The US economy entered a recession in February, the National Board of Economic Research declared (6/8), meaning that the recession started before states and local government ordered non-essential businesses to shut down in March in an attempt to control the spread of the coronavirus.
The economists said that employment, income and spending peaked in February and then fell sharply afterward as the viral outbreak shut down businesses across the country, marking the start of the downturn after nearly 11 full years of economic growth.
“The unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the entire economy, warrants the designation of this episode as a recession, even if it turns out to be briefer than earlier contractions,” the NBER said.
The unemployment rate announced June 5 is officially 13.3%, down from 14.7% in April. (And it might actually be 16.3%, due to a “misclassification error” around workers sidelined by the pandemic.) Any of those figures are higher than in any other downturn since World War II. A broader measure of underemployment that includes those who have given up looking and those who have been reduced to part-time status is 21.2%.
The government said employers added 2.5 million jobs in May, an unexpected gain that suggested job losses may have bottomed out. A recession ends when employment and output start to pick up again, not when they reach their pre-recession levels. So it’s possible that the recession could technically end soon, Christopher Rugaber of the Associated Press noted (6/8).
But economist Paul Krugman warned in the New York Times (6/9) the uptick is the result of emergency aid — “the safety net hurriedly put in place in late March, largely at Democrats’ insistence. This safety net alleviated hardship while allowing the unemployed to maintain spending and encouraging businesses to maintain their payrolls. And unless Congress and the White House act, that safety net will be yanked away by August.
“More specifically, enhanced unemployment benefits, which are both more generous than standard benefits and cover more people, have been a huge source of support despite the difficulties many have faced in getting enrolled. Among other things, those benefits have — temporarily — made it possible for millions of families to keep paying rent on their homes. But those benefits will expire July 31.
“And the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers small businesses loans that can be converted into grants if they’re used to maintain payroll, is already out of money, and the job support lasts only eight weeks.
“So two of the main things sustaining the economy are set to disappear. At the same time, Congress has yet to provide major relief to state and local governments, which are facing a huge fiscal crisis and have already laid off a million and a half workers; there will soon be many more layoffs unless aid comes soon.”
So “we’re facing probable disaster in the near future unless Congress acts,” Krugman wrote. “But here’s the thing: Republicans just hate helping the unemployed, hate aiding states, in fact hate any kind of disaster response other than tax cuts. And the uptick in jobs gives them an excuse to indulge their hatred.”
At best, most economists expect a full recovery could take two years or more, with the unemployment rate likely still 10% or higher at the end of this year. With few Americans traveling, eating out or shopping at anywhere near their previous levels, consumer spending — the primary driver of the US economy — could keep economic activity weak for many more months.
TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADMITS TRUMP IS LOSING. Liberals don’t like to hear that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is winning, because 2016 is etched into their psyches, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Kos) wrote at DailyKos.com (6/6).
“We are winning the race for the White House. And we are winning the battle for the Senate,” the founder and publisher of DailyKos wrote. “(The House isn’t even in play. Only question is whether we gain a handful of seats, or lose a handful of seats. The Democratic majority is safe.)
“Thing is, you don’t have to take my word for it, or that of all the pollsters showing Trump losing. The Trump campaign has admitted itself, and few realized it.
The happy admission takes place in this one quote:
“Everyone knows public polling is notoriously wrong about President Trump. Our internal data consistently shows the president running strong against a defined Joe Biden in all of our key states,” Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman said.
To fully understand this quote, you have to know what this spokesman means by “defined Joe Biden.”
In polling, there are several kinds of campaign polls. There are your standard horserace polls, “Candidate A vs Candidate B.” That’s what you see from media and publicly released polls. But actually, those polls aren’t very useful to campaigns. They don’t want to know who is ahead or behind, they want to know what they need to do to move numbers.
Then there’s the issue polls, the ones that try to gauge the electorate’s positions on key issues driving the political debate. Is a candidate’s district anti-abortion or pro-choice? If it’s anti-abortion, and the candidate is pro-choice, then the candidate knows to de-emphasize the issue during the campaign. Presumably, her or his opponent has similar data and knows to make the campaign all about abortion. Those polls are usually dozens of questions long, as campaigns seek to map out a campaign message based on where the majority of voters reside.
And finally, there’s the “informed ballot” poll. An honest informed ballot starts off with a basic horserace head-to-head question. Then it’ll say something like “Let me read you some statements about the candidates,” and then proceeds to both read out the positives and negatives of both candidates. Then, the horserace question is asked again.
Trump’s campaign manager went to the “informed ballot” polls, which showed numbers that were more positive for Trump, after Trump blew his top and threatened to sue campaign manager Brad Parscale after he showed him regular polls.
