Third Party & Independents: Archives

I would like to know the difference in coverage that the economy got when it was doing poorly… before this strong recovery we have had, all I saw on TV was “Bush lost X number of jobs” (which is so economically illiterate it makes me want to fall over) ect. Now that the economy is kicking up, no one in the mainstream media wants to talk about it. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

You can pretty much figure out which developments are good for Bush based on what the media refuses to cover. It’s practically a science.

The economy is expanding at a rate we haven’t seen since Reagan. The only element keeping the picture from being totally positive was lagging job growth, so that was front page material for a few months. But now, over a million jobs have been added in ninety days. The truth would elect Bush. Therefore the truth must be suppressed. It’s very simple for the New York Times’ and C-BS’s of this world.

This election is less about Bush and Kerry than whether the media is going to achieve its goal of being an unelected artistocracy.

Martin,
“You can pretty much figure out which developments are good for Bush based on what the media refuses to cover.”

I see it too, and the converse as well, that any story that gets repetitive coverage and beaten into the ground like a dead horse, those are the things that certain media elements consider “damaging to Bush”.

With that being said, I would also say that certain aspects of the Bush administration do deserve considerable damage, as “Karma” to the damage they have done to the U.S. Abu Ghraib, for example, apart from putting us in a ticklish situation regarding international law, was also extremely embarrassing, and now that the memo has been leaked showing that the Justice Department was telling Bush it was basically okay to do things like Abu Ghraib, that just plain rubs salt into the wounds of our national security posture.

In the modern world, right is what makes might, by way of propaganda and psyops, and the right/might formula has been vastly squandered by the Bush advisory team. To the extent that that has been done, it’s hard to fault the “left wing media” for reading the administration the riot act over it.

And then with that, in turn, being said, I would also go on to say that enough is enough and at some point the message gets lost in the hype, and to have Ted Kennedy shouting to people about “morality” doesn’t do that watch-word any favors either. The way in which the outrage has become politicized, threatens to cheapen the outrage itself. So in that sense, I too, am “outraged by the outrage”, not that it happens, but in the way it happens. “Gotcha” and political points should be less important than a serious discussion of how best to craft our national security strategy.

Oh, and Martin, the media IS “elected” by the votes cast in dollars spent by consumers for the products of the companies that sponsor the broadcasts or advertise in the papers. Contrary “votes” of that nature may be considered, if you want a Republican political effort to be more comprehensive. A corporate enemies’ list might get a clear message across that the media “war” has begun in earnest.

Replacing engineering and programming jobs with restaurant and nursing jobs is not an economic recovery. Middle America has been stuck in wage stagflation for thirty years, a taboo topic in our Republocrate fake Democracy. Most single income households have been replaced with two incomes to make up this shortfall. White collar fraud has saddled us with two huge unnecessary wars and about thirty little ones; massive legal tax scams for partisan contributors; Social Security, S&L, Bank, Wall Street, and Pension failures; privatization of Education, Justice and National Defense. Conservatives are flooding communication channels with economic misinformation. A very odd couple, Conservative Paul Craig Roberts and entertainer Michael Moore compile and report the ugly truth.

Having a fair sum invested in fixed rate instruments and stocks (forget bonds), I have had no problem getting daily information about the economy on MSNBC, CNBC, C-Span’s Washington Journal, and Bloomberg. If folks were interested in what “fat” cats think about the economy, there is ample coverage in the newspapers, on the internet, and on cable and satellite TV.

A majority of the public however, knows how to judge the economy from the single most powerful news source on the subject - the pay stub. They know that if their bills are going up faster than their pay raises, all the B.S. in the world about the economy from people who make their living trading financial instruments or counting population interances via statistics, is pure politics. The truth is in the family checkbook and monthly family budget.

This is a wisdom of the American people that no amount of politics or statistics is going to deceive.

David:

To be even clearer, most people look at the things that seem to affect them the most. Pay stub is right up there, but so too are gas prices and the stock market. The details of why and what might happen in the future (ie, if inflation starts then yada yada yada happens, and bonds will yada yada yada) is just too hard for many to fathom.

