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Tag Archives: republicans
Mitt Has A Plan For Women
During last night’s debate, Mitt Romney sure had a lot of opinions about women in the workplace. He seemed to think he was connecting with women voters. Do you agree?
Here’s the transcript of Romney from last night:
I had the — the chance to pull together a Cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men. And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, how come all the people for these jobs are — are all men?
They said, well, these are the people that have the qualifications. And I said, well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?
And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, can you help us find folks? And I brought us whole binders full of — of women. I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my cabinet and my senior staff that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.
Now, one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort, but number two, because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce, that sometimes they need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school. She said, I can’t be here until 7:00 or 8:00 at night. I need to be able to get home at 5:00 so I can be there for — making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said, fine, let’s have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.
I don’t know about you, but I’m insulted.
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Paul Ryan Didn’t Always Shy Away From The Word “Voucher”
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7.8%
Good News on Jobs
Today is the first Friday of the month, which means it’s the day the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases monthly figures on jobs and unemployment. Today’s news was unexpectedly good, with the unemployment rate dropping sharply from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent. Just to put that into perspective, the unemployment rate during the president’s first full month in office, February 2009, was 8.3% and it’s been above 8 percent ever since.
ThinkProgress’ Pat Garofalo breaks down today’s news:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that payrolls expanded by 114,000 last month, dropping the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent. 873,000 Americans reported having found jobs in September (in the so-called household survey), the most since 1983.
This adds to the total number of jobs created over President Obama’s term; revisions released last week by the BLS showed that Obama is net positivefor jobs since January 2009. Here are some other highlights from the report:
– Labor force grows. The labor force grew by 418,000 people, so the drop in the unemployment rate was not due to people giving up on looking for work.
– Revisions shows stronger summer job growth. The number of jobs created in both July and August were revised up, adding a total of 86,000 jobs.
– Public sector finally stopped shedding jobs. State, local, and federal government finally ended a long period of job contraction, adding 10,000 jobs. Revisions show that the public sector created jobs in both July and August.
– Average hourly earnings rise. Earnings rose 7 cents to $23.58. Average hourly earnings have risen by 1.8 percent over the last year.
Of course, one month’s report does not make for a good economy, but the three-month average for job growth hit 145,000, a sign of a recovering labor market (albeit, one that is recovering slowly). Overall, the economy has added 1.3 million jobs this year.
The unemployment rate would be under 7 percent without public sector jobs cuts, while the American Jobs Act that Republicans filibustered in Congress would have added millions of jobs, according to economists.
Conservatives, in the apparent belief that good news for the American economy means bad news for their prospects in next month’s elections, immediately seized on the news to allege a vast conspiracy of data-rigging at the BLS — a scrupulously non-political entity. This dovetails with the recent right-wing conspiracy theory that America’s pollsters are working in collusion the media to rig the polls in President Obama’s favor in order to depress GOP turnout.
Check out this post by ThinkProgress’ Aviva Shen to see which conservatives are peddling their newest conspiracy theory.
BOTTOM LINE: We have more to do, but today’s jobs news shows that we are on the road to recovery and can’t afford to go back to the same policies that crashed the economy in the first place.
Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed
The women who were invisible at the presidential debate.
Mendacious Mitt’s week: 50 lies and counting.
How Romney’s tax plan could still mean big tax increases for the middle class.
Big Bird showed up at a Romney rally today.
How Obamacare’s birth control mandate will lead to fewer abortions.
Romney’s ridiculous and belated attempt to distance himself from his 47% comments.
Justice Scalia says ruling against abortion rights and LGBT rights are no-brainers for him.
Romney’s sick joke.
Romney’s real Big Bird problem: moms votes.
Be a Seed for Change 
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