Job Search Discouraging For Many Americans

There's been all kinds of jive the last few months about how the economy has turned around, the housing market has turned around, the jobs market is turning around.

Let's be clear that the economy is still being propped up by the Federal Reserve printing press, the housing market is re-inflating in part because that Federal Reserve printing press program is helping Wall Street buy a ton of houses and the jobs market remains dismal for many:

WASHINGTON (AP) — After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up.

She'd already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, counseling the disabled. But she couldn't land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a telephone call center.

Until she feels confident enough to send out resumes again, she'll get by on food stamps and disability checks from Social Security and live with her parents in St. Louis.

"I'm not proud of it," says Baebler, who is in her mid-30s and is blind. "The only way I'm able to sustain any semblance of self-preservation is to rely on government programs that I have no desire to be on."

Baebler's frustrating experience has become all too common nearly four years after the Great Recession ended: Many Americans are still so discouraged that they've given up on the job market.

Older Americans have retired early. Younger ones have enrolled in school. Others have suspended their job hunt until the employment landscape brightens. Some, like Baebler, are collecting disability checks.

It isn't supposed to be this way. After a recession, an improving economy is supposed to bring people back into the job market.

Instead, the number of Americans in the labor force — those who have a job or are looking for one — fell by nearly half a million people from February to March, the government said Friday. And the percentage of working-age adults in the labor force — what's called the participation rate — fell to 63.3 percent last month. It's the lowest such figure since May 1979.

The falling participation rate tarnished the only apparent good news in the jobs report the Labor Department released Friday: The unemployment rate dropped to a four-year low of 7.6 percent in March from 7.7 in February.

People without a job who stop looking for one are no longer counted as unemployed. That's why the U.S. unemployment rate dropped in March despite weak hiring. If the 496,000 who left the labor force last month had still been looking for jobs, the unemployment rate would have risen to 7.9 percent in March.

"Unemployment dropped for all the wrong reasons," says Craig Alexander, chief economist with TD Bank Financial Group. "It dropped because more workers stopped looking for jobs. It signaled less confidence and optimism that there are jobs out there."

 There are simply not enough jobs:

"It's the lack of job opportunities — the lack of demand for workers — that is keeping these workers from working or seeking work," says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. The Labor Department says there are still more than three unemployed people for every job opening.

Cynthia Marriott gave up her job search after an interview in October for a position as a hotel concierge.

"They never said no," she says. "They just never called me back."

Her husband hasn't worked full time since 2006. She cashed out her 401(k) after being laid off from a job at a Los Angeles entertainment publicity firm in 2009. The couple owes thousands in taxes for that withdrawal. They have no health insurance.

She got the maximum 99 weeks' of unemployment benefits then allowed in California and then moved to Atlanta.

Now she is looking to receive federal disability benefits for a lung condition that she said leaves her weak and unable to work a full day. The application is pending a medical review.

"I feel like I have no choice," says Marriott, 47. "It's just really sad and frightening"

This is life in neo-feudal 21st century America.

The Best and Brightest running the country are technologizing everything they can, putting more and more people out of work and squeezing wages on everybody else, leaving more and more (often stolen) profits for the financial sector.

There is no end to this and you can bet that Obama calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare isn't going to help that any.

The game is rigged, folks, and until the masses rise up against the bankster class and make them feel fear that they've got to loosen up the money, wealth and opportunity spigots a little, nothing is going to change.

That's why the Occupy movement was so scary to the oligarchs.

And that's why they, with the help of the Obama administration, destroyed the camps.

They want us all alone and isolated, fighting each other for what little remains of the social safety net.

So Much For That Turnaround

We kept hearing how sequestration and austerity wasn't hurting the economy. 

We heard how the 2% payroll tax hike in January wouldn't hurt consumer spending. 

We heard that the housing market is BACK and the markets are steaming at all-time highs and everything is ready to ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOM.

And then we got this:

(Reuters) - American employers hired at the slowest pace in nine months in March, a sign that Washington's austerity drive could be stealing momentum from the economy.

The economy added just 88,000 nonfarm jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below market expectations for a 200,000 increase. The jobless rate ticked a tenth of a point lower to 7.6 percent largely due to people dropping out of the work force.

Analysts suspected some of the weakness was due to tax hikes enacted in January. While retail sales data had not shown a big impact earlier in the year, retailers cut staff in March by 24,100.

"The U.S. economy just hit a major speed bump," said Marcus Bullus, trading director at MB Capital in London.

Let's add in long-term unemployment for a whole generation of older Americans laid off from their jobs and probably never going to work again, the looming Medicare and Social Security cuts President Obama is dying to inflict upon working and middle class Americans, the continued problems in the Eurozone where unemployment is at 12%, almost every country is in recession and one or two are near depressions, the stealth inflation the Fed has created by printing money faster than the speed of sound, the budget crisis which never seems to get resolved, and we have a whole host of reasons why this summer could very well cool down after a very "hot" winter - just the way the last two summers saw cool downs after the economy looked to be turning around in January/February.

Not Adding Value: NYC's Unemployment Rate Rises To 10%

Mayor Bloomberg likes to make the people who live and work in his fiefdom live and die by the data.

Well, here's some data that ought to disturb him - the unemployment rate in NYC is the highest it's been since the worst of the recession:

New York City’s unemployment rate climbed to 10 percent in June, equaling the highest level it reached during the recession, even as employers continued hiring at a healthy pace, the State Labor Department reported on Thursday.

Though city officials make almost daily pronouncements about how impressively the city’s economy has rebounded from the long recession, the unemployment rate has returned to the peak it held for six months, from fall 2009 until February 2010. The last time it was higher was 19 years ago, when it was 10.1 percent, said James P. Brown, principal economist for the department.

The June rate was up from 9.7 percent in May, and it translated to more than 397,000 unemployed city residents, according to state data. That total was within 2,000 of the highest number of jobless city residents at any time in 37 years of record keeping, the numbers showed.

The unemployment rate worsened again despite a gain of 11,500 jobs last month, Mr. Brown said. That increase was modest compared with the strong gains of recent months but was about average for the last 10 Junes, he said.

...

Labor union officials have said the bigger problem is that most of the new jobs are in industries that pay low wages, like retailing and janitorial work. They have been pushing for several months in Albany for an increase in the state’s minimum wage, which has been $7.25 an hour since 2009.

I know what will fix this problem.

Let's close schools and fire teachers.

Of course the unemployment increase is not Bloomberg's fault.

Nothing is his fault.

So it must be the fault of unions and public schools.

Failed President

Heckuva job, Barack!

