Omission Watch: Job Creation Staggering at ‘Slowest Post-Recession Rate Since Great Depression’
May 21, 2011 No Comment
Here’s more figures suggesting most media outlets are skipping around the bad economic news. On the front of Friday’s USA Today was this story by Dennis Cauchon: Nearly two years after the economic recovery officially began, job creation continues to stagger at the slowest post-recession rate since the Great Depression. The nation has 5% fewer jobs today — a loss of 7 million — than it did when the recession began in December 2007. That is by far the worst performance of job generation following any of the dozen recessions since the 1930s. In the past, the economy recovered lost jobs 13 months on average after a recession. If this were a typical recovery, nearly 10 million more people would be working today than when the recession officially ended in June 2009…. This unique recession has been particularly unfriendly to job-seekers, experts say. “There was too much employment in housing, and that isn't coming back — and frankly shouldn't come back,” says Amar Bhide, a Tufts University professor The housing collapse and productivity gains on the factory floor have made it hard for the economy to absorb workers without a college degree and young people generally, says Carl Camden, president of Kelly Services, a global staffing firm. Manufacturers are producing more value than ever in the USA with a fraction of the workers needed before, he says.
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Women on the frontline of demonstrations against Syria’s brutal regime are now being targeted by security forces They came for the men first, as the security forces of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad killed, beat and arrested people protesting against his regime. Next, they came for the women of Syria’s revolution. Despite the threats, however, they refuse to be silenced. As the violence has become worse, women activists have organised a Friday protest of Free Women showing solidarity with those seized or killed. Women-only protests in towns across the country have led the effort to let the outside world know what is happening in Syria. But they are now being targeted as well, with the same lethal brutality. Two weeks ago three women were shot dead at an all-women march near the besieged city of Banias. A week later human rights activist Catherine al-Talli, 32, was detained in the Barzeh district of Damascus after being forced off a minibus when it was stopped at a checkpoint by the secret police. Others, such as Razan Zeitouneh, whose husband has been arrested, have been forced into hiding as evidence emerges that the regime is targeting relatives of those it is seeking to arrest. Yesterday it was Zeitouneh who reported that the final death toll for the latest crackdown on Friday protests by the regime had been 30. Twelve were reported dead in Ma’aret al-Nu’man, south of Syria’s second city Aleppo, after tanks entered the town earlier in the day to disperse protesters; 11 in the central city of Homs and seven in Deraa, Latakia, the Damascus suburbs and Hama. “Reem” – we have changed her name to protect her family – spoke to the Observer from Syria last week. Aged 22, she is expecting her first child in the next few weeks. Her husband, an anti-regime activist, has been arrested twice and is now in detention. Her father was invited to a meeting with a senior member of the regime and detained afterwards. Reem has been arrested once. In common with activist friends, she expects a knock on her door from the security forces at any moment. She is still ready to risk prison by talking about the murderous repression in her country. “I have women friends who have been arrested like me,” she said. “But then they just go out again to protest. One of my friends was arrested for collecting medical supplies for the people in Deraa. She was beaten at the security branch and they forced her to take off her headscarf. She was held for two weeks and released two days ago. “She is very enthusiastic and active. She is getting ready to protest again. The only thing that is keeping me at home right now is that I’m expecting a baby in two weeks.” For now, Reem has to content herself with reporting what she has seen and what she knows, which is dangerous enough in a country where the international media are largely banned. “If you tell the truth,” she said, “there is a big chance of arrest. You risk being beaten and being treated with no dignity.” That treatment was described last week by Dorothy Parvaz, an al-Jazeera journalist who was arrested by the Syrians in Damascus and encountered a number of terrified young women in the security barracks where she was held. Upon her release, Parvaz described how two of the young women she met had