U.S. Politics

[Richard Smith]

Michael Avenatti - that darling of the leftist media who they once touted as a presidential candidate - has now been convicted.  Heading to the slammer for an actual crime and not one made up for political purposes.  Joining disgraced Chris Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo, Jeff Zucker, and a parade of anti-Trump establishment GOP and Dems leaving Congress into the hall of shame.  What a great week for Trump!  He keeps on winning even after leaving office.

[Rick Plant]

Whew.  You can't be for real.  That is far out stuff.  CNN runs almost continuous anti-Trump stories even over a year after he has left office.  It should be called the Jan. 6 Network.

Far out stuff? Trump's coup and January 6th insurrection was the worst attack against the United States so it will be discussed. Faux Propaganda tries to cover it all up.  You call CNN "leftist" but they hire right wing Trump hacks to come on the air to push anti Biden propaganda.

CNN's hiring of serial liar and Trump propagandist Alyssa Farah is a huge mistake
Farah’s only relevant professional experience is promoting right-wing lies
https://www.mediamatters.org/cnn/cnns-hiring-serial-liar-and-trump-propagandist-alyssa-farah-huge-mistake

[Rick Plant]

Biden takes victory lap with January jobs report
“America’s job machine is going stronger than ever,” Biden said at the White House.

President Joe Biden sounded a triumphant note Friday after the monthly jobs report came in significantly above expectations.

“America’s job machine is going stronger than ever,” Biden said at the White House.

Employers in the U.S. added roughly 467,000 jobs in January and the numbers for November and December were revised significantly upward — an unexpected jolt to the economy that came in the midst of the surging Omicron variant of Covid-19.

“America is back to work,” the president said.

Biden said that with Friday’s news, the economy has added more than 6.6 million jobs over his first year in office.

“If you can't remember another year when so many people went to work in this country, there's a reason. It never happened,” Biden said. “History has been made here.”

The strong jobs numbers seemed to have caught the White House off guard, as officials had been signaling in the run-up to its release that the January report may have been weighed down by the spike in Covid-19 infections.

The jobs figures also offers a political tailwind to the administration, which in recent weeks has seen key parts of its legislative agenda sputter in Congress and Biden’s poll numbers sink.

Biden also used the January jobs report to make the case for his stalled Build Back Better plan, which has floundered on Capitol Hill since late last year, when lynchpin Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced his opposition to the massive social spending package.

“The bottom line is this, the United States is once again in a position to not only compete with the rest of the world, but outcompete the rest of the world once again,” he said.

Biden did acknowledge that more work still needs to be down to tamp down the rate of inflation, which has eaten into economic progress on other fronts.

“We still need to ease the burden on working families by making everyday things more affordable and accessible,” he said, arguing that his spending blueprint would help do so.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/04/biden-victory-lap-jobs-report-january-00005772

[Rick Plant]

Once again, the November and December 2021 jobs report was severely undercounted just like it was from June-September 2021. All of those job numbers has been revised and added to the totals. Remember, the GOP voted against President Biden's American Rescue Plan last year which is one of the factors in this historic job growth. Just another reminder that the GOP does nothing for the American people and the economy.   

The economy added 709,000 more jobs than originally reported in the final 2 months of 2021
"The bottom line is that the recovery has been faster and steadier than measured," a former top Obama economist wrote on Twitter.

The US economy is steamrolling its way into a remarkable stretch of job growth.

The latest jobs report released Friday showed the economy added 467,000 jobs in January. .

But January's strong hiring wasn't the only good news in the report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its previous data for November and December, finding that the economy added 709,000 more jobs than previously reported, closing out 2021 with the labor market gaining steam.

"January 2022 will be remembered as the month the virus ceased to be boss. It wreaked havoc & death at a terrible scale. But the economy no longer cares," Jason Furman, a former top Obama administration economist, wrote on Twitter. "People returned to the workforce. The economy added jobs. Wages rose. You would barely know it happened from the economic data."

BLS also made other regular annual adjustments to their previous data releases. The changes reflected how the pandemic disrupted the federal government's ability to measure the health of the economy. The agency revised figures for June and July downward, making overall figures from one month to the next seem less turbulent than they originally did through 2021.

"The bottom line is that the recovery has been faster and steadier than measured," Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, wrote on Twitter.