The public opinion boost President Obama received after the killing of Osama bin Laden has dissipated, and Americans’ disapproval of how he is handling the nation’s economy and the deficit has reached new highs, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey portrays a broadly pessimistic mood in the country this spring as higher gasoline prices, sliding home values and a disappointing employment picture have raised fresh concerns about the pace of the economic recovery.

By 2 to 1, Americans say the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, and nine in 10 continue to rate the economy in negative terms. Nearly six in 10 say the economy has not started to recover, regardless of what official statistics may say, and most of those who say it has improved rate the recovery as weak.

New Post-ABC numbers show Obama leading five of six potential Republican presidential rivals tested in the poll. But he is in a dead heat with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who formally announced his 2012 candidacy last week, making jobs and the economy the central issues in his campaign.

Among all Americans, Obama and Romney are knotted at 47 percent each, and among registered voters, the former governor is numerically ahead, 49 percent to 46 percent.

Overall, about six in 10 of those surveyed give Obama negative marks on the economy and the deficit. Significantly, nearly half strongly disapprove of his performance in these two crucial areas. Nearly two-thirds of political independents disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, including — for the first time — a slim majority who do so strongly.

In another indicator of rapidly shifting views on economic issues, 45 percent trust congressional Republicans over the president when it comes to dealing with the economy, an 11-point improvement for the GOP since March. Still, nearly as many, 42 percent, side with Obama on this issue.

The president has sought to point to progress on the economy, particularly in the automobile industry, and to argue that the policies he put in place at the beginning of his term are working. But the combined effects of weak economic indicators and dissatisfaction among the public are adding to the political pressures on the White House as the president’s advisers look toward what could be a difficult 2012 reelection campaign.

Let's run down the failures of this president to put things right with the economy:

1. Stimulus too small
2. Stimulus gave us garbage like Race to the Top instead of a jobs bill that would have put people to work rebuilding the infrastructure of this country
3. Renominated Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve, doubling down on the print and mint monetary policy
4. Bought into deficit reduction frame of economic story long before recovery took hold, legitimizing all the downsizing that is now leading to mass layoffs and budget cuts which are further damaging a weak economy
5. Held NOT one Wall Street criminal accountable for financial collapse of '08, instead handed out trillions in bailout money and rubberstamped Wall Street criminal activity in the process as A-OK
6. HAMP mortgage mess which made things worse in the housing market for many homeowners

And those are just the ones I can of off the top of my head.

So if the president's re-election chances are going from slam Arne Duncan to ruh-roh Shaggy!, it's really his own fault.

The theme for the administration should have been jobs, jobs, jobs.

It should have been protecting the middle and working classes from the economic ravages of globalism.

It should have been rebuilding this country's infrastructure and putting people to work with good paying jobs while doing it.

Instead we got TALF, HAMP and RttT.

Maybe Obama will get a trip back to RahmEmanueland for his arrogance and short-sightedness.

How's That Austerity Theory Working Now?

Our coprorate overlords and the coprorate politicians they own in both parties have been selling the country on austerity as the fix for the economic ills we suffer.

Here is how that "fix" is working so far:

After several months of strong job growth, hiring slowed sharply in May, raising concerns once again about the underlying strength of the economic recovery.

The Labor Department reported on Friday that the United States added 54,000 nonfarm payroll jobs last month, following an increase of 232,000 jobs in April. May’s job gain was about a third of what economists had been forecasting.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1 percent from 9.0 percent in April.

“The economy clearly just hit a brick wall,” said Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics. “It’s almost as if it came to a complete standstill.”

The dismal numbers may change the economic debate in Washington and potentially revive calls for the Federal Reserve to engage in another round of asset purchases, Mr. Ashworth said. Democrats and labor-oriented groups have also amplified their pleas for Congress to delay deficit-reduction measures.

“Living here in Washington, in the past few weeks there has been all this talk about deficits and the debt ceiling as though that were the biggest problem right now,” said Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization. “My fervent hope is that this shocks policy makers into realizing the most urgent problem in front of us right now is jobs.”

More layoffs to come at the state and municipal levels, more cost-cutting in municipal, state and federal government, and a middle and working class that is being squeezed by stagnant wages, job uncertainty and higher food and energy costs.

Oh, and the housing market is tanking again.

Should be a fabulous recipe for an improved economy.

Heckuva job, Barack! Buying into the Randian deficit meme has really brought about a recovery.

And just wait until all those teachers get laid off at the end of year in states all across the nation.

Should really make for a "recovery summer"!

The Hollowing Out Of The American Economy

The education reformers both in and out of the Obama administration like to say that there is no unemployment problem in this country, there is an education problem.

Under this dubious theory, Americans are not educating themselves enough to be able to do the high tech jobs the economy is creating.

Once the American public education system is blown up and replaced by a charter school system that actually educates the youth of America better, especially in the areas of math, science, and technology, the unemployment problem will largely disappear.

The NY Times lays waste to this theory today:

When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS, the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of “discovery” — providing documents relevant to a lawsuit — the studios examined six million documents at a cost of more than $2.2 million, much of it to pay for a platoon of lawyers and paralegals who worked for months at high hourly rates.

But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.

Some programs go beyond just finding documents with relevant terms at computer speeds. They can extract relevant concepts — like documents relevant to social protest in the Middle East — even in the absence of specific terms, and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents.

“From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,” said Bill Herr, who as a lawyer at a major chemical company used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. “People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t.”

Computers are getting better at mimicking human reasoning — as viewers of “Jeopardy!” found out when they saw Watson beat its human opponents — and they are claiming work once done by people in high-paying professions. The number of computer chip designers, for example, has largely stagnated because powerful software programs replace the work once done by legions of logic designers and draftsmen.

Software is also making its way into tasks that were the exclusive province of human decision makers, like loan and mortgage officers and tax accountants.

These new forms of automation have renewed the debate over the economic consequences of technological progress.

David H. Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the United States economy is being “hollowed out.” New jobs, he says, are coming at the bottom of the economic pyramid, jobs in the middle are being lost to automation and outsourcing, and now job growth at the top is slowing because of automation.

“There is no reason to think that technology creates unemployment,” Professor Autor said. “Over the long run we find things for people to do. The harder question is, does changing technology always lead to better jobs? The answer is no.”

Automation of higher-level jobs is accelerating because of progress in computer science and linguistics. Only recently have researchers been able to test and refine algorithms on vast data samples, including a huge trove of e-mail from the Enron Corporation.

“The economic impact will be huge,” said Tom Mitchell, chairman of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “We’re at the beginning of a 10-year period where we’re going to transition from computers that can’t understand language to a point where computers can understand quite a bit about language.”

Nowhere are these advances clearer than in the legal world.

...

