US Presidential Contenders

[Rusty Edge]

AP FACT CHECK: GOP claims on carpet bombs, Kurds and economy
Associated Press
Robert Burns and Josh Boak,  January 28, 2016

A look at some of the claims Thursday night and how they compare with the facts:

TED CRUZ: "We have seen now in six years of Obamacare that it has been a disaster. It is the biggest job-killer in this country. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, have been forced into part-time work, have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have seen their premiums skyrocket. "

THE FACTS: Lost jobs? Since the time Obama signed the health care law in March 2010, the nation's jobless rate has fallen from 9.9 percent to 5 percent. The economy has added more than 13 million jobs over that period.

Lost insurance? The share of Americans without coverage reached a historic low of 9 percent last year, according to the government's National Health Interview Survey. More than 16 million people gained coverage since 2013, just before the law's big coverage expansion got underway.

___

This one has been a burr under my saddle all day. I'm going to go with the old politician's trick/ state of the Union message ploy- anecdotal evidence. -

My wife and I are both high risk health insurance cases. Wasn't an issue when one of us was working. It didn't happen the first year, but the Great Recession strapped my wife's parent company for cash. Because the enterprises she oversaw were the most profitable and desirable, they were the only ones that could be quickly sold piecemeal in a down market. Eventually, they didn't have enough left to justify her job ( or so they thought, but that's a tangent )

Anyway, finding private health insurance for both of us was a rather feminine canine. Then, when Obama care provisions started kicking in, the high deductible policies like we had were outlawed and discontinued. But the exchanges, policies, and whatnot of Affordable care weren't in place. So we were without health insurance and pretty anxious and stressed. I'm a guy that when the tough choices had to be made earlier in my life, went without utilities rather than health and car insurance.

Eventually we got coverage, only to be dropped again because of slow paperwork processing due to stupidity in implementation.

Anyway- while for us Affordable Care is more affordable, it hasn't exactly been dependable care in the transition. Also, it's the only time in my adult life when I was uninsured.

So actually - When my wife  lost her job, and was  forced into part-time work, we lost our health insurance multiple times, I recently lost my doctor ( because of Affordable Care, but that's tangent, too.), we have seen our  premiums plummet.

I can relate to a lot of it, but I can also say that some of the trouble finding a job was related to the uncertainties of Cruze related government shut-downs. Cuts, at least, would have introduced certainty the economy, rather than paralysis. Now Cruze is claiming he'll repeal every word of Obama Care.

He didn't say anything about making sure there was something else in place first...


If I took off my shoe and hit him in the side of the head do you think it would knock any sense into him?

[Rusty Edge]

...The woman's got a lot of bad points, but I really don't find that overblown scandal to be one of the interesting ones...

No. The only interesting stuff is what we aren't allowed to see anyway.   She continues to approach this one like the lawyer and politician she's always been..


What are the odds of Hilary finding humility?

Better or worse than Cruze getting some sense knocked into him? 

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, they're both pretty much total loses.

[Dio]

...The woman's got a lot of bad points, but I really don't find that overblown scandal to be one of the interesting ones...

No. The only interesting stuff is what we aren't allowed to see anyway.   She continues to approach this one like the lawyer and politician she's always been..


What are the odds of Hilary finding humility?

Better or worse than Cruze getting some sense knocked into him?

I imagine the range varies between 0 and 0.0000001% within any given year of Hillary finding humility.

[Rusty Edge]

Amazing! Sanders and Clinton in virtual tie in Iowa with a 95% of the caucus results tabulated.

I watched Sanders' speech. What he lacks in rationality he makes up for in sincerity.

On the other side-

Cruze 28%
[Sleezebag] 24% ( I wonder if he's said his famous catch phrase to the advisor who told him to skip the last debate )
Rubio 23%

Carson is rumored to be temporarily suspending his campaign.

[vonbach]

Cruz isn't even eligible to run for president.

