The US economy set the record for the most jobs created in one year in 2021, but you’d never know it from the continuing doomsday economic coverage under President Joe Biden, Eric Boehlert noted at PressRun.media (1/10).
The jobs reported released Jan. 7 showed the US economy posted 199,000 new jobs in December, during a pandemic surge. That sounds like a good thing, right? Not according to CNN, which called it a “major disappointment,” despite the fact employee wages hit record heights and the unemployment rate tumbled to 3.9%. (Last winter, the CBO predicted it would take five years for the US to reach an unemployment rate that low.) NPR stressed the US added “only” 199,000 jobs. Hiring had “faltered,” the New York Times reported. All because the key number failed to meet estimates.
The expectations game is set by economists and banks which publish their estimates on the eve of each job survey, Boehlert noted. It’s an easy-to-use model the press has employed for decades to analyze monthly results. But economists’ expectations no longer work during the pandemic. They’ve been wildly inaccurate during the Biden recovery and should no longer serve as the determining factor in how jobs reports are presented by the press.
“During one of the most volatile periods in recent memory, private and public-sector economists have a less firm grasp of what the labor market is doing,” the Wall Street Journal recently conceded. During 2021, economists cumulatively missed the jobs mark by well over 1 million jobs. And that’s in a year when the US created more than 6 million jobs, the most since records began in 1939.
The expectations model often produces dubious journalism, Boehlert wrote. When last November’s job report was released, NPR quickly announced it was a “bust” because just 210,000 jobs had been created. But back in January of 2020, NPR cheered that the US economy was “revved up” because 225,000 positions had been added.
Why the drastically different NPR spin for the Biden and Trump years? Expectations. Trump’s 225,000 job gains surpassed that month’s modest expectations, while Biden’s 210,000 fell short of estimates.
Boehlert added, “There’s also the lingering suspicion that the press simply likes to tell bad economic news — and hide upbeat newsflashes — during the Biden years. Just look at this pretzel-logic headline from the Washington Post (1/9), ‘2021 Shattered Job Market Records, But It’s Not as Good as it Looks.’”
TRUMP’S EURO GOLF RESORTS LOSE $100M. Even though the golf industry has seen a boom during the pandemic, Donald Trump’s European golf interests have tanked to the tune of $100-plus million, Forbes reports. It’s almost like the guy who has reportedly squandered hundreds of millions of unearned capitol numerous times over the last five decades continues to be terrible at everything he does, Walter Einenkel notes at DailyKos (1/5).
According to Forbes, the issue for Trump is that his golf courses in Europe are tied to large-scale resorts, and so while tee times increased at golf courses all over the world, people booking “resort” time decreased sharply—you know, global pandemic and all that.
One of the shiniest objects on the list is Trump’s money pit investment in the Turnberry golf resort in Scotland. Turnberry was reportedly purchased for more than $60 million back in 2014. Trump then poured upwards of $200 million into the place and has taken one loss after another as Turnberry under Trump has yet to do anything but bleed money. Even “a $3.2 million COVID-related grant through the British government” did not stop them from losing $4.7 million in the last year and a half. Since taking over the resort, Turnberry has lost almost $70 million.
In fact, all of Trump’s golf resorts throughout Europe consistently took losses every year leading up to the pandemic. The pandemic doesn’t seemed to have done much of anything to change the trajectory of what was clearly a bad investment by a bad business man. That, of course, is if Trump’s plan was to actually do business in the first place.
A major part of his Trump Organization revenue came from the marquee properties that he often visited during his presidency, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reported in February. The Trump Hotel in DC, his now “home” Mar-a-Lago and his golf courses Doral, Bedminister and Trump National Washington brought in a combined $620,709,659 over the last four years. He paid a combined 399 visits to these properties as president. With the pandemic shuttering hotels and golf courses, the Trump Hotel dropped from $40 million a year in revenue to $15 million from 2020 through the end of Trump’s presidency and Doral, which saw regular revenue in the mid-$70 millions, only tallied $44 million. Mar-a-Lago, however, saw a slight uptick to $24 million, as the president continued to visit during the pandemic. The Virginia-based Trump National Washington, which the president spent many weekends at during the pandemic, did not see a dropoff from the previous three years.
