Visitor Logs

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called the White House decision to release visitor logs “as important a transparency mechanism as has been instituted in decades” and said that for future administrations it would be “difficult if not impossible to walk away from.” He said that visits will not be included in the release if they fall into one of three categories: family visits, such as friends of Malia and Sasha; national security exceptions, such as covert operatives; and meetings with people like potential Supreme Court nominees. Gibbs said that all decisions to withhold records under the national security exception will be reviewed by the White House Counsel’s office each month. He also said that visit logs “held back” for people such as nominees will be later released, and the White House will disclose how many records are being held back.

Gibbs cited the number of records—70–100 thousand per month—as a reason for not releasing the visit logs for the entire administration. Gibbs said that he would check with the Counsel’s office about whether the same disclosure policies would apply to Camp David and Air Force One. The records will include the visitor’s full name, whom he or she met with, and the time of entry and departure.

School Address

Gibbs said the upset over President Obama’s address to school kids is “a little bit of the silly season,” and that if telling kids to study hard and stay in school is a political message, someone should tell the NBA. Gibbs noted that Presidents Reagan (in 1988) and H. W. Bush (in 1991) also addressed school children. Responding to schools that are not going to be showing the address, Gibbs said that “there are school districts that won’t let you read Huckleberry Finn,” but he also said there could be logistical reasons for some schools refusals.

Jobs Report

On the new jobless numbers out this morning, Gibbs said that the country is “continuing to see a slowing of the pace of job loss,” pointing out that new jobless claims are about one-third what they were in January. He attributed the slowing to manufacturing numbers being up, new home sales being up, and consumer confidence being up.

Van Jones

Gibbs refused to discuss the Van Jones allegations, saying only that the “Truther” statements are not something the president agrees with and confirming that Van Jones continues to work in the administration.

By Mariko Lamb, Talk Radio News Service

Keith Hall, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released data to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee Friday that indicated a moderation in unemployment, a “good sign” for economic improvement, he said.

According to the Bureau’s statistics, the unemployment rate remained relatively consistent at 9.4% in July. Job losses in wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing and financial activities industries continued, while losses in the hardest hit sectors, construction and manufacturing, increased. Employment in leisure and hospitality remained steady and health care employment increased, growing in line with the 2009 trend thus far.

Additional findings in the report show that minorities and the uneducated continue to suffer the most job losses, a trend that parallels unemployment statistics prior to the recession. “The trend is pretty much the same,” Hall said, “so when the overall unemployment rate goes up, it goes up by more for the minorities.”

Despite continued job loss, Hall said that the moderation in the past three months is a “good sign.” “While I would say we’re not in recovery yet, this is the path that we have to go through to get to recovery. We expect to see moderation first before we start actually getting improvement in the labor market,” he said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner, Keith Hall, says that minorities and the uneducated continue to suffer the most job losses, a trend that parallels unemployment statistics prior to the recession. “The trend is pretty much the same,” Hall says. “When the overall unemployment rate goes up, it goes up by more for the minorities.” (0:18)

 

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Christina Romer, Council of Economic Advisers Chair, describes the Economic Recovery Act as a collaborative effort by the Obama administration and Congress to create a bold and well-conceived plan. She said the President wanted a package that “was large and got good employment bang for the fiscal buck.” (0:36)

 

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Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) says that by preventing GM or Chrysler from shutting down independently owned dealerships, Congress does not intend to preserve the brand of GM or Chrysler. Rather, Sutton says, Congress is making the move to save jobs (0:14).

 

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By Celia Canon – Talk Radio News Service

During an address on Latin America and the economic crisis at the Brookings Institute yesterday, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet discussed her country’s comparatively strong economy, explaining that the 1980’s economic crisis in Latin America taught the region to take measures to insulate itself from global financial crises.

“This time in Latin America, fundamental [institutions] were better and policy responses were swift,” Bachelet said. “Central banks move quickly to offset the lack of liquidity in dollars using either sovereign funds or international reserves accumulated during the commodity boom earlier this decade.”

Chile’s current financial stability is largely due to the fact that it has moved away from American policies in recent years, eschewing the Washington Consensus, a set of American recommendations to Latin American states on how to rebuild their economies in 1989. The recommendations focused on maintaining a free market economy with little to no government involvement.

