Unemployment

UPDATE: BizzyBlog commenter "Rich in Iowa" notes that what the AP is criticizing is "a clearinghouse for employers and job seekers hosted by the State of Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development and  this site pre-dates Walker’s Governorship by, oh, maybe a decade."

Boy, Scott Bauer and the Associated Press have really, really nailed Scott Walker this time -- not.

Bauer found that some of the jobs listed in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's "Job Center of Wisconsin" website are located in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan). Imagine that: The Badger State's governor is including jobs in neighboring states because he apparently believes that his state would be better off if some of its unemployed workers found jobs across the border. Oh the humanity.

In a softball interview with Bill Clinton on Monday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer gushed over the former president's Global Initiative: "One of the things that's always impressed me....you're really good in a closed room. I mean you get people to commit to things, to invest money....Are you surprised at how good you are at that?"

Even Chuck Todd thinks President Obama's new tax plan is a joke.

When asked on MSNBC Monday if the White House believes "tax reform in the context of the Super Committee is a realistic goal," NBC's chief White House correspondent broke out laughing followed by the entire "Morning Joe" panel (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Friday's NBC Today, correspondent Tom Costello described how "Nearly one in six Americans is living in poverty. 16 million are children. That's 3 million more than three years ago." However, nowhere in his report on the growing problem did he mention the Obama administration's failed economic policies as a cause.

Instead, Costello lamented over possible cuts to government welfare programs: "It was 50 years ago that Sergeant Shriver led President Johnson's war on poverty. Today his son, Mark, runs Save the Children in the U.S....[and] fears that programs like Head Start, which serve poor children, might face cuts in the next round of congressional budget cuts, just as more and more families find themselves struggling to put food on the table."

Last Thursday, President Obama unveiled his "American Jobs Act" to a joint session of Congress with a new plan for job creation. The plan takes a Keynesian approach, much like his previous stimulus bills, but with little success from them, it seems that Obama's American Jobs Act is not so much an economic plan as a political plan for his reelection. Obama and his advisors recognize that they can trap Republicans as a do-nothing Congress if they don't pass any job plan, but know the Republicans will lose their public support if they do vote for Obama's plan, which includes another $500 billion in increased spending and temporary handouts financed by an additional $500 billion in permanent tax increases. As explained by Peter Ferrara at Forbes:

Two out of three CBS local affiliate political reporters featured on Thursday's Early Show bluntly stated that President Obama faces "major uphill battle" in recapturing key states for the 2012 election. Anchor Chris Wragge noted the "all-time low" approval rating for the President, while an Ohio journalist highlighted how a Democratic strategist thought Obama was "feeling more Carter than Clinton."

Wragge turned to David Crabtree of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina; Jim Heath of CBS affiliate WBNS in Columbus, Ohio; and Sam Brock from WTVR in Richmond, Virginia for their takes on the President's recent stops in their states following his jobs bill speech to Congress earlier in September. Crabtree reported on the positive reaction from those who attended Mr. Obama's speech in North Carolina, but then outlined that the Democrat faces several challenges in the months ahead:

New York Times White House reporter Jackie Calmes and Binyamin Appelbaum reported Wednesday on Obama’s latest big-spending “stimulus” proposal, “Bigger Economic Role for Washington,” enthused that the chance of some of it coming law “could have a substantial effect on economic growth and unemployment....could add 100,000 to 150,000 jobs a month over the next year, according to estimates from several of the country’s best-known forecasting firms.”

Calmes had consistently hyped the administration’s stream of vague, liberal spend-now-pay-later economic “plans,”only to see the proposals die in Congress. This front-page headline from her July 20 story captures her typical cheerleading tone: “Bipartisan Plan For Budget Deal Buoys President – House Republicans Face Intensifying Pressure to Avoid Isolation.” (It has not aged well.)

Darlene Superville's Associated Press report earlier this evening on President Obama's visit to North Carolina ("Obama touts jobs bill benefits for small business") had an interesting final paragraph.

Concerning Obama's openness to compromise on his "jobs plan" (otherwise known as "spend now, pay for with taxes later"), she wrote: "President Obama has made clear he'd sign a portion of the legislation if that's all Congress could agree on, although he's said he would continue to fight to pass the whole thing."

