Lousy emoployment #'s...well, Reich has it right!

by: Doug Coffin

Fri Dec 03, 2010 at 15:10:37 PM MST

The Bad news.

More misery and tough times ahead for our country and we have really lousy leadership that doesn't hold much hope for solving anything soon.

Part of the answer is to look to our best and brightest for ideas, and then hope that the policymakers can square themselves away for just a moment to get things right.

For me, one of those people is Paul Krugman. He has a great critique in todays NY Times of Obama's bummer Presidency and what he (Obama) can do to get it right. (....er...."correct" that is...he's already too far right). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12...

Another one of my favorites is Robert Reich. The former labor secretary to President Clinton is arrogant, but also very smart. His piece in Salon today probably sums up the employment problem and potential solutions as well as any recent column that I've read.

http://www.salon.com/news/feat...

Combine this with Rob's outstanding reference to the Atlantic article and we've got a bonanza. All that pretty much sums up the situation that we're in and even has some great ideas on how to get out of "Bush's Revenge" aka "The Great Recession" or our current economy.

I submitted the following to Reich's piece. We met last spring in San Fransisco at an economic
conference.

Hi Robert. Please recall from our conversation in SF: As you point out education is one of two essentials in protecting or growing wages. The other is collective bargaining. Remember slide #19? It showed that, not only is a lack of higher ed the problem, but that a College Education is becoming a relative term. States are gutting funding for higher ed, accelerating a trend that started 20 years ago. Now, there are only two public universities left in the top 25 (Yours, UCB, is one at 22nd) with none in the top 10. The funding gap is leading to an opportunity gap whereby a student with a degree from a private university has much greater value and, therefore, disproportionately greater opportunity than a student with a public university degree.
Regarding wages, I believe that the Great Recession is also proving that collective bargaining is the other great essential (with education) to protecting or growing wages. Indeed, I submit that the correlation between bargaining power and economic prosperity is no longer a correlation but cause and effect. The lower the bargaining power the lower the wages; pretty simple. So, it's education and collectivism as the cornerstones to the long-term rebuilding of our economy. You agreed before, do
you still?

BTW, I would throw in two things to a govt based recovery plan:1. a program were the FED buys up the current, outstanding student loan burden and forgives the bottom 20% and then refinances the rest at prime plus 1%. 2. Lower the retirement age and eligibility for social security and medicare to age 60. That'll create jobs!! Check out our "Left in the West Blog" http://leftinthewest.com/

Baucus Sides with Big Oil and Coal, not Montanans

by: Turner

Sat Oct 16, 2010 at 09:26:49 AM MST

Powers' Commentary

Last week Montana Senator Max Baucus appeared to side with Republicans and a handful of coal-state Democrats in opposition to the US Environmental Protection Agency using the authority that the US Supreme Court has said EPA has to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Baucus was quoted as saying that the regulation of greenhouse gases was too important and complicated to trust to just a federal agency. Instead, that regulation should remain the business of the US Congress where different regional and industrial interests can be balanced. Congress, of course, has not been able to muster the votes to pass any climate protection legislation, and with Republicans expected to be significantly more powerful in Congress after the mid-term elections, there is little chance a greenhouse gas emission control bill will be produced by Congress any time soon. No EPA greenhouse gas regulation may effectively mean no greenhouse gas regulation at all for the indefinite future.

Because Baucus is a member of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, his apparent opposition to allowing EPA to adopt regulations controlling greenhouse gas emissions was big news in Washington DC. One of the Capitol's influential daily newsletters, Environment and Energy, explained Baucus' waffling on the regulation of greenhouse gases by saying: "Baucus is wary of efforts to limit carbon emissions, as coal mining, coal-fired electricity and oil refineries dominate his state.

It is true that Montana has lots of coal and continues to produce significant amounts of petroleum and natural gas. It is also true that a half-dozen large coal mines are operating in the state, shipping that coal to coal-fired generators across the nation. That coal mining also supports six coal-fired generators here in Montana including Colstrip's four generators. We also have oil refineries in Billings, Great Falls, and Laurel. We have high voltage transmission lines delivering the electricity we generate to the West Coast, a petroleum products pipeline stretching across much of the state connecting some of our refineries with the states to the west and a variety of natural gas pipelines crisscrossing the state. Clearly energy production, transformation, and transmission are a significant part of Montana's economy. But are we "dominated" by these energy industries?

That description, of course, is not just a shorthand way for Washington DC insiders to try to make sense out of why our representatives vote the way they do. It is also a description that increases the political power of those very fossil fuel sectors in Montana, giving them more leverage to either block or change any proposed greenhouse gas regulations or legislation. That, actually, is what Baucus meant by saying that regulation of greenhouse gases should be done in Congress where heavy emitters of greenhouse gases can better get their economic interests taken into account.