Back in 2018, The New Yorker ran a story by Adam Davidson that asked a lot of questions Donald Trump’s move of borrowing large loans and flipping places to spending tons of “his” own “cash” on real estate projects like Turnberry. As Davidson wrote, organized crime and other criminal entities like to launder money by way of throwing down cash on real estate. Golf courses offer up large laundering options, Einenkel noted. “Are the losses Trump’s European properties taking Trump’s losses, or just a part of doing the business of being the single most obviously corrupt elected official of the last few years? Hard to say.”
INDIANA SEN. SAYS TEACHERS SHOULD BE IMPARTIAL WHEN DISCUSSING NAZISM & FASCISM. A right-wing Indiana state senator stirred outrage when he told a committee teachers must be impartial when discussing Nazism or fascism.
State Sen. Scott Baldwin (R) made his remarks during a hearing Wednesday on SB167, a controversial bill that would require teachers to be impartial in their teaching of all subjects, Charles Jay noted at DailyKos (1/9), citing reporting of the Indianapolis Star.
The bill would also require schools to establish curriculum committees that would include parents to review all education materials used in classrooms. and create portals that would allow parents to view everything being taught in their children’s classroom.
Many teachers showed up at the hearing to express opposition to the bill. One teacher Matt Bockenfield said his history class was now studying the rise of fascism and Nazism.
“I’m just not neutral on the political ideology of fascism,” he said. “We condemn it, and we condemn it in full, and I tell my students the purpose, in a democracy, of understanding the traits of fascism is so that we can recognize it and we can combat it.”
Bockenfeld said that, even if it wasn’t the intent of the bill, he feared it would require teachers to be neutral on all topics. He said teachers should obviously be neutral on the political issues of the day, but should not be neutral on Nazism and must “take a stand in the classroom against it.”
Baldwin replied that that may be going too far, even in teaching about Nazism and fascism.
“I have no problem with the education system providing instruction on the existence of those isms,” he said. “I believe that we’ve gone too far when we take a position on those isms ... We need to be impartial.”
Baldwin said that even though he agreed with Bockenfeld “on those particular isms,” teachers should “just provide the facts.”
“I’m not sure it’s right for us to determine how that child should think and that’s where I’m trying to provide the guardrails,” Baldwin said.
Keith Gambill, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, said the bill could hurt the state’s already strained teaching workforce. Soon, he said, teachers are going to be afraid speak freely or go “off-script,” for fear of retaliation.
“We don’t want to create a system where we stifle our students natural learning curiosity,” he said. “We want them able to explore and to study without fear of, ‘Well, you’ve asked a question I am not allowed to answer.’”
Bockenfeld, a teacher in Fishers, Ind., said he came to the statehouse out of concern that the bill’s vagueness would make it too easy for disgruntled parents and community members to make false accusations against teachers. Teachers and other school employees around the state have been targeted, as mask mandates and social issues have divided school communities over the last two years.
He said he was shocked by Baldwin’s response and was ready to fight the bill. Bockenfeld said he’d “oppose Nazism until they fire me.”
TRUMP HAS BEEN LAUGHING AT JAN. 6 VICTIMS’ TRAUMA, WITNESSES SAY. Despite being culpable for the deaths, trauma, and collective national scars that resulted from last year’s Capitol insurrection, Trump remains unchastened. In fact, according to one recent report, he’s downright giddy about that disgraceful chapter in our nation’s history—still, Aldous Pennyfarthing noted at DailyKos (1/6).
According to the Daily Beast:
According to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, the twice-impeached former president has noticed the emotional accounts, particularly that from Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Some he has found annoying. Others, however, have become targets of mockery and casual hilarity for him.
In several conversations with close allies over the past 12 months, Trump has repeatedly made fun of the idea that certain legislators, police, or journalists were traumatized by the violent events of the day, according to these sources. There are moments when the ex-president has speculated that his critics are “faking” their trauma and anxiety, for attention. Other times, he’s done poor, whining impersonations of perceived enemy lawmakers crying about the riot.
Pennyfarthing commented: “Wait, he thinks it’s funny that they were frightened by a violent, rampaging mob? This guy?”
Trump’s callousness toward his real and perceived enemies, no matter the level of trauma inflicted, is standard fare for a man who built much of his political legacy and appeal by demagoguing and viciously smearing those who speak out against him. For example, despite his frequent claims about “backing the blue,” Trump privately referred to some of the police officers who were at the Capitol that day as “pussies, The Daily Beast previously reported.