THE FACTS: Lost jobs? Since the time Obama signed the health care law in March 2010, the nation's jobless rate has fallen from 9.9 percent to 5 percent. The economy has added more than 13 million jobs over that period.

What are they kidding? The real unemployment numbers (counted in the old way) are about 22%.
Now they don't count people that stopped looking for work.

[Unorthodox]

What are they kidding? The real unemployment numbers (counted in the old way) are about 22%.
Now they don't count people that stopped looking for work.

The whole rotation group nonsense used for calculating is easy to manipulate however you want.  Don't know where you're coming up with 22% or "The old way".  The group disparity has been called out since 1975. 

[vonbach]

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

Alternate Unemployment Charts

The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.

The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
Unemployment Data Series   subcription required(Subscription required.)  View  Download Excel CSV File   Last Updated: January 8th, 2016

The ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate for December 2015 is 22.9%.

“The 6.7 percent is probably 21 or 22 percent in real numbers,” he said of the nation’s unemployment rate. (That number ticked down further, to 6.6 percent, in January.) “When you give up looking for a job, it’s like they consider you employed,” he continued. “It’s amazing.”

There you go the second is a speech from [Sleezebag]. I've heard numbers even higher. Especially recent college graduates thats closer to 40%. You cant just open the borders and let people flood in without consequences. Why do you think [Sleezebag] has so much support? Oh by the way Cruz is Canadian born and not eligible to even run the Democrats are talking about suing.

[Unorthodox]

To that I would question where they're coming up with their estimate, and why it's not tracking down the last 4 years when it's previously followed the same pattern as the official numbers.  Nothing has changed in how the other numbers are generated over the last 4 years, so it just smells like cooked numbers specifically to make the present administration look bad.  As you say, their bone of contention was removed in 1994, and since then their estimate has tracked along with the U3 and U6 number, until it was convenient for them to not.  So, yes, I understand their contention that the real unemployment is higher than the headline number, I do strongly question how they are coming up with their estimate (which they don't explain). 

As for a [Sleezebag] speech, you probably point to his source. 

[vonbach]

Officially, the unemployment rate in the U.S. is 5.6%, meaning 5.6% of the work force is temporarily out of a job and actively seeking another one. This low number reflects nearly full employment, as 3% to 4% of the work force is typically in the process of quitting/being laid off and finding another job.

Typically, periods of nearly full employment are economically good times, as household income is bolstered and employers have to pay a bit more to hire workers when the labor market is tight.

But these do not feel like good times for most households, despite the low unemployment rate. Earnings are stagnant for 90% of the work force, and employers are only paying a competitive premium for workers in very select fields (programmers adept at Python and mobile user interfaces, etc.)

This creates a cognitive dissonance between the low official unemployment rate and the real economy, which is behaving like an economy with much higher rates of unemployment, i.e. sluggish hiring, stagnant wages, difficulty in finding jobs, and very little pressure on employers to pay more for typical jobs.

Let's start by trying to calculate the work force--the number of people who could get a job if they wanted to. This isn't quite as straightforward as we might imagine, because the two primary agencies that compile these statistics use slightly different categories.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates the civilian noninstitutional population as everyone 16 and older who is not in active-duty military service or in prison. The BLS reckons this to be about 250 million people, out of a total population of about 317 million residents: Household Data (BLS)

The BLS subtracts 93 million people who are not in the labor force, leaving about 157 million people in the civilian work force--roughly half the nation's population.

Of these, 148.8 million have a job of some sort and 8.6 million are unemployed.

The Census Bureau calculates the civilian noninstitutional population as everyone who is not in active-duty military service or in prison. (You can download various data on the U.S. population on this Census Bureau website: Age and Sex Composition in the United States: 2012. I am using Table 1 data.)

The Census Bureau places the civilian noninstitutional population at 308.8 million in 2012. Since roughly 4 million people are born and 2.6 million die in the U.S. each year, we can adjust this upward by roughly 3.5 million to bring it up to date (mid-2015) to 312 million.

