the administration can wield on behalf of Big Labor. The need to placate that most powerful special interest was behind Mr. Obama's decision to install his illegal recess appointments in the first place, and it explains the NLRB's continuing defiance of courts and Congress. Mr. Solomon's wisdom is the Obama philosophy of raw power, in all its twisted glory.
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2)The Spring unleashed disorder, not democracy
The Arab Spring has failed. Angry crowds ransacked the offices of Egypt’s democratically elected President, Mohamed Morsi, this week just as they once forced their way into the marble palaces of the region’s dictators. The mob set the place on fire and if there had been a statue of the president they would surely have toppled it.
What is happening in Egypt is not just part of a global revolt against austerity or a protest against the yawning gulf between rich and poor. It marks the death of an idea: that greater political choice and free speech could swiftly transform the Middle East. That turns out to have been a Western mirage in the desert. None of the European points of reference, from the uprisings of 1848 to the toppling of communism in 1989, really applied to the modern Arab world, not to the teeming urban poor of Cairo, nor the frustrated medical students of Bahrain nor the warlords of Libya.
We wanted a different outcome. We wa nted dictatorship to be replaced by democracy. Instead it was replaced by the escalating collapse of nation states. In the squares and streets of Cairo we can watch this tumbling-down in real time. There are plenty of men with weapons in the mob; guns have been flooding in from the Libyan surplus stockpiles and amateur armourers make improvised ones, called fards, that fire birdshot. These were fired at President Morsi’s HQ this week. Because the police are all but invisible, because there has been a twelvefold increase in armed robberies since the 2011 “Spring”, because the murder rate has increased 300 per cent, the small arms market is booming.
In all other respects, though, the economy is shrivelling. One quarter of the population are struggling to live below the very low Egyptian poverty line. Unemployment has soared. To keep fuel and food subsidies — and thus head off further unrest — President Morsi has dipped into foreign rese rves, which have plunged from $36 billion before the Spring to $13 billion last March....
What is happening in Egypt is not just part of a global revolt against austerity or a protest against the yawning gulf between rich and poor. It marks the death of an idea: that greater political choice and free speech could swiftly transform the Middle East. That turns out to have been a Western mirage in the desert. None of the European points of reference, from the uprisings of 1848 to the toppling of communism in 1989, really applied to the modern Arab world, not to the teeming urban poor of Cairo, nor the frustrated medical students of Bahrain nor the warlords of Libya.
We wanted a different outcome. We wa nted dictatorship to be replaced by democracy. Instead it was replaced by the escalating collapse of nation states. In the squares and streets of Cairo we can watch this tumbling-down in real time. There are plenty of men with weapons in the mob; guns have been flooding in from the Libyan surplus stockpiles and amateur armourers make improvised ones, called fards, that fire birdshot. These were fired at President Morsi’s HQ this week. Because the police are all but invisible, because there has been a twelvefold increase in armed robberies since the 2011 “Spring”, because the murder rate has increased 300 per cent, the small arms market is booming.
In all other respects, though, the economy is shrivelling. One quarter of the population are struggling to live below the very low Egyptian poverty line. Unemployment has soared. To keep fuel and food subsidies — and thus head off further unrest — President Morsi has dipped into foreign rese rves, which have plunged from $36 billion before the Spring to $13 billion last March....
Daniel Pipes
...The historical record shows that the thrall of radical utopianism endures until calamity sets in. On paper, fascism and communism sound appealing; only the realities of Hitler and Stalin discredited and marginalized these movements.
In the case of Islamism, this same process has already begun; indeed, the revulsion started with much less destruction having been wrought than in the prior two cases (Islamism not yet having killed tens of millions) and with greater speed (needing years, not decades). Recent weeks have seen three rejections of Islamist rule, what with the Gezi Park-inspired demonstrations across Turkey, a resounding victory by the least-hardline Islamist in the Iranian elections on June 14, and now the unprecedentedly massive refutation of the Muslim Brotherhood in public squares along the Nile River.
But I fear that the quick military removal of the Muslim Brotherhood government will exonerate Islamists.
Egypt is a mess. Relations between pro- and anti-Muslim Brotherhood elements have already turned violent and threaten to degenerate. Copts and Shi’ites get murdered just because of their identities. The Sinai Peninsula is anarchic. The incompetent and greedy military leadership, which viciously ruled Egypt from behind the scenes between 1952 and 2012, is back in charge.
