Careers on The Huffington Post

Job Hunting Tips: 5 Simple Ways To Get A Job This Holiday Season

2009-12-22T15:46:29Z

There are five easy things you can do right now, in December, while you're cramming your face with sugar and carbs, to set yourself up for a successful job search in January.

Chicago Unemployment Rate Drops Slightly Month-Over-Month

2009-12-22T15:40:19Z

Unemployment in metropolitan Chicago edged down to 10.3% in November but remained close to a 26-year high.

Mark Horvath: An American Heartbreak: From Earning $90,000 each year to the Streets

2009-12-22T14:44:04Z

From earning $90,000 each year to the streets, James is a story of American heartbreak.

Working in the auto industry and as an electrician, James seemed to be living on top of the world. He accepted an early buyout, took the chance to go back to college, and graduated only to find no opportunities.

Shelters and abandoned buildings became home to James until he connected with a band of local churches that opened their doors to him and provided him with a daily allowance of two bus passes. More recently, James has been provided with clothing, shelter and a checking account from a program.

Fortunately, he finally is beginning to see light at the end of a dark tunnel.

Asked what he would do if were granted three wishes, James humbly and perhaps surprisingly, acknowledges that he has everything he needs.

Imagine how many more stories could end with hope and promise like James' if we each devoted ourselves to truly solving the issue of homelessness.

James from InvisiblePeople.tv on Vimeo.

Special thanks to Solid Ground.

David Paul Kuhn: Obama and the Invisible Workingman

2009-12-22T13:40:08Z

Cross-posted with RealClearPolitics.

This month, the Obama administration renewed its push for stimulus dollars to be directed to minority groups and women. But government data paints a Great Recession that has not discriminated in its casualties, at least not in the modern liberal sense. It's blue collar workingmen who bear the greatest burden of this crisis--black, white and brown alike.

Three-quarters of the recession's total job losses have fallen on blue collar workers. Two-thirds of all Americans who have lost jobs are blue collar men. And more than 4-in-10 of the total job losses are blue collar white men.

The blue collar backbone of the American economy has finally broken. This is the central story of the Great Recession. Decades of withering blue collar jobs hit a tipping point. And the liberal establishment has failed to address a crisis that once defined its cause. No great voice rallies Washington to this fight.

Once again, progressives have confused blue collar troubles with shades of identity politics and, by consequence, limited their policies, their message, and their coalition.

Consider the recession's total pink slips: 43 percent are blue collar white men, 13 percent blue collar Hispanic men and another 7 percent blue collar black men.

The term "blue collar" is out of fashion. Tellingly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer uses it. But by the government's traditional definition, from the third quarter of 2007 to the third quarter of 2009 -- roughly the span of this recession -- a downturn that began on Wall Street has ended on the back of blue collar America.

Men still work most of these jobs. That's why men constitute nearly three-fourths of all jobs lost in this recession. And, as I've written, the outcome is an economic downturn that has fallen more disproportionately on one gender than any financial slump since at least the Great Depression.

But one cannot isolate this blue collar recession to men. Importantly, blue collar women constitute 11 percent of all jobs lost. Workingmen did lose the bulk of the jobs. But their wives and children suffer with them. And service occupations, where more women work, shrink along with communities' spending power.

Drive the nation today and witness the wake of America's industrial empire. Ghost towns of bygone industry. Decaying infrastructure. Millions of working class families reduced to economic refugees.

"At campaign time, they are celebrated as the people who built America. Now they just want to know how much they can get for a wedding band," wrote the Washington Post's Anne Hull in a powerful feature on Ohio's fading steel towns.

This blue collar crisis worsened in today's Washington. Ironically, the party that claims to represent the "people who built America" is in power. And yet working people have been forgotten by the powerful.

Democrats' balkanized interest groups are fragmenting all over again. Interest groups are, of course, tasked with looking after their own. But the vast majority of blue collar Americans are without an advocate.

The year began with Council of Economic Advisers' economist Christina Romer reportedly stating that, "The very first email I got [was] from a women's group saying 'We don't want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.'"

This month, Rep. Barbara Lee, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told a McClatchy reporter: "Behind virtually every economic indicator you will find gross racial disparities. We believe that tackling systemic inequality requires specific, concrete and targeted action."

The McClatchy story's headline: "Obama wants stimulus projects to hire more minorities, women." U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood recently sent a letter to governors urging precisely that. President Obama has, of late, struck the same chord publicly. And in doing so, a president who ran on unity is making the old modern liberal mistake: exaggerating the divisions in the shared experience of hard times.

In the late 1980s, poverty advocate Michael Harrington noticed that he and his political left overlooked a trend. He noted that between 1979 and 1983, more than nine million Americans were added to the poverty rolls. Of these nine million more than half were from white, male-headed families.

"Why do we ignore white poverty in general and white male poverty in particular?" Harrington asked.

The story of how this all came to pass is the story of my 2007 book. This country is "the only nation in the western world where the conservative party consistently wins the vote of the workingman," I wrote then. And we are living one explanation.

The September 2008 market collapse upended our political tectonics, as dramatic events tend to do. But this past year, Democrats' inability to effectively address the crisis has gradually brought back the tectonics of old. And the flag bearer of the Democratic Party has paid the price: President Obama's approval rating has fallen from the high 60s in January to the high 40s this month. It marks the largest first-year decline of any president since Jimmy Carter.
Obama's broad support has been lost due to his inattention to the broad nature of this blue collar crisis, a crisis that does not fit the fashionable identity politics of liberalism.

