Still Not Gone, Still NOT Clean
Posted: January 7, 2011 Filed under: Environment, Environmental Protection, Gulf Oil Spill, New Orleans, toxic waste | Tags: 10 year old poisoned by corexit, Marshes dying from BP Oil, no clean up crews for BP oil mess, Oil in the Gulf, petrochemicals in human blood 25 Comments
THEN.
Well, it’s time for my bimonthly rant about the total lack of concern by any one above the I-10 on the fact we’re still swimming in oil down here. The Cost Guard is still doing the Dosey-Do. Obama doesn’t swim here so he doesn’t care. There was some MSM press coverage.
Hello? Is any body there?
PORT SULPHUR, Louisiana — Federal and Louisiana officials got into a heated argument Friday over the cleanup of oiled marshes during a tour of an area that remains fouled 8½ months after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
State and Plaquemines Parish officials took reporters on a boat tour of Barataria Bay, pointing out an area where oil continues to eat away at marshes and protective boom is either absent or has been gobbled up by the oil. The heavily saturated area that reporters saw was 30 feet to 100 feet wide in sections. No cleanup workers were there when reporters toured the area.
The marshes are critical to the Louisiana coast because they protect the shore from hurricanes and serve as a nursery for Gulf sea life.
“This is the biggest cover-up in the history of America,” Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser told reporters, gesturing with his gloved right hand, which was covered in oil.
Nungesser was accompanied by Robert Barham, the secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
As the two were answering questions from reporters, representatives from the U.S. Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration interrupted to point out that a plan is being developed to clean up the marshes. They also insisted that the government has not abandoned the Gulf, nor has it lost sight of the fact that BP is a responsible party.
“Clearly there is oil here in the marsh but we are working as a team to find a best way to clean it up,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer. “It’s a high priority.”
RIGHT NOW.
You could tell it’s a high priority.
There were no clean up crews.
There was oil everywhere.
People down here are getting pretty tired of the excuses.
We’ve heard enough of them since Katrina and Rita.
Our Dismal Job Market
Posted: January 7, 2011 Filed under: Barack Obama, Breaking News, financial institutions, Global Financial Crisis, jobs, Team Obama, The Great Recession, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: Gene Sperling, labor force participation rate, long term unemployment, rigid wages, Sticky wages, unemployment 11 Comments
Economists–well at least NeoKeynesian economists that look at data–frequently use words like “rigid” and “sticky” to describe the jobs market. Rigid is a good word. It means “deficient in or devoid of flexibility”. The Labor Markets are the biggest empirical hurdles to jump if you want to buy into some variant of supply-side economics or NeoClassical economics.
Wages and quantities of labor used to adjust very slowly. They appear to be dismally slow these days. Part of this is obviously due to outsourcing. The substitution of foreign (e.g. outside of our borders; legal status really doesn’t matter for purposes of macro growth) for US-based workers seems to have made the NeoKeynesian assumptions of sticky and rigid wages even more so.
What’s very interesting about today’s BLS report on jobs is that the unemployment rate inched down but the fundamentals in the job market don’t appear to be changing much. Plus, the unemployment rate inched down based on the way it’s calculated by more than anything else. It’s not really fooling people that know economics or finance, but will the public at large embrace the nuance? A huge portion of the populace is simply leaving the job market.
Felix Salmon explains some of the nuances in his Reuters Blog today called “No good news for the long-term unemployed”. He focuses on some of the buried numbers rather than the top number. Yes, he has a nifty graph you should check that out too.
The December jobs report turns recent history on its head. We’ve been used to healthy increases in employment making no dent in the unemployment rate, but this time a mediocre jobs figure—just 103,000 new jobs were created—coincides with a gratifyingly large fall in unemployment, to 9.4% from 9.8%. For those keeping track at home, that’s employment up by 103,000 and unemployment down by a whopping 556,000.
There’s no doubt that the headline payrolls number is a disappointment. The economy just doesn’t seem to be creating jobs: we need to see 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth. But is there some good news, at least, on the unemployment front?
I’m not sure. While unemployment is down from both December 2009 and December 2010, it’s down only for those who have been out of work for less than 26 weeks. The ranks of the long-term unemployed are still rising
Well, it’s not so ‘whopping’ in context–as we’ll see in a moment–but let’s look at some other things. The underlying numbers appear to be a total disconnect–and Salmon’s analysis is not unique among economists’ take on the situation–with the assessment of the President who just appointed lawyer Gene Sperling to do an economist’s job. President Obama also continued his rhetoric on substanial job creation being just around the corner and how the trend is just so much rosier under his leadership. Does any one outside of his circle actually believe this?
