CONSUMER CONFIDENCE IN SEPTEMBER IS OUTSTANDING, HIGHEST SINCE AUGUST 2007

More signs that the economy is good.  Consumer confidence is high* and household income is soaring.**  (Quotations from article are in italics.)

A key measure of consumers' attitudes increased in September, to its highest level since the recession.

The Consumer Confidence Index hit 104.1 in September, The Conference Board said on Tuesday. Economists expected the Consumer Confidence Index to hit 99.0 in September, down from August's revised reading of 101.8, according to Thomson Reuters consensus estimate.

 (Click on figure to enlarge)

A larger share, 27.9 percent of those surveyed, felt that jobs were plentiful in September, up from 26.8 percent in the prior month. Those claiming jobs were "hard to get" declined to 21.6 percent, from 22.8 percent, The Conference Board said.

Well some will never recognize the economy is good because they are the ones left out.  That is capitalism.  Somebody always gets left out.  Presumably this is a rather small number of people.  some people are left out because of not all people benefit fro trade packs, but there is a Federal program to help them:

The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program is a federal program that provides a path for employment growth and opportunity through aid to US workers who have lost their jobs as a result of foreign trade. The TAA program seeks to provide these trade-affected workers with opportunities to obtain the skills, resources, and support they need to become reemployed.***

* http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/27/consumer-confidence-for-september-reported-by-the-conference-board.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-good-do-things-have-to-get-before.html
*** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/07/tpp.html

HOW GOOD DO THINGS HAVE TO GET BEFORE PEOPLE FEEL IT?

The median household income in 2015 increased by 5.2% from 2014 to $56,516, the largest increase in real terms in 17 yrs.*  Household income increased in every region of the U.S. with the largest increase in the West and the smallest in the the South. The increase was also felt by nearly all age groups.  The increase was felt by both full-time, year-around men and women.

An increase in household income does not necessarily mean an increase in individual income because someone in the household may became employed or changed from part-time to full time or one member of the household had a big increase that more than countered small, flat or declining wages of others in the household (I urge you to read the entire article cited. Quotes are in italics.).

(Click on figure to enlarge)

Median household income in 2015 increased for many different demographic groups, including for Hispanic (6.1 percent), non-Hispanic white (4.4 percent) and black (4.1 percent) households. Although median income is highest in Asian households, their median was not statistically different between 2014 and 2015. Note that the increases (6.1 percent, 4.4 percent and 4.1 percent) are not statistically different from each other.
...........................................................................

Further, the increase was experienced by householders in nearly all age groups. By age of householder, the median household income increased for:

• 25- to 34-year-olds (5.6 percent).
• 35- to 44-year-olds (7.0 percent).
• 45- to 54-year-olds (4.2 percent).
• 55- to 64-year-olds (3.5 percent).
• Ages 65 and older (4.3 percent).

Note that the percent increases for each age group were not statistically different from each other.

.............................................................................
The nation’s official poverty rate in 2015 was 13.5 percent, with 43.1 million people in poverty, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014. The 1.2 percentage point decrease in the poverty rate from 2014 to 2015 represents the largest annual percentage point drop in poverty since 1999.

The percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire 2015 calendar year was 9.1 percent, down from 10.4 percent in 2014. The number of people without health insurance declined to 29.0 million from 33.0 million over the period.
..............................................................................
For the second year in a row, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage dropped for every single year of age under 65, according to the American Community Survey.
..............................................................................
The American Community Survey also showed that between 2014 and 2015, the uninsured rate decreased in 47 states and the District of Columbia. The declines for the states ranged from 0.5 percentage points (Massachusetts) to 3.9 percentage points (California). Three states (North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming) did not experience a statistically significant change in their uninsured rate.

* http://blogs.census.gov/2016/09/13/2014-to-2015-median-household-income-is-largest-percentage-increase-since-1998/
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-158.html

SOLAR ENERGY TODAY

Because of the tax advantages, solar energy is really increasing in the U.S.*  New battery technology is helping store solar energy for homes.*

(Click on figure to enlarge)

California is, of course, the largest user of solar energy by far.  Much to my surprise, North Carolina ranked 4th near the end of last year behind Arizona and New Jersey (with NJ also a surprise);**

(Click on figure to enlarge)

A more recent study shows that North Carolina has taken over 2nd place which is even more surprising.***

Something that makes rooftop solar practical is net-metering where excess power is sold to the energy company.****  Power companies are fighting this in a number of places, however.