At the industry level in January, leisure and hospitality businesses experienced the largest jump in hiring with firms adding 151,000 payrolls. The sector has led the hiring recovery throughout the pandemic, largely due to the sector shedding the most jobs when the pandemic slammed into the economy.

Other revisions showed warehousing and storage as the sector adding the most jobs in recent months, per Indeed economist Nick Bunker. Wages climbed as well, though inflation continues eating into workers' paychecks. Bunker told Insider that the revisions mean "recovery has been stronger than we previously thought" and that "it's been more stark in terms of its distribution than we previously thought."

"The nice nature of this report, it was not just what happened in January, but also finding out that payroll gains were so much stronger in 2021. [It] looked like that monthly average gain in payrolls was over a half million a month, which is great to see," Bunker told Insider. "I do think it's also noticeable to see how the distribution of gains when it comes to employment changed as well. There's even more transportation and warehousing jobs than we thought and even fewer leisure and hospitality positions."

"Hopefully we can keep up this strong pace of payroll gains while also potentially seeing some more gains from some of the sectors that have been hit hardest," Bunker said.

https://www.businessinsider.com/january-jobs-report-bls-revisions-in-2021-payrolls-2022-2

[Rick Plant]

Biden signs executive order aimed at strengthening union construction jobs

"The Executive Order I signed today is all about making sure federal construction projects get completed efficiently, saving taxpayers money, clearing construction zones quickly, and ensuring that everything the federal government signs a contract to build is built to last." - President Biden 2/4/22

https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/592871-biden-signs-executive-order-on-labor-for-federal-construction-projects

[Rick Plant]

Thanks to President Biden, 2021 was the greatest year of job creation in U.S. history. Notice that Trump was in the minus losing jobs as the worst jobs "president" in the modern era.     

[Rick Plant]

'She doesn't have any friends': Kristi Noem's political future in danger as Republicans turn on her



According to a report from the Daily Beast's Tom Lawrence, Gov. Kristi Noem's plan to break out of South Dakota and became a high-profile figure in the Republican Party is blowing up in her face because has she alienated GOP lawmakers in her state who have grown tired of her act.

Noem, has closely allied herself with Donald Trump in an effort to raise her profile and set herself up for a run for national office, is finding few allies at home among the Republican leadership despite her popularity with voters in her home state.

According to the Beast's Lawrence, "Gov. Kristi Noem, who has been riding high in polls in her state, has never lost an election. She served four terms in Congress before being elected governor in 2018. The South Dakota legislature has supermajorities in both chambers, with Republicans holding 94 of 105 seats. No Democrat holds statewide office. But Noem has suddenly found plenty of opponents with whom to wage bitter political battles: fellow Republicans."

According to political observers who have been watching Noem's political star rise, she will likely still win re-election but may stall out there due to her war with her Republican colleagues.

"University of South Dakota political science professor Michael Card told The Daily Beast that Noem has raised hackles in part by the very nature of how she performs duties essential to her job. Specifically, he pointed to her repeatedly referring to South Dakota issues with terms like 'my bill' and 'my budget' in a state with old-school lawmakers who like to maintain their fiefdoms."

That, in turn, has angered GOP lawmakers who are the ones creating and passing the bills that she is attempting to take credit for.

With a GOP insider bluntly stating, "She doesn’t have any friends," the Beast's Lawrence adds, "State political insiders suggest Noem is basically alone in Pierre, and that even if she remains beloved by large swaths of the Republican base, her image has taken a serious dent among the very people she needs to get things done."

Add to that, Noem is the subject of investigations in her state which her opponents within her own party could use against her.

"One is Noem’s use of state airplanes for multiple trips out of state to appear at conservative political gatherings. For months, the governor has claimed she needed to keep details of her travels private for security reasons. Now the Republican-dominated legislature is interested in digging into those trips," The Beast report states. "Noem also has taken heat for her involvement in her daughter Kassidy Peter’s efforts to obtain a real estate appraiser license from the state. That led to a meeting between the governor, the state employee who oversaw the process, that employee’s boss, and other officials—as well as Noem’s daughter—as the Associated Press reported."

According to State Sen. Reynold Nesiba (D), Noem's problems with her GOP colleagues are self-inflicted.

"She’s not very good at being governor,” Nesiba explained.

