"With a little flow of cash and some borrowed time, he could be this year’s Larry Hogan — the Republican in a blue state no one was watching who got swept up in a wave in Maryland to win the governor’s office in 2014."
Read about it, here.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Police find many more infant bodies in another Detroit funeral home as scandal expands
This story is the macabre bookend to the grisly Kermit Gosnell infanticide case in Philly.
[T]wo attorneys said they believe many more infants’ remains may be found in the improper possession of the Perry Funeral Home, perhaps as many as 200, based on their research of log books kept by the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science. The funeral home routinely deposited infant remains at the WSU school’s morgue, then failed to follow up with parents’ wishes for the remains to be used in research by the WSU School of Medicine, they said.
“I’m really wondering where all the rest of them are,” Cieslak said late Friday. The lawsuit filed by the two charges that Perry may have fraudulently billed Medicaid, as well as the Detroit Medical Center, for burials it never performed. The lawyers said they can’t estimate how much money might be involved, “but it must be significant,” Parks said.
"We already have people calling us, after seeing the news, saying 'this happened to me,'" he said.
Friday, October 19, 2018
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Pro-Democrat Politico wouldn't write a story like this if the Blue Wave hadn't fizzled already
[P]rivately, even a few Democrats — say the GOP could still hang on, if only by a few seats. ... Democrats have pulled money out of several districts that should be competitive, indicating that Republicans have solidified their leads in the closing days of the campaign. ... Democrats should have had “these seats put away by now, and they don’t,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an interview. “I feel like they’ve hit a ceiling and held there — and we’re coming back.”
Noncompetes: Tell me about it
It ain't capitalism when the capitalists try to eliminate competition . . . especially yours.
It’s this perception of a legal threat, Starr, Prescott and Bishara found, much more than the reality of whether they could actually be sued that explains why people turn down job offers because of noncompetes. The predictable result is that workers with noncompetes tend to stay in the same job a lot longer. So it should be no surprise, as the U.S. Treasury points out, that noncompetes are also associated with lower wage growth. It isn’t easy to negotiate a raise when you can’t use other offers as leverage.
The so-called tight labor market is a euphemism for age discrimination by employers
Employers can't find enough young, cheap labor because of declining birth rates, reducing the available pool (blue line year over year growth in decline on an average basis since the mid-1980s, lower than 1% for 20 years).
There's still plenty of older, more expensive labor out there, but employers keep getting rid of them and won't rehire them (red line year over year growth steady between 2-3% for 20 years).
Alan Greenspan's tight labor market is fake news: Unemployment is really 8.4%
In September 2018, the civilian labor force was just 62.7% of the civilian noninstitutional population (161.958 million X 100 / 258.290 million = 62.7).
Not seasonally adjusted, this yielded an unemployment rate of 3.6% (5.766 million unemployed X 100 / 161.958 million = 3.56, before rounding up).
Unfortunately that's only because the labor force shrank by 8.5 million since 2008. The labor force then averaged 66% of the civilian noninstitutional population, not today's 62.7%.
Taking 66% of September 2018's civilian noninstitutional population means a labor force of 170.5 million instead of the not quite 162 million we've actually got. Where'd all those 8.5 million go? New Zealand?
Add 'em back in on both sides of the equation, both to the size of the labor force and to the unemployed, because they are obviously not working, and unemployment soars to . . . 8.4% (14.266 million unemployed X 100 / 170.458 million = 8.36).
All this labor slack is the reason wages fail to go up at rates of 3-4% as in previous recoveries.
It's not a tight labor market.
House projection with 19 days to go: Republicans keep the House 218-217 in the worst case scenario
Real Clear Politics has the current math at Democrats 206 to Republicans 199, with 30 toss-ups, 29 of which are Republican.
To date 15 formerly Republican seats have shifted to Likely/Leans Democrat in the so-called Blue Wave, or 34% of the total 44 Republican seats at some level of risk of flipping. Defying that trend, 3 formerly Democrat seats have shifted to Likely/Leans Republican.
Were the Democrat trend to continue, which is now however unlikely in view of Democrat missteps in the Kavanaugh affair and other public relations disasters, Democrats might be expected to peel off at most 10 more of the 29. Add the Democrat toss-up seat, and Democrats finish with 217, one shy of a majority.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
Until next week.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Republicans slip one point from tied with Democrats in latest Rasmussen generic Congressional poll
Dems 45
Repubs 44
Other 4
Undec 7
Reported here:
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters would choose the Democratic candidate if the elections for Congress were held today. Forty-four percent (44%) would opt for the Republican. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided.
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