Personally, I think Rex Nutting's a commie, but he couldn't be more right about the fake news of "not in the labor force"

Rex Nutting is right. Our side has been trafficking in this piece of fake news for years, a factoid originating with Zero Hedge and endlessly repeated by the Goodyear blimp of gasbags Rush Limbaugh, touching all and sundry from Donald Trump on down to little known radio hosts on low power stations in Michigan like Steve Gruber in Lansing. Correct it try though you may, every attempt to stop it fails. It's embarrassing, not in the least because it exposes the endemic inability to think critically and the proclivity to believe in authorities which share your political opinions.

For all the good it will do, Rex Nutting goes once more unto the breach, here, with excellent links and a good graph, too:

There are a lot of “fake statistics” bandied about in service of some ideology or another, but I’d like to focus on just one example in which I have expertise from my work covering the monthly employment report over the past 20 years: The idea that there are 95 million Americans who are out of work but not counted as unemployed.

This statistic pervades the conservative discourse about our economy (or at least until Jan. 20). The implication of this statistic is that the government and media are lying to us. Instead of an economy that’s slowly improving as President Barack Obama has been telling us, our economy is actually a catastrophic failure, unable to provide any work for nearly 100 million people. ...

This is the perfect fake statistic, because it’s absolutely true. And completely meaningless.

If Republicans had any brains they'd be pointing out that GDP is running $2 trillion behind Bush and employment 6 million

But no, they have their heads up their ass because Trump talked about grabbing pussy.

Which proves that Republicans don't care about the economy and the middle class, only about their privileges under the establishment.

Which is why they hate Trump, because he does care. 

Rush Limbaugh's memory of 1980 is terrible

He just said the unemployment rate in 1980 was in the double digits, but it wasn't.

In 1980 the unemployment rate averaged 7.2%. In July it peaked at 7.8%.

That hurt a lot because it had been as low as 5.6% in 1979. 

Hillary gets the best she can from Janet Yellen: Economy still too weak for the Fed to further normalize interest rates

Actually, the Fed is too weak morally to normalize interest rates, and won't move until after the election. A December hike if Trump is elected may well send the markets tumbling down, which you know will be blamed on his election, not on the Fed.

Meanwhile banks continue to get rich while impoverishing savers $100 billion quarterly since the end of 2008. That's $3.2 trillion they'll have robbed from the American people by the end of 2016.

Government of the banks, by the banks, and for the banks.

Politico reports here:

The Fed’s target rate is now just 0.25 percent to 0.50 percent, a remarkably low figure this late in an economic recovery that gives the central bank little room to maneuver should a new crisis or recession arise. So the Fed’s move avoids a market meltdown but offers fresh rhetorical evidence for Trump and other Republicans who argue that the economy is extraordinarily weak. ... Trump has also said that as president he would replace Yellen, whose term runs until February 2018. And he has ripped the Fed for creating what he has called a “false economy” with high stock prices but only modest wage gains and a very low labor-force participation rate.

Age discrimination update: Unemployment rate for those 55+ estimated to be 12%, 2.5 million want to work but can't get hired

Reported by Reuters, here:

Further, if you add jobless workers who gave up looking after more than four weeks, the 55-plus unemployment rate is a whopping 12 percent, SCEPA [Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School] analysis shows. Looked at another way, 2.5 million older Americans want a job but do not have one.

New York Times opinion piece against age discrimination never once mentions the main reason for it: The young can be paid much less

The number one cost of doing business is employees, and employers will do anything they can to reduce it: fire the old and hire the young, ship the jobs overseas to cheaper labor markets, and the coming zinger, automate them out of existence.

From the story here:

The problem is ageism — discrimination on the basis of age. A dumb and destructive obsession with youth so extreme that experience has become a liability. In Silicon Valley, engineers are getting Botox and hair transplants before interviews — and these are skilled, educated, white guys in their 20s, so imagine the effect further down the food chain.