Someone forgot to tell that to David Axelrod this morning, as Meghashyam Mali at the Hill reported (video is at link):

Appearing on Tuesday's The Ed Show, MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter urged both liberals - euphemistically calling them "progressives" - and non-liberals to support President Obama's economic plan and advised Obama to "fight, fight, fight," and argue that Republican opposition would mean they are "standing in the way of you getting a job."

After host Ed Schultz asked Alter about the GOP response to Obama's plan, the MSNBC analyst soon appealed to Americans to support the bill:

CBS's Early Show on Monday devoted two segments and a news brief to the Obama "jobs bill," but in none of the three stories did they allow a single Republican to speak. Correspondent Bill Plante filed a report that was almost all Obama soundbites -- and to make the sound of a sales job complete, it even included a clip of a TV ad from the Democratic National Committee to help push the $447 billion "stimulus" package.

Plante led the 7 am Eastern hour with his report on the President's legislation, and mentioned the Republicans only in passing: "He's [Obama] been saying that both Republicans and Democrats support the kinds of ideas that he's got in this job bill. But he knows that Republicans are reluctant to embrace the kind of spending he wants. So, he's taking his case directly to the voters, as he did Friday in Richmond, Virginia."

Appearing on Monday's NBC Today to preview his exclusive interview with President Obama, Nightly News anchor Brian Williams revealed some of his softball questions: "I went on to ask him when he's going to channel his inner Harry Truman, as members of his base have been asking....I also asked him about all the people who voted for the man on the poster that said, 'Hope.' That answer was illuminating."  

Near the end of the segment, co-host Matt Lauer asked Williams about Obama's strategy of running against Republicans in Congress. Williams explained: "While not quite painting it as a do-nothing Congress, he's going to be running against Congress as he goes out into all these congressional districts." Lauer remarked: "Yeah, like 80% of people would like to get rid of that particular Congress." Williams added: "Yeah, 82%, I think."

It certainly wasn't a Paul Krugman moment, but is the tenth anniversary of the biggest attack on our mainland a good time to say, "Fifty years from now, we might even look at 9/11 as simply the beginning of the decline of America?"

That's what Fareed Zakaria said Sunday on the CNN program bearing his name (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A day after the New York Times published an editorial praising President Obama for his "ambitious," "robust," and "far-reaching" jobs address the previous evening, the Gray Lady printed a front page story with the shocking headline, "Employers Say Jobs Plan Won’t Lead to Hiring Spur."

The first few paragraphs were just as surprising:

Throughout coverage of President Obama's address to Congress Thursday night, anchors and correspondents on both CBS and NBC gave fawning reviews of the new jobs plan, in some cases, even before the speech began. In contrast, ABC took a much more skeptical tone, with a focus on the President's falling poll numbers.  

Evening News anchor Scott Pelley opened CBS's coverage by proclaiming the President was "hanging out a 'help wanted' sign" for unemployed Americans, with chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell excitedly announcing moments later that Obama would put forward "an extraordinarily bold plan" to create jobs.

Talking to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry fretted over a handful of congressional Republicans declining to attend President Obama's upcoming jobs speech to a joint session of Congress: "At least three Republicans are not going to be in the audience....is this disrespectful to the office of the president, Joe?"

Scarborough responded: "I don't know if it's disrespectful. I don't think it's very smart....Americans want to see these two sides working together. Now, that may not excite the base, but that's exactly where middle America is."

Just like in Groundhog Day when Bill Murray wakes up to the same day each and every morning, it appears Americans will feel a frustrating sense of déjà vu listening to President Obama's jobs speech on Sept. 8.

According to Bloomberg, Obama's not-so-new plan "follows the contours of his $830 billion 2009 economic stimulus package." This time around, Obama will call for $300 billion for tax breaks and infrastructure spending. Never mind that the first one didn't work as promised. Meanwhile, the network news media are treating the ideas from his speech like new solutions, instead of more of the same.

America was in a post-stock market bubble bursting recession, had just suffered its worst mainland attack in its history, and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman believes ten years later all would have been made right if the President of the United States on September 12, 2001, had raised taxes.

