Job market improving for college grads this year

This has to be a relief for many soon-to-be graduates and their parents. Even better than the higher volume of jobs is the news that the pay is up as well. It's still a tough market and there are some painfully high school loans to be paid, but how can you not like this if you're about to join the working world?

Employers expect to hire 10 percent more college graduates from the Class of 2012 than they did from last year's crop of grads, according to a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

This marks the second consecutive year that employers have increased their hiring expectations from their initial outlook in the fall.

"Although employers haven’t revised their earlier projections significantly (up 0.5 percent), this upward movement along with other positive economic indicators show that the job market for new college graduates is improving steadily," said Marilyn Mackes, the executive director of the NACE.

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More on climate change = longer allergy seasons

I wanted to expand on John's mention last night of the linkage between allergies and global warming.

For allergy sufferers, this is probably not the news that you want to hear. An important point to consider as well is that there will be a financial cost to this. There will most definitely be a cost for patients who will be purchasing more medication to combat the allergies, but there will also be a business cost due to employees being sick or at least not 100% during the work day. Other researchers are pointing to higher asthma rates as well as longer allergy seasons.

Climate change is not some distant issue that doesn't have a direct impact on people, as we are seeing here. The right wing smear machine has done it's best to discredit the problem and they've largely been successful. Fewer people today believe in climate change than a few years ago though the numbers are starting to slowly come back.

Jobs are always going to be important, but the health and well being of the population is important as well. Why do the anti-environment types always ignore health care costs? NY Times:

“There is data showing that pollen is not only more prevalent as a result of the effects of carbon dioxide and greenhouse exposure, but that the pollen proteins are more potent,” said Dr. Clifford W. Bassett, an allergist and assistant clinical professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine.

In a study published last year, Agriculture Department researchers found that at certain latitudes, especially north of 44 degrees, the pollen seasons were up to a month longer than usual. In Wisconsin, for example, ragweed was in the air two weeks longer in 2009 than it was in 1995.

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Video: Moscow flash mob (with political overtones?)

It's hard to believe that it's just a coincidence that the song was "Putting on the Ritz" when with a Russian accent they pronounce it "Putin on the Ritz." And there were a series of pro and anti Putin flash mobs taking place around the time of this one, February 28, 2012. I'd love to know the story behind this, if anyone knows.

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Romney's son describes dad's $12m, 3000 sq.ft. home as "pretty small"

Someone needs to ask the rest of America how "small" that is.

“They finally gave my dad a couple days off, so we were together with my dad,” he says in the clip. “We got to stay in the house because we were there first. I had a couple other brothers that were out there that had to stay at my brother’s house. But we got to stay at my parent’s place; they have a two-bedroom house, uh, pretty small.

According to an interview with Mitt Romney and Hugh Hewitt, the family spent Thanksgiving in San Diego, where he owns a two-bedroom house that’s reportedly 3,000 square feet and valued at $12 million. The property made headlines earlier this year when news broke that Romney planned to tear it down and replace it with an even larger compound.

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Rupert Murdoch's son leaves BSkyB after new hacking allegations

Last week the BBC broadcast what may turn out to be the biggest Murdoch scandal of them all.

NDS [a News Corp subsidiary] is accused of leaking information from On Digital which could be used to create counterfeit smart cards, giving people free access to paid for TV.

The latest claims have been made by Lee Gibling - who set up a website in the late 90s known as The House of Ill-Compute, or Thoic.

Mr Gibling told the BBC he was paid to publish stolen information. His contact at NDS was Ray Adams, who at the time was head of UK security for the firm - which manufactures smartcards for all News Corporations' pay-TV companies across the world.

Today James Murdoch, Rupert's son, has stepped down as chairman of BSkyB.

The NDS/Sky rumors have been circulating in the cryptography world for quite a while but without sources. The BBC program (region locked to UK unfortunately) puts faces to the statements. What the BBC is alleging amounts to a multi-billion dollar fraud that may have bankrupted ITV On-Digital, a pay-per-view system that threatened to compete with Murdoch's own pay-per-view system BSkyB.