Now we live double digit unemployment. And consider the nature of today's joblessness. White men had the most jobs before the crisis. One expects them to lose the most jobs. But even within each group, white men have lost more than twice their share of jobs as white and Hispanic women, and more than black women as well.

It's not blacks, but more specifically black men, who have uniquely fallen prey to this recession. Their unemployment rate was highest before the recession began. And black men do constitute a far smaller portion of all jobs lost than white men. But they have suffered most as a group. The number of jobs held by white men has fallen by 6 percent. Hispanic men by 5 percent. But the number of black men employed has fallen by 11 percent.

In the end, in this recession, the economic experience of black men has more in common with working class white men than with black women. Yet progressives continue to return to the vice of their historic virtue. Liberalism's good fight for equality has often limited Democrats' imagination to the America of that original fight.

To read the rest of Invisible Workingman go to RealClearPolitics.

Leo W. Gerard: The Gift America Needs Most: Manufacturing

2009-12-22T12:41:01Z

In Columbus Ohio, a 5-year-old girl jumped onto Santa's lap last month and asked if he could give her dad a job as an elf.

Mike Smith, who works the Santa station at the Polaris Fashion Place in Columbus, asked why, the Wall Street Journal reported. The little girl in the Dora-the-Explorer sweat shirt responded:

"Because my daddy's out of work, and we're about to lose our house."

Happy Holidays America.

The gift this country needs most this holiday season is an economy built on a solid foundation, one that will provide middle class, family-supporting jobs now and into the future.

That present would not be another version of Monopoly for Wall Street wannabees. It would not be Barbie-goes-to-the-mall-credit-cards for youngsters in families already maxed out on their plastic and their mortgages.

The metaphorical gift our economy could really use is an Erector set - a strong steel construction kit from which the intrepid manufacture airplanes, automobiles, robots on motorized tracks, backhoes, helicopters, skyscrapers, cranes, even working Ferris wheels.

That's because, most of all, this economy needs manufacturing. Enthralled by the glitz, glamour and bogus bonuses of Wall Street, we've allowed multinationals to export our grit and grimy factories overseas. Factories that made clothing, sports shoes, large appliances, tire, glass and so much more in big and small U.S. towns and transferred to China and Indonesia and India, lured not just by cheap labor, but also by lavish government subsidies and absent environmental regulations.

Manufacturing, the basis of any strong economy, has continuously declined as a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product since its World War II peak, when it was 28.3 percent. Its new low is less than half of that -- 12 percent.

Here's the most obvious difference between an economy based on manufacturing and one based on Wall Street: You can hold the handlebars of Harley-Davidson in your hands, but just try grasping a derivative.

The paper traders on Wall Street bundle mortgages into exotic financial instruments called derivatives, sell those, buy pseudo-insurance to secure them, then engage in legal betting on whether the "instruments" will soar or fail. This kind of activity caused the financial collapse in 2008. Frankly, beyond being incredibly risky, these transactions don't create true wealth; they just generate big bonuses.

In manufacturing, an entrepreneur takes raw material and adds energy, ingenuity, tools and labor to create a product - like steel. That has real value and can be sold on the market to someone who needs it to combine with other materials to make finished merchandise like motorcycles or refrigerators. And those manufactured items are durable and valuable.

In the process of manufacturing, many people are employed - to get the raw materials, whether it's limestone or iron or trees, to transport it to a factory, to generate electricity to run the factory, to transform the raw material at the factory, to deliver the product to the buyer, to pave the roads and build the bridges and repair the railroads necessary for all that transportation, to design the highways and factories and overpasses, to feed all the workers lunch.

Tragically, the Great Recession caused by Wall Street has hit manufacturing hard. While unemployment is at a 25-year high of 10 percent, the unemployment in manufacturing has run a couple of percentage points higher than that. More than 2.1 million manufacturing workers have been thrown out of their jobs since the recession began in December 2007.

These workers are the parents of children in Dora-the-Explorer sweat shirts who are asking Santa for elf jobs.

These are the workers who have cut back on doctor visits or medical treatments - although almost half are suffering from depression or anxiety, a New York Times/CBS poll of unemployed adults showed.
These are the workers who told the pollsters that the frustration and stress of unemployment has provoked conflicts and arguments with family and friends.

These are the workers who have lost their homes or have been threatened with eviction or foreclosure, who have difficulty paying bills and have resorted to borrowing money from friends and relatives. These are the workers profiled by Anne Hull of the Washington Post in a story that began by describing desperate laid off Warren, Ohio residents in a pawn shop:

"At campaign time, they are celebrated as the people who built America. Now they just want to know how much they can get for a wedding band."

These are workers selling their precious keepsakes to survive 15 percent unemployment in an area along the Mahoning River that once was the world's fifth-largest steel producer - until it lost 50,000 of those family-supporting manufacturing jobs and another 11,500 middle-class jobs at the Lordstown General Motors plant all in a decade.

These workers could be holding good, steady factory jobs if the United States had implemented a manufacturing strategy, the way China, Japan, Germany, even The Netherlands did long ago.