* http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/solar-is-the-fastest-growing-energy-says-top-fossil-fuel-major
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3068599/sustainable-it/renewables-fastest-growing-energy-source-feds-say.html
http://www.solarcity.com/residential/backup-power-supply
** http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=24852
*** http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article101994067.html
**** http://www.seia.org/policy/distributed-solar/net-metering
http://www.seia.org/policy/distributed-solar

FIXING THE ECONOMY

The WSJ recently published an article by Jeffry Sparshott, "Want to Fix the U.S. Economy?  Start With the Broken Political System."*  Reading the entire particle is highly recommended.  The article contains some quotes  by Harvard Prof. Michael Porter and his colleagues.  Referenced below is the entire 70 page article by Porter and colleagues.**

“The political system is obstructing our economy,” said Michael Porter, a professor and co-author of a new report on U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.
...................................................................
“Overall, we believe that dysfunction in America’s political system has now become the single most important problem facing America,” Mr. Porter and fellow faculty members Jan Rivkin, Mihir Desai and Manjari Raman wrote.  The Sparshott article also contains a number of figures, one of which is shown below demonstarting the decreease in productivity  over the last 60 yrs.

The political problem is caused by the American voters repeatedly voting for gridlock.  When they do throw out some of the rascals, they seem to be replaced by people even worse.   An example is the Tea Party.  I was impressed in the early days of the Tea Party how many of the adherents had been unemployed for a long time.  I can understand that they felt that the government had failed them so who needs it.  I sympathize with such people, but it is hurting America.

What’s the solution?  ... For example, the White House and lawmakers from both parties have long called for an overhaul of the corporate tax code but there hasn’t been any progress. The report also highlights “distortions and abuses” in the international trading system, lagging infrastructure investment, burdensome regulations and an unsustainable federal budget as areas demanding attention.*

But not everything is bleak/  As the WSJ by Sparshott article concedes and  quotes:

To be sure, the outlook isn’t entirely bleak. Messrs. Porter and Rivkin said businesses are taking a more active role in local communities again while local and regional initiatives have been taking the lead on workforce training and infrastructure development.*
“And we have got enormous strengths for which any other country would kill,” Mr. Rivkin said, citing entrepreneurship, innovation, capital markets and management skills. “We’ve got strengths on which we can build, weaknesses we can fix.”*

American business is to be complemented for the remarkable recovery from the Great Recession, a near death financial collapse, where one political party has refused to let the government help; yet complain that the recovery is so slow..

* http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/09/15/want-to-fix-the-u-s-economy-start-with-the-broken-political-system/?mod=djemRTE_h
** http://www.hbs.edu/competitiveness/Documents/problems-unsolved-and-a-nation-divided.pdf

MOTIVATING MINORITY CHILDREN (Biographical)

In the mid to late 1960s, I was induced to join a group whose aim was to motivate 5th grade children in a high-rise, low-cost housing complex in Denver one night a week during the school year.  I wasn't sure how I could contribute, but would try.  The makeup of the development was 90% Hispanic, 5% African American, and 5% other (Caucasian, Asian,, etc.).  It turned out however, that at least half the "classes"* were African American.  I was to learn that there were 20 or so mother's in this complex who would do anything to help their children have a better life than theirs.  Whatever the problems faced by African Americans, the Hispanics problems were worse.

Now I was a research geologist with no training in teaching children so I wondered what I could contribute.  The first thing I noticed was the children had trouble especially with arithmetic: multiplication and division.  So I bought some flash cards and at the beginning of the "class," I would warm up the children with contests as to who could get the right answer first.    As time went on, the competition appealed to the children, especially the boys, and they would spit out the right answers to things like "What is 23 times 22?"  The flash cards went up to 25.  And the children would go home and teach their siblings so that as the years went by, everyone got better, but the African Americans were always the best.  Division was more difficult as you can only do simple division with flash cards.  The children easily mastered these.

I also would attract one or two children to make and paint paper mâché volcanoes.  When done, I would steal some dry ice from work and drop it into a empty Campbell's soup can with some water in it so we could have smoke come out of the volcano. It was lots of fun for both of us.  It was also educational in that I would keep up a patter on volcanoes as we went along and let them know there were opportunities there for a career.

As a scientist, I admit I used to look down my nose at secondary school teachers whose courses were so easy, but, in these meetings, I learned respect for grade school teachers. The teachers had learned something about relating to children that I didn't have.  Remember now, these teachers had spent all day teaching, but came out at night to do some more.  I recall one teacher who looked to me like she was always on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and the children would flock to her and tell her all of their problems.

