The Real Unemployment Rate

I’ve always assumed that the unemployment rate is truly twice what it is reported to be. I see way too many people who are living off the grid to accept the official figures. Even allowing for where I am, it still seems wrong.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does collect this information, what it calls “alternative measures of labor underutilization“. You can click on that link and cut the information up in 12 different measurements, both seasonally adjusted and not. Seasonal adjustment must account for farm labor in some way.

Some of the reports go back decades. The most interesting data, the most inclusive “total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers”, only goes back to 1994.

Anyway, “total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers” must be closer to the true figure of unemployment.

The figure includes “Discouraged Workers: Persons not in the labor force who want and are available for a job and who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but who are not currently looking because they believe there are no jobs available or there are none for which they would qualify.” This wouldn’t appear to include prisoners, but it should. Prison entails enforced unemployment. I don’t think that working in a UNICOR wood shop counts.

I can find only 5 webpages that link to the BLS’s most expansive unemployment calculation.

Anyway, if you do what Slate.com columnist Daniel Gross did, and chart the difference between the most expansive and the least expansive reportage of unemployment it looks like this:

From Slate. A legible version can be found on Slate’s site here.

It would be nice if, every quarter, someone on an economic beat covered the difference between the more inclusive figures and the low-ball numbers reported as the unemployment rate. All I could find was this 2004 article on Slate.com by Daniel Gross: “Odd Jobs: Why The Unemployment Rate Is Higher Than It Looks“. Gross is just addressing the discrepancy and moving on. As a guy who thinks that speculative bubbles are good for you, he’s hardly concerned with microeconomic misery.

The analysis provided here includes more charts and diagrams, explaining many different ways to look at the BLS’s unemployment data. The images and graphs provided in this article are more interesting than Gross’s as well, becase they explain the different rates used by the BLS from U-3 to U-6 and even factors in population growth. The author finds that the ‘effective’ rate is higher than the usually reported U-3 rate. The more expansive rates are used in two 2008 analysis papers on the same site “Trade Truth #1: The NAFTA Nemesis” and “Jobs & ‘Trade’ Data Update Jun08“. I’m not endorsing these conclusions. I haven’t read them in any detail. The articles exist because the author, one Dr. Powell, uses systems theory in his consultation business. Knowing more about systems theory would help the reader get more out of the articles. You have to bear in mind that the articles have serve some business development purpose, and that may effect the analysis.

Still, I am impressed with the articles, because the author is actually using the BLS’s readily available information. I can find nothing in the wire services or business press using the BLS material for any comparable analysis. If Dr. Powell can appraise the BLA’s figures to tease out the story of the underemployed shy don’t we get more of this analysis from economic journalists every quarter?

There are two reasons. The first is a lack of available time and space to allow for the discussion. This is a structural problem in the media. It would take several minutes just to explain the differences between the different rates of unemployment and the economic factors which impact most on each. In the 30 or so seconds allowed on a headline news channel, that’s impossible. In a longer format show, a 2 minute segment would be mostly given over to depicting the situation of individuals. Papers don’t seem to publish many charts and graphs. Probably because of the expense. Without analysis, the repeated depiction of people suffering marginal employment woes offers little actionable information.

The other reason is that the unemployment rate isn’t reported as anything other than an economic indicator. Knowing the most recent trend in the rate let’s you know where the economy’s headed, but doesn’t help you understand or develop economic policy. Everybody’s got an economic policy, of some kind, but most are formed from random bits of available, meager, information.

Writing in the July 14, Wall Street Journal, publisher Mort Zuckerman lists ten factors commonly overlooked in calculating the unemployment rate. Zuckerman is interested because the rate is hitting 10% nationwide in the Summer of 2009 and he’s a political opponent of Obama. Regardless the list contains factors of unemployment that could be considered in any calculation:

- June’s total assumed 185,000 people at work who probably were not. The government could not identify them; it made an assumption about trends. But many of the mythical jobs are in industries that have absolutely no job creation, e.g., finance. When the official numbers are adjusted over the next several months, June will look worse.