The BBC team claim that the man behind 'The House Of Ill Compute' site (THOIC) was paid to distribute  instructions for hacking the ITV On-Digital system.  In other words, the allegation is that they tried to kill the competition by showing people how to get it for free.

Who could have imagined that News Corporation's business practices might be as dishonest and corrupt as the 'news' they publish? Read the rest of this post...

Roubini: Eurozone needs a divorce

It certainly would not be the cleanest process, but it may eventually be necessary. The imbalances are so extreme that it's hard to see how it won't eventually happen. Addressing the current economic problems hardly seems fair when countries are burdened with the euro. FT via CNBC:

To deal with what they argue are fundamental design flaws of the euro zone, they propose a "divorce settlement" under which some countries - ideally Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain - leave the union and a core group of countries remains in the euro.

The leavers should rebalance their economies away from growth led by debt to economies based on export and income-led growth while the core should rebalance towards domestic demand, they say.

They suggest currency realignment to achieve this, but admit that there would be disruptions.

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Study: Women caused the financial crisis (seriously)

A new study - by three men - suggests that all you evil incompetent women were to blame for the financial crisis.

Mark Gongloff at HuffPost:

After studying the track records of German bank executives from 1994-2010, the three dudes who wrote the paper found that "board changes that result in a higher proportion of female executives...lead to a more risky conduct of business."

In fact, the authors go so far as to suggest that having too many women around (and/or too many young executives and/or too few executives with PhDs) could lead to another financial crisis:

This is particularly important against the background of the recent financial crisis. In fact, anecdotal and emerging empirical evidence suggests that poor governance arrangements in banking have far-reaching consequences for society. ...
While numerous explanations have been invoked for why banks take excessive risk, e.g., executive pay, moral hazard arising from deposit insurance and too-important-to-fail considerations, our research adds a new dimension to this literature by enhancing the understanding of how socioeconomic factors affect collective decision making about risky project choices in corporate finance in general.

Right, because there are so many women running Wall Street, and Washington.  If only we could get some more men in those jobs...

Not surprisingly, the Financial Times' Lisa Pollack found a few holes in the "study."

Further on in Atkins’ article:

Explaining their controversial findings, based on an analysis of German bank executive teams from 1994 to 2010, the report’s authors suggest a main reason is that women executives tend to be “significantly less experienced” than male counterparts and that a lack of experience drives risk taking.

Wait a second… This study didn’t control for levels of experience?! Do we hear a whistle? Oh yes, there it is.

If the study had controlled for the amount of experience that executives had, and yet still found that the presence of women was correlated with increasingly risky behaviour by banks, then we’d get a bit more intrigued about the “it’s because of their gender” conclusion. But there wasn’t such a control in place and that’s quite an variable to omit.

To be clear, it’s not an outright lack of “experience” that the researchers refer to. It’s “executive level” experience.

And let's not forget that had the boys in the Obama administration listened to the girls (or girl) we might not be in the unemployment mess we're in right now. From Sam Stein at HuffPost:

But a new book by Noam Scheiber of The New Republic, "The Escape Artists," sheds new light on the matter.

As Scheiber writes, members of the president's economic team felt that if they were to properly fill the hole caused by the recession, they would need a bill that priced at $1.8 trillion -- $600 billion more than was previously believed to be the high-water mark for the White House.

The $1.8 trillion figure was included in a December 2008 memo authored by Christina Romer (the incoming head of the Council of Economic Advisers) and obtained by Scheiber in the course of researching his book.

"When Romer showed [Larry] Summers her $1.8 trillion figure late in the week before the memo was due, he dismissed it as impractical."

Yes, it was "impractical" to recommend what the economy actually needed to fully save it from another Great Depression, so no one even tried.

