The Quotable Reich

cicerone imposter:
It is disappointing that Trump is still in the race at this point. His Russian connections and desire to screw around with the amazingly successful NATO should have sent his popularity spiralling downward. Lucky for the country that he's such a narcissist that he bragged in front of cameramen and sound engineers what he thinks women are for.

I would like to see him lose by 15 percentage points or more, just to send the message that the parties have to put up serious candidates who indicate they are actually capable of executing the duties of the office for which they are running.

Robert Reich
2 hrs ·
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now directly on the wrong side, despite President Obama recent assurances. Yesterday the Corps instructed the Sheriff’s Department of Morton County, North Dakota, to remove anyone who trespassed on the public lands where Native American artifacts were discovered last month. So the Sheriff’s Department used pepper spray and tear gas against Native American protesters and their supporters who were approaching the land over a creek, and arrested several of them.
Remember: This is land that Native Americans once occupied for thousands of years, and which the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe considers ancestral land. In 1868, by treaty, the United States recognized the Tribe’s right to the land. The U.S. subsequently revoked that treaty, for reasons in dispute. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers leased the land to a private, for-profit pipeline company, Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners. When the company discovered the Native American artifacts last month, it did not immediately report the discovery.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is supposed to be responsible to the people of the United States. The people of the United States have responsibilities to Native Americans, from whom the U.S. appropriated the land. Our agents are now pepper-spraying and tear-gassing Native Americans and their supporters. This is wrong.

Democrats once represented the working class. Not any more
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/democrats-working-class-americans-us-election

How is that crow tasting?

Is he still around?

Re Reich: I read him during the primaries with such hope and pride. He flipped over to Clinton so abruptly with no good explanation of how he could diverge so wildly. Lol. When he asks those "what do you think" questions on Facebook, I always tell him exactly what I think through the lens of his former Bernie views.

Good for the soul.

Robert Reich
10 hrs ·
Today’s jobs report for November looks okay except for one big thing: 95 million Americans now are not counted as in the labor force. That’s an historic high, which makes a mockery of the 4.6 percent rate of unemployment since it’s really just 4.6 percent of people who are still counted as in the labor force. The number of people not counted as in the labor force has been rising consistently for years but it surged by 446,000 last month.
Why do we have so many missing workers?
1. About a quarter of those missing workers are aging baby boomers who are exiting from the work force.
2. Another quarter are people who don't have the skills necessary for jobs that are available. Why don’t they get the skills they need? They often don’t know what's needed, and couldn't afford to get the skills training even if they did. The U.S. has the smallest and flimsiest job retraining programs in the entire post-industrial world. (Where is Trump’s economic nationalism when we need it?)
3. Another quarter are people on public assistance, such as food stamps and Social Security disability. Conservatives focus on them, but in my experience most people who get public assistance would far rather have a good job.
4. Which leaves a quarter unexplained. My guess is that these are people who are working at the margin, often paid under the table. But they, too, would rather have a good, steady job.
Bottom line: The American economy isn’t providing nearly as many good jobs as are needed. Pay no attention to that 4.6 percent unemployment rate. Counting everyone who would prefer to work, a more accurate measure would be closer to 10 percent real unemployment.
Trump's neo industrial policies won't create these jobs. We need major spending on infrastructure along with a new WPA (as we had during the New Deal).

How many quit looking for work.

Another interesting aspect of the college grad unemployed is the kind of education they received. Those in the sciences and accounting aren't having the kind of problems many in the arts are. I think that's an important issue students attending college should take into consideration.

Back in the sixties, I majored in Accounting, and I had four job offers before I even graduated. I think that still holds true today.

If that is true, rather further dividing, why not try persuading? I know that tactics works a lot better in speakers than pure negativity. Talk about why what democrats are doing are not working and what would work. I would be willing to listen as I have daughters and nieces and nephews (and so forth) in the work force and I would like to see their economic lives improved.

Quote Robert Reich, (by way o0f Edgar):

Today's jobs report also shows 159.5 Million Americans are now in the labor force, which is also a historic high. So where's the problem?

Quote Reich:

Looks like a lot higher percentage than that. Check the chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for number of people over 65 not in the labor force. It's going up steadily.



