[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.”
Thursday, October 18, 2018
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.
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Brilliant point by Rush Limbaugh: Senators Dianne Feinstein and now Elizabeth Warren launched October election surprises
I think including Hillary in this October surprise stuff is stretching it, though. Hillary is a follower, not a leader. She's just chiming in, piling on. And Christine Ford was simply Feinstein's foil, not a separate player.
But as for these two Senate Democrat luminaries, both of their efforts indeed have and are blowing up in their faces despite their transparent attempt to sway the 2018 Election.
Howie Carr rips Elizabeth Talking Bull for resurrecting the "one drop rule" of Democrats' Jim Crow infamy
Good thing Boston still has two newspapers, but Facebook users prefer the wrong one.
Here:
But this is breathtaking chutzpah — she’s resurrecting the “one-drop” rule from her Democrat party’s proudest Jim Crow days of the Ku Klux Klan, Woodrow Wilson and the rest of all those separate-but-equal Democrat worthies.
One drop of black blood — “Negro,” as the Jim Crows of CNN now say again, at least when they’re talking about Kanye West — and you’re … not white. ...
Yesterday the Globe was cooking the numbers to pretend that the least Indian she might be was 1/512th — more fake news from the newspaper of Kevin Cullen, Mike Barnicle, Patricia Smith and Jayson Blair.
All day yesterday, the Globe was running corrections of its fuzzy math. The original story said she was between 1⁄32nd and 1⁄512th Indian. That was the one the moonbats still have posted to their Facebook accounts.
I rather doubt George Scialabba's radicalism has ANY room for the citizens of 30 states who once explicitly and overwhelmingly defined marriage as heterosexual ...
... until a black-robed tribunal of nine decided otherwise.
Anthony Kennedy was the radical, and George Scialabba wouldn't recognize radicalism if it came up and bit him in the ass.
From The New Republic, here:
Scialabba believes that the one saving possibility in this country is rooted in our imperfect and hypocritical adherence to two ideas: that people are radically equal and that, as equals, they have to be the judges of their own interests and the authors of their own laws. All intellectual melodrama about how we are too frail and narrow to draw our own judgments or govern ourselves, Scialabba rightly takes for a combination of juvenile philosophical elitism on the one hand, and, on the other, unselfconscious apologetics for the political and economic orders that have been profitably hollowing out our capacity for self-rule.
Monday, October 15, 2018
Chicoms in Kenya call black people monkeys
Mr. Ochieng’ found work at a Chinese motorcycle company that had just expanded to Kenya. But then his new boss, a Chinese man his own age, started calling him a monkey. It happened when the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said. “‘Your brothers,’” he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates. And it happened again, he said, with his boss referring to all Kenyans as primates. Humiliated and outraged, Mr. Ochieng’ decided to record one of his boss’s rants, catching him declaring that Kenyans were “like a monkey people.” ...
Mr. Ochieng’ said he protested several times, but the monkey comments did not stop. “It was too much,” he said. “I decided, ‘Let me record it.’” The rant that Mr. Ochieng’ recorded came after a sales trip had gone awry. Mr. Ochieng asked his boss why he was taking out his anger on him. “Because you are Kenyan,” Mr. Jiaqi explained, saying that all Kenyans, even the president, are “like a monkey.” Mr. Ochieng’ continued that Kenyans may have once been oppressed, but that they have been a free people since 1963. “Like a monkey,” Mr. Jiaqi responded. “Monkey is also free.”
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