Quantifying the employment impact of these new technologies is difficult. Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy, is convinced that “legal is a sector that will likely employ fewer, not more, people in the U.S. in the future.” He estimated that the shift from manual document discovery to e-discovery would lead to a manpower reduction in which one lawyer would suffice for work that once required 500 and that the newest generation of software, which can detect duplicates and find clusters of important documents on a particular topic, could cut the head count by another 50 percent.

There is an Asimov short story, one of the Robot stories I think, that starts out with a line about how some people were supportive of the robots in society but others worried what humans would do for jobs once the robots took over much of the employment. What would the robots do to the economy?

Well, we're now there.

I have been thinking about this topic a lot, not least of which because I believe ultimately the powers that be will replace teachers like me with computers, virtual instruction software and one or two remote teachers somewhere in Sri Lanka to teach students in NYC.

I have also thinking about this topic in terms of how to help my seniors navigate the college admissions world. Majors that once seem sure bets for employment - like law, like education, like computer programming - now seem more uncertain as automation replaces much of what humans used to do.

I'm no Luddite, but I am uncomfortable with so much of the uncritical "Gee Whiz!" reaction we get to so much of this human-replacing automation we are seeing in the past few years.

And as Autor, the economics professor from MIT, pointed out in the Times article, these high-paying jobs that are disappearing are NOT going to be replaced with anything nearly as lucrative.

Indeed, Robert Reich noted this in his commentary about yesterday's jobs report.

There are jobs returning to America, yes - 190,000+ last month.

But they don't pay anywhere near what the jobs that disappeared back in 2008-2010 paid.

This ought to be the thing that Obama and his merry men are worried about for the future.

But they're not - they're too busy scapegoating teachers and schools for a systemic problem that will not be addressed by education levels, but that will instead be addressed by coming to a different understanding of the value and economics of work.

Private Sector Hiring Up Sharply In December; Layoffs And Salary Freezes For Public Sector

From McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — Private businesses hired new workers at a surprisingly energetic pace in December, according to a widely tracked job-tracking report released on Wednesday.

The ADP National Employment Report showed that private-sector employment rose by 297,000 in December. That's the highest monthly gain since the report's inception in 2000, and it's double or triple what was expected by mainstream economists.

Most important, job gains that high are what's needed to knock down the stubbornly high unemployment rate, which has been stuck at just under 10 percent for more than a year. Currently it's at 9.8 percent, with a new official BLS report on December employment due on Friday.

The new data suggest that last month's disappointing official jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics may have been flawed, or at least a pothole on the road to recovery. Combined with several other recent positive indicators, the evidence that the economic recovery is strengthening appears to be mounting.

"This kind of number crosses a threshold in terms of its importance to the economy, the importance to the unemployment rate. More importantly, it's a strong enough number that you can start thinking about the virtuous cycle between employment and growth," Joel Prakken, the chairman of forecaster Macroeconomic Advisers, a co-creator of the monthly report, said in an interview.

The ADP doesn't always track well with the BLS numbers, but if the ADP numbers are close to accurate, things COULD be turning around in the job market.

At least for the private sector.

For those of us in the public sector, dunno if you heard, but WE'RE the REASON why the economy tanked and we must take layoffs, salary freezes, salary cuts, benefit cuts and pension cuts in order to make these a'right again.

So things are going to get worse for public sector workers for a long, long time to come.

Just ask Little Andy.

Woman Who Questioned Obama On Jobs At Forum Laid Off From Her Job

How ironic - the woman who offered some accountability to President Accountability at a CNBC forum back in October was laid off from her job:

Velma Hart, who burst onto the media scene after telling President Obama she was scared about her financial future, has been laid off. Hart was let go as the chief financial officer for Am Vets, a nonprofit Maryland-based veteran services organization.

Hart has become another casualty of the tough economy in which so many people have lost their jobs.

"It's not anything she did," said Jim King, the national executive director of Am Vets. "She got bit by the same snake that has bit a lot of people. It was a move to cut our bottom line. Most not-for-profits are seeing their money pinched." ...

Hart's comments to Obama became political fodder as proof that the president was losing his die-hard supporters - African American voters. Hart told me at the time that she still supported Obama but that she had expected more changes by now.

I dunno - I think there have been plenty of changes since President Accountability took office.

He renamed the federal bank bailout TALF (it had been named TARP under Bush.)

He renominated Ben Bernanke to the Federal Reserve instead of picking somebody who didn't, you know, help bring about the financial collapse of 2008.

He pulled troops out of Iraq and put them into Afghanistan.

He created a federal education policy that promotes testing in ALL subjects at ALL levels, not just in math and ELA as used to be done under the Bush policy.

He took unemployment from 7% and brought it to 9.6%.

And of course now he wants to raise the retirement age for Social Security to 69.

Come on, Velma, that's plenty enough change for me.

Frankly, I don't think the country can take any more of the kind of changes Obama brings with him.

Value-Added Analysis Of The Obama Record On Jobs

Nearly two years into the Obama administration, here is where the country's employment situation stands:

TODAY, the Bureau of Labour Statistics released the last set of American employment numbers to come ahead of the November Congressional elections. If the Democrats were looking for a boost from the numbers, they're sure to be disappointed—and then some. For the fourth month in a row, nonfarm payroll employment declined in September, by a total of 95,000 jobs. The unemployment rate held steady at 9.6%.

...

There is little to be positive about elsewhere in the report. The number of people working part-time for economic reasons jumped in September, and nearly 10 million Americans now fall into that category. Partially as a result, the statistic known as U-6, considered a more complete indicator of un- and under-employment, rose from 16.7% in August to 17.1% in September. The previously reported jobless figures for July and August were both revised down slightly. Aside from government employment, payrolls in good producing sectors had a rough month, and construction in particular was hard hit, shedding 21,000 jobs. Private services did better across the board, especially the leisure and hospitality sector, which added 38,000 employees. There is indeed a lot more leisure to go around in America these days.

The Obama administration predicted unemployment would top out at 9% without the stimulus.

The administration predicted unemployment would top out at 7.9% if the stimulus was passed.

As you can see from the report above, the unemployment rate has held steady at 9.6%.

The underemployment rate, a much more accurate picture of the labor market, increased to 17.1%.

To put it simply, the Obama administration has NOT added value to the employment market.

Dems in the Congress and the Senate will pay a price for that miserable record next month.

Obama will have to wait for his accountability moment for a few years.

But it's coming:

A new CNN/Opinion Research survey shows that Americans are now divided on their preference for Barack Obama or George W. Bush, with 47% saying Obama has done a better job as president than Bush and 45% saying Bush did a better job.

It's a marked change from the same time last year. When asked the same question late last year, 57% of Americans picked Obama, and 34% picked Bush.