Now take a look at the number of people between the ages of 25-54, (the heart of their working years), who not in the labor force-it's leveled off and is going down:



Again, where's the problem? And by the way, why are we making such a big stinking deal about the "labor force", which makes no distinction between people who are employed and unemployed, and ignoring the fact that there are more people employed in Full Time jobs than at any time in history?

Check the chart for numbers of Full Time employed workers-it went sharply down in 2008, and has been recovering at a good rate ever since the start of 2010. That chart is immensely more indicative of the labor picture than any discussion of "labor force", where employed people and unemployed people are counted as equal.

http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm
Unemployment is hovering in the 5% range which some opine is full employment. I think there will always be about 5% who are not working based on many reasons. This is the level of unemployment I've observed for many decades.
Looking at the employment picture for our country against all other developed countries, I don't think we're doing too poorly.
Unemployment will drop during the Christmas shopping season, because retail shops and restaurants get busier.

Robert Reich
59 mins ·
Donald Trump has a “yuge” plan to the nation’s crumbling infrastructure as part of his pledge to make America great again. But it’s nothing more than a huge boondoggle to the rich.
1. Rather than taxing the wealthy and then using the money to fix our dangerously outdated roads, bridges, airports, water systems, Trump wants to give rich developers and Wall Street investors tax credits to encourage them to do it. This means that for every dollar they put into a project, they’d actually pay only 18 cents and we would contribute the other 82 cents through our tax dollars.
2. The public won’t even own the roads and bridges that get built. They’ll be owned by the private developers and investors — who will be able to charge us tolls and other fees for using them. So we get taxed twice – once when we subsidize the developers and investors with our tax dollars, and then when we pay the tolls and user fees that also go into their pockets.
3. We get the wrong kind of infrastructure. Projects that will be most attractive to Wall Street investors are those whose tolls and fees bring in the biggest bucks – giant mega-projects like major new thruways and new bridges. Not the thousands of smaller bridges, airports, pipes, and water treatment facilities most in need of repair. And not the needs of rural communities and smaller cities and towns too small to generate the tolls and other user fees equity investors want.
This will be a huge rip-off. To make America great again we need more and better infrastructure. But Trump’s plan will just enrich big developers and investors at the expense of the rest of us. The only way we get the infrastructure we need is if corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.

I read and posted about this not long after Trump won; all I got in return was how much better the private sector is better at everything than the government.

It's true. The private sector has a reason to control budget overruns and do things on time and under budget. The public sector, the govt, doesn't have any reason to do things on time and under budget. There are no govt programs or projects that actually come in on time and under budget.

I can provide you with the story on the new VA Hospital that has run 3 times it's original budget and time schedule.

Robert Reich
3 hrs ·
If Democrats don’t act like Democrats and stick up for average Americans, who will? Republicans? Trump?
Last night Bernie Sanders introduced a simple amendment urging the federal government to allow Americans to purchase pharmaceutical drugs from Canada (where drugs are considerably cheaper because the Canadian government uses a review board and price negotiation to make drugs more affordable). Such unrestricted drug importation is currently barred by law because Big Pharma doesn’t want anything to cut into its profits.
The Senate voted down the amendment 52-46. It was opposed by most Republicans (no surprise) but also by 13 Democrats, including New Jersey’s Cory Booker, a rising star in the party and a possible 2020 presidential contender. Democrats who opposed it said they were concerned about safety.
Rubbish. Canadians are just as concerned about safety as we are. Most of the drugs that would be imported from Canada were originally manufactured in the United States, anyway.
Booker and other Democrats who opposed the Sanders amendment are longtime friends of Big Pharma. As MapLight data shows, Booker has received more pharmaceutical manufacturing cash over the past 6 years than any other Democratic senator: $267,338. Other Democrats receiving six-figure donations from Big Pharma – Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, Washington’s Patty Murray, and Colorado’s Michael Bennet -- also opposed the amendment.
We have no hope of winning back Congress and the presidency – and winning back the confidence of the American people – if elected Democrats take big money and vote the way big money wants them to.

Right you are Edgar. An unconscionable number of so called democrats are also bought by big money, which was why I wanted to see Clinton choose a SC justice rather than tRump. We are screwed by big money for the next 20 years.

Hillary was the poster child for big money! Apparently so was Bernie with the purchase of his new lake house.

Lie, lie, lie. He is at it again.

Apparently you believe Clinton has no connections with "big money".

Remarkable.