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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (2225)	12/10/2003 12:28:07 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Gore Urges Dems to Rally Around Dean Former VP Gore Endorses Dean for President, Urges Fellow Democrats to Unite Behind Him The Associated Press CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa Dec. 10 — Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean's presidential bid Tuesday, praising the front-runner's fervent opposition to the Iraq war while urging Democrats to unite behind Dean five weeks before the first votes are cast. "We don't have the luxury of fighting among ourselves," said the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000, sending a chilling signal to Dean's eight rivals stunned by the former Vermont governor's political coup. Their hands joined and raised above their heads, Gore and Dean began their political marriage of convenience in New York's Harlem community homage to the candidate's bid to draw minority voters to his campaign. At the former vice president's behest, they flew together to Iowa, site of the Jan. 19 kickoff caucuses won by the former vice president three years ago by a 2-to-1 margin. Gore, who captured the popular vote but lost the electoral count to George W. Bush, said Dean's stance against the war, above all else, swayed him. "I realized it's only one of the issues, but my friends, this nation has never in our two centuries and more made a worse foreign policy mistake," Gore told several hundred people at a downtown convention center. The force of his Iraq criticism was a not-too-subtle indictment of the four candidates who backed the congressional resolution on Iraq, including Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gore's running mate in 2000. The Gore-Dean courtship began in fall 2002, when Dean called and wrote Gore to praise the former vice president's speech criticizing President Bush on Iraq. Gore broke the news to a stunned Dean on Friday, then the two former rivals pledged to keep it a secret even from their closest advisers until the last possible moment. "Now that I've made the decision that I want to endorse you, I want to do it as soon as possible," Gore told Dean from Tokyo. The former Vermont governor was on a cell phone in a van in Iowa, forced to speak in hush tones and code. Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes in 2000 but conceded to Republican Bush after a tumultuous 36-day recount in Florida and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote against him. The election still rankles Democratic activists, many of whom tell pollsters they prefer Gore to the nine candidates. Dean hopes the coveted endorsement eases concerns among party leaders about his lack of foreign policy experience, testy temperament, policy flip-flops, campaign miscues and edgy anti-war, antiestablishment message. "Excuse me, he was the only major candidate who made the correct judgment on the Iraq war," Gore said. A beaming Dean thanked Gore for his leadership and his endorsement. He hopes the former vice president, still popular among minorities, draws blacks and Hispanics to a campaign fueled by upscale, white backers. In 2000, blacks supported Gore by a 9-1 margin over Bush. "We lost of lot of races in 2002 because we decided to go to swing voters and the base would come along later," Dean said, vowing to "recognize those people who are with us all the time." But he told reporters that only voters will determine whether the endorsement cements his grip on the front-runner's position. "It doesn't solidify anything," he said. Dean's advisers, with a high-fiving sense of triumph, cast the endorsement as the biggest step yet toward persuading Democratic activists that it's time to jump aboard the Dean bandwagon despite the fact that voters have yet to weigh in. "I think it's important to have as little bloodletting in this nominating process as possible," campaign manager Joe Trippi said, adding that Gore's backing may push 15 to 20 members of Congress into Dean's camp. He added one Tuesday California Rep. Loretta Sanchez. But New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, pressed about a primary endorsement, declined to back any of the nine candidates, saying she considers it "more important to coalesce around a nominee" than an early front-runner, and adding, "I want to see how the process plays out." The race has not taken shape beyond New Hampshire, where Dean leads in polls by double digits, and Iowa, where Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt are locked in a tight fight. Dean's support is weakest in the seven states holding Feb. 3 contests, particularly those in the South and West. Democratic strategists say that while the endorsement makes Dean the overwhelming favorite, it does not erase doubts about the former Vermont governor. "This hands the nomination to Dean and probably dooms the Democratic Party's efforts to unseat George Bush," former New York City Mayor Ed Koch told WROW-AM radio in Albany, N.Y. Koch, who backed Gore in 1988 and Democrat Bill Bradley in 2000, supports Bush's re-election. The endorsement left Dean's rivals stunned and disheartened. "I was surprised. I'm not going to talk about Gore's sense of loyalty," a jilted Lieberman told NBC. An official close to Gore, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the former vice president tried repeatedly Monday to contact Lieberman. But the Lieberman campaign said the first call from Gore's staff came at about 8:15 p.m. Monday, nearly four hours after Lieberman heard the news. The two finally spoke around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday after Lieberman criticized the endorsement on NBC. Associated Press Writers Sara Kugler in New York, Marc Humbert in Albany, N.Y., and Lolita Baldor in Washington contributed to this report. abcnews.go.com

To: calgal who wrote (2225)	12/10/2003 1:25:17 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 90947