Kos, who is an experienced pollster, noted, “Here’s the thing: both Trump and Biden are already defined. They are two of the most defined politicians in the country. Informed ballot polls make sense in down-ballot campaigns where the candidates aren’t as well known to the voters. But again, this poll wasn’t done for the campaign’s strategic purposes. It was done so Parscale could keep his job and keep his boss from utterly losing his mind. It was done so they could issue bulls**t responses to the media when presented with yet another battleground state poll showing Biden winning.”
DEMOCRATS LIKELY TO GAIN SENATE IN NOVEMBER. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so Democrats will need to pick up at least three seats to regain the majority, if Joe Biden wins the presidency and his vice president would break the tie.
Democrats probably will lose the Senate seat in Alabama, Kos noted. “That was a temporary gift won in a special election against a child molester. And we still barely won. In a normal year, against a normal Republican, with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket? If Democratic Sen. Doug Jones wins reelection, we’ve got a 60-seat majority landslide. So we assume he loses.” But Dems shouldn’t give up.
Arizona, where appointed Sen. Martha McSally is seeking election, the state seems to be moving strongly against Republicans. Democrat Mark Kelly leads McSally by double figures in polls by Fox News, Highground and OH Predictive Insights (a local Republican pollster). Fox News also showed Biden leading Trump 46-42.
In Colorado, Kos wrote, “no one is pretending that Republican Cory Gardner has any chance. Even he realizes it—he spent his impeachment time aggressively defending Trump in a state in which Trump will lose by double digits. And so will Gardner. Two polls in early March had former Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper leading by 17 and 18 points. No one has wasted time polling there ever since.”
In Maine, “Republican Sen. Susan Collins saw her ‘moderate’ veneer shorn off after voting both to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial, and voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. A poll [in May’ had Democratic candidate Sarah Gideon with a 51-42 lead. The race has been underpolled, but Collins ranks amongst the most unpopular senators in the country in a state that will solidly go blue this fall. She can’t count on ticket splitters anymore.”
And in North Carolina, Kos said, “incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis is looking weak, weak, weak,” running behind Democrat Cal Cunningham in four polls where his best showing was trailing 46-44.
“Any incumbent below 45% is generally considered to be toast. People are looking for an alternative.”
Losing Alabama but winning Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina gets Dems to a 50-50 Senate. At this stage of the cycle, given current trends, this is the most likely outcome, Kos noted. But Dems also have a good chance in two Georgia Senate seats, as well as Montana, where popular outgoing Gov. Steve Bullock (D) is challenging incumbent Sen. Steve Daines (R). Democrats also hope to run a competitive race against Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), as well as an open seat in Kansas, where presumptive Democratic nominee Barbara Bollier appears to be in a dead heat with three Republican contenders, including former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, businessman Bob Hamilton and Rep. Roger Marshall. Dems also are targeting Sen. John Cornyn (R).
And Democratic challengers in Kentucky and South Carolina will have good wishes as well as cash from around the country to take on Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Polls offer hope, but Trump is still very popular in both states
TRUMP BLOWS PAST 19,000 LIES. For weeks, as the coronavirus silently spread through the US, President Trump belittled the threat and repeatedly praised China for “transparency” and the World Health Organization for its handling of the outbreak. But when the death toll mounted and the scope of the public health crisis became too difficult to ignore, Trump reversed course.
“I always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” he declared — then angrily blamed China for failing to contain the new virus and accused the WHO of helping a coverup. He later withdrew the United States from the WHO.
Likewise, when a distraught widower asked Twitter to remove Trump’s tweets insinuating that the man’s wife had been killed by MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, Trump ignored the plea and repeated the slander.
The president’s technique — refined over half a century in public life — is relentless and unforgiving: Never admit any error, constantly repeat falsehoods, and have no shame about your tactics, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker noted (6/2).
From the start of Trump’s presidency, the Fact Checker team has catalogued every false or misleading statement he has made. As of May 29, the count stood at 19,127. That works out to about 15 claims per day. But the pace of deception has quickened exponentially. He averaged about six claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018, and more than 22 a day in 2019 and 2020 so far. Indeed, the president made more false or misleading claims in 2019 than he did in 2017 and 2018 combined.
The pace and frequency of Trump’s falsehoods can feel mind-numbing — and many Americans appear to have tuned out the torrent of presidential misstatements.
STUDY ESTIMATES SHUTDOWNS PREVENTED 60M COVID CASES IN US. Though the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US is nearing two million and the death toll has topped 110,500, an analysis published in the journal Nature (6/8) states that stay-at-home orders and other measures implemented in response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic prevented about 60 million infections nationwide, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (6/8).