simply been plucked off the street for no apparent reason. “One had been there for eight days when I met her,” wrote Parvaz last week. “And she looked ill. The food we were given three times a day – fetid, random and at times rotting – mostly had the effect of making her vomit, but she was too hungry to stop eating .” Reem has an explanation for the detention of these young women. “They have been arresting anyone with a phone they see in the streets,” she said. “They do not want anyone to take pictures, to tell the world what is happening.” Reem describes seeing one young woman being dragged by security forces into a shop at a demonstration. “We saw a young girl and some security men in civilian clothes. They grabbed her by the head and dragged her off, calling her a traitor. She said: ‘I’m not a traitor!’ They pulled her into a shop and we tried to reach her, but they shut the door on us and then took her somewhere else. “Women have played a really important role since the first protests in March – non-violent activists like myself and the mothers and sisters of prisoners of conscience.” And the part women are playing has become ever more important. “In some areas,” says Ameera, a human rights lawyer, “so many of the men have been killed, arrested or injured it is the women who have been left to protest. The biggest problem is trying to find the people who have disappeared. The security forces won’t say where they are, and the families are afraid to speak out.” For some – like Ameera – the threat has succeeded in persuading them to stay at home. She now feels unable to protest. “It feels like you are waiting for your turn to be arrested. I am expecting to be arrested at any moment. I am not scared for myself, but I am afraid for my family.” Arab and Middle East unrest Women in politics Bashar Al-Assad Syria Middle East Gender Women Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk
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At a function commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first live presidential news conference Monday, veteran journalists bemoaned the fact that the press are too “timid” at such events today. On Thursday, “Red Eye's” Greg Gutfeld pointed out that this is because “The media loved President Obama from the moment their gazes met from across that smoky room…So all the smart folks knew that from the start, Obama's honeymoon would outlive most marriages” (video follows with transcript and commentary): GREG GUTFELD: So some veteran journalists have piled on the current roster of White House correspondents, accusing them of being too nice to Captain Perfect. This happened during a media shindig Monday, marking the 50th anniversary of the first live televised news conference by JFK. Now, some blame the 24 hour news cycle for making press conferences less important, boring, and more staged. Maybe so. But I think these old coots are avoiding the real culprit behind these mundane conferences, and that is this: The press got their guy. The media loved President Obama from the moment their gazes met from across that smoky room. They accepted him unconditionally, for he is one of them: an academic liberal, progressive crusader, Democrat, West Wing fan, closet smoker. On the other hand, he was the first black President – and you know how the media hates that sort of thing. So all the smart folks – i.e. me and my masseuse Antonio – knew that from the start, Obama's honeymoon would outlive most marriages. For the media to turn on Obama, he'd have to renounce Lady Gaga or worse kitten videos. That's why watching a press conference, and expecting a “truth to power” moment, is like watching The View and expecting coherence. Other than a mild risk-free display of angst for the sake of theater, forget about any kind of defiance. It's just rude. But the real folly is watching these old reporters criticizing the new crop for being timid. Cuz something tells me they'd be doing the same thing. They're just mad they aren't there to do it. And if you disagree with me, you sir are worse than Hitler. To be sure, in the past 29 months, there have been moments when it seemed the honeymoon was ending, but the love being expressed for Obama by so-called journalists today is possibly deeper and more disgraceful than what we saw in 2008 when he was first running for president. Suddenly every Republican presidential candidate is a racist. His possible female opponents, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, are too stupid for the job. Even liberals having the nerve to criticize the current White House resident are being disparaged for doing so. Others are allegedly having a hard time getting their anti-Obama pieces published. Yes, the media got their guy, and they're going to do everything in their power to keep him.
