The Scariest Chart – Calculated Risk. Click to embiggen
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
OK, so you might have noticed a few headlines the last few days talking about how the economy is getting better, unemployment is dropping, and we’re all going to win Powerball tonight and retire tomorrow with our sparkly ponies.
Yeah, I ain’t holding my breath on any of those things either.
Yes, the economy is getting a little better. Slightly. But not to a level to make an appreciable difference to the millions of long term un and underemployed. As David Dayen noted at FDL News on Friday:
The reason that the unemployment rate was able to tick down, however, is that the labor force participation rate remained unchanged at 64.0%. This low participation rate means that, even with the economy growing and the job market improving, a fair number of able-bodied workers have not rejoined the labor force. When they do, and when the labor force participation rate increases, that will put upward pressure on that topline unemployment rate. And unless everyone came into found money, that’s fated to happen. The employment-population ratio also remained unchanged in December (58.5%), despite the job additions. The average workweek and average pay went up very slightly over the month.
Even if those folks who have given up and left the workforce were to stay away and not return, it will still take years for the current problems to right themselves.
Let’s pretend that we stay on the current level of seeing the official unemployment rate drop .2% each month. At the end of 2012, the unemployment rate would be at 6.1%, a number that sounds much better than it has been. But that number would still not be addressing the millions of folks working part time (probably minimum wage) jobs who want full time employment. Nor does it account for all the folks forced into being “independent contractors” or all the college grads from 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 still trying to get their first position in their fields.
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
Each week on Thursday, there’s a report of the Initial Jobless Claims for the week before. Like many of the earlier weeks, last week’s report forced the headline writers to find the lone tidbit of almost good news to concentrate on in their ledes. From Reuters:
(Reuters) – Americans filed fewer new claims for jobless benefits last week but the decline was not enough to dispel worries the economy was dangerously close to falling into a new recession.
Applications for unemployment benefits dropped 9,000 to 423,000 in the week ended September17, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was roughly in line with expectations.l
Of course, once again, the earlier report had been revised upwards (from 428K reported on September 15). It is not going too far out on a limb to predict that the 423K reported for September 22 will be revised upwards on September 29.
Two things seem clear, however. Across the country, a greater level of demand growth is necessary to boost employment. And at the same time, there are places within the country experiencing strong growth which aren’t producing the jobs we’d expect them to. If America could find ways to make San Jose just a little more like Dallas, that might make a meaningful dent in America’s employment problems.
MSNBC offered this article with a touch of good news involved, i.e., that there is some hiring going on, although not to a level necessary to reduce the official un and underemployment rates. One point to note from that MSNBC link – all the reasons offered for the slow hiring have to do with demand levels and not the skills of the workers.
Today’s (Tuesday, September 27) NY Times had this article analyzing some BLS figures on how the economic map is being redrawn due to the lingering economic ill-effects:
When the unemployment rate rose in most states last month, it underscored the extent to which the deep recession, the anemic recovery and the lingering crisis of joblessness are beginning to reshape the nation’s economic map.
The once-booming South, which entered the recession with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, is now struggling with some of the highest rates, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.
Several Southern states — including South Carolina, whose 11.1 percent unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the nation — have higher unemployment rates than they did a year ago. Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.
…snip…
The long cycle of “lose jobs, gain jobs, lose jobs” that kept Georgia’s unemployment rate at 10.2 percent in August — the same as it was a year earlier — is illustrated by Union City, a small city on the outskirts of Atlanta.
It suffered a blow when the last store in its darkened mall, Sears, announced that it would soon close. But the city had other irons in the fire: a few big companies were hiring, and earlier this year Dendreon, a biotech company that makes a cancer drug, opened a plant there, lured in part by state and local subsidies.
Then, this month, Dendreon said it would lay off more than 100 workers at the new plant as part of a national “restructuring.”
