Free Republic

NewsBusters previously reported that CNN's Fareed Zakaria had met with President Obama face-to-face to discuss foreign policy. Obama's other reported "source" of information on foreign policy, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, mocked Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday on CNN, and added that he should have dutifully obeyed the demands Obama outlined in his recent Mideast speech. According to a May 11 New York Times article, Friedman was one of two foreign policy journalists "sounded out" by President Obama for information on foreign affairs. The other, CNN's Fareed Zakaria, has previously criticized Israel's prime minister for not...

It is surprising that over the past several years very little has been said in the popular media about the fact that America is slowly (but surely) transforming from a full-time to part-time employed society. And while much has been said about the temporary and now past impact of census hiring, and government jobs on the workforce, there are still few mentions in mainstream media that since the depression started in December 2007, America has lost 10.5 million full time jobs, offset by a 2.8 million increase in part time jobs. Two recent mentions of this extremely troubling phenomenon were...

The number of people working part-time hours rose by 143,000 in the three months to August to reach 7.96m, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992, the figures by the Office for National Statistics have revealed. Part-time working accounted for 27.3pc of total employment, with the number of people in working rising by 178,000 on the quarter to 29.16m. A record 1.14m employees and self-employed people were working part-time because they could not find a full job, up 65,000 on the quarter, the ONS said.

New York – Roberta Hanson of North Haven, Conn., had been searching for work for 22 months when she landed a part-time job weekend afternoons and nights for a nearby municipal parks and recreation department. But now Ms. Hanson rues the day she took that work. Why? The Connecticut Department of Labor used her negligible earnings in her part-time job as the new baseline for Hanson's unemployment benefits. She went from receiving $483 a week to getting nothing. "Afterwards, unofficially, they said I shouldn’t have taken the job," Hanson says. It's a twist in the law that may affect thousands...

The unemployment rate edged down slightly to 10.0 percent in November from 10.2 percent in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. There was only a net job loss of 11,000 in October. In the prior 3 months, payroll job losses had averaged 135,000 a month. The flatenning of the unemployment can largely attributed to gains in the number of temp workers. Employment in professional and business services rose by 86,000 in November.Temporary help services accounted for the majority of the increase, adding 52,000 jobs. Since July, temporary help services employment has risen by 117,000. Employers using temp services...

September 29, 2009 Group Seeks To Scratch Plan For Part-Time California Legislature Steve Wiegand Sep. 29, 2009 Once upon a time - when new Volkswagen Beetles cost $1,825 and were fueled by 34-cent-a-gallon gasoline - California's legislators were part-time workers. That was 43 years ago. In November 1966, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that gave legislators full-time positions. And nowadays, it seems, they never go home. In 2007, the Legislature met virtually the entire year, anchored in Sacramento by a regular session, a protracted budget fight and special sessions on water and health care. In 2008, lawmakers were in...

David Rosenberg at Gluskin Sheff flagged a different way of looking at US unemployment figures on Monday; rather than noting the slowing rise in unemployment, he pointed in the direction of the number of people employed part-time and average hours worked. In which case the two following trends can be observed: The part-timezation effect of slowing wage growth and declining hours has had one major impact on corporate America, says Rosenberg: a decreasing wage bill. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of personal income and aggregate demand, which are needed to grow top-line revenues. What it equals — in no...

Conservative groups are out to take back California with two petitions demanding “fair districts” and a part-time legislature. All they need are signatures—more than 600,000 of them, per petition. Nevertheless, leaders of the most recent movement say they will succeed where several previous petition drives failed. Leading the group is Ted Costa, who said the group has 100,000 signatures for their redistricting initiative. Costa and his group, People’s Advocate, submitted paperwork for their petitions in October. Costa, a veteran of the gubernatorial recall, started accepting signatures after the Nov. 2 election. The petitioning group had previously submitted paperwork for the...

SANTA FE (AP) - New Mexico has part-time lawmakers and driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, but California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's visit didn't convince him of the wisdom of either. Schwarzenegger, further distancing himself from the idea he first floated in the spring, said Tuesday the notion of a part-time California Legislature needs much more study and he has no plans to try to get it on the ballot. The California governor also said while the driver's license debate could be resolved in the current legislative session, security concerns remain a stumbling block. And Schwarzenegger said he still hasn't made up...

Ted Costa, one of the orchestrators of California's successful recall election last fall, now wants to ask voters to knock the state Legislature down to part-time status. It is a notion that has circulated around the Capitol a lot lately and even has been mentioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the throes of his frustration with lawmakers during the state budget impasse. Costa is proposing a constitutional change to cut the legislative year by half, with lawmakers meeting for 90 days between January and the end of June. "The legislators (would) have more time to spend in their districts, and...

Knowledge is power and that is especially true in politics. Therein lies the danger to California if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger follows through with threats to turn the state Legislature into an underpaid "part-time" body. Blaming legislators (Democrats publicly, both parties privately) and not his own budget giveaway deals for delaying this year's spending plan, Schwarzenegger spokesman Rob Stutzman has told the Los Angeles Times that the governor may seek revenge. That would come in the form of a special election next year. This election may or may not seek constitutional changes to shrink the legislative calendar to a part-time status,...

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has come up with the best reform proposal we've heard in years: return to a part-time Legislature. In 1966, the state switched to a full-time Legislature, supposedly because our state was so complex it needed the full-time attention of politicians.</p>

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, lounging in Hawaii on spring break with his wife and kids, tells a reporter that state lawmakers should follow his lead and take more time off. The Legislature, he says, "doesn't have enough to do." Their full-time status in Sacramento simply gives them too much time to make mischief.</p>

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - State lawmakers should work part time so they would be more productive and less likely to write "strange bills," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told a reporter during a family vacation in Hawaii.</p> <p>"I want to make the Legislature a part-time Legislature," he said Tuesday. "Spending so much time in Sacramento, without anything to do, then out of that comes strange bills.</p>

Conservative Talk Show host Joe Crummey is taking calls concerning the latest news about the grocery store lock-out and strike. Union officials were in Los Angeles yesterday to discuss current negotiations. Joe Crummey believes the grocery store strikers are being misled by their Union. He suggests that workers re-read their contract. Page 12 of their contract says that workers get $4.04 (company paid insurance benefit per hour) for every hour they work. Mentions also that civil disobedience has now been suggested by a sympathetic union supporter.

<p>If the Legislature doesn't shape up and enact sensible budget and other reforms, what next can be done? Maybe return to a part-time Legislature such as the state had until the 1960s.</p> <p>The part-time idea is being advanced by Ted Costa, CEO of People's Advocate, the Sacramento- based activist group that spearheaded the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis.</p>