Wait, didn’t Trump say during his speech on the Ellipse last Jan. 6 that he would be marching to the Capitol with these fools? Guess he was too scared to follow through. How come none of his diehard fans ever call him out on that? “I’m gonna march into battle with you, brave patriots! But first, some teevee and Funyuns!”
In a related story, we’re now hearing even more reports that Trump was pleased as punch about the unfolding violence last Jan. 6, and more than a little reluctant to call it off:
A former Trump White House official said then-President Donald Trump initially refused to tweet the words “stay peaceful” as the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was escalating.
As a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and sent lawmakers scrambling for their lives, Trump tweeted at 2:38 p.m. ET that day: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” The tweet came 20 minutes after Trump supporters were smashing through windows and evacuations of lawmakers had begun.
The former official, who was working in the West Wing and was close to White House messaging during the insurrection, said Trump did not want to include the words “stay peaceful” and was “very reluctant to put out anything when it was unfolding.” Trump was “letting it play out,” the official said of the violence at the Capitol.
Essentially all the reporting that’s come out on this since last year has pointed in the same disturbing direction: Trump didn’t just do nothing to stop the riot, he absolutely loved it.
On Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., CNN interviewed former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, who’s now working to expose Trump’s dark side to the world. (I thought it was all dark, but then maybe I have a blind spot when it comes to seeing the good in irredeemable shart golems.)
GRISHAM: “All I know about that day was that he was in the dining room gleefully watching on his TV as he often did. ‘Look at all of the people fighting for me.’ Hitting rewind, watching it again. That’s what I know.”
Seventy-four million votes, people..
This is going to be a long year—and a long fight. I really hope we’re ready.
KEVIN McCARTHY SAYS HE WILL KICK DEMS OFF COMMITTEES IF REPUBLICANS GET HOUSE MAJORITY. US Rep. Kevin McCarthy promised to strip Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar (MN), Eric Swalwell (CA) and Adam Schiff (CA) of their committee assignments if Republicans take back power in the House after the midterm elections.
In an interview with Breitbart News (1/10), the minority leader said he would kick Swalwell and Schiff off the House Intelligence Committee and Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee.
McCarthy vowed to strike back after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi removed two members of his caucus from their committee assignments last year.
In February 2021, the House voted 230-199 to kick Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., from the Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committee, with 11 Republicans joining Democrats in ousting Greene after she espoused QAnon conspiracies before being elected to Congress – including supporting calls online for Nancy Pelosi’s execution.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., lost seats on the Oversight and Reform Committee and the Natural Resources Committee after posting a manipulated anime cartoon showing him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Biden in November.
McCarthy has said Gosar and Greene will get their committee assignments back if Republicans regain power.
Swalwell told CNN’s Anderson Cooper (1/10) that McCarthy’s vow was “purely for retaliation.”
“He’s targeting me and he’s targeting Schiff and he’s targeting Ms. Omar because we’re effective. Not for any other reason,” Swalwell said on “Anderson Cooper 360.” “This is the Trumpization of politics. ... He’s doing it purely for retaliation purposes and he’s not even offering a fig leaf as to why he’s doing it.”
DEATH RATES UP 40%, FOR 200-YEAR HIGH, LIFE INSURANCE CEO SAYS. Scott Davison is the CEO of OneAmerica, an Indianapolis-based life insurance company. To start the new year, Davison said in an online news conference, “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business—not just at OneAmerica. The data is consistent across every player in that business,” Walter Einenkel noted at DailyKos (1/5)
According to Davison, the third and fourth quarters of this past year saw death rates “up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic.” Even more distressing, explains Davison, is that this is not some demographic anomaly with the eldest members of our society passing on. The 40% rise in death rates is consistent for working-class folks 18 to 64-years-old. “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or 200-year catastrophe would be a 10% increase over pre-pandemic levels.”
There are large areas of the US under Republican control where COVID-19 deaths and COVID-19-related deaths are openly undercounted. Unfortunately for the GOP and Trump death-cult followers, life insurance doesn’t care about your internet research degree at MAGA Meme University. Their entire business model is based on the gamble that they can figure out exactly who will die and when, based on the best actuarial science and statistical data available.