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Labour leader sets out mission to regain trust of voters by admitting to past mistakes and pledging to tackle inequality Ed Miliband has said the Labour party must offer a new national mission to win back voters who deserted them for the Conservatives. In a speech to the Progress thinktank in London, Miliband pledged to tackle the “new inequality” between the rich and the rest of society, but also admitted the gap had grown under the last Labour government. The party would only succeed in regaining power if it could counter the “shrivelled, pessimistic, austere” vision of David Cameron and the Conservatives, he said. In a direct pitch to middle-class voters in the south of England, Miliband said their living standards were being squeezed in the same way as those in poorer parts of the country. Labour needed the humility to acknowledge that the inequality between “those at the top and everyone else” had grown under the last Labour government, although the coalition was exacerbating the problem. “Inequality is no longer an issue just between rich and poor. But between those at the top and those both in the middle and on lower incomes,” he said. “Since 2003, those at the top have seen their living standards continue to rise at extraordinary rates, while those of the rest have stagnated. “This is about the middle-income people in the south of England and elsewhere who don’t consider themselves rich even though they may be higher-rate taxpayers.” Miliband said the recent local elections showed that the party was winning back disaffected Liberal Democrat voters who felt betrayed by their leadership, but it had yet to make inroads into the Conservative vote. To win back those former Labour voters, the party needed to own up to its past mistakes, including being too relaxed about the impact of cheap migrant labour on wages, he said. “Eastern European immigration did place downward pressure on wages. People can argue about the extent. We were too relaxed about that.” Miliband offered little policy detail in his speech, focusing instead on his broad vision of how Labour would approach the next general election. He attacked what he said was the Conservatives’ “almost Maoist contempt” for any institution that did not conform to their ideological beliefs. “That’s why they tried to sell off our ancient forests. It’s why [universities minister] David Willetts saw nothing wrong with the suggestion that the wealthy should be able to buy their way into university,” he said. However he warned that the party could not afford to simply “hunker down and benefit from an unpopular government”. “I hear it quite a lot – let’s be a louder, prouder opposition,” he said. “But to think that is enough is to fail to understand the depth of the loss of trust in us and the scale of change required to win it back.” He said he was committed to tackling Britain’s budget deficit, but that the current government’s austerity measures were loading more of the financial burden on to those who were already struggling. Improving jobs and wages would mean “asking less of the state”, although he did not eloborate on whether this meant something akin to Cameron’s “big society”. “The truth is that we cannot create a society that is equal to the aspirations of the British people in a world of wide and growing inequalities – a world in which there are bailouts for bankers and austerity for the rest. “Asking more of our economy, good jobs and wages, means asking less of the state. At times, we hung on to a picture of Britain in which people were either poor, and desperately in need of our help, or affluent, aspirational, and doing OK. “We failed to understand that for millions of people in the middle, life was becoming more and more difficult. “In the future the Labour offer to aspirational voters must be that we will address the new inequality by hard-wiring fairness into the economy.” The Conservative party deputy chairman, Michael Fallon, dismissed the speech, saying the Labour leader had failed to set out a credible alternative. “He says the public want more from his party and he’s right, they want to know his plan to deal with the appalling deficit that the last Labour government left the country,” he said. Ed Miliband Labour Equality Recession Economics guardian.co.uk
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enlarge I’ll bet that you didn’t know that one of the real advantages for women getting caught up in today’s scheduled Rapture is that it makes your boobs perky. Very perky. enlarge I have no idea what it will do for guys. But my guess is that Viagra won’t be needed. In the meantime, the rest of us damned-for-all-eternity schlubs are looking forward to the Tribulation, because it means we won’t have to put up with smug Bible-thumping zombies any more. Woo hoo! The thing is, Pastor Camping’s prophecy is really rather grim : Click here to view this media “The whole universe is going to be destroyed by fire,” said California preacher Harold Camping… and the whole world listened. It’s his second apocalyptic prophecy promising the end on May 21st. He got the doomsday date wrong in 1994. This time it seems more people are talking about it largely in part because he’s spreading it online. His website sent out customized warnings in nearly every language. This all reminds me of our old friends at the Church Universal and Triumphant, Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s cult who made for some interesting journalistic work back in the 1980s and ’90s in Montana : Primarily due to its doomsday predictions and attempts to establish a self-sufficient community on its 32,000 acre ranch in Montana, the Church Universal and Triumphant has come into considerable conflict with local residents and federal officials alike. The church was propelled into the national spotlight when Prophet predicted a massive Soviet missile strike on the United States for April 23, 1990. She now states that this date did not mean nuclear holocaust, but rather marked the beginning of a 12 year cycle of negative karma for the organization. Nevertheless, members from around the world streamed to the group’s ranch, paying up to $12,000 each for space in one of the underground bomb shelters built by staff members. The state of Montana has since banned the church from ever using the shelters again. My recollection was that when the date came and went, Prophet declared that the cult’s fervent prayers had convinced the Lord to spare the Earth for now — so they saved the world and then went home. I rather expect we’ll hear something like that on Sunday, too.