Age discrimination in employment is illegal, but two-thirds of older job seekers report encountering it. At 64, I’m fortunate not to have been one of them, as I work at the American Museum of Natural History, a truly all-age-friendly employer.

I write about ageism, though, so I hear stories all the time. The 51-year-old Uber driver taking me to Los Angeles International Airport at dawn a few weeks ago told me about a marketing position he thought he was eminently qualified for. He did his homework and nailed the interview. On his way out of the building he overheard, “Yeah, he’s perfect, but he’s too old.”

Police show restraint after rioting in Milwaukee, at least four businesses burn to the ground, alderman says "it may not have been right" but threatens more

Khalif Rainey, the thugs' man in power

Whattaya mean "may", alderman?

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports here:

After an hours-long confrontation with officers, police reported at 10:15 p.m. that a gas station at N. Sherman Blvd. and W. Burleigh St. was set on fire. Police said firefighters could not for a time get close to the blaze because of gunshots.

Later, fires were started at businesses — including a BMO Harris Bank branch, a beauty supply company and O'Reilly Auto Parts stores — near N. 35th and W. Burleigh streets, a grim and emphatic Mayor Tom Barrett said. He spoke at a midnight news conference at the District 3 police station at N. 49th St. and W. Lisbon Ave. ... The mayor said police had "shown an amazing amount of restraint" Saturday evening. ...

“This entire community has sat back and witnessed how Milwaukee, Wis., has become the worst place to live for African-Americans in the entire country,” [Sherman Park Alderman Khalif] Rainey said. “Now this is a warning cry. Where do we go from here? Where do we go as a community from here? Do we continue – continue with the inequities, the injustice, the unemployment, the under-education, that creates these byproducts that we see this evening? … The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their existence. This is their life. This is the life of their children. Now what has happened tonight may have not been right; I’m not justifying that. But no one can deny the fact that there’s problems, racial problems, here in Milwaukee, Wis., that have to be closely, not examined, but rectified. Rectify this immediately. Because if you don’t, this vision of downtown, all of that, you’re one day away. You’re one day away.”

Tyler Cowen, soulless libertarian, epitomizes what's wrong with America, thinks there's a positive side to Chinese cheating and slave labor which must be considered

Here:

I expected to hate [Peter Navarro's] "Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World," but instead I found it to be an intelligent discussion of the problems likely to result from a more assertive China. That said, Navarro does not come close to demonstrating his opening prediction that future war with China is “very likely.” In contrast, his "The Coming China Wars" is mostly a series of emotional diatribes against the Chinese government, opening with charges of cheating and slave labor and never much considering the positive side of Chinese economic growth.

Foreign Policy pinhead Fredrik deBoer erupts with reverse racism against whites, feigns concern over increase in white suicides to slam gun ownership

Evidently the same self-loathing white guy featured here for whom more neoliberalism isn't an option and FDR was just another affluent bastard who short-circuited socialism. It's always about the guns, isn't it, because the guns in the hands of the people stop commies like this from taking power. And hey, thanks to Foreign Policy and Business Insider for giving this creep a forum. deBoer must laugh to himself at how easy it is to subvert the country.

Here:

[W]hite Americans overall continue to enjoy significant advantages over black and Hispanic Americans in metrics like unemployment, college completion rate, and incarceration rate, which is not surprising in a country that still suffers from immense and structural white supremacy.

But this does not change the fact that white workers without college degrees have seen their overall quality of life eroded in a variety of ways that almost certainly contribute to the suicide rate. For example, as a New York Times story on the report points out, unmarried men have dramatically higher suicide rates, and divorce rates are strongly tied to income and education, with those in lower income brackets and educational levels suffering from far higher rates.

Why white Americans are so much more likely to commit suicide than black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, whose rates are less than half that of white Americans, is something of a mystery.

