Civility in Public Discourse :This is truly getting ridiculous!
This party has to be broken up!
What’s next? Will the Village Council eventually vote to make it illegal to go so far as to raise one’s eyebrow in response to misbehavior by public officials? Does anyone remember the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 1790’s which made it illegal to publicly criticize the government? We don’t need a quasi-public civility panel composed in large part of non-residents to impose via subtle (or not-so-subtle) social intimidation tactics what was so clearly unconstitutional for the government to impose via the criminal code.
Do we really want the newly-elected Bergen County Executive telling us how to express ourselves in Ridgewood? This was a mistake for Mr. Tedesco to intrude on Ridgewood’s strictly local concerns. Tedesco should withdraw from the scheduled appearance immediately unless, of course, he plans to break out into a full-throated defense of the God-given free-speech rights held so dear by self-respecting Ridgewood residents (much to the chagrin of Mayor Aronsohn, who by now must be fed up with us “bitter clingers”).
Make no mistake, the North Jersey Media Group would like nothing more than to turn back the clock to a time when letters to the editor (never anonymous) and speaking at the public microphone (never anonymous) at public meetings were the only timely and reliable ways to get one’s point across to the wider public when attempting to register discontent as a resident or taxpayer with the activities (or unaccountable lack of activity) of local government. Anonymous commenting on local blogs, demonstrably on the increase both in terms of frequency and political effectiveness, is so clearly anathema to traditional news outlets (such as print newspapers) straining to prop up the remnants of the political power structure built up so carefully over time by the progressive elite. Accordingly, we in Ridgewood should not put up with people who live outside the Village seeking to impose their free-speech restriction ideas on us, whether they were invited to do so by our mayor, or not.
The steady march of technology, and the irrepressible desire of Americans to speak their minds freely and without fear of disproportionate political or personal retribution, is making things more and more difficult for progressive House Organs like the Record of Bergen County and The Ridgewood News to control the terms of political debate. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, “is a good thing!”
Hoboken blogger trial continues, highlighting Hudson city’s political rifts
JERSEY CITY – A defamation case involving Hoboken political bloggers continued before jurors in Hudson County Superior Court on Monday, underscoring freedom of speech issues and the general nastiness of political discourse in Hoboken, Hudson’s real estate boom town.
The trial, which began last week, is rooted in a lawsuit filed by Hoboken resident Lane Bajardi and wife Kimberly Cardinal Bajardi in July 2012 in Hudson County Superior Court seeking $2 million in damages. The Hoboken-based bloggers Roman Brice and Nancy Pincus are named as defendants, as well as 10 other unnamed individuals – listed in the court documents by their on-line screen names – for allegedly posting remarks in 2011 and 2012 that allegedly injured the careers and future employment of the Bajardis. Lane Bajardi is a WINS 1010 radio reporter. (Bonamo/PolitickerNJ)
Ron Paul: “Reality Is Now Setting In For America… It Was All Based On Lies & Ignorance”
Submitted by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity,
If Americans were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state. If we do not recognize and resist this development, freedom and prosperity for all Americans will continue to deteriorate. All liberties in America today are under siege.
It didn’t happen overnight. It took many years of neglect for our liberties to be given away so casually for a promise of security from the politicians. The tragic part is that the more security was promised — physical and economic — the less liberty was protected.
With cradle-to-grave welfare protecting all citizens from any mistakes and a perpetual global war on terrorism, which a majority of Americans were convinced was absolutely necessary for our survival, our security and prosperity has been sacrificed.
It was all based on lies and ignorance. Many came to believe that their best interests were served by giving up a little freedom now and then to gain a better life.
The trap was set. At the beginning of a cycle that systematically undermines liberty with delusions of easy prosperity, the change may actually seem to be beneficial to a few. But to me that’s like excusing embezzlement as a road to leisure and wealth — eventually payment and punishment always come due. One cannot escape the fact that a society’s wealth cannot be sustained or increased without work and productive effort. Yes, some criminal elements can benefit for a while, but reality always sets in.