Oh, yeah - that accountability moment is coming.

Somehow, Obama has managed to erase from the memories of Americans just how bad Bush was.

Heckuva job, Barack!!!!

Heckuva job.

Poverty Rate Soars

Times are hard:

Struggling New Yorkers dragged into poverty during the recession weren't surprised to hear that things have gotten worse at the bottom of the economic food chain.

...

Although citywide poverty statistics won't be available until later this month, local advocates for the poor said there are more New Yorkers in need.

The West Side pantry experienced a 21% jump in visitors this year while St. John's Bread and Life, Brooklyn's largest soup kitchen program, reported a 47% increase in the number of people it served.

"These are people who were just getting by before. They can't work any harder. They just can't make it," said Anthony Butler, executive director of St. John's Bread and Life.

One woman, who asked not to be named, was visiting a food pantry for the first time Thursday because she hasn't been able to find work since her son was born a year ago.

Her husband's job as a security officer is no longer enough to pay their new expenses.

"It's harder to make ends meet," she said, adding "Things are more difficult in every way."

1 out of every 7 people in this country now live in poverty.

The unemployment rate stands at 9.6%.

The underemployment rate stands at 18%.

People are hurting.

What has Barack Obama's response been?

Bail out Wall Street, cut food stamps by $11.9 billion, and move to raise the retirement age to 72 with his Cat Food Commission.

Change we can believe in?

Nope - corporate governance from a corporate Dem.

The change I can believe in is seeing Barack Obama going the way of Adrian Fenty.

How's That Economic Data Looking, Obama?

Barack Obama has a data fetish.

Outside of smoking cigarettes and playing basketball with Arne Duncan, there is nothing in this world Barack Obama likes better than looking over some data.

There has been a lot of economic data released this week that shows how well or not-so-well Obama has been doing as a steward of the nation's economy.

Let's take a look at some of that data:

More bad news hit the U.S. economy Friday as the Commerce Department released a revised forecast of economic growth that shows a decline to 1.6%.

The second-quarter numbers were initially forecasted to be 2.4%.

The economy grew at 3.7% rate in the first quarter.

This comes as Wall Street closed below 10,000 Thursday, a first since the beginning of July.

The dismal data has led to fears the country is headed for another recession.

"The economy is going to limp along for the next few months," Gus Faucher, an economist at Moody's Analytics, told The Associated Press. "There's even a one in three chance it could slip back into recession," he said.

The outlook for the third quarter isn't much better with economists expecting just a 1.7% growth.

Also, the private sector is not adding enough jobs to dent the unemployment rate, which remains stuck at 9.5%.

The sagging housing market has also been a drag on economic growth. Earlier this week, new home sales sunk to a record low in July and existing homes sales fell 27%.

Consumer spending in the second quarter grew 2%, from 1.9% in the first quarter.

The somber news comes as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will give a key speech to bankers Friday that will be aimed at restoring confidence in the economy.

"While we don't expect the chairman to brace the nation for a 'double dip,' he may warn that near-term growth could be insufficient to promote a sustained reduction in the country's 9.5% unemployment rate," Neal Soss of Credit Suisse Group, told the Wall Street Journal.

Keep in mind that Ben Bernanke was wrong about the housing market, wrong about the '08 recession and wrong about pretty much everything else, so just because Ben Bernanke doesn't think the economy is heading for recession doesn't mean it isn't heading for recession.

Mark Zandi says there is now a 33% chance of recession. A few weeks ago he said the chance of recession was 20%.

Nouriel Roubini says the chance of recession is 40%.

And Robert Schiller says the chance of recession is greater than 50%.

Yeah, the "data" is bad.

And yet somehow, President Data Fetish, so happy to use data to fire teachers, close schools and shame people publicly, doesn't want to take responsibility for his own miserable record on the economy and the "proof" we have in the form of the data.

Let me repeat:

9.5% unemployment.

19% underemployment.

Both heading higher.

1.6% GDP for Q2.

There will be one more revision for this number, so it could go even lower.

The number of home foreclosures in July actually fell for the first time since 2006, but the number of homeowners behind on payments has increased, meaning foreclosures are likely to increase again in the coming months.

And now the problem is people with prime loans, not people with subprime or Alt-A loans.

See, when people are unemployed or underemployed, they can't pay their mortgages or spend money to buy things.

This would be bad for the overall health of the economy.

But President Data Fetish, on his sixth vacation this year, seems wholly unconcerned about the situation.

He did have a conference call with his economic advisers about the weak economic data, but they decided not to change course on any of their policies.

And of course the financial "reforms" Obama touted as a major accomplishment of his have been a sham.

Banks are engaging in the exact same risky ventures and bets they did before the '08 financial crisis.

So don't look to Wall Street to stabilize this mess.

If Obama was a teacher in the LA school system, he'd see his name in the paper on Sunday under the heading "Bad President."

And while I am NOT a fan of value-added analysis of teachers or of publicly naming names in the paper in order to shame people to quit their jobs, in Obama's case, I think both are warranted.

Bloomberg and Klein Claim RttT Award "Vindicates" Their Education Policies

Seriously, that's what they said in a statement:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said in a statement that the awarding of the money was a vindication of their efforts.

“This win is a testament to what we’ve accomplished in the New York City schools over the last eight years, and we are going to work with our teachers and schools to raise the bar once again,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement.

Chancellor Klein said: “Race to the Top has been a tremendous catalyst for precisely the kind of education reform we’ve supported and implemented in New York City; now it is up to all of us to live up to this commitment and continue the important work that got us here.”

They used phonied test scores to rave about how they had closed the achievement gap between white and Asian students and black and Hispanic students.

That gap stands larger now than before they took over.

Same for the gap between students in schools with higher income populations and students in schools with lower income populations.

Meantime they close hundreds of schools, reopen them as charters but only take the cream of the crop into those schools while shunting the rest off to neighborhood schools which themselves are eventually declared "failing" and closed.

And the three card monte game of school closures continues ad infinitum, though somehow Bloomberg and Klein, now running the system for almost ten years, never take the blame for any of it.

And Bloomberg and Klein say the failed policies they have been pushing have been vindicated by their education deform cronies from the Gates and the Broad Foundations in the Obama administration handing them money for more of the same failed reforms?

Please.

The RttT boondoggle will be about as successful in education as Obama's HAMP mortgage plan has been at saving people from foreclosure.

Or his stimulus package has been at reducing the unemployment and underemployment rates.

Or his economic team has been at getting the economy revving again.

Or his foreign policy team has been at winding down the war in Afghanistan (now the longest war in U.S. history - even longer than Vietnam.)

