Right Wing Defiance of Public Health Directives

Many of the ugly elements of the far right - good people according to Trump -have protested state ordered shutdowns and refused to wear masks, an act that sends a message that they care nothing for those they might infect.  any in the media - especially right wing outlets like Fox News, a/k/a Faux News on this blog, have spun the resistance as a class struggle with working class whites struggling to survive financially resisting the most versus the educated "liberal elite" working from home.  The problem is that the facts do not support this false narrative.  The defining element is not one's class or socioeconomic group, but rather partisan.  If one is a knuckle dragging, religiously extreme, and/or racially aggrieved white supportive of Trump and the GOP more widely, odds are you oppose the lock downs.  If you put science, knowledge and some modicum of concern for others, then you likely support the lock downs and feel some fear as the states reopen their businesses.  A column in the New York Times looks at this fake class war meme.  Here are highlights:

A Washington Post article on Sunday described people in a posh suburb of Atlanta celebrating liberation from coronavirus lockdown. “I went to the antique mall yesterday on Highway 9 and it was just like — it was like freedom,” said a woman getting a pedicure.

“Yeah, I’m going to do the laser and the filler,” said a woman at a wine bar, looking forward to cosmetic dermatology. “When you start seeing where the cases are coming from and the demographics — I’m not worried,” said a man lounging in a plaza.

Only one person was quoted expressing trepidation: a masked clerk in a shoe store.

Lately some commentators have suggested that the coronavirus lockdowns pit an affluent professional class comfortable staying home indefinitely against a working class more willing to take risks to do their jobs. . . . On Fox News, Steve Hilton decried a “37 percent work from home elite” punishing “real people” trying to earn a living.

The assumptions underlying this generalization, however, are not based on even a cursory look at actual data. In a recent Washington Post/Ipsos survey, 74 percent of respondents agreed that the “U.S. should keep trying to slow the spread of the coronavirus, even if that means keeping many businesses closed.” Agreement was slightly higher — 79 percent — among respondents who’d been laid off or furloughed.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have been tracking the impact of coronavirus on a representative sample of American households. They’ve found that when it comes to judging policies on the coronavirus, “politics is the overwhelming force dividing Americans,” and that “how households have been economically impacted by the Covid crisis so far” plays only a minimal role.

Donald Trump and his allies have polarized the response to the coronavirus, turning defiance of public health directives into a mark of right-wing identity. Because a significant chunk of Trump’s base is made up of whites without a college degree, there are naturally many such people among the lockdown protesters.

But it’s a mistake to treat the growing ideological divide over when and how to reopen the country as a matter of class rather than partisanship. . . . . And many of those who face exposure as they’re ordered back to work are rightly angry and terrified.

[H]ere’s the thing about reopening: It’s liberation to some, but compulsion to others. If your employer reopens but you don’t feel safe going to work, you can’t continue to collect unemployment benefits. In The Texas Tribune, a waitress in Odessa spoke of her fear when she was called back to work at a restaurant that hadn’t put adequate social distancing measures in place. “It scared me, so I left,” she said. “Then I had to remember that if I do quit, I would have to lose my unemployment.”

As seems to be always the case, the far right opponents of the public health directives are self-centered and selfish - something that is also a hallmark  of evangelical Christians who put their rights and, wants and prejudices over the rights and lives of others.

Trump Tariffs Slam Pence's Hometown

Karma can seemingly be a bitch.  A case in point is Mike Pence's shameless self-prostitution to Donald Trump and hypocrisy-filled pretense of being a godly Christian while serving a man who is the antithesis of the Gospel message.  Now, the Trump tariffs - put in place in a fit of bullying rage and effort to appear the "tough guy" - are slamming Pence's hometown in Indiana. One can feel only so much pity for the residents since their state supported Pence for governor (although many believe he could not have won re-election, hence his prostitution to Trump) and voted for the Trump/Pence ticket. Embracing racism and religious extremism do, in my view, need to carry a severe price.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the economic pain occurring in Pence's hometown - pain that will likely worsen if Der Trumpenführer puts additional tariffs in place.  Here are excerpts:

COLUMBUS, Ind. — One company and one family loom large over this city, intertwined for decades. Cummins Inc. is the biggest employer in Columbus, built into a $20 billon heavy equipment manufacturer with the help of Mike Pence, who as governor passed pro-business tax cuts and made trade visits to China on its behalf.
 Pence’s older brother Edward joined Cummins after graduating from college and worked there for four decades, running one of its most lucrative engine plants before retiring last December. A second brother, Greg, is running for the 6th congressional district seat and visited Cummins during a recent campaign stop.

But the alliance of the past is being threatened by the administration Mike Pence now serves, as President Trump’s trade war with multiple nations clobbers Cummins and other local companies.

According to the Brookings Institution, the Columbus area is the most export-reliant region in the country, with just over half of its economic output linked to foreign purchases. “I’m very worried,” said Tom Linebarger, the chief executive of Cummins, who met with President Trump over dinner at the White House in January in a bid to dissuade him from introducing steel and aluminum tariffs or tearing up free trade agreements. Linebarger, 55, warns of job losses ahead because thousands of jobs at Cummins and elsewhere in the area depend on trade. “We will do everything we can to mitigate . . . the impact to jobs,” he said. “It’s very clear, though, that we’re not going to be able to mitigate everything.”

Pence’s hometown oozes internationalism: 40 foreign companies have a presence, more than half of them Japanese engines and auto-parts plants, employing almost 10,000 people. The area’s schools collectively speak 51 languages. The city ranks second in the nation in the per capita percentage of H-1B visas for foreign workers.

Now the aggressive pursuit of foreign trade that made this city a recession-busting economic miracle has made it decidedly vulnerable, with businesses already canceling projects and mulling the depth of job losses. . . . Cummins alone has 25,000 different suppliers and also its own chain of distribution, both of them largely international. Its U.S. base is bolstered by operations in the United Kingdom, China and India.

Linebarger said the president’s trade war hits the company in two ways, affecting both its incoming parts, which will be subject to tariffs, and its own products, on which retaliatory penalties will be assessed by countries targeted by Trump.

[T]he most vulnerable of the company’s factories: the high-horsepower engine plant in Seymour, outside Columbus, which employs 1,000 people. Its biggest export is a 95-liter engine, which is the size of a car and can power hospitals, tanks and football stadiums. It is so specialized that only 10 can be made per day. Of these, eight will be sold abroad.

