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David Harsanyi says the White House and media can’t spin the jobs numbers.
Remember: We’re now on our 42nd straight month of unemployment at or above 8 percent, and the President of the United States is out on the campaign trail arguing that raising taxes and spending money will fix it.
And how is that working out for us?
In July, the Labor Department reports, the economy added 163,000 jobs and unemployment ticked up to 8.3 percent. The economy, which typically needs around 100,000 jobs just to keep pace with the new workers entering the labor market, is on a three-month average of 105,000. So another disaster. (Also, job creation in June was revised down to 64,000.)
The White House claims that “today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover.” But stagnation is not recovery — a noun, meaning a return to a normal state of health or strength. Unless, that is, this is the new normal and voters accept it.
You expect the White House to spin, but the media’s take on these numbers — though subtle — is also misleading.
“Despite the seemingly good news,” reports CNBC (seemingly good news!), “the report’s household showed that the actual amount of Americans working dropped by 195,000,” as labor force participation is at a 30-year low. As Jim Pethokoukis at AEI likes to point out, if the workforce were the same as when George W. Bush left office, the unemployment rate would be 11 percent. Seemingly, indeed. …
Investors.com editors say “163,000 jobs” is pure bs.
… The 163,000 figure becomes even more suspect when you consider that 150,000 people left the workforce in July — something that almost never happens when the economy is expanding and creating new jobs. In short, the 163,000 “new” jobs is a mirage due mostly to seasonal adjustments — not real jobs.
Nor is this a one-month phenomenon. Since Obama stepped into office, 7.5 million people have left the workforce — calling all the administration’s claims of job “gains” into question.
Yes, some of those people have retired. But the vast majority has become so disgruntled with their job prospects that they’ve quit looking.
What Obama didn’t mention was that the monthly employment survey of households — which is used to create the unemployment rate — shows a stunningly different picture than the business payroll data.
By this household measure, the number of jobs plunged by 195,000, pushing the unemployment rate up to 8.3% from 8.2%. So talk of job gains is deceptive.
And, indeed, alternative measures of the unemployment rate show far worse problems. The so-called U3 measure of unemployment is the one most people know. It shows 8.3% joblessness, and 12.9 million people with no job.
But the government also releases what it calls the U6 measure — one that takes into account discouraged workers and those who, as the Labor Department puts it, are “marginally attached” to the labor force.
What does U6 show? It shows an alarming 15% unemployment rate — with 23 million people having no job. Worse, the U6 measure of unemployment is rising as the economy slows down. …
Matthew Continetti covers the Romney coverage.
… As Dan Quayle, John Ashcroft, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Charles and David Koch know all too well, once the Democrats and their allies in the media have determined the story they are going to tell about a conservative political figure, nothing can change the emphasis or tone of their coverage. The media portrayed Quayle and Palin as airheads, and that was that. They called Ashcroft a religious fundamentalist, and he was berated and dismissed from polite society. They said Limbaugh was a racist and a sexist, and entire public relations campaigns were launched to deprive him of sponsors. They “reported” that the Koch brothers’ political giving was entirely self-interested, and hardly anyone who edits our major newspapers or produces our network news gave these philanthropists the benefit of context—let alone the benefit of the doubt.
With Romney the storyline had proven more elusive. Before settling on “gaffe-prone” the media had difficulty choosing between extremes. They shoot at Romney coming and going. One day he is a bully, the next day he is a wimp. One day he has “no core,” the next day he is a radical. One day he is out of touch, the next day he is pandering to his base. In the morning they say Romney is too vague, in the evening they say his specific policies will be ruinous. Romney is too secretive, but what we know about him is scary. The whiplash from attack to attack provokes nausea. Some, like Harry Reid, have taken simply to making things up.