URL:http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/wm379.cfm Strong Economic Growth Continues by Rea S. Hederman, Jr. WebMemo #379 December 5, 2003 \| printer-friendly format \| The November employment report -- continuing the string of good economic news -- shows increasingly strong economic growth with low inflation and remarkably high worker productivity. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports: The unemployment rate declined for the second straight month, dropping this past month from 6.0 percent to 5.9 percent, The job growth trend continued with October’s numbers revised upward to 137,000 new jobs reinforcing indications of a growing recovery. The number of new jobs in November, 57,000, will probably be revised upwards like the previous three months. Overall, economic indicators have been very robust and paint an encouraging picture. Productivity The productivity growth of the third quarter was outstanding at 9.4 percent, the most growth in twenty years. More significant is that there has been job growth even with record productivity growth. Productivity growth this high is far above normal business activity, however as the productivity gains ease, continued job growth will follow as these numbers indicate strong demand. Productivity is key to increasing overall wealth because it allows goods to be produced in a more efficient manner. Manufacturing There is continuing good news coming from the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing is having some of its best months in 20 years and demand for new goods is increasing. The downturn in manufacturing jobs slowed dramatically over the past months indicating that job losses in that sector have peaked and are declining. The Commerce Department gave manufacturing sector more good news by announcing that new factory orders were up 2.2 percent, the highest increase in fifteen months and the fifth increase in the last six months. Business inventories continued to decline as well indicating that demand is outstripping output. This increase in demand of manufacturing goods points to a growth in manufacturing jobs in the near feature. Payroll & Household Survey Comparison The November employment report again highlighted differences between the payroll survey and the household survey. The payroll survey contained moderate job growth while the household survey featured another drop in the unemployment rate. Additionally the household survey showed a much more substantial growth in jobs than the payroll survey, which continues a trend of large differences that labor economists have been tracking for over a year While there are many differences between the payroll or establishment survey and the household survey (both conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistics under contract by the Census Bureau), the two surveys generally have tracked each other over the last fifty years have shown the same trends in job gains or losses. Thus the widening gap between the two surveys has been a bit puzzling especially since over the last decade the payroll survey has shown more employment growth than the household survey. Both surveys are used to estimate employment with some variation in their purpose. The establishment survey seeks to measure not just employment but also hours and wages. The household survey measures the demographics of employees as well as their working status. There are other structural differences such as what constitutes employment and the coverage of the survey. The household survey covers the prison population and agricultural workers while the establishment survey does not. The household survey is also more likely to count self-employed workers than the establishment survey. Small Business and Self-Employment Growth While the payroll survey has generally been viewed as more accurate in counting the overall employment, there is strong evidence that the payroll survey’s accuracy diminishes in periods of economic transition[1]. Hence it tends to overstate employment in downturns and understates employment in upturns. Economist James Smith of the University of North Carolina says, “When you're at a turning point in the economy, you get a lot of new business startups. … They don't show up in the payroll data for about a year”. [2] A primary failing of the payroll survey is its inability to estimate self-employed workers. Some reports show that the number of self-employed workers could have increased by over 400,000 in 2003. The income of the self-employed has also seen a sharp increase indicating that these workers are earning income. On December 1, a Wall Street Journal stated, “The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that proprietor's income, excluding the farm sector, was up 8.6% from a year earlier. By contrast, the wages and salaries of individuals on corporate payrolls were up just 2.3%. While business-formation data is spotty, it is clear that individual business owners are seeing strong growth in their own income.”[3] Continued Upward Revisions The payroll survey’s inability to capture the rise of the self-employed is due to its structure. The BLS interviews existing firms while the Census Bureau interviews workers directly. As a result, Census can capture job growth sparked by job hiring in small businesses better than the payroll survey can. Haseeb Ahmed of Economy.com believes that the payroll survey’s undercounting of small business employment will lead to an upward revision of the payroll survey employment numbers, similar to the revision in the early 1990’s when revisions to the payroll survey doubled the number of job gains.[4] Both surveys measure the employment status of the U.S. economy. However, both surveys have their flaws and at times present a picture that is wildly divergent from the real economic situation. With the growth of small business and the self-employed, it is quite likely the payroll survey will be revised upward erasing part of the divergence with the household survey. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Nardone, Thomas, Bowler, Mary, Kropf, Jurgen, Kirkland, Katie and Wetrogan, Signe “Examining the Discrepancy in Employment Growth between the CPS and the CES” October 17, 2003, paper to Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC). [2] Smith, James, as quoted by the Raleigh News Observer, October 1, 2003 [3] Hilsenrath, Jon “The Self-Employed Boost U.S. Economic Recovery”, The Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2003. [4] Ahmed, Haseeb “Perhaps a Not-So-Jobless Recovery After All”, Economy.com, September 9, 2003.