“We almost put the factory in India. We evaluated the U.K. and China too. If we’d seen trade barriers at that point, we’d definitely have made a different decision,” says Linebarger.

Other local businesses are seeing the effects as well. Harold Force, 67, has run a construction company founded by his father since 1980, which currently employs 250 people. Now he is coping with rising prices on items he needs for contracts signed in less expensive days before the trade war. Already, he said, he has had to cancel plans to expand his workforce.

“I think this is a much bigger deal than people think. When it started, it was shock. I thought, ‘Is this really happening?’ Then one of our biggest projects in recent times was canceled because of steel prices,” he said.

The city’s foreign companies are likewise worried. Jon Volz of Sunright America Inc., a Japanese-owned company in Columbus which supplies U.S. Toyota plants with millions of bolts and fasteners, said the materials required to make their parts are only available in Japan.

The Democrat running against Greg Pence has sought to make trade an issue in the campaign. Jeannine Lake, 51, a Christian newspaper publisher, said the economy was the only issue that mattered. “Tariffs are not just hitting people in places like Columbus, it’s also farms which make soy beans and corn,” she said. Pence has run a muted campaign, refusing to attend candidate debates and declining to release a public schedule. His most public comments so far came when he defended himself after it was revealed that his gas station company’s bankruptcy had cost taxpayers $20 million in contamination costs.

Across Columbus, workers are expecting the worst. “I’m very Republican, but I feel the current strategy is opinion-based, not data-based,” said Chris Tiemeier, 38, whose grandfather was also a proud Cummins employee and whose wife works at the plant. “The company has changed our town, it’s doubled in size. I’m worried about tariffs.”

Jason Hester of the Greater Columbus Economic Development Corporation has traveled to China for the last nine years to whip up investment. This year, he’s canceled his travel plans.

At the risk of sounding cruel, I hope the pain coming to Columbus is replicated all across the Mid-west, especially in districts that threw the Electoral College vote to Trump/Pence.

The Budget Deal's Biggest Losers: American Workers

In today's America, wealth inequality is rising and more and more families are struggling to maintain their standard of living. And for the working poor, the picture is even more bleak.  Especially in the wake of the budget deal in Congress which throws the most needy under the bus - or perhaps onto the trash heap.  Of course, leading the charge to trash the poor are the Republicans and their party base that pretends to support Christian values while acting worse than the Biblical Pharisees.  A piece in the New York Times looks at how American workers are the budget deal's biggest losers.  Here are excerpts:

The pundit consensus seems to be that Republicans lost in the just-concluded budget deal. Overall spending will be a bit higher than the level mandated by the sequester, the straitjacket imposed back in 2011. Meanwhile, Democrats avoided making any concessions on Social Security or Medicare. 

But if Republicans arguably lost this round, the unemployed lost even more: Extended benefits weren’t renewed, so 1.3 million workers will be cut off at the end of this month, and many more will see their benefits run out in the months that follow. And if you take a longer perspective — if you look at what has happened since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010 — what you see is a triumph of anti-government ideology that has had enormously destructive effects on American workers.

One of the truly remarkable things about American political discourse at the end of 2013 is the fixed conviction among many conservatives that the Obama era has been one of enormous growth in government. . . . . Once Obamacare is fully implemented, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will add only about 3 percent to overall federal spending. And, if you ask people ranting about runaway government what other programs they’re talking about, you draw a blank. 

Meanwhile, the actual numbers show that over the past three years we’ve been living through an era of unprecedented government downsizing. Government employment is down sharply; so is total government spending (including state and local governments) adjusted for inflation, which has fallen almost 3 percent since 2010 and around 5 percent per capita. 

And when I say unprecedented, I mean just that. We haven’t seen anything like the recent government cutbacks since the 1950s, and probably since the demobilization that followed World War II. 

[T]the most obvious cuts have been in education, infrastructure, research, and conservation. While the Recovery Act (the Obama stimulus) was in effect, the federal government provided significant aid to state and local education. Then the aid went away, and local governments began letting go of hundreds of thousands of teachers. Meanwhile, public investment fell sharply — so sharply that many observers refer to it as a “collapse” — as state and local governments canceled transportation projects and deferred maintenance.

There are three things you need to know about these harsh cuts. 

First, they were unnecessary. The Washington establishment may have hyperventilated about debt and deficits, but markets have never shown any concern at all about U.S. creditworthiness. In fact, borrowing costs have stayed at near-record lows throughout. 

Second, the cuts did huge short-term economic damage. Small-government advocates like to claim that reducing government spending encourages private spending — and when the economy is booming, they have a point. The recent cuts, however, took place at the worst possible moment, the aftermath of a financial crisis. . . . government cutbacks simply swelled the ranks of the unemployed — and as family incomes fell, so did consumer spending, compounding the damage. The result was to deepen and prolong America’s jobs crisis.

Finally, if you look at my list of major areas that were cut, you’ll notice that they mainly involve investing in the future. So we aren’t just looking at short-term harm, we’re also looking at a long-term degradation of our prospects, reinforced by the corrosive effects of sustained high unemployment. 

So, about that budget deal: yes, it was a small victory for Democrats. It was also, possibly, a small step toward political sanity . . . . the larger picture is one of years of deeply destructive policy, imposing gratuitous suffering on working Americans. And this deal didn’t do much to change that picture.

American Workers Are Scared - They Should Be

The GOP's vision for American workers

As noted before, income and wealth inequality in America now exceeds that in former banana republics and "Old Europe" now provides more opportunity for upward social mobility than in America.  Yes, one still hears stories of dramatic success, but the likelihood of such success for most of us has dimmed markedly.  And a present, things do not look to be getting any better.  The once thriving and prosperous middle class is under siege.  For the under class, things are even worse.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the bleak prospects for so many Americans and looks at how we got to the present situation.  Wall Street greed, of course, plays a role.  It's not a pretty picture but it is what happens under today's vulture capitalism.  Here are excerpts:

On this Labor Day, American workers face a buyers’ market. Employers have the upper hand and, given today’s languid pace of hiring, the advantage shows few signs of ending. What looms, at best, is a sluggish descent from high unemployment (7.4 percent in July) and a prolonged period of stagnant or slow-growing wages. Since 2007, there has been no gain in average inflation-adjusted wages and total compensation, including fringes, notes the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank.

