Free Republic

"....Pleasant. That’s even how Walker’s bitterest political foes describe him.In the heat of the state’s showdown with its union four years ago, Rep. Peter Barca, the Wisconsin State Assembly’s top Democrat, publicly denounced the governor at protests across the state. “You know, Governor Walker, you have defiled our heritage,” Barca said at one rally. “You have disregarded our values.”But Walker,who declined to be interviewed for this article,never took it personally. “I’d give a speech in front of 50,000 protesters saying,‘Walker’s got to go,’“ Barca says, “and you’d see him the next day and you’d think I just sent him a...

....[SNIP].... Labor unions rely on density for two reasons. First, unions need monthly dues in order to be able to pay organizers and staff. The more members, the more dues, the more organizing. Second, the more unions that exist in a region, the easier it is to organize. That's because more union employers usually means smaller disparities between the wages paid by different businesses -- meaning less incentive to oppose organizing drives. That's why New York state has the highest union membership rate in the country: New York City's high union density makes it easier to organize. Again, half of...

".......In this modern age of hyperpartisan combat,no one running has consistently succeeded when fighting for conservative principles the way Walker has. Actually fighting and winning conservative fights is what voters are hungry for. That’s why Walker used the word “win” six times.Where the candidates announce their candidacies tells you about their campaign. Jeb Bush chose Miami Dade College so that the tableau of diverse faces could speak to his effort to expand the Republican Party. Bush has since talked about the makeup of that crowd and how it doesn’t look like the typical Republican electorate. Walker’s crowd was 99 percent...

The president of the board and the UW-Madison chancellor have pledged to maintain tenure and academic freedom. But faculty are skeptical they will have the same ironclad protections against retaliation for controversial research, particularly the type of scholarship that can leave winners and losers in the marketplace. MADISON, Wis. — First, Gov. Scott Walker defeated public-sector labor unions. Then, he declawed their private-sector counterparts. Now, ahead of his entry into the presidential race, the Wisconsin Republican is staring down another conservative target: college professors. The trifecta could cement Walker's reputation among conservative Republican primary voters as a bold leader...

A Facebook meme posted by a liberal Democratic group puts a new twist on an old claim that the state of Wisconsin is "broke." The post by Occupy Democrats includes a photo of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and this statement: "Last year, Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a $541 million tax cut for millionaires and corporations. Today, Wisconsin’s budget is $283 million in the red, funding for education is being slashed, government programs are being gutted, and the state is about to miss a $108 million debt payment -- because it is dead broke." In the comments below the...

Peter St. Onge writes: The job-threatening rise of the machines is an economically illiterate meme that refuses to die. We’re actually probably in the early stages of it, a bull-market in neo-luddism, if you will. Bastiat’s “Candlemakers Petititon” answered this one long ago, but today I’ll run a little thought experiment that owes it all to good old Bastiat. Let’s say Weird Al Yankovic invents a machine capable of making everything with a single push of a button. The first thing he does is print up a bunch of machines and sell them for a ton. Weird Al is now...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New applications for U.S. unemployment insurance benefits rose last week to their highest level since February, suggesting some slowdown in the labor market recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 297,000 for the week that ended July 4, the U.S. Department of Labor said on Thursday. Even with the rise in claims, the latest report marks the 18th consecutive week of new filings below 300,000, which is considered consistent with a firming labor market. The previous week's claims were revised to 282,000, showing that 1,000 more people filed than initially reported....

<p>There are few people in politics who are quite as hilarious as Stephen Moore. Formerly the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist (he’s now a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow” for the group) Moore has achieved greater notoriety as one of the worst pundits alive. The man is constantly, flagrantly wrong. He’s been blacklisted by a major newspaper for making too many embarrassing errors in his columns. He’s a climate change denier who draws his arguments against environmentalism from sci-fi monkey movies. He’s written anti-Obamacare Op-Eds that are literally 0 percent accurate. As an economic thinker he’s been no more successful – he has a string of bad predictions under his belt and a tenuous grasp of the field he’s supposedly an expert in.</p>

America needs a strong manufacturing sector to sustain robust economic growth that creates new businesses, jobs and opportunities for all. Manufacturing is responsible for 70 percent of U.S. R&D, and often spins off entire new industries. But since 2000, American manufacturing has lost thousands of factories and 5 million jobs. The top reason: poorly conceived “free trade” agreements that Washington has pushed, including NAFTA, CAFTA and Korea and China joining the World Trade Organization. Given the record of job outsourcing and factory closings, it is troubling that Congress has just given President Barack Obama fast track power to negotiate the...