This is what Friedman, in his most recent blame all the troubles of the world on George W. Bush rant, called "The Whole Truth and Nothing But" Wednesday:

Yesterday, at organized labor's traditional Labor Day picnic at Cincinnati's Coney Island amusement park, Vice President Joe Biden gave the keynote address. His key lines, as reported by Carl Weiser at the Cincinnati Enquirer's Politics Extra blog (video is here at MRC-TV): "... this is a different kind of fight. This is a fight for the heart and soul of the labor movement. This is a fight for the existence of organized labor. You are the only ones who can stop the barbarians at the gate! That’s why they want you so bad.”

Biden's statement is in an important aspect more problematic than the more widely (but not sufficiently widely) noted "son of a b*tches" comment made by Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. in Detroit yesterday at a Labor Day event President Obama keynoted. While Hoffa was threatening and hateful, he was at least in theory speaking only for Big Labor (though Obama has essentially adopted it by not condemning it). In Cincinnati, Biden, who was elected to serve all citizens of the country, personally characterized a large plurality of those he is supposed to be serving with a word which means "savage, primitive, uncivilized persons." Biden's "barbarians"comment has received very light establishment press coverage, as did what appears to have been a singularly unimpressive number of people who actually heard his speech:

Exactly what country does New York Times columnist Paul Krugman actually reside in?

Before you answer, consider the following sentence from his article Monday:

Check out Labor Secretary Hilda Solis [she of the solicitude for the rights of illegal immigrants at the expense of American workers] on the CBS Early Show this morning.  She ticks off a list of industries in which the government will make "investments" because "we know" they will be growing in future years.  Kinda like the Obama admin "knew" solar energy was the wave of the future when it "invested" about a half-billion in taxpayer dollars in Solyndra, a company that backed by a major Obama fundraiser.

Participating in pure partisan politics, Solis claimed the unemployment rate in Rick Perry's Texas would be "much higher" were it not for the spending of stimulus money there.  Right.  That vaunted stimulus that for only $800 billion managed to keep the national unemployment to only 8%.  Oh, wait, three years later it's 9.1%.  Never mind.  View video after the jump.

It appears one should never say in Christiane Amanpour's presence Barack Obama isn't ideologically flexible.

When former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin did so on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, the host pushed back, "Do you think that’s true that he hasn’t shown flexibility since he's, he’s sort of come completely to the Republican tenor of the debate?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If it's Sunday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman must be "saying something really stupid or outrageous."

On ABC's "This Week," the Nobel laureate told host Christiane Amanpour, "If Obama called for endorsing motherhood, the Republicans in the House would oppose it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Labor Department reported Friday that for the first time since 1945 - needless to say a long, long time ago - the economy produced exactly zero jobs in the month of August.

Despite the history, the tremendously disappointing numbers, and the President speaking before a joint session of Congress next week about this very issue, ABC's World News actually made this its fourth story - yes, I said fourth! - Friday evening (video follows with commentary):

Charles Krauthammer on Fox News's "Special Report" Friday offered Republicans a 2012 campaign slogan to defeat Barack Obama.

"President Zero: zero economic expansion, zero jobs, zero ideas on how to cure the economy" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the midst of the failure of President Obama’s $800 billion or more “stimulus spending” program, ABC on Friday night asserted the solution to the devastating report, of zero jobs created in August, is...more stimulus spending. Since “the debt, say most economists, is only a long-term concern and the U.S. can borrow money right now at practically no interest,” reporter Jim Avila contended the federal government “should launch a stimulus program as big as the one that was launched in World War II.”

Avila insisted “the non-political, overwhelming answer from a dominant majority of economists” as to what the government should do “is spend and build. Roads, bridges, schools. A $200 billion a year investment would produce two million jobs and lower unemployment by a point.”

For the second time in as many days, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough took issue with a Washington Post Obama-apologist for blaming all that ails the nation on the Republican Party.

What made Friday's "Morning Joe" more delicious was the Post's Eugene Robinson was present this time, and after predictably defending the current White House resident while pointing fingers at the GOP was marvelously asked by the host, "Isn't there also though a larger context that the United States citizens may have just elected a president that was not ready to run the most complex economy in the world?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):