The weak job market has a semi-permanence unlike anything seen since World War II, and the effects on public opinion extend beyond the unemployed. “People’s expectations have been really ratcheted down for what they can expect for themselves and their children,” says EPI economist Lawrence Mishel. There’s a sense “that the economy just doesn’t produce good jobs anymore.” Possible job loss becomes more threatening because finding a new job is harder. Says Paul Taylor of the Pew Research Center: “Security is valued more than money because it’s so fragile.”

Over the past century, we’ve had three broad labor regimes. The first, in the early 1900s, featured “unfettered labor markets,” as economic historian Price Fishback of the University of Arizona puts it. Competition set wages and working conditions. There was no federal unemployment insurance or union protection. Workers were fired if they offended bosses or the economy slumped; they quit if they thought they could do better. Turnover was high:Fewer than a third of manufacturing workers in 1913 had been at their current jobs for more than five years.

After World War II, labor relations became more regulated and administered — the second regime. The Wagner Act of 1935 gave workers the right to organize; decisions of the National War Labor Board also favored unions. By 1945, unions represented about a third of private workers, up from 10 percent in 1929. Health insurance, pensions and job protections proliferated. Factory workers laid off during recessions could expect to be recalled when the economy recovered. Job security improved. By 1973, half of manufacturing workers had been at the same job for more than five years.

To avoid unionization and retain skilled workers, large nonunion companies emulated these practices. Career jobs were often the norm. If you went to work for IBM at 25, you could expect to retire from IBM at 65. Fringe benefits expanded. Corporate America, unionized or not, created a private welfare state to protect millions from job and income loss.

As time passed, companies faced increasing competition from imports and new technologies. Pressure mounted from Wall Street for higher profits. In some industries, labor became uncompetitive. Career jobs slowly vanished as a norm; managers fired workers to cut costs. Unions provided diminishing protection.

Now comes the third labor regime: a confusing mix of old and new. The private safety net is shredding, though the public safety net (unemployment insurance, Social Security, anti-poverty programs, anti-discrimination laws) remains. Economist Fishback suggests we may be drifting back toward “unfettered labor markets” . . .

An article in the Harvard Business Review argues that lifetime employment at one company is dead and proposes the following compact: Companies invest in workers’ skills to make them more employable when they inevitably leave; workers reciprocate by devoting those skills to improving corporate profitability.

“The new compact isn’t about being nice,” the article says. “It’s based on an understanding that a company is its talent, that low performers will be cut, and that the way to attract talent is to offer appealing opportunities.”

Workers can’t be too picky, because their power has eroded. . . . Workers do best when strong growth and tight markets raise real wages. On Labor Day 2013, this prospect is nowhere in sight.

The column notes that the public safety net still exists.  But the GOP would like to shred that as well.  It's a very scary picture.  I worry about the prospects of my children and grand children in this increasing brutal employment reality.

Survey: 4 in 5 in America Face Near Poverty, No Work

Wealth disparities in America now exceed those in Europe and even former banana republics.  And things seem to be getting only worse as more and more Americans live on the edge just a pay check away from financial ruin and ensuing poverty.  Yet, the GOP continues to seek to slash social programs and to cut taxes for the very wealthy.  The GOP agenda is the antithesis of what the "godly folk" of the GOP base ought to be pursuing if they really gave a damn about the Gospel message that they pretend to revere.  A new study reveals just how bad things have become.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the findings:

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused — on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of race.

Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy “poor.”

“I think it’s going to get worse,” said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend but it doesn’t generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.

“If you do try to go apply for a job, they’re not hiring people, and they’re not paying that much to even go to work,” she said. Children, she said, have “nothing better to do than to get on drugs.”

The gauge defines “economic insecurity” as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.

Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones.

“It’s time that America comes to understand that many of the nation’s biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position,” said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama’s election, while struggling whites do not.

“There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front,” Wilson said.

Sometimes termed “the invisible poor” by demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America’s heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.

Buchanan County in southwest Virginia is among the nation’s most destitute based on median income, with poverty hovering at 24 percent. The county is mostly white, as are 99 percent of its poor.

More than 90 percent of Buchanan County’s inhabitants are working-class whites who lack a college degree. Higher education long has been seen there as nonessential to land a job because well-paying mining and related jobs were once in plentiful supply. These days many residents get by on odd jobs and government checks.

There is much more depressing news and the irony is that many of the poor whites stupidly support the GOP which is in reality their worse enemy.  Another irony is that Buchanan County, Virginia, is in the land of Bible beaters and open bigotry, yet residents wonder why no progressive business wants to locate there.  Who would want to move to a region filled with racists, homophobes and Neanderthals?  Bigotry and intolerance carries a high economic price.  Meanwhile, of course, the GOP blathers on and on about American exceptionalism.  

Census: Over 1 in 3 USA Counties Dying Off

By Hope Yen of Associated Press

The trend toward a more urban population in America is accelerating and rural counties - the bastions of the Republican Party - are dying off and seeing drops in population.  The irony is that as the populations in many of these counties double down on their conservatism, the population losses only increase as younger residents leave for more liberal and progressive areas that offer more job opportunities and social amenities.  It's a trend that is clearly visible in Southwest Virginia where the political/religious establishment tries to hang onto the 1950's while unemployment remains inordinately high.  Here are excerpts from a piece at MSN News that looks at the Census findings:

New 2012 census estimates released Thursday highlight the population shifts as the U.S. encounters its most sluggish growth levels since the Great Depression.

The findings also reflect the increasing economic importance of foreign-born residents as the U.S. ponders an overhaul of a major 1965 federal immigration law. Without new immigrants, many metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and St. Louis would have posted flat or negative population growth in the last year.

"Immigrants are innovators, entrepreneurs. They're making things happen. They create jobs," said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, at an immigration conference in his state last week. Saying Michigan should be a top destination for legal immigrants to come and boost Detroit and other struggling areas, Snyder made a special appeal: "Please come here."

Census data show that 1,135 of the nation's 3,143 counties are now experiencing "natural decrease," where deaths exceed births. That's up from roughly 880 U.S. counties, or 1 in 4, in 2009. Already apparent in Japan and many European nations, natural decrease is now increasingly evident in large swaths of the U.S., much of it rural.

Despite increasing deaths, the U.S. population as a whole continues to grow, boosted by immigration from abroad and relatively higher births among the mostly younger migrants from Mexico, Latin America and Asia.

