Friday, July 19, 2013

Massachusets "Not Seasonally Adjusted" Unemployment Rate Jumps To 7.4 Percent In June 2013

If you haven't had much luck finding a job in Massachusetts recently, you're probably not the only one in Massachusetts who's been having some difficulty getting hired  recently under the current U.S. economic system and the Democratic Patrick Administration in Massachusetts.

Between May and June 2013, the official "not seasonally adjusted" jobless rate in Massachusetts jumped from 6.7 to 7.4 percent, according to the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data; while the total number of unemployed workers in Massachusetts increased by 27,000 (from 234,3000 to 261,000) during the same period.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Mexico Revisited: Some Hidden Facts About Mexican History and Mexican Society--Part 5

In his 2010 book Mexico: Why A Few Are Rich and The People Poor, University of California-San Diego Professor Emeritus of History Ramon Eduardo Ruiz revealed the following remaining hidden facts about Mexidan history and Mexican society:

41. "...Over 12 million Mexicans do not have running water in their homes..." (page 210)

42. "Mexico City...has some of the most polluted air in the world..." (page 210)

43. "More than 4.5 million Mexicans, one-tenth of the workforce, are unemployed [in Mexico]..." (page 211)

44. Half of the government agents in Mexico's Justice Department apparently receive money from their drug busts; and 500,000 Mexicans are apparently linked in some way to drug trafficking industry. (page 213)

45. "...Ten of the world's billionaires were from Mexico [in 2010], among them the telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim..." (page 216)

46. "...Carlos Slim...purchased the [Mexican] nation's telephone network...at a bargain price; his monopoly nonetheless...charges some of the world's highest phone rates..." (page 218)

47. "...The Great Recession of 2009...set Mexico adrift on a sea of trouble...The shock in Mexico was felt at once. The peso's value dropped...Even Volkswagen, the German giant, laid off workers...Maquiladoras [border area factories in Mexico] shut down or cut workers in Baja California, Norte, Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Tamanlipas and Conhuila..." (page 236)

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Mexico Revisited: Some Hidden Facts About Mexican History and Mexican Society--Part 4

In his 2010 book "Mexico: Why A Few Are Rich and The People Poor," University of California-San Diego Professor Emeritus of History Ramon Eduardo Ruiz revealed the following additional hidden facts about Mexican history and Mexican society:

31. "...By 1996, Wal-Mart...had scores of stores in Mexico...General Motors, Volkswagen, Chrysler and Nissan accounted for 80 percent of [Mexico's] export. It was cheap to assemble autos in Mexico and then ship parts and autos by truck or rail to the biggest market in the world..." (page 186)

32. "...Privatization [in Mexico] cost 400,000 Mexicans their jobs..." (page 187)

33. "...Thousands of Mexicans, unable to find decent jobs at home, fled to the United States. Each year during the 1960s, some 27,000 Mexicans had left; by 1999, that number had multiplied tenfold..." (page 188)

34. "Unwilling to help their poor, Mexico's elite had chosen to rely on Uncle Sam to give the [Mexican] poor jobs and to feed them, and equally important, to avoid a potential social explosion of the restless [in Mexico]..." (page 188)

35. In 2000, 10 percent of Mexico's labor force earned less than the minimum wage in Mexico.

36. In 2000, less than 20 percent of Mexico's labor force belonged to labor unions.

37. "...For the poor of Mexico, NAFTA has failed to deliver more jobs: half of the workforce is unemployed, underemployed or in the informal sector, and...no country in the world has exported more manpower than Mexico..." (page 206)

38. "An average of 450,000 people a year are thought to have crossed into the United States [from Mexico] during the early years of the 21st-century..." (page 206)

39. "Some 2.5 million workers had left their families [in Mexico] for jobs in the United States [in the early 21st-century], more than 16 times the rate for the 1960s, when only 30,000 Mexicans per year had fled northward..." (page 206)

40. "One fact [in Mexico] stares one in the face. The well-off [in Mexico] hate paying taxes, and Mexico has one of the lowest-tax rates in the world. Less than 1 percent of Mexico's local budgets are collected from property taxes..." (page 207)

Monday, July 15, 2013

Mexico Revisited: Some Hidden Facts About Mexican History and Mexican Society--Part 3

In his 2010 book "Mexico: Why A Few Are Rich and The People Poor," University of California-San Diego Professor Emeritus of History Ramon Eduardo Ruiz revealed the following more hidden facts about Mexican history and Mexican society:

21. "Despite [former Mexican President] Cardenas's land reforms [of the 1930s], nearly half of the national real estate [of Mexico] remained in the hands of big landlords...The landless campesinos of 1960 outnumbered those of 1930..." (page 168)

22. "...Mexican employers had an abundant pool of cheap, unskilled labor to exploit, which kept wages low..." (page 159)

23. "In 1993, workers at the Ford assembly plant in Hermosilla [Mexico] earned 6 pesos an hour (about $2 dollars), while their counterparts in the United States earned $15 dollars an hour for exactly the same job..." (page 159)

24. "At the Volkswagen plant in Pueblo [Mexico], the best-paid auto assembly plant [in Mexico], employees earned $28 dollars for a day's labor, but unionized assembly workers in the United States took home between $120 and $180 dollars per day..." (page 159)

25. "...NAFTA opened the gates to American multinational corporations and financial behemoths to Mexico..." (