…snip…
In a sign of how severe the downturn has been, the Brookings analysis found that only 16 of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas have regained more than half of the jobs they lost during the recession.
So here we are. After all the years of hearing about the Rust Belt failing everyone and how the South was the leader in everything, well, maybe not so much. Businesses will accept all the subsidies and tax breaks in the world, but they will cut and run at the slightest sign of problems. Of course, I’m from a small town in Kentucky that bragged over the years about bringing in jobs from the Rust Belt (make sure you use plenty of Post-It Notes to keep the folks in my hometown working). I would almost suggest the governors of Georgia and South Carolina might want to contact their rust belt counterparts for some advice except that most of the governors involved seem to be intent on learning the wrong lessons.
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
So, here we are, waiting for President Obama to give his long awaited “Jobs” speech tonight. However, from the news reports and “analyses” in the TradMed speculating on the content and potential proposals I will not be holding my breath on there being much if anything worthwhile coming out of the speech. The cliche of “too little, too late” most comes to mind. While CNN had this report today on the stimulus from February 2009 having created jobs, it was nowhere near large enough. This article from Center for Economic and Policy Research from October ’10, points out that there was a need for a stimulus nearly three times the size of the $787B from February ’09.
We are and have been in an employment/jobs crisis for years now. Even while the official unemployment figure stays above 9%, even optimistic projections have unemployment to stay high through 2012, some projections have the high unemployment continuing as far out as 2020. Unfortunately, the current White House seems to be more willing to pretend to do something for show rather than actually doing something that will be effective.
As always, there are just some things that I do not understand. A large part of President’s Obama’s plan is further tax cuts (or rather, extending existing tax cuts such as the payroll tax cut). We have fairly strong evidence starting with the initial Bush tax cuts in 2001, that tax cuts have created few if any jobs over the past ten years yet we continue to be presented with tax cuts as a job creating panacea. Read the rest of this entry →
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
So here we are, coming to the end of another month with limited economic growth. Friday (August 26), the Commerce Department downgraded the second quarter US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 1.3% as initially reported to 1%. Via Reuters:
The rate of growth between April and June was cut from the government’s first reading of 1.3 percent and followed a lethargic 0.4 percent pace in the first three months of 2011.
This means the economy grew only 0.7 percent in the first half of the year. Nonetheless, and despite a sharp fall in consumer confidence this month, economists do not believe the economy will fall back into recession.
Note for those with short memories – the first quarter GDP was initially reported at 1.8%, upped to 1.9% with some fanfare before being downgraded to .4%. That seems to be a bit of a trend these past few weeks and months where the various economic indicators get revised in a negative direction (negative that is in relation to what would be good news). For example, when the Initial Unemployment Claims for last week came out on Thursday, the previous week’s claims were revised upwards (via CNN):
The number of first-time filers for unemployment benefits rose to 417,000 in the week ending Aug. 20, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s up 5,000 from a revised 412,000 the prior week.
The original report for the previous week was at 408K so the upwards revision was 4K. Since the business reporters like to latch onto a factoid or two to try to explain things, they’ve all seemingly latched onto the point that some striking Verizon workers had filed claims. But the number provided was 8.5K which means even without the Verizon worker claims (which will most likely be denied as strikers are rarely allowed to collect unemployment), it would still have the initial claims at 408.5K. From the previously linked CNN article:
In most states, workers on strike are not eligible for unemployment benefits. And the weekly initial claims number merely reflects applications for the benefits — not all of which will be approved and paid out.
"Trickle Down Economy Bin" by LauraFries.com on flickr
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
Trickle down economics is the phrase that has often been supplied to describe whatever current flavor of economics theory being propounded that says cutting taxes for the well-to-do is the quickest path to an economic nirvana. Supply-side is just one of the variants of this from over the years.
