Obama Adminstration Meta Discussion

Azdak

Nobody commented on it so I suspect nobody looked at the graph of GDP that I linked. Here it is:



Any more questions as to how come the recovery under Reagan in the earlier 80s was so much quicker than the recovery under Obama?

[Hint: We were in a much much deeper hole when Obama took office than when Reagan took office.]

You can't compare the two IMO. Different type of recession, different era, different economic structure going in, etc, etc. (I'm not saying this to criticize or praise anything Reagan did --just pointing out the two situations aren't similar).

Here is another illustration of the difference:



It might also be worth noting the that recessions in 1990 and 2001 show similar curves, although not to the depth of 2007. To me that also suggests the changing nature of recessions as the economy has changed over the past 20 years.

VelociMama

You can't compare the two IMO. Different type of recession, different era, different economic structure going in, etc, etc. (I'm not saying this to criticize or praise anything Reagan did --just pointing out the two situations aren't similar).

Agreed, especially with wealth distribution:



This data is from the latest census numbers.

treetop57

I thought I'd mention this because A2O was talking about Obama's supposed war on coal.

Coal miners lost pay when Mitt Romney visited their mine to promote coal jobs

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/08/coal_miners_lost_pay_when_mitt.html

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.

The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.

A group of employees who feared they'd be fired if they didn't attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.

Moore told Blomquist that managers "communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend." He said the company did not penalize no-shows.

Because the company's mine had to be shut down for "safety and security" reasons during Romney's visit, Moore confirmed workers were not paid that day. He said miners also lose pay when weather or power outages shut down the mine, and noted that federal election law doesn't let companies pay workers to attend political events.

. . . .

When contacted about the interview on Monday afternoon, Murray Energy spokesman Gary Broadbent emailed this statement: "Rob Moore made it abundantly clear that no employees were forced to attend the Romney event. All participation was, and always has been, completely voluntary."

Blomquist said that he got multiple emails and phone calls from Murray Energy workers who felt that they were intimidated into attending Romney's appearance. He said employees were told they'd have to forfeit the day's pay unless they could make up their missed hours on overtime or weekends. . . .

Not clear to me how an event can be both mandatory and voluntary.

Azdak

I'm not going to take up space by quoting the whole article, but why Rob Moore is not in jail -- or at the very least -- is a mystery to me. From what I read at the time, negligence by his company was directly responsible for the deaths of those miners in Utah.

It would be unfair to say he represents all republicans, but he certainly epitomizes the wing of corporate sociopaths who have found a home in the GOP and have the $$ to exert a lot of influence.