Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
Morning Message: Jobs Report: Unemployed Paying The Price of Obstruction
OurFuture.Org's Isaiah J. Poole: "On the morning after Senate Republicans blocked consideration of an infrastructure jobs bill, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that the economy created only 80,000 net jobs during the month of September. The unemployment rate is now 9 percent. The continued anemic performance of the job market represents the continued price of right-wing obstruction of the measures necessary to produce jobs... On the morning after Senate Republicans blocked consideration of an infrastructure jobs bill, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that the economy created only 80,000 net jobs during the month of September. The unemployment rate is now 9 percent. The continued anemic performance of the job market represents the continued price of right-wing obstruction of the measures necessary to produce jobs."
Jobs Update
U.S. unemployment rates drops to 9% [BBC]: "The U.S. unemployment rate, which has remained stubbornly high, dropped to 9% in October from 9.1% the month before. The US added 80,000 new jobs in October, the Department of Labor said, less than had been forecast. But the world's largest economy added 158,000 jobs in September, more than the original estimate of 103,000... Economists had predicted the US would add 95,000 jobs last month."
ILO Warns Of More Social Unrest As "world On Verge Of New Jobs Recession" [RTT News]: "The global economy is on the verge of a new and deeper jobs recession that may ignite social unrest, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said in a grim analysis issued ahead of the G20 leaders' summit... Noting that the current labor market is already within the confines of the usual six-month lag between an economic slowdown and its impact on employment, the report indicates that 80 million jobs need to be created over the next two years to return to pre-crisis employment rates. However, the recent slowdown in growth suggests that the world economy is likely to create only half of the jobs needed. The report also features a new "social unrest" index that shows levels of discontent over the lack of jobs and anger over perceptions that the burden of the crisis is not being shared fairly. It notes that in over 45 of the 118 countries examined, the risk of social unrest is rising. This is especially the case in advanced economies..."
More GOP Obstruction on Jobs
Republicans block $60 billion infrastructure bill [Financial Times]: "Republicans in the Senate blocked a $60 billion portion of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, which would have directed federal funds towards spending on US infrastructure projects, paying for it with a surtax on millionaires. In the latest defeat for the White House, which has tried in vain to secure bipartisan support for its jobs agenda, a critical procedural vote in the upper chamber only garnered 51 votes out of 100, with 60 required to advance the legislation."
President Obama blasted the GOP for voting against part of his jobs bill once again: "While discussing the global economy at the G-20 in France, President Obama found time to blast Senate Republicans for again voting against parts of his jobs bill. 'At a time when more than a million construction workers are looking for a job, they voted 'no' to putting them back to work doing the work America needs done -- rebuilding our roads, bridges, airports and transit systems,' Obama said in a statement issued from Cannes, France. 'That makes no sense,' the president said."
The NY Times writes that the Senate is putting millionaires before jobs: "There’s nothing partisan about a road or a bridge or an airport; Democrats and Republicans have voted to spend billions on them for decades and long supported rebuilding plans in their own states. On Thursday, though, when President Obama’s plan to spend $60 billion on infrastructure repairs came up for a vote in the Senate, not a single Republican agreed to break the party’s filibuster. That’s because the bill would pay for itself with a 0.7 percent surtax on people making more than $1 million. That would affect about 345,000 taxpayers, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, adding an average of $13,457 to their annual tax bills. Protecting that elite group — and hewing to their rigid antitax vows — was more important to Senate Republicans than the thousands of construction jobs the bill would have helped create, or the millions of people who would have used the rebuilt roads, bridges and airports."
Happy Bank Transfer Day
Bank Transfer Day is November 5th. Time to move your money! [The Daily Beast]: "Kristen Christian was feeling more than a little fed up with the county’s big banks when a month ago today she logged on to Facebook to share an idea with friends: withdraw your money from the likes of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, and instead open an account with a credit union. She even chose a deadline for taking action: this Saturday, November 5. ...Clearly, Christian’s message resonated with a group wider than her 500 or so Facebook friends. Within three days of her creating a “Bank Transfer Day” event page, more than 8,000 people had indicated they would “attend.” Another 20,000-plus people would join the groundswell over the coming week. Now, one month later, 76,000 people have joined her cause and 39,000 have “liked” the “Bank Transfer Day” ‘cause’ page she created soon after she first floated her idea for a boycott of the country’s biggest banks."
DailyKos' Marvin Borg handed out flyers for Bank Transfer Day in front of Citibank. And the police let him: "Like most bullies, the banks are cowards. They talk a big game, but if confronted with their crimes, they run for cover and go whining to 'mommy.' Today, I walked up and down a sidewalk, in front of a branch of Chase and a branch of BofA. I handed out about 250 fliers during lunch hour. They panicked and called their private security people, then more private security and finally the cops. That's when they found out that they didn't have a leg to stand on."
Supercommittee Kryptonite
Supercommittee deal prospects dim [Politico]: "Prospects for a bipartisan deficit deal grew markedly worse on Thursday as Republican and Democratic negotiators huddled in their respective corners amid an impasse over taxes. ...The fact that both sides had to send different proposals to the CBO — at a time when the lawmakers hoped they could get behind one plan — could show that the two sides remain far apart at a crucial stage of the negotiations. Republicans won’t give on increasing tax-based revenue and are insisting on savings from health-based entitlement programs. And Democrats say there can’t be a deal on entitlement cuts without more revenues."