Reality is now setting in for America and for that matter for most of the world.The piper will get his due even if “the children” have to suffer. The deception of promising “success” has lasted for quite a while. It was accomplished by ever-increasing taxes, deficits, borrowing, and printing press money. In the meantime the policing powers of the federal government were systematically and significantly expanded. No one cared much, as there seemed to be enough “gravy” for the rich, the poor, the politicians, and the bureaucrats.
The Threat to Political Speech Online: Q&A With Former Elections Chief Lee Goodman
Melissa Quinn / @MelissaQuinn97 / January 03, 2015
The Federal Election Commission has steered clear of regulating political speech on the Internet. But the FEC’s outgoing chairman, Lee Goodman, warns that the commission could well impose rules on Americans who disseminate information on blogs, video channels or podcasts.
Goodman, a Republican, last year headed the six-member FEC, which oversees campaign finance laws. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal before his term ended, he discussed a 3-3 decision by the six-member commission in response to a complaint filed against a nonprofit group called Checks and Balances for Economic Growth.
The nonprofit had posted two campaign videos on YouTube without making disclaimers or divulging production costs. The complaint alleged that Checks and Balances violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 because it didn’t disclose the information.
Goodman and the two other Republicans on the panel contended that free postings on the Internet are exempt from the law. However, FEC Vice Chairman Ann Ravel, a Democrat, called for a “re-examination of the commission’s approach to the Internet.” Such a review, Ravel said, is “long overdue.”
Ravel has not made definitive proposals for new Internet regulations, a spokesman told The Daily Signal, but she plans to meet with technology and media leaders this year.
This transcript of the interview with Goodman was edited for style, clarity and length.
The Daily Signal: What was the basis for your ruling that Checks and Balances for Economic Growth did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act?
Goodman: In 2004 and 2005, the FEC undertook a rulemaking specifically addressing Internet communications and Internet political activity. The commission heard public comments from over 800 citizens and organizations. The commission drew a fairly bright line in its regulations as a result of that process. And under the 2006 rule, the commission will regulate paid advertising on the Internet.
If my organization wants to take out a banner ad or place an Internet video on a commercial website and pay a fee for that advertising space, the FEC regulates that expenditure just like it would a TV ad or radio ad. However, if an organization places content for free on the Internet, there is no expenditure to regulate because the dissemination cost is free.
In the process of drawing that line in the rulemaking process, certain organizations proposed that the FEC count production costs of websites and podcasts and YouTube videos as an expenditure, and the commission declined to adopt that proposal.
Since 2006, if your dissemination on the Internet is free or low-cost, such as posting a free video on YouTube or building a website or organizing a social media platform, or any number of Internet-based political activities, you are unregulated.
The American public has embraced this freedom, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos, blogs, websites, podcasts, social media posts, social media platforms and other Internet-based activities that have gone unregulated without so much as an inquiry from the FEC.
I don’t think there is any evidence that this robust exercise of freedom on the Internet has corrupted any politician in America. Moreover, it’s clear that the Internet has facilitated a free marketplace of ideas and political expression, where individuals and small groups compete with large, well-funded voices on a level playing field.
For all these reasons, my two Republican colleagues and I voted the way we did in the Checks and Balances matter, and will oppose efforts to impose far greater regulation of political speech on the Internet.
Republicans on the FEC ‘will oppose efforts to impose far greater regulation of political speech on the Internet,’ Goodman says. (Photo: Newscom)
The Daily Signal: If this discussion is brought before the FEC as Vice Chairman Ann Ravel said, what implications could this have on the blogging community, on any Web-based news organization, on people with YouTube channels or organizations posting YouTube videos?
Goodman: I don’t think we can begin to contemplate all of the severe consequences to online political speech as a result of even opening this discussion within the FEC.
First, I believe that opening this issue will serve only to deter low-cost and free discussion of political issues on the Internet. As people begin to hear that the Federal Election Commission is considering a crackdown on Internet political speech, some people will be discouraged from participating. I think that’s a shame, and that’s one reason I’m speaking out loudly and clearly that three Republican commissioners will oppose any effort to restrict freedom on the Internet.