Seriously, when the president has failed at almost everything else he has touched policy-wise, why should it be any different in education?

But the shills in the papers and on TV and at the ed deform blogs will wave their pom-poms and parrot the Bloomberg/Klein press releases.

Just wait until all of the children unfortunate enough to be in school during the Bush/Obama/Bloomberg years come of age.

Jobless Claims Jump, Philly Fed Index Shows Contraction

Just in case you're inclined to be as clueless about the seriousness of economic conditions as President Hopey/Changey, take a look at this mornings' business headlines:

Jobless claims jump to nine-month high
Initial filings up 12,000 in latest week to hit 500,000 mark, data show

Philly Fed Index shows contraction in August, first time since July 2009

U.S. stocks dig deeper hole after Philadelphia Fed drop

AIA: Architecture Billings Index shows contraction in July

Jobless claims need to be at or below 300,000 for there to be real job growth.

That claims are going the OTHER WAY and have hit 500,000 is very bad news indeed for the economy and the already unemployed.

If you're already an unemployed person, just try getting a job when more people are being laid off every week.

With economic activity as measured by the Philly Fed DECLINING (the index went from 5.1 reading in July to -7.7 in August), you can bet there will be more layoffs to come.

The August jobs report is going to be pretty bad.

The September and October reports may be even worse.

And President Obama and his yes boys and girls around him seem clueless - not only about what to do to spur job growth and economic activity, but clueless too about why the president's approval ratings have plummeted:

Democrats in Washington are divided and somewhat puzzled over President Obama’s fading popularity. They reject, of course, the Republican view that the president is basically a closet socialist whose disdain for free enterprise has alienated voters. But that’s about as far as the consensus goes.

In conversations over the past few weeks, some of the party’s leading strategists told me that it all comes down to messaging, or — here’s that ubiquitous word again — “framing.” The president who ran such a brilliant campaign, they argue, has utterly failed to communicate his successes. They cited factors like the president’s cool demeanor and suggested that he hadn’t used the right words or shown the proper empathy.

Uh, boys and girls at the White House, "framing the issues" and "showing empathy" are both important skills and/or qualities to have in politics and I would definitely say President Hopey/Changey is REALLY, REALLY bad at the empathy thing (he really does come across like he doesn't give a shit about anything except his next post-game cigarette with Arne Duncan), but the biggest, most important reason Obama's ratings have plummeted is THE FREAKING ECONOMY.

Jesus Christ, why can't these morons at the White House get their heads around the fact that no one outside the Village Hierarchy of Evan Thomas, David Broder and Jonathan Alter gives a shit that Obama got a bunch of legislation through.

What people care about are RESULTS.

How is the economy doing?

What's happening with employment?

Is my job safe?

Can I pay my mortgage and still buy food?

What are my health care costs like?

On ALL of these counts, Hopey/Changey has been a MISERABLE failure.

The economy got WORSE after he took office, steadied for a bit, and is getting WORSE again.

Unemployment, which the administration said would never get above 8% if Obama's stimulus package was passed, has held steady between 9.5% and 10% and is now RISING again as the economy worsens in the second half of the year.

And let's not forget that the unemployment rate is a BULLSHIT measure.

Underemployment - the number of people who are unemployed and looking for work, the number of people who are unemployed but have stopped looking for work BECAUSE THERE IS NONE, and the number of people who are working part-time but want full-time work - is at 19%.

Yeah - 19%.

Underemployment may hit 25% before long as layoffs ratchet up again and the economy continues to slow.

And let's not forget that states and municipalities haven't finished cutting hours and laying people off too.

Calculated Risk posts that California furloughs are back on again and Oregon is seeing a widening budget deficit and is considering cutting jobs and school and state services.

Conditions are growing worse.

People are scared.

Yet the man in charge in Washington - a fellow who has bragged about holding teachers accountable like no one has ever held them accountable before for stagnant test scores and poor graduation rates - can't seem to get his head around the fact that THE ECONOMIC DATA SUCKS and therefore people think HE SUCKS.

The Democratic Party will take it on the chin this November. They should. They have done little to mitigate the mortgage disaster, the unemployment problem, the way hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson use Wall Street like a Big Rigged Casino.

But the man who really deserves the accountability - President Obama - will not receive any this November. He and his political advisers have decided that losing the House to the GOP is EXACTLY what they want to happen.

That way they can run against the crazy Repubs running Congress who want to repeal the 14th Amendment and deport every Mexican busboy in every restaurant in the country just because they're, you know, Mexican.

But had President Obama actually used the economic crisis of 2008-2009 to reforge the bond between government and the people that FDR once built, to show Americans how government services can be used to help put people back to work, to increase economic activity, to make people's live better, we could have been in a better place economically and he could have been in a better place politically.

Instead we got that corporate-friendly THIRD WAY jive that Clinton was so fond of - if you add a government program, it must be in the form of some competitive grant that shifts the work to some private corporation because private enterprise is so much better than Big Government.

That's what Race to the Top was all about.

That's what so much of the stimulus stuff was.

You know, had they trained people to fix the infrastructure, the electrical grid, to repave roads that states can longer afford to keep paved, to make sure bridges in Minnesota (or anywhere else) do not collapse because they haven't been fixed, to build transit systems or fix existing ones, to build high speed rail along the Eastern Corridor so that people can travel rapidly and cheaply without going near an airport, Obama could have gone down into history as a great president who not only pulled the country out of the Great Recession but also made this country look great (and be safe) again.

Instead we got Race to the Top and the other jive. And Obama has 44% approval ratings and 500,000 new jobless claims this month and unemployment soon to reach 10% or higher again and GDP to hit 0%.

If the measures of accountability that the LA Times and the other ed deformers are using on teachers like a sledgehammer were applied to this president and the yes boys and girls around him, he would be vilified as the incompetent arrogant fool he is and out on his ass.

But I think we will have to wait until 2012 for that.

And unfortunately, as NYC Educator points out here, what comes AFTER Obama will be even worse.

It's a shame.

It didn't have to be this way.

Unemployment To Rise, Stock Market Heading For Meltdown

Calculated Risk on why he thinks unemployment is going to rise:

This morning, in the "Negative News Flow" post, I noted that the unemployment rate will probably start ticking up again soon.

Here are a few reasons why I think the unemployment rate will increase (some overlap):

1) The main reason is the general slowing economy. There is a general relationship between GDP and the unemployment rate (see Okun's Law), and since I expect a 2nd half slowdown (from a sluggish 1st half), I also expect few payroll jobs to be added in the 2nd half - and that suggests the unemployment rate will rise.

2) With the end of the housing tax credit, I expect residential construction employment to decline further over the next few months.