But the worst problems are economic. Remittances from foreign workers have declined since the upheaval in neighbouring Libya. Sabotage against the pipeline sending natural gas to Israel and Jordan ended that source of income. Tourism has obviously collapsed. Inefficiencies mean that this hydrocarbon-producing country lacks the fuel to run tractors at full capacity. Socialist-era factories churn out sub-par goods.
Egypt imports an estimated 70 percent of its food and is fast running out of hard currency to pay for wheat, edible oils, and other staples. Hunger looms. Unless foreigners subsidize Egyp t with tens of billions of dollars of aid a year into the indefinite future, a highly unlikely scenario, that hunger looks unavoidable. Already, poor families have cut back on their food intake....
In the case of Islamism, this same process has already begun; indeed, the revulsion started with much less destruction having been wrought than in the prior two cases (Islamism not yet having killed tens of millions) and with greater speed (needing years, not decades). Recent weeks have seen three rejections of Islamist rule, what with the Gezi Park-inspired demonstrations across Turkey, a resounding victory by the least-hardline Islamist in the Iranian elections on June 14, and now the unprecedentedly massive refutation of the Muslim Brotherhood in public squares along the Nile River.
But I fear that the quick military removal of the Muslim Brotherhood government will exonerate Islamists.
Egypt is a mess. Relations between pro- and anti-Muslim Brotherhood elements have already turned violent and threaten to degenerate. Copts and Shi’ites get murdered just because of their identities. The Sinai Peninsula is anarchic. The incompetent and greedy military leadership, which viciously ruled Egypt from behind the scenes between 1952 and 2012, is back in charge.
But the worst problems are economic. Remittances from foreign workers have declined since the upheaval in neighbouring Libya. Sabotage against the pipeline sending natural gas to Israel and Jordan ended that source of income. Tourism has obviously collapsed. Inefficiencies mean that this hydrocarbon-producing country lacks the fuel to run tractors at full capacity. Socialist-era factories churn out sub-par goods.
Egypt imports an estimated 70 percent of its food and is fast running out of hard currency to pay for wheat, edible oils, and other staples. Hunger looms. Unless foreigners subsidize Egyp t with tens of billions of dollars of aid a year into the indefinite future, a highly unlikely scenario, that hunger looks unavoidable. Already, poor families have cut back on their food intake....
Click here for the complete article, or copy and paste this link into your web browser:
http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/news/?p=9537
http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/news/?p=9537
Jonathan S. Tobin
There is bad news, good news and better news coming out of Egypt today. First let’s discuss the good news.
The end of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt is a blow to the cause of radical Islam. The rise of the Brotherhood and the now deposed President Mohamed Morsi was a disaster for Egypt as well as for the West. Had Morsi and his party been left in place to continue their drive to impose their Islamist vision on the world’s most populous Arab country it might have been impossible to depose them, thus locking Egypt into the same nightmare scenario of theocratic tyranny that we have seen unfold in Iran in the last generation.
The even better news is that the Egyptian Army didn’t listen to the Obama administration when it asked them not to launch what is, for all intents and purposes, a military coup that toppled a democratically elected government. The embrace of Morsi and the Brotherhood by President Obama and his foreign policy over the last year has further poisoned Egyptian public opinion against the United States as well as strengthened the confidence of Islamists that America will not oppose their efforts to transform the region. After having been intimidated by U.S. pressure aimed at ensuring that the military would not prevent Morsi’s election, the military ran the risk that this time Obama meant what he said about using the billions in aid Egypt gets from the United States to prevent them from stopping the Brotherhood’s push for power. The willingness of the Egyptian army to step in and stop the confrontation in the streets not only avoided clashes that might have produced unimaginable casualties but also kept open the possibility that a new government could emerge in Cairo without having to fight a civil war in order to survive.
However, the bad news is twofold. First, the series of events leading up to the ouster illustrates the utter bankruptcy of American f oreign policy under Barack Obama. The second is that there should be no blind confidence that what will follow will make Egypt more stable or prosperous, let alone free. The United States should oppose the rise of Islamists, but none of the possible outcomes of the conflict playing out between them and the military and secular Egyptians is likely to produce a liberal democracy or a nation that is likely to be a force for peace in the region....