“The last several months have been extraordinarily difficult, but through our individual sacrifices, people everywhere have each contributed to one of humanity’s greatest collective achievements,” lead author Solomon Hsiang said. “I don’t think any human endeavor has ever saved so many lives in such a short period of time.”
Infectious disease expert Dr. Dena Grayson calculated that approximately 270,000 lives were saved by the shutdowns, assuming the same fatality rate as now. “Without lockdowns, the [case fatality rate] likely would have been HIGHER, as hospitals/ICUs became overwhelmed,” she tweeted, adding, “More lives could’ve been saved if we’d locked down SOONER.”
Since mid-March, millions of people in the US have lost their jobs—and for many, that has also meant losing their health insurance in the midst of a pandemic. Americans’ struggles to access healthcare, remain in their homes, and keep food on the table has put pressure on congressional leaders and the Trump administration to dramatically expand efforts that provide direct relief to people who need it.
WISCONSIN REPUBS PLOT TO BLOCK DEM GOV’S POWER TO VETO NEW GERRYMANDERS, Wisconsin Republicans have launched an assault on Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' power to block new gerrymanders after the 2020 census by asking the state Supreme Court to change the state's procedural rules to guarantee the high court's conservative majority will adjudicate lawsuits over redistricting that are all but certain to arrive next year, Stephen Wolf wrote for DailyKos (6/5).
In the likely event that Evers winds up vetoing GOP gerrymanders and lawmakers fail to pass compromise maps, Wisconsin voters could file lawsuits asking a court to adopt new districts. Republicans want the state Supreme Court to establish rules that any redistricting lawsuit would go straight to the state Supreme Court instead of starting in a lower court as a typical lawsuit would. Litigation could also commence once census data is available in 2021, before legislators even have a chance to redraw the lines.
Democrats have blasted the GOP's maneuver as a ploy to circumvent Evers' veto power by enabling the partisan Republicans who control Wisconsin's Supreme Court to adopt new gerrymanders. They've specifically charged that, under these proposed rules, the Supreme Court majority could draw new districts "without discovery, a trial, or the presentation of any evidence or input by anyone other than partisan politicians." Such rules would allow the Supreme Court to fast-track any suits and institute new maps before the federal courts, which also have jurisdiction on redistricting matters, could resolve litigation filed with them.
Progressive Judge Jill Karofsky ousted a conservative incumbent in this spring's vote. When Karofsky joins the bench in August, conservatives will be reduced to a 4-3 majority. However, liberals won't have a chance to gain a majority until at least 2023.
Last year, the Wisconsin Examiner reported that Republicans were considering asking the Supreme Court to overturn a 1965 precedent so that they could draw new districts by "joint resolution," which isn't subject to veto, instead of as a regular statute, which is.
Republicans won fewer votes than Democrats in both 2018 and 2012 but won sizable legislative majorities both years thanks to the gerrymandered districts.
NY TIMES REPORTS OAS ELECTION FRAUD CLAIMS IN BOLIVIA WERE BOGUS. More than seven months after claims of fraudulent elections sparked a coup that led to the ouster of Bolivian President Evo Morales, the New York Times (6/7) reported on new research showing the US-led Organization of American States used flawed data and analysis to support its widely cited contention the voting was rigged.
“It was clear from the start, but now even the NYT is admitting: what happened in Bolivia was nothing short of a coup by the U.S. and its OAS puppet, deposing one of the most successful democratically elected leaders in modern Latin American history,” tweeted journalist Glenn Greenwald in response to the Times reporting.
In November 2019, US officials cited the OAS report on the election as a justification for backing the coup that deposed Morales, the left-wing Indigenous former president, Eoin Higgins noted at CommonDreams (6/8).
Despite reporting from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) casting doubt on those claims within 24 hours of the OAS making them, the Times only covered the problems with the US-dominated organization’s analysis after a study from three independent researchers found the same results.
Since the coup, the human rights situation in the Latin American country has gone from bad to worse as the government of far-right interim president Jeanine Áñez has rolled back reforms put in place by Morales, opened the country’s resources to private exploitation, and delayed scheduled elections under the pretext of public health due to the coronavirus outbreak.
“The OAS bears responsibility for the significant deterioration of the human rights situation in Bolivia since Morales’ ouster,” said CEPR co-director Mark Weisbrot.
Weisbrot warned that if the OAS and its leadership is “allowed to get away with such politically driven falsification of their electoral observation results again, this threatens not only Bolivian democracy but the democracy of any country where the OAS may be involved in elections in the future.”
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2020
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