About 74 million people are 17 and younger, and 36 million are 68 and older. Given that the full-benefit retirement age for Social Security is pushing 67, I am using 67 as the cut-off for the work force rather than the traditional 65.

This is of course a squishy calculation, as many people retire at 62 and others work beyond the age of 70. But given the strong employment trends of the over-65 cohort, I think it fair and reasonable to include everyone between 18 and 67 in the work force.

Subtracting 110 young people and retirees leaves a civilian work force of around 200 million people. Let's then subtract those who can't work or choose not to work for conventional reasons. There are roughly 8 million people on permanent disability and several million more at any one time on temporary disability, so let's subtract 10 million disabled.

Next, let's subtract stay-at-home parents. Since there are 20 million children under the age of 5, let's reckon 20 million adults will on average choose to leave the work force to care for their children full-time.

Should this number be 40 million? What about home-schooling? Given the possibilities for part-time, home-based and free-lance work, I am reluctant to conclude everyone caring for or schooling their children cannot possibly earn some income. But let's consider adding another 10 million adults who may be caring for their families (seniors as well as children) at home full-time.

While it may seem as if every other hipster in town is a trust funder, i.e. a person who draws upon inherited wealth and doesn't need to work, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data reports less than 2 million people draw substantial incomes from trusts. Since even those with unearned income can still perform work, I include trust funders in the work force.

If we subtract 10 million disabled and 30 million stay-at-home parents, we have a work force of around 160 million--not far from the BLS number of 157 million. If we use a smaller number of full-time stay-at-home parents, then perhaps the work force is closer to 170 million.

The BLS calculates what it calls labor force participation rate--63% of the total civilian noninstitutional population is in the labor force.

The next issue is what we reckon qualifies as a job. In general, the BLS and the Census Bureau count anyone with earned income as employed. The BLS reckons 148.8 million people have jobs, but this includes 23 million people who earn less than $5,000 annually. The Social Security Administration (SSA) states that 155 million people reported taxable income, which includes not just earnings (wages and salaries) but distributions from retirement funds, IRAs, etc. that are taxable. Wage Statistics for 2013.

The question boils down to this: should we count someone who earns $1,000 a year as employed? How about someone who earns $5,000? At what point does an income enable a person to support himself/herself? Should we place those earning incomes far below a living income in the same category as those with full-time jobs/incomes?

This is where I part company from the government agencies' classification of any earned income in any amount as qualifying as a job. If I am a consultant earning less than $5,000 annually, clearly I cannot support myself on this income. If I earn $2,500 annually in part-time free-lancing, this is at best 10% of poverty-level income for a household in a low-cost region; in a high-cost region, it is perhaps 5% of poverty-level income.

The BLS attempts to define a broader definition of under-employment and unemployment in its categoryU-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force: this is 10.8% of the work force.

Depending on how we calculate the work force, and if we count everyone with any earnings as employed, we get an unemployment rate of somewhere between 5.6% and 12.5%. If we use the BLS's metric for including under-employment, this is in the range of 10% to 15%.

Common sense suggests that we calculate employment/unemployment based on earnings, not just any income in any amount. If we reckon that only those with earnings of $15,000 or more annually (roughly speaking, full-time work at minimum wage) are fully employed, then the numbers change dramatically.

The $15,000 annual earnings are also a rough benchmark of self-supporting households: two wage-earners making $15,000 each would have a household income of $30,000--enough to get by in much of the country.

About 50 million people earn less than $15,000 annually. This includes roughly 10 million self-employed and 40 million with part-time jobs or other sources of earned income. This suggests that only 100 million of the 160 million work force are fully employed in the sense of not just having a job but making enough to be self-supporting.