While what I just described is the most commonly used version of “trickle-down,” we are now seeing examples of true trickle-down, i.e., the trickle-down of pain through the economy from all the various budget cuts at all levels of government. The past two days the Tampa Tribune has had articles showing the affects of cuts. First up is this one from yesterday on cuts for caregivers of the disabled:
The state Agency for Persons with Disabilities needs to slash about $90 million in services this year to meet its budget. The cuts not only affect contract workers like Davison, but employees in group homes who coordinate training programs, community outings and other activities for the disabled.
About 33,000 people in Florida with developmental disabilities like Cherta go through the agency to find companions who will not only care for them but also find ways to make them a part of their communities.
The agency serves about 50,000 people with autism, cerebral palsy, spina bifida and intellectual disabilities.
"Good News and Bad News" by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com on flickr
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
Well, here we go again. As usual, the past couple of weeks there have been a few articles on how the economy really isn’t THAT bad. In fact, that was a large part of the title of this article from McClatchy while USA Today offered up this from a Maria Bartiromo interview with the head of AIG, Robert Benosche (with a McCainesque “There’s a core of strength to the economy”). However once again, the reality on the ground rears up to refute the cheerleaders. Today’s (Thursday, August 18) Initial Unemployment Claims report for last week is out and the numbers are back over the dreaded 400k line once again (via Reuters):
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 408,000, the Labor Department said.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 400,000. The prior week’s figure was revised up to 399,000 from the previously reported 395,000.
Given that the trend the last few weeks has been for an upwards revision of the previous week’s numbers, I am not at all surprised at the upward revision from 395K initially reported to the 399K (although since I did not write a post on last week’s report, I can’t claim to have officially predicted the revision.)
Last Thursday, CNN had this article showing the lost jobs holes each state has to crawl out of to regain their pre-recession jobs numbers, especially when the new job seekers and residents for each state are factored in. Meanwhile, we got to ‘enjoy’ President Obama’s photo opMidwest bus tour this week (not to be confused with Cincinnati’s own Midwestern Hayride). Even though the lack of jobs has been an economic crisis for months years now, the elected officials, when they see fit to do something seem most intent on doing the wrong things. Marcy Wheeler has taken a few whacks at the stupidity of “free trade,” deficit reduction clueslessness, and the White House propensity for rhetoric over accomplishment, but I have to chime in with a big WTF over this NY Times article from this past Sunday: Read the rest of this entry →
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
Yesterday, I wrote about my prediction for an “official” double-dip recession. One of the points I covered was the release by the Commerce Department of the second quarter GDP figures (along with the downward revision of the figures for the first quarter 2011 back to before the start of the Great Recession/Lesser Depression.)
Today, I have seen a couple of articles pointing out that the (lack of) government spending at all levels has been a large factor in the “disappointing” GDP figures. First up is this blog post from yesterday’s Washington Post with the title “GDP Shocker: ‘Much of the drag was government’:
So what was the problem?
Government, according to Faucher. “The major drag came from government, on both the federal and state and local sides. Government subtracted 1.2 percentage points from growth in the first quarter, with the federal government accounting for about two-thirds of that,” he said.
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
The weekly report of Initial Unemployment Claims is out today (via Reuters):
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 398,000, the Labor Department said.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims falling to 415,000. The prior week’s figure was revised up to 422,000 from the previously reported 418,000.
I do hope the Beltway Village Idiots Pundits, Politicians, and Courtiers don’t make too much of this news however. The 400K figure does seem to be a magic line for most but my guess/prediction is that after revision (which may or may not be reported), it will wind up back over 400K for the week. The upward revision of the numbers from the week before has seemingly become a staple on the reporting of this metric.
While the DeeCee folks do their Debt Ceiling/Deficit/Austerity Danse Macabre, there have been a few reports in the TradMed to remind the clueless of the realities being faced by millions of people who are not cocooned within the fog of life in the Beltway. Not that these articles penetrate the consciousness of most Villagers, given how they seem to always like to double down on the policy while “improving the messaging,” but we can still hope they might see the light at some point, if only to protect their careers.