You can read more here:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-republican-knives-are-out-for-south-dakota-gov-kristi-noem

[Rick Plant]

What a miserable failure Ron Johnson is. You can never have enough jobs and a Senator who refuses to fight for good paying jobs to help his state has no business being in Senate. This is another Trump stooge that needs to be voted out in November.       



The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) doesn't think that his state needs more jobs.

Over the weekend, Johnson revealed he wouldn't work to keep a Wisconsin manufacturer to add new jobs in his hometown.

"It's not like we don't have enough jobs here in Wisconsin. The biggest problem we have in Wisconsin right now is employers not being able to find enough workers," Johnson said about Oshkosh Corp.'s plans to relocate 1,000 jobs to South Carolina.

While all elected officials tend to serve as kind of ambassadors to their state, on Saturday, Johnson explained he would be taking another route.

"I wouldn't insert myself to demand that anything be manufactured here using federal funds in Wisconsin," Johnson told reporters while in Washington County. "Obviously, I'm supportive of it. But in the end, I think when using federal tax dollars, you want to spend those in the most efficient way and if it's more efficient, more effective to spend those in other states, I don't have a real problem with that."

The Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce hasn't commented on the issue through their website or social media.


'It's not like we don't have enough jobs here in Wisconsin': Ron Johnson won't try to land Oshkosh Corp. postal vehicle work

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Saturday he won't try to persuade a Wisconsin manufacturer to place more than 1,000 new jobs in his hometown.

"It's not like we don't have enough jobs here in Wisconsin. The biggest problem we have in Wisconsin right now is employers not being able to find enough workers," Johnson said about Oshkosh Corp.'s plans to locate the jobs in South Carolina.

Johnson, who is seeking a third term this fall, said he supports having more manufacturing jobs in the state but indicated the company is best suited to make the call on where to build vehicles for the U.S. Postal Service.

"I wouldn't insert myself to demand that anything be manufactured here using federal funds in Wisconsin," Johnson told reporters after appearing at a "Parent Empowerment Rally" in Washington County. "Obviously, I'm supportive of it. But in the end, I think when using federal tax dollars, you want to spend those in the most efficient way and if it's more efficient, more effective to spend those in other states, I don't have a real problem with that."

Johnson's approach contrasts with Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who says she's trying to get the trucks built here by the company's Oshkosh Defense segment.

"To me, it’s simple — I want Oshkosh Defense to manufacture trucks in Oshkosh with Wisconsin workers," Baldwin said in a statement.

The two stances show the dramatic fault lines between the two senators.

But they also hint at what's to come over the coming months as Johnson, up for, re-election, faces a campaign where economic issues are likely to be front and center.

While Johnson has sought to frame the economic debate on his terms: blasting the Biden administration for soaring debt and rising inflation. The crowded field of Democratic contenders has stressed the need to create family-supporting jobs for more Wisconsinites.

When told of Johnson's remarks, Democratic candidate and Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson was dumbfounded, declaring that the added jobs — and money — would help the wider community.

"He wants a third term and he just doesn't understand economic development," Nelson said. "It's mind blowing, breathtaking."

In February 2021, Oshkosh Corporation's Oshkosh's Defense division won a contract with the U.S. Postal Service to produce up to 165,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles.

In June, Oshkosh Defense announced its decision to manufacture the vehicles at a new facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where it planned to hire more than 1,000 employees.

Under the plan, more than 100 employees in engineering and program support for the project would be based in Oshkosh at the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle Technical Center.

Unionized workers in Oshkosh, along with their national counterparts, have asked the company to reconsider the decision. Baldwin and others have contended production in South Carolina would likely be done by non-union labor.

In late November, Baldwin and U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, sent a letter to Oshkosh Corp. management to get more information on the plans to manufacture in South Carolina as well as information the firm supplied to USPS.

In a statement, Baldwin said she would "continue to urge Oshkosh Defense and the Postal Service to further scrutinize the final production location in South Carolina based on the strength of our existing, experienced workforce in Wisconsin."

Last week, the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency sent letters to USPS asking it to reconsider its plans to buy primarily gas-powered vehicles. Oshkosh Defense said it could make adjustments to meet new requirements for all-electric vehicles if the contract changes.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/06/sen-ron-johnson-wont-try-get-oshkosh-corp-jobs-wisconsin/6683226001/