BloggeRhythms

It’s truly amazing how hard the major media works to put a positive spin on results in order to support liberal agendas.  

Today, Sho Chandra @bloomberg.com headed his article: “Payrolls Surge, U.S. Jobless Rate at 5% as Workforce Grows,” noting that employers added 292,000 workers in December, while: “The jobless rate held at 5 percent as people entering the labor force found work.” 

And then Mr. Sho got into the details, writing: “At the same time, worker pay disappointed, rising less than forecast from a year earlier. The average workweek for all workers held in December at 34.5 hours.” While before the health care tax average work-weeks were 40 hours or more.

And then, the labor force participation rate, which shows the share of working-age people in the labor force, increased to a four-month high of 62.6 percent, up a tenth of a point from 62.5 percent. 

However, for all of 2015, the highest labor participation rate was 62.9 percent in January: the lowest was 62.4 percent in September, and that 62.4 percent was the lowest in 38 years. Going back to when Jimmy Carter was president. 

As far as the jobless rate of 5% is concerned, the formula now omits the underemployment rate. Changed by the Obama administration for reporting purposes to omit part-time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and those who want to work but have given up looking. If those categories were still included, the actual rate would be 9.9 percent, roughly doubling the cosmetic statistic currently presented. 

At the same time, according to The Pew Char­it­able Trusts: “Im­mig­rants make up 13 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion and 17 per­cent of the work­force.”

As far as immigrant effect of the work force is concerned: “At the na­tion­al level, im­mig­rant work­ers are dis­trib­uted dif­fer­ently across in­dus­tries than their U.S.-born coun­ter­parts." However: "Im­mig­rants are more likely than U.S.-born work­ers to hold jobs in six of the 13 ma­jor in­dus­tries ex­amined, in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and ad­min­is­trat­ive ser­vices.”

So, in conclusion, while the media try’s it’s best to put the administration in its very best light, the dismal economic news directly affects huge sectors of the working public who are losing ground consistently. Which means that, despite the slanted headlines, it’s very likely the voting public will demonstrate their employment frustrations at the polls next November.  

On the bright side, however, according to Sam Ro @businessinsider.com, writes: “Goldman Sachs rethinks its stock market outlook because of something that hasn't happened in at least 48 years.” Referring to the continuing drop in the price of oil.

Goldman Sachs' David Kostin said that their S&P 500 has been lowered by $3, because: "Energy is the leading driver of our reduced profit outlook."    

Mr.Kostin went on: "We expect Energy will post a $2 per share loss in 2015 EPS, the first time that [last-twelve month] Energy EPS has been negative since our data series began in 1967. The write-down in Energy company assets has exacerbated the earnings hit from the 35% fall in Brent crude oil prices in 2015 following a 48% plunge in the commodity price in 2014."

However, while the falling prices for oil may be distressing to Mr. Kostin, Goldman Sachs and even the S&P 500 average, the price reduction certainly provides good news for practically everybody else.

Thanks to lowers cost of fuel, consumers now have more to spend on other things. Be it housing, shopping, entertainment, or any other pleasure or necessities, increased available funds will now drive the rest of the economy. 

And, as often mentioned here, as far as national security’s concerned, Russia, Iran, Syria and even Venezuela are feeling the loss of billions of dollars in oil revenues, crimping their spending on aggression significantly. 

So, while things may be troublesome for Goldman Sachs, all the rest of us have gained considerably from oil’s dropping price and will keep doing so.  

Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife. 

Anita Kumar @mcclatchydc.com writes: "At least 1,340 emails that Hillary Clinton sent or received contained classified material, according to the State Department’s latest update from its ongoing review of more than 30,000 emails. 

"The State Department released a new batch of 3,007 pages of Clinton’s emails after 1:30 a.m. Friday in response to a court order. Of those, 66 contain classified information. 

"None of Clinton’s emails was marked as classified during her tenure, State Department officials say, but intelligence officials say some material was clearly classified at the time. Her aides also sent and received classified information."

That supposition seems to be confirmed @hotair.com via Drudge, by Ed Morrissey who writes: “Has the State Department released a smoking gun in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal? In a thread from June 2011, Hillary exchanges e-mails with Jake Sullivan, then her deputy chief of staff and now her campaign foreign-policy adviser, in which she impatiently waits for a set of talking points. When Sullivan tells her that the source is having trouble with the secure fax, Hillary then orders Sullivan to have the data stripped of its markings and sent through a non-secure channel.”

Regardless of whether or not Sullivan complied, this demolishes Hillary’s claim to be ignorant of marking issues, as well as strongly suggests that the other thousand-plus instances where this did occur likely came under her direction.

In keeping with Joe Biden’s telling television station WVIT in Connecticut yesterday that he plans to stay "deeply involved" in the campaign, reader rbj commented, "No longer inadvertent. This is intentional, with full knowledge of the law.

“Biden as the reluctant warrior is more and more probable now. Hillary is not liked by the federal bureaucracy."

Which also leads once again to the ongoing question: Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you guys reading this?   

That’s it for today folks.     

Adios