JOB GROWTH CONTINUES TO STRENGTHEN

Continuing the historical pattern of Democratic administrations halting economic downturns, the Obama administration continues to produce positive job growth results.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2011-03-30-hiring...
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The ADP National Employment Report said private payrolls rose by 201,000 in March, slightly below estimates. Yet the average monthly increase the past four months is 211,000, up from gains of 74,000 from August to September.

"It seems clear to me hiring is picking up, and we're going to add more jobs in 2011” than in 2010, says Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner.

Smaller companies appear to be doing the heavy lifting. March employment rose by 102,000 at small firms, 82,000 at mid size businesses and 17,000 at large ones
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POST SCRIPT: We have now seen 15 straight months of positive job growth and todays official job numbers exceeded estimates. Over 216,000 were added to the work-force last month. Over 500,000 jobs have been created since the first of the year.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42377655/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/?GT1=43001
Solid jobs growth in March shows recovery is for real
Neither earthquake nor Mideast turmoil have stopped businesses from hiring

52 YEARS OF TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH, and what do we get?

AND WHAT HAS BEEN THE RESULT OF THESE TAX CUTS FOR PLUTOCRATS BEEN?



SOURCE:
http://wealthforcommongood.org/shifting-responsibility/

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A TIDAL WAVE OF DISAPROVAL SWEEPS OVER THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

I suspect that every visitor to this blog were sure of one thing after last November’s election: The Republican’s would over reach. But I also suspect that no-one understood the level of overreach they would attempt or just how quickly the American public would turn on them.

New polling is showing that of 50 House seats targeted by Democrats in 2012, 35 Republicans are in deep trouble. These freshmen Republicans have an average approval rating of 35%. Compared to Democrat incumbents in July of 2009, Republicans are today 10% behind that standard. We all know, all too regrettably, how that turned out for us.

But that’s not all the bad news sweeping over the Republican Party. In these same districts, only 40% are supporting re-electing the Republican incumbent, 45% do not support retaining them. After taking these 50 districts by a collective average of 14%, the Republican incumbents find themselves tanking in the polls. In the top 25 districts, the generic Democrat leads the Republican incumbent 46% to 45%.

Republican governors are not faring any better. After just four months after electing, three new Midwestern governors, Scott Walker (R) WI, John Kasich (R), OH, and Rick Snyder (R) MI, voters are expressing deep “buyer’s remorse.” All three have witnessed plummeting approval ratings, falling to the point that polls show them losing hypothetical do-over elections.

Governor Walker beat Democrat Tom Barret 52% to 46%. But today Walker would lose a do-over election by a seven-point margin, a stunning 14% swing in the polling after just 6 weeks in office. An unprecedented recall effort is gathering energy and threatens to remove 8 Republican State Senators in Wisconsin and once Walker reaches the threshold of one year in office, Walker himself will likely face a vigorous recall effort.

Governor Kaisich ® OH is polling at 30% approval, and a fourth governor, Tom Corbett (R) PA, has bottomed out at 31% approval. The voters have had a look at the radical agenda that these people want to ram down the throats of working Americans and their disapproval is unmistakeble and overwhelming. These incumbents have loosed the floodgates and the upcoming election in 2012 may be the tide that sweeps them out of office and off the political landscape. Forever.

Why Obama is the favorite for 2012

Political observers are predicting a second term -- but he should thank Huckabee, Gingrich and Bachmann
By Gene Lyons



Many Americans follow politics the way lukewarm fans follow sports, paying close attention only during the playoffs or presidential elections. Most would be surprised to be told that most professional observers in Washington think President Obama's a strong bet to win re-election in 2012.

Never mind that events in Japan and the Middle East underline the folly of predicting the future. Some people can't help themselves. Most who think that way give two reasons: the near-comical weakness of the Republican field and Obama's protean ability to pose as a pragmatist surrounded by zealots.

Several GOP contenders do appear to be abandoning Fox News for the Comedy Channel. Newt Gingrich told the Christian Broadcast Network that patriotism drove him into adultery. "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate," the former Speaker confessed. Horny are the brave. She showed me the American flag on her thong, and my pants fell down. Evidently, Newt grew so weary impeaching Bill Clinton for adultery that he fell into the arms of the third Mrs. Gingrich. Now a 67 year-old granddad, he vows fidelity.

Bless his heart.

Then there's Mike Huckabee, probably the Republicans' strongest candidate, despite being a former Arkansas governor. Yakking on talk radio, the Huckster explained that the Mau-Mau rebellion during President Obama's Kenya childhood caused him, unlike most Americans, to hate British imperialism. Never mind that millions with ancestors in formerly subject nations such as Ireland, India and the United States of America don't entirely share Huckabee's nostalgia.