No one is saying that politics doesn't involve some practicality.  You don't go asking for the moon simply because you think it's right, to hell with the politics.  But.  If you really think we need $1.8 trillion to save the country from economic collapse, you don't ask for less simply because the Republicans - who just lost an election by a massive amount, and were subsequently left at their weakest in over a decade - might be mean to you.  There is that crazy alternative of trying to use a wildly popular new President, with a huge electoral mandate against an opposition in tatters, to convince the terrified American people, and through them their elected representatives, that this is the only thing that might save us from economic ruin.

It's not like it was a crazy idea that something like that might just work.  But the boys in the administration, and a few lead male voices in the partisan media, said it simply couldn't be done.

The Obama administration needed some serious cojones in its first two years.  And it looks like the guy with the biggest just might have been a gal. Read the rest of this post...

Supreme Court okays strip searches for traffic fines

Your Supreme Court at work. Five-four decision (natch). Do you think this decision will be used by some to target more blacks than whites, more women than men, more Latinos? Or to intimidate Occupyers? (So do I.)

Via the Guardian (my emphasis and paragraphing):

The US supreme court ruled on Monday that jails do not violate privacy rights by routinely strip-searching everyone, even those arrested on minor traffic offenses. By a 5-4 vote and splitting along conservative-liberal ideological lines, the high court ruled that privacy rights involving the searches were outweighed by security concerns by jails about a suspect hiding drugs, weapons or other contraband.

Writing the opinion for the court's conservative majority, justice Anthony Kennedy concluded the jail search procedures struck a reasonable balance between inmate privacy and the needs of the institution.

You remember Kennedy, don't you? He's the great "centrist" hope.

The case on which this was decided is particularly egregious.

Attorneys for Albert Florence, who was strip-searched twice at two New Jersey jails in a six-day period after his arrest for an unpaid traffic fine, argued jailers must first have reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

I've seen reports [see update below] that not only had he paid the fine, but he had proof of that in the car — 'cause, you know, driving-while-black and all. Didn't matter, apparently, to Mr Moderate-Justice Kennedy.

Oh, and not to forget, this tickled my fancy as well:

The decision was a victory for ... the Obama administration, which argued for an across-the-board rule allowing strip-searches of all those entering the general jail population, even those arrested on minor offenses.

Cornel West, anyone? (Just asking.)

Your SCOTUS news of the day. For more information, watch this excellent Maddow Show segment — she interviews the subject of the case and provides her thoughts.



Sigh.

UPDATE: Here's the report that Mr. Florence had proof of payment in his glove box at the time of his arrest. Wash Post:

He spent seven days in jail because of a warrant that said, mistakenly, that he was wanted for not paying a court fine. In fact, he had proof that the fine had been paid years earlier; he said he carried it in his glove box because he believed that police were suspicious of black men who drove nice cars.

Driving While Black? Only the arresting officer knows for sure.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...

Hillary for you and me in 2016?

I'm game.

Buzzfeed:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has joined the growing ranks of politicians and public figures lining up behind a Hillary Clinton presidential bid in 2016.

"I would love to see Secretary Clinton become the nominee for President in 2016," Pelosi said during an appearance in the 92nd Street Y in New York City Sunday night.

"I do think the Secretary should entertain the thought of running in 2016," said the former Speaker of the House, who was formally neutral in 2008 but was widely viewed as tacitly supporting Senator Barack Obama, then Clinton's bitter rival. "Hasn't she been a magnificent Secretary of State?"

In the past few weeks, a growing group of high-powered Washington figures have echoed Pelosi's sentiments. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand told BuzzFeed she'd "be one of the first to ask Hillary to run in 2016," while former New York City mayor Ed Koch said to "count [him] in" as a Hillary 2016 supporter. Democratic strategists James Carville and David Plouffe also acknowledged the potential strength of a Clinton candidacy, and even Bill Clinton said he'd be "happy" if his wife decided to run.

Now, before all the Hillary supporters start complaining, primaries are brutal. Per se we're going to be on opposite sides during a primary. We all need to get over it. And that includes some of Hillary's campaign staff who still won't talk to us. Yes, we sided with Obama. Whatever. Every primary splits the party, then you get over it. The end.