Just last week, the Obama administration offered a gift to all those who believe in manufacturing. It is that strategy for America. Its formal name is the White House Plan to Revitalize American Manufacturing.

For that five year old girl in the Dora the Explorer sweat shirt. For her furloughed father and her family. For the future of this country, let's give ourselves the gift of a future constructed on a solid economic foundation. Let's implement that plan to revitalize American manufacturing immediately. Millions of unemployed workers can't wait.

GDP Up 2.2% In 3Q, But Recovery Is Much Slower Than Previously Thought

2009-12-22T08:57:17Z

WASHINGTON — All signs suggest the economic recovery will end the year on firmer footing despite a report Tuesday that the economy grew at a 2.2 percent pace in the third quarter, less than previously thought.

The Commerce Department's new reading on gross domestic product for the July-to-September quarter was weaker than the 2.8 percent growth rate estimated a month ago. Economists had predicted this figure would remain the same in the final estimate of the quarter's GDP – the value of all goods and services produced in the United States.

Labor Agency Overwhelmed By Jobless Claims In CT

2009-12-22T07:46:51Z

HARTFORD, Conn. — A crush of unemployment claims has slowed the Connecticut Department of Labor's filing system to a crawl.

The state agency posted on its Web site Monday a warning that due to a high volume of claims, users may experience difficulty filing via the Internet or telephone.

Unemployment Programs In 40 States About To Go Broke

2009-12-21T23:39:10Z

The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.

The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments.

US Crime Rate Falling, Despite Recession

2009-12-21T17:49:49Z

WASHINGTON – High unemployment. More folks on food stamps. Fewer owning their homes. Yet for all the signs of recession, something is missing: More crime.

Experts are scratching their heads over why crime has ebbed so far during this recession, making it different from other economic downturns of the past half-century. Early guesses include jobless folks at home keeping closer watch for thieves, or the American population just getting older_ and older people commit fewer crimes.

Les Leopold: Wall Street's 10 Biggest Lies of 2009

2009-12-21T16:06:43Z

Say goodbye to 2009, the worst economic year since the Great Depression.

Say hello to the billionaire bailout society in which the super-rich gamble, lose and get bailed out by the rest of us.

To save the system from total collapse we poured trillions of dollars into the financial sector. The result? Banks still are refusing to lend. Thirty million Americans are looking for full-time jobs and 49 million are skipping meals including one out of four children. But Wall Street again is reaping record profits and bonuses.

Not only are we richly rewarding those who wrecked our economy, but also, we have to put up with hundreds of fabrications about how the big banks got us here. Here is my biggest, fattest lies list for 2009:

1. "Government programs for low-income home buyers caused the financial crash." Wall Street defenders were quick to blame the Community Reinvestment Act, which urges banks to loan money in minority communities. In fact, almost none of the CRA loans are sub-prime and the vast majority are doing well, thank you. Blaming government programs deflects us from the real cause: Wall Street's incredibly reckless creation, marketing, selling and trading of "innovative" new securities that supposedly removed the risk from pools of risky debt. It didn't work. Wall Street, not the poor, crashed our economy.

2. "Income inequality is good for everyone." Lord Brian Griffiths, Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs at least had the nerve to say what so many of the super-rich really believe:

"We have to accept that inequality is a way of achieving greater opportunity and prosperity for all."

Unfortunately, the facts suggest otherwise. There is a high correlation between the mal-distribution of income and economic crashes. The last time our wealth and income distribution was as skewed as it is today was 1929, and that's not an accident. When too much money is in the hands of the few it runs out of real world investment and gravitates towards speculative investments. This inevitably creates asset bubbles and crashes. Record pay and bonuses on Wall Street and high unemployment are connected. (See The Looting of America Chapter 11).

3. "The rising number of billionaires is a sign of economic health." It's accepted media wisdom that the more billionaires the better. China with 130 billionaires now trails only the US, which has 359, according to Forbes magazine. But in our billionaire bailout society, the rising number of billionaires signals a collapsing middle class. Ponder this statistic: In 1970 the ratio of the compensation of the top 100 CEOs compared to the average production worker was 45 to 1. By 2006 it was an astounding 1,723 to one. Does that look healthy to you?

4. "Paying back TARP means banks are no longer on government welfare." Bank after bank is rushing to repay TARP funds during the worst economic year since 1937. They want to get out from under the Pay Czar (not that he's been sufficiently tough on the banks under his purview.) Banks that were insolvent only a few months ago now say they have the financial strength to refund tens of billions of dollars to the government. Where did all that money come from? Much of it comes from other government welfare programs for Wall Street (over $12 trillion worth) that aren't publicized. (See Nomi Prins's excellent accounting.) It may be the case that our banks are paying us back with our own money. Now that's financial innovation.

5. "Wall Street's freedom to innovate must be protected." Congressional leaders are tripping all over themselves to say new regulations will not discourage Wall Street innovations, something they claim is vital to our economy. Oh really? Do those "innovations" add anything useful to our country other than new casino games for the super-rich? Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volker, recently blew the whistle on this fabrication:

"I hear about these wonderful innovations in the financial markets and they sure as hell need a lot of innovation. I can tell you of two - Credit Default Swaps and CDOs - which took us right to the brink of disaster: were they wonderful innovations that we want to create more of?

.... I wish that somebody would give me some shred of neutral evidence about the relationship between financial innovation recently and the growth of the economy, just one shred of information....