- More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don’t count on the unemployment roll.

- No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work in the last 12 months but were not counted. Why? Because they hadn’t searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.

- The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about nine million, or 5.8% of the work force. Add those whose hours have been cut to those who cannot find a full-time job and the total unemployed rises to 16.5%, putting the number of involuntarily idle in the range of 25 million.

- The average work week for rank-and-file employees in the private sector, roughly 80% of the work force, slipped to 33 hours. That’s 48 minutes a week less than before the recession began, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data 45 years ago. Full-time workers are being downgraded to part time as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water, and factories are operating at only 65% of capacity. If Americans were still clocking those extra 48 minutes a week now, the same aggregate amount of work would get done with 3.3 million fewer employees, which means that if it were not for the shorter work week the jobless rate would be 11.7%, not 9.5% (which far exceeds the 8% rate projected by the Obama administration).

- The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks, the longest since government began tracking this data in 1948. The number of long-term unemployed (i.e., for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all-time high.

- The average worker saw no wage gains in June, with average compensation running flat at $18.53 an hour.

- The goods producing sector is losing the most jobs — 223,000 in the last report alone.

- The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent. Instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes in the way they conduct business. General Motors and Chrysler, closed hundreds of dealerships and reduced brands. Citigroup and Bank of America cut tens of thousands of positions and exited many parts of the world of finance.

If more information was readily available, more people would reconsider where they fit into the employment picture.

This graphic, which someone else created from introductory sociology textbook info, shows the “Lower Class” making up 17-20% of the U.S. population. Members of this class are underemployed, marginally employed, or stuck in a part time job. They are also underreported. Presumably a lot of the fluctuation in the unemployment rate must consist of the marginally employed moving in and out of the “employed” column. As a part-time worker, I probably fit in this category myself. But i want to know generally: who is marginally employed in this country, what is broad situation of the marginally employed, and how do we, by and large live?

Image created by wikipedia user BrendelSignature using Dennis Gilbert's book American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality and the book Society in Focus by William Thompson and Joseph Hickey for the percentages of each class. These are introductory Sociology textbooks.

Relevant wikipedia page with graphs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_lower_class

Census Bureau resources on Poverty: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty.html

Eugent Platt fights to stay on SC ballot as a Green

UPDATE July 22, 2008: I clarified some reasons for respecting the earlier nominations of candidates seeking a second ballot line in a subsequent contest. I’ve amended to include the situation of Michael Cone, as well as that of Eugene Platt.

————-

South Carolina has its first elected Green. Eugene Platt is a member of the James Island Public Service District Commission and has been since 1993. He had been seeking the Democratic, Green and Working Families nominations for the SC State House District 115, and when he lost the low-turnout Democratic primary, Platt decided to continue as a Green into the general election. He had previously resigned his position in the Democratic Party and became Lowcountry coordinator for the Green Party.

SC state law allows electoral fusion, but according to this Ballot Access News post, it is prohibited under the following circumstances: under section 7-11-10 of SC state law if a candidate, seeks the nomination of and is nominated by one party then seeks the nomination of a second party, but loses the second nomination, the first nomination is invalidated and the candidate cannot appear on the November ballot under either party designation.

This is apparently a variation on the ’sore-loser’ principle, which presumes to keep spurned primary nominees from seeking to punish their inter-party rivals by splitting a party’s vote in the general election. The different political parties represent more or less different ideologies; but still may have complementary interests. Electoral fusion permits a candidate to build a coalition of shared interest across part of the political spectrum. If the appeal to endorsement of a second party does not succeed, then the candidate still has a platform for political office. Except, apparently, in South Carolina, where the state electoral commission has interpreted section 7-11-10 to permit a party which rejects a coalition to negate the candidacy of another party.