For that reason, it is important to investigate the extent to which Montana is actually economically "dependent" on coal mines, coal-fired electric generators, and oil refineries. The answer to that is that we have "little" and "shrinking" economic dependence on those energy industries. The Montana Coal Council tells us that in 2009 about 1,150 people were employed in coal mining in Montana. That sounds like a lot of jobs, but there were about 625,000 jobs in Montana in 2009. The coal mining jobs represented about one out of every 500 jobs, less than two-tenths of one percent of all jobs. In petroleum refining, we have about 1,100 jobs, about the same as in coal mining. If we look at electric generation, the 2002 and 2007 Economic Census indicate that the employment in electric generation was about 450, but about 150 of those jobs were associated with hydroelectric generation, leaving about 300 workers engaged in fossil fuel-based generation. Clearly that is even a smaller sliver of the total Montana economy, one out of every 2,000 jobs. If we add all of the coal mining, coal-fired electric generation, and petroleum refining jobs together, there are about 2,600 jobs associated with these energy sectors. That is, these sectors provide one out of every 250 Montana jobs or about four-tenths of one percent of total jobs.

To call this a "dominant" position in the Montana economy is more than a stretch, it is at the very limits of hyperbole. One can, of course, start using multipliers to inflate this number. But any reasonable multiplier would leave us accounting for less than two percent of the Montana's jobs. It might be better to be worrying more about the other 98 percent of jobs if we are really concerned about the future of the Montana economy.

Just as important, we could ask how many of the new jobs that have been created in Montana over the last 25 years were created in these energy sectors. Over the last quarter century, Montana added almost 220,000 jobs, over a 50 percent increase. During that time, employment in coal mining declined by over 300. Employment in coal-fired generation also appears to have declined as automation reduced the necessary work force. On the other hand, employment at our oil refineries expanded by 200. So overall, these three energy sectors lost a couple of hundred jobs while the over all economy was expanding dramatically. Just in health care, for instance, almost 30,000 new jobs were created, more than doubling that workforce.

It is important that we focus clearly on the economy we actually have and the sources of economic vitality that have actually been supporting the expansion of employment opportunities. Our continued fascination with the view through the economic rear-view mirror leads only to confusion and bad public economic policy that allows a tiny sliver of economic participants to distort public policy to protect their private interests at the expense of the rest of the population and the economy.

Immigrants don't steal jobs

by: Jay Stevens

Tue May 18, 2010 at 05:47:18 AM MST

Yglesias:

But of course when you look at the politics of this issue, none of this is reflected. The people clamoring to "control the border" aren't recent low-skill immigrants from Mexico. It's very rarely native born high-school dropouts either. Rather, the people upset about immigration tend to be white high school graduates, a group that has a lot of conservative opinions about many issues but generally benefits from high levels of immigration.

Kevin Drum suggests that immigration opponents' opposition "...is rooted less in economic concerns and more in cultural resentment and language angst." Which isn't really accurate, either, given the number of immigration opponents that proudly point to, say, German, Irish, or Italian immigrant ancestors.

It's racism. Not the overt, old-fashioned segregation and lynching kind...it's the face of a kind of new racism, in which a handful of people, no doubt feeling threatened, confused, or annoyed by the myriad and rapidity of change - economic, cultural, moral, or technological, and not all of it positive - cling for self-identity to a highly politicized vision of the mythic American past, which, at its center, includes a racial and ethnic identity. Obama does not belong to the mythology, nor, apparently, does the most recent Miss America - a Muslim-American woman who "usurped" the "rightful" owner of the crown, Arizona-immigration-policy-supporting Miss Oklahoma. A "real" American doesn't speak with an accent, drive the wrong car, worship the wrong God, or veer from the views of the conservative punditry.

And I do think there's an economic component to this resentment that's written into the mythology as the "Protestant work ethic," but is probably more about the fear of immigrants slicing off a too-generous helping from the US government's budget pie. It's no coincidence that the areas of the country most hostile to civil and immigrant rights are also the most federally subsidized. And it's no coincidence that Reagan's pairing of federal welfare abuse with single black mothers resonated so sharply with many white, middle-class voters.

Whatever. Let's just say that distrust of immigrant populations runs deep, and all the evidence in the world that new Americans actually benefit the US economy will change neither the canard associating immigrants with job loss nor any anti-immigration views.

Republicans Against Savings Claim Recovery Act Creates Jobs

by: Junior

Wed Mar 03, 2010 at 12:51:49 PM MST

Now it might be confusing to someone, but Montana was in a unique situation when congress pass the recovery act - we had money.  So, the legislature created a $20 million dollar grab bag of general fund money for local governments to spend.  These are not federal recovery act dollars.  Remember the rubber-tilled tennis courts in Bozeman was out of this free for all.

Now Republicans are all in a fuss over Schweitzer holding and saving the remaining $3.5 million until we have a better picture of the budget.  It shouldn't make anyone blink, these are the same Republicans who said we have "too much in the bank" when the Governor vetoed some unnecessary spending.  

No I mean the same Republicans who proclaim that spending is out of control.  Here is Sen. Dave Lewis (R-Helena) who said "Everything has to be on the table." and "In the meantime, we just keep driving toward that steep drop-off." Republican leaders are also saying a special session is needed.

The latest pork project Republican to jump for the bacon was Sen. Jim Peterson.  No one should be surprised by that -- Sen. Peterson has been living off the tax trough for some time.