First up is this from the NY Times’ Catherine Rampell from Tuesday (July 26), pointing out once again that many employers refuse to hire the unemployed, serving only to make things that much worse for the millions of long term un and underemployed:
A recent review of job vacancy postings on popular sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Craigslist revealed hundreds that said employers would consider (or at least “strongly prefer”) only people currently employed or just recently laid off.
…snip…
Legal experts say that the practice probably does not violate discrimination laws because unemployment is not a protected status, like age or race. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently held a hearing, though, on whether discriminating against the jobless might be illegal because it disproportionately hurts older people and blacks.
…snip…
Government incentives for companies to hire unemployed workers have met with limited success. One such tax incentive from last year was poorly publicized, so most employers did not know about it. Better publicity may not suffice, either. An experiment from the 1980s found that telling companies that the unemployed were eligible for generous wage subsidies actually made employers less likely to hire such workers.
I’m not sure if this blog post from Rampell at the NY Times Economix from Monday (July 25) was intended as a companion to the Tuesday article, but there is some reinforcement of the themes:
One of many reasons blamed for (Western) Europe’s stagnant growth in recent decades has been that so many European adults are not working, and are effectively not employable because they have been out of jobs for so long. The United States, on the other hand, has had a much higher share of its population in gainful employment. In fact, between 1980 and 2000, the percent of adults working was on average about 10 percentage points higher in the United States than in Europe.
…snip…
It’s not clear whether the gap between employment-population ratios in the United States and Europe will continue to shrink. Certainly it does not help that the United States has been accumulating a huge underclass of long-term unemployed workers. As we’ve noted before, the longer people are out of work, the harder it is to find them a new job.
Which is exactly the experience Europe had seen, and that the United States hadn’t learned from, in decades past.
Amazing! US politicians not learning from all the previous economic problems across the world. Hoocoudanode? Of course, one glaringly large difference between Western Europe and the US is that Western Europe has a far more robust social safety net protecting its citizens.
Tuesday’s Washington Post had this article on polling showing dissatisfaction with President Obama’s handling of the economy. Of course, in a slightly buried lede, the polling shows even more dissatisfaction with Congressional Republicans:
More than a third of Americans now believe that President Obama’s policies are hurting the economy, and confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding among his base, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
But Americans’ discontent does not stop there. The survey also found that Americans harbor negative feelings toward congressional Republicans. Roughly as many people blame Republican policies for the poor economy as they do Obama. But 65 percent disapprove of the GOP’s handling of jobs, compared to 52 percent for the president.
Now whatever could the elected officials do that could improve their standing with their nominal constituents? Well, this article from the Washington Post just might offer a small clue:
As Congress debates how to meet the nation’s long-term transportation needs, decaying roads, bridges, railroads and transit systems are costing the United States $129 billion a year, according to a report issued Wednesday by a professional group whose members are responsible for designing and building such infrastructure.
Complex calculations done for the American Society of Civil Engineers indicate that infrastructure deficiencies add $97 billion a year to the cost of operating vehicles and result in travel delays that cost $32 billion.
…snip…
Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the necessary spending was “not just transportation for transportation’s sake.”
“Without more robust economic growth, the U.S. will not create the 20 million jobs needed in the next decade to replace those lost during the recession and to keep up with a growing workforce,” he said.
Ultimately, Americans would get paid less, the ASCE report says. The economy would lose jobs, and the paychecks of those who are able to find work would be cut by nearly 30 percent.
It is not often that I find myself even remotely close to agreeing with Mr Donohue but in this instance he is correct. I’m sure we would not be remotely close on how to go about fixing things but still, it’s a start. And in reality, it’s not as if this should be coming as a surprise to people. The collapse of the I35 bridge in Minneapolis a few years ago brought the infrastructure issue to the fore but as seems to be the norm these days, even if there is agreement on an issue, the solution(s) seem to defy agreement.