The end of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt is a blow to the cause of radical Islam. The rise of the Brotherhood and the now deposed President Mohamed Morsi was a disaster for Egypt as well as for the West. Had Morsi and his party been left in place to continue their drive to impose their Islamist vision on the world’s most populous Arab country it might have been impossible to depose them, thus locking Egypt into the same nightmare scenario of theocratic tyranny that we have seen unfold in Iran in the last generation.
The even better news is that the Egyptian Army didn’t listen to the Obama administration when it asked them not to launch what is, for all intents and purposes, a military coup that toppled a democratically elected government. The embrace of Morsi and the Brotherhood by President Obama and his foreign policy over the last year has further poisoned Egyptian public opinion against the United States as well as strengthened the confidence of Islamists that America will not oppose their efforts to transform the region. After having been intimidated by U.S. pressure aimed at ensuring that the military would not prevent Morsi’s election, the military ran the risk that this time Obama meant what he said about using the billions in aid Egypt gets from the United States to prevent them from stopping the Brotherhood’s push for power. The willingness of the Egyptian army to step in and stop the confrontation in the streets not only avoided clashes that might have produced unimaginable casualties but also kept open the possibility that a new government could emerge in Cairo without having to fight a civil war in order to survive.
However, the bad news is twofold. First, the series of events leading up to the ouster illustrates the utter bankruptcy of American f oreign policy under Barack Obama. The second is that there should be no blind confidence that what will follow will make Egypt more stable or prosperous, let alone free. The United States should oppose the rise of Islamists, but none of the possible outcomes of the conflict playing out between them and the military and secular Egyptians is likely to produce a liberal democracy or a nation that is likely to be a force for peace in the region....
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3)US Adds 195,000 Jobs in June as Unemployment Rate Stays 7.6 Percent
U.S. employers added a robust 195,000 jobs in June and many more in April and May than previously thought. The job growth raises hopes for a stronger economy in the second half of 2013.
The unemployment rate remained 7.6 percent. That was because more people started looking for work in June — a healthy sign. Once people without jobs start looking for one, they're counted as unemployed.
An improving job market makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will slow its bond purchases before year's end. The bond purchases have kept long-term interest rates low.
Job growth "continues to look more than strong enough to keep unemployment trending down ... and probably more than strong enough to lead to Fed tapering starting in September," said Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
Pay also rose sharply last month, the Labor Department's monthly jobs report Friday showed. Pay has now outpaced inflation over the past year.
Stocks opened higher an hour after the jobs report was released at 8:30 a.m. EDT. And the yield on the 10-year Treasury note jumped from 2.56 percent to 2.69 percent, its highest level since August 2011. That's a sign that investors think the economy is improving.
The economy has added an average 202,000 jobs a month for the past six months, up from 180,000 in the previous six. Hiring and consumer confidence have risen despite higher taxes and federal spending cuts that kicked in this year.
Friday's report showed the economy added 70,000 more jobs in April and May than the government had previously estimated — 50,000 in April and 20,000 in May. Average hourly pay rose 10 cents to $24.01, 2.2 percent higher than a year ago.
The hotels, restaurants and entertainment industry added 75,000 jobs last month. Retailers added 37,000.
The health care industry added 20,000, construction 13,000. Temporary jobs rose 10,000. But manufacturing shed 6,000.
Many of the new jobs were part time. The number of Americans who said they were working part time but would prefer full-time work jumped 322,000 to 8.2 million — the most in eight months.
Despite the solid pace of hiring, the economy is growing only sluggishly. It expanded at a 1.8 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter. Most analysts expect growth at roughly the same subpar rate in the April-June quarter.
Weak economies overseas cut demand for U.S. exports in May. That led some economists to predict that growth in the second quarter might be slower than forecast.
Still, many areas of the economy are improving. The Fed's low-rate policies have led more Americans to buy homes and cars. They also helped boost stock and home prices in the first half of the year, increasing wealth and lifting consumers' confidence to its highest level in 5½ years.
Auto sales in the January-June period topped 7.8 million, their best first half since 2007, according to Autodata Corp. and Ward's AutoInfoBank. Sales of previously occupied homes exceeded 5 million in May, the first time that's happened since November 2009. New-home sales rose at their fastest pace in five years.
Though fewer exports have hurt manufacturing, factories fielded more orders in May. And a measure of business investment rose for a third straight month.
