Daily Archives: July 1, 2012

Politics — No Comments
01
Jul 12

‘State of the Union with Candy Crowley’ Transcript (7-1-12)

Full transcript. Excerpt below:

CROWLEY: Joining me now is White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew. Thank you for joining us this morning. Let’s talk about health care a bit because I wanted to show you a opinion poll taken by USA Today/Gallup after the decision, and this is the opinion of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the individual mandate, in fact, most of the entire law is constitutional, 46 percent of Americans agree with that and 46 percent of Americans disagree with that.

Why does health care law remain so divisive at this point?

LEW: Candy, I think that one of the great things about this country is we have a Supreme Court and when it rules, we have a final judgment. So there is not a question now as to whether or not the law is constitutional, it is a constitutional.

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Uncategorized — No Comments
01
Jul 12

‘Fareed Zakaria GPS’ Transcript (7-1-12)

Full transcript. Excerpt below:

I was recently in Turkey and Russia and I’ve been persuaded that there might be a path forward. The pressures on Bashar al-Assad’s regime are real and mounting; it is running out of cash and it now faces real military pressures from Turkey. These pressures could be combined with smart diplomacy to push Assad out of power.

But it would mean trying to work with the Russian government rather than attacking it. The U.S. has been bashing Russia for shielding Assad, coddling an ally at the cost of human lives, for arming the Syrian military. Some of this is true, some false, but all of it is unhelpful if the goal is to oust Assad.

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Uncategorized — No Comments
01
Jul 12

‘Meet the Press’ Transcript (7-1-12)

via July 1: Nancy Pelosi, Bobby Jindal, Howard Dean, Rich Lowry, Eugene Robinson, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd – Meet the Press – Transcripts – msnbc.com.

Economy — No Comments
01
Jul 12

U.S. job growth in June likely to be weak

Source:

Slower pace of hiring, softer manufacturing growth forecast

The weak level of hiring in the U.S. since spring is likely to carry over into June, an outcome that could exacerbate worries about the health of the economy.

[...]The U.S. needs to create jobs at more than double the pace, however, to bring down the unemployment rate. It takes slightly more than 100,000 new jobs each month just to absorb the number of working-age people who enter the labor force.

Some economists are predicting even smaller job growth in June. BNP Paribas, for example, estimates the U.S. gained 85,000 jobs.

[...]The string of subpar indicators has prompted most economists to cut their forecasts for hiring and U.S. growth. The Blue Chip forecast of economists, for example, trimmed its second-quarter projection to 2.0% from 2.3%.

Politics — No Comments
01
Jul 12

GOP lawmakers: Romney needs to distance himself from Bush

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/235779-gop-lawmakers-say-romney-needs-to-distance-himself-from-bush

War on Labor — No Comments
01
Jul 12

Power firm ConEd locks out union workers as talks stall

Source:

New York power utility Consolidated Edison Inc locked out its unionized workers early on Sunday after contract talks broke down, both sides said, raising the possibility of power cuts during a summer heat wave.

The company asked to extend negotiations for two more weeks, it said, but the union, which had threatened a strike, refused. In response, the firm told union members not to report for work on Sunday.

Reuters reported that the action increased the risk of power outages if a continuing heat wave puts extra strain on the electrical grid for New York City and suburban Westchester county.

War on Labor — No Comments
01
Jul 12

The Washington Post Still Can’t Talk Honestly About Mexico’s Economy

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-washington-post-still-cant-talk-honestly-about-mexicos-economy

The Washington Post is heavily invested in NAFTA. At the time of the debate it abandoned any pretext of being an objective newspaper, allowing both its opinion and news pages to be overwhelmingly dominated by proponents of the agreement. Since its passage the Post has refused to acknowledge that the agreement has had the intended effect in the United States of lowering the wages of manufacturing workers. (This is textbook economics. By putting U.S. manufacturing workers into more direct competition with their low-paid counterparts in Mexico, the result is that wages of manufacturing workers in the United States fall.)