The most important financial innovation that I have seen in the past 20 years is the automatic teller machine... How many other innovations can you tell me of that have been as important to the individual?" ("What Has Financial Innovation Done for You?")

6. "To retain critically needed talent, Wall Street must be free to pay top salaries and bonuses." Where would they flee if they just got paid like normal people rather than like gods? The British are putting in place a 50 percent tax on bonuses. Also, compensation is much, much lower in the European Union. But the real lie is that we need such "talent" in the first place. That kind of "talent" just crashed our economy. That kind of "talent" is widely overpaid - no way should bond traders receive 10 to 100 times what is earned by the best neurosurgeons in the world. Something is really wrong and it starts with the lie of banking "talent."

7. "Overpaid American workers are the real cause of unemployment." The New York Times writers who concocted this argument didn't think they were lying. But this is one of the most preposterous ideas put forth during 2009. ("American Wages out of Balance" New York Times November 11, 2009) Edward Hadas, Martin Huchinson and Antony Currie informed us that:

"American manufacturing workers should take average real wage cuts of as much as 20 percent to get into global balance."

They don't mention that the average non-supervisory worker has already taken an 18 percent cut in real wages between 1973 and 2007. What's worse, they claim that if workers don't take these additional cuts, these "overpaid" working stiffs will be the cause of another Great Depression. They write:

"But if American wages get stuck above global market-clearing levels, as in the 1930s, the result could well be something approaching Depression-era levels of unemployment."

Not a word is mentioned about how Wall Street's gambling caused all of this unemployment and how the continued failure of Wall Street banks to lend is stalling job growth, right now.

8. "I'm doing God's Work." Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman of Goldman Sachs said what too many Wall Street leaders truly believe: that they are so privileged and entitled that it seems as if the heavens bless their work. Why else are they earning hundreds of millions of dollars? Mr. Blankfein believes he is creating a virtuous circle by raising capital for corporations who create jobs and help our society prosper. But Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and the rest of the apostles helped to bring the entire world economy to its knees. Does that mean God likes unemployment and widespread hunger?

9. "We're out of money." Who's we? Yes, the middle class is tapped out but the super-rich haven't even begun to pay their fair share for the mess they created. Yet the top 400 richest Americans alone are sitting on $1.27 trillion or so in wealth. Here's a dangerous thought. What if we had a very steeply progressive wealth/income tax that reduced the net worth of the super-rich to "only" about $100 million each? You wouldn't be suffering if you had $100 million kicking around. Now do the math: The 400 richest x $100 million each would equal $40 billion. That would leave about $1.23 trillion to help pay back the country for the Wall Street meltdown that we, our children and their children will be subsidizing.

10. "We are becoming a socialist economy." Somewhere between 68 and 78 percent of the US GDP is private sector activity, the highest among developed nations. And much of the government expenditures go to private contractors as well. But there's a kernel of truth in the socialist scare: What do you call a society that encourages the private accumulation of wealth without limit, and then when the super-wealthy get into serious trouble, we bail them out with taxpayer funds - largely from a declining middle-class? That's not free-enterprise. That's not socialism either. It's something new and it deserves to be called the billionaire bailout society.

Here's hoping that in 2010 we can begin to undo it.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It, Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009. u

Sheila Lirio Marcelo: Child Care: A Worker And A Mother

2009-12-21T13:53:00Z

Throughout most of my career, I've worked in environments with more men than women. This even started even back in business school. It's just part of the world I work in: startups and the venture capital space. According to the most recent data available (it's eight years old, but things haven't changed dramatically since then), only five percent of investments go to businesses owned by women. Another study shows an even lower number, reporting that just "2.3 percent of dollars among the investors surveyed went to women-owned firms." Often, the entrepreneurial world is dominated by the guys.

Today if I'm invited to participate in a conference on small business, entrepreneurs or online companies, I'm often the only woman on the panel. Initially this intimidated me. I remember struggling at the beginning of my career to have confidence in myself and my ideas while I sat in conference rooms as the only woman (and, often, minority) there. To get me through, I thought of my mother and how she--an entrepreneur herself--inspired me to be strong. These situations usually don't bother me anymore, but I still can't keep from observing these imbalances as I move forward in my career.

Most working women and mothers experience the same thing. Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal recently covered a new study from the Academy of Management Journal. She reported "bosses still see women as more conflicted than men over work and family--regardless of their actual caregiving duties." Even though child care, senior care and work/life balance affect both parents in two-parent households, managers in the study subconsciously assumed the brunt of that burden fell to their female employees and affected their work output.

As a parent, I know my responsibility of being a good mom to Ryan and Adam does affect my work. How couldn't it? Recent studies show the average family experiences five "child care crises" each year that cause parents to miss work or change their schedules (parents of children with special needs experience twice as many "care crises," by the way.) But work responsibilities and the daily shuffle don't just affect me. They affect Ron, too. I've written before about parents dividing caregiving responsibilities. Having four hands when it comes to caring for our kids certainly makes things easier than only two.

Yet it looks like women still have to overcome a workplace perception that they're more distracted or occupied with family matters on a regular basis. Maybe that's just another obstacle we have to navigate in the corporate world. We working mothers have to make ourselves known as both "workers" and "mothers," demonstrating to our bosses and co-workers that it's possible to be both successfully. That's another thing my mother taught me. More than showing me how to be strong woman, she set an example of how to be a dedicated, determined worker in the workplace. And at home, she also showed me how to become the best mother I could be.