"These counties are in a pretty steep downward spiral," said Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer and sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire, who researched the findings. "The young people leave and the older adults stay in place and age. Unless something dramatic changes — for instance, new development such as a meatpacking plant to attract young Hispanics — these areas are likely to have more and more natural decrease."

Mark Mather, an associate vice president at the Population Reference Bureau, noted that political efforts to downsize government and reduce federal spending could also have a significant impact on future population winners and losers.

Since 2010, many of the fastest-growing U.S. metro areas have also been those that historically received a lot of federal dollars, including Fort Stewart, Ga.; Jacksonville, N.C.; Crestview, Fla.; and Charleston-North Charleston, S.C., all home to military bases. Per-capita federal spending rose from about $5,300 among the fastest-growing metros from 2000 to 2010, to about $8,200 among the fastest-growing metros from 2011 to 2012.

"Federal funding has helped many cities weather the decline in private sector jobs," Mather said.
Other findings:

— Roughly 46 percent of rural counties just beyond the edge of metropolitan areas experienced natural decrease, compared with 17 percent of urban counties.
— As a whole, the population of non-metropolitan areas last year declined by 0.1 percent, compared with growth of 1 percent for large metro areas and 0.7 percent for small metropolitan areas.
— In the last year, four metro areas reached population milestones: Los Angeles hit 13 million, Philadelphia reached 6 million, Las Vegas crossed 2 million and Grand Rapids, Mich., passed 1 million.
— Chattahoochee County, Ga., home to Fort Benning, was the nation's fastest-growing county, increasing 10.1 percent in the last year.

Although the study doesn't cite conservatism per se as a problem, here in Virginia many rural areas find it difficult to attract new business and industry because they are so culturally backward  and  unwelcoming to those who aren't white conservatives.  Martinsville, Virginia, is a case in point.  The area is scenically beautiful, but if you are gay, black, Hispanic and non-Christian, you will likely not be welcomed.

The Republican Myth on Job Creation

If one looks at the employment numbers, one of the reasons that the unemployment level remains high is that hundreds of thousands of government employees have lost their jobs since the U.S. economy tanked in 2008 largely as a result of Republican policies.  And who has led the push to fire government employees at the state and local levels?  Republican governors, of course.  While Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan chant over and over again - with no data to back up their claim -  that government doesn't create jobs, government can and does create unemployment.  So the truth is that government may not create private sector jobs, it does create the public sector jobs that go towards providing the infrastructure that is conducive to private sector job growth.   Public sector jobs likewise generate incomes that help support consumer oriented private business in sectors as diverse as home building to grocery stores, to automobile sales.  The New York Times looks at the myth being recited by Romney/Ryan as if it were some truth filled mantra.  It's not.  Here are highlights:

Government does not create jobs. Except that it does, millions of them — including teachers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, sailors, astronauts, epidemiologists, antiterrorism agents, park rangers, diplomats, governors (Mr. Romney’s old job) and congressmen (like Paul Ryan). 

First, the basics. At last count, government at all levels — federal, state and local — employed 22 million Americans, with the largest segment working in public education. Is that too many? No. Since the late 1980s, the number of public-sector workers has averaged about 7.3 for every 100 people. With the loss of 569,000 government jobs since June 2009, that ratio now stands at about 7 per 100. 

Public-sector job loss means trouble for everyone. Government jobs are crucial to education, public health and safety, environmental protection, defense, homeland security and myriad other functions that the private sector cannot fulfill. They are also critical for private-sector job growth in two fundamental ways. First, the government gets its supplies from private-sector companies, which is why Republican senators like John McCain have been frantically warning about the dire effects on job creation if Congress moves ahead with planned military spending cuts. (Republicans insisted upon the cuts as part of their ill-advised showdown over the debt ceiling.) Second, government spending on supplies and salaries reverberates strongly through the economy, increasing demand and with it, employment. 

That means the economy suffers when government cuts back. A report by the Economic Policy Institute examined the effect of recent cutbacks at the state and local level — including direct loss of government jobs and indirect loss of suppliers’ jobs; the jobs that should have been added to keep up with population growth; and the reduction in purchasing power from other cutbacks. If not for state and local budget austerity, the report found, the economy would have 2.3 million more jobs today, half of which would be in the private sector. 

The government does not create jobs? It most certainly does. And at this time of state budgetary hardship, a dose of federal fiscal aid to states and localities could create more jobs, in both the public and private sectors. 

The truth doesn't fit with the alternate universe that has become the almost permanent abode of the GOP and its Christofascist/Tea Party base.  That, however, doesn't make this reality on job creation any less true.  Simply saying something is so, doesn't make it so, yet Mitt Romney is hoping that Americans are too stupid to think through the process on their own.

Encouraging News From Gallup Tracker, etc.

Many Democrats are in a funk right now over last week's poor debate performance by Barack Obama and the improvement of pathological liar Mitt Romney's numbers.  However, there are some indications that things are shifting back towards Obama as hopefully the truth sinks in with voters that Romney gave a lie filled performance last week and that he's still the same nasty man that they though he was before the fantasy land performance last week.  What those of us who oppose the backward looking, racist and discriminatory agenda of the GOP need to do is redouble our efforts and snap out of the funk.  Turn out will still make or break this election and the anti-GOP voters need to be encouraged to get to the polls rather than sit at home in a funk.  Blue Virginia is reporting the following positive news:

President Obama's still the favorite on November 6 in Nate Silver's model and elsewhere. Need more cheering up? How about the following numbers from Gallup, which just posted them at 1 pm.

*Obama has a +11 (53%-42%) net approval rating. It's VERY hard to see how a sitting president with a +11 net approval rating loses his bid for reelection a few weeks later (although I suppose anything's possible).
*Obama leads Romney by 5 points (50%-45%) among registered voters. That's a 2-point improvement from yesterday. So much for Romney's post-debate "bounce?"
*Obama and Romney are tied (48%-48%) in Gallup's likely voter model (up 2 points from yesterday). We'll see if that's accurate or not, but here's where I'm thinking the Obama "ground game," which they've invested huge resources in, should pay big dividends.
*According to Gallup, the unemployment rate has fallen again and is now at 7.3% (compared to 7.8% as of late September, according to Gallup, and also BLS). So much for unemployment being "above 8%," as lying liar Karl Rove and other right-wing SuperPACs keep FALSELY claiming on TV.
*Gallup's Job Creation Index, at +22 (up 2 points from yesterday), is close to the highest levels it's seen since early 2008, well before the collapse of Wall Street led our country into the Great Recession.
*Gallup's Economic Confidence Index (up 3 points today) is now 80 points (!!!) above where it was 4 years ago at this time.