Anyway, I think she'd make a great candidate and president. I do think her campaign was slightly full of itself in 2008 (though it didn't stop me from defending her on national TV numerous times in 07), and that was part of the problem. (Then again, McCain didn't pull his "celebrity" meme about Obama out of nowhere, that campaign too had its share of arrogance to deal with.) But hopefully both Hillary and Obama have learned their lessons.

What do you think? Still on board, upset, over a potential President Clinton II?

I'm sorry, I just can't resist one more time:

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New "cybersecurity" bill may be worse than SOPA

One way or another, Congress is eager to get their hands on your private emails and do whatever they want with that information. What is even worse is that there's no interest in preserving privacy or providing any oversight in case data is mishandled. There is no reason why the NSA or DOD should have unlimited access to everyone's private email, as is the case with this new proposed legislation.

Click through to the TechDirt article about the lousy legislation that is receiving healthy support in Congress and what you can do about it. Much like the SOPA struggle, people need to speak out before it's too late.

While most folks are looking elsewhere, it appears that Congress is trying to see if it can sneak an absolutely awful "cybersecurity" bill through Congress. We've discussed how there's been some fighting on the Senate side concerning which cybersecurity bill to support, but there's a similar battle going on in the House, and it appears that the Rogers-Ruppersberger bill, known as CISPA (for Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) or HR 3523 is winning out, with a planned attempt to move it through Congress later this month. The bill is awful -- and yet has somehow already gained over 100 sponsors. In an attempt to pretend that this isn't a "SOPA-like" problem, the supporters of this bill are highlighting the fact that Facebook, Microsoft and TechAmerica are supporting this bill.

However, this is a terrible bill for a variety of reasons. Even if we accept the mantra that new cybersecurity laws are needed (despite a near total lack of evidence to support this -- and, no, fearmongering about planes falling from the sky doesn't count), this bill has serious problems.

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What's at stake if SCOTUS cuts back the Commerce Clause?

Via Sam Seder and the Majority Report, we're pointed to this excellent commentary by Chris Hayes on his new Up With Chris show.

It's short, tight, and puts this momentous decision in good historical context. Watch:



Ah yes, the social contract; something we've been on about as well.

Seder also points us to this comment by Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker. Very smart. According to Toobin, there's 70 years of settled law at stake (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

Consider, then, this question, posed to Verrilli by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy:

“Assume for the moment that this”—the mandate—“is unprecedented, this is a step beyond what our cases have allowed, the affirmative duty to act to go into commerce. If that is so, do you not have a heavy burden of justification?”

Every premise of that question was a misperception. The involvement of the federal government in the health-care market is not unprecedented; it dates back nearly fifty years, to the passage of Medicare and Medicaid. ...

Kennedy’s last point, about the “heavy burden” on the government to defend the law, was correct—in 1935. That was when the Supreme Court, in deciding Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States—a case involving the regulation of the sale of sick chickens—struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act [which established the NRA], a principal domestic priority of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on the ground that it violated the Commerce Clause.

Two years later, however, the Court executed its famous “switch in time that saved the Nine” and began upholding the reforms of the New Deal. The Justices came to recognize that national economic problems require national solutions, and they deferred to Congress, usually unanimously, to provide those solutions, under the Commerce Clause.

This isn't just about the ACA or getting a second crack at the Public Option; it's about settled law and the Commerce Clause. Untimately it's about the New Deal government that we've all been living under and benefiting from — the one we assume is bullet-proof, here forever.

Not so, says Toobin (and Hayes in the clip above). Toobin again:

In the more than seven decades since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has avoided this sort of line-by-line parsing[.] ... Now, instead, the Supreme Court acts as a sort of supra-legislature, dismissing laws that conflict with its own political agenda.