Another situation, aside from Platt’s, where the SC state electoral commission’s interpretation would interfere with the political expression is in the U.S. Senatorial election. The South Carolina Working Families Party nominated Michael Cone to oppose Lindsey Graham in November. Cone was also seeking the Democratic nomination, which he lost to Bob Conely, by 1,049 votes out of the 147,287 cast. Conely is apparently a Republican and a former Horry County GOP Committeeman. Conely is a supporter of Ron Paul and has picked up support from some Southern separatists – two positions that don’t comport with those of many South Carolina Democrats. I do not know if the WFP intends to run a candidate on its own, but the party should, in order to give the tens of thousands of Democrats who voted for a registered Democrat in the Party’s primary a candidate representing their positions. By permitting the party that holds the later primary to veto the choice of the earlier party, the state electoral commission’s interpretation of the statute denies political expression to both Greens and Democrats.

Given that the political opinions of South Carolinians are much broader than the choices would suggest, section 7-11-10 shouldn’t be used to exclude failed primary candidates with real policy differences from competing in the general election. This is an argument for Cone to appear on the Working Families candidate and for Platt to appear as the Green in their respective contests.

Three local news stories have appeared on Platt’s challenge in the Charleston press. A ruling from the state Electoral Commission should be forthcoming in a week.

• Platt trying for spot on November ballot

By Robert Behre
The Post and Courier
Thursday, June 19, 2008

The State Election Commission will decide next week if state House District 115 candidate Eugene Platt may appear on the ballot this fall, but his odds appear dim.

Platt, who lost the June 10 Democratic primary to James Island lawyer Anne Peterson Hutto, hopes to run in November as a Green Party candidate.

Before he can run, he must clear two hurdles.

One, state law appears to prohibit candidates from running in a general or special election if they already have lost a primary race.

Two, Platt signed a pledge with the Democratic Party vowing that he wouldn’t run again this fall.

As far as the pledge goes, Platt said Wednesday, “That was probably one of the papers that was presented to me along with the others.

“Obviously I signed it not knowing the full ramifications, not anticipating a situation like this. The Green Party feels such a pledge would not be enforceable.”

Platt said he has resigned from the Democratic Party, and “I no longer consider myself as a Democrat.”

State law might prove an even greater obstacle. The Election Commission staff cited a section of law indicating that Platt may not appear on the ballot since he lost his primary race, but the commissioners will consider the request on June 27.

If Platt loses, then Hutto will face only incumbent Republican Rep. Wallace Scarborough on Nov. 4.

Green Party organizer Gregg Jocoy said the commission’s decision will set an important precedent, and he noted that Platt was nominated by the Green Party in May, a month before the Democratic primary.

“Our right to have our candidate on the ballot in November shouldn’t be subordinated by the Democratic Party’s decision who it wants on the ballot,” Jocoy said. “Eugene’s campaign is vital to the growth of the Green Party in the Lowcountry.”

Platt, who has run for state and federal legislative seats and lost several times, said he is weighing whether to seek re-election as a James Island Public Service District commissioner at the same time he runs for the state House seat.

Reach Robert Behre at 937-5771 or at rbehre@ postandcourier.com.

Book find: Slavery By Another Name

Interview with Douglas A. Blackmon on neo-slavery in U.S. South after the end of the Civil War:

Slavery by Another Name

Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

A Note on the Interview
We are publishing this interview courtesy of “Beneath the Surface” radio show hosted by Michael Slate on KPFK, Los Angeles. The views expressed by the author in this interview are, of course, his own, and he is not responsible for the views expressed elsewhere in this newspaper.

Douglas A. Blackmon’s new book, Slavery by Another Name – The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday, 2008 ) has unearthed ugly chapters of U.S. history that have been buried for decades. In graphic and truthful detail, Blackmon’s powerful book reveals the widespread use of bonded labor after the Civil War—and how this amounted to a new form of slavery that incorporated many of the same inhuman conditions of brutal confinement like shackles, whippings, hog-tying. and water torture.