Look at all these statistics from Gallup, and please explain to me how a sitting president with numbers like these loses his bid for reelection? I don't see it.

P.S. More good news on the polling front: Obama's up 49%-45% in Florida, an absolute must-win state for Romney.

UPDATE: Another good poll, this time of Minnesota by Public Policy Polling, shows "Barack Obama expanding his lead to 10 points over Mitt Romney at 53-43."

Jobless Numbers Fall - GOP Conspiracy Claims Rise

It is almost entertaining to watch the spittle and bewilderment emanating for Romney/Ryan and the usual demagogues of the GOP as the react to the latest unemployment figures which show improvement notwithstanding all of the efforts of the GOP to destroy the U.S. economy in the hope of defeating Barack Obama.  All those efforts of total obstruction and throwing millions of Americans down the financial toilet and yet the economy is improving.  They simply cannot deal with it and as a result are claiming that somehow Obama conspired to cook the numbers.   To me, it's yet the latest example of how low and untethered to reality today's Republican Party has become.   The GOP would rather see the nation in a depression rather than see Obama re-elected.  Pretty f*cked up priorities in my book.  The Washington Post looks at yesterday's jobs report and why the GOP demagogues are so flummoxed.  Here are highlights:

For Mitt Romney, it was the number that proved everything. Since the very first speech of his campaign, the Republican candidate has used a simple figure to bolster his argument that President Obama couldn’t fix the U.S. economy: 8 percent.  For Romney, any number above 8 percent proved he was right and Obama was wrong.

Obama had promised, Romney told audiences repeatedly, never to let unemployment get that high. Instead, Romney said, the jobless rate blew past 8 percent and got stuck there.  Until Friday.

The 0.3 percent dip in unemployment in September, from 8.1 to 7.8 percent, deprived Romney of one of his central campaign themes.  It was enough to put him on the defensive just as he was basking in the afterglow of his debate performance Wednesday . . . . the economy had crossed a threshold that Romney had implied it would never cross without him.

The political importance of the 8 percent threshold was driven home, in a backhanded way, by a few conservatives who floated a conspiracy theory that Friday’s dip had been engineered to give Obama a boost.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, a branch of the Labor Department, uses two main sources. One is a survey of 141,000 businesses. The other looks at 60,000 households, asking if the people in those households were working or looking for work in the last month. The household survey captures data that the business survey doesn’t, such as people who are self-employed or who work on farms.

The September survey of businesses indicated a relatively modest gain in hiring: Payrolls rose by about 114,000. But the household survey indicated a much greater boost in hiring, with about 456,000 people no longer unemployed.

Later in the day, Welch told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that he had no hard evidence that the data had been fudged.  But he said he stood by his suspicions. “I don’t want to take back one word in that tweet,” Welch said. “These numbers defy logic.”

It is truly frightening that Republicans want to see the economy in decline and more Americans in dire straits solely so that they can be political opportunists.  It is truly sickening.  But then, the GOP leadership doesn't care about nearly half the population anyways.  Romney said so himself and said it wasn't his job to worry about such citizens.

The Real Cost of the Romney-Ryan Plan to Virginians

It's no surprise that the Romney-Ryan ticket doesn't want to explain the details of its plan for deficit reduction, jobs creation and a host of other issues.  The excuse is that "it's too complicated" to address.  Truth be told, if the details are fully disclosed, I suspect that even more voters would be fleeing the GOP and its pro-wealthy agenda.  Think Progress has analyzed precisely what the Romney/Ryan plan would mean for Virginians.  The picture presented is not pretty, but it is something that Virginia voters and voters elsewhere need to grasp and understand.  Here are highlights from Think Progress' analysis (NOTE: watching the debates, Romney now suddenly seems to be disclaiming much of what he's been campaigning on for 18 months): 

Behind dramatically different economic visions and a deluge of attack ads, this election comes down to numbers. Many Virginians—and many families across the United States—are asking what this will mean at the kitchen table. What will be the cost of a second term of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden or a first term led by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)? The answer is that, in concrete and quantifiable ways, a Romney-Ryan presidency would mean higher taxes for the middle class, out-of-pocket health expenses for current seniors, fewer college loans and fewer health care options for young people, and the re-introduction of corporate outsourcing tax loopholes that have sent so many jobs overseas.

The nonprofit organizations ProgressVA and the Center for American Progress Action Fund examined the economic and tax agenda of Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan, taking a close look at how their policies would affect the way Virginians live and work. The price tag includes:

• Middle-class Virginians would pay more in taxes while millionaires pay less. Millionaires in the state would receive an additional $87,000 in tax breaks under the tax plans of Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan while middle-class families would pay up to $2,000 more in health care taxes and $1,066 more in taxes on their mortgages.
• Jobs would decline across Virginia. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan plan to provide extra tax incentives for corporations to outsource jobs and are pushing policy proposals to cripple the clean energy industry, jeopardizing 90,000 jobs across the state.
• Drastic cuts to federal spending would shrink Virginia’s middle class. The state stands to lose more than $46 billion in federal funding from 2013 through 2022, an average of more than $4.6 billion a year, from cuts to schools, law enforcement, highway repairs, job-training programs and more. These cuts would fall predominantly on middle-class and low-income families, especially cuts to education programs that would result in nearly $156 million in reduced federal support for education and job training in the state in 2013 and $361 million in 2014 alone.
• Seniors in Virginia would lose health care benefits and pay more. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan would force seniors in the state to pay at least $639 more for their prescription drugs each year. At the same time, the Romney-Ryan plan to turn Medicare into a voucher would cost current seniors at least $11,000 more out of pocket.
• Women in Virginia would pay more for health care but receive less bang for their buck. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan would once again allow insurance companies to charge women more than men while taking away preventive care from at least 1,376,205 women in the state.
• Young adults in Virginia would lose access to their families’ health insurance. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan promise to dismantle Obamacare, which would directly result in 66,000 young adults in Virginia losing the insurance they have today due to the Affordable Care Act.