“Republican commissioners will oppose any effort to restrict freedom on the Internet,” says 2014 FEC Chairman Lee Goodman of online political speech
Second, I cannot imagine how the Federal Election Commission will begin to regulate hundreds of thousands of blogs, YouTube videos, chat rooms, emails and links, and all sorts of Internet-based political discussion because of how vast political discussion on the Internet currently is.
The problem for the FEC as a practical matter — put aside the philosophical and policy implications — what the vice chair is inviting the FEC to do is to establish an Internet review board where a room full of government bureaucrats sit on a daily basis and troll the Internet for political commentary — to identify online commentators who did not register or report their expenses in connection with their website, and to issue subpoenas seeking information about their expenditures.
I know of no other way that the FEC could regulate the hundreds of thousands of posts on the Internet, absent such a review process.
The Daily Signal: It seems like this would hurt the little guys starting blogs, as opposed to big companies and news organizations. Is that the case?
Goodman: The specter of regulation of Internet political speech will discourage small groups and individuals from using the Internet to express their political opinions. If we regulate it, we will necessarily discourage it and get less of it. It’s an axiom that if you regulate it, you will deter it and get less of it.
Under current law, there are two important exemptions from FEC regulation: One is the media exemption. Congress wrote in the Federal Election Campaign Act an explicit exemption for the media, the press.
The second important exemption, created in the commission’s 2006 rulemaking, is the Internet exemption. If the commission were to abolish the Internet exemption, many online bloggers who have been protected by it would resort to protection under the media exemption.
However, the distinction between a bona fide media organization and blogger online is a blurred line. And there are three Democratic commissioners on the FEC today who have consistently voted to constrict the definition of the press entitled to the media exemption.
It is unclear whether online bloggers would be exempt from regulation under the press exemption, and it would embroil the FEC in determining which bloggers are the press and which bloggers are not the press. That would be a significant consequence and complication if the FEC were to follow Vice Chair Ravel’s proposal.
The Daily Signal: Would this, then, be regulated by the government combing blogs to see if the blogs meet the qualifications for what the FEC rules as a media organization?
Goodman: That’s correct. Look at the medium. This is not as easy as identifying who has a broadcast license from the Federal Communications Commission. The Internet has placed a printing press in the hands of every citizen in America. And many small groups and individuals have started political commentary pages or websites on their kitchen tables and have grown those blogs into being significant daily publications.
The Internet has democratized not just political speech generally, but journalism specifically. Imagine the FEC having to comb all blogs in America to determine which ones are exempt, are bona fide press entities, [and] which ones are not bona fide press entities and would be regulated because the Internet exemption has been abolished. I believe this is an area where the government ought to leave well enough alone.
On Nov. 5, national and local newspapers in New York report on the results of the previous day’s mid-term elections. (Photo: Richard B. Levine/Newscom)
The Daily Signal: Isn’t it the First Amendment right of Americans to record podcasts and write on the Internet?
Goodman: Absolutely, and let me take it a step further. This is the fundamental error in the proposal to regulate the Internet. The Supreme Court consistently has ruled that the FEC has no constitutional authority to regulate speech for the sake of regulating speech.
The FEC exists solely to regulate large contributions to candidates and to require public disclosure of large expenditures to influence elections because the money involved in the contributions and the expenditures has the potential to corrupt politicians.
The vast majority of posts on the Internet, from YouTube videos to websites to blogs, are low cost or free. Therefore, if we were to begin regulating online political speech, the FEC would be in the position of regulating speech and not expenditures for speech.
Absolutely it’s a First Amendment right to speak to the world through your personal computer without governmental interference, so long as you’re not corrupting politicians.
The Daily Signal: Is the concern that someone who is running for Congress is going to find a blog and be corrupted?
Goodman: I cannot speak for the vice chairman. I infer from her statement that my Democratic colleagues are concerned that Internet speech has become highly effective and influential in the political process.
