Politics Plus

Think back, if you will, to 1979 and how much technology has changed since then.  My computer was a kit that I had built myself.  The PCs available at the beginning of the year were the original IBM PC, the Apple II, and the Commodore PET.  That year Texas Instruments releases the TI-99/4. 8 MhZ was a fast CPU, not today’s 2.4 GhZ which is over 300 times faster.  Those of us who communicated between computers did so at 110 bits bps, not today’s 4 Gbps, which is over 39 million times faster.  Todays cell phones have far more computing power that the desktops of that day.  Watching the advance of technology in this and most other fields has been sufficient to boggle the mind.  Last night I saw a video segment from Rachel Maddow that takes us back to 1979 to compare the Ixtoc oil spill in the gulf and the industry response with the GOBP Gusher earlier this year.  Here it is.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Considering the rapid advances in technology in so many other fields makes the advance of technology for preventing and recovering from oil spills  conspicuous for the complete lack thereof.  The only explanation is that the oil industry simply did not try to advance it to their shame and the even greater shame of US politicians who sell out the American people to enable these companies.  We will not know the true cost of the GOBP Gusher for years.  Can we afford to learn the lesson again in 31 more years?

Each time history repeats itself, the cost of the lesson goes way up.

I have long claimed that counting someone as one no longer seeking employment after unemployment benefits expire was nothing more than a deceptive way to cover up structural unemployment.  This was true long before Republicans trashed the US economy, causing the current recession, largely because employers needed more highly skilled workers than the US labor force could provide and because automation and increases in productivity were cutting the number of available jobs.  Now it is far worse, because of outsourcing.  There are simply far more workers than there are jobs.  Consequently, next year the Bureau of Labor Statistics will track people as unemployed for five years.  It’s a first step, but far more needs to be done than just tracking people.

So many Americans have been jobless for so long that the government is changing how it records long-term unemployment.

Citing what it calls "an unprecedented rise" in long-term unemployment, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), beginning Saturday, will raise from two years to five years the upper limit on how long someone can be listed as having been jobless.

The move could help economists better measure the severity of the nation’s prolonged economic downturn.

>[sic]The change is a sign that bureau officials "are afraid that a cap of two years may be ‘understating the true average duration’ — but they won’t know by how much until they raise the upper limit," says Linda Barrington, an economist who directs the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Likening recessionary unemployment spikes in recent decades to a storm at sea, she says, "The waves are getting higher, and we want to understand the intricacies of how they’re made up."

The change involves the form used for the bureau’s Current Population Survey, based on interviews with thousands of the unemployed. Currently, no matter how much longer than two years someone has been out of work, the form allows interviewers to check off only "99 weeks or over." Starting next month, jobless stints of "260 weeks and over" can be selected on the response form.

"The BLS doesn’t make such changes lightly," Barrington says. Stacey Standish, a bureau assistant press officer, says the two-year limit has been used for 33 years.

A two-year limit hampers economists’ ability to compare this recession’s effect on the job market with another severe one in the early 1980s, Barrington says.

Although "this feels like something we’ve not experienced" since the Great Depression, she says, economists need more information to be sure.

The change will not affect how the unemployed are counted or the unemployment rate is computed nor how long those eligible for unemployment benefits receive them. Analysts call the move a sign of the times.

"We realize more and more people are unemployed longer than 99 weeks, so we need to break it down further," Standish says… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Common Dreams>

I suppose that government is not willing to go so far as to include the long term unemployed in the unemployment rate, let alone do something to help the long term unemployed.

In my opinion, the old paradigm of distributing resources based on capital and labor has failed, and it’s time to look for a new paradigm, before the old one collapses amid violence and discord.

What, in your opinion, might be a better basis than capital and labor for distributing resources?

When Democrats took the House in 2006, they did the responsible thing and instituted PAYGO.  But House Republicans are changing the rules to stack the deck against the American people.  The following article explains the changes and examines some effects.  However the author seems to miss that Republicans are laying the groundwork to take back most of what Obama gained in negotiating the Tax Capitulation Act.

In 2007, just weeks after Republicans lost control of the House and Senate and six years after the first passel of Bush tax cuts were signed into law, Democrats made a key change to the budget rules to prevent that episode from repeating itself.

Republicans had used the budget reconciliation process — immune from a filibuster — to pass the cuts and explode the deficit: two things the reconciliation process was never meant to allow. To get away with it, Republicans were forced to include a 10-year sunset in package — planting the seeds for the tax cut fight we just saw on Capitol Hill. After Dems wrested control of Congress, they banned the reconciliation loopholes used by the GOP altogether.

But as they return to power in the House of Representatives, Republicans are taking steps to unravel those changes.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities examined the GOP’s proposed new rules for the House, and here’s what they found.

The new rules would stand the reconciliation process on its head, by allowing the House to use reconciliation to push through bills that greatly increase deficits as long as the deficit increases result from tax cuts, while barring the use of reconciliation in the House for legislation that reduces the deficit if that legislation contains a net increase in spending (no matter how small) that is more than offset by revenue-raising provisions.

To translate: Bush tax cuts are fine, but, say, paying for infrastructure projects by taxing carbon would be forbidden, even if the net result would be a reduction in the deficit… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <TPM>

What I see happening here is that, when it comes time to fund unemployment extensions, Republicans will demand offsets from either entitlement spending or stimulative spending.  In addition, using reconciliation rules to pass more tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires in the House, prevents Democrats in the Senate from using even a talking filibuster to block an alliance between Republicans and DINOs.  This leaves, the veto pen as the only defense, and I fear the hand holding that pen is a shaky one.

As we approach the New Year, 2011 promises to be a very difficult one for Democrats, but one bright spot we have looking ahead to 2010 is the love that the Theocon and InsaniTEA wings of the Republican party still has for Sarah Palin.  Realistically, we can thank her that Republicans so not control the Senate as well, as the mainline Republican candidates who lost in the primary to Palin’s choices, Christine O’Dingbat and Obtuse Angle, would have won the Delaware and Nevada seats.  Voters on the whole disapprove of Palin, especially in her home state.

It’s a well known fact that Sarah Palin is the most unpopular major political figure in the country…one thing that may be less well known is that one of the states where voters have the dimmest view of her is her own home state of Alaska.

 

We’ve polled Palin’s favorability in ten states over the last couple months. In Alaska just 33% of voters have a favorable opinion of her to 58% with a negative one. The only place where fewer voters see her positively than her own home state is dark blue Massachusetts.

 

Democrats hate Palin in Alaska but they hate her everywhere so there’s nothing newsworthy about that. What makes her home state numbers unusually bad is that Republicans see her favorably by only a 60/30 margin. In most places she’s closer to 80% favorability within her own party. Also while independents don’t like her anywhere their level of animosity in Alaska is unusually large- 65% unfavorable to only 25% with a favorable opinion…

 

…Here are Palin’s state by state favorability numbers:

 

State	Favorability
Montana	44/50
Ohio	37/52
North Carolina	36/57
Florida	36/57
Virginia	35/58
Wisconsin	35/58
Minnesota	35/60
Michigan	34/60
Alaska	33/58
Massachusetts	27/68

Inserted from <Public Policy Polling>

Despite Palin’s overall unpopularity  her Republican support remains strong. and the Theocon and InsaniTEA wings are most active.  If she runs, it with throw the Republican Party into disarray, as the Neocon, Corporocon and Plutocon wings try to defeat her, promising political theater at it’s best and an opportunity to push for more progressive candidates from the left.