It's own "political agenda"? Would that be one more voice saying this? He continues:

[This] decision is a great deal more important than its immediate political aftermath. It’s about what the government can do, not just who runs it. If the Court acts in line with the sentiments expressed by the conservatives last week, it could curtail the policymaking options of Congress for a generation. ... It is simply not the Supreme Court’s business to be making these kinds of judgments.

Maybe. On the other hand though, if you totally love power, and totally can't be removed by any agency on earth — why not just use it?

After all, it's not like you haven't had practice swinging some pipe; you totally gave us this guy:

Nearly a century of settled law won't repeal itself, you know, and time's totally wasting.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Obama calls GOP deficit reduction plan a "Trojan horse" for "radical... social darwinism"

I think he did well with "radical." "Social Darwinism," however, might be a bit too Harvard for the average American to get their head around. I suspect the President means to say that the GOP budget leaves families to fend for themselves, "survival of the fittest" style. He should have said that more clearly, but I'm working off an embargoed excerpt of the speech, so hopefully he clarifies the jab.

Below is an unusually partisan excerpt from the President's speech today at the Associated Press Luncheon. Just as interesting as the partisan jab is the fact that this is what the White House chose to leak before the luncheon - the President jabbing in a partisan manner.  Yes, yes, it's all for the election.  But so what.  I want the man to fight back, he is fighting back (finally).  Let's hope that he's learned his lesson about the Republicans.

“This Congressional Republican budget, however, is something different altogether. It’s a Trojan Horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly-veiled Social Darwinism. It’s antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it – a place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last – education and training; research and development – it’s a prescription for decline.”

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British school meal portions "made smaller to save money"

Ah yes, everyone is in this painful economic time together, including young school children. Clearly they need to pay for the sins of the bankers so they can know their place in society, right? But at least the rich are getting tax cuts. The Independent:

School meal portions are being shrunk, leaving children to go hungry, teachers and parents have warned. Smaller portion sizes caused by cost-cutting are reported in schools across the country and are of particular concern, given the increase in the number of impoverished pupils who rely on school lunches as their only hot meal of the day. Primary-age children, in particular, are going hungry after being given lunches that are too small, according to teachers.

The findings of a study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) were confirmed by individual teachers and parent groups who told The Independent it was a growing problem that had to be addressed. "Children are going hungry in schools and we all know what hunger does to your ability to learn," said Mary Bousted, the ATL's general-secretary. "It is no surprise that, in the current economic climate, there has been an increase in the uptake of free school meals ... For some children, it may be their only hot meal of the day."

Figures from the School Food Trust show that the number of children eligible for free school dinners increased by 43,000 to an estimated 1,055,000 in 2010-11. More than a third of education staff have reported an increase in the take-up of free meals since 2007.

And as one commenter in the original article mentioned, the House of Lords is actually complaining about their subsidized meals and the quality of the smoked salmon. How does such a useless and entitled body still exist?

On the other side of the spectrum, good for Jamie Oliver for diving in and trying to correct the school lunch problem. It's not a flashy subject, but it's an important one. Read the rest of this post...

Suu Kyi's party wins 43 of 44 seats in Myanmar elections

Keep in mind that she has won before, so it doesn't necessarily mean anything yet. It's a positive sign that the military junta even allowed elections (again) and that people were able to get out and vote but this is still going to be an uphill struggle to make it translate into actual reform. The Guardian:

Speaking to thousands of red-clad supporters outside the headquarters of her opposition party, the National League for Democracy' (NLD), the Nobel laureate called the election "a triumph of the people" and said: "We hope this will be the beginning of a new era."

Traffic slowed to a crawl as throngs of people, many of them waving flags and clutching red and white roses, spilled into the street to cheer, clap and call out "Amay Suu" (Mother Suu) as her motorcade arrived. At least one person was trampled underfoot when bodyguards pushed back the crowds and people swarmed to the car to see the woman who spent almost 22 years under house arrest and who many hope will create a new future for Burma's 60 million people.

Aung San Suu Kyi spoke briefly in both Burmese and English to loud applause and cheers from the crowd.

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