Pew issued a report one year ago indicating that one-half of Americans report the Internet as a primary source of obtaining political news, information and advocacy. So the Internet clearly is an influential medium in America today.
I believe that’s what captured the attention and regulatory impulses of Vice Chairman Ravel. Just because it is influential or effective does not give the FEC a writ to regulate it.
“Just because it is influential or effective does not give the FEC a writ to regulate it,” says 2014 FEC Chairman Lee Goodman of online political speech
The Daily Signal: It seems this is a nonpartisan issue. You have Democrats and Republicans who would benefit from an unregulated Internet.
Goodman: The proposal to regulate Internet political speech would have ecumenical consequences. It would deter political speech on the right and the left of the political spectrum. More importantly, it would deter thousands of populist voices that have found a voice on the Internet.
The Daily Signal: Do you think this move has anything to do with the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Citizens United and McCutcheon v. FEC, even though those decisions deal with monetary contributions?
Goodman: I haven’t heard anyone articulate that being the problem. But the major concern after Citizens United was that large, corporate-funded voices would drown out all other voices in the political process. On the Internet, the smallest of bloggers has the level playing field to make their ideas heard as easily as the largest of corporations.
The decentralized architecture of the Internet gives each citizen an equal place to have his voice heard. What goes viral on the Internet is interesting political speech that resonates with people. Much of what goes viral — by “going viral” I mean gets millions of viewers — is creative and interesting content, and not necessarily well-funded content.
Look at “Obama Girl” in 2008. I daresay that video has had, on YouTube alone, 30 million hits. And because it goes viral and other people pick it up and send links to it, who knows how many Americans have seen that video. JibJab.com [animation with political themes] went viral. I don’t think the production cost of JibJab cartoons is very expensive.
What large corporations tend to do and what well-funded advocacy groups tend to do is they buy advertising. They buy banner ads, for example, and we regulate those expenditures. If you pay Yahoo or AOL to post a banner ad [for] your advocacy message, we regulate that. But what’s going viral and being seen by millions of Americans on the Internet is predominantly low-cost production.
What’s viral on the Internet is a populist phenomenon. Someone posts something interesting or something that resonates, and then millions of Americans talk to each other through email and links and say, ‘Look at this.’ I believe that the Internet is the antidote to the concerns raised after Citizens United. We don’t need to ruin it for the American people.
The Daily Signal: Those are interesting examples. How would FEC regulation change that process?
Goodman: BarelyPolitical.com produced “Obama Girl” and other videos — all politically themed – about John McCain, about Rudy Giuliani. There were at least a dozen politically themed videos that they produced and posted for free on YouTube. It was the first one that went viral. They had millions of viewers for all of them.
Under a regulatory regime, there would be several implications. First, each video would have to carry a disclaimer at the bottom indicating who paid for it and whether it was authorized by a political candidate. Second, BarelyPolitical.com would have to file expenditure reports with the Federal Election Commission disclosing the first date on which they post each YouTube video and how much they spent on the production.
Screen shot from an “Obama Girl” video. (Photo: BarelyPolitical.com/YouTube)
The FEC would have to issue regulations on what would be included in the production costs – do I consider purchasing costs of your personal computer, the editing equipment that you used? What about the video cameras you use? Did you pay the girl who performed in the video? Did you pay anyone else?
We would have to have a regulation prescribing what is described in production costs. The software that you purchased — and by the way, that goes for individual bloggers, too — up to computer, the software you purchased, your monthly Internet access charge. The FEC would have to get into this granular level of prescriptive regulation to tell people what to include in their expenditure reports to the FEC.
Then the content creator would have to disclose anyone who contributed money for the purpose of supporting the blog or YouTube post. And then, last but not least, if they coordinated their communication at all with a campaign or political party — for example, if they republish any campaign materials from a candidate — then that would count as a contribution to the candidate if the blogger or YouTube poster is incorporated. And that would mean the expenditure being reported is an illegal corporate contribution.