The Fed has said that if economic growth accelerates and unemployment falls, it will likely slow its bond purchases before year's end and end them next year. A pullback in the Fed's bond buying would likely send borrowing rates up.
But Chairman Ben Bernanke has said that if the economy weakens, the Fed could delay its pullback or even step up its bond purchases again.
3a)4 Things to Know About June's Jobs Report
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6)
Bad news for the end-of-the-world crowd: June's jobs report was released Friday, and it was pretty good. 195,000 new jobs were created last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was the third-best June jobs report in the last 15 years. May and April's jobs numbers were revised higher by a combined 70,000 jobs. Both the S&P 500(SNPINDEX: ^GSPC ) and interest rates jumped, though both were looking up before the report was released.
Here are four things know about the jobs report.
1. Average jobs growth is almost, sort of, decentAny monthly jobs report is noisy and prone to revision. A better gauge is the rolling six-month average, which shows jobs growth of about 200,000 a month. That isn't great -- we need a little more than 100,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth -- but it's near the high of what the economy has been able to produce over the last decade:
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
2. Revisions have been almost as important as the original jobs reportsEach jobs report is revised seven times -- twice in the two months after the original report, and once a year for five years thereafter. (There's nothing fishy about this; the BLS is constantly getting new data to revise its assumptions).
Revisions tend to be positive during a recovery and subtractive during a recession. Good news: Revisions during the last few months have been universally higher. By quite a bit, too:
Month
|
Original jobs growth estimate
|
Revised
|
|---|---|---|
February
|
236,000
|
332,000
|
March
|
88,000
|
142,000
|
April
|
165,000
|
199,000
|
May
|
175,000
|
195,000
|
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
3. Not all jobs are created equalAny job is better than no job. But not all jobs are created equal, and a big portion of jobs created in recent months have come from notoriously low-wage sectors. Leisure and hospitality accounted for 42% of June's gain. Of that segment, 52,000 jobs came from the "food services and drinking places" subsector. Retail jobs increased by 37,000. Meanwhile, manufacturing employment fell by 6,000.
Hoards of previously unemployed Americans may be rejoining the workforce, but still worse off than they were a few years ago. We are recovering, but not recovered.
4. It's still going to take a while to get back to normalThe Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has an online jobs calculator that lets you play around with different assumptions to see when the jobs market might be back to normal.
If we stay at the current rate of job creation, the unemployment rate will drop to 6% in about two years, and 5% by about 2017. By then, we'd by a full decade out from the beginning of the last recession, which is longer than it took for the job market to recover after the Great Depression (although that recover was boosted by World War II). We are dealing with nothing short of a historic disaster. June's jobs report doesn't change that.
3b)Will Media Report the Poor Quality of Jobs Created in June?
The bulk of the gains—75,000—came in the hospitality industry of bartending and waiters.
3b)Will Media Report the Poor Quality of Jobs Created in June?
It seems a metaphysical certitude the Obama-loving media will be falling over themselves in the next 48 hours to report the better than expected jobs numbers in June.
But will they expose the poor quality of those jobs, or just stick with the headline number?
Recall that when Bush was president, virtually every jobs report no matter how rosy was presented to the public with negative caveats.
They were always "low-paying." Remember?
By contrast, since employment bottomed in 2009, jobs reports that would have been met with skepticism under Bush have magically become far more upbeat.
This isn't to say the figures released by the Labor Department Friday are bad.
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 195,000 in June, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.6 percent.
Expectations were for 165,000 jobs to be created and the unemployment rate to drop to 7.5 percent. So, as far as the headline figures are concerned, this was a good report.
But if you dig deeper, you'll find serious problems with the quality of these jobs. Our friends at Zero Hedge reported:
In June, the household survey reported that part-time jobs soared by 360,000 to 28,059,000 - an all time record high. Full time jobs? Down 240,000. And looking back at the entire year, so far in 2013, just 130K Full-Time Jobs have been added, offset by a whopping 557K Part-Time jobs.
Now imagine for a moment what a broadcast evening news report concerning these numbers would look like if a Republican was still in the White House.
Pretty dour, right?
Will any of the evening broadcasts or non-Fox News cable reports address the flies in the ointment here?
Or how about this:
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 322,000 to 8.2 million in June. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.