The school year after the Martin Luther King assassination was tough and not much progress was made.  I figured, however, that the fact that these children were exposed to a Caucasian who didn't hate them was learning enough.

Things got pretty wild for awhile.  One night as I was leaving, a bunch of students were mulling around the lawn in front of the school door yelling things like "Burn the expletive place down."  So I was a bit apprehensive as I opened the door to leave, but I calmed myself with the thought that I had a lot of these kids in the motivational classes, and they didn't seem to hate me.  As I stepped out, three big African American girls that I had in a "class" approached me and said, "Dr, Ford, Dr. Ford, we are going to riot.  We really are going to riot."  To which I replied "Wherever you girls are is a riot."  They laughed and laughed and rolled on the ground.  I then walked to my car, unimpeded, and drove home.

We were told to never let a child back into the "class" once they had advanced to the 6th grade.  The 5th grade was considered the last good year before the children found out what their fate was to be.  I had one African American girl who had "graduated" to the next grade come up to me and beg to be let into the "class" again.  "Dr. Ford, Dr. Ford, please, please, please let me in."  I was weakening when a small African American boy started poking her in the back.  She swing around and kicked the little boy in the stomach.  "I'm sorry, but I really can't let you back in."

There was one African American girl who had a beautiful name - Charlotte Hawkins - who could run faster than the wind.  No one could beat her, not the instructors, male or female, and certainly not me.  She did go on to become a runner of some note in college though she never got to the top.  I hope something good happened to her.

Some wise people decided to introduce some high school students to the "class" on the basis that they could better relate to the 5th graders.  In fact, the high scroll students turned out to be a problem,  they would gather together and talk or show that they really didn't wasn't to be there.  What seemed like a good idea was a big mistake.

In October, I was transferred to Zurich, Switzerland for a year.  When I left, Denver had been in a building boom for several years.  There was lots of optimism in the people of the complex as the men could find work.  When I came back, the building boom was over and the men were out of work again.  Also it seems something happened to one or more of the high school girls and the effort was disbanded. I had looked forward to taking up where I left off, but that part of my life was over. I had no children of my own, so such works were a way of my making a contribution to society.

* I use class in parentheses because they were not classes in the usual sense, but one motivator on one or a few children with the students making the choice of motivator and each motivator did their own thing to help motivate the children.

POINT OF NO RETURN (Biographical)

If you do field geology for any length of time, you run into dangerous situations.  I didn't have many, but I did have a few., for example working in an underground mine * One dealt with returning back to camp after a days work of mapping geology in New Mexico. Normally, there are two of you working together, but, on this day, I was alone.  I was not in very good physical shape because of my bouts with collapsed lungs.  The way back to camp going the way I came was very long so I decided to take a shortcut.

I went to the edge of a cliff of limestone I'd guess was maybe 50 ft high or so and could see the road below that would be easy walking so I decided to climb down the cliff.  It didn't look hard, and I started to pick my way down until I came to a spot where there was no easy way down.  I could see there was a reasonably broad shelf  below so I thought that I could drop down to it and hope there was an easy way down from there that I couldn't see.  It was something like a 10 ft drop onto the shelf.  If I dropped down and there was no way to get down further, I was stuck there until somebody found me, and it wasn't long until it would get dark.

So I edged my way over the little cliff, managing to hold onto the top edge of the cliff with my fingers and dropped onto the shelf below.  It turned out there was an easy way down the rest of the way so I got on the road and walked slowly back to camp.  Beer never tasted so good as when I got back to camp totally exhausted.  After that experience I was given a partner.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/01/working-underground-my-rational-self.html

TRUMP BEST REPUBLICAN?

The reason I feel Donald Trump is the best Republican for president is that so many people who know him say they are surprised at the way he is behaving in the election season.  I have long felt I know he has tailored his political approach to appeal to what has become known as the Deplorables, a term they have in fact adopted.*  As I have said before, he is not leading a group of people, he is following them:**
ALL his comments are carefully crafted to appeal to this large group of people who believe Obama was born outside the U.S., that he is a secret Muslim, that all Hispanic illegals should be deported, that we should build a wall on our southern border, that Muslims should not be allowed to enter America (I suspect many would find the idea appealing that all Muslims should be deported or placed in detention camps.), etc., etc.  It isn't pretty folks but there it is.  You aren't going to solve this hate by getting rid of Trump.  It will still be out there, as Trump is followingthese people, not leading them.