History records that Obama never lived in Africa. Challenged, Huckabee chortled that he should have read his own book. Why, page 183 of "A Simple Government" explains that the president actually learned anti-British passions in Indonesia. OK, so Indonesia was a Dutch, not a British colony. It's definitely a foreign country, and Obama definitely lived there long ago. We're supposed to admire Huckabee's self-deprecating wit.

Except, guess what? The worker bees at mediamatters.org checked page 183. Uh-oh. So they ran a Kindle search. The words "Indonesia" and "Indonesian" appear nowhere in Huckabee's book. Here we go again. Blaming the "left-wing media," Huckabee's making things up, pretty much as he does whenever anybody brings up the serial murderers he got sprung from the Arkansas penitentiary -- two at last count.

Elsewhere, the photogenic Michelle Bachmann gave two speeches moving the midnight ride of Paul Revere and the "shot heard 'round the world" -- fired at a British soldier, come to think of it -- from Massachusetts to New Hampshire, where there's an early presidential primary. Meanwhile, a Fox News gremlin told New York magazine that retired Gov. Sarah Palin was cautioned against her infamous "blood libel" video, implying that the real victim of the grotesque assassination attempt against Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was Sarah Palin.

You can definitely fool all of the GOP "base" all of the time. They've already forgotten the catastrophic mess President George W. Bush left behind, and grow apoplectic when anybody reminds them. It's the broader electorate that's the problem. Presidential candidacies have foundered on far less consequential blunders than Republican front-runners made last week alone. It's actually scary to think that's the best a major political party can do.

Anyway, barring catastrophe, Obama definitely looks good for a second term. Ah, but to what end, pray? There, it seems to me, tea party dogma and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have given President Obama a chance to bridge the historic rift between the working middle class and the Democratic Party cogently analyzed in Mother Jones by the estimable Kevin Drum.

Starting with the culture wars of the Vietnam era, Drum explains, "New Left activists derided union bosses as just another tired bunch of white, establishment Cold War fossils, and as a result, the rupture of the Democratic Party that started in Chicago in 1968 became irrevocable in Miami Beach four years later." That break led to the 1972 nomination of George McGovern and the landslide victory of Richard M. Nixon -- whose "Southern Strategy" still defines today's political landscape.

For all their faults, as labor unions lost power, wealth and political influence have grown ever more concentrated at the very top. The United States is becoming a plutocracy. The numbers can be startling, with Wall Street profits rising 720 percent between 2007 and 2009 even as unemployment rose 102 percent. Wealth distribution has become grotesquely unbalanced.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Walker's brazen attempt to break the unions and defund the Democratic Party has sparked mass demonstrations dwarfing tea party extravaganzas the press made so much of -- hardhats and university teaching assistants marching together for the first time in a generation. If President Obama's looking for a parade to get in front of, that would be the one.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000).
You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.

Wisconsin Republican’s Mistress Hired as State Employee

http://www.politicususa.com/en/wisconsin-republican-mistress

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You might remember Sen. Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) as they guy whose wife and maid were going to sign the recall petition against him and who no longer lives at the home where he is registered. Well, it get’s worse. This guy’s mistress was hired from a right wing lobbyist firm and given a state employee’s job. You know, the jobs the senator just signed a budget bill over, killing collective bargaining. Maybe in Republican circles collective bargaining happens in bed. -clip-

If you've not read the post below, read that first. Then read this. Then pinch yourself. This is actually happening. You can't make stuff like this up

Wisconsin GOP Family Values Senator Living With 25 Year Old Mistress

-Sen. Randy Hopper's Wife Tells Protesters Hopper Is Living with 25-year-old mistress in Madison-


Recall target, the silver-haired lothario, randy Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac), talks a good game about family values and is demonstrating his respect for the institution of marriage by hopping into the bed of a staffer and lobbyist young enough to be his daughter.

Protesters outside the Hopper house this week in Fond du Lac were met by his wife Alysia, who reportedly came out and told them: Hopper no longer lives there, but with his 25-year-old mistress, Valerie Cass, in Madison. Cass's position with the ironically named Persuasion Partners lobbying firm has ended as public attention drew to her extramarital, ethically scandalous, relationship with the sanctimonious Senator Hopper.

Hopper has been a close ally with Gov. Scott Walker whose billionaire Koch Brothers funded attacks on Wisconsin families is drawing international attention and widespread condemnation.

Update: Two sources in Fond du Lac close to the recall effort say the Hopper maid has signed the legal-sized recall sheet. The maid reportedly said it's likely Hopper's soon-to-be-ex wife will also sign the recall petition.

Update II: Blogging Blue reports the woman in question is a former state Senate committee staffer and lobbyist.

http://foolocracy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/randyhopper.jpg
http://foolocracy.com/2011/03/wisconsin-protesters-surround-state-senators-home-wife-explains-that-he-lives-with-25-year-old-mistress-now/
http://malcontends.blogspot.com/2011/03/sen-randy-hoppers-wife-tells-protesters.html