At a time when Democrats need to minimize negative press to avoid substantial losses this fall, the Federal Elections Commission announced this week that Vice President Joe Biden (D) violated federal campaign finance law during the 2008 election.
The finding that Biden for President accepted over-limit contributions and a discounted flight on a privately-owned jet was only compounded by what has been characterized as sloppy campaign accounting.
The flight was found to have been undervalued by nearly $27,000, according to an audit completed by the FEC since the campaign was partially funded by public funds. The audit also identified more than $100,000 in over-limit contributions that Biden's campaign did not seek to quickly address.
For the violations, the FEC fined Biden's campaign $219,000.
Biden's campaign team is downplaying the findings, stating that they attempted to contact the over-limit contributors.
The White House is seeking ideas from federal employees on how to improve government efficiency and save money. The process -- called the SAVE award -- started in 2009 with federal employees submitting more than 40,000 ideas.
Officials in the White House Office of Management and Budget ranked each proposal. In the end, four of the top ideas were included in the budget. The highest ranked idea, submitted by Nancy Fichtner of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, led to a policy change at the VA where employees are allowed to save prescriptions medications when discharged from hospitals.
To date for the 2010 competition, more than 7,000 ideas have been submitted by federal employees. One major change for this year is that employees can also rate the ideas.
The proposer of the winning idea will personally pitch the proposal to the President and likely see it implemented in the Fiscal Year 2012 budget proposal to be released by the White House in Feb. 2011.
Missouri's labor market continues to see modest improvements each month. According to new data released last week by the Missouri Dept. of Economic Development, the state's unemployment rate fell two-tenths of a point, from 9.3 percent in May to 9.1 percent in May.
Nationally the unemployment rate is 9.5 percent, down from 9.7 percent in May.
The lower unemployment rate in Missouri likely signifies two effects that may seem unlikely to be concurrent. First, some individuals are finding employment, evidenced by the gains of 3,600 jobs month-over-month. Second, a number of individuals receiving unemployment benefits for more than six months stopped looking for jobs.
While the effects of each of these two points are difficult to isolate with the sparse data provided by DED, we suspect individuals being dropped from the unemployment rolls played a more significant role over the last month in the substantial drop in unemployment.
Here are the latest trends according to DED:
Missouri’s labor market conditions continued to improve in June, according to data released today by the Missouri Department of Economic Development (DED). Missouri’s nonfarm payroll employment increased by 3,600 jobs during the month, on a seasonally-adjusted basis, marking the fifth consecutive month of positive job growth in the state. Missouri’s net job growth since January 2010 now stands at 26,600, an average of 5,300 new jobs created each month.
The state’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate stood at 9.1 percent in June, the lowest rate in more than a year, down from 9.3 in May. The state’s not-seasonally adjusted rate increased by half a percentage point to 9.2, a standard practice in June each year as summer jobseekers enter the labor force. In comparison, the U.S. rates for June 2010 were 9.5 seasonally-adjusted and 9.6 not-seasonally-adjusted.
The private sector added 6,000 new jobs in June, with noteworthy growth occurring in construction (+1,100); durable goods manufacturing (+2,300, spread through a number of industries); and transportation, warehousing and utilities (+2,200). Increases came in spite of the loss of 3,300 federal government jobs in June, mostly temporary Census workers.
Most other industry groups saw comparatively small changes. The leisure and hospitality industry as a whole saw little change from May as its two major sectors went in opposite directions. Arts, entertainment and recreation saw an employment gain of 1,900, while accommodation and food services employment was down by 2,200.
Payroll employment in the state’s metropolitan areas decreased in some areas and increased in others. The reduction of temporary census workers played a substantial role in many areas, particularly in St. Louis (-2,600) and Kansas City (-2,600). On the plus side, Joplin (+1,000) led the way in gains, while most others were relatively unchanged.
The signs are weak, but clear: jobs are beginning to return to the Show-Me state.
According to data from the U.S. Labor Department, Missouri has gained jobs steadily over the past four months, 25,800 in all.
Of course, that alone doesn't mean the recession is over and things are back to normal, because in the three preceding months Missouri lost as many jobs. In other words, net employment is back to Oct. 2009 levels.
Nonetheless, over the four month time period Missouri's employment growth is about one percent.
Ezra Klein of The Washington Post teams up with George Washington University Professor John Sides in a column today to explain that the economy will be closely linked to electoral outcomes this fall:
...The job of governing is different than the job of getting reelected. What do you do when good politics and good governance point you in the opposite directions?
But maybe we don't have to choose. For decades now, political scientists have been building election models that attempt to predict who will win in November without making any reference to candidates or campaigns. They can generally get within two percentage points of the final vote, and they don't need to know anything about the ads, the gaffes or the ground games to do it. All they really need to know about is the economy.
While predicting Congressional elections is indeed very difficult, MPN's own model to project voter turnout in 2010 is similarly based largely on economic conditions. One of the key variables -- the state unemployment rate -- accounts for a sizable and statistically significant share of the explanatory power in the model. Here are the results from our analysis.
Posts