Although Trump is the Flip Flopper In Chief, his overall stance seems to be in line with Republican values. He has a problem with establishment Republicans in that he says out loud what most Republicans believe but think should be only said in private because it doesn't sound good.  Trump favors a tax plan that will enrich the wealthy.  Paul Ryan favors a tax plan that favors enriching the wealthy.  Trump believes that women that have abortions should be punished some way.  Paul Ryan believe that abortion should be illegal.  And so it goes.  The Libertarian Party was established by Republicans that don't follow the Evangelicalism of the Republican Party.  It will be interesting to see how this attempt evolves.  Right now it seems to take more votes from Democrats than Republicans, most of whom seem to accept their party become a religious party.

That said, Trump has fabricated a Hillary who is a genuinely bad person.  Fortunately, that Hillary is not the Hillary running for president.  Hillary Clinton is the one who is running for president, and she has been a long-time advocate for children's upbringing (It Takes A Community To Raise A Child), children's health, etc.), women 's rights, and We Are Stronger Together.  After Barack Obama was nominated for president, Hillary worked hard on his campaign for president, was his Secretary of State, and has wrapped herself in Obama on her current candidacy for president.  That a couple of Hillary's aids in her run for president in 2008 explored the birther issue is mute. She never espoused it and certainly has not pursued it since.  It was no excuse for Trump to the promote the birther issue for five years since.  It is incredible that Republicans think it is,

We are well into the silly season in American politics, and I plan no further discussion of this election cycle.  In fact, I try to avoid all dnews of politics during the rest of this period.  We will see if I can hold onto this.

 *http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/09/im-deplorable_15.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/09/basket-of-deplorables.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2015/12/donald-trump-final-comments-i-hope.html

TAX CUTS AND ECONOMIC STIMULATION

Well, we have it again, Donald Trump has proposed the tired old proposition that, if you cut taxes, the  increased economy resulting from the tax cut will replace the loss of revenue.  Though Ronald Reagan once followed this, he became so alarmed at the Federal deficits he was ringing up that he started increasing taxes again. I believe he did it 12 times and recovered nearly half the revenue lost from his tax cuts.  Reagan never did come close to balancing the budget.

As a result of Reagan increasing taxes, I ended up paying more taxes than I did before his tax cuts.  One of the loop-holes he closed was being able to take interest paid on time purchases from your income tax.  Of course the tax cuts weren't meant for the likes of me, but for the wealthy.

If the proposition was true, why not cut taxes to zero and have infinite Federal revenue?

I discussed years ago (beginning in 2010, my all time favorite) why cutting personal income taxes is an inefficient way of  stimulating the economy.*  The problem is that the wealthy do not spend all their money productively.  For examples, they buy bonds (municipal, Treasuries, corporate, foreign) which can be productive if they are new issues not to pay down other debt (e.g. high interest debt).  They buy existing stock (companies only benefit from selling new issues), and then they spend on luxuries such as Canadian personal Bombardier jets, chalets in Switzerland, island in the Bahamas, and the like.  And the poor pay down debt.  Many of these enrich other countries and are good for the global economy but do nothing for the U.S.

Then we have the example of president "Dubya" Bush who cut taxes a lot, particularly for the wealthy, and plunged us into the near economic death, the Great Recession.  To be fair, it wasn't just the tax cuts that plunged us, but his opposition to regulation of the financial industry that may have been the biggest cause.  Of course having two wars paid for on the cuff (borrowing) didn't help (Disclosure I did support the war in Afghanistan because I thought we had to do something after 9/11, but I didn't support having a tax cut on top of it.).

There are two  types of business tax cuts.  Trump wants to lower the corporate tax rate to 15%.  I'm not sure how much fiscal damage it would do as I believe that is about the rate companies actually pay now because of tax breaks.  GE, for example became famous for, among other things, not paying any corporate taxes for 2010.  GE said that it wasn't true and that they would pay a "small income tax" for 2010.***

The other corporate tax cut that might be beneficial is to permit companies to repatriate money held from profits overseas.  This has been done before and

Buybacks have become a popular use for foreign earnings****
Others are using the cash to pay down debt.
Last month, President Barack Obama proposed letting companies bring back the profits they hold at overseas subsidiaries at a tax rate of 14%, and then proposed taxing foreign earnings going forward at a minimum of 19%.****

Stryker, which makes medical devices, said last year that it earmarked $2 billion for return to the U.S. The company incurred tax bills in Europe when it moved some of its intellectual property to the Netherlands from other European countries and realized that those taxes would help reduce its U.S. tax bill on the money to roughly 5%.