Robert Reich breaks down the two questions pre-occupying Washington: "The biggest question in America these days is how to revive the economy. The biggest question among activists now occupying Wall Street and dozens of other cities is how to strike back against the nation’s almost unprecedented concentration of income, wealth, and political power in the top 1 percent. Until we reverse the trend toward inequality, the economy can’t be revived. But the biggest question in our nation’s capital right now has nothing to do with any of this. It’s whether Congress’s so-called “Supercommittee” – six Democrats and six Republicans charged with coming up with $1.2 trillion in budget savings — will reach agreement in time for the Congressional Budget Office to score its proposal, which must then be approved by Congress before Christmas recess in order to avoid an automatic $1.5 trillion in budget savings requiring major across-the-board cuts starting in 2013. Have your eyes already glazed over?"
Boehner Signals Revenue to Be Weighed in Congressional Debt Plan [Businessweek]: "Republicans are willing to consider raising revenue as part of a debt-cutting plan under discussion by a congressional panel if Democrats agree to “real reform” of entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid, said House Speaker John Boehner. 'There’s room for revenue but there clearly is a limit to the revenues that may be available' to help reach the congressionally mandated target of cutting government deficits by at least $1.2 trillion, Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters yesterday in Washington."
From Cain to Can't?
Herman Cain faces fourth allegation of sexual harassment from his past [Politico]: "Herman Cain flatly denies the most serious allegation facing him – that he made an unwanted sexual advance toward a female employee at a work event – but POLITICO has learned new details making clear there were urgent discussions of the woman’s accusations at top levels of the National Restaurant Association within hours of when the incident was alleged to have occurred. The new details—which come from multiple sources independently familiar with the incident at a hotel during a restaurant association event in the late 1990s—put the woman’s account even more sharply at odds with Cain’s emphatic insistence in news media interviews this week that nothing inappropriate happened between the two."
GOP voters shrug off Cain allegations [USA Today]: "Herman Cain and Mitt Romney remain locked in a dead heat for the GOP presidential nomination in a new poll, which shows 55% of Republicans don't believe the allegations of sexual harassment against Cain are a 'serious matter.' Seven in 10 Republicans in the ABC News/Washington Post survey say the allegations of misconduct stemming from Cain's tenure as head of the National Restaurant Association do not matter when it comes to picking a presidential candidate. But the poll, taken from Oct. 31-Nov. 3, shows some challenges for Cain. Among the 39% who say the allegations are serious, half of them say it makes them less likely to support the businessman for president."
NYT's Timothy Egan writes that the real scandal about Herman Cain is what candidate Cain doesn't know: "Lost in the wave of contradictory statements about his personal behavior was something Cain said a few days ago about the Asian powerhouse. China, said Cain with his clueless urgency, is 'trying to develop nuclear capability.' Anyone who is gobsmacked by this category five level of ignorance concerning a country that has had nuclear weapons for more than 45 years has not been paying attention. Cain makes Sarah Palin, with her eagle-eyed view of Russia from Alaska, sound like a Council of Foreign Relations scholar on a gasbag high. The clowns have finally taken over the circus, and I mean this with all due respect to those who labor with painted faces and oversized shoes. The party that got itself into a fever over Barack Obama’s imaginary Kenyan birth, and briefly elevated Donald Trump, the main purveyor of that invention, to its front ranks, is now overwhelmed by its own nonsense."
Mitt's Moment?
Mitt Romney offers specifics about cutting spending by $500 billion: "Romney’s three approaches – which, he said, combined will achieve his goal in cutting spending by half a trillion dollars by 2016 – include eliminating and cutting programs, sending some programs back to the state level and, finally, improving the productivity of the federal government. 'There are some programs I just don’t like and will be easy to eliminate,' quipped Romney. 'Like Obamacare.' 'That saves about $90 billion, Obamacare alone, by 2016,' he said. ...'I like Amtrak, but $1.6 billion borrowed from China isn’t a good idea [so] I’ll cut it out,' said Romney."
Mitt Romney is moving to embrace Paul Ryan's Medicare plan [Huffington Post]: "Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney proposed overhauling Medicare to allow beneficiaries to enroll in private health care plans on Thursday, a step in the direction of Rep. Paul Ryan's controversial plan for the entitlement program. "Tomorrow's Medicare should give beneficiaries a generous defined contribution and allow them to choose between private plans and traditional Medicare. And lower-income future retirees should receive the most assistance. I believe that competition will improve Medicare and the coverage that seniors receive," Romney wrote in a USA Today op-ed ... It was the only mention of Medicare in a longer op-ed by Romney... But it is new ground for Romney, who as late as last Friday gave no indication that he was considering such a move, when asked by a voter in New Hampshire."
Eugene Robinson, at WaPo writes that the GOP is slowly coming to the realization that Mitt Romney is their guy: "The Republican Party’s inevitable decision to nominate Mitt Romney for president is starting to look evitable after all. That’s certainly not a consensus view among the Washington cognoscenti, who tend to see the yet-to-come primaries and caucuses as mere formalities. Romney, they say, is the GOP’s obvious choice — a poised and experienced candidate with presidential bearing, world-class hair and the ability to speak in complete sentences, even about the economy. Sooner or later, the party will come to its senses and see that he has the best chance of beating President Obama."