There are many caveats resulting from the way that government social welfare is not included in earnings: thus a household might have two part-time wage-earners making very modest sums monthly who are getting by because they qualify for Section 8 housing, SNAP food stamps, Medicaid healthcare, school lunch programs, and so on. These programs enable the working poor to support a household despite low earnings.

Should we include those depending on social welfare programs as fully employed?

By my reckoning, roughly 60% of the civilian work force is fully employed and 40% are marginally employed (i.e. earning less than $15,000 annually) or unemployed. Since full-time workers even at minimum wage earn close to $15,000 annually, I think it is fair to use that as the cut-off for fully employed. The BLS counts 121 million people asusually work full-time, but given only 100 million workers earn $15,000 or more, this doesn't add up unless we include self-employed people earning very little who are counted as full-time workers.



Based on income, I set the fully employed rate at 60%, and the marginally employed/unemployed rate at 40%. If we accept the BLS's 121 million full-time jobs (which once again, this doesn't make sense given even minimum wage full-time jobs earn $14,500, and 50 million people report earnings of less than $15,000), we still get a marginally employed/unemployed rate of 25%: work force of 160 million, 121 million fully employed.

These numbers align much better with the real economy than the official unemployment rate of 5.6%. It's nonsense to count everyone earning a few hundred or few thousand dollars annually as being employed in the same category as full-time workers or those earning $15,000 or more annually.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-16/whats-real-unemployment-rate-us

Basically they aren't counting almost a hundred million people.

[Unorthodox]

If we subtract 10 million disabled and 30 million stay-at-home parents, we have a work force of around 160 million--not far from the BLS number of 157 million. If we use a smaller number of full-time stay-at-home parents, then perhaps the work force is closer to 170 million.

Wait, we got close to the official number with our estimate method (and the disparity is mostly explained by the trust funders purposely included because they COULD work even if they don't need to), so let's decide to arbitrarily up that to show greater disparity. 

This is where I part company from the government agencies' classification of any earned income in any amount as qualifying as a job. If I am a consultant earning less than $5,000 annually, clearly I cannot support myself on this income. If I earn $2,500 annually in part-time free-lancing, this is at best 10% of poverty-level income for a household in a low-cost region; in a high-cost region, it is perhaps 5% of poverty-level income.

And this is where it also starts to fall apart a bit.  By his argument, technically my brother's wife is unemployed.  She works for my brother's business, but does not draw a wage.  The BLS would count her as employed in a "family non-earning" category, the above would just calculate it as unemployed, period.  This would apply to a number of family owned businesses and farms.  The individual may not draw income, but the household does.  What that number is/should be, I don't know. 

Not saying either is perfect, just that any estimate has flaws. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Rand Paul ran for president and realized he’s a senator
Yahoo! Politics
Jon Ward Senior Political Correspondent  February 03, 2016



Rand Paul, the U.S. senator from Kentucky who was once a legitimate contender for the Republican presidential nomination, dropped out of the race Wednesday, two days after a lackluster showing in the Iowa caucuses.

“It’s been an incredible honor to run a principled campaign for the White House, Paul said in a statement announcing the end of his bid. “Today I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of Liberty.”

Paul, a 53-year-old ophthalmologist who had never run for office before his election to the Senate in 2010, risked losing his Senate seat if he tarried too long in the presidential race. He will now turn his attention to winning reelection in Kentucky, where the Democratic mayor of Lexington announced last week he will run against Paul.

Paul, the son of libertarian former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran quixotic but ultimately impactful campaigns for president in 2008 and 2012, rose to national prominence in the spring of 2013 after he spoke on the Senate floor for almost 13 hours to protest President Obama’s use of drones to target American citizens overseas.



Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., surrounded by his family at a caucus night rally at the Scottish Rite Consistory in Des Moines, Iowa, Monday, Feb. 1, 2016. (Photo: Nati Harnik/AP)


Paul showed considerable creativity in seizing on issues related to civil liberties and foreign policy that cut across partisan lines, raising the prospect that he could build on his father’s constituency in Iowa and elsewhere, bringing in more younger voters as well as mainstream Republicans who saw him as more electable than his father.