“We will use the funds to drive growth in our existing businesses through investments in acquisitions, dividends and share repurchases, in that order,” said CFO Bill Jellison.****

Some companies also paid out special dividends with a part of the repatriated money and made some acquisitions.****

In 2004, the United States Congress enacted such a tax holiday for U.S. multinational companies, allowing them to repatriate foreign profits to the United States at a 5.25% tax rate.^[1] Under this law, corporations brought $362 billion into the American economy, primarily for the purposes of paying dividends to investors, repurchasing shares, and purchasing other corporations.^[1] In 2011, Senate Democrats, arguing against another repatriation tax holiday, issued a report asserting that the previous effort had actually cost the United States Treasury $3.3 billion, and that companies receiving the tax breaks had thereafter cut over 20,000 jobs.^[2] A second repatriation tax holiday was defeated in the United States Senate in 2009.^[1]

Very little of the money repatriated in 2004 ended up in new productive investments that was the purpose of the low tax rate so corporation cheated.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/05/effectiveness-of-taxes.html
Also see: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/07/trouble-with-income-tax-cuts.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/09/jobs-disconnect-between-business-and.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/06/lowering-tax-myth.html
*** http://www.factcheck.org/2012/04/warren-ge-pays-no-taxes/
**** http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-companies-bring-more-foreign-profit-home-1427154070
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_tax_holiday

JOBLESS CLAIMS AND JOB OPENINGS - JULY 2016

JOBLESS CLAIMS
It was the 80th straight week that claims remained below the 300,000 threshold, which is associated with robust labor market conditions. That is the longest stretch since 1970, when the labor market was much smaller.*

(Click on figure to enlarge)

This is the first time since April that I have posted on jobless claims.

JOBS
Jobs are opening up faster than they can be filled.**

To be sure, millions of workers who gave up looking for a job after the Great Depression have been returning to the workforce, offsetting some of the demographic headwinds.

But an ongoing wave of aging baby boomers is leaving the labor force for good, reducing the number of workers available to fill new jobs.

...................................................................

Employers posted 5.9 million job openings in July, a rate of 3.9 percent, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) report. That compares to 5.62 million job openings in June, according to Thomson Reuters.**

(Click on figure to enlarge)

The reference to the figure below contains some commentary on Donald Trumps economic plan that may interest you.**

* http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/15/us-weekly-jobless-claims-sept-3-2016.html
** http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/15/trumps-25-million-new-jobs-promise-doesnt-add-up.html

TRUMP BUSINESS DEALINGS

Finally someone gets concerned about Trump's business dealings.  I urge you to read the full article in the latest issue of Newsweek and it isn't pretty.  This can be done online, but I include here a few excerpts to give you a flavor of the article (see reference below)

Updated | If Donald Trump is elected president, will he and his family permanently sever all connections to the Trump Organization, a sprawling business empire that has spread a secretive financial web across the world? Or will Trump instead choose to be the most conflicted president in American history, one whose business interests will constantly jeopardize the security of the United States?*
....................................................................
A close examination by Newsweek of the Trump Organization, including confidential interviews with business executives and some of its international partners, reveals an enterprise with deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians and even criminals, although there is no evidence the Trump Organization has engaged in any illegal activities. It also reveals a web of contractual entanglements that could not be just canceled. If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires.*
...................................................................
Trump’s business conflicts with America’s national security interests cannot be resolved so long as he or any member of his family maintains a financial interest in the Trump Organization during a Trump administration, or even if they leave open the possibility of returning to the company later. The Trump Organization cannot be placed into a blind trust, an arrangement used by many politicians to prevent them from knowing their financial interests; the Trump family is already aware of who their overseas partners are and could easily learn about any new ones.*
.....................................................................
The problem of overseas conflicts emerges from the nature of Trump’s business in recent years. Much of the public believes Trump is a hugely successful developer, a television personality and a failed casino operator. But his primary business deals for almost a decade have been a quite different endeavor. The GOP nominee is essentially a licensor who leverages his celebrity into streams of cash from partners from all over the world. The business model for Trump’s company started to change around 2007, after he became the star of NBC’s The Apprentice, which boosted his national and international fame. Rather than constructing Trump’s own hotels, office towers and other buildings, much of his business involved striking deals with overseas developers who pay his company for the right to slap his name on their buildings. (The last building constructed by Trump with his name on it is the Trump-SoHo hotel and condominium project, completed in 2007.)*

