Free Republic

The Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll jobs report released May 5 says the economy created 131,000 private sector jobs in April. Construction added 10,000 jobs; natural resources, mining and logging added 8,000 jobs; and manufacturing added 19,000. Despite this unusual gain, the economy has 10,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than a year ago. Most of the April job gain -- 72 percent -- is in domestic services, with education and health services (primarily health care and social assistance) and waitresses and bartenders accounting for 55,000 jobs, or 42 percent of the total job gain. Financial activities added 26,000 jobs, and professional...

The Bush administration has done more damage to Americans and more harm to America's reputation than any other administration in history. Yet a majority of Republicans still support Bush. This tells much about blind party loyalty. By encouraging the move offshore of American jobs and manufacturing, Bush has run up tremendous trade deficits that have undermined the world's confidence in the dollar as the reserve currency. Recently, both Chinese and Russian government officials warned of the dollar's shaky status. The fall in confidence in the dollar is evidenced by the sharp run-up in the price of gold. In January 2001,...

Is your job safe? Not if it can be done abroad. The only safe jobs are in domestic services that require a "hands-on" presence, such as barbers, hospital orderlies, and waitresses. For a number of years the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly payroll jobs reports have been sending US policymakers dire warnings, only to be ignored. The March report repeats the message. Ninety-five percent of the new jobs created are in domestic services. The US economy no longer creates jobs in export or export-competitive sectors. Wholesale and retail trade, waitresses and bartenders account for 46% of the new jobs. Education...

The Bush regime currently has wars underway in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and can bring neither to a conclusion. Undeterred by these failures, the Bush regime gives every indication that it intends to start a war with Iran, a country that is capable of responding to U.S. aggression over a broader front than the Sunni resistance has mounted in Iraq. The United States lacks sufficient conventional capability to prevail in such widespread conflict. The United States also lacks the financial resources. Iraq alone has already cost several hundred billion borrowed dollars, with experts' estimates putting the ultimate cost in excess...

Imagine knocking on America's door and being told: "Americans don't live here any longer. They have gone away." But isn't that what we are hearing, that Americans have gone away? Alan Shore told us so on ABC's "Boston Legal" on March 14: "When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out not to be true, I expected the American people to rise up. They didn't. (That's because Americans know Saddam was a bad guy) "Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced, and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn...

The Great American Job Sellout Free trade policies that force US companies to outsource or import foreign labors are dramatically affecting opportunity for American middle class. Paul Craig Roberts examined this in March 2005. Americans are being sold out on the jobs front. Americans' employment opportunities are declining as a result of corporate outsourcing of US jobs, H-1B visas that import foreigners to displace Americans in their own country, and federal guest worker programs. President Bush and his Republican majority intend to legalize the aliens who hold down wages for construction companies and cleaning services. In order to stretch...

On March 11, the former Serbian leader and president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, died in his prison cell at The Hague, where he had been on trial for four years and one month for war crimes and genocide. The Serbian Socialist Party leader Zoran Andelkovic responded to the news of Milosevic's death with the following statement: "Slobodan Milosevic, the president of the Socialist Party of Serbia and a former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia was murdered today at the tribunal in Hague. The decision of the tribunal to disallow Milosevic's medical treatment at the Bakunin Institute in Moscow represents a...

Paul Craig Roberts and the Certifiable Right By Ben Johnson FrontPageMagazine.com | March 17, 2006 Quick – what columnist alleged in an article Thursday that President “Bush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to bring war about?” That Bush has used “bribery and coercion” to block “every effort to bring the dispute to a peaceful end”? That “in order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran,” he and a “’black opts’ [sic.] group will orchestrate [an] attack” on U.S. soil? One would never expect to hear the author is “chairman of the Institute for Political...

How Economic News is Spun Paul Craig Roberts Friday, March 3, 2006 Readers ask me to reconcile the jobs and debt data that I report to them with the positive economic outlook and good news that comes to them from regular news sources. Some readers are being snide, but most are sincere. I am pleased to provide the explanation. First, let me give my reassurances that the numbers I report to you come straight from official U.S. government statistics. I do not massage the numbers or rework them in any way. I cannot assure you that the numbers are perfectly...

