Cost of employing U.S. workers shows few signs of acceleration

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — An index that measures the price of U.S. labor rose modestly in the fourth quarter, but showed little sign of marked acceleration.

The employment cost index increased 0.6% from October through December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected a seasonally adjusted 0.6% gain.


The ECI is a closely followed gauge that reflects how much companies, governments and nonprofit institutions pay their employees in wages and benefits.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cost-of-employing-us-workers-rises-mildly-in-fourth-quarter-2016-01-29?link=MW_home_latest_news

http://www.gq.com/gallery/megan-kelly-fox-news-photos#2

Don't think of this as an intervention, think of it as a coming out of the closet party. We know you are a closet socialist. It's okay, you are amongst friends and we support you. Besides, we always knew...

Socialism is taxpayer funds being used collectively to benefit society as a whole, despite income, contribution, or ability.

Sounds horrible, huh?

Well I hate to be the one to tell you, but Socialism, which you have been told to fear all your life, is responsible for all this...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/3/29/1078852/-75-Ways-Socialism-Has-Improved-America

The list includes the military, the police, the fire department, highways, libraries,postal service, student loans and grants, bridges, garbage collection, farm subsidies, EPA, museums, public schools, and much, much more...

After a Texas-based grand jury declined to indict Planned Parenthood on Monday, clearing an Austin-based clinic of any wrongdoing, GOP presidential candidates are simply doubling down on their opposition to the national women’s health organization. Although the jury chose to indict the videographers who tried to discredit Planned Parenthood in a misleading video campaign, rather than the organization itself, the verdict has only further inspired candidates to speak out against the nonprofit and its “disturbing” mission.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/01/26/3742809/gop-response-pp-texas/

Comments from various jugheads at the link

In 2011, Snyder ordered a state takeover of Flint’s government amid the city’s mounting financial woes. During its time in receivership, a series of Snyder appointees served as “emergency managers,” overseeing Flint’s government functions and finding ways to cut spending.

Two years later, one of those managers, Darnell Earley, implemented a plan to switch Flint’s water supply from the Detroit system to a new consortium and to use water from the Flint River in the interim. He claimed this would save $6 to $8 million, one city council member recalled to the Associated Press. The Flint River water proved toxic and Snyder has said it will require a “long-term,” decades-long financial commitment to attempt to mitigate the damage to Flint children who drank the water.

But an email obtained by the Bill Johnson group and first reported by Motor City Muckraker suggests that the move might not have been necessary to reduce Flint’s water costs. Then-Detroit Water and Sewerage Department Director Sue McCormick proposed to continue providing water to Flint at a savings of $800 million over 30 years, or 20 percent less than the switch. In other words, Flint could have kept the Detroit water and still saved more money than it did. A spokeswoman for McCormick confirmed the email and reporting to ThinkProgress on Monday.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/01/25/3742625/documents-michigan-contradict-flint-narrative-snyder/


These Republicans are criminals and must be prosecuted and jailed!

On Monday, residents of North Carolina are taking the state to court, arguing that North Carolina legislators designed a new voter ID law to stifle growing minority turnout that threatened the Republican majority in Raleigh.
The state is claiming that the law was passed to prevent voter fraud, though there is no evidence of widespread fraud at the ballot box. Attorney Denise Lieberman with the Advancement Project, which is representing the North Carolina NAACP in this case, told ThinkProgress that the state lawmakers who debated and passed the ID law knew it would place a disproportionate burden on African American and Latino voters.
“This is illuminated by the fact that there’s no legitimate basis for having this law,” she said. “We have expert witnesses who will testify that the state’s rationale for the law is unsupported, that there is absolutely no evidence of in-person voter impersonation that would justify this law. Furthermore, these laws don’t advance or expand people’s confidence in the voting process, as the state is arguing. They actually reduce it. So the conclusion we must draw is that lawmakers knew what they were doing.”
Lieberman and her colleagues plan to argue that this 2013 law was in part a backlash against the “increased political power” of voters of color in the state. Over the past few decades, both the number of residents of color and the percentage of them who showed up to vote have increased exponentially, thanks in large part to a series of laws making it easier to vote.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/01/25/3742000/nc-voter-id-trial/

for example, the purported photo of Bernie marching in Selma--
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110736164

A claim which Bernie never made--
Although Sanders has stated that he did participate in the landmark "March on Washington" civil rights event of August 1963 (where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech), we haven't found any record of Sanders' stating that he was also present at any other civil rights march involving Martin Luther King, Jr

http://www.snopes.com/sanders-mlk-selma-march/

I don't think I would lose any votes.

Of course I have no intention of shooting Donald Trump, but if he has the First Amendment right to spout such nonsense, then I have the same right.

?uuid=3aadfdf6-c139-11e5-870d-0015c588e0f6

According to a report released Friday by the Pew Research Center, the approval ratings for Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan upon entering their final year of the presidency are similar. Obama has a 46% approval rating; Reagan had a 50% approval rating during the same period, which, when you take into account the margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, could have been even more similar.

This is a similar finding to other polling data from last year: Gallup data show that in 2015, Obama’s approval rating was also quite similar to what Regan’s was at the same point in his presidency.


Still, neither Obama nor Reagan were as popular as Bill Clinton in his last year as president (his approval rating was 56%), though both were significantly more popular than George W. Bush (31%). And thus far Obama’s approval rating over his entire term (47%) doesn’t quite meet Reagan’s (52.8%), according to Gallup data — though Obama still has some time left to catch up.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/barack-obama-is-almost-as-popular-as-ronald-reagan-2016-01-22?link=MW_popular