Basically this is comparing the relative drops and recoveries in employment of pretty much every recession since World War 2. When people say ‘worst economic downturn since the Great Depression’ this is what they mean.
Via Calculated Risk.
Tag Archive: 2010
Brain is still fried from summer classes. Here’s Matthew Yglesias on the most recent employment figures:
The new unemployment report highlights the fact that the economy remains lousy and John Boehner is going to be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. Ironically, it also demonstrates the bankruptcy of Boehner’s way of thinking. The new conservative orthodoxy has been that somehow teachers, police officers, guys who repair street signs, bus drivers, librarians, etc. don’t have “real jobs” and that police departments, roads, trains, buses, libraries, etc. don’t contribute to economic growth. In those terms, the unemployment report was actually fine—the private sector added 71,000 jobs, which isn’t the greatest number in human history but it’s okay.
The losses came from the public sector. And they were foreseeable. And they were foreseen by the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and the majority of House members and a majority of Senators. And the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and the majority of House members and a majority of Senators voted for bills that would have prevented that. But because in the Senate a minority of members can get their way, action wasn’t taken. Consequently, we have a horrible jobs number. Which would be bad enough, but the way the American political system works, the minority party that prevented the majority from addressing the crisis will accrue massive political benefits as a result of the collapse.
Conservatives won’t admit it today, but what we’re looking at is a major breakdown of the logic of the American political system.
START is the nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the U.S. It was the brainchild of Ronald Reagan and subsequent treaties have been upheld and approved by conservatives and liberals alike. It’s pretty obvious to me that regardless of your political leanings no one wants to live in a world where the threat of nuclear annihilation is real, so you would think that approving the renewal of the treaty which lowers nuclear levels even further would be a no-brainer, right?
Wrong. Apparently blanket Republican opposition to Obama knows no bounds, Mitt Romney has an Op-Ed in the Washington Post calling it ‘Obama’s worst foreign policy mistake‘ and Republicans in the Senate (where the treaty must be ratified) have promised to filibuster it as well.
As such there’s an excellent piece in Slate that starts off this way:
In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and—let’s not mince words—thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney’s attack on the New START treaty in the July 6 Washington Post.
And only gets better from there.
Here’s hoping someone can knock some sense into these people.
Republican Senate candidate, Sharron Angle
So the flipside of the rise of the Tea Party is that there are increasing numbers of wingnutty candidates winning Republican primaries and having to now run in a general election where saying things like ‘People should use their 2nd amendment rights to solve the Harry Reid problem’ or that the Civil Rights Act was ‘an abuse of federal power’ isn’t going to win you too many admirers. The degree to which the things that will win you a Republican primary but turn into a millstones in the general election varies from state to state but so far I think Nevada wins the prize.
Sharron Angle wound up winning the Republican primary to face Harry Reid for Nevada’s Senate seat in November. Sharron Angle also happens to have a somewhat checkered past and record, ranging from calling for Social Security to be privatized to aligning herself with the Oath Keeper’s, an extremist group calling for the armed resistance to any law they deem unconstitutional, to calling for the dismantling of the Departments of Energy and Education.
Now everyone is entitled to their opinions and if these are things she believes, more power to her. However her potential constituents also have a right to know what their prospective Senator believes in, as such this website, Sharron Angle’s Underground Bunker has been set up to enumerate her various beliefs. Harry Reid’s website also had a list of positions they pulled from Angle’s own website before Republican operatives scrubbed it but the Angle campaign sent them a Cease-and-Desist letter to pull it down…
You know it’s bad when you have to send C&D letters to prevent your opponents from reproducing your own website.
Last week San Francisco not only celebrated it’s 40th annual pride but also it’s 34th annual GLBT Film Festival, Frameline. So Mike and I made the trek into the city to check out what sounded like a pretty good film, Spring Fever. Touted as the “Chinese Brokeback Mountain” and filmed in secret by a director who had be banned by the Chinese government, I thought we’d be in store for a subversive, push-the-envelope type movie that challenged the viewer.
However the thing no one remembers about Brokeback Mountain was that it was so goddamn slow and in that way then Spring Fever really is the Chinese version. The premise itself is pretty interesting: Set in a seemingly boundless Chinese metropolis it features a closeted, married man in a clandestine relationship with another man whose wife hires a private investigator to spy on him and discovers his male lover. Lights, camera, drama – right? Yet not really, all that is revealed in the first five minutes of the film, the rest of the two hours is a little less than exciting.
Here’s the thing Spring Fever is an arthouse film, which means it’s beautifully shot and left me with a yearning to visit China sometime for the scenery alone, but it is severely lacking in action and dialogue. Most communication between characters is purely through movement or expression, which is touching in its own way but there’s only so many loving glances and silent exits I can take before I just want someone to say something.
So if all you want from a movie is beautiful scenery, the occasional shirtless guy and longing stares then check it out. If, on the other hand, you’re like me and prefer films that move slightly faster than a glacier then I’d suggest looking elsewhere for your summer gay flick.
After yesterday’s post regarding the depressing and tragic events surrounding Pride in San Francisco last weekend, I thought I’d share something a little more uplifting from Pride in Chicago:
I spent the day at Chicago’s Pride Parade. Some friends and I, with The Marin Foundation, wore shirts with “I’m Sorry” written on it. We had signs that said, “I’m sorry that Christians judge you,” “I’m sorry the way churches have treated you,” “I used to be a bible-banging homophobe, sorry.” We wanted to be an alternative Christian voice from the protestors that were there speaking hate into megaphones.
What I loved most about the day is when people “got it.” I loved watching people’s faces as they saw our shirts, read the signs, and looked back at us. Responses were incredible. Some people blew us kisses, some hugged us, some screamed thank you. A couple ladies walked up and said we were the best thing they had seen all day. I wish I had counted how many people hugged me. One guy in particular softly said, “Well, I forgive you.”
Watching people recognize our apology brought me to tears many times. It was reconciliation personified.
My favorite though was a gentleman who was dancing on a float. He was dressed solely in white underwear and had a pack of abs like no one else. As he was dancing on the float, he noticed us and jokingly yelled, “What are you sorry for? It’s pride!” I pointed to our signs and watched him read them.
Then it clicked.
Then he got it.
He stopped dancing. He looked at all of us standing there. A look of utter seriousness came across his face. And as the float passed us he jumped off of it and ran towards us. In all his sweaty beautiful abs of steal, he hugged me and whispered, “thank you.”
San Francisco’s pre-Pride “Pink Saturday” party last weekend turned tragic when a gunman opened fire, killing one and wounding two others. One person was arrested and a weapon recovered but there are differing reports on what the status of the investigation is, this article at SFWeekly says there aren’t any murder charges whereas this article at the SF Examiner says there are. Regardless the sad fact remains that one teen lost his life and two others were seriously injured.
Now to make matters worse two more people were shot at a vigil held for the victim of the Pink Saturday shooting.
I originally wrote up a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post chiding the guy who brought a gun to a street party to settle a diva off and ruining everyone elses fun but in light of the most recent violence all I can say is: what a tragedy.