Every few weeks, a new study comes out pointing out that the “official” numbers of people who have died from COVID-19 are considerably lower than what the real numbers are. So while we all will point out that the US is very soon to surpass one million deaths due to COVID-19, we also know that the number of people dying as a result of a broken health care system in crisis during a pandemic is likely astronomically higher.
Many folks on all planes of the political spectrum are psychologically and emotionally fatigued by our seemingly never-ending pandemic, in part because our federal government continues to cater to the billionaires and their race to absorb the crumbs of wealth they do not yet own. This has led to traditional media hoping to promote how the new, more contagious, omicron variant of the COVID-19 is more “mild.” But as we all know, “mild” is relative, and only tells the story of how many people end up dying in an ICU bed.
As the actuaries are noting, a lot of people are dying before they make it to the hospital. So while some may not have had COVID-19, the economic and health care crisis we are facing will end up being the single deadliest event in our country’s history.
RETIRING REPUBLICANS COULD SUPPORT VOTING RIGHTS — BUT THEY WON’T. Almost all of the attention on clearing the way for voting rights bills has been directed toward Democratic senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who are standing in the way of reforming the filibuster. But Charles P. Pierce noted at Esquire.com directed the spotlight toward “five revolting, abject cowards on the other side of the aisle: to wit, Senators Richard Shelby, Richard Burr, Roy Blunt, Rob Portman, and Pat Toomey. All of them are Republicans. All of them have announced that they will not be running for re-election.”
In July 2006, the Senate reauthorized the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a count of 98-0. Among those 98 votes were the votes of Senators Shelby, Burr and Blunt. “If all three of these people announced that they were voting to restore the protections that they voted for in 2006, then everybody could tell Sinema and Manchin to pound sand and pass the voting-rights bills currently before the Senate,” Pierce noted. “But there’s no indication that any of the five retirees plan to do anything else but stand in solidarity with their vote-suppressing brethren.
“They have no excuse. None of them is likely to run again for anything, so there is no sanction that the former president* and his agitated base can drop on them. Presumably, after many years in the Senate, they’re all independently wealthy. There’s no financial incentive for them to vote the way they are likely to vote. They literally have nothing to lose—except their spines, which they apparently put into cold storage in 2017 anyway. All one can conclude is that none of them really supported the VRA in the first place, but none of them wanted to stand out on the previous reauthorization roll calls, all of which were going to be lopsided, so voting against it would be conspicuous and embarrassing.
“However, in 2013, in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts declared the Day of Jubilee and led the gutting of the VRA. That gave everybody clearance to let their vote-suppressing freak flag fly, including, apparently, these five under-the-radar chickens**ts. I mean, Portman’s even supposed to be a ‘moderate,’ as though that word has any meaning at all anymore. Manchin and Sinema are supposed to be ‘moderates,’ too. God save us from all of them.”
VIRGINIA’S NEW GOV. SHOWS HOW REPUBLICANISM WORKS IN ONE AWFUL STROKE. Incoming Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) announced his selection as secretary of natural resources for the state of Virginia (1/5). That selection? Andrew Wheeler.
That would be Andrew Wheeler, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Donald Trump, Mark Sumner noted at DailyKos (1/7). The Andrew Wheeler who overrode the recommendations of his own experts by refusing to ban a pesticide that is proven to cause brain damage in children. The Andrew Wheeler who decided it was perfectly fine for Americans to be exposed to much higher levels of both mercury and radiation while basing his decision on a completely unscientific theory. The Andrew Wheeler who closed down the EPA’s office that provides scientific advice, as well shutting down the office on children’s health. The Andrew Wheeler who stopped enforcing the Clean Water Rule, creating a paradise for polluters. The Andrew Wheeler who let oil and gas companies know they no longer had to worry about limits on methane emissions. And, of course, the Andrew Wheeler who had spent his previous career as a coal lobbyist. Which helps explain why his first action in office was ditching the rule that required cleaning up toxic coal ash.
That Andrew Wheeler.
But Wheeler is more than an awful choice to be running environmental services anywhere. He’s also a perfect example of how Republicanism has worked since at least 1964: It’s a Darwinian struggle to find, and reward, the absolute worst in humanity.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2022
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