Excellent points of clarity, joebagodunuts. If my wife had not pulled her 401K money out of stocks at strategic points this year, she would have incurred a net loss. Most 401K working people don’t move their money as conditions warrant and thus, most are seeing little gain and many are seeing red in their employer sponsored 401K’s. More importantly, there is no place for 401K investors to look for the kind of returns they were accustomed to seeing prior to the recession. It is a very bad investment environment right now since fixed rates are so low and not even keeping up with inflation, while all other vehicles for 410K investors are volatile due to international circumstances and rising interest rates.

david-
you are right, i have no idea what you were just writing about, except it seemed like it was not good regarding the economy.

David, maybe your wife can give me a call when she makes a 401k change. Mine is still not worth what I put into it. :)

Can you imagine if every American was forced to become an expert stock market gambler, just so they could have food and shelter after they retire?

Oh, right. The original topic.

Martin, if you and I got the news about new jobs from the media, then the story is obviously not being suppressed. It’s just not as interesting as doomsday scenarios, and new revelations aren’t coming to light daily like investigations into Abu Ghraib abuses.

The economy is expanding at a rate we haven’t seen since Reagan.

First term, or last term? :)

Wake me when it expands at a rate we haven’t seen since Clinton.

Deceit about jobs is taking over from deceit about the Iraq war.

Lost in the hoopla about 248,000 jobs created in May is the discouraging pattern of job creation. Why didn’t the pundits touting the “good news on the jobs front” tell us that 176,000 of the jobs — or 71 percent — are concentrated in low-paying domestic services that cannot be outsourced? Here is where the May jobs are: restaurants and bars, 33,000; health care and social assistance, 36,000; temporary help, 31,000; retail trade, 19,000; transportation and warehousing, 15,000; financial activities, 15,000; real estate, 9,000; services to buildings and dwellings, 8,000; education, 8,000.

This repeats the pattern of last month and, indeed, of every month in the new millennium. Our economy is not creating jobs that are part of the high tech global economy or that require university education. The jobs that made America a land of opportunity where people could rise are missing.

During the same 40 months, the U.S. economy lost 4.35 million jobs in manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail, transportation and warehousing, utilities, information, and professional and business services.

Despite Sarbanes-Oxley, legislation that greatly increased the accounting burden on U.S. firms, Americans lost 64,000 accounting jobs, many of which were outsourced to the Philippines.

Despite the loss of 1 million jobs, the U.S. economy found the need for 67,000 more jobs in legal services.

With fewer architectural, engineering, computer, information and manufacturing jobs than four years ago, what becomes of university graduates trained for nonexistent jobs in the high tech economy? They have to retrain to wait tables and serve drinks when they graduate. When the vast majority of new jobs are in domestic services that only require short term on-the-job training, what sense does a university education make?

Pundits are fond of citing “studies” paid for by Indian offshore jobs platforms that “only” 3.3 million U.S. jobs will be outsourced in the next 10 years. For an economy that has lost 1 million jobs since January 2001, this is a crippling amount.

For an economy that has only 1.1 million jobs in “computer systems design and related” and only 1.26 million jobs in “architectural and engineering services,” 3.3 million more jobs to be outsourced is a devastating blow to students who pursue difficult curriculums in college in hopes of a career.

Americans are being taken for a ride on jobs, just as they were on Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorist links to Al Qaeda. The jobs mess will be just as big and just as costly as the Iraq mess. Americans are being manipulated beyond their means.

Sources for the jobs data are the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Charles McMillion at MBG Information Services in Washington, D.C. (quoted from Paul Craig Roberts)

AP, to be as unfair to Clinton as the situation warrants, the “Clinton boom” was actually a bubble, or a “false boom”. It was built on dot-com speculation, and America basically ran on a corporate credit card underwritten by certain Venture Capital investment firms who were a few bits short of a byte, at the time.

The falseness of the boom wasn’t Clinton’s fault, but the boomness of the boom wasn’t Clinton’s virtue, either.