These are the consequences of regulating what has been a wholly constructive forum for Americans to speak and share ideas. Government needs to know when to leave well enough alone. The specter of government regulation of hundreds of thousands of websites and YouTube posts and chat rooms is ominous. It’s the regulatory Pandora’s box.
The spies in the cellar are now sidling up to your desk
Adam Jones
Publicans may have scored a victory but offices are becoming havens for monitoring equipment
One of the most unsettling workplaces I have ever come across was a pub in the English Midlands I visited 12 years ago. It was nothing to do with the licensee of the Pig & Truffle in Rugby, an enterprising man called Mike Trow, who brought in some fine real ales.
Instead, the uneasiness I felt stemmed from something lurking in his cellar. Attached to the pipes that sent beer up to the bar was spy equipment introduced by Punch Taverns, a company whose flotation I was covering. Punch was both renting the pub to Mr Trow and selling him all his beer at above-market rates .
December 28, 2014, 6:58 PM Last updated: Sunday, December 28, 2014, 6:58 PM
By JULIE PACE and NANCY BENAC
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — It was supposed to be a joke. “Are you still president?” comedian Stephen Colbert asked Barack Obama earlier this month.
But the question seemed to speak to growing weariness with the president and skepticism that anything will change in Washington during his final two years in office. Democrats already are checking out Obama’s potential successors. Emboldened Republicans are trying to push aside his agenda in favor of their own.
At times this year, Obama seemed ready to move on as well. He rebelled against the White House security “bubble,” telling his Secret Service detail to give him more space. He chafed at being sidelined by his party during midterm elections and having to adjust his agenda to fit the political interests of vulnerable Democrats who lost anyway.
Yet the election that was a disaster for the president’s party may have had a rejuvenating effect on Obama. The morning after the midterms, Obama told senior aides, “If I see you moping, you will answer to me.”
People close to Obama say he is energized at not having to worry about helping — or hurting — Democrats in another congressional election on his watch. He has become more comfortable with his executive powers, moving unilaterally on immigration, Internet neutrality and climate change in the last two months. And he sees legacy-building opportunities on the international stage, from an elusive nuclear deal with Iran to normalizing relations with Cuba after a half-century freeze.
“He gained some clarity for the next two years that is liberating,” said Jay Carney, who served as Obama’s press secretary until this spring. “He doesn’t have as much responsibility for others.”
In early October, President Obama warned his supporters to “make no mistake: these policies [of mine] are on the ballot. Every single one of them.” After the November elections, he probably wishes he hadn’t said that. The scale of the liberal defeat is remarkable, as are its causes.
In 2008, Obama had long coattails: When he took office in 2009, the House of Representatives had 256 Democrats. In 2015, it probably will have 188.
But the underlying reasons for Obama’s failure run deeper than the normal swings of the political pendulum. Four of them are vital. The first is that a good part of Obama’s appeal in 2008 was that he was supposedly above politics. He was compared to Abraham Lincoln, a canny politician we now misremember as being above the partisan fray.
This was nonsense. If you want to get anywhere in politics, you have to be a politician. And the essence of politics has not changed since Aristotle’s time. That doesn’t mean that politicians are all liars. But it does mean that anyone who looks for salvation in a politician is going to be disappointed. Obama was hyped so high in 2008 that he had nowhere to go but down.
Another reason for Obama’s failure was that he sought, in his words, to begin “the work of remaking America.” The entire American political system was designed by the Founding Fathers to frustrate his plans. The Constitution, with its checks and balances and its separation of powers, was intended to limit the government and prevent transient majorities from having their way.
Within those limits, Obama has actually – and from a conservative perspective, regrettably – done a lot: Obamacare itself is proof of that. But inevitably, having set out to, as he claimed, fundamentally transform the United States, Obama has come up short. He has increasingly resorted to unilateral executive actions precisely because he resents the system’s constraints, but that just feeds the narrative that he’s more emperor than president.
The third reason for Obama’s failure is that most of his ideas were wrong. There were no shovel-ready jobs waiting for the stimulus spending. Fixing health care did not require ripping apart the insurance market. The answer to a weak economy was not expensive green energy.