Paul also made a point of visiting historically black universities and talked often about the need for the Republican Party to welcome minorities and to expand their party.

But Paul was beset by a number of troubles. His relationship with the Ron Paul libertarian crowd was hurt by his endorsement of Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 and further deteriorated as Rand tacked to the center on foreign policy.

At the same time, Paul’s noninterventionist foreign policy, which had seemed current in 2013, grew out of step with the times as the rise of the so-called Islamic State and a spate of terrorist attacks around the world and in the U.S. raised the nation’s anxiety level about national security and pushed civil liberties concerns off the front burner.

And Paul was also not well cut out for the rigors of a presidential campaign. He was a lackadaisical campaigner who — from the early days — failed to impress donors and Republican Party influencers. His decision to wear blue jeans to a Koch brothers event early this year was innocuous in and of itself, but it came to be seen as a sign of something larger, an arrogance and indifference on Paul’s part that indicated a lack of hunger for the presidency and offended the party’s elites.

Paul, in fact, hated to ask for money. His campaign aides and advisers worked on him to improve, and he did. He also improved in the last few debates.

But over the course of the past year, it became ever more clear that if Paul wanted a place of influence in national politics, he was a better fit for the Senate, where there is more space for the debating and hashing out of ideas, and where he can over the long haul craft legislation to address issues of his concern.

Kentucky Republicans are confident that as long as Paul is fully focused on his reelection, he can hold his seat. The senior senator from Kentucky, after all, is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and there’s no doubt he was in constant communication with Paul about the need to retain the GOP majority in the Senate.

“I look forward to earning the privilege to represent the people of Kentucky for another term,” Paul said.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/rand-paul-ran-for-president-and-realized-hes-a-145457152.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Bernie and Hillary end first solo debate with love fest
Yahoo! Politics
Olivier Knox Chief Washington Correspondent  February 04, 2016


Democratic presidential rivals Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton knocked each other around Thursday in their first one-on-one debate of the 2016 season, but ultimately closed ranks behind the notion of keeping the White House in their party’s hands.

Sanders spent much of the evening arguing that he was the true standard-bearer for the Democratic Party, hammering the former secretary of state over her ties to Wall Street and vote in favor of the war in Iraq. Clinton focused her energies largely on defending her progressive bona fides, while arguing that the Vermont independent was putting ideological purity on a pedestal above pragmatic proposals that could actually become reality.

But by the end of their MSNBC encounter, the two candidates closed ranks.

It started when moderator Chuck Todd asserted that Clinton did not think Sanders could be president. She looked genuinely surprised, and said, “I never said that,” then brushed aside his follow-up about whether she might pick Sanders as a running mate if she wins the party’s nomination.

“Well, I’m certainly going to unite the party, but I’m not getting ahead of myself. I think that would be a little bit presumptuous,” Clinton said. “If I’m so fortunate as to be the nominee, the first person I will call to talk to about where we go and how we get it done will be Sen. Sanders.”

Todd tried the question on Sanders.

“I agree with what the secretary said. We shouldn’t be getting ahead of ourselves,” the Vermont senator replied. ”And as I have said many times, you know, sometimes in these campaigns, things get a little bit out of hand. I happen to respect the secretary very much, I hope it’s mutual. And on our worst days, I think it is fair to say we are 100 times better than any Republican candidate.”

Clinton agreed, declaring “That’s true, that’s true.”

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/bernie-and-hillary-end-first-solo-debate-with-love-045328455.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Chris Christie’s attacks rattle Marco Rubio
Yahoo! Politics
Jon Ward Senior Political Correspondent  February 06, 2016


MANCHESTER, N.H. — Chris Christie did not disappoint.

