Unemployment Plunges to 6.3%

The unemployment rate for the country at the start of May is 6.3% - - which is the lowest it has been since 2008 and 288,000 jobs were “added” last month, which is one of the highest growth rates we have seen.  But rather than make people like Rush Limbaugh happy, their reaction was just the opposite, I may suggest more out of fear (of success) than any true concern for this economy.  Rush Limbaugh now raises the number of a so called 92 million people in the country NOT working, and that the percent of 62% is the lowest percent of employable Americans working since 1978, when I imagine, there were not quite so many women employed.  But there is another figure Rush kept throwing around.  Rush claims that 800,000 people LEFT the work force last month, and people like Rush claim the figure around there is the amount of people who leave the work force EVERY month.  This number makes no sense demographically, considering these uncertain times and if anything- - people would be more inclined to KEEP working past 65 for fear of having insufficient savings for their retirement.   Obviously if this figure has any substance to it at all, it would mean that there was a net LOSS of jobs of over five hundred thousand workers THIS month and EVERY month, which I have a real problem believing.  However Rush did say there is a secret unemployment number they don’t release of 12.6% - - which is actually the True number of the unemployed in this country.   Rush claims that Democratic candidates are being advised NOT to use the word “Recovery” when referring to people’s financial security, because the word “Recovery” doesn’t test well in Surveys their own people have run.  Perhaps because of the fact that the President has used the word “Recovery” to frequently that the word now leaves a sour taste in everybody’s mouth, when they realize that it isn’t so.

I listened to Glen Beck on the radio but at one point I listened to Bill Handel and gleaned that he generally favors a hike in the minimum wage.  Bill tried to make it more complicated than it is in terms of ramifications.  If you assume that employers intend to spend (allocate) no more money for employee payroll than they do now, one can assume that the amount of money put into the economy would stay static.  However- - should the profits of the company be going up- - it would well be that with a minimum wage, they could afford to dedicate (allocate) more of their funds to the payroll, in which case this WOULD put more money into circulation by those employees.  But something else would happen that I just thought of, that is a good thing and hopefully even Newt Gingrich would like it.  And that is the lazy or incompetent or marginal employees would be penalized, and those harder workers, who kept their jobs, would be rewarded with higher pay.  So there would be a biferfercation between the two sets of workers.  The slower ones would be let go and the faster ones would be rewarded.  In the process the overall quality of the worker would be improved, because those employees would now have another incentive to work hard, lest they lose their jobs too.   Bill Handel suggested, and he sounded vaguely serious about it- - that minimum wage should be raised to fifteen dollars an hour which to me is way excessive.  You see my “take’ on the whole thing is only valid if the now “harder working “employee pulls his weight and proves that he’s actually worth the higher wages he is now being paid.   Too high of a minimum wage would amount to meddling around with market forces- which seldom comes to good.

In terms of the news there is still continued fighting in the Eastern Ukraine- with Ukraine forces fighting back now, so the full scale Civil War is on.  And President Obama and John Kerry are living in a dream world if they didn’t anticipate the events the way they have unfolded and now events have gotten out of their control.   You know the Republicans want to investigate the Bengazi tragedy once again, though the event is now two years old.   Republican logic though is a little strange and I think I know their motives and THAT is strange.  The Republicans still can’t admit that President Obama got Bin Laden killed or that US Drones have struck all over the Mideast decimating Al Qaeda of its high command and they are only a shadow of the organization they used to be- - particularly after our drone attack in Yemen a couple of weeks ago killing that convoy of ten.  It’s like the Republicans are looking for a way to make all of that to “un happen” and they way they think they can is to show that the President, according to the tea party, was so desperate to prove that Al Qaeda wasn’t viable any more that somehow they manufactured a deliberate lie- - - and supposedly when it was “exposed as a lie” they wouldn’t accept it - -  so all of this really is the Republicans - - want to prove that it was all some “Campaign ploy” two years ago.

BLAST FROM TWO DAYS AGO:  Yesterday it was 92 on the beach at Newport, which was a record, and it was 95 in Laguna Beach, which was also a record.  They say it was 92 here yesterday and predicted to get to 95 today and 98 on Thursday, so this heat wave isn’t going anywhere.  The weatherman revived an old George Fishbeck term “cut-off Low”.   Actually we’ve had rare occasions where a low will stay in place for a protracted period and a storm will cycle all the way around the Low by way of Idaho before it works its way back here, and we get the same storm again.  I guess there was one of the first tornadoes in Tupelo since the one that struck Tupelo around Elvis’ tenth birthday in January of whatever year.  But Dallas Rains was saying that this High pressure system we have station now is a really powerful one, and it isn’t going anywhere.  

