Downbeat goes on “Who’ll stop the pain?” asks Paul Krugman, but finds no answer as a meeting of bankers at the Federal Reserve predicts high unemployment through the end of 2011. Krugman says this isn’t your father’s recession (think 1981-82), but more like your grandfather or great-grandfather’s Great Depression.
Over at Politico, Matthew Dallek debunks the debunkers, notably Amity Shlaes, whose Forgotten Man claims that the New Deal failed to employ people or stimulate the economy. He cites historians to show the fallacies and outright deceptions in the popular right-wing screed:
Shlaes cited unemployment figures that excluded Americans who had New Deal-generated jobs, and she virtually ignored what Rauchway calls “the authoritative reference work Historical Statistics of the United States.” That reference book shows that during FDR’s first term, the real GDP grew by some 9 percent annually; and after the 1937-38 recession, the economy grew at an annual clip of 11 percent. By the fall of 1934, another New Deal historian, William E. Leuchtenburg, explains, “the ranks of the unemployed had been reduced by over 2 million and national income stood almost a quarter higher than in 1933.”
Fool on the Hill? Minnesota’s own embarrassment, Michelle Bachmann, is at it again. In an interview on conservative KTLK radio, Bachmann told one whopper after another. Daily Kos observes: “There are lies, there is stupidity, there are stupid lies, there are migraine-inducingly-stupid slanderous lies, and then there are Bachmannisms,” but for a point-by-point analysis, go to Washington Monthly. The ACORN lie is a good example: “Bachman ‘explained’ … ACORN is ‘under federal indictment for voter fraud,” but the stimulus bill nevertheless gives ACORN “$5 billion.’ (In reality, ACORN is not under federal indictment and isn’t mentioned in the stimulus bill at all.)”
Of course, as embarrassing as Bachmann is for Minnesota, we are in good company: Illinois has its own Roland Burris embarrassment in the Senate.
MN Job Watch U.S. Steel is laying off almost 600 workers at its Minntac mine in Mountain Iron, reports Jessica Mador at MPR. That’s almost half the workforce. Mountain Iron mayor Gary Skalko said the layoffs will have a massive ripple effect because most industry in the area is mining related.
Last month’s Best Buy announcement of future layoffs materialized Thursday, reports Martin Moylan on MPR, with pink slips for 250, and a posting of 210 new jobs. That’s a net loss of 40 jobs, and you can bet that the 210 new jobs pay less than the 250 that are ending. In the Strib, Jackie Crosby notes:
The company, which is the nation’s largest consumer-electronics retailer, now has slashed 13.5 percent of its corporate workforce in recent months as sales at its more than 1,175 stores have plunged. …
Best Buy in not alone in its struggles to remain profitable during the nation’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In 2008, retailers eliminated more than half a million jobs, about 20 percent of the 2.6 million layoffs that occurred nationwide.
And AP reports that February looks like another “brutal month,” as “the number of people receiving regular unemployment benefits rose by 170,000 to 4.99 million for the week ending Feb. 7, marking the fourth straight week continuing claims have hit a record.”
Building plans in Minneapolis Bridges, scattered-site public housing, and a pedestrian mall for the Convention Center area are among the priorities for federal stimulus spending in Minneapolis, reports Steve Brandt in the Strib. It will be a while before projects and programs get sorted out, but other candidates include energy conservation and weatherization, lead abatement, job training, and law enforcement. Part of the federal money will come in a pot of $3.7 million for the community development block grant fund.
Around the world Right-wing Likud party chief Benjamin Netanyahu will form the next Israeli government, 10 days after an inconclusive parliamentary election, reported Ha’aretz. Netanyahu was prime minister before, in the 1990s, and will now have six weeks to put together a caoalition cabinet. Centrist Kadima party leader Tzipi Livni said her party won’t be part of the coalition. Likud has 27 seats in the 120-member parliament, and Kadima has 28, but smaller right-wing parties hold the balance, and Ha’aretz reports that extreme right-winger Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party will play a key role.
In DR Congo, the FDLR Rwandan Hutu militia killed more than a hundred civilians in the last month, reports BBC, as a joint Congolese-Rwandan military force hunted them down. Though Rwandan officials say the FDLR killed almost 50 people this week, the joint force says it has achieved 95% of its objectives and Rwandan troops will leave next week. The FDLR militia is estimated to number more than 6,000 and has been linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In January, Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda was arrested, and some of his CNDP militia are now being integrated into the Congolese army. BBC reports that “On-and-off fighting involving the CNDP, FDLR, the army and pro-government militias has forced more than one million people in North Kivu to flee their homes since late 2006.”
Argentina has ordered the ultra-traditionalist, Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson to leave the country, reports BBC. The Pope lifted the bishop’s excommunication (on an unrelated matter) in January. Then his anti-Holocaust and anti-women views became widely-publicized, embarrassing the Vatican. The pope ordered him to recant — he hasn’t — but so far has taken no further action.
A suicide bomber killed more than 30 people and wounded more than 50 in the Pakistani city of Dera Ismail Khan today, reports Pir Zubair Shah in the NYT. The bomber targeted the funeral of a Shiite Muslim man, and was followed by mob attacks on local security forces and shops. Sunni-Shiite strife has been frequent in the city, with six suicide attacks in recent months.
Coleman keeps losing On Wednesday, the three-judge panel refused to hear testimony from conservative blogger King Banaian, who was set to testify about inconsistencies between counties in rejecting absentee ballots. This is what the Coleman campaign now calls an “equal protection” issue, reports Jay Weiner in MinnPost. Of course, classic equal protection arguments require some government action that adversely affects a protected class of people, not just random differences between counties. In the judges’ opinion:
“The Court will be reviewing all ballots presented according to the uniform standard contained [in Minnesota law]. It is irrelevant whether there were irregularities between the counties in applying [Minnesota law] prior to this election contest.”
Mary Turck