The Romney-Ryan plan asks the vast majority of Americans to pay more, and then spends this revenue not on balancing the budget but rather on more tax breaks for the richest Americans. Gov. Romney’s top direct donor would receive over $2 billion in direct tax benefits from under the Romney-Ryan plan, while a typical police officer in Richmond making a little over $48,760 a year would see their taxes increase by $ 1,660. These lopsided priorities are not a coincidence or a cruel joke. They are the logical extension of a trickle-down economic policy that failed under President George W. Bush but would be revived by Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan.

The Republican contenders for the White House have tried to avoid details, but have nonetheless gone on the record with proposals that have enormous consequences for the economy, taxes, women’s health, health care, and energy security. ProgressVA and the Center for American Progress Action Fund believe facts should matter in elections because they will certainly matter to families trying to live the American Dream. This report outlines the real cost of Romney-Ryan policies to Virginians.
It is tempting for people across Virginia to start tuning out the election, defined too often by gaffes and thirty-second sound bites. But behind the politics are deep policy differences with profound consequences for the middle class.

Here is how this hidden part of the Romney-Ryan tax plan would affect low-income and middle-class families in Virginia:

• 4.3 million. The number of families in the state that rely on health insurance from their employer, which is currently not taxed.
• $1,200-2,000. The amount those middle-class families would pay in higher taxes if the exemption for employer health insurance is reduced by 58 percent.

• 1.1 million. The number of middle-class families in the state that file for the mortgage interest deduction on their federal taxes.
• $1,066. The average loss in mortgage interest deduction for middle-class families in the state if the deduction is cut by 58 percent.

• 1.4 million. The number of middle-class families in the state that deduct state and local taxes from their federal income taxes.
• $670. The amount on average that middle class families in the state will pay in higher taxes if the deduction for state and local taxes is cut by 58 percent.

• 610,000. The number of middle-class families in the state that benefit from the child tax credit.
• $580. The amount that families in the state will pay in higher taxes per child if the child tax credit is reduced by 58 percent.

• 171,000. The number of low-income and middle-class families in the state that claim the child care tax credit (in addition to the child tax credit detailed above).
• $318. The amount that families in the state will pay in higher taxes per child if the child care tax credit (in addition to the child tax credit detailed above) is reduced by 58 percent.

• 1.1 million. The number of low-income working families in the state that qualify for the earned income tax credit or the refundable portion of the child tax credit.
• $736. The tax increase for 275,000 of those families (with a total of almost 494,000 children) would pay on average if the improvements to those tax credits passed under President Obama are rolled back, as the Romney-Ryan plan proposes.

• 231,000. The number of middle-class Virginia families and students paying for college educations that use President Obama’s American Opportunity Tax Credit.
• $2,100. The average benefit these families and students receive from the American Opportunity Tax Credit. The Romney-Ryan tax plan would eliminate this credit, leaving families in the state with no credit or a less valuable tuition credit.

There's much more in the piece that details each of these areas and I recommend that readers check out the full article.

Senate Republicans Kill Veterans’ Jobs Bill

Image via Getty

With Virginia being a swing state and the 2nd Virginia Congressional District and the Virginia U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jim Webb being highly competitive we Virginians are being inundated with political ads - particularly GOP ads talking about creating jobs.  Yet when the rubber meets the road, Congressional Republicans are doing everything they can to kill pro-jib creations bills.  Even bills that would help unemployed military veterans.  One can only hope that those hearing the incessant, dishonest GOP ads are watching the GOP's actions as opposed to the party's disingenuous words and will remember the lies on election day and pull the levers for Democratic candidates.  Think Progress looks at what GOP senators did today to screw over our military veterans.  Here are excerpts:

Senate Republicans prevented a veterans’ jobs bill from coming to a vote today by forcing a budget point of order vote. Democrats came up 2 votes short of the 60 needed to defeat the GOP’s budget measure. 

The Veterans Jobs Corps bill — which is part of President Obama’s push to secure jobs for veterans — would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 young veterans for public lands jobs and prioritize vets for first responder jobs such as police, firefighter, or EMT. The measure would have also provided young vets access to the infrastructure with which to assist in job searches, such as access to computers, internet and career services advisers. 

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a vets group that supported the legislation, called the GOP move “a huge disappointment,” adding, “Today, politics won over helping vets.” 

While only five Republicans voted with the Democrats to waive the GOP budget point of order measure, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) led the GOP opposition.

The jobless rate for Iraq and Afghanistan war vets, while steadily declining, is still higher than the national average, yet congressional Republicans remain “resolute in their commitment to deny the Democrats anything that looks like an accomplishment in an election year.” 

In an editorial last weekend referring to today’s vote, the New York Times said, “We’ll know then whether good sense prevailed, or the wheels have come completely off the Congressional machine.” It looks like the Republicans have made sure of the latter. 

As I have noted many times, today's GOP has become as dishonest as the party's Christianist base.  Indeed, if Republicans' lips are moving, the safest bet is to assume that they are lying.

Virginia Could Lose 207,571 Federal Jobs Under GOP Forced Budget Cuts

To listen to Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans who seem hell bent on destroying the middle class via their calls for drastic cuts in the federal government budget, the number one reason the U. S. economy is lagging is because of too much government spending.  The truth, of course, is the direct opposite yet cretins in Virginia, including Hampton Roads, continue to support Republicans like Eric Cantor and Scott Rigell - and Bob McDonnell and Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli all of whom support massive budget cuts  A piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch looks at the doomsday scenario that could over take Virginia if GOP forced spending cuts in fact kick in.  It ought to be a wake up call for everyone who can think beyond the religious pander and anti-immigrant/minority mantra of the GOP.  Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads could be hit very hard.  Here are article highlights:

Virginia could lose 207,571 jobs and nearly $10.7 billion in labor income from federal spending cuts starting next year if Congress fails to resolve the looming budget crisis, according to an analysis released Tuesday.

Virginia ranks second only to California in estimated job losses from the automatic budget reductions, which are scheduled to kick in Jan. 2 unless Congress acts.

Texas would take the third-biggest loss, according to the analysis conducted for the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group for manufacturers that could lose billions of dollars in federal contracts.

The researchers said the automatic spending cuts will cost the economy more than 2 million jobs, from defense contracting to border security to education. The cuts also would reduce the nation's gross domestic product by $215 billion next year while consumer confidence would plummet.