Who can forget the neocons' claim that under their leadership America creates its own reality? Remember the neocons' Iraq reality – a "cakewalk" war? After three years of combat, thousands of casualties and cost estimated at over $1 trillion, real reality must still compete with the White House spin machine. One might think that the Iraq experience would restore sober judgment to policymakers. Alas, neocon reality has spread everywhere. It has infected the media and the new Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, who just gave Congress an upbeat report on the economy. The robust economy, he declared, could soon lead...

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is. Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is. Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The U.S. economy was more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and...

After three years of war in Iraq, reporting and debate continue to ignore the key fact: The U.S. invasion was a mistake. President Bush himself acknowledges this. He says the war was based on intelligence and the intelligence was wrong. So, then, what is right about the war? If we believe Bush, he would not have taken America and Iraq to war if he had been given correct, instead of incorrect, intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaida. In view of this, why is Bush intent on continuing the war? Why is it important to win...

A provision in the "Patriot Act" creates a new federal police force with power to violate the Bill of Rights. You might think that this cannot be true, as you have not read about it in newspapers or heard it discussed by talking heads on TV. However, it is a looming reality. Go to House Report 109-333 - "USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005," and check it out for yourself. Sec. 605 states the following: "There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.'" This new...

On Friday, Feb. 3, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the nonfarm payroll jobs report for January. New York Times reporter Vikas Bajaj wrote an upbeat news story, obviously based on a Labor Department press release rather than any study of the BLS report. If the rosy view of Ethan Harris, chief economist for Lehman Brothers, is typical, Wall Street has no more idea than Bajaj of what the jobs report really says. The export and import-competitive sectors of the U.S. economy have been tanking for a long time. To keep the story manageable, let's just go back to January...

What happened to a formerly conservative press to reduce it to political partisanship and warmongering? Specifically, I have in mind National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. When I was associated with National Review, the magazine understood that the U.S. Constitution and civil liberty had to be protected from government. It was not considered unpatriotic to take the side of the Constitution and civil liberty against a sitting government, even if the government were Republican. Some things were still more important than party loyalty. No more. Consider, for example, Byron York writing in the Feb. 13 issue. York...

In keeping with its established role as purveyor of disinformation, Fox "News" talking head Brit Hume misreported Fox's own poll. On the Jan. 26 "Special Report," Hume said that 51 percent of Americans "would now support" air strikes on Iran. What the poll found is that if diplomacy fails, 51 percent would support air strikes. Can we be optimistic and assume that the American public would not regard an orchestrated failure by the Bush administration as a true diplomatic failure? Alas, we cannot expect too much from a population in thrall to disinformation. The "evidence" that Iran is pursuing nuclear...

Two recent polls, a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll and a New York Times-CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is getting away with impeachable offenses. Half of the U.S. population is incapable of acquiring, processing and understanding information.(He's talking about himself here) Much of the problem is the media itself, which serve as a disinformation agency for the Bush administration. Fox "News" and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all of the media are affected to some degree. Despite the media's failure, about half the population has managed to discern...

As coincidence would have it, Mark Crispin Miller's new book, "Fooled Again" (Basic Books), documenting the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election, arrived in the same mail delivery with the Jan. 12 edition of the Defuniak Springs Herald, the locally owned weekly newspaper in a Florida panhandle county seat. The Florida panhandle is thoroughgoing Republican. Even Democrats run as Republicans. Nevertheless, the newspaper's editor, Ron Kelley, believes that American political life is measured by something larger than party affiliation. In his editorial, "The Shepherds and the Sheep," Kelley reports that two Florida counties have banned any further use of...

Is there a person anywhere in the world who still thinks there is an ounce of sanity in the Bush administration? If so, let that person read John Bolton’s orders to Syria in the January 24 online edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. [UN Security Council calls on Syria to comply with Lebanon By The Associated Press] Bolton is Bush’s unconfirmed ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, a neoconservative warmonger, has managed to get the UN Security Council on January 23 to instruct Syria to disband and disarm the Lebanese militias. Bolton says, "I hope in Damascus they read it...