“This approach of no regulation is an approach that we have come to call in Chile the ‘Paradigm of Passivity,’ ” Bachelet said. “The crisis has taught us what we should have known all along: that the state is not and cannot be passive when it comes to economic activity or financial regulation.”

The Chilean president added: “When I talk about not being passive, I’m not talking necessarily about [an] interventionist state. I’m not calling for a government involved in all sectors of the economy or prone to over-regulating markets.”

Bachelet also compared Western states and Chile with regard to the policies implemented to reduce the impact of the global financial crisis.

“Unlike the U.S. and much of Europe, in 2009, tax payers have not have to pay the burden of bailing out” national companies, said Bachelet.

Additionally, the Chilean government has produced its own stimulus package, which aims to maintain the population’s purchasing power, rather than bail out industries.

“This [stimulus] package was designed to inject resources directly into the pockets of the most deprived families to promote employment by increasing public investment, and by granting subsidies to youth employment and to encourage private investment with temporary tax rebates,” Bachelet said.

Bachelet, a moderate socialist, is currently in Washington, D.C. to meet with President Barack Obama in hopes of increasing bilateral ties and improving trade partnerships. During her speech, she was quick to empathize with the Americans, echoing Obama’s frequent calls for an economic restructuring to lead to “lasting prosperity.”

States should not “go back to the same situation that we were in before, because that would mean we haven’t learned the lessons of the crisis,” Bachelet said.

An employee bringing an age-discrimination lawsuit against his employer must prove that age was the determining factor in the demotion or firing, the Supreme Court held today in a 6-3 ruling.

Plaintiff Jack Gross, 54, sued his employer, FBL Financial Group, Inc., after FBL demoted him and gave his old position to a younger employee. Gross brought his action under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), which makes it unlawful for an employer to take adverse actions against an employee “because of such individual’s age.”

Over FBL’s objections, the judge instructed the jury that if Gross proved his age played any part in the decision to demote him, the burden would shift to FBL to prove it would have demoted him regardless of his age. The jury returned a verdict for Gross, awarding him over $46,000 in lost compensation.

Today the Supreme Court vacated that verdict, finding that the judge had improperly instructed the jury.

In an ADEA disparate-treatment claim, the plaintiff has the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that age was the “but-for” cause — that is, the determining factor — of the employer’s decision.

Lower courts were inappropriately applying Title VII precedent to this ADEA action, the Court found. Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. But unlike Title VII, the burden of proof in ADEA age-discrimination claims “does not shift to the employer to show that it would have taken the action regardless of age, even when a plaintiff has produced some evidence that age was one motivating factor in that decision,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.

The case was Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc.

By Courtney Ann Jackson- Talk Radio News Service

Nothing has changed about the Council on Economic Advisers’ estimate in measuring the creation and saving of jobs. Their purpose remains the same. (0:28)

 

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By Courtney Ann Jackson- Talk Radio News

The Council on Economic Advisers reports that they will be monitoring the saving and changing of jobs in the United States on individual state basis.
 
The CEA this year will report to Congress on all estimates of jobs saved and created. The estimates will be combined with numbers from state by state reports.

An unnamed senior administration official said they are going to “be monitoring every state, every county, finding out what’s happening in terms of the actual reporting of where the jobs are being created and how things are going.”

A January report said that 3.5 million jobs would be saved as a result of the program under the Recovery Act. The official said those estimates have not changed “in terms of what the program is going to do.”

The program is expected to fulfill its original promises, the official said. “We are seeing unemployment interestingly throughout the spectrum,” the official said. The effects have crossed over into a variety of industries and geographic groups. The CEA hopes to receive description of exactly what types of jobs are being created when they receive the individual state reports.

The report spells out the general principles of how the states will be asked to report on the specifics of their progress. The official said it is important to see how each state’s projects and progress compares across the country. That is the type of information the CEA hopes to gain with the direct reports.

Professor Linda Bilmes of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University speaks with Jay Goodman Tamboli about her new book, The People Factor: Strengthening America by Investing in Public Service and the staffing crisis that faces the American government. Bilmes and co-author W. Scott Gould are calling on a federal investment of $10 billion over the next five years to improve recruiting, training, and management of the federal workforce. (10:33)

 

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