"If they are allowed to occur as currently scheduled, the long-term consequences will permanently alter the course of the U.S. economy's performance, changing its competitive position in the global economy," the report said.

In Virginia, the spending cuts likely would hit Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads the hardest because of the concentration of defense-related and federal contracting jobs in those areas. Still, the entire state would suffer losses, Fuller said.

The impact on Virginia also could be larger than the direct job losses in the state, Fuller said. The District of Columbia and Maryland also would lose tens of thousands of jobs. They rank fourth and fifth overall in the number of jobs that would disappear.

"A lot of those jobs are held by Virginians," Fuller said.  The report says Virginia's losses would total 136,191 jobs resulting from Department of Defense cuts and 71,380 jobs from non-Defense Department cuts.

For those with short memories, Blue Virginia summarizes how the nation and Virginia in particular got to this scary precipice: 

[W]e'll have Republican'ts to thank if that happens. Remember, they scuttled a "grand bargain" between President Obama and Speaker Boehner on the deficit and raising the debt ceiling, resulting in the automatic spending cuts deal. Now, they're trying to blame Democrats for THAT too. These people are utterly shameless.

The GOP Economy - Bad News for Most of Us

With much of the world economy looking posed to fall back into recession, the GOP is hell bent to inflict more of the economic policy that has failed globally.  The outlook, if this happens, is not good for anyone except perhaps the ultra- wealthy who can weather the economic gloom.  Even more maddening is the refusal of the media to stop merely parroting GOP sound bites.  And then there's Obama and the Democrats timidity in placing blame where blame belongs: at the feet of the GOP.  Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that looks at the GOP's disingenuous con job and what it could mean for the future.  Here are highlights:

What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years.

[T]he Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed. 

For some reason, however, neither the press nor Mr. Obama’s political team has done a very good job of exposing the con.

What do I mean by saying that this is already a Republican economy? Look first at total government spending — federal, state and local. Adjusted for population growth and inflation, such spending has recently been falling at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War. 

Over all, the picture for America in 2012 bears a stunning resemblance to the great mistake of 1937, when F.D.R. prematurely slashed spending, sending the U.S. economy — which had actually been recovering fairly fast until that point — into the second leg of the Great Depression. .  .  .   .  responsibility for the policy wrong turn lies with a completely obstructionist Republican majority in the House. 

That same obstructionist House majority effectively blackmailed the president into continuing all the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, so that federal taxes as a share of G.D.P. are near historic lows — much lower, in particular, than at any point during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. 

Republicans have been warning that we were about to turn into Greece because President Obama was doing too much to boost the economy; Keynesian economists like myself warned that we were, on the contrary, at risk of turning into Japan because he was doing too little. And Japanification it is, except with a level of misery the Japanese never had to endure. 

So why don’t voters know any of this? 

Part of the answer is that far too much economic reporting is still of the he-said, she-said variety, with dueling quotes from hired guns on either side. But it’s also true that the Obama team has consistently failed to highlight Republican obstruction

At this point, however, Mr. Obama and his political team  .  .  .  .  Their best bet, surely, is to do a Harry Truman, to run against the “do-nothing” Republican Congress that has, in reality, blocked proposals — for tax cuts as well as more spending — that would have made 2012 a much better year than it’s turning out to be. 

[W]e have already seen the Republican economic future — and it doesn’t work. 

Will the DNC's Charlotte Convention Backfire for Obama?

I see many references across the blogosphere about boycotting North Carolina after the passage of Amendment One earlier this month.  I DO understand that feeling although I will be going to OBX Pridefest next month to support Dare County residents and businesses that voted against Amendment One (Dare County was the only non-metropolitan county to reject Amendment One).  The Counties surrounding Charlotte likewise voted against Amendment One, but that may not dampen the anger and animosity that is palpable in North Carolina.  Given this toxic atmosphere, some see the DNC National Convention as something that may backfire big time.  Here are excerpts from a column in The Daily Beast that suggests holding the DNC convention in Charlotte may not be a good idea: 

When the Obama campaign last year picked Charlotte, N.C., as the host city for the 2012 Democratic National Convention, they hoped to double down on the president’s historic victory four years ago, when his electoral coalition of young, black, and college-educated white voters made him the first Democrat to carry the Tar Heel State since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

But while polls show Barack Obama and Mitt Romney neck-and-neck in the state, the president's choice to hold the convention there could come back to haunt him, given the convergence of angry labor unions, an unfortunately named venue, embarrassing local political scandals, Occupy Wall Street protesters, and the voters’ decision this year to pass a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions.

That vote led more than 30,000 people to quickly sign a petition from a New York–based marriage-equality group to move the convention elsewhere, though timing and logistics alone render that functionally impossible.

[T]he economic backdrop is far from ideal for the president looking to sell voters on the Obama recovery. North Carolina’s unemployment rate has persistently been above the national average, at 9.4 percent last month, and Charlotte is the world headquarters of Bank of America, a bailed-out megabank so closely associated with the financial collapse of 2008 that Occupy Wall Street has devoted a campaign specifically to breaking it up. Protesters will be on the streets of Charlotte taking aim at the bank even as President Obama delivers his acceptance speech—at Bank of America Stadium. And labor unions are fuming that the convention is being held in a so-called right-to-work state (where union membership or dues cannot be required for employment).

Labor, which remains the bedrock organizing arm of the Democratic Party, is miffed that national Democrats chose to meet in the state with the smallest proportion of union members—just 2.9 percent of the workforce last year—to make their case for a strengthening the middle class and broadening economic prosperity. Some locals are planning to skip or even protest the convention, and labor has pointedly declined to contribute its expected share of the convention’s costs, which will be upwards of $36 million this year.

Time will tell whether or not the Charlotte choice proves to be disastrous.  Knowing wat we all know now, I cannot help but believe a different choice would be made if time permitted a change of venues.