Douglas A. Blackmon, the Atlanta Bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, has written about race and especially the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct, and segregation. In 2000, the National Association of Black Journalists recognized Blackmon’s stories revealing the secret role of J.P. Morgan & Co. during the 1960s in funneling funds between a wealthy northern white supremacist and segregationists fighting the Civil Rights Movement in the South.

Originally broadcast on “Beneath the Surface” radio show hosted by Michael Slate on KPFK, Los Angeles.

Slavery By Another Name: The Reenslavement of Black Americans From The Civil War To World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon is published by Random House.

Library availability of Slavery By Another Name via OCLC World Cat.

Recent article citing “Douglas A. Blackmon” found via Google Scholar.

Scott McClellan on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman

June 11, 2008:

Ex-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan Speaks Out on the Bush Admin Lies and Media Allies that Led the US to War

[McClellan] explains his own personal transformation from Bush administration mouthpiece to a critic of conscience and why he’s now sympathetic to the journalist I.F. Stone’s famous advice to young reporters: “governments lie.”

————

Its funny to me that McClellan speaks to Amy Goodman now, when neither she nor any other DN or Pacifica reporter could/can/foreseeably ever will be called on in a White House Press Conference.

Its funny because, McClellan now says that reporters should have been asking the questions that only Knight-Ritter and Pacifica correspondents were asking in the run-up to the war.

That “no one knew” the administration wanted war is a shared mantra of the White House (eg. Sec. of State Rice) and the mainstream media (eg. Tim Russert).

I.F. Stone would’ve presumed the opposite. The 100,000s in NYC and the millions who turned out around the world at the February 15, 2003 anti-war protests knew better.

If it was known at the time that the war was being engineered and it is almost inarguably true now, then why is George Bush still in office and why is Wolf Blitzer on TV every other night?

I suppose it is because there is no real crisis. The sky isn’t falling yet.

SC Dem primary results – no wins for WFP endorsees

None of the Democratic primary candidates cross-endorsed by the SC Working Families Party appear to have won the Democratic primary.

All of the endorsees will now have to decide whether to continue into the general election as Working Families Party Candidates. Eugene Platt in the SC State Rep 115th District has also been endorsed by the South Carolina Green Party.

* = Dem primary winner

U.S. Senate – DEM (Vote For 1)
46 of 46 Counties Reporting
Michael Cone (DEM)    49.67%    72,954 [WFP endorsed]
*Bob Conley (DEM)    50.33%    73,933
Total Votes: 146,887

SC State House of Representatives District 111 – DEM (Vote For 1)
Wendell G Gilliard (DEM) 46.09% 1,444
Clay N Middleton (DEM) 37.76% 1,183 [WFP endorsed]
*Maurice G Washington (DEM) 16.15% 506
Total Vote: 3,133

SC State House of Representatives District 115 – DEM (Vote For 1)
*Anne Peterson Hutto (DEM) 62.35% 853
Eugene Platt (DEM) 37.65% 515 [WFP & Green Party endorsed]
Total Vote: 1,368

SC State Senate District 4 – DEM (Vote For 1)
Roger Odachowski (DEM) 39.41% 318 [WFP endorsed]
*Leonardo Ortiz (DEM) 60.59% 489
Total Vote: 807

Richland County Council District 7 – DEM (Vote For 1)
12 of 12 Precincts Reporting
Kiba Anderson (DEM) 24.42% 661 [WFP endorsed]
Johnny Bland (DEM) 15.44% 418
*Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy (DEM) 44.00% 1,191
Rodney Standiferd Mills (DEM) 3.36% 91
Napoleon Tolbert Jr (DEM) 12.78% 346
Total Vote: 2,707

Results are from the SC Election commission site: http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/4186/5874/en/summary.html

Dems throw 4 Green Congressional Candidates off Illinois Ballot

I have found only two news stories on the removal of the Greens from the Illinois November ballot. The Chicago Daily Herald gets the number of candidates wrong, but quotes Green Party officials at greater length. The Pentagraph article includes some very nasty quotes from Democratic Party officials.

