No Coasting in 2012

Dave Brockington is right to be worried about Obama in 2012.
Unemployment is bad. And it is downright terrible among those who do not have college educations. These voters tend to vote Democratic. Plus, the Republicans who have taken over the key state of Florida are suppressing the very votes Obama needs to win. Ohio is moving to suppress the youth vote, too.

Moreover, when people lose their homes due to foreclosure, that can create confusion about their voting addresses--which is another opening for Republicans to contest the eligibility of people to cast ballots.

Citizens United has burst a dam for money to buy nasty campaign ads, that will drag him down.

There needs to be a serious effort by every progressive-leaning person to reach out to everyone, to have conversations over coffee, at the watercooler, at the lunch truck convince other voters that Obama shares their values and needs their vote.
Oh, yeah, same goes for the progressive candidates running in primaries for Congress.

More needs to happen that just that--but at the very least, progressives need to get Obama to win.

Blame Where Blame Belongs

This piece rightfully blames the Senate for not extending unemployment benefits. But the lead suggests that the blame falls on both parties:

One month after the House passed a bill extending unemployment benefits, the issue is still being debated in the Senate. While leaders in both parties are trying to negotiate a compromise, the bickering is costing people their benefits.

No, let's be quite clear on this: the Republican Party has decided to not let this past. While Harry Reid deserves excoriation for his weakness as Majority Leader, there is only one party who is denying people benefits. That is the Republican Party.

Is it asking too much for journalists to assign blame when one party is at fault? Or can they only do that when they can blame Democrats?

Historical Image of the Day

Unemployment Council (a communist organization) led demonstration at City Hall, Tacoma, WA, 1931

Screwing the Unemployed

CNN has a surprisingly decent story about how the states are screwing over unemployed people by charging them every time they use the debit cards they receive for their unemployment benefits.

I'm not surprised that states are trying to recoup some of the costs of unemployment. It's a system that the states shouldn't be administering in the first place. Unemployment should be a national system, like in Europe and Australia, where if you are out of work, you can go on the dole and they don't screw you over too bad. Still, even with the system as it is now, it's really bad. Why would you make the poor even poorer? What is that supposed to accomplish?

Maybe when the unemployed march on Washington under a new Coxey's Army, this will be something to riot over.

A little bit of perspective

It seems, for the most part, people are giving Obama the benefit of the doubt on the economy-- as well they should, since this crisis was years in the making, and fixing something is often more complicated than breaking it in the first place. Unemployment keeps ticking upwards, and is often the last part of the economy to recover. For a little bit of perspective, we can look at the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and see how the horrible, miserable Carter years compared to the glorious Renaissance that comprised Reagan's reign.

Reagan won the 1980 election, when the unemployment rate was a salty 7.1% (a full pecent lower than the February 2009 rate of 8.1%). Unemployment rose in 1981 and 1982 (topping out at 9.7%), then slowly started to fall (9.6% in 1983, 7.5% in 1984, 7.2% in 1985). It wasn't until 1986-- six years into Reagan's term-- that unemployment was lower than it was at the end of the Carter administration, and then only by one-tenth of a percent (7.1% in 1986).

Clinton inherited a high unemployment rate as well-- in fact, higher than Reagan inherited from the Carter administration (7.5%). The Clinton administration enjoyed a quick and steep drop in unemployment to some of the lowest levels since the early 1950's-- 6.9% in 1993, 6.1% in 1994, 5.6% in 1995, 5.4% in 1996, continuing to drop until 2000, which had an unemployment rate of 4.0%. Every single year of the George W. Bush administration had higher unemployment than the last three years of Clinton.

So this may take some time to fix. This recession is more like the one in the early 1980's than the early 1990's, but I'm confident that Obama will get the ship turned around faster than Reagan did. And if Reagan can attain nearly canonized status by overseeing six years of unemployment higher than the Jimmy Carter years, Obama should be on the $20 bill if he can fix this mess in two or three years.

Take that, Michigan!

Riverside and San Bernardino counties (the two sprawling counties that make up Southern California's Inland Empire) now have the country's highest unemployment rate, tipping in at a robust 9.1%. To be fair, The Detroit suburbs had the second highest, and Michigan overall is worse off than California overall.

The Inland Empire is one area where public works projects could help immensely. The downturn in the construction industry has contributed greatly to area unemployment. There is, however, a fantastic opportunity here. If the goverment were to invest in public works projects (say, I don't know, mass transit, bridge and road repair, solar / wind energy [this is the desert out here, after all]), they would find a large number of willing, experienced, and trained workers. Win-Win.

Seriously, that would be better than another $700 check.

Here is a graphic tracking the rise in unemployment to the male suicide rate, via The Economist's View (one of the economic blogs I've been reading to try to figure out what the hell all of this stuff means).