MORNING MESSAGE: Sinking American Electorate - Unmarried Women On The Edge
Page Gardner of Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund: "Composed of unmarried women, African Americans, Latinos, other people of color, and youth ages 18-29, the Rising American Electorate, or RAE, continues to feel the pinch of the underperforming American economy ... this past March, a survey conducted by the Democracy Corps and the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund confirmed our fears ... unmarried women and significant portions of the RAE had experienced economic hard times within the past year ... Our research shows that their concerns are not being addressed by current economic policies. If left unaddressed, this disconnect could spell disaster for Democrats in 2014 and beyond."
Austerity Math Literally Doesn't Add Up
Landmark austerity economic paper littered with basic errors. The Atlantic: "[Carmen] Reinhart and [Ken] Rogoff looked at times when advanced countries have had debt of at least 90 percent of GDP going back to 1946, and found that growth tends to be much lower during these periods ... [But] a new paper by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, identifies two big issues ...First, and most amusingly, Reinhart and Rogoff seem to have made an Excel formula error ... [Second,] they didn't calculate the average for New Zealand. They just used one year instead. This skewed the result more than you might think, since the average should have been 2.6 percent, and Reinhart and Rogoff used one year that had -7.9 percent growth."
Krugman slams Reinhart-Rogoff response: "First, they argue that another measure — median growth — isn’t that different from the Herndon et al results. But that is, first of all, an apples-and-oranges comparison — the fact is that when you compare the results head to head, R-R looks very off ... Second, they say that they like to emphasize the median results, which are much milder than the mean results; but what everyone using their work likes to cite is the strong result, and if R-R have made a major effort to disabuse people of the notion that debt has huge negative effects on growth, I haven’t noticed it."
Corporate trend of fewer workers hurting bottom lines, finds W. Post's Harold Meyerson: "[J.C.] Penney employed at least 150,000 people for almost a decade, but within a year of [Ron] Johnson’s arrival it had cut its labor force to 116,000 ... One year into his tenure, however, revenue had plunged to $13 billion; consumer dissatisfaction, not to mention worker dissatisfaction, was high ... The number of [Wal-Mart] employees per store has been cut from 343 to 301. Fewer workers have meant fewer products on Wal-Mart’s shelves. Businessweek reports that 'pallets of merchandise are piling up in its stockrooms as shelves go unfilled' and overworked employees can’t find the time to restock the products ..."
Delicate Immigration Reform Faces Challenges
President backs Senate immigration deal, despite disagreeing with border security "triggers." CNN: "They include forming an 'e-verify' system for employers to check the legal status of workers; tracking immigrants entering and leaving the country, and bolstering border security, which Rubio, one of the 'Gang of Eight,' specified would 'include fencing.' The trigger system is the main difference between the Senate proposal and that of the president. 'The president, for instance, didn't believe in a trigger. We did. But we created a trigger that's achievable and specific, so it can't be used as an excuse not to provide a path to citizenship,' Schumer said Tuesday."
"Something for everyone to hate" says supporter GOP Sen. Jeff Flake. McClatchy: "For Latino advocates and civil liberties activists, that means swallowing the idea of a southern border armed with airborne drones and a gun-toting military. It means accepting that family reunification might no longer be the heart of the nation’s immigration system. For conservatives who hold dear the rule of law, that means allowing 11 million people who either came here illegally or who illegally overstayed their visas a chance to remain in the country and eventually become U.S. citizens."
House make break up Senate bill into pieces. HuffPost: "...Boehner is likely to slice immigration reform into three broad parts: securing the border, creating an E-verify system to ensure that U.S. businesses are complying with the law, and crafting some kind of path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Such a move would create a crowded legislative calendar, since work is ongoing on a gun control bill and House Republicans want to try to tackle tax reform this year as well."
Opponents plot strategy of delay. W. Post: "[Opponents] are coalescing around a strategy to kill the bill by delaying the legislative process as long as possible, providing time to offer “poison pill” amendments aimed at breaking apart the fragile bipartisan group that developed the plan ... The tactics, used successfully by opponents of an immigration bill during a 2007 debate in the Senate, are part of an effort to exploit public fissures over core components..."
Breakfast Sides
China regains lead in renewable energy. McClatchy: "China overtook the United States last year as the global leader in clean energy investment while American spending on renewables dropped nearly 40 percent, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the Pew Charitable Trusts ... The United States led in global clean energy investment until 2009. America then traded the top spot with China before reclaiming it during the surge in investment that came along with the stimulus legislation and a record boom in U.S. wind energy construction. American investment in wind skyrocketed as developers scrambled to finance projects before a tax break was to expire at the end of last year. Congress is keeping the subsidy alive for another year, but scant new U.S. wind energy production is being planned at this point..."
"Moment of Truth" on gun control legislation today. TPM: "Late Tuesday, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) said they were hopeful but were less than certain they had the votes. Earlier in the afternoon Democrats said they were weighing new carve-outs in an effort to win over skeptical senators. But in a blow to the bill’s prospects, Sens. Dean Heller (R-NV) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), two lawmakers Democrats were hoping to win over, said afterward they won’t support it."