Dennis, other Greens removed from ballot
http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/06/09/news/doc484dbbdab7e86793490814.txt
By Kenneth Lowe
Kenneth.lowe@lee.net
Bloomington Pentagraph
Monday, June 9, 2008 7:37 PM CDT

“Maurice Doyle, a Democratic precinct committeeman in Macon County, objected to Dennis’ campaign, alleging that the Green Party did not slate their candidates using proper party officials.

The other objectors, all members of the Democratic Party, made similar allegations against the other three candidates.”

[...]

Steve Brown, spokesman for Democratic Party Chairman Mike Madigan, said established parties should be expected to follow election laws.

“If Illinois has a set of election laws, we expect the Democrats and Republicans and anyone else who wants to be a candidate to obey those laws,” Brown said. “Usually this group whines every year when they fail to follow the law and get tossed off the ballot.”

Brown’s closing statement is beneath contempt as well as factually inaccurate. The Greens obtained major party status in 2006 when the Green candidate for Governor, Rich Whitney, obtained 10%+ of the vote.  This is the first year that the Green Party has operated under major party rules.

Three (sic) Green Party candidates removed from ballot
By David Beery | Daily Herald Staff
Published: 6/10/2008 12:03 AM
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=205191&src=2

But Andrew Finko, an attorney representing five Green candidates in board of election hearings, said objectors can file challenges on virtually no evidence.

“The concern is that any person can file a short, one-paragraph objection that challenges the other party’s nomination, effectively shifting the burden to that party to prove that everything was done properly,” Finko said. “Objectors are doing this when they have no basis in fact on which to raise the allegations.”

Richard Winger of Ballot Access News says:

I haven’t seen the documents yet, but the best I can understand, the law says certain party officials that presumably were elected in the primary must do certain things. The problem is, in certain counties the Illinois Greens didn’t elect any party officers at the primary, so they improvised with a bylaw that says the state party can appoint those “missing” officials. It’s an example of laws being written with large parties in mind, laws that don’t match the reality for smaller ballot-qualified parties.

SC Green, Constitution, Libertarian, United Citizens, and Working Families Candidates in 2008

UPDATE, August 23, 2008:

The Constitution, and Libertarian candidates will be on the November ballot.

The Green nominees should be on the November ballot, though the State Senate candidate is involved in litigation to secure his place. Eugene Platt lost the Democratic Primary, subsequent to his endorsement by the Green and Working Families parties. The ACLU is currently suing the state of South Carolina so that Platt may appear on the November ballot as a Green.

All Working Families Party nominees sought the endorsement of the Democratic Party. Although two nominees proceeded to a primary run-off, none won the nomination of the larger party. Subsequently the WFP did not submit the names of any candidates to the SC Electoral Commission and so no WFP candidates will appear in November.

Mark McBride failed to collect the necessary 10,000 signatures to appear as an independent petition candidate for U.S. Senate. McBride might have done well in November, since he was recently mayor of Myrtle Beach and Buddy Witherspoon got a respectable 30% of Republican primary voters running on a similar platform. Since the WFP Senate candidate Michael Cone is not contesting the Electoral Commissions exclusion of candidates failing cross-nominations, there will only be two candidates for Senate: incumbent Republican Lindsay Graham and Republican-now-Democrat Bob Conley.

Ralph Nader did collect the necessary 10,000 signatures and will appear on the SC November ballot for President.