* http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/donald-trump-foreign-business-deals-national-security-498081.html
Also see: http://www.newsweek.com/2016/08/12/donald-trumps-business-failures-election-2016-486091.html

I'M DEPLORABLE

Yesterday, I saw some photos of women wearing T-shirts that said, "I'm Deplorable."  Yes, you can buy such T-shirts.  See the figures below.  Do these people really like to admit they are, "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it." and proud of it or that they love such people?  I hope these people wearing such T-shirts are joking, but it is unfortunately a sick joke.

(Click to enlarge)

Apparently there are also T-shirts that says, "Deplorable Lives Matter."

Of course, people are ignoring the other basket  of Trump supporters that Hillary talked about:  "Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but they are not America but the other basket … are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change … they don't buy everything he says but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different."*

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pense has ignored this part of Hillary's speech and enlarges the her basket of half the Trump supporters who are Deplorables to say that she said the entire American people.  But I suppose this exaggeration is just good clean American political fun.

* http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/10/hillary-clinton-half-of-trump-supporters-belong-in-basket-of-deplorables.html
** http://www.bustle.com/articles/183648-donald-trump-supporters-are-wearing-deplorable-lives-matter-shirts-its-just-not-that-clever

BENGHAZI

Perhaps we forget that the Benghazi attack on our diplomatic mission happened on September 11, 2012 four years ago Curiously the fourth anniversary, like the previous three, was peaceful.   Why was there no diplomatic mission attack?  Can it be because there was no inflammatory  happening concerning Mohammad, burning or desecration of Korans, or Islam?

Republicans still like to pretend that the trigger for the Benghazi attack wasn't the anti-Mohammad movie trailer.   Vice-Presidential candidate Mike Pense is the latest Republican to try to sustain this fallacy.  After this trailer appeared, there were uprising throughout the Muslim world.  For example an embassy attack happened in Egypt before Benghazi ,and there were even more severe attacks on following days in which quite a few protesters were killed:

On September 13, protests occurred at the U.S. embassy in Sana'a, Yemen, resulting in the deaths of four protesters and injuries to thirty-five protesters and guards. On September 14, the U.S. consulate in Chennai was attacked, resulting in injuries to twenty-five protesters.^[14] Protesters in Tunis, Tunisia, climbed the U.S. embassy walls and set trees on fire. At least four people were killed and forty-six injured during protests in Tunis on September 15.^[6] Further protests were held at U.S. diplomatic missions and other locations in the days following the initial attacks. Related protests and attacks resulted in numerous deaths and injuries across the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan.*

The only things unusual about Benghazi was an Ambassador being killed  and the small total of those killed totaling only 4 when 31 people were rescued.

Mitt Romney opened a whole new avenue in American politics by politicizing the Benghazi attack, the first time this was done in spite of the attack being smaller than many previous ones.  It was a terrible mistake by Romney to do this as now everything is on the table, making U.S. diplomacy very difficult.**

I repeat here my Quick Summary of Attacks on American Diplomatic Missions:
A Quick Summary Of  Attacks On Diplomatic Missions***  Since the embassy burning in Tripoli in 1979, in 1983 our embassies in Beirut, Lebanon, (63 killed) and Kuwait City, Kuwait, (6 killed) were bombed when Reagan was president along with the Marine Barracks bombing (241 American deaths) plus attacks on U.S. Embassies in Jakarta (1986) and Rome (1987) by the "Red Army" and a failed attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv (1990).  In 1998, U.S. Embassy's in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in which hundreds died when Clinton was president.  George W. Bush had seven attacks on U,.S. facilities including the 2002 attack on the U.S. Center in Kolkata, India, (5 killed) and the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan (12 dead), 2004 the embassy bombing in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (2 killed), Jeddah Consulate bombing (6 killed), 2006 embassy attack in Damascus,Syria (1 killed), 2007 attack on the embassy in Athens, Greece, (no deaths), 2008 attacks on the consulate in Ankara, Turkey, (3 deaths), and on the U.S. embassy in Yemen (16 dead).  Under President Obama, our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked (4 killed) along with 8 other facilities and our embassy in Ankara, Turkey, was bombed in 2013 (1 killed).**