I've loved Sue's advice for women to confront the perceptions head-on by openly discussing their goals and challenges with their bosses, showing them desire to be both a worker and a mother. At my company, we've tried to address these issues by creating an open environment with ongoing dialogues that address not only work subjects, but work/life balance. We do this for everyone, regardless of gender or family background, too. I've found this openness not only helps everyone on the team manage expectations, but also encourages a culture where everyone cares about their teammates and helps eliminate any unwarranted perceptions.

While every company is different in the way it presents and processes feedback like this, I'd also encourage other working mothers (and fathers!) to be open about your jobs, family and work/life balance. Once you do, then it's up to you to get out there and exceed expectations--that's really the best way to blow through any potential obstacles or misconceptions.

Lee Schneider: Fundraising The Honest Way

2009-12-21T13:12:39Z

If you're making a film you want the biggest budget possible. ("I can't live without at least one crane shot. I get depressed otherwise. Now get me a latte, tall, with crispy foam.")

So one morning you wake up, make your own damn latte and start plugging in numbers into a spreadsheet (or an abacus if you're low budget) and you end up with a budget for a $15 million indie movie. Then you realize you don't know enough rich dentists to finance that, so you cut the budget so a rich used-car salesman might be able to finance it. Then you realize that the car industry has tanked and your lean budget isn't roadworthy. Your suspicions are proven right when you pitch the five mil picture to some used-car salesmen and they start asking you for money. The meeting is getting embarrassing, so you excuse yourself and go cut your budget again.

This time maybe you get the film in at $1.2 million. The latte line item has been slashed, along with the fake blood and alas, there are no cranes. You take this budget to a potential investor and make your presentation.

He says, "If I invest in your film, how will I get back my money?"

Since you don't know the answer, you go with distraction. "Hey, isn't that pigeon over there wearing a superman outfit?" You're desperate to buy time, so you say, "You'll get your money back in six months!" That sounds good. But it wouldn't be true. "What I meant to say is you'll get your money back in three months!" That sounds even better and of course it's a bigger lie.

Then you come up with the perfect thing to say: "Keep your money in your pocket because the film market has tanked and I have no idea how I'll pay your money back."

Your potential investor starts looking a little crabby. You say, "We'll borrow the money from a bank, if we could find a bank that would loan us money. Maybe if we sever a limb and hand it to the bank officer on a bed of lettuce and promise indentured service. I will also throw in one of my children as collateral."

The meeting is getting awkward. The investor corrects you. "Banks are not taking children as collateral anymore. New regulations."

Will banks take pets as collateral? Yes, but only if they were once owned by celebrities.

You can't go there. Then you realize something. You have a responsibility to make a film that fits the market. This concept was addressed in an All Cities networking meeting I attended and it came up again this morning at a meeting with a smart producer's rep.

The imparted wisdom is this: Look at the market. Study the films that are like yours. Find out how they were budgeted and how much money they took in. (IMDb and Box Office Mojo work well for this and you can also check out PBS's Current.org Pipeline listing.) You can see what your film might actually make. You can decide if you're willing to make it on a budget that could actually return investors' money. Huh. I believe the term for that is honesty.

Here are some of the films I'm looking at in my own research.

(500) Days of Summer. Domestic Gross: $32,391,374

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? Domestic Gross: $10,941,801

Run Lola Run. Domestic Gross: $7,267,585

Senator Tom Coburn Defends Obama Against GOP Attacks

2009-12-21T12:03:12Z

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) may not be that good a friend to health care reform, or Senator Robert Byrd, or Senate clerks, for that matter, but he's widely known to be some kind of super-Senate BFF with President Barack Obama. As Washington braced for this weekend's snowpocalypse, Coburn was reminding The Hill's Eric Zimmerman what great pals he and the President were:

"I try to write him about every week or two," Coburn said of Obama. "Write him a note, encourage him. No one has a tougher job than he does."

The two last spoke when Obama called Coburn last week to offer condolences on the passing of his mother.

"We came into the Senate together, and I just have a lot of admiration for him," Coburn said of Obama. "I'm 180 degrees from him on policy on most issues. But I think he's a wonderful man."

And that's all precious and whatnot, but one had to wonder: Is this special friendship ever going to materialize in some important way? Well, Media Matters' Chris Harris notes that Coburn did defend his friend this past Saturday against some of the criticism his party was laying at the President's feet:

COBURN: On January 1st, 2009, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. It now stands at $12.1 trillion. That's not President Obama's fault, so don't confuse this with a partisan attack. My attack is on the Senate, and on the Congress.

[...]

In January 2009, the unemployment rate was 7.6%, today it's 10%. That's not President Obama's fault either. That's our fault, it the members' of Congress fault.

[WATCH]

RELATED:
Dr. Coburn Immunizes Obama From GOP Attacks [MediaMatters]

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Joe The Nerd Ferraro: If you know somebody...

2009-12-21T11:28:06Z

If you are a Vet (former serviceperson not the animal doctor),
live in the Houston Area,
and need a job,
please see below.