Last night- - while the internet was working I had “Free Speech TV” on a long time watching first a thing on how economics without taking into account people and populations or the environment- - “is a form of brain damage” and in all of their accounting math, they regard human and environmental issues as “external”.  In the old days you would exploit one natural resource till it ran out, and them "all the smart money" would then go into a different resource and exploit that.  In the old cays whole civilizations would rise and fall but if one went down, another such as China or Arabia would spring up.  Today with all the world's economics tied together, if one link falls, they ALL fall and the whole Earth goes down the toilet.  There was talk about surplus populations being congragated in cities - - and the growing number of poor as the rich get greedier and greedier till you reach a critical mass and then you have Revolution.  Clearly the Bible speaks against such greed and even of "giving the land a rest".  There were sabbaths for workers, and for the land, and there was also a sabbath for business- - where property related to its original owner where money was not allowed to accumulate into the hands of a few.  Clearly our Founding Fathers even warned against the potential economic harm caused by Big Financial Institutions.  Bush was an oil man and President Obama is in the grasp of Wall Street bankers, and will fashion no economic policy unless it is in accord with their wishes.  Also President Obama ignored the whole BP oil spill crisis.  BP has restored their public image but the land and the people who sffered loss from them, are still languishing.  Then there was some stuff on the Mike Papentonio show that would curl your hair.  First they said that if the Media reported ALL the stuff that Cliven Bundy and his minions believed, everyone in the country would see him for the fringe nut he is.  But it’s like the media is protecting him.  Also just like the tea party, this whole rally was carefully orchestrated with people being brought in from other states- perhaps funded by the Koch Brothers.  Then there was a thing on General Mills and Starbucks in saying that if you use one of their food coupons, the company is immune from any legal suit you might choose to bring in court, like if you were to keel over dead or get violently ill or something.  I spouted off about this on the patio, being positively incredulous about what I heard.

People looking to where to invest their newly required money from this - - Recovery - - should listen up.  Sometimes you learn something valuable from Rush Limbaugh that perhaps he didn’t intend to tell us.  Apparently congress was way ahead of me in 1993 in passing an expense deduction regulation for business, where no salaries over one million dollars may be counted as a deduction.  It made sense to me.  But they left themselves a gaping loophole.  You see they allowed these ECO’s to be paid in stock options.  Now in my day a “stock option” notably a call, was the OPTION to buy a stock at a previously established price at a future date, and thus garner an instant profit.  But you STILL have to have the money to PAY for that stock.   If this situation works as I describe it- - it would avail the market nothing but rather most all of said “Profit” would go instantly into the hands of the individual holding the Call option.  But the other school opf thought says that they are actually Awarded the Stocks themselves.  In this case it would be a windfall for the main exchanges - - the market- - almost along the lines of Obamacare being a windfall for Health providers.  If this is the case you have almost a guarantee there Will Be no “Crashes” in the market.  Because these rich people would only be hurting themselves.  And if these rich people Sell their stocks- - this would mean a substantial reduction of the government deficit, which we know they will move heaven and earth to prevent.  Keep in mind when Rush Limbaugh says “The democrats have no accomplishments to run on” or “Obama is a failure” he is being disingenuous unless he also says “Just like all of us republicans were planning - - all along, before the President took office”.   It’s like a marriage where the wife is bitching and moaning to a marriage counselor about what a failure her husband is and he has no good traits, and so the therapist asks her “Well, what would you say is your husband’s Greatest Weakness” and the wife goes “Well, that’s easy, - - he can’t get along with his wife.  Back when we were courting he said he’d work to make me happy- - and clearly he has failed at this because No Matter What gifts he gives me or how many raises he gets at work- - all he gets from me is constant complaint, so as you can see my husband failed to live up to his promise”.  And Nicole Sandler is right.  Obviously there is a racial component to this since the things they are saying about our current President they would have never said about Bill Clinton even when the rhetoric was at its worst and most vitriolic.  (Selah)