It does seem to me though that an investment in repairing the US infrastructure (bridges, roads, dams, sewers, etc) could go a long way to repairing the US economy. Yes, it would require a $2T – $3T investment by governments at all levels. But this investment would start to be recouped immediately by the taxes paid by the newly hired workers and by the further economic ripple of jobs throughout local economies all over the country. Not to mention the savings of the $129B in not having to cover vehicle repairs and lost time from the decaying infrastructure.
It is such a simple solution isn’t it? So very simple that we can pretty much guarantee that nothing like it will be done since it would benefit millions of people without necessarily bringing immediate partisan benefit to one party or the other.
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
Well today’s (Thursday, July 21) report of Initial Unemployment Claims from last week is out and once again, the numbers show little improvement (via Reuters):
Separately, initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 to 418,000, the Labor Department said, above economists’ expectations for a rise to 410,000.
The Reuters article is a revision of their initial report which had noted that last week’s number had once again been revised upwards, from the originally reported 405K to 408K. At least they didn’t say the “economists are surprised” for once.
Buried way down at the bottom of the Reuters article are these little nuggets of information:
The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid dropped 50,000 to 3.70 million in the week ended July 9.
The number of Americans on emergency unemployment benefits declined 80,133 to 3.15 million in the week ended July 2, the latest week for which data is available.
A total of 7.33 million people were claiming unemployment benefits during that period under all programs, down 159,000 from the prior week. Read the rest of this entry →
"François, it's just good business" by dawpa2000 on Flickr
Author’s Note: Please take a few minutes and Join the Firedoglake Membership Program today. FDL provides the tools that help me and others extend our reach with our rants so we need to support FDL when we can.
“Business Friendly Climate” is one of the buzz phrases we see and hear a bit more frequently these days. I guess it is a phrase that may have always been around to some extent but is not just limited to the business press. But what exactly does “Business Friendly Climate” actually mean? Googling the phrase brings up millions of pages of hits with apparently every state, city, and town in the country making the claim for themselves. President Obama says the US must become Business Friendly to create jobs. But to me, the more often I see and hear the phrases “business friendly” or “good for businesses,” the more I become convinced that the end result will be something that is bad for humans and bad for living, breathing entities.
Buffeted by high taxes, strict regulations and uncertain state budgets, a growing number of California companies are seeking friendlier business environments outside of the Golden State.
…snip…
While not all companies investing elsewhere are doing so for economic reasons, some are shopping around for lower costs, lighter regulations, stable leadership and government assistance and incentives.
The most popular places to go? Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Virginia and North Carolina, said Vranich. All rank in the Top 13 places to do business, according to Chief Executive.
And there it is. “Looser environmental regulations…” From the article:
WASHINGTON — Republicans in the House of Representatives are waging an all-out war to block federal regulations that protect the environment.
They loaded up a pending 2012 spending bill with terms that would eliminate a broad array of environmental protections, everything from stopping new plants and animals from being placed on the endangered species list to ending federal limits on water pollution in Florida,
The terms also include a rollback of pollution regulations for mountaintop mining and a red light on federal plans to prevent new uranium mining claims near the Grand Canyon.
Another Republican-sponsored bill that’s before Congress would weaken the nation’s 1972 Clean Water Act, taking away the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to step in when it finds state water-pollution rules too loose.
It’s OK to poison the earth, air, and water but doG forbid anything should be done to stop businesses, right? Just today, the NY Times had this article on how a recently approved herbicide may be killing trees:
Manufactured by DuPont and conditionally approved for sale last October by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Imprelis is used for killing broadleaf weeds like dandelion and clover and is sold to lawn care professionals only. Reports of dying trees started surfacing around Memorial Day, prompting an inquiry by DuPont scientists.
