As editorial cartoonist for The Journal News in New York, Davies cuts to the chase on every major issue, deftly penetrating the spin and obfuscation to show readers what’s really at the heart. His caustic wit combines with a strong moral sensibility to render the complex comprehensible.
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MortyForTyrant said, 9 months ago
Nothing new. The GOP has started their war on science, logic, math, the lot a long time ago. Just ask Rep. Bachmann…
Radish
said, 9 months ago
People who are not counted as unemployed because they have been out of work to long did not start with Obama. It goes back to at least my entire working life.
Michael wme said, 9 months ago
Every month, the Census Bureau selects several thousand lucky people to be surveyed, and the form says that failure to answer, and answer correctly, is a Federal Offence with fines and jail terms. They ask a bunch of questions, but the two relevant ones are: 1) Did you work AT ALL during the month, even one hour? and 2) Did you apply to at least one place that was accepting applications for employment?
The same form has been used since 1947 with no changes. So clearly, the results give artificially low and high numbers.
People who have no money and are living with friends or relatives and who have exhausted every place to apply in their town are NOT unemployed. People who only had half a day’s work shovelling snow after the big blizzard are NOT unemployed. So the numbers are much too low. There are between 15% and 20% out of work under President Obama’s administration, but less than 8% technically unemployed.
On the other hand, people leaving school who have multiple offers are technically unemployed while they’re trying to decide and while employers are bidding up their starting salaries. The same goes for people leaving the military. Rational people don’t consider them really unemployed.
So the numbers under Bush, Jr, Reagan and every other Republican president were much too high, they were really 0%. And the numbers undeer every Democratic president were much too low, they were really above 15%. This is clear if one just checks any of the Republican blogs.
jonesb said, 9 months ago
What an idiot, the numbers are phony. Every president since Clinton has fudged the numbers, both parties.
mikefive said, 9 months ago
@Michael wme
There is a small problem in your concluding paragraph in that there is a one to one and and a half percent of the population that are chronically unemployed, are on workman’s comp, are disabled and find it difficult to find positions that allow them to work, etc. This small percentage of people never goes away; they just fail to include them in the count.
narrowminded said, 9 months ago
The Admin. Is blatantly lying. Sad.
Ms. Ima said, 9 months ago
O really loves unemployed people who run out of unemployment funds. He has made so many.
Business’s are moving out of America because of the high tax structure. No one looks for the highest tax base they must pay into when looking to expand. Libs are so ignorant to how intelligent people think and act.
Bruce4671 said, 9 months ago
Every Administration tries to make itself look good. You should look at this table and see all the different ways the government compiles the data. Traditionally the “U-3” scale is the one put out for public consumption. It shows just the people who are “actively” unemployed. They are not working, they are looking for a job. Each month there is a certain section of the “workforce” that exhausts their benefits. They no longer get counted. There are a certain number that just give up. Not counted. There are some that take part time positions that what or need full time. And then there are jobs that go away reducing the number of jobs available which also lowers the “U-3” percentage.
Check out the “U-6” numbers.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
meetinthemiddle said, 9 months ago
@jonesb
There’s only one president I can remember who actually changed how the numbers were counted – Reagan. In 1982, the numbers were too high (between 12-13% I think), so Reagan decreed that the active military (which were previously excluded) be tossed in the pool to lower the rate a couple of points without actually changing anything.
Of course the new method has been used ever since but impacts it less. As the country grows and the % of active military doesn’t keep up with the growth, the effect is diluted.
Chillbilly
said, 9 months ago
People DO notice that the GOP celebrates the bad economy.
Radish
said, 9 months ago
When Reagan got into office the unemployment rate was 10% and it was 7.2% when he was reelected.
When Obama got into office the unemployment rate was 10% and is now 7.8%.
disgustedtaxpayer said, 9 months ago
the “counters” are humans with opinions and biases…not machines.
excellent analysis at www.aei-ideas.org (10/5/12) by James Pethokoukis, with an impressive resume of esperience in writing on economic topics.
“The sickly, stagnant September jobs report”…printed 3 pages.
-
“the U-3 unemployment rate fell to 7.8%, the 1st time since Jan.2009…but that’s only due to a flood of 582,000 PART-TIME JOBS.”
“the broader U-6 rate” (discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job and part-time workers who want full-time included in the counting) “stayed unchanged at 14.7%…” (which is the TRUE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE)…
“involuntary par-time workers rose from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September”
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Obama promised 5.6% unemployment rate in Sept.2012 if the $800 Billion stimulus package was passed by congress in 2009. And the 2007 recession officially ended June 2009. This everlasting non-recovery is due IMO to Obama’s anti-biz policies.
yohannbiimu said, 9 months ago
If folks would use the case of individual states’ unemployment rates as an indication of how an economy works, they’d clearly see whether Obamanomics was “working” or not. The bottom 5 states with the highest unemployment in the country (with rates between 9.7 and 12.1) are ALL “BLUE.” If states that used Obama’s economic model were “recovering” the rest of the country, this would not be the case. Hence, Obama’s Marxist policies are a miserable failure.
PREDICTION: If Barack Obama is reelected, unemployment will rise to double-figures in 2013, and they will STAY THERE, Mark it down.
josefw
said, 9 months ago
@Radish
There ya go, stretching the truth again…
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the last time unemployment sat below 8 percent was in January 2009, when it was 7.8 percent. Unemployment rose to 8.3 percent the next month and continued on that track until it hit 10 percent in October 2009. From there, it dropped gradually, reaching 8.2 percent in May 2012, making that the 40th consecutive month the rate had been at 8 percent or higher. June also rolled in at 8.2 percent.
DenverMosaic said, 9 months ago
@josefw
In other words from Oct. 09 until today, unemployment has been steadily declining from 10% to 7.8%. So where is the bad news you conservatives sought so much?