Populist and Refreshing

It is nice to see Democrats taking the lead for a change. Barbara Lee has introduced HR199 to address the "backward incentives" corporations have that allow them to deduct the costs of executive compensation. You can read the details at the Orange Satan.

Under the current rules, the more a firm pays its CEO, the more the firm can deduct from its taxes.
To be clear, corporations can compensate their executives as much as they’d like. The idea is to prevent corporations from passing the buck to the American taxpayers.
My bill would eliminate a “backward” incentive for excessive compensation, which the bill defines as more than 25 times that of the lowest paid workers at the company.

This is a good thing and there is a petition at the above link if you think so too.

Another Drop In the Bucket

No worries right? Nothing to see here just move along.

The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air jumped dramatically in 2012, making it very unlikely that global warming can be limited to another 2 degrees as many global leaders have hoped, new federal figures show.

Scientists say the rise in CO2 reflects the world's economy revving up and burning more fossil fuels, especially in China.

Carbon dioxide levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million, says Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That's the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. The measurements are taken from air samples captured away from civilization near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

This is not good and if you have been paying attention this isn't the first drop in the bucket and the bucket is rapidly getting full and when it does actually fill it will be the end of mankind on this little planet.
What is so frustrating is that the world is facing two big problems right now...climate change and shrinking employment/economies and addressing climate change with investment in non oil based energy resources, clean industry and other pro-environment initiatives would solve both these problems at once. The frustration being that our leaders are focusing on exactly the opposite. How to get more oil. How to get the dirtiest oil out of Canada and ship it down through the U.S. for export to China. Oh and reducing and already shrinking deficit. Idiots.

Welcome Aboard But Don't Look For A Lifejacket

Oh Boy! Not a lot of  rosy blush on the initial unemployment claims today. Today it jumped  to 500,000, which is a new high for the year. The 'conventional wisdom'  is that weekly initial jobless claims must be in the 300,000 range or less in order to get any actual job growth. We haven’t been at 300,000 since the beginning of the recession in December 2007.

New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to a nine-month high last week, yet another setback to the frail economic recovery.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000 in the week ended August 14, the highest since mid-November, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 476,000 from the previously reported 484,000 the prior week, which was revised up to 488,000 in Thursday’s report.

You can see ugly trajectory in this Calculated Risk graph.  The economy is just wallowing in its misery. It has not only stalled but now we see upward movement in unemployment. “The economy ran into a wall in August,” according to one analyst quoted in the story.

During the last recession in 1982, the unemployment rate added a full point, from 9.8 to 10.8 in the period August thru December. If you'll remember Democrats regained 26 seats in the House, although they split even in the Senate. It is looking like it will take a miracle for the Democrats to hold losses to that level this year if  the voters run true to form and punish the party in power.

The sad thing is that nobody seems to want to do anything about it. 

Bad Numbers

The October jobs numbers are out and it is not good. "The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September".

I think it is time to refocus our efforts on job creation.

Paul Krugman, Obama’s Faces His Anzio (and why we need more jobs/stimulus):

If the Democrats lose badly in the midterms, the talking heads will say that Mr. Obama tried to do too much, this is a center-right nation, and so on. But the truth is that Mr. Obama put his agenda at risk by doing too little. The fateful decision, early this year, to go for economic half-measures may haunt Democrats for years to come.

Obama was left with a lot on his plate by the last administration. And the efforts at health care reform, environmental policy change, financial reform, an education bill, immigration reform are all important but the jobs picture has become, I think, the number one priority.

The Republicans proved yesterday that they are not serious about moving the country forward. The Republican leadership embraced extremism at the Michele Bachmann 'tea party' event on the Capitol steps. It was an ugly spectacle. It just reinforced the notion that the GOP is not going to partner with this administration to address the problems that we face. Moreover, it proved that they are seriously pushing the fact that they are, if not completely insane, irresponsible and detached from the reality that is America today. We cannot count on them to be at our side as we try and move forward.

We need to re-prioritize and get something done that will add jobs and, in turn, build the economy.

Climbing Deeper

No good news on the employment side of the game this morning. The national unemployment rate is now 8.1% but we all know that number doesn't reflect the real number of people unemployed or underemployed which is likely 3 times as high.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. economy continued to hemorrhage jobs in February, bringing total job losses over the last six months to more than 3.3 million, and taking the unemployment rate to its highest level in 25 years.

The government reported Friday that employers slashed 651,000 jobs in February, down from a revised loss of 655,000 jobs in January. December's loss was also revised higher to a loss of 681,000 jobs, a 59-year high for losses in one month.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 650,000 jobs in February.

The unemployment rate rose to 8.1% from 7.6% in January. It was the highest reading since December 1983 and higher than economists' projections of 7.9%.

The survey of households found 12.5 million people are now unemployed, the most since records started being kept in 1940.