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Journalism and other myths.

Syria Breaks?

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Should the US take military action against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria?  It’s become the one important question in the US since President Obama announced that the dictatorship had indeed used chemical weapons against its own people.  After a year of ducking the question, a brutal attack on August 21 with multiple rockets full of nerve agents into the suburbs of Damascus has made the situation intolerable.

It’s best to never react to the news as it is coming in because everything is fluid. We last wrote about Syria 18 months ago and it was not clear that the horror has lessened.  But today it seems as though there has been a breakthrough and the threat of US force, wielded without flinching, works well in the hands of an administration that would rather not have to do it at all.

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ADP Employment Report

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The stock market has been up so far in September, a somewhat unusual event for the weakest month in stocks.  The optimism is propelled largely by decent news on jobs, with weekly initial unemployment claims dropping to their lowest level since 2008 at 323k.  But the big news was the ADP Employment Report, which came in at 176k jobs gained in August.  Investors are still watching for the official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on Friday – but they don’t need to.

What is this ADP Employment Report, and what does it mean?  It’s actually the best barometer of where we are, if not the official one, and it comes with a lot of useful information that can’t be found anywhere else.  Since we’ve dissected the official BLS report it’s time to take a good look at the ADP numbers – and why they are in many ways much more interesting.

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Sovereignty

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The year was 1648.  After 30 years of Lutherans slaughtering Catholics and Catholics slaughtering Lutherans, Europe had become tired of war. The heart of western Germany, the Palatine, was utterly destroyed.  A treaty was concluded at Westphalia, near the heart of the conflict, which crafted peace through a new concept – sovereignty.  The warring monarchs agreed that each side had territorial integrity and that neither would interfere in the internal affairs of the others.

The entire world was eventually divided up into “sovereign nations” based on this principle.

The year was 2011.  Protesters igniting the “Arab Spring” in Syria were slaughtered by their sovereign national army, and eventually formed something like an armed rebellion in what is now known as a civil war.  The world watched in horror as at least 100,000 people were killed, about half civilians, for more than two years.  Sovereignty means that no one is supposed to intervene, at least not directly.  That has held until repeated attacks by chemical weapons occurred, crossing an apparent “red line” that denotes the limits of sovereignty.  The world wants to act to stop it.

Why this line?  Why now?  What is the real limit of “sovereignty” and what does it mean to be a nation-state today?

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Part Time Work

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Part-time work is a part of the economy.  A first job might be just a few hours after school, and parents often find themselves only able to work while the kids are in school.  Some people want only part-time work while they get their “real career” together, such as an artist who waits tables to pay the bills.  But in an economic downturn, people get stuck with fewer hours than they want and the ranks swell.

When we discussed the employment figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) here in Barataria, the “Part Time for Economic Reasons” really stuck in the craw of many readers, and for good reasons.  That number has to come down from 5.3% of all employed persons before we can be excited about the jobs reports.  The San Francisco Federal Reserve had the same feeling, and has released a new report with some fascinating details on part-time work in the US and what it is today.

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Women’s Equality Day

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The long list of calls settled itself into the monotone of routine.  “Hi, my name is Erik, and I’m calling for Jim Scheibel, your DFL candidate for Mayor of Saint Paul.”  The 1989 election was going to be close, so Get Out The Vote (GOTV) calling to loyal Democrats was important.  But just as I let the script propel my calls with their own momentum the soft gravely tone on the other end split the evening open.

“Oh, dear, you don’t have to remind me to vote.  I’ve been voting ever since they let us.”

We’ve been “letting” women vote for 93 years today, ever since Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment on August 26th, 1920 by just one vote.  This anniversary, “Women’s Equality Day”, is a good time to reflect on how young and precarious this precious foundation of democracy is for half the population.

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