This might paradoxically be part of the legacy of white privilege: Because white Americans have traditionally enjoyed greater affluence and cultural prestige than people of color, they might take unemployment, poverty, and their attendant indignities as harder to stomach. ... Owning a gun is one of the most powerful predictors of suicide risk overall. 

NYT: Tens of thousands of American workers lose their jobs to H-1B temporary visa abuse by American employers, some start to speak up

Does anyone read The Times on Saturday?

Here:

According to federal rules, temporary visas known as H-1Bs are for foreigners with “a body of specialized knowledge” not readily available in the labor market. The visas should be granted only when they will not undercut the wages or “adversely affect the working conditions” of Americans. But in the past five years, through loopholes in the rules, tens of thousands of American workers have been replaced by foreigners on H-1B and other temporary visas, according to Prof. Hal Salzman, a labor force expert at Rutgers University.

Students for Trump has 200 chapters in 38 states, began with a Rand Paul supporter

The LA Times reports here:

Students for Trump began as a Twitter account in October in a dorm room at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C. Ryan Fournier, a freshman and early supporter of Rand Paul, was drawn to Trump's blunt rhetoric and policies on border control and employment. ... More than 5,000 students in 200 chapters in 38 states are publicly on board. Fifteen chapters have taken hold in California, on campuses including UC Santa Barbara and USC.

Ted Cruz' many flipflops: Obamatrade, foreign workers, illegal alien amnesty, birthright citizenship, Edward Snowden, crop insurance

Nicely detailed with links by Laura Ingraham, here.

Ohio surplus due to Medicaid expansion, not to John Kasich's special skills

The Toledo Blade reported here . . . a year ago:

COLUMBUS — The infusion of billions in federal funds to pay for expanded Medicaid coverage in Ohio has had the side effect of dramatically increasing the state’s ability to put away money for a rainy day, as well as its power to borrow.

Ohio expects to finish the current fiscal year with a surplus of $970.4 million. It will transfer more than half of that amount at the last minute to help pay for proposed income tax cuts, unemployment compensation interest payments to the federal government, a proposed student debt reduction program, and other items.

But the remaining $374 million would be transferred to the state’s so-called rainy-day fund, budgetary reserves capped by law at no more than 5 percent of the general revenue fund. That would bring the balance in the fund to just under $1.9 billion, well above the current balance of roughly $1.5 billion.

Wake up people: Ted Cruz in 2013 advocated giving 325,000 American STEM jobs to cheaper foreigners

The full story is here.

Go back to Canada, Ted!

Rupert Murdoch, owner of FOX News and The Wall Street Journal, doesn't care illegals cut in line or about jobless Americans

Rupert Murdoch is working on wife #4

Here in The Wall Street Journal in "Immigration Reform Can't Wait" from June 2014: 

"We need to give those individuals who are already here—after they have passed checks to ensure they are not dangerous criminals—a path to citizenship so they can pay their full taxes, be counted, and become more productive members of our community.

"Next, we need to do away with the cap on H-1B visas, which is arbitrary and results in U.S. companies struggling to find the high-skill workers they need to continue growing."

New study says trade with China caused severe permanent harm to American workers

From Noah Smith in "Free Trade With China Wasn't Such a Great Idea for the U.S." for BloombergView, who says the public has been exactly right about the consequences of trade with China:

The study shows that increased trade with China caused severe and permanent harm to many American workers:

Adjustment in local labor markets is remarkably slow, with wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining elevated for at least a full decade after the China trade shock commences. Exposed workers experience greater job churning and reduced lifetime income. At the national level, employment has fallen in U.S. industries more exposed to import competition...but offsetting employment gains in other industries have yet to materialize.

... [T]he public might have been wrong about free trade in the 1980s and 1990s, but things have changed. Popular opinion seems to be exactly right about the effect of trade with China -- it has killed jobs and damaged the lives of many, many Americans. Economists may blithely declare that free trade is wonderful, but our best researchers have now shown that public misgivings about these smooth assurances have been completely justified.