________________________________________________________________________

From: Congressman Joe Sestak [mailto:pa07reply @ mail.house.gov]
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 4:40 PM
To: politics @ findanerd.com
Subject: A message from the office of Congressman Joe Sestak

December 18, 2009

Dear Mr. Ferraro,

Earlier this month I wrote to inform you of a local business, KL ChemPak that was looking to hire Veterans. Their partner in Houston, ChemPak International, Inc. is also looking to hire Veterans. They are looking to hire 9 or 10 new employees to help with the significant increase in contract packaging for export. Their requirements are for ex-military men with leadership skills, mechanical capability, a strong work ethic and a desire to succeed. ChemPak will be running three shifts on a 6-day week production schedule.

I have attached some information on ChemPak Internation for your convenience. Please pass this information to any Veterans you know that are seeking employment. For more information, you can contact Gregory W. Lyons at 713-661-1330, ext. 106.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish you and your family an enjoyable holiday season and a happy and healthy new year. Thank you for your service to our nation and to our fellow Veterans!

Sincerely,

Joe Sestak
Member of Congress

Food Stamps For Half Million Brooklyn Residents

2009-12-21T11:23:23Z

In total, more than half a million Brooklyn residents now receive food stamps, an increase of 34% in the last 22 months, according to statistics from the Human Resource Administration (HRA).

Deepak Chopra: Is This a Spiritual Crossroads?

2009-12-21T10:44:16Z

A front-page poll in the New York Times confronts an issue no one likes to talk about: the pain of losing a job. Fifty percent of the unemployed have borrowed money from friends or relatives. Around the same number have experienced depression or anxiety. Four in ten are struggling enough that they have noticed behavioral changes in their children.
Normally, a recession as bad as this one wouldn't be coupled with a jobless recovery. The last time the unemployment rate hit ten percent, during the early Reagan years of 1981-82, the country returned to normal by having workers go back to familiar jobs. That isn't going to happen this time. The recovery involves a crisis of identity for millions of people.
Here are the critical factors:

-- Manufacturing jobs have collapsed, leaving Michigan, for example, with the highest unemployment in the nation, at 15%. Some of these jobs can be retooled; others will return with the recovery of the big three automakers. But even before the bubble burst, manufacturing was fleeing to China.

-- As companies rehire, they are more likely to rehire in China and South Asia than at home.

-- Older workers who have never lost their jobs before are among the last to get a new job and the first to be jobless for more than a year.

-- Minority unemployment is around twice the national average, and the young are being hardest hit. Their chance at a good first job -- or even a college education -- has been severely curtailed.

-- All the bad conditions mentioned above will last at least another two years, if we believe the optimists, or up to a decade if we believe the pessimists.

In short, no ordinary bubble collapsed. America was already going through a crisis of identity, spending wildly, incurring foreign debt, living off second mortgages and paper profits as house prices soared, trusting that the rich had a social conscience, passively ignoring corruption in politics, and being diverted by pointless social issues as reactionary politicians and religionists fanned the flames.

I can only see this as a spiritual crisis that was long in the making.

Crises bring uncertainty. They weaken social bonds and increase class antagonism. Fear lurks just beneath the surface. The most basic questions -- Who am I? Where is my life headed? -- beg for answers.

The future will form itself around how this uncertainty is resolved. The reactionary pull is still strong. There is a huge faction that is blinded to anything but free markets, military superiority, church values, and consumerism. The right wants a return to an America that hasn't really prospered according to their creed for twenty years, unless you call two frustrating wars and massive debt to China a way to prosper. The left is more appealing, because it includes the vast majority of progressives. Also, the left is wedded to utopian visions, and utopia is more digestible than neoconservative fantasies.

But neither side will bring us into a new spiritual reality. That can happen only one person at a time, with hopeful but uncertain steps. A recent survey of economic response to bad times revealed that no one really knows what causes an economy to grow. Over seventy factors were studied, including lower taxes, job programs, and bailout subsidies. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. There's an invisible factor that makes one society rise and another fall.
Ultimately, it takes a vision that conquers uncertainty and keeps fear at bay. At this moment, every American is seeking such a vision. It's a challenging time for the pocketbook but even more challenging for the soul. Needless to say, my hope is that America revives on a spiritual basis. A return to the status quo won't work, and it's not going to happen anyway. "May you live in interesting times" is said to be a Chinese curse. I doubt it. Change only occurs in interesting times. Far worse is another supposed Chinese curse: May you live the life you are already living.

Published in the San Francisco Chronicle

For more information go to deepakchopra.com

Joseph Stiglitz: 'Significant' Chance The Economy Will Contract In 2010

2009-12-21T09:01:07Z

(AP) -- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz warned there's a "significant" chance the U.S. economy will contract in the second half of next year, and urged the government to prepare a second stimulus package to spur job creation.

"The likelihood of this slowdown is very, very high," Stiglitz told reporters in Singapore. "There is a significant chance that the number will be in the negative range."

Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, called on Washington to make more funds available to state governments who face a drop in tax revenue.

The U.S. economy, the world's largest, must grow at least 3 percent to create enough jobs for new entrants into the labor force, he said.

The unemployment rate fell to 10 percent in November from 10.2 percent in October.

"If you don't prepare now, and the economy turns out to be as weak as I think it's likely to be, then you'll be in a very difficult position," he said.

The economy grew at a 2.8 percent rate in July through September, after a record four straight quarters of contraction.