3) The 4-week average for initial weekly unemployment claims has increased recently. This is the highest level since February.

Robert Reich notes in his latest post that

More people are out of work today than were last year, counting everyone too discouraged even to look for work. The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to the highest level since February. Not counting temporary census workers, a total of only 12,000 net new private and public jobs were created in July -- when 125,000 are needed each month just to keep up with growth in the population of people who want and need to work.

Not since the government began to measure the ups and downs of the business cycle has such a deep recession been followed by such anemic job growth. Jobs came back at a faster pace even in March 1933 after the economy started to "recover" from the depths of the Great Depression. Of course, that job growth didn't last long. That recovery wasn't really a recovery at all. The Great Depression continued. And that's exactly my point. The Great Recession continues.

Oh, yes, the Great Recession - let's call it the Great Obama Recession - continues unabated.

And to make matters worse, Wall Street is abuzz with worries that the stock market is going to crash once traders come back from summer:

Forget about Friday the 13th. Many on Wall Street took to whispering about an even scarier phenomenon—the "Hindenburg Omen."

The Omen, named after the famous German airship in 1937 that crashed in Lakehurst, N.J., is a technical indicator that foreshadows not just a bear market but a stock-market crash. Its creator, a blind mathematician named Jim Miekka, said his indicator is now predicting a market meltdown in September.

...

Mr. Miekka came up with the Omen in 1995 as a way to predict big market downturns, developing a formula that parses data like 52-week stock levels and the moving averages of the New York Stock Exchange. He said the Hindenburg Omen's name was coined by a fellow market technician, Kennedy Gammage, when they found out the name "Titanic" already had been taken.

The confluence of data used by the Omen was officially tripped this week. There were 92 companies that hit new 52-week highs on Thursday, or 2.9% of all companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange. There were also 81 new lows, or 2.6% of the total. Each number must exceed 2.5% for the Omen to occur, according to Mr. Miekka.

Other criteria include a rising 10-week moving average for NYSE and a negative McClellan Oscillator, a technical indicator that measures market fluctuations. Mr. Miekka said the appearance of one signal is usually an indication of a market top, but the Omen becomes more accurate when there are two or more close together.

The Omen was behind every market crash since 1987, but also has occurred many other times without an ensuing significant downturn. Market analysts said only about 25% of Omen appearances have led to stock-market declines that can be considered crashes.

"The Hindenburg Omen does show some deteriorating internals, which signals some major concerns," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research. "But it isn't a reason to move to 100% in cash. We're taking a wait-and-see approach, but considering its recent history, we're considering it more than other indicators."

Take the Hindenburg Omen buzz with an extra large grain of salt, the point is that the markets have been volatile, Wall Street is full of uncertainty again and uncertainty can turn to fear very quickly.

And fear could mean the Dow and S&P plummeting below 2008 levels.

It would be nice if President Accountability were doing something about all of this, but he isn't.

He is vacationing instead.




Think of this summer as the economic analogue to Bush's August 2001 PDB.

Had Bush acted on that information, maybe 9/11 could have been averted.

Were President Accountability to stop listening to Larry Summers and Timmeh Geithner and actually take steps to put people back to work and reassure Americans they can and will find work if they look for it, maybe the coming economic disaster could be avoided.

But time is running short.

And Obama and company seem pretty oblivious to the warning signs.

Or they just don't give a shit.

Either way, they're not doing much of anything to stave off disaster.

When The Party Turns Its Back On People...

...people turn their backs on the party - as in the Democratic Party:

ALBION, Mich.—Michelle Rena Jones cheered when candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden visited south-central Michigan in 2008. She supported Mr. Obama that November along with a slate of Democrats, including Mark Schauer in the 7th congressional district.

Now, the 40-year-old is rethinking her lifelong support for the party. She has been without steady work for two years, lost her home and car and began receiving cash assistance from the state for the first time. This year, she says, "I'm willing to take a chance on something different." Another possibility, she says, is that she won't vote at all.

Ms. Jones is part of an unmeasured, agitated mass: unemployed Americans who don't believe the Obama Administration and Congress have done enough to produce jobs. With elections coming up, their unease is especially troublesome for the Democrats, who control both chambers.

A poor economy never bodes well for incumbents. Cook Report, the nonpartisan political newsletter that tracks congressional races, estimates that 73 House seats are vulnerable—including Mr. Schauer's. This group has two things in common. Almost all (66 of 73) are held by Democrats, and most include counties that have unemployment rates exceeding the national average, according to data assembled by The Wall Street Journal.

...

"The jobless are the new swing voters," says Rick Sloan, acting executive director of UCubed, a community service project of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. "You can talk about deficit reduction, health-care reform—you can talk about all those things but you're talking past the jobless voters."

Unemployment in the individual congressional districts "is the leading factor in determining the November elections," says Mark Gersh, one of the Democrats' top voting analysts. "The hope of the administration is it's trending down when the elections are held, but they're running out of time."

President Accountability got all smug when he saved Michael Bennet's corporate whore ass on Tuesday in the Colorado Senate primary.

Let's see how smug he looks in November when all those people who voted for HOPE and CHANGE in 2008 either don't vote for vote for a DIFFERENT kind of change.

And the same goes for 2012.

Obama and his handlers think they've got time to recover before 2012.

They're HOPING they lose the House so they can run against crazy House Republicans just like Bill Clinton did in 1996.

But there is a MAJOR difference between those days and now.

The economy was pretty good in 1996.

The trending for the economy right now is ANOTHER dip into negative GDP, continued high unemployment and lots and lots of scared people out there worried about paying their bills, keeping their homes, and having a job at the end of the day.

So stay smug, Accountability, cuz' the plan you have to save your own failed ass going into 2012 isn't going to work so well when the economy continues like this.

Republicans despise you.

Independents no longer trust you.

And even life-long Dems are looking for alternatives.

That's what happens when there ARE NO JOBS.

And blaming teachers and the public school system for the economic ills will only take you so far.

Sure, it plays well at Newsweek and the the Daily News, but something tells me the unemployed and underemployed people don't want to hear that shit.

They just want to go back to work and they want to see you doing something to help the economy create jobs.

Firing teachers and closing schools just ain't it.

Stock Market Lower For The Year

Down 265 for the Dow after the Fed signaled economy is up shit creek yesterday.

Here's how Reuters puts it:

(Reuters) - Stocks erased the year's gains in the broadest selloff in a month-and-a-half on Wednesday as fears of sustained global economic stagnation caused investors to flee to safer assets.

All three major indexes posted their worst percentage drop since July 16 following the Federal Reserve's bleaker assessment of the economy on Tuesday. The U.S. central bank said it would take steps to hold down borrowing costs. However, some traders questioned how effective these measures would be.