…snip…
In a June 17 letter to its landscape customers, Michael McDermott, a DuPont products official, seemed to put the onus for the tree deaths on workers applying Imprelis. He wrote that customers with affected trees might not have mixed the herbicide properly or might have combined it with other herbicides. DuPont officials have also suggested that the trees may come back, and have asked landscapers to leave them in the ground.
Mr. McDermott instructed customers in the letter not to apply the herbicide near Norway spruce or white pine, or places where the product might drift toward such trees or run off toward their roots.
…snip…
Imprelis is not approved for use in New York and California because both states have separate review procedures for such products. New York State officials say they have told DuPont that it has detected two problems: the herbicide does not bind with soil, and it leaches into groundwater. The state has told DuPont it will therefore not allow Imprelis to be sold unless the company provides evidence to the contrary.
Good for New York and California. And this leads me right to the point. With all the articles around the Toobz on “business friendly” there are a couple I’ve found, pointing out some of the fallacies of the phrase. Both Bloomberg with this opinion piece from last Friday and the Fiscal Times also from last Friday had pieces pointing out how the “Texas Economic Miracle” so often touted by Gov Goodhair isn’t so much of a miracle after all. From the Bloomberg piece:
It’s easy to be charmed by Texas, but it would be a mistake to think the state might serve as a national model. Texas created almost 250,000 jobs in the past two years, nearly as many as the other 49 states combined. Texas leaders, including Republican Governor Rick Perry, credit that success to low taxes and a business-friendly regulatory approach.
Yes and no. Those factors played a role. To a sizable degree, however, the state’s booming payrolls are the result of hard-to-duplicate factors, such as a fast-growing population, and unusually low wages.
Of course, the businesses surely do love the low wages aspect. But even in Texas, try living on minimum wage. And I have to be honest, there are many parts of the opinion piece conclusions (passing the so-called “Free Trade Agreements” and repatriating overseas profits at a much lower rate for example) that I find just as wrong as touting low wages as something that is good for people.
The Fiscal Times piece offers a different set of reasons for how maybe Texas isn’t quite the shining star:
There’s just one problem with that portrayal. While Texas has created more jobs than any other state in the past two years, the increase is far less than advertised, and the rate is not much higher than a number of other states, including former rustbelt centers like Pennsylvania or liberal sanctuaries like Vermont. In fact, the Lone Star State’s unemployment rate of 8 percent is ranked 24th among states, placing it squarely in the middle of the pack.
Moreover, to the extent Texas has done better than other areas of the country, most of its good fortune rests on conditions that are not replicable elsewhere: soaring oil prices have provided a substantial number of new jobs and tax revenue even as higher gas prices put pressure on other state budgets, and an influx of new government defense spending has pumped up revenue. Moreover, the state has used oil revenue to postpone a sharp cutback in state and local government employment, which is about to hit in full force.
In addition, Texas eluded the housing price bubble and thus did not suffer as much from price declines and foreclosures. After the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, which hit Texas hard, the state legislature tightened mortgage regulations. Even though Perry touts a free market economy, the new mortgage rules saved Texas from the worst effects of the national housing bust, even as construction employment fell by 95,000 and remains 14% below its pre-recession peak.
Why imagine that! Those dastardly, no good, very bad regulations that seem to be the root of all evil for businesses actually protected people in Texas from the very worst parts of the Great Recession.
Too bad the Beltway Village Idiots Politicians, Pundits, and Courtiers can’t see how eviscerating environmental regulations, banking regulations and such will not protect them from the effects of un-breathable air, poisoned ground and water or destroyed financial markets. I think it may just be a matter of finding which Dystopian or Apocalyptic fiction winds up being closest to the eventual reality of life on earth. Any predictions?
MyFDL is the community site of progressive political blog Firedoglake. Anyone can participate by writing a diary, commenting on others’ diaries, or joining groups to find other people in your area. Content posted to MyFDL is the opinion of the author alone, and should not be attributed to Firedoglake.