====Original Post======

Most South Carolina parties nominate by convention, and the candidates, along with those of the Democratic and Republican primary winners, were posted on the SC Election Commission website on May 15, 2008. Find below the list of the nominees from the commission site, along with a few local candidates. I have included fusion candidates who care reported to have been endorsed by a party, but for whatever reason are not mentioned as such on the Election Commission website.

I will follow up on some of the candidates individually later, but for now, here is a list of the nominees and the office they are seeking with links to the party and candidate pages (if available).

Parties without a presidential candidate have not yet nominated for that office.

SC Green Party:

C Faye Walters - U. S. House of Representatives Dist. 4

Eugene Platt – State House of Representatives District 115

• Platt is running in the Democratic primary and has received a fusion endorsement of the Green and Working Families Parties.

Bryan Smith – York County Council District 1

• “Green Party may put forth council candidate” By Jonathan Allen Fort Mill Times. April 15, 2008

SC Constitution Party : (SSCP’s Youtube Channel)

Chuck Baldwin – President of the United States

Frank Waggoner – U. S. House of Representatives District 5 (video of May 10, 2008 speech by Waggoner)

Polly Nicolay – State Senate District 1(video of May 10, 2008 speech by Nicolay)

• Author of We The People, Taking America Back

Patricia Matthews – State House of Representatives District 104

Susie Cornelius – Oconee County Treasurer (video of May 10, 2008 speech by Cornelius)

Matt Jarfi – Horry County Council District 6 (Jarfi’s Youtube channel)

Other Constitution party candidates not found on the SC Votes website, and so possibly not ballot qualified:

John Langville – SC State Senate District 7 (video of May 10, 2008 speech by Langville)

Articles on the CP campaign:

• “Constitution Party candidates throw down gauntlet in Oconee County” Ray Chandler / Special to the Anderson Independent-Mail. Friday, April 4, 2008

SC Libertarian Party:

Bob Barr – President of the United States

Victor Kocher – State House of Representatives District 76 (archived 2002 candidate campaign site)

• SCLP Blog

United Citizens Party: (archived 2004 party campaign site) (wikipedia page)

Barak Obama – President of the United States (April 11, 2008 Ballot Access News article)

Chris Nelums – State Senate District 19 (archived 2004 candidate campaign site)

John J C Nelums – State House of Representatives District 79

SC Working Families Party:

Clay N. Middleton – State House of Representatives District 111 (also seeking Democratic endorsement in June 10, 2008 primary)

Eugene Platt – State House of Representatives District 115 (also seeking Democratic endorsement in June 10, 2008 primary)

• Platt was also endorsed by the SC Green Party at their May 3, 2008 convention.

The WFPSC website lists the following candidates, who do not appear on the SC Election Commission website:

Michael Cone – U. S. Senate (also seeking Democratic endorsement in June 10, 2008 primary)

• “Questions and Answers from US Senate Candidates“. Myrtle Beach Sun, June 6, 2008.

Kiba Anderson – Richland County Council (also seeking Democratic endorsement in June 10, 2008 primary)

Roger Odachowski – SC State Senate District 4 (also seeking Democratic endorsement in June 10, 2008 primary)

• Odachowski is president of the Independent Association of Fire Fighters, Anderson, SC
• Q&A with Odachowski and Democratic primary opponent Leonardo Ortiz in Friday, June 6, 2008 Anderson Independent-Mail.

Independent Petition Candidate

Mark McBride – U.S. Senate

“Independent Green” Party of Virginia

(Update 2: August 26, 2008)  The recent brouhaha over who the IGVP will lend its ballot line to is discussed in some detail here at Ballot Access News.   Briefly: the party had circulated petitions for a Bloomberg/Paul presidential ticket.  The use of stand-in nominees is common practice when petitioning begins before a makes its nomination.   Now that petitioning in Virginia is complete, it is unclear who the IGVP will actually place on the ballot.  IGVP chairman Carey Campbell told Elizabeth Benjamin of the NY Daily News that he was going to keep Bloomberg on the ballot.  Richard Winger of Ballot Access News is reporting that Carey told Winger that he was giving the line Chuck Baldwin, of the Constitution Party, a right-wing Christian party very unlike the Greens or Bloomberg, for that matter.  The Virginia State Board of Elections meets in the third week of every month.)