Iran was not waiting for an outstretched hand of friendship. Russia wanted a reset for malicious reasons of its own, not because it wanted to be our friend. Al-Qaida was not on the run. The Arab Spring was not a new democratic dawn. The European Union was not a force for prosperity. Israel was not the reason the Middle East is so troubled.
Everyone makes mistakes. But it’s hard to bounce back from so many fundamental errors, especially when – and this was Obama’s fourth error – the administration has been terrible at the boring business of being competent.
The fiasco of Obamacare was bad enough. But then there was the Veterans Administration scandal, the Secret Service’s prostitute parties, the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups, Ebola and the Justice Department’s gun-running into Mexico, to name only a few of the screw-ups that have tainted the administration.
We should never attribute to malice what can plausibly be explained by incompetence. And conservatives aren’t shocked when governments make mistakes: It’s what we expect them to do. But incompetence wears more heavily on liberals, because they are the ones who always want government to do more. The evidence is overwhelming that government can’t do it well.
Obama came into office wanting, in his words, to make government cool again. But as respected U.S. political analyst Michael Barone points out, since Watergate and with the exception of the 9/11 aftermath, trust in government peaked under Ronald Reagan, precisely because Reagan sought to limit government. Under Obama, it has fallen to near-historic lows.
The conservative triumphs in 2010 and 2014 have not irrevocably set America’s destiny: there are no permanent victories in politics. But there was a fundamental contradiction between the apolitical fantasy that Obama embodied and the real-world desire of the American people to support liberal policies, especially when incompetently administered.
Once the fantasy wore off, reality set in. And for liberals, reality is often bad news.
Not just tolls: E-Z Pass keeping an eye on speeders
Warning to motorists: Don’t speed in the toll lanes. E-Z Pass is watching.
Several states, including New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania, say they monitor speeds through the fast pass toll lanes and will suspend your E-Z Pass for multiple speeding violations.
In all, five of the 15 E-Z Pass states have some kind of rules on the books for breaking the speed limit in the convenience lanes.
“You can lose your E-Z Pass privileges if you speed through E-Z Pass lanes,” says Dan Weiller, director of communications for the New York State Thruway Authority. “You get a couple of warnings. We don’t have the power to give a ticket, but we do have to power to revoke your E-Z Pass, which we will.”
He and tolling officials in several other states say the issue is the safety of human toll collectors. “At most toll barriers, we have a mix of E-Z Pass lanes and standard toll lanes,” Weiller says.
Prof: ‘Elf on the Shelf’ conditions kids to accept surveillance state
December 15, 2014
Post to Your Wall
Kyle Olson
Kyle founded Education Action Group in 2007.
Find Kyle on Twitter.
TORONTO – Could there be something more sinister behind the little elf sitting on the shelf who returns to the North Pole each night?
Yes, says Laura Pinto, a digital technology professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
She recently published a paper titled “Who’s the Boss” on the doll, saying the idea of it reporting back to Santa each night on the child’s behavior “sets up children for dangerous, uncritical acceptance of power structures,” according to insideHalton.com.
From her paper:
When children enter the play world of The Elf on the Shelf, they accept a series of practices and rules associated with the larger story. This, of course, is not unique to The Elf on the Shelf. Many children’s games, including board games and video games, require children to participate while following a prescribed set of rules. The difference, however, is that in other games, the child role-plays a character, or the child imagines herself within a play-world of the game, but the role play does not enter the child’s real world as part of the game. As well, in most games, the time of play is delineated (while the game goes on), and the play to which the rules apply typically does not overlap with the child’s real world.
“You’re teaching (kids) a bigger lesson, which is that it’s OK for other people to spy on you and you’re not entitled to privacy,” she tells the Toronto Star.
She calls the elf “an external form of non-familial surveillance,” and says it’s potentially conditioning children to accept the state acting that way, too.
“If you grow up thinking it’s cool for the elves to watch me and report back to Santa, well, then it’s cool for the NSA to watch me and report back to the government,” according to Pinto.