Please note that Republicans have forgiven  Ronald Reagan for the two embassy attacks (both larger than Benghazi) plus the Marine Barracks bombing  in 1983 .  Also note that President George W. Bush had 7 diplomatic mission attacks.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_Innocence_of_Muslims
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-was-movie-trailer-after-all.html
*** *** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_on_diplomatic_missions

BASKET OF DEPLORABLES

(Facebook will not let me cite this piece for reasons unknown)

Hillary Clinton recently said that half of Donald Trump's supporters are a basket of Deplorables.  This is a Donald Trump kind of statement.  It is of the sort that it is all right to think it and even talk about it in private, but not all right to say it out loud in public.*

Actually Hillary was wrong about half of Trump supporters being Deplorables, it is certainly closer to 100% of his base and even larger.  In January of 2016, a poll quoted by the Huffington Post concluded 53% of Republicans still believe Obama is not a U.S. citizen and ineligible to become president, although he was born to an American mother and Kenyan father in Hawaii.  At the same time, 70% of Republicans feel that Ted Cruz is eligible to become president although he was born in Calgary, Canada, to an American mother and a Cuban father.**

There is nothing that can be done about the Republicans ineligible belief.  Even if you show them Obama's birth certificate, they shrug it off as a forgery.

And what about the constant efforts by Republicans to disenfranchise African Americans from voting?

I have known a number of these people where you can't say anything so bad about Obama that they won't believe it.  At the same time, if you stay off of politics, they can be very nice and helpful people.  I've played bridge with some and socialized with them.  They are very nice as long as you stayed off of politics.

These people would try to convert me.  There were a group of retired military officers whose e-mails were so bad that I actually prayed on 9/11 that it wasn't some retired military pilots that crashed into the Twin Towers.  I always hoped these retired military officers were just letting off steam.

* I think it would be interesting to see a poll of Democrats on the issue of Deplorables.  It could well come out with results similar to what Republicans believe about Obama.
** Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona Territory 3 yrs before it became a state.  John McCain was born in Panama but on a U.S. military base to American parents.  Mitt Romney was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, to American parents from Utah Territory.  I don't recall any flap about these on where they were born, but I'm told that there was some discussion about eligibility for president.  Note that all these are Republicans and none became president.

TRUMP AND PUTIN

The coziness of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with Russian dictator Putin really scares me to think about what might happen if Trump becomes president.

I'm confused about Trump being in Putin's pocket as Trump has carefully calculated what stances are promoted by his "base."  I don't recall any of these people that I knew being fond of Putin.  In fact, I seem to remember them accusing Obama and Hillary of being more than cozy with Putin (and still do).  Remember the Russian Reset?*
Making things worse, Podesta never fully disclosed the relationship, as the law requires. But of greater concern than Podesta is what it says about Clinton's strange and mutually beneficial relationship with Russia that led to Clinton lending a hand in helping Vladimir Putin build Skolkovo, a high-tech community meant to be "the Russian equivalent of America's Silicon Valley."
.....................................................................
In a wide-ranging interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Hillary suggested that Donald Trump "has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin, whether it's saying that NATO wouldn't come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together, because of Russia's aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin which is I think quite remarkable."

That said, Donald Trump is the best Republican candidate you can think of.   Ted Cruz, for example is even more scary. Wait, I'll take that back,  There was a fine candidate in the Ohio governor John Kasich.  He had significant congressional experience and has been a popular governor as witnessed by his reelection victory.  He certainly is qualified to be president.  He has passed the supreme Republican litmus tests in that he is against both abortion and Obamacare.  His only sin, so far as I can see, is that he says things like we need to care for those less fortunate than us, and he accepted Federal Medicaid money.**

As I have said elsewhere, if I had to have a Republican president it would be John Kasich, but I don't know if the country can survive another Republican president so soon after George Bush.

* http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/hillarys-biggest-scandal-russia-and-her-reset-pal-vladimir-putin/
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2015/08/expand-medicare-to-repeal-obamacare.html

ON GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT CLASSIFICATION

There is incessant discussion of a Secretary of State e-mails being sent from a private server.  Here is the State Department's definition of Confidential Security  ( grades are Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential from highest to lowest)  I will concentrate on Confidential that I believe is the problem.:
 "Confidential" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.*

Please note the words "unauthorized disclosure."  This is a big difference, for example, between the Department of State discussion and, say, the Gen. Patraeus** problem in which he intentionally gave classified information to his biographer/girlfriend who didn't have security clearance (plus he also lied about it.).  There is no claim that the Secretary of State intentionally disclosed any classification information to unauthorized personnel. The claim is that someone might hack the Secretary's private server and read the e-mails (Actually this has happened to the Dept. of State official computer system.).  In fact the private system was shut down at one point because the company that maintained the server thought it might be being attacked.  Because there was no "unauthorized disclosure" there is no indictable violation, it seems to me it would be accidental disclosure.  Thus I agree with the CIA that there was no indictable offense, but to say it was careless to have the private server seems justified.