Homophobia: A Mark of Losers Nations and Loser States

I have noted before the growing homophobia that is sweeping Russia where anti-gay propaganda laws are under consideration in a number of many of Russia's major cities. Then, of course, we have the economic and social cesspools of sub-Sahara Africa where it seems as if nations are racing to see which one can enact the most anti-gay legislation. In contrast, most developed nations - the USA being a glaring exception - are increasingly gay accepting. Some countries in South America even deliver better nowadays on the promise of liberty and freedom than the USA. My activist friend Wayne Besen has a column in the Falls Church News-Press that the level of homophobia is increasingly a gauge for whether a nation is in decline or ascendancy. Sadly, employing this measure, the USA is in an accelerating state of decline because of the special privileges afforded Christianists and the unwillingness of elected officials to protect and deliver on constitutional rights of all citizens. The same holds true for states like Virginia and others in the South in particular that support bigotry rather than constitutional rights. Here are some highlights from Wayne's column:

I knew Russia was likely to embrace homophobia the moment I read that approximately 1.25 million Russians have emigrated from the nation in the past decade. Population experts say that the mass exodus is comparable in size to the migration following the Bolshevik Revolution. This one-time superpower is disintegrating into a superstitious country more concerned about angels than economics.

In this politically stagnating and spiritually stifling environment, it is predictable that the city of Saint Petersburg would consider a totalitarian bill imposing fines for the so-called promotion of gay "propaganda." If it were to pass, anyone who committed "public acts" promoting homosexuality, bisexuality or transgender identity to minors could pay up to 3,000 rubles while an organization could pay 10,000 to 50,000 rubles.

Such an outright assault on expression and speech are not the product of a free country and rightfully raised red flags within the U.S. State Department.

Without exception, loser nations are always the most homophobic. Leaders of such lands desperately look for scapegoats to distract the public from noticing their dismal failures. They also find the promotion of religious extremism useful, because it is more difficult to vilify leaders who present themselves as deified.

The LGBT community rarely thrives in backward places that promote ignorance over education and medieval views over modernity. As these intellectual swamps sink, sexual minorities make ideal targets because their members are often isolated and deeply closeted, vulnerable to persecution, and don't have the numbers to fight back.

Russia is not the only loser nation where leaders manipulate the public through virulent gay bashing. Brutal Zimbabwe dictator, Robert Mugabe, called homosexuality un-Christian and un-African last week, and then threatened to severely discipline anyone in a gay relationship.

Even in some advanced nations there is the threat of retrograde preachers who have no qualms about dragging their countries into the gutter for personal riches and political gain.

Homophobia is a mark of failing nations. Even in America, it is the emblem of poor, second-tier states. It is the signpost of inferior cities that perpetually fail to reach their potential and can't figure out why.

It is not that anti-gay sentiment on its own causes the collapse of such places. It is that homophobia virtually never stands alone. It can only flower in corrupt environments that lack basic freedom, devalue education, limit liberty, have huge income disparities, degrade women, discourage religious pluralism, mock intellectuals, and promote superstition at the expense of science.

As a general rule, places that are leaders in passing anti-gay laws are losers in virtually every other category that defines successful, civilized societies.

I believe that Wayne is pretty much on target. His analysis certainly holds true in the case of Virginia and regions of this state which are the most homophobic (homophobic, of course, being a relative term since the entire state is homophobic in terms of its anti-gay legal framework). The more conservative and homophobic they become, the more they spiral downward toward economic collapse. Don't believe me? The map below shows a county breakdown of unemployment. The lowest unemployment figures are for the most part clustered around cities with major universities and more liberal counties. The highest unemployment rates correlate closely with the most conservative and anti-gay areas of Virginia.

What Failed GOP Policies Have Wrought for Generation Y

All three of my children fall within what is often referred to as "Generation ," namely young adults between the ages of 18 and 28. What this younger generation is experiencing as a result of the failings of my baby boomer generation and in particular the failed policies of the Bush/Cheney years is disheartening. Despite the harsh reality of what has been done to the nation's economy, the majority of the would be GOP presidential candidates want to implement even more of the same policies that have wrought the economic current debacle. A story in American Prospect looks at what this reality is meaning for Generation Y. Here are some highlights:

Young adults entering the workforce today think they'll be worse off than their parents—they're not wrong.

The recession officially ended nearly two and a half years ago, in June 2009, but for the generation of young adults who’ve been trying to take their first steps into adulthood, its effects could shape the future for decades to come.

Why is this recession different from other sharp downturns? The standard economic indicators fail to tell the whole story. Yes, unemployment rates for young people remain at the record-high levels they hit at the Great Recession’s peak in 2007, but this is typical for young workers, who tend to be the last group that recovers after a recession—and tend to feel its effects far after the economy has rebounded.

For youth entering the workforce today, not has the sour economy delayed their careers; they are entering a workforce that offers historically low wages and, unlike their parents, they're coming in with massive amounts of student-loan debt.

A poll we commissioned of young people ages 18 to 34 shows that 32 percent of employed college graduates—and a shocking 53 percent of young workers with only a high school diploma—are working jobs that do not advance their careers. Given that the Federal Reserve, in its most recent projection, predicts unemployment will remain at about 8 percent until the end of 2013, and 7 percent until the end of 2014, that means many young workers will not get their first career-track job for another two or three years.

Millennials’ soaring debt burden is largely due to crushing college tuition rates that have risen far faster than inflation. In 1968, when the first boomers entered college, a student could have paid for tuition and fees at a public university by working just 6.2 hours a week at minimum wage; today, they’d have to work full-time just to cover tuition costs.

ising debt, un- and underemployment, and dim job prospects have forced many Millennials to postpone the key decisions that historically marked entry into adulthood. Nearly half of the 25- to 34-year-olds surveyed said they’ve put off purchasing a home; 29 percent say they’ve delayed starting a family; and 26 percent still live with their parents. These decisions have long-lasting effects.

The lower wages, skimpy benefits, debt burdens, and persistent unemployment that young workers face today are not simply the result of random economic fluctuations or forces beyond our control: They're the direct consequence of decades of bad government policy and inaction. The assault on collective-bargaining rights, the loosening of corporate oversight, the deregulation of the financial sector, and the repeated reductions in taxes—particularly for corporations—have all combined to create a bleak economic landscape.

But there are many ways policymakers could help Millennials start their lives with a greater chance of economic security and prosperity. Increasing the minimum wage, for instance, would raise the wage floor and help combat a decades-long slump. . . . . policymakers need to take action right now to prevent a lost generation of youth whose parents simply did not pay forward the social benefits they inherited.

Do John Boehner, Eric Cantor or the Koch brothers give a damn about this dismal picture? Of course not. They are focused solely on aiding the wealthy and pushing the rest of us towards quasi-serfdom. Would that the idiots in the Tea Party would wake up to the fact that they are backing the very people and policies that have screwed them over.