Financial Times — Jobs data dash recovery hopes
When the May jobs report came out, some people were shocked to see unemployment up over 9 percent and climbing. The concern was that combined with the people who have been unable to find a job for long enough to be dropped from the rolls, the newly fired added up to a large enough number to create a perpetual motion recession in our consumer-based economy that could last for months.
The Obama administration pooh-poohed the worriers as chicken littles. The number of people being fired was shrinking and while many people already laid off still couldn’t find work, one of the first signs of a turnaround is always the decline in the number of the newly unemployed. The stimulus, they said, was starting to work, but would be ramped up.
But the new numbers – with job losses above what they were in October and companies scaling back on hours for remaining workers – put the lie to that notion. The president scrubbed the first day of his getaway to Camp David to stay and fret over the economy and the White House changed its official posture to one of concern and empathy for the unemployed. The stimulus, they said, though, was still working.
But as writers Krishna Guha, Sarah O’Connor, Michael Mackenzie and Ralph Atkins point out, the hopes for a recovery that begins by years’ end are mostly gone and the possibility for long-term, double-digit unemployment is now considered very real among economists.
‘”If you were banking on the US driving a vigorous recovery, think again,’ said Alan Ruskin, a strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital. ‘The employment report can largely be taken at face value. . .a labour market that is not improving nearly as rapidly as May data suggested.’”
Wall Street Journal — Romney Emerges as Top Issues Play to His Strength
Writer Gerald Seib looks at how well things are lining up for Mitt Romney – 2012 GOP contenders are dropping like flies, the economy is miserable and much of the focus is on the auto industry. Romney has a solid team and is working to be a frequent, but not ubiquitous, voice for the Right – a familiar face but not hunting controversy like Newt Gingrich.
It’s working so far.
“Yet the most important thing Mr. Romney is doing may lie elsewhere, in the air miles and shoe leather he is investing to help fellow Republicans. That is the kind of loyalty-inducing investment that can come back to benefit a presidential candidate.
He has made appearances for the Republican candidates in the two governor’s races being held this year, in Virginia and New Jersey. One Republican senator up for re-election next year, Robert Bennett of Utah, already is running a television ad playing up a Romney endorsement. Last year, Mr. Romney’s political action committee endorsed 84 Republican candidates for federal office and passed out more than $400,000 in contributions, while Mr. Romney appeared at 34 campaign events for Republican congressional candidates.
Mr. Romney still has problems, of course, not least the lingering feeling that he has shifted his positions to pander to his party’s social conservatives. But all told, most prominent Republicans would happily trade their problems for Mr. Romney’s right now.”
New York Times — Coffers Empty, California Pays With I.O.U.’s
It’s been something of a return to the pre-Obama Arnold Schwarzenegger while the California governor has been staring down the state legislature over a $22 billion budget deficit. As the deadline for the state to start issuing IOUs redeemable with interest in October instead of checks for many of its obligations, including tax refunds, bills from vendors and welfare subsidies to local governments.
Schwarzenegger wants a long-term fix and no tax increases, which can be achieved by a steep round of short-term cuts, fixing pension programs and more stringent eligibility tests for the state’s huge, expensive welfare programs – identity checks, unemployment verification etc..
Writer Jennifer Steinhauer observes that Democratic legislators thought as the deadline for the IOUs approached and the state’s bond rating slid and public concerns mounted, Schwarzenegger would cave and accept their proposal for a mix of less ambitious cuts and a new round of tax increases.
Instead, Schwarzenegger seems to dig being back to doing battle.
“In a news conference here Thursday, Mr. Schwarzenegger did not apologize for the state of California’s fiscal affairs and instead stood defiantly against the people he had alternatively battled and wooed for the better part of six years — chiefly Democratic lawmakers, public employee unions and so-called special interests.
‘At the end of the day, they haven’t accomplished anything,’ Mr. Schwarzenegger said, speaking of an effort by the Legislature to stave off the i.o.u.’s with stopgap measures to cut education financing. ‘So I sent the budget back, doing it forcefully and without any hesitation.’”
Washington Post — McCain, Feingold Team Up Again Over FEC
The men who did more to damage America’s campaign finance system of anyone since the days of Crédit Mobilier are back on the case. Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold are tired of the lax enforcement of their campaign finance rules brought on by the vacancies at the Federal Election Commission, and are going to blockade President Barack Obama’s nominee for the commission until the president agrees to fill two other vacancies on the panel, breaking a deadlock that has prevented many McCain-Feingold penalties from being enforced.
Writer Dan Eggan makes it hard to follow, there are three vacancies – two Democratic and one Republican – on the 6-member, bipartisan commission.
McCain and Feingold are really mad, though, that with the temporary imbalance, Republican commissioners were able to block some of the more legalistic points of their law.
“But former FEC chairman Bradley A. Smith, who heads a group called the Center for Competitive Politics, said such criticisms are “unfair smears” on the GOP commissioners, who are simply preventing federal bureaucrats from overreaching their authority in often complex and ambiguous legal disputes.
Smith is also sharply critical of McCain and Feingold, saying the two senators “are threatening the independence of the agency” to get what they want.
‘The wind shifted a while ago in our favor, and that has put the other side back a bit,’ Smith said. ‘The system is working; it’s just not working the way they want it to work.’”
Wall Street Journal — In Political Ads, Christian Left Mounts Sermonic Campaigns
Extensive radio ads on country and gospel stations for fighting global warming and providing universal health care as Christian obligations are freaking out some Christian conservatives.
But writer Stephanie Simon says that it’s just part of a trend towards the rise of the religious Left.
“The religious left’s re-emergence as a strong voice — with the financial backing to make aggressive media buys — is a ‘seismic shift,’ said D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University who studies evangelical politics.
‘The religious left is experiencing today what the religious right had in 1981,’ Mr. Lindsay said. ‘They’ve finally found a White House that’s not just tolerating but welcoming, affirming, of their involvement.’
Left-leaning Christian groups also have started to attract funding from secular donors who share their political goals — and who see Biblical appeals as a promising way to broaden public support.
Oxfam America has worked with churches for years, but on relatively non-controversial campaigns such as staging fasts to call attention to world hunger. Now, the group is teaming up with the religious left to push for congressional action to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.