Personally, I think the charge should be "what damage was done?"  So in the case of Gen. Patraeus, so far as I know, no damage was done in his release of classified information.  I think the nation has denied itself the contribution of a brilliant person (Gen. Patraeus).  Even in the case of the Secretary of State, there is no claim of  actual damage.

In my own job with the Department of Interior and NASA, I received many classified documents. These would arrive with the cover page red candy striped with a big classification designation on the cover such as CONFIDENTIAL in large letters.  You had to sign for it and sign again when you returned it.  In practice, the Federal bureaucrats are classification happy and do too much classification and also classify things above their importance.  It was not unusual to receive a document with a confidential classification that involved matter in the public domain.  I recall one meeting classified as Secret that I was glad was highly classified because everything said in the meeting was wrong (I was even forced to give a wrong answer by my boss.).

At one time I even had a clearance above Top Secret (Yes there are such classifications and even the name of the classification is classified.).  The only meeting I had with that classification seemed to include all information in the public domain, as nearly as I could tell.  That said, I am sure there are meetings and document deserving of high classification.  For one example, I would say that the attack on Osama bin Laden was one deserving of the highest classification.  Drone attacks might be another.

An additional discussion of security clearance is given in the reference.***

* https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dos-class.pdf
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information

WORKERS LAID OFF ARE FINDING WORK

Something that many analysts are not taking into account is that recovery from a near-death financial collapse is different from "ordinary" recessions many of which are inventory overstocking.  When the inventories are worked down, then a rapid recovery begins.  The only really comparison for the Great Recession is the Great Depression.  Compared to this, our recovery is remarkable, and there are those who recognize this:

The latest sign the U.S. labor market is returning to normal, seven years after the recession ended: More workers who lose a job are able to find a new one.

Some 7.4 million people lost jobs between January 2013 and December 2015, including 3.2 million who were laid off from positions they had held at least three years, the Labor Department reported Thursday in its biennial survey of displaced workers. That was down from 2011 through 2013, when 9.5 million people lost jobs including 4.3 million long-tenured workers.

Among the long-tenured workers who were laid off over the past three years, about 66% were re-employed as of January 2016, while 16% were unemployed and 19% had left the workforce. (The figures didn’t add up to precisely 100% due to rounding.)

(click on figure to enlarge.)

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/08/25/laid-off-american-workers-are-having-better-luck-finding-new-jobs/?mod=djemRTE_h

TOP STATES FOR BUSINESS (CNBC)

In the CNBC analysis, I was surprised to see Utah as the best state for business. *  Texas, Colorado, and Minnesota are no surprise.  North Carolina rounds out the top five states and I am surprised by this.  I live in North Carolina and didn't realize business was so good.

Big companies and social events are moving out or not expanding in North Carolina because of the regressive social policies of the state. ** The state's attempts to restrict voting was thrown out by a Court of Appeals on a unanimous vote., and, for just one example, the NBA has cancelled holding their All Star game in Charlotte.  They also passed a law at one point that didn't allow seniors to claim medical deductions and then had the Gaul to say they welcomed retirees.***  They discovered the error of their ways, however, and rescinded this law (Medical expenses above 10% of income can be deducted.).

Following is a description of how the ranking were done and a listing of the top 17 states.  If you look at the reference, you can see the whole list.

We score all 50 states on more than 60 measures of competitiveness, developed with input from a broad and diverse array of business and policy experts, official government sources, the CNBC Global CFO Council and the states themselves. States receive points based on their rankings in each metric. Then we separate those metrics into 10 broad categories, weighted based on how frequently each is used as a selling point in state economic development marketing materials. That way, our study ranks the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves. *

* http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/12/americas-top-states-for-business-2016-the-list-and-ranking.html
** https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-voter-id-law/2016/07/29/810b5844-4f72-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/sports/basketball/nba-all-star-game-moves-charlotte-transgender-bathroom-law.html?_r=0
*** http://luminanews.com/2015/10/push-to-restore-medical-expense-deduction-succeeds/