(Update: August 18, 2008. I will revise this post again when I can find more information on the Independent Green Party of Virginia, when it is available on the web. Some of what was written below is self-evidently partisan. I would appreciate (and I think other interested persons would as well) if supporters of the IGVP published more about the party on the internet: what distinguishes it, why they are working outside the two party system, and what distinguishes them from the Greens and from the Reform Party, a movement that their positions resemble.)

Right now, minor parties around the country will be conducting petition drives toward ballot access in November.

Aside from the inherent difficulties in obtain the proper number of signatures in the proper format by the proper people, the fractious and in some cases duplicitious nature of independent politics creates further complications.

A good example is what’s going on in Virginia. Virginia requires petitions containing the valid signatures of 10,000 registered voters, including at least 400 valid signatures from each of the eleven congressional districts.

The Green Party affiliate in Virginia can be found here: http://www.vagreenparty.org/.

There is a competing Independent Green Party of Virginia which can be found here: http://www.votejoinrun.us/

There is not much green in the IGPVa platform, except for the near constant references to passenger rail. The party was gearing up to support Bloomberg in an independent run for president. A picture of the New York mayor clutching a baby still appears at the top of the IGPVa web page. Bloomberg’s not running, so the New York branch of this party is in talks to lend its ballot line to McCain.

The IGPVa doesn’t have a ballot line, so don’t gain much by hitching onto the GOP yet. They even have a picture of Cynthia McKinney down their home page, just hedging their bets.

As has been noted previously the “Independent Green Party of Virginia” has a bad history of false representation. In 2005 they went so far as to submit papers to the Virginia State Board of Elections for candidates who were unaffiliated with, or had never heard of, the “Independent Green Party”

See the comment thread here: http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/05/21/virginias-independent-green-joe-oddo-confirmed-on-ballot-for-congress/

This press release lumping in the IGPVa’s candidates with real Greens in Illinois and the presidential campaign seems to be more of the same blind poaching. It must be indefensible, since I’ve never seen or heard a response from anyone in the IGPVa.

Rupert Murdoch backs Barak Obama

The New York Post endorsed Obama the other day. During a pretty interesting interview with technology reporter Walt Mossberg, Murdoch compares Obama to a rock star. The nicest thing he says about McCain is that the man was patriotic.

[The discussion of the endorsement begins about 3:00 minutes in.]

When Murdoch mentions what’s wrong with America that Obama could put right, all he can come up with is calling U.S. education a mess. That’s hardly the defining issue of our time. Nothing revolutionary is on the table. Education is a base level government concern, usually framed purely as an issue of resource management.

Murdoch himself does not donate money to political candidates. He doesn’t have to, of course. But many of the people who work for him do, and they’ve been remarkably bipartisan, as this 2004 New York Times article shows. Murdoch appeared to be leaning toward Clinton back in 2006.

which non-partisan. Murdoch purports to hate politicians. I guess that is an acceptable opinion. It only seems provocative from his phrasing to say that the majority of people in a field are mediocrities. The endorsement works on two levels. Tactically, Murdoch is conferring respectability on Obama and a kiss of death on McCain. Strategically, he’s demarcating the acceptable limits of politics: if the politician can operate above the fray, offering pablum about education, then its suitable. News Corp outlets brand themselves in a post-idological politics by offering a slightly harder ideological view of the news than is generally offered by the politicians themselves.

Venturesome politics of any kind are out.

It makes no difference now, to Murdoch, that he and his own papers once supported the war. Murdoch isn’t that rigidly ideological, or that In 2003, invading Iraq seemed reflexively proper to the kind of national populist politics Murdoch’s news outlets espouse. Just as he was following a trend toward inevitable war then, they are preparing the ground for acceptable positions on the inevitable withdrawal now.

