80,000 new jobs in June, unemployment holds steady

The number of new jobs is still well above the Bush average, but still not enough to put a dent in unemployment. Imagine what would be possible if the GOP was more focused on helping to create jobs rather than obstructing?

The U.S. economy created just 80,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent, reflecting continued slow growth in the economy with the presidential election just four months away.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said private payrolls increased 84,000, while the government lost 4,000 jobs. Economists expected job growth of about 100,000 and the unemployment rate to be unchanged, though many had increased their forecasts based on some recent indicators.

With yet another month of weak employment growth, the second quarter marks the weakest three-month period in two years.

On the positive side, the May numbers were increased to 77,000 new jobs. Read the rest of this post...

GOP Congressman when asked if he will support minimum wage increase: "Get a job"

Asking for a bottom of the barrel living wage is asking for too much for GOP Rep. Bill Young. He can't even understand the conversation when his constituent explains that yes, he does have a job. The Congressman who loves shoveling over pork to the businesses that hire his family as well as the defense contractors that donate heavily to his business may not appreciate how little $10 per hour is in 2012. He's all for secrecy in Washington and consistently against the transparency that Americans want in the modern era.

On the other hand, Rep. Young doesn't understand the working world since he's been a career politician, where government healthcare and many other perks still survive. Those juicy jobs perks haven't existed in decades for everyone else, but when you spend most of your life in Washington, DC suckling on the teat of taxpayer money, it's not easy to understand that the world has passed by and is no longer the 1950s. Read the rest of this post...

Video: What fireworks look like to God

Or Martians.

Or birds.

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Is the US government reading your email without a warrant?

The ACLU is trying to find out and the deadline for providing a response is quickly approaching. During the Bush years, many suspected that it was a Republican obsession with hating privacy but sadly it's a political class and government problem and likely a lot more widespread than any of us would like.

ACLU lawyer Catherine Crump, who ran the cellphone location data investigation, is at it again. This time, she has filed similar Freedom of Information Act requests with several federal agencies, asking about their policies and legal processes for reading Internet users' emails.

"It's high time we know what's going on," Crump told msnbc.com. "It's been clear since the 1870s that the government needs a warrant to read postal mail. There's no good reason email should be treated differently."

There are hints that it is being treated differently, however. In a landmark 2010 case, United States v. Warshak, government investigators acknowledged that they read 27,000 emails without obtaining a search warrant, violating both the suspect's privacy and the privacy of everyone who communicated with the suspect, according to Crump.

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TSA to have"random" beverage checks before boarding

Just when you think the TSA could not be any more ridiculous, they turn it up to eleven.

According to the TSA's website, the beverage checks are random, hygenic and happen at airports across the country, including Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field.

The test involves a test strip and dropper containing a non-toxic solution. TSA agents do not place the test strips in your drink. Instead, agents have the passenger remove the cap or lid, and agents then hold the strip over the opening.

The test strip is then removed away from the drink and the solution is dropped on the strip.

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Does Mitt Romney agree with top supporter Nugent that America might be better off enslaving blacks?

If Mitt's willing to take a break from jet-skiing, it might be nice to know if Romney is still "excited", and if Mitt's son Tagg is still bragging on Twitter, about NRA board member Ted Nugent's public endorsement after this latest whopper in which Nugent appears to suggest that it might have been worth keeping slavery. Read the rest of this post...

NRA board member Nugent: America might be better had South won the Civil War

I guess we now know the NRA's position on slavery.

NRA Board Member Ted Nugent: "Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I'm beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War. Our Founding Fathers' concept of limited government is dead."

That's a bit like saying that it would have been best had Hitler won WWII because of his keen sense of limited government, and then trying to deny that you in any way just condoned the Holocaust. Uh, yeah you did. And worse, you clearly knew you did.

Oh, and Mussolini did get the trains to run on time.

I'm damn curious about how the Democrats who voted to hold Holder in contempt, and who are funded by the NRA - i.e., who basically did the NRA's bidding in voting against Holder - feel about slavery? Heck, how about all members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, who take money from the NRA. Do those Members agree that the US would be a better place if blacks remained slaves? Because that is what the NRA board member just said - he said that America would be better off if the South won the civil war, which means blacks would still be slaves. He clearly knows that that would be the result of the South winning the war. So a prominent NRA board member thinks slavery would have been a worthwhile price to pay.

It's interesting that when Trent Lott said something similar - something somewhat less offensive than what Nugent said - he lost his leadership post in the Republican party. Yet when an NRA board member comes out and suggests that slavery would have been an okay price to pay, the NRA does nothing to address the matter.

Those Democrats who take NRA money should be ashamed of themselves. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Guy responds to video of himself from 20 years ago asking questions

This one is very cool.  A 12  year old in 1992 filmed a video asking his future self a serious of questions.  Today, the 32  year old answers the 12 year old's questions, in side by side videos.  Awfully cool.

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What is Mitt Romney hiding?

From Business Insider:

These are important questions. We know that Governor Romney has had a Swiss bank account, as well as money in other tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Bermuda, and Ireland. Romney's answer to any question about his taxes has basically been, "Trust me." But the guy's running for President, for Pete's sake. He owes us more than that. 

The bottom line is that there is a lot of unsettling information in what investigators have so far been able to piece together about Romney's finances. The easiest way for Governor Romney to put to rest what his campaign described to Shaxson as "unfounded allegations and insinuations" would be to release his tax returns. Yet he has not done so and shows no sign of changing his mind. Josh Marshall calls the questions "kryptonite" and thinks Romney will come under a lot of pressure to release more tax returns. Let's hope so. The guy's running for President, for Pete's sake.