We shouldn't wonder why people are working into their 70s--we should wonder why anyone retires, assuming they'll still be receiving their full pension in five years.You may have seen a variation of this chart of employment in the U.S. by age group. This chart--courtesy of mdbriefing.com-- shows the number of those employed (with any kind of job--full-time, part-time, self-employed) as a percentage of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (CNP), which includes everyone 16 years of age and older who is not institutionalized or on active duty in the Armed Forces. A number of striking features pop out of this chart: 1....

SEATTLE — Microsoft plans to announce a major new round of layoffs as early as Wednesday, as the company seeks to further cut costs in a shifting technology landscape. The layoffs are in addition to the about 18,000 employees that Microsoft said it planned to let go a year ago, according to people briefed on the plans, who asked for anonymity because the details were confidential. The new job cuts are expected to affect people in Microsoft’s hardware group, among other parts of the company, including the struggling smartphone business that it acquired from Nokia last year in a $7.2...

The community of Craig is holding its collective breath today, waiting on the feds to decide by midnight whether they will bother to challenge a court decision that threatens to shutter the Colowyo Mine. The Interior Department has gobbled up the entire period allotted to them to decide whether to appeal. We can only hope they have used this time wisely to decide in favor of the 200 plus workers whose jobs are on the line. And the lines in the proverbial sands have been clearly drawn. On one side is the radical environmental group WildEarth Guardians, who brought the...

Is America hard at work? Or hardly working? I ask this because Thursday's Labor Department report for June found yet another 430,000 Americans of working age (16 and older) dropped out of the workforce. Over the last year, only 1.3 million Americans of working age have entered the workforce, even as the population of this same demographic increased by more than 2.8 million. Just over 1 million members of this group found jobs. That's right -- of the new additions to the working age population, less than four in 10 found jobs. The newspapers touted the reduction in the unemployment...

The big joke Tuesday was that comb-over reality TV star Donald Trump announced that he’s running for president in 2016 as a Republican. As if it isn’t funny enough that he’s given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Foundation, he also said he wants Oprah Winfrey as his VP. And just in case you aren’t convinced of his conservative credentials, it turns out he’s left quite a liberal footprint of anti-gun, pro-abortion, redistribution of wealth, Obam-esque socialism. Back in 2000 The Don was flirting with running for president as a Reform Party candidate... Here’s...

Republican 2016 presidential hopefuls Scott Walker and Rick Santorum are suggesting a potentially controversial way to boost Americans' job prospects: admit fewer legal immigrants into the United States. The notion, absent from presidential politics for at least 20 years, could help them tap into the frustrations of working-class voters who have struggled with stagnant wages and reduced job opportunities since the economic crisis of 2007-2009. It could also complicate prospects for a comprehensive fix to the nation's outdated immigration system and tar the Republican Party as anti-immigrant at a time when it needs to broaden its support base of Hispanics...

It’s a progressive paradise.Public employees get 30 vacation days a year. Anyone who works over eight hours in a day gets paid time-and-a-half. Employees have strong rights.The minimum wage is high: 77 percent of the median wage.Environmental regulations are settled beyond the pressure of local economic interests. The forests and mountains are pristine destinations for ecotourism.Energy costs are kept high, pushing consumption down to a level deemed “socially beneficial”. Utilities have strong public backing and provide jobs to thousands.Union jobs in shipping are protected from outsourcing to cut-rate foreign competitors.The social safety net is buoyant and provides a solid working-class standard...

Presented without comment. * December 2007 is when, according to the NBER, the recession started. The same recession which also according to the NBER ended precisely 6 years ago.

CNSNews.com) - A record 93,626,000 Americans 16 or older did not participate in the nation’s labor force in June, as the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.6 percent, a 38-year low, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, hit 250,663,000. Of those, 157,037,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one. The 157,037,000 who participated in the labor force equaled only 62.6 percent of the 250,663,000 civilian...

You’ve probably heard this phrase: “There are lies, damned lies and there are statistics.” Let’s look at the latest statistics from the Labor Department and you decide whether we are being told the truth, lied to or simply misled by faulty numbers. On Thursday, Labor, in the first sentence of its June jobs report statement, said that “payroll employment increased by 223,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 5.3 percent. Thanks, but I’d like to focus instead on the fifth paragraph and the very last paragraph. First, the unemployment rate. It was down from 5.5 percent in May, so instinctively...

While the kneejerk reaction algos were focusing on the +223K jobs number reported by the Establishment Survey, few if anyone notched that the Household survey reported a decline of 56,000 workers in June. But what's worse, is that according to this survey which according to some is far more reliable than its peer, the composition of the US labor force once again deteriorated rapidly with part-time jobs added in June surging by 161,000 while the number of full time jobs tumbled by 349,000. Putting this number in context, while the total number of US workers has long since surpassed its...