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Marine experts are still monitoring around 60 whales which had been in danger of a mass stranding on South Uist in Scotland Around 60 pilot whales at risk of beaching themselves in shallow waters off the Western Isles are out of immediate danger, rescuers have said. The whale pod, which caused alarm after swimmming into the Loch Carnan, a small remote sea loch on South Uist on Thursday, has calmed down and moved out of the shallows and into open water, according to members of the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) . Although the animals could swim back into the loch, there was currently no sign of the whales there, the group said. Dave Jarvis, from BDMLR, said: “They seem to be doing fine at the moment. They seem to be a lot calmer and are not as noisy as yesterday. The volunteer rescue team will remain on station until the situation is resolved.” Some of the whales have injuries to their heads, thought to have been sustained when they struck the rocky shoreline of the loch. The BDMLR dispatched nearly all its whale floatation devices from across the UK in case the mammals beached, and rescuers remain on standby with the inflatable pontoons to help float any stranded whales. A pod of around 35 pilot whales was involved in a similar emergency at Loch Carnan, a small and narrow loch near the northeastern corner of the island, last October. After being watched closely by the BDMLR, the SSPCA and the coastguard, they went back to sea. But less then a week later the same pod is believed to have been involved in a mass stranding in County Donegal in Ireland, when 33 pilot whales were found dead on a beach. Pilot whales are among the most common cetaceans, and the adult male can grow to 20ft long. Whales Marine life Scotland Animals guardian.co.uk
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enlarge Credit: AP Shooter in custody at Heritage High – a lot of that going around in 1999. Click here to view this media A month to the day after the tragic shootings at Columbine High, another in a long line of gun violence at school happened, this time at Heritage High in Conyers Georgia outside Atlanta . The shooter, a Sophomore by the name of Thomas Solomon, distraught over a recent breakup, decided it was a good idea to go maladroit and take his grief out on unsuspecting kids who were just trying to get through the school year in one piece. The result was the wounding of six students and a distraught Solomon, tackled to the ground as he contemplated pulling the trigger on himself. And once again, the hands of the nation were firmly holding up shocked heads as yet another school shooting unfolded on live TV. And so the news of that day in 1999 was pretty much taken over by that event, with words of shock, proclamations and resolutions to end gun violence in our schools being voiced on Capitol Hill. And meanwhile, Chemical giants F. Hoffman La Roche and BASF were handed hefty fines over the Vitamin Scandal which saw them rigging prices on Vitamin C among other supplements. Interesting when you consider BASF was very big in the “Arbeit Macht Frei” movement in the 1930′s and ’40′s. But that’s another whole story, along with Bayer. They giveth, they taketh away. And so May 20, 1999 as presented by CBS Radio News.
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Sensational Rapture headlines have dominated the media recently, but is that what you really should be paying attention to?
