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Open thread May 5, 2012

Dan Crawford | May 5, 2012 7:12 am

Tags: open thread Comments (5) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
5 Comments
  • Jack says:
    May 5, 2012 at 12:09 pm

    Looking at the jobs reports.  What’s a curious reader to do?  The NY Times discusses the jobs report at the most superficial level and completely disregards any reference to losses in the public sector brought on primarily by Republican control of state and local governments.  See here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/us/politics/job-numbers-become-instant-campaign-fodder.html?pagewanted=2&hp

    Why is this important? As the WaPo points out public job losses account for a mighty big portion of the total job losses over the past several years and there has been no improvement in this sector to date.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/threat-from-mounting-public-job-losses-tested-obamas-economic-strategy/2012/04/29/gIQAhJpMqT_story_2.html

    Why are public sector jobs, especially teachers, being shed in such large numbers?  Ask a Republican economist and he gives you opinion without reference to real data.  “Andrew Biggs, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that nobody wants people to lose their jobs unnecessarily but that it was right for the federal government not to do more to save these positions, because state and local governments had become bloated.”
    Another “expert” in governance from the great state of Kentucky puts it this way,  “We’re not going to get this economy going by growing the government,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last year. “It’s the private sector that’s ultimately going to drive the recovery.”

    Not all economic analysts share the Republican view that public employees add little to the health of the economy.  “The job losses at state and local governments is the most serious weight on the job market,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who has advised both parties.”

    The Republican Party on a national, state and local level has been doing all that it can to interfere with an economic recovery for the past four years.  I guess racism trumps patriotism.  Or is it elitism trumps populism?   And they offer us Mitt “the job creator?” Romney whose career in arbitrage investing (on a company by company basis) traded jobs for quick profits repeatedly.  Suddenly, accordiing to the NY Times article, he has found the light and makes this ludicrous suggestion,  “Speaking on the campaign trail in Pittsburgh, Mr. Romney said the economy ought to be adding 500,000 jobs a month — a growth rate the United States has achieved only five times in the last 50 years — and that any unemployment rate above 4 percent was a cause for concern.”

    If the voting public can’t see through the most bald faced deceipt coming from such a disloyal opposition then the economy is certainly doomed to a third world status and we will all suffer while the reactionary fringe takes control at the behest of the financial elite of the country.  As Linda points out in her post above, the heart of the Republican beast lies in the belly of the elites, “Ryan offers bill to end sequester in bid to stop automatic defense cuts.” The Hill

  • coberly says:
    May 5, 2012 at 3:21 pm

    Jack

    yes, it’s a bit like the passengers all singing “nearer my god to thee” as the Titanic sinks below the waves.

    no point in launching the lifeboats.  that would send the wrong message to the markets.

  • PJR says:
    May 5, 2012 at 10:00 pm

    Maybe it all starts to make sense if the GOP goal to privatize everything. The only government the GOP seems to need: elected/bought poilticians. Their job is to dole out some money (collected from the middle class) to private firms for corporate services deemed “essential” by the lobbyists with the most cash.

  • coberly says:
    May 6, 2012 at 1:04 pm

    PJR

    it makes about as much sense as a school “fight song.”  We are not talking about thinking here, we are talking about getting people to vote for your candidate.  That is an exercise in fantasy and self deception. Always has been.

    The trouble with the Democrats is not that they can’t concoct a counter fantasy… a nicer one perhaps. that would cheer the fight for better policy… as that they have sold out to the corps and don’t deliver on even the illusion of a decent policy.

    Both sides just keep telling the same old (respectively) lies, because they know the voters vote for the lie, not the policy.

  • PJR says:
    May 6, 2012 at 4:19 pm

    Exactly. It’s a lie that keeps on giving because it “makes sense” to voters who don’t think very hard. Even the lie that privatizing Medicare and Social Security, ala Ryan’s Roadmap, will “save” the systems works with more than a few voters. Eliminating public school teachers will lead more voters to support school vouchers, because the private sector–not government–is offered as the answer to the question of how to improve our educational system. There’s almost no end to this simple, effective lie. (For those who want a smaller military: Halliburton and Blackwater can help with that!)  

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