Janet Murguía: Jobs for Latinos and Blacks: The Reality of Our Struggle

2009-12-21T08:39:31Z

When it comes to jobs, the president says he gets it.

Americans "aren't looking for a handout," he said in a speech at the Brookings Institute earlier this month. "All they're looking for from Washington is a seriousness of purpose that matches the reality of their struggle." But in order to demonstrate a "seriousness of purpose," the White House must recognize the reality of the struggle of Latino and Black workers and families, upon whom the recession has inflicted disproportionate damage. Without a specific plan to address the jobs crisis in communities of color, the administration's response will be insufficient to bring about true economic recovery.

For minorities, the specter of double-digit unemployment has been a reality for more than nine months. Fully 54% of Latinos report that someone in their household has been directly impacted by the recession. And while the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has brought much-needed relief, aid has yet to make its way to some of the hardest-hit workers and families. In a recent poll, fewer than 30% of Latinos say they see the impact of ARRA at the local level. That is the reality of our struggle.

The president and Congress must put equity and fairness at the center of any new jobs initiative. The following recommendations will ensure that all workers, including Latinos and Blacks, have access to new employment opportunities. Details of these proposals can be found at www.nclr.org/JobsNow.

Create jobs in the hardest-hit neighborhoods. To do this quickly and effectively, local nonprofit organizations should help identify community needs and hire neighborhood people. Workers can repair and maintain buildings, work at community health centers, and take care of children and the elderly.

Stabilize communities by hiring local unemployed workers to repair abandoned and foreclosed homes. If Congress dedicates $1 billion to improving neglected properties, it will help attract buyers and revitalize communities. Anyone who is unemployed, has low levels of income and education, and is not receiving unemployment insurance should go to the top of the list for hiring.

Prepare workers for the jobs of the future. Workforce development programs need more funds and must cast a wider net. It is important that these programs support basic literacy and English-language skills as well as job-specific training. This will help Latinos and other workers prepare for jobs in new and growing industries.

Improve lending to nonprofit and community organizations to provide essential services. In order to meet a greater demand from their communities, these groups need affordable loans and technical assistance so they can improve facilities and equipment. Financial lending institutions should be encouraged to direct 20% of their loans to these organizations and provide them with financial planning, loan management, and loan restructuring services.

Having helped big business and the financial industry, it is now time for the president and the administration to get serious about helping the American worker. We hope that the president's tour of American Main Street opens up his eyes to this reality and that his administration will look to ideas that truly meet the needs of the community in this challenging hour.

Demand For Temporary Workers Grows -- Does It Mean Employers Will Start Hiring Soon?

2009-12-21T08:34:23Z

The hiring of temporary workers has surged, suggesting that the nation's employers might soon take the next step, bringing on permanent workers, if they can just convince themselves that the upturn in the economy will be sustained.

Philip N. Cohen: Is the Recession Really Saving Marriages?

2009-12-19T14:50:00Z

The National Marriage Project, under the editorship of the sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, has released a report titled The State of Our Unions, 2009: Money and Marriage. It has a lot of useful information on marriage and families, with some editorial bending in the pro-marriage-and-family direction.

My beef here is with the chapter titled "The Great Recession's Silver Lining?" In it, Wilcox writes:

Judging by divorce trends, many couples appear to be developing a new appreciation for the economic and social support that marriage can provide in tough times. Thus, one piece of good news emerging from the last two years is that marital stability is up.

That line was quoted by Ross Douthat at the New York Times, which is a shame, because there is no evidence about anyone's appreciation for marriage in the chapter. Instead, the evidence for this assertion is presented in a graph that shows three data points in the divorce-rate trend:

The figure shows a decline in the divorce rate from 2007 to 2008. In the press release he calls that drop "the first annual dip since 2005." (The rate shown here is divorces in a given year per 1,000 married women in the population that year.) Couple things:

1. There is no data point for 2006, so for all we know the divorce rate actually rose higher than it was in 2007, and started falling before the recession, which officially began in December 2007.

2. Despite the dramatic turnaround apparent in this graph, it's really not enough to go on to draw the kind of conclusion he draws.

The second point is more important, because there really is a lot of research that shows job loss increases the odds of divorce. So why should this recession be different? It's possible it is, but there's no evidence - in this report or elsewhere that I've seen - of such a change.

In fairness, Wilcox wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal that musters some anecdotal evidence for his theory. But nothing to get him this far: "For most married Americans, the Great Recession seems to be solidifying, not eroding, the marital bond." Even if the divorce did drop a little in one year - that doesn't say anything about "most married Americans."

That three-point graph is especially unfortunate because it leads to interpretations like this: "The divorce rate ... had previously been on an upward path, rising from 16.4 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2005 to 17.5 in 2007." That seriously misstates the real trend in divorce rates, which have actually been falling since 1981. And there is nothing in the trend to suggest that recessions teach couples a "new appreciation for the economic and social support that marriage can provide in tough times." In the appendix, Wilcox presents that longer trend, which makes his previous figure seem much less dramatic.

(The graph seems a little off to me - notice how 10.6 is closer to the line for 10 than 14.9 is to the line for 15 - but I'll work from his numbers below anyway.)

I think the story of a turnaround in divorce rates has traction because, like crime, divorce is one of those things many people assume is always getting worse (I see this in student papers frequently). So any decline in divorce rates looks like an important change.