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From Broadmoor to boardroom, they’re everywhere, says Jon Ronson, in an exclusive extract from his new book It was visiting hour at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital and patients began drifting in to sit with
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Business secretary says politicians have not made clear the time and pain needed to restructure Britain’s broken economic model Vince Cable has warned that the political class has not yet prepared the public for the scale of the underlying problems facing the UK economy and the coming squeeze on living standards. In a frank interview with the Guardian the business secretary repeatedly referred to the time and pain that will be needed to restructure what he regards as a broken economic model. “It is a challenge to us to communicate it better. I don’t think it is understood that the British economy declined 6 or 7% – [that is] 10% below trend,” Cable said. “We are actually a poorer country, mainly because of the banking crash, the recession that followed it and partly due to the squeeze we are now under from the changing balance of the world economy.” He argued: “Britain is no longer one of the world’s price setters. We take our prices from international commodity markets driven by China and India. That is something we have got to live with and adjust to. It is painful. It is a challenge to us in government to explain it. The political class as a whole is not preparing the public for how massive the problem is.” He expresses frustration that “the debate about the economy is in the wrong place,” partly blaming Labour for still being in a state of denial that its golden decade of growth had been built on an unsustainable model of financial services. “There is not a sustained critique, pressure or argument from the progressive wing of politics. Ultimately it comes back to this defensiveness and an unwillingness to accept that Britain was operating a model that failed … it makes it more difficult for us to get through to the public about the scale of the problem. That is to everyone’s loss.” He said: “As a country we are going to have to go through some very big major structural changes, but if the dominant debate is ‘Well, what is the problem? Why are we all doing this stuff? It is not really necessary.’ Of course it makes it more difficult.” Cable, one of five Liberal Democrat ministers in the cabinet, said it was realistic for the coalition to eradicate the structural deficit by the end of this parliament, adding “our credibility hinges on it”. But he does not convey optimism about growth in the short term. “The fact is that we are now having to get used perhaps to lower growth and a gradual process of building the economy up again.” He said: “We have had a very, very profound crisis which is going to take a long time to dig out of. It is about the deficit, but that is only one of the symptoms. We had the complete collapse of a model based on consumer spending, a housing bubble, an overweight banking system – three banks each of them with a balance sheet larger than the British economy. It was a disaster waiting to happen and it did happen. It has done profound damage and it is damage that is going to last a long time.” He predicted the impact on people’s lives will not come primarily from government spending cuts, but the squeeze in living standards caused by world prices and a 20% devaluation of sterling against other major currencies. Without questioning the growth forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility, he stressed the uncertainty of external factors. “We cannot predict what is going to happen in the eurozone, and how that is going to impact on us, and we cannot predict what is going to happen to oil prices.” Cable recently wrote that “economic policymaking is like driving a car with an opaque windscreen, a large rearview mirror and poor brakes”, and told the Guardian the metaphor applied to Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, as he made the big calls on monetary policy designed to spur growth. More broadly, he said: “The danger is over-confidence — the belief that the government can control everything in the economy. Governments cannot. Economic management is difficult.” He also denied the government is locked into a cycle of more spending cuts if growth slows. He said: “What is not often acknowledged is that there is a lot of flexibility built into current policy. The main element of flexibility is in monetary policy and the second is the basic Keynesian stabilisers. That is the way the government is functioning. We are not trying to maintain budget balance come what may. If the economy slows down, the deficit temporarily has to rise to take account of cyclical change, flexibility is built in.” Cable expressed disappointment that tribalism has returned to politics in the wake of the AV referendum, admitting it will be difficult for his party in the short term. But he claimed the change could be turned to Nick Clegg’s advantage. “There is now a large constituency of people out there who, for want of a better word, are de-tribalised, who hate the ya-boo, left-right debate who are looking for a home, and in a way that is our constituency. Blair appealed to that [group] a decade ago, successfully.” He said despite the vitriol directed at his party during the local elections, it had retained a base of 15% from which it can build. Vince Cable Economic policy Economic growth (GDP) Economics Liberal-Conservative coalition Public sector cuts Public services policy Public finance Liberal Democrats Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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