Others concur with Pinto’s theory.
“It’s a little creepy, this idea that this elf is watching you all the time,” Emma Waverman, a blogger with Today’s Parent, tells the paper. She also doesn’t like that the story uses a threat – “nice” and “naughty” lists – to produce good behavior.
“It makes the motivation to behave something that’s external,” she says. “If I’m not around or if the elf is not around, do they act crazy?”
“Children potentially cater to The Elf on the Shelf as the ‘other,’ rather than engaging in and honing understandings of social relationships with peers, parents, teachers and ‘real life’ others,” Pinto writes.
“It’s worth noting that Pinto doesn’t object to the Elf on the Shelf’s Jewish counterpart, the Mensch on a Bench, which she characterized as ‘benign.’ Unlike the elf, the mensch doesn’t report to anyone at night but stays put, watching over the Hanukkah menorah,” the paper reports.
According to the paper, 6 million “Elf on the Shelf” dolls and books have been sold in the last 8 years.
The Incredible Shrinking Incomes of Young Americans
It’s repetitive for some to hear, but important for everybody to know: You can’t explain Millennial economic behavior without explaining that real wages for young Americans have collapsed.
American families are grappling with stagnant wage growth, as the costs of health care, education, and housing continue to climb. But for many of America’s younger workers, “stagnant” wages shouldn’t sound so bad. In fact, they might sound like a massive raise.
Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care.
November Jobs Report Gives Insight into Why Most Americans Think the Economy Is Lousy
James Sherk / @JamesBSherk / December 05, 2014
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ November employment report showed solid economic growth, but also provides clues about why many Americans report unhappiness with the economy.
The headline figures contained mostly good news. The household survey reported the unemployment rate remaining flat (5.8 percent) at the lowest rate since July 2008. Labor force participation also remained flat at 62.8 percent as did the employment to population ratio—remaining 59.2 percent, the highest since mid-2009 but well below pre-recession levels.
The average duration of unemployment has remained stubbornly high, rising to 33 weeks in November.
The payroll survey reported employers created 321,000 net new jobs in November—the most in any month since April 2011. The professional and business services (+86,000), retail trade (+50,000), healthcare (+29,000) and food services and drinking places (+27,000) showed the greatest gains. The payroll survey also found the average work hours increasing a tenth of an hour to 34.6 a week—the highest level since early 2008. In more good news, revisions to the September and October surveys showed that employers created 44,000 more jobs those months than previously believed.
Nonetheless, polls suggest that most Americans consider the economy in poor shape. The exit polls from the midterm elections found that 70 percent of voters see America’s economic condition as either “not so good” or “poor.”
Over the past year, average wages have grown by 2.1 percent—only slightly above the rate of inflation.
The November jobs report gives some insight into why. The average duration of unemployment has remained stubbornly high, rising to 33 weeks in November. The median unemployed worker has been looking for work for almost three months—almost twice as long as before the recession hit. Unemployment has become more painful for workers; those who lose their jobs have much greater difficulty finding new ones.
Additionally, average hourly wage growth has slowed to a crawl during the recovery. In November, average wages rose just 9 cents an hour. Over the past year, average wages have grown by 2.1 percent—only slightly above the rate of inflation. Thus, the real buying power of American workers has hardly improved.
This also shows why claims that this represents the strongest economic growth since the tech bubble are misleading. Yes, the economy has added jobs a good pace – welcome news after the deep recession and anemic recovery. But wages grew far faster and the unemployed found jobs far more quickly in the mid-2000s. This does not feel like a booming economy because it is not.
All told, November’s employment report brought welcome news about labor market improvements—but the economy still remains far from a satisfying recovery.
Bergen County Sheriff’s Department drops plan to acquire surplus military vehicles
DECEMBER 1, 2014, 8:28 PM LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2014, 8:28 PM
BY HERB JACKSON AND JOHN ENSSLIN
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD
The Bergen County Sheriff’s Department has dropped plans to obtain two armored mine-resistant vehicles from the military in part because “it was no longer worth the effort,” a department spokesman said Monday.