Someone said it best, if you take the hypocrisy out of politics you won't have any politicians left.  But you can't have it both ways - spend in my district, but cut the budget. Now I just wish reporters in Montana could pick up on this hypocrisy.

The Myth Machine Fires Up on Financial Reform

by: John_Firehammer

Sat Feb 06, 2010 at 08:46:05 AM MST

A new ad now airing in Montana tries to make a claim that proposed reforms of our nation's financial system amount to a "big bank bailout bill."

It's a deliriously cynical and misleading statement from the people who brought us the absurd cries of "death panels" and "socialized medicine."

The new myths from these old fear mongers are funded by a right-wing North Carolina organization -- the ironically named Committee for Truth in Politics -- and were scripted by Frank Luntz, an ultra-conservative stooge for Wall Street and the Big Banks.

Montanans and people throughout the nation are angry at Big Banks and Wall Street and the reckless business practices that have eviscerated our economy. But in the strange world of Luntz -- where everything is what it isn't and facts are meaningless -- the ads somehow wave the populist flag while railing against the very policies that will stabilize our financial system and rein in the Fat Cats.

The financial reforms before Congress would impose rules and consequences on the massive corporations that got us into our economic mess.

That's why big-bonus CEOs and the enemies of reform are launching such a hard and dirty fight against these changes.

It's time our laws protected Main Street, not Wall Street.  

41 MT House Republicans vote against 11,000 jobs

by: Junior

Tue Mar 17, 2009 at 11:03:43 AM MST

Among many other projects and investment it means.

For Billings no Shiloh Road upgrade or money for School District 2.  Looks like they will have to go back to the property taxpayers.  Thanks to Rep. Tom McGillvray, Rep. Penny Morgan, Rep. Krayton Kerns, Rep. Ken Peterson, Rep. Don Roberts, Rep. Cary Smith.

For the Flathead unemployment will hover around 14%, no jobs working on HWY 93, and no loan helping restarting the timber mills.
Thanks to Rep. Dee Brown, Rep. Janna Taylor, Rep. Scott Reichner, Rep. Bill Beck, Rep. Gary MacLaren, Rep. Jon Sonju.

For Libby I guess that means no help for the asbestos victims and close the doors on the mills.
Thanks Rep. Chas Vincent and Rep. Gerald Bennett.

For taxpayers it means not creating energy efficient schools to save your tax dollars.  No to the jobs upgrading energy projects in Montana.  No to investing in our kids education.  No to holding the line on tuition. And I guess no clean water projects in Brockway, MT.  

Please follow the link to the vote on HJ33 and find out if your Representative voted against creating jobs and projects in your neighborhood.

Thankfully there are 59 commonsense members in the House that want to reinvest in jobs and Montana.    

hypocRisy with a capital R for Republicans

by: Junior

Tue Feb 03, 2009 at 21:34:51 PM MST

Why? - promoted by Jay Stevens)

Another day, another hypocritical vote by the extremist House Republicans.  Today, among other empty rhetoric during the day; 48 House Republicans voted against HJ 12, carried by Cheryl Steenson (D-Kalispell), that urges Congress to pass the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to create jobs, jobs, and more jobs.  

Never mind that Flathead unemployment level is approaching 10% and Rep. Dee Brown, Rep. Bill Beck, Rep. Jon Sonju, Rep. Mark Blasdel, Rep. Janna Taylor and Rep. Scott Reichner all voted against this resolution to put Montanans in the northwest back to work.  

But remember the reason we cannot move the budget forward in Subcommittee is the House and Senate Republicans want to wait until the Recovery and Reinvestment Act passes Congress before they vote on any part of the budget.  Say what?  

Recap - 48 House Republicans vote against the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, yet won't vote on Montana's budget until it passes congress.

Yep, the Good Guv was right, they are smoking pine cones.  

Voting No to Jobs, Jobs, and More Jobs:
Rep. Duane Ankney, Rep. Elsie Arntzen, Rep. Russell Bean, Rep. Gerald Bennett, Rep. Tom Berry, Rep. Joel Boniek, Rep. Ed Butcher, Rep. Ray Hawk, Rep. Gordon Hendrick, Rep. Dennis Himmelberger, Rep. Roy Hollandsworth, Rep. Brian Hoven, Rep. David Howard, Rep. Pat Ingraham, Rep. Llew Jones, Rep. Dave Kasten, Rep. Krayton Kerns, Rep. Harry Klock, Rep. Bob Lake, Rep. Gary MacLaren, Rep. Tom McGillvary, Rep. Walter McNutt, Rep. Scott Mendenhall, Rep. Mike Milburn, Rep. Mike Miller, Rep. Micheal Moore, Rep. Penny Morgan, Rep. Bill Nooney, Rep. Jesse O'Hare, Rep. Ken Peterson, Rep. Lee Randall, Rep. Keith Reiger, Rep. Scott Reichner, Rep. Don Roberts, Rep. Scott Sales, Rep. Cary Smith, Rep. Wayne Stahl, Rep. Ron Stoker, Rep. Gordon Vance, Rep. Chas Vincent, Rep. Bob Wagner, Rep. Wendy Warburton, and Rep. Ted Washburn