"Adding liquidity to the system by saying they would buy Treasuries isn't helping the average man on the street," said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Banyan Partners LLC in New York. "This isn't going to be creating jobs or helping the housing market."

Indeed, as I wrote yesterday, printing money and handing to the banksters for free will NOT put people to work or fix the housing market or help middle and working class people.

But silly Reuters writer, you're assuming the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration actually CARE about putting people to work.

They do not.

They care that Whitney Tilson and his hedge fund criminal friends continue to make money.

They care that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan continue to make money.

On both counts, all is well.

So fuck putting people to work or fixing the housing market or helping middle and working class people.

So long as the Masters of the Universe continue to live off the gigantic taxpayer-provided punchbowl first Bush and now Obama have created for them, nothing will change.

Now if the stock market continues to tank, well, THAT would be a different story...

Where Is The Accountability For Obama On The Economy?

The economy is a mess.

Unemployment still stands at 9.5%. Add in the people who stopped looking for jobs because the job market is so bad or the people working only part time but wanting full time work and you get a figure closer to 19% of the entire country either underemployed or unemployed.

That's just incredible.

Back in January 2009, the Obama administration said unemployment would rise to 9% WITHOUT the '09 stimulus package and projected unemployment to be closer to 8% with it.

Wow - were they REALLY wrong!

Unemployment hit double digits, has hovered between 9.5%-10% since and is expected to RISE again before the end of the year as GDP growth slows.

In fact 9% unemployment and 18% underemployment may be the new normal for the 21st century.

So what happened?

What happened is the stimulus package SUCKED.

It wasn't large enough, it didn't actually employ people, it was used for bullshit ideological items like giving Arne Duncan $4.3 billion in walking around money for Race to the Top.

Add to the unemployment problem the GDP problem. We're headed back into negative territory:

The government’s preliminary estimate for economic growth in the second quarter is likely to be revised substantially lower.

This preliminary estimate of gross domestic product growth, which was released on July 30, reported that the nation’s output grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the spring. This tepid growth was nothing to write home about, since it was a big step downward from growth rates in the previous two quarters. (The economy grew at an annual rate of 3.7 percent in the first quarter of the year, and 5 percent in the last quarter of 2009.)

But even that 2.4 percent annual rate is now looking too rosy.

Many of the inputs that government economists use to estimate G.D.P. each quarter are rough estimates based on incomplete data. Slowly, more complete data are rolling in.

As we noted last week, more complete data on the inventory component of G.D.P. shows that the overall growth rate was worse than expected.

And today, the Commerce Department reported that the trade deficit in June was wider than expected. Trade is also incorporated into the calculation of G.D.P., and a wider trade deficit means an even smaller gain gross domestic product.

Right now it’s looking like second quarter G.D.P. growth was only half as big as initially estimated.

“Combining the bigger-than-expected trade deficit with other weak data suggests that Q2 growth was only 1.2 percent rather than the 2.4 percent originally estimated, placing the economy on even shakier ground than it seemed,” wrote Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, “and underlining why the Fed has shifted towards an easing bias.”

It was in the second half of the year - Q3 and Q4 - when the stimulus money has completely faded away that GDP was expected to see a large drop.

If the drop is ALREADY happening in Q2, well, Q3 and Q4 may be REALLY ugly.

Wall Street finally woke up to that fact today. As of 1:00 PM, the Dow is down 248 points.

Now who knows, the Big Casino On Wall Street may end up for the day, but the long term picture remains the same.

Economic activity is decreasing.

Unemployment is as big a problem now as it was when Barack Obama first took office.

And it is going to get WORSE before it gets better.

It may be this bad FOR YEARS.

And yet, the only accountability we hear from the administration is for teachers.

There is NO accountability for Larry Summers, Timmeh Geithner or Barack Obama - the three men MOST responsible for the CURRENT economic mess.

And Ben Bernanke got renominated to the Federal Reserve, so there was no accountability there either.

Yes,the economic mess started under Bush. But the Obama people have done LITTLE to NOTHING to make things better.

Unfortunately before Barack Obama becomes a one term president and is himself unemployed, he will see many more people fired and laid off.

Many of those will be purposeful (i.e., teachers as part of the RttT and NCLB Jr. programs.)

Obama calls those firings "accountability."

It comes from all the testing data he wants tracked and collated.

Looking at the economic data, it is quite clear that Larry Summers, Timmeh Geithner and Barack Obama himself ought to be fired.

But silly, RBE - accountability isn't for THEM.

It is only for teachers.

Heckuva Job, Barack!!! Obama Admin Helps Corporate America Outsource Jobs While Domestic Job Market Tanks

President Accountability loves data and stats. Nothing makes him happier than tracking numbers, data and stats and then using that information to fire teachers, fire principals and close schools.

Well, right now the data for the Barack Obama administration isn't looking too good:

With the American economic recovery hanging in the balance, private employers added 71,000 jobs in July, up from a downwardly revised 31,000 in June but below the consensus forecast of 90,000. The unemployment rate stayed steady at 9.5 percent.

Over all, the nation lost 131,000 jobs last month, but those losses came as 143,000 Census Bureau workers left their temporary posts, the Labor Department said. June’s number was revised dramatically downward to a total loss of 221,000 jobs. The agency originally reported that the nation lost 125,000 jobs in June.

Figures released last week confirmed that the United States economy slowed in the spring, and the Department of Labor’s monthly statistical snapshot of hiring pointed toward a stall in hiring this summer, as employers failed to add jobs at the rate they were earlier this year.

With some economists predicting a “double dip” back into recession and the political stakes for the Obama administration rising as the weeks tick closer to the midterm elections, Friday’s unemployment report renewed pressure on lawmakers to consider the next steps they might take to bolster the economy. Recent indicators focusing on consumer confidence, retail sales and housing appear to put the economy in a holding pattern.

Earlier this week, a crucial index of manufacturing showed that activity had slipped slightly in July, chain stores reported anemic increases in sales and unemployment claims rose above the level usual for this stage of a recovery. On the more positive side, auto sales increased 5.1 percent in July compared with a year earlier, although from a very low base.

For now, companies appear nervous about expanding their payrolls. “Businesses just don’t want to hire,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics. “Workers are too costly and it’s very easy to substitute technology for labor.”

He added that with corporate earnings rising partly on the back of cost-cutting, employers are reluctant to give up profits. “So while corporate earnings were spectacular,” Mr. Sinai said, “the job market just stinks.”

Corporate profits are spectacular, but the job market stinks.

That's great!

Maybe Barack Obama should be doing something to hire Americans here at home, yes?