As CNBC.com observed, "That pushed a more encompassing count of unemployment that includes discouraged and underemployed from 13.8 percent to 14.3 percent."
Also from CNBC.com:
Moreover, the quality of jobs was weak.While the actual employment level grew by 160,000, the unemployment ranks increased as well, by 17,000.
The bulk of the gains—75,000—came in the hospitality industry of bartending and waiters.
So not only did the number of unemployed actually increase, so did the number of discouraged and underemployed workers. And, more than a third of the jobs created were bartenders and waiters.
But there's more:
Among the marginally attached, there were 1.0 million discouraged workers in June, an increase of 206,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.
So there are 206,000 more discouraged workers today than a year ago.
Somehow I envision media spending a lot of time on such problems with the June report if there was a Republican in the White House.
Will any of this surface with a beloved Democrat in the Oval Office?
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4)Economics Professor: 'American Dream' Is Becoming an Illusion
By Michael King
The American Dream of homeownership and economic advancement may be under threat from stagnating wages and a weak economic recovery.
"If there aren't enough jobs in general, then we have a systemic problem that threatens the American Dream," said Steven Fazzari, an economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, according to CNBC.
The American Dream holds that you'll be better off than your parents if you just get an education and work hard.
"In the United States, people who are coming from low-income families are highly likely to be low-income themselves," Erin Currier, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project, told CNBC. "That sort of rags-to-riches story ... is very unlikely."
Wages have been unable to outpace inflation in recent decades. Adjusted for inflation, median household income in 2011 was almost 9 percent less than it was in 1999.
Plus, the collapse of home values in the housing bust combined with high unemployment in the Great Recession gave a severe blow to the American dream.
A Gallup poll last year showed that only about half of Americans are satisfied with the opportunities the poor have to move up the income ladder through hard work, CNBC noted.
Americans have grown increasingly negative about their own finances, according to The Pew Charitable Trust. Less than a third (32 percent) in a 2011 poll rated their financial situation as "excellent" or "good," down 9 points in just a year and down 23 points since the recession started in 2007.
According to The Pew research, just 4 percent of people who grew up in a household at the bottom fifth of household income made it to the top fifth as adults.
Its research also shows that 83 percent of Americans exceed their parents' family income by at least $1,000.
Half of Americans exceeded their parents' family wealth, and 47 percent have at least $5,000 less wealth than their parents.
Black Americans are less likely to experience absolute upward income and wealth mobility than whites, and a greater proportion of dual-earner families surpass their parents' family income than do single-earner families.
"The ideal of the American Dream is complex and we see again that one's ability to achieve it is impacted by race, education, and family background," said Erin Currier, manager of Pew's Economic Mobility Project.
4)Economics Professor: 'American Dream' Is Becoming an Illusion
By Michael King
The American Dream of homeownership and economic advancement may be under threat from stagnating wages and a weak economic recovery.
"If there aren't enough jobs in general, then we have a systemic problem that threatens the American Dream," said Steven Fazzari, an economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, according to CNBC.
The American Dream holds that you'll be better off than your parents if you just get an education and work hard.
Wages have been unable to outpace inflation in recent decades. Adjusted for inflation, median household income in 2011 was almost 9 percent less than it was in 1999.
Plus, the collapse of home values in the housing bust combined with high unemployment in the Great Recession gave a severe blow to the American dream.
A Gallup poll last year showed that only about half of Americans are satisfied with the opportunities the poor have to move up the income ladder through hard work, CNBC noted.
Americans have grown increasingly negative about their own finances, according to The Pew Charitable Trust. Less than a third (32 percent) in a 2011 poll rated their financial situation as "excellent" or "good," down 9 points in just a year and down 23 points since the recession started in 2007.
According to The Pew research, just 4 percent of people who grew up in a household at the bottom fifth of household income made it to the top fifth as adults.
Its research also shows that 83 percent of Americans exceed their parents' family income by at least $1,000.
Half of Americans exceeded their parents' family wealth, and 47 percent have at least $5,000 less wealth than their parents.
Black Americans are less likely to experience absolute upward income and wealth mobility than whites, and a greater proportion of dual-earner families surpass their parents' family income than do single-earner families.
"The ideal of the American Dream is complex and we see again that one's ability to achieve it is impacted by race, education, and family background," said Erin Currier, manager of Pew's Economic Mobility Project.