The decision means Sheriff Michael Saudino is making permanent a delay announced in August.
The decision puts an end to a contentious debate that reverberated throughout this year’s elections for Bergen County executive and freeholder and one that started well before a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.
The use of military-style vehicles, weapons and armor in response to protests in Ferguson led to state and federal reviews of programs that deploy surplus equipment from the Defense Department to domestic law enforcement.
The White House released one of those reviews on Monday and President Obama directed his cabinet to bring him concrete recommendations to ensure police departments “aren’t building a militarized culture.”
Obama Pushed ‘Fullest Extent’ of His Powers on Immigration Plan
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JULIA PRESTONNOV. 28, 2014
WASHINGTON — Months before President Obama took executive action last week to reshape the nation’s immigration system, Jeh C. Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, quietly convened a small group of advisers to explore the legal limits of the president’s powers.
Working in secrecy, Mr. Johnson’s team huddled for hours daily under orders to use “our legal authorities to the fullest extent” on a new deportations policy, a senior administration official said. In five White House meetings over the summer, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Obama, both lawyers, pored over proposed changes, eventually concluding that the president had the authority to enact changes that could affect millions of people and significantly alter the way immigration laws are enforced.
“I don’t think he wanted to be in the position of taking executive action,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group, said of Mr. Obama. “It was not the way he wanted to fix the system.” Nonetheless, “at the end of the day, he felt this was the only option he had.”
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel resigned Monday, becoming the first casualty of the Obama administration since Democrats suffered significant losses in this month’s midterm elections.
Hagel, the only Republican in Obama’s cabinet, was brought to the Pentagon to reduce budgets and wind down the war in Afghanistan.
His departure comes as the White House faces criticism over its handling of a new terrorist threat — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and questions had been raised about whether Hagel was the right man for that job.
Obama announced Hagel’s departure in a White House ceremony were he was flanked by Hagel and Vice President Biden. He hailed Hagel as an “exemplary defense secretary” who had put the military “on a firmer footing.”
“I’ve known him admired him and trusted him for nearly a decade,” said Obama, who then added that Hagel had decided “it was an appropriate time for him to conclude his service.”
A senior administration official said the two had been discussing the possible transition since October. The president plans to nominate a successor shortly, but Hagel said he would remain in the post until that person is confirmed by the Senate.
Hagel, clearly emotional, said the “greatest privilege” of his career was leading the men and women of the Pentagon.
Richard Wolf, USA TODAY6:42 p.m. EST November 22, 2014
WASHINGTON — The most serious challenge to President Obama’s health care law since it survived the Supreme Court by a single vote in 2012 isn’t a balky website, public opinion or the Republican takeover of Congress. It’s the Supreme Court — again.
In a case likely to be heard in March and decided in June, the justices will dissect the meaning of four words on page 95 of the 906-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — four words that could render health insurance premiums unaffordable for millions of Americans.
Here’s a look at the issues in King v. Burwell:
Question: Why the fuss over four words?
Answer: The law states that tax credits will be available through so-called exchanges, or online marketplaces, “established by the State.” When it was being crafted, it was assumed that all 50 states would create their own exchanges. After it passed in March 2010, it became clear that many states would rely on the federal government to operate them, as the law allows.
In 2012, the Internal Revenue Service made the subsidies available in all states. The law’s challengers claim they cannot be offered in exchanges operated by the federal government. Thirty-six states fit into that category. Without subsidies, insurance costs would skyrocket.
Q: What’s more important — the plain meaning of those words, or the context?
A: That depends on whom you ask. The challengers say the plain meaning is clear: Subsidies can be offered only in state exchanges. If that’s what Congress wrote, they say, the Supreme Court cannot change it, and the IRS cannot extend tax credits to federal exchange customers.
The administration and other proponents say the words must be read in the context of a law clearly intended to make health insurance more widely available and affordable. Even the suspect words appear in a subtitle of the law that reads, “Affordable Coverage Choices for All Americans.”
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