Except that he's not.

His administration is actually helping corporations outsource jobs abroad.

I'm not kidding.

Here's David Sirota on that:

In recent months, President Obama reversed his campaign promises on trade issues - first by dropping his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA and then by pushing to pass NAFTA-style trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Now, with the unemployment crisis persisting, the key jobs question is once again front a center in American politics. Specifically: How do we create jobs here at home and build our most valuable 21st century industries?

The first and foremost answer is that our government should stop doing stuff like the program described in this stunning new report from Information Week:

U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs...

The outsourcing program (is) sure to draw the most fire from critics. While Obama acknowledged that occupations such as garment making don't add much value to the U.S. economy, he argued relentlessly during his presidential run that lawmakers needed to do more to keep hi-tech jobs in IT, biological sciences, and green energy in the country.

Now look, I'm all for a robust foreign aid budget - we don't do nearly enough to help the developing world. However, using foreign aid money to specifically help private corporations "take advantage of low labor costs" in the developing world - that's not "aid," that's rank taxpayer subsidization of for-profit exploitation.

Right now, Even if we do not reform our atrocious trade policies that incentivize the ongoing wage-cutting race to the bottom, the least we should be doing is investing every single available dollar we have in job training and job creation here at home. Doing the opposite - actually using public dollars to intensify that wage-cutting race to the bottom - is grotesque.

Indeed it is grotesque, but not a surprise from a president who only listens to a couple of cronies when it comes time to get advice for policy and then sticks with both the cronies and the advice even when they and it are wrong.

So Larry Summers and Timmeh Geithner have the president's ear and nobody else with contrary ideas gets to offer them.

So here we are, almost two years after the 2008 election, and job losses are starting to accelerate again even as corporate profits are "spectacular."

What exactly has changed from the Bush administration economic policies to the Obama administration's policies?

Leaving aside the idiots like Palin and Bachmann who call Obama a socialist, this administration seems very comfortable making sure the corporations are doing "spectacular," while working people are struggling.

And don't get me started about how Obama cut food stamps so he could save his RttT/Fire Teachers program..

Obama To Veto Teacher Jobs Bill

Apparently President Hopey/Changey prefers spending federal money on "education reforms" and "data tracking" rather than keeping teachers employed:

The House approved a war spending bill on Thursday with a provision that would include $10 billion to help school districts avoid educator layoffs, paying for the effort, in part, with $800 million in cuts to several of President Obama’s key education initiatives.

The $80 billion bill would pay for the 30,000 additional troops ordered to Afghanistan.

The education measure provoked fierce debate, especially because it would reduce by $500 million the award money available to three dozen states that have submitted proposals in Round 2 of the Obama initiative, the Race to the Top competition.

To become law, the legislation needs Senate approval. The White House said in a statement that if the final bill included cuts to education reforms, Mr. Obama would most likely veto it.

“It would be short-sighted to weaken funding for these reforms,” the White House said.

Using stimulus money voted on last year, the Department of Education awarded $500 million to Tennessee and $100 million to Delaware in March, and has promised to distribute the $3.4 billion that remains among additional winning states this year. The House bill would reduce the money available to $2.9 billion.

Teachers’ unions lobbied for weeks for federal money to avert what the administration estimates could be hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs.

Several dozen charter school and other advocacy groups lobbied fiercely against cutting Race to the Top, which rewards states promising to overhaul teacher evaluation systems and shake up school systems in other ways.

Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, a longtime ally of the teachers’ unions, unveiled the school jobs provision late Tuesday. In Thursday’s debate, he called Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s objections to trimming Race to the Top “a joke.”

Even with the proposed $500 million cut, Mr. Duncan still has about $3 billion left that “he can spend any way he wants,” Mr. Obey said.

So Obama will actually VETO a jobs bill that would keep teachers employed if that money comes out of his education reform/Race to the Top initiative.

The RttT money CANNOT be used to save teacher jobs.

It can only be used to close "failing schools," build "data-tracking systems" to collect and collate test scores, and other like reform measures.

That's change we can believe in?

Nope - that's lots of unemployed teachers, larger class sizes and chaos in the public schools all across this nation.

It does go to show what President Hopey/Changey actually cares about, however.

If the choice is between paying off Education Management Organization cronies and forcing school districts to fire teachers and close "failing" schools or keep teachers employed, President Hopey/Changey is going with paying off Education Management Organization cronies and forcing school districts to fire teachers and close "failing" schools.

Call the White House and let 'em know what you think about Hopey/Changey's policy:

202-456-1111.

POSTSCRIPT: Jobs data for June showed the economy losing 125,000 jobs - the worst monthly report since October 2009. The unemployment rate dropped from 9.7% to 9.5% because discouraged workers have stopped looking for work and/or the long-term unemployed no longer qualify for unemployment money and thus are no longer counted in the stats.

Those are NOT good numbers.

In addition, private sector hiring is slowing while states and local governments are beginning to lay off employees.

School districts will be laying off thousands of teachers if the jobs bill money doesn't come through.

Unemployment may now hit double digits before the end of the year.

But Hopey/Changey refuses to keep teachers employed.

Instead he continues to dangle money to cash-starved states, but only if they do the "reforms" he and Arne and the Gates/Broad Foundation people want.

Not enough bad stuff can happen to this administration come November.

And given how the economy is losing steam and tipping toward recession, it looks like lots of bad stuff will happen to them.

House and Senate Dems should call Obama's bluff on the veto.

Make him veto the war bill and explain to the country why it is he thinks charter school and merit pay funding are more important than money for troops or money for working teachers.

Obama Administration: 9.7% Unemployment Is Fine

The Obama administration forecast unemployment to fall to 6.5% by the end of 2011 if their stimulus package was passed and implemented.

They predicted 7.5% if the stimulus was not passed and implemented

Unemployment currently stands at 9.7%.

Reliable forecasters says it will hover around the 9.7%-10% range through the end of 2011.

Unemployment was 6.5% when Barack Obama was elected.

And the administration seems to be more worried about the deficit than actually putting people back to work (HINT: Put people back to work, get the economy revving again, the deficit becomes less of a problem.)

So we will get no new stimulus, no FDR jobs programs that put people to work while investing in the country and rebuilding the infrastructure.

This sounds like a miserable statistical failure even by the administration's own standards to me.

Question: Isn't it time for an administration "turnaround" where all the economic advisers and the president have to reapply for their jobs?

Based upon prior performance of economic policy (lots of bailout cash and gutted regulations for Wall Street, few actual jobs programs for Main Street, horrific long-term unemployment rate, persistently high unemployment), I'm pretty sure we won't be rehiring some of them back.

Maybe all of them.