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5)Nicaragua, Venezuela Offer Asylum to Snowden
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of secret U.S. spy programs.
Snowden, 30, is believed to be holed up in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport and has been trying to find a country that would take him since he landed from Hong Kong on June 23.
"In the name of America's dignity ... I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to Edward Snowden," Maduro told a military parade marking Venezuela's independence day.
"He is a young man who has told the truth, in the spirit of rebellion, about the United States spying on the whole world."
Russia has kept the former National Security Agency contractor at arm's length, saying the transit area where passengers stay between flights is neutral territory and he will be on Russian soil only if he goes through passport control.
It was not immediately clear how Snowden would react to Maduro's offer, nor reach Venezuela if he accepted.
There are no direct commercial flights between Moscow and Caracas, and the usual route involves changing planes in Havana. It is not clear if the Cuban authorities would let him transit, however, and there was no sign of Snowden aboard the flight to Havana on Saturday.
Given the dramatic grounding in Vienna of the Bolivian president's plane this week over suspicions that Snowden was onboard, using European airspace could prove problematic.
Russia has shown signs of growing impatience over Snowden's stay in Moscow. Its deputy foreign minister said on Thursday that Snowden had not sought asylum in that country and needed to choose a place to go.
Moscow has made clear that the longer he stays, the greater the risk of the diplomatic standoff over his fate causing lasting damage to relations with Washington.
Both Russia's foreign ministry and President Vladimir Putin's spokesman declined to comment on Venezuela's offer.
"This is not our affair," Dmitry Peskov told Reuters.
But senior pro-Kremlin lawmaker Alexei Pushkov, head of the international affairs committee of Russia's lower house of parliament, said asylum in Venezuela would be Snowden's best option.
The White House declined to comment.
Raising the possibility of at least one other option, Nicaragua said it had received an asylum request from Snowden and could agree to it "if circumstances permit".
WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, said on Friday that Snowden had asked six more nations for asylum, bringing to about 20 the number of countries he has appealed to for protection from U.S. espionage charges.
WikiLeaks said on Twitter it would not reveal which six new countries Snowden had applied to for asylum, due to "attempted U.S. interference".
Maduro said Venezuela was ready to offer him sanctuary, and that the details Snowden had revealed of U.S. spy programs had exposed the nefarious schemes of the U.S. "empire."
"Who is the guilty one? A young man ... who denounces war plans, or the U.S. government which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate President Bashar al-Assad?" he asked, to applause and cheers from ranks of military officers at the parade.
"Who is the terrorist? Who is the global delinquent?"
'COLONIES OF THE UNITED STATES'
Since narrowly winning a presidential election in April that followed the death of his mentor, Hugo Chavez, from cancer, Maduro has often lambasted the United States - even accusing the Pentagon and former U.S. officials of plotting to kill him.
But the former bus driver and union leader has at times also struck a much more conciliatory note, saying he is ready for better relations with Washington, based on mutual respect.
Already one of Snowden's most vocal supporters on the world stage, Maduro has sharpened his rhetoric in recent days.
It peaked after Bolivia said France, Portugal, Italy and Spain banned a plane carrying its president, Evo Morales, from using their airspace because of suspicions Snowden was aboard.
Latin America's most vocal leftist leaders denounced that as a disgrace and a serious breach of protocol, and Maduro said the CIA, the U.S. spy agency, was behind it all.
Snowden had revealed that the United States was spying on its European allies, Maduro said on Friday, and yet European leaders still caved under U.S. pressure to ground Morales' jet.
"The European people have seen the cowardice and the weakness of their governments, which now look like colonies of the United States," the Venezuelan president said.
Venezuela's opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, accused Maduro of making a fuss about Snowden to distract voters from a dismal economic picture at home, and a host of other problems including one of the highest murder rates in the world.
"Nicolas, you can't use asylum to cover up that you stole the election. That doesn't give you legitimacy, nor make the people forget," Capriles said on Twitter.
Speaking in Managua, President Daniel Ortega said he would gladly give Snowden asylum in Nicaragua "if circumstances permit". He did not say what those circumstances might be.
Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the Americas, has benefited greatly from financial support from Venezuela, and Ortega was a staunch ally of Chavez.
A bid by Snowden for Icelandic citizenship hit an impasse on Friday when the country's parliament voted not to debate the issue before its summer recess.
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