The number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week by the largest amount in three months. The surge is evidence of how volatile the job market remains, even as the economy grows.
Applications for unemployment benefits rose to 471,000 last week, up by 25,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the first increase in five weeks and the biggest jump since a gain of 40,000 in February.
A week or so ago I suggested in response to Chris Bowers that there was as yet no evidence of a progressive swing in the electorate though there were "indications".
That was last week. This week we have some real live evidence. Joe Sestak beat Arlen Specter to be the Democratic Senate candidate from PA and Mark Critz won a special election to replace the deceased John Murtha in Westmoreland County. Neither was supposed to win, neither could win, according to the Usual Pundits. Right-wing ex-Pub and avid Bush Baby Specter was welcomed into the BD Democrat party primarily on the strength of a conservative-spun rumor that nobody could beat him and it was the only way to keep PA in the Dem column. Sestak, they said, was yet another Quixote-ish librul loser tilting at windmills he couldn't possibly knock over and it was a waste of time for SERIOUS PEOPLE to work for his campaign or even talk about it.
It seems that for once - and I do mean once - my pessimism may have led me uncustomarily astray. It appears that the White House, Wall Street, and conservatives are actually going to lose the battle to make sure the Fed stays unaudited and therefore unaccountable in every way. According to both TPM and the NYT, Bernie Sanders' amendment is now expected to pass.
During each political kabuki there usually comes a time - at least one - when working from the shadows backstage just doesn't cut it any more and you need to risk coming out into the open. In the financial "reform" kabuki, that moment came when Bernie Sanders entered an amendment to the Dodd bill that would require the Fed to be audited. All of a sudden the back room playas were all out front in a full-court press.
I haven't looked but I suppose the usual suspects are all excited about the "anti-Wall Street" speech Obama gave today. You know, the one where he gave the banksters and their lobbyists Holy Heck.
The shocking news that the SEC was actually going to charge Goldman Sachs with criminal fraud, a move most of us had long ago given up expecting, was so well-received that it seems to have galvanized rank-and-file Democrats.
[H]ow good is the legislation on the table, the bill put together by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut?
Not good enough. It's a good-faith effort to do what needs to be done, but it would create a system highly dependent on the wisdom and good intentions of government officials. And as the history of the last decade demonstrates, trusting in the quality of officials can be dangerous to the economy's health.
"Good faith effort"? That's pushing the benefit of the doubt past the breaking point. The admittedly minimal House bill was a "good faith effort" if your definition of "good faith" is an effort to just barely control the worst of Wall Street's usual financial scams, shenanigans, and skullduggery. Dodd's bill is a bad faith effort to make non-reform smell like reform, thus keeping Wall Street happy with him so his life-after-the-Senate will be a very comfortable one.
"We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war."
Zinn
"[O]ur time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."
Bono
"True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice, it's a command. ...
God, my friends, is with the poor and God is with us, if we are with them. This is not a burden, this is an adventure."
The Reverend Al Sharpton
Ray wasn't singing about what he knew, 'cause Ray had been blind since he was a child. He hadn't seen many purple mountains. He hadn't seen many fruited plains. He was singing about what he believed to be.
Mr. President, we love America, not because of all of us have seen the beauty all the time.
But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.
Marx
''With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent will produce eagerness, 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime which it will not scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.''
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