What is recession's effect?

I previously speculated that, because this recession was costing so many men their jobs, more men were likely to be become primary caregivers, and do more housework. The downside - I speculated - was that "maybe men getting 'stuck' with childcare doesn't bode well for marriages." To support that speculation, I showed a graph of divorce rates that had little upward spikes during some recent recessions. The graph was not the real evidence for the argument - which was here:

We already know that economic hard times contribute to marital instability and divorce. Studyafter study after study have found that losing a job increases the likelihood of divorce, with some evidence that husbands' losses matter more.

Here is a new graph I made, with the "crude divorce rate" (divorces per 1,000 people in the population) in blue, superimposed over Wilcox's calculations in red. (His takes more work, which is probably why he doesn't have it for every year. But they track quite well, with some pulling apart some after 1980, which has to do with changes in the population composition that probably aren't important.) I also put the recessions on there, roughly, by hand with purple bars.

Source: Divorce rates from 2010 Statistical Abstract and various prior years; business cycles from 2010 Statistical Abstract.

Two things here:

1. Over the longer run, there is no obvious relationship between recessions and the divorce rate. There are big social forces at work here (like the rise of the legal practice of no-fault divorce, the increase in women's education and employment, the growing tendency of men and women of similar education levels to marry, later age at marriage, more cohabitation and unmarried childbearing, etc.). But on the surface - which is where the Wilcox conclusion is drawn - there is not much to go on.

2. The crude divorce rate I got from the Statistical Abstracts shows a little peak in 2006 - not 2007 - followed by two consecutive years of decline, beginning before the recession. So rather than talk about the reason for the decline in the last year - which really just fits in with the falling divorce rates since 1981 - the anomaly is 2006. I have no explanation for that, but in the long run it probably doesn't matter much.

I doubt the final word will end up as simple as, "Couples too broke to bicker," as heartwarming as that is. There may be something to the speculation that falling home prices are stalling some divorce plans, but that is not quite the same as developing a newfound appreciation for the benefits of marriage.

I'm sticking with this: in hard times, families are a big part of how people make it through, but hard times are also hard for a lot of marriages. If it's true that the husband's job loss especially increases stress on a marriage - as previous research suggests - we may yet see that emerge for the current crisis. If not, maybe something has changed.

Cross posted from the Family Inequality blog.

Sen. Byron Dorgan: History Reveals a Pattern as DPC Hearings Look For Best Job Creation Ideas

2009-12-19T10:24:35Z

The Obama Administration inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. That crisis has been described as the "Great Recession."

Over the past year, we've made some good progress in digging out from under that mess. We prevented complete economic collapse, and indicators suggest that the economy is now on the mend.

Employment - jobs - remains a serious problem. Historically job creation has always been one of the last areas to recover, and that's the case with this recession, too. We are determined to focus on this area to get Americans back to work as soon as possible.

The recession may be waning, but talk of economic recovery is small comfort to Americans who have lost their jobs. Our country's unemployment rate now exceeds 10 percent. For every American who is out of a job, the unemployment rate feels more like 100 percent.

The Senate faces no question more important than how to get Americans back to work.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) asked Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) and I lead an effort to develop legislation to create jobs as soon as possible. As part of that effort, I'm conducting a series of Democratic Policy Committee hearings to hear a broad range of ideas about what ought to be in that bill and to review what's worked in the past and what hasn't.

I certainly don't believe that any one party has all the right answers and the other party has none. I'm interested in taking a broad look around and getting the best ideas regardless of the source. I also want to make sure that we are challenging and really thinking through the job creation ideas we select.

It is important to look at the record. What's worked in the past? What hasn't?

Historically, the data suggests that Democratic policies have worked best to put people back to work and strengthen the economy. That's the record.

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Here are three simple charts that illustrate this.

This first chart shows the record of job growth of every administration from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush.

As you can see, only the Hoover administration had a net loss of jobs. Every other administration had at least some net job growth.

However, there is a distinct trend here: every Democratic administration - shown in blue on this chart - has had a better rate of job growth than every Republican administration - shown in red. If you look at this as a series of peaks and valleys, you see that the peaks are blue, and the valleys are red.

The odds of this job growth pattern happening due to random chance is 1,700 to one.

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The next chart shows the rate of economic growth from the Truman to the George W. Bush Administration. This is the growth in the average annualized real GDP. And again, as you can see, there is a distinctive pattern: the greatest economic growth has come in the five Democratic Administrations.

Your browser may not support display of this image. Finally, here's a chart that shows the performance of the stock market over the years. From FDR through the current administration, the average growth in the S&P index has been 9.4% in Democratic administrations, and 4.3% in Republican administrations. And that does not include the Hoover administration, which would have essentially driven the stock market growth rate for Republican administrations to zero.

There is a pattern that has emerged over the years. In considering various job creation policy options, I think we want to take the historical record into account.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said the Senate will turn to the jobs bill Senator Durbin and I develop when it concludes its consideration of health insurance reform.

Getting Americans back to work is an urgent job. The hearings we're conducting at the DPC, which are taking a broad look at job creation ideas, are helping to ensure that when the Senate considers a jobs bill the ideas it contains have been carefully considered and even challenged.

We want a jobs bill that not only works, but that puts millions of Americans back to work as soon as possible. Thinking "outside the box" will help make that happen.