Now, read this Bloomberg article and notice the part at the end that I highlighted.
Obama said Sperling has been an “extraordinary asset” over the past two years as a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, helping to pass a small-business jobs bill and a tax-cut compromise.
Obama said one of the reasons he selected Sperling is that “he’s done this before,” a reference to Sperling’s 1996-2000 leadership of the NEC during the Bill Clinton administration.
Obama also named Jason Furman as principal deputy director of the NEC, and nominated Katharine Abraham to the Council of Economic Advisers. He also nominated Heather Higginbottom as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Obama spoke on the same day that government data showed that the U.S. added 130,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4%. Read MarketWatch’s story about jobs report.
Obama trumpeted 12 straight months of private-sector job creation and said, “the trend is clear.” But he said there’s a lot of work to do to get more people back in the labor force, and pledged to forge ahead with more job-creation efforts.
Sperling was also deputy NEC director during Clinton’s first term, which was marked by standoffs that resulted in government shutdowns. Sperling helped negotiate a balanced budget agreement in 1997 and was an advocate for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banking.
Economist Heidi Shierholz: “There’s never been a pool of missing workers this large”
Posted: January 7, 2011 Filed under: jobs, Stock Market, Team Obama, The Great Recession, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Heidi Shierholz, Huffington Post, jobs, Lila Shapiro, Stock Market, Team Obama, The Great Recession, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, Wall Street Journal 16 Comments
Economics isn’t my area of expertise, but I can read, and the top story at Huffpo right now is pretty disturbing. Author Lila Shapiro spoke to some economists, including Heidi Shierholz, about the December jobs report, which came out today.
Although the unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent from 9.8 percent in December, bringing the total number of officially unemployed Americans to 14.5 million, only 103,000 jobs were added in December according to the Labor Department’s BLS report — a number significantly lower than expected. (The Wall Street Journal reported that many Wall Street analysts were predicting “at or above 200,000” new jobs.)
The news gets worse: less than half of the drop in unemployment rate can be attributed to new job creation — the other half came from 260,000 Americans who have dropped out of the labor force altogether.
This brings the percentage of Americans who are either employed or actively looking for work down to 64.3 percent, what economist Heidi Shierholz calls “a stunning new low for the recession.”
[….]
“We have now added jobs every single month for a year,” Schierholz said. “So you would think that there would be labor force growth, these missing workers starting to come back in. Not only is that not happening, it’s actually starting to go in the other direction. There’s never been a pool of missing workers this large. It’s not clear to me when they’ll come back.”
That can’t be good, no matter what the White House and CNN try to get us to swallow.
At the Wall Street Journal the reaction to the jobs report doesn’t make things sound much better. One headline reads: Markets Whipsawed After Jobs Report. Here’s the gist:
Investors hoped that the jobs report would confirm expectations that a robust recovery was finally filtering through to long-stagnated labor markets. But after traders positioned aggressively this week on lofty expectations of a strong payrolls figure, the disappointing data had a relatively muted impact.
[….]
The Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy created 103,000 new positions last month, far below market consensus expectations for a 150,000 gain. In November, the economy added 39,000 jobs. The unemployment rate fell sharply to 9.4% from 9.7%.
Sustainable job creation has been elusive in an economy that is still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis. As a result of the troubled job market, analysts think the Federal Reserve is likely to continue full steam ahead with its controversial $600 billion plan to reinflate the economy.
Dakinikat can give us her expert take on this, but as a layperson, I think it’s obvious that the country is on the wrong track and some one needs to light a fire under the President and his incompetent economic advisers.
HEY VILLAGERS! WE NEED JOBS!!!
Friday Reads: It’s Carnival Time
Posted: January 7, 2011 Filed under: Anti-War, Federal Budget, Festivities, Food, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, New Orleans, U.S. Politics, Wikileaks | Tags: 12th night, Defense Spending cuts, GOP plans infrastructure cuts, inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, King Cake, King's day, mardi gras, The UK Guardian, troop cuts, Wikileaks 62 Comments
Good Morning
You probably think you’re at the wrong blog!! I’ve had a few folks say the gray print and the gray background were hard to read and dreary. So, I spiffed up the front page a bit.
So, is this easier to read?
Welcome to the Carnival Season!
New Orleans has said so long to the holidays and used the Twelfth Night observance to kick off the Carnival season, which will be extra long this year.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu, accompanied by New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountain, on Thursday served up slices of king cake at historic Gallier Hall, where the mayor greets parading royalty on Mardi Gras Day.Between Thursday and when Carnival celebrations wrap up March 8, about 100 parades will roll through area streets or float down waterways.