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Property rights are not inherent, but granted by the people as a whole

I've had property rights on the brain for a while, far longer than my recent Fourth of July post.

Bottom line — only the owner-class, led by the aristocracy (Our Betters), considers property rights god-given. The rest is a sell-job, which most of us have bought.

Here's Benjamin Franklin on property rights. I'll let him speak, then I'll say in modern terms what he means (my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):

Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris, 25 Dec. 1783:

All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it.

All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition.

Think about hunter-gatherer man versus settled-farmer man. For Franklin, the hunter-gatherer notion of property was exemplified by the American Indians (the "Savage"), but he's really just referring to man as he lived for almost two million years:

Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence strategy employed by human societies beginning some 1.8 million years ago, by Homo erectus, and from its appearance some 0.2 million years ago by Homo sapiens.

It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago, and after this was replaced only gradually with the spread of the Neolithic Revolution.

What is personal property for the hunter-gatherer (Franklin's "Savage")? It's what he carries and wears. The rest is common to the community he lives in and with.

And the land? The land, by its nature, is entirely unowned, or better, "owned" by all in common.

Now look at the last bolded sentence in the Franklin quote. The ownership of land is a convention, agreed to by the public, which can be removed by the public at any time for any reason.

To think otherwise gets you into Divine Right of Kings territory — and there is no Divine Right of Property Owners for Franklin. Nor for me. Nor should there be for you.

If you believe in the inherent-ness of property ownership, you believe that once property is acquired (often by conquest and theft) it can never be redistributed.

You believe, in other words, in the Divine Right of the Aristocracy (Our Betters) to run and rule our world. Franklin holds otherwise; me, the same.

Here's another way to think about it. Every property "right" on earth, if you trace it back far enough, rests on a theft. How can any property "right" be more legitimate than any other? It can't.

Want more? Here's Thomas Paine (h/t David Atkins at Digby's place):

From Agrarian Justice:

Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund prod[uced] in this plan is to issue.

The property owners owe rent to those who do not own property for the privilege of cultivating the land, and taking away the natural ownership that all people have...

To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling [a ton ov money in those days], as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property:

And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.

Let me translate: The true owners of land are the mass of the people generally. (Same as Franklin's idea, above.) Individual "owners" of land are actually renters from the public generally, and thus owe rent to the public for the right to squat on it and use it as their own.

Paine proposes that this rent be an annual payment into a national fund, which will then be distributed annually to every "non-owner" (each non-squatting landlord) of the land.

Not a bad plan. Note the common theme — "owners" of anything but the clothes on their back are not owners at all, but squatters, who hold "their" land by agreement of society as a whole.

That "ownership" — not ownership at all — can all be taken away. And frequently is.

When things become too one-sided, of course, it will all be taken away, in one way or another. Most of us prefer the peaceful way.

This is not a threat — I personally do not want to be around if the non-peaceful way of debt forgiveness and wealth redistribution occurs. That way is ugly, bloody, intensely brutal, profoundly inhumane; and it generally takes at least three generations for things to settle out. That's a lot of lost lifetimes.

France wasn't a stable republic for 80 years following the original revolution. Russia isn't one yet.

If America is truly exceptional, blessed by god, here's his or her chance to prove it. Give us, madame or sir, our needed revolution ... without the blood.

Thanks in advance,

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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CA is 6th state to call for constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United

Sadly, I fear it's going to take a lot more damage to our electoral process - like an election obviously stolen by one or two big businesses/businessmen - for the American people to wake up and fully comprehend the danger of money in politics.

From HuffPo:

One of the largest states in the nation took an official stand Thursday against the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which ruled that government restriction of corporation or union spending on political campaigns violated the First Amendment right to free speech.

California joins Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maryland and New Mexico in calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling.

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IMF slashes global growth outlook, again

There's a lot of bad news brewing and it's not just in Europe. Even the BRICs are showing signs of trouble these days. The big banks in Brazil have just been downgraded, China is slowing down and Russia has the issue of being too reliant on a changing oil economy. Those looking for good news are likely to be disappointed.

As the bad news continues to come in, the global banks are likely to have an even more difficult time. (Santander and other Spanish banks are also very present in Latin America.) Since we can see that the road ahead has issues, we should assume that the US Treasury has drawn up contingency plans for another round of bailouts for the banking industry, just as they had done before the 2008 crisis. This time there can't be another plan that saves the banker lifestyles as there was before.

Since the last IMF update was only a few months ago, who wants to guess how long until the next downgrade? More from Bloomberg on the latest economic crisis.

“The global growth outlook will be somewhat less than we anticipated just three months ago,” Lagarde said in a speech in Tokyo today. “And even that lower projection will depend on the right policy actions being taken.” The new outlook will be announced in 10 days, after an April estimate of 3.5 percent, she said.

Interest-rate cuts in China and Europe yesterday and the Bank of England’s boost to an asset-purchase program underscored the fragility of the global recovery as austerity measures and debt burdens weigh on advanced nations. Lagarde is pressing for fiscal union in Europe to aid growth and financial stability as nations such as Greece wrestle with balancing their books.

The “key emerging markets” of Brazil, China and India are showing signs of slowdown, Lagarde said. Those three countries along with Russia will comprise more than 20 percent of the world economy this year, according to IMF data.

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