The New Jersey governor had made it quite clear that when he stepped on the debate stage Saturday night here, three days before the New Hampshire primary, he would be looking to draw a very sharp contrast between himself and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

From the jump, Christie went after Rubio like an attack dog, tearing into the 44-year-old first-term senator and mocking his youth and inexperience. And Rubio, who increasingly has gathered momentum after a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses last week, was put on the defensive in a way that he has not been so far in this campaign.

Christie, who is in his second term as governor, needs very badly to do well in the voting on Tuesday, but is struggling to gain traction in the polls. He is bunched together with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rubio behind businessman Donald [Sleezebag], and Rubio has been rising in the polls.

Christie began his critique of Rubio by saying that senators wake up thinking about what speech they will give that day or what kind of legislation they will sponsor. A governor, Christie said, wakes up thinking about “What kind of problem do I need to solve?”

Turning to Rubio, Christie addressed him directly. “You have not been involved in a consequential decision where you have had to be held accountable. You just simply haven’t,” Christie said.

Christie then aggressively made the argument that a vote for Rubio is an unwise gamble on an untested, inexperienced politician, and compared him to President Obama, who was also a first-term senator in 2008 when he was elected president.

“What we need to do is not to have the same mistake we made eight years ago,” Christie said. “I like Marco Rubio, and he’s smart person and a good guy. But he simply does not have the experience to be president of the United States.”

Rubio tried to counter by going after Christie’s fiscal record in New Jersey.

“I think the experience is not just what you did, but how it worked out. Under Chris Christie’s governorship of New Jersey, they have been downgraded nine times in their credit rating,” Rubio said.

Then Rubio tried to turn his attention and his argument away from his confrontation with Christie, and criticized Obama, talking in generalizations about how Obama is trying to change the country to make it more “like the rest of the world.”

It was an awkward transition, and one that Christie swiftly pointed out.

“You see, everybody, I want the people at home to think about this. That is what Washington, D.C., does: the drive-by shot at the beginning, with incorrect and incomplete information, and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him,” Christie said, as the debate audience began to roar.

“See, Marco, the thing is this: When you’re president of the United States, when you are a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech, where you talk about how great America is at the end of it, doesn’t solve one problem, for one person,” Christie said.

Rubio was on his heels, and scrambled to respond, saying that Christie had not wanted to return to New Jersey to deal with a blizzard earlier this month. “They had to shame you into going back,” Rubio said. It came off as a weak retort that indicated he was not prepared for the degree to which Christie was in his face.

But the clearest indication that Rubio was rattled was that he once again repeated his canned line about Obama. “This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he is doing is just not true,” Rubio said. It was now a non sequitur, and Christie interjected.

“There it is, there it is,” Christie said.

Rubio and Christie went back and forth for a few more moments, with Christie getting in one more shot.

“You’ve never been responsible for anything in your entire life,” he said to Rubio. And as Rubio continued to say that Christie had not wanted to return to New Jersey at the time of the storm, Christie stopped him.

“Wait a second, is that one of the skills you get as a United States senator: ESP, also?”

Christie continued throughout the debate to use any opportunity to go after Rubio. Later, he brought up a comment Rubio had made about the 2013 immigration reform bill more than 10 minutes earlier.

“He acted as if he was somehow disembodied from the bill,” Christie said of Rubio. “It was his idea. … When you’re governor, you have to take responsibility for these things.”

Rubio, who more than any other presidential candidate this cycle has jumped in and inserted himself to gain time in debates any time his name has been mentioned, stayed silent as Christie launched this critique. He clearly did not want any part of Christie.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/chris-christies-attacks-rattle-marco-rubio-023817040.html

[Buster's Uncle]

I see Sanders took New Hampshire.

-I'm pretty sure Mylochka has it right that Sanders only ran in the first place hoping for nothing more than a Perot Effect - to get his issues out there in the conversation, treated with respect.  He can't possibly have thought to do as well as he has, not being an obvious megalomaniac, and being Bernie Sanders.

I'd say he's already won big, looking at it like that.