The Phunny Phorty Phellows rolled Thursday Night. They’re the first official parade of Mardi Gras. They rent one of the St. Charles Avenue street cars then ride and drink their way up and down St Charles Avenue to usher in the season! They’re a really old krewe that was resurrected in the 1980s. It’s one of the most fun and least commercial of the krewes and parades. You can see some pictures of them from last year if you follow the link.
Well, they’re off and dragging their knuckles through the Halls of Congress! Yes, Republicans are bringing greedy back. It’s so bad that the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce are joining up to fight them off. Yes, you read that right.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO — two powerful players that are often at each other’s throats — are considering teaming up for a campaign against the House GOP’s planned cuts to infrastructure spending, spokespeople for both groups tell me.
The two groups rarely agree on anything, and frequently target each other in the harshest of terms, but one thing they agree on is that they don’t want the House GOP to make good on its threat to subject highway and mass-transit programs to budget cuts. GOP leaders announced earlier this week that such cuts could not be taken off the table in the quest to slice up to $100 billion in spending.
The prospect of deep infrastructure cuts may now lead to the unlikely sight of the Chamber and the huge labor federation, both of which boast powerful and well-funded political operations, teaming up to campaign against the House GOP’s plans. The Chamber — a staunch ally of House Republicans that spent millions in the 2010 elections — has already been pushing back against cuts to highway spending because it could lead to more job losses in the construction industry.
MSNBC reports that protests are growing over the treatment of whistle blower Bradley Manning.
Some Feel-Good News From Boston
Posted: January 6, 2011 Filed under: GLBT Rights, just because | Tags: Boston Herald, Boston sports, Steve Buckley, WEEI sports radio 32 Comments
Steve Buckley is on the left in this photo
This afternoon I was out in the car, listening–as I often do–to the local sports radio station, WEEI. It was the beginning of the afternoon drive time program “The Big Show.” Instead of talking about the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics (almost never the Bruins), the guys on the show were participating in a “coming out party” for frequent co-host Steve Buckley, a sportswriter for the Boston Herald.
After years of hesitation and months of talks with friends and co-workers, Buckley had decided to announce publicly that he is gay. He wrote about his journey in his column in the Boston Herald today.
Years ago, Buckley had come out to his mother; and while she assured him she totally accepted and loved him just as he was, she advised him not to go public as he wanted to, because she feared his sports writing career in might be damaged by “prejudice.”
Here’s a bit of Buckley’s column:
Just over seven years ago, before Thanksgiving, we were getting into the car outside of a CVS when my mother said, “I think you should go ahead and do that story you’ve been talking about.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said. “Just go ahead and do it. And then we’ll have a party.”
She was talking about the story in which I would say that I am gay.
[….]
“Do it,” she said. I thanked her. She smiled. And then I made the biggest mistake of my life: With a vacation lined up for the first week of December, I told her I’d get to it when I returned to Boston — just before Christmas.
The vacation came and went. The day after I returned to Boston, I received a call from the Lifeline people telling me my mother was being rushed to Mount Auburn Hospital, where she had undergone radiation therapy during the summer. The family gathered at her side. The next morning, she suffered a heart attack. She died a few days later.
There was a funeral at Doherty’s, and then a very soulful, reflective Christmas. And then a Super Bowl, and then spring training. The story didn’t get done. Whenever I revisited the idea of coming out, I’d foolishly dwell on how it was to have been a big family event, my mother pulling everyone together. When that was lost, I guess I lost my way.
On the radio show today, Buckley explained that many of his friends knew he was gay, and that he would have told anyone who asked him. But he still felt he wasn’t really being true to himself. He needed to go public.
After he wrote the column last night, Buckley received thousands of calls and e-mails from friends, readers of his column, listeners to WEEI, and several professional athletes. He answered questions from co-hosts and took calls from listeners throughout the three-hour show today, and toward the end of the program he said that he could honestly say this was the happiest day of his life.
As someone who has listened to Buckley on the radio for years, I couldn’t help smiling as he talked and as the other guys on the show supported him–and these are very macho-type guys.
While I’m not gay, I am a recovering alcoholic, so I know what it’s like to have a deep dark secret that you’re not sure you want to reveal. After a number of years of sobriety, I decided to just be open about it; because my sobriety is a huge part of who I am. I’m a completely different person today because I stopped drinking. I’m not saying it’s the same thing as coming out of the closet, but I can identify with that feeling that you want your friends and family to know you as you really are.
Anyway, this story made me feel really good, and so I wanted to share it with you all. I hope it makes you feel as happy as it made me.
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