Murdoch likes to back winners, of course, and maybe he sees something he likes in Obama. Its not simply that he expects the quid pro quo of influence for the endorsement. By stating that Obama is the better candidate, Murdoch indicates that the Democrat can be expected to work within what, to his lights are proper politics. And by getting to that point ahead of the curve, when lots of people still think McCain can win, Murdoch show the kind of prescience that confirms his reputation as a kingmaker and an arbiter of public opinion.

He did the same thing for Tony Blair (as noted by celebrity gossip site Gawker). This endorsement came at an interesting time in UK history. The Thatcherite Conservative party had been in office through four elections and were pretty evidently out of ideas. Still, they’d been reelected two times more than Labour believed possible. In preparation for the 1997 elections, Labour finished jettisoning socialism from its platform, a process which began after its historic defeat of 1982 and accellerated following Kinnock’s embarrassing loss to Conservative John Major in 1992. The faithful Labour supporters understood that the change was about electability. After 12 years of Thatcher and the end of the Cold War, most people in Britain seem to have acquiesced to capitalism. Some did, and still do, hold the belief that the election of a Labour government means a kind of reformist stance either will lead to a rebuilding of the Left, or may be all that remains of the Left. Murdoch understood the transformation better, and anchored it to populist and apolitical opinion.

When Murdoch used his tabloid The Sun to endorse Blair, it wasn’t so much an acknowledgment of back room dealings corrupting Labour as a signal that the party had completed its transformation into a outfit that was safe for big business. Over the ensuing government, Blair and Murdoch often discussed policies and the world situation and they did it out of the public eye.

When politics is professionalized, its the nonprofessionals that lose out, unless what’s good for News Corp is good for you.

Obama’s Ballot Challenges in 1996

CNN ran a long (for cable TV) investigative report after 10:00 PM tonight on Barak Obama’s successful petition challenges against Democratic primary opponents in his 1996 campaign for the Illinois state senate.

The video of the segment is not yet online, but a printed story was posted to the CNN website a few days ago.

Text: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/obamas.first.campaign/index.html?iref=newssearch
Video: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/obamas.first.campaign/index.html?iref=newssearch#cnnSTCVideo

Transcript: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0805/30/cnr.03.html

A representative of Chicago’s Better Government Association clearly states in the report that there was nothing illegal in the challenges. Also interviewed is disqualified challenger Gha-is Askia. Askia makes a few quick references to technicalities that reduced his 1000+ signatures below the threshold of 750 or so (the exact number is in the video). The incumbent, Alice Palmer, is not interviewed, but was apparently also prevented from entering the primary by similar means.

The reporter repeatedly implies that there was something underhanded in throwing off printed names (rather than the legally required signatures) or signatures obtained by ineligible petition circulators. In the video, Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass makes much of the connections between Obama and Mayor Daley via David Alexrod. He as much as says that Obama is a machine politician.

While the report contains many references to the hardball nature of Chicago politics, there is no attempt to contextualize the story in the larger issue of ballot access. It goes almost without saying that there is no reference to the partly successful Democratic campaign to keep Ralph Nader off state ballots in 2004 via the same sort of petition challenges. Or the ludicrously high signature requirements in certain states like Oklahoma, North Carolina, Ohio, or Tennessee. In fact, ballot access requirements are usually just about has difficult as they can be and then applied most egregiously against independent candidates. You could argue that Obama showed initiative in understanding  and applying the law as it was intended in a party primary election.

Kass evidently has an ax to grind and makes the whole thing come off like a hit piece. It’s good that ballot access is getting some attention, however inadvertently. The problem isn’t Obama, though.

[Submitted to Ballot Access News.]

Reporter: Drew Griffin

Chicago Tribune Reporter: John Kass