And who can blame him? The media have displayed an insatiable and indiscriminate appetite for negative stories about Romney, his wealth, his company, and his religion. The narrative of Mitt Romney, gaffe-machine, colored media coverage of the foreign trip before it even began. As Romney was making his way to England, journalists were asking his campaign to follow-up on a Daily Telegraph report in which an unnamed “adviser” said the United States and the United Kingdom “are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and [the governor] feels that the special relationship is special. The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.”
Whether the quote was true or false, it was nevertheless unremarkable. The United States and the United Kingdom do share the same heritage. And the White House has seemed particularly dismissive of our longtime ally—its communications director, for example, did not even know that it had returned a bust of Winston Churchill to the British Embassy. The Obama campaign and the media were just waiting for a moment to accuse Romney of criticizing the president on foreign soil. David Axelrod called the banal, possibly fictitious quote “stunningly offensive.” Joe Biden said it was “beneath a presidential campaign.” Points scored.
The pattern was established. Throughout his trip Romney would say something perfectly well meaning and true, and the press would declare it a gaffe and the voyage a horrible failure. He stated the obvious to Brian Williams: There were concerns over London’s preparedness for the Olympics. From the ensuing coverage you would have thought he had just spat on the Queen. …
Michael Barone says the media are finding ways to ignore news they don’t understand.
Americans keep behaving in ways that baffle the liberal mainstream media. Two examples figured prominently–or should have–in last week’s news.
One is the runoff primary for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz thumped incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, 57 to 43 percent.
Cruz won even though the Texas Republican establishment, from Gov. Rick Perry on down, endorsed Dewhurst. So did the Austin lobbying community, since Dewhurst as lieutenant governor has run the state Senate for the last 10 years (and, having lost this race, will do so for at least the next two).
Dewhurst has had a generally conservative record and had no problem getting elected and reelected statewide four times. And he spent liberally from the fortune he made in the private sector.
To be fair, some MSM outlets did run stories on Cruz’s rise in the polls since he ran behind Dewhurst by a 45- to 34-percent margin in the May 29 primary. And it’s not uncommon for a second-place finisher to overcome the primary winner in a runoff.
But there’s a pattern here that the big liberal press has been reluctant to recognize: Candidates from the GOP establishment are getting knocked off by challengers with less name recognition, far less money, and the support of the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party was supposed to be dead and gone, you know. …
Great Corner Post from Mark Steyn.
Previously on Dallas:
Only six months ago the Canadians were planning to ship nearly all of this newly developed oil to Texas via the Keystone Pipeline. Environmentalists, however, swore the pipeline would be built over their dead bodies and President Obama, not wanting to be left with no natural constituencies except single mothers and minorities, decided to appease environmentalists and block the pipeline.
The Canadians were shocked. They had long planned to sell this oil south of the border. Canada is already our largest supplier of foreign oil and it was inconceivable that we wouldn’t want to take more it instead of relying on Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela, and other unpredictable sources.
America had been offered first refusal, and had refused it. So, after they got over being shocked, Canada looked elsewhere for business partners. Last week, the Chinese announced they were buying a Canadian company with major interests in those oil sands that Obama & Co have no interest in. Whatever one’s feelings about this Sino-Canuck deal, it does not appear to fall under the jurisdiction of a New York senator and a Massachusetts congressman. Nevertheless:
I am speaking, of course, of Senator Charles Schumer of New York and Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, both of whom have decided we are in a position to tell a Chinese company that it cannot acquire a Canadian company because… well, because we’re Americans and the world has to pay attention to what we say.
My weekend column concludes with a tweet from Huffington Post/MSNC honcho Howard Fineman on what Washington can learn from the London Olympics:
“Brits long ago lost their empire,” he tweeted, “but overall show us how to lose global power gracefully.”
Fineman and other lefties who commend this line might want to ponder on the likelihood of America declining “gracefully” as opposed to imploding through a pitiful Schumeresque combination of hollow bullying and self-destructive buffoonery: The Brokest Nation in History thinks it can dictate to its principal energy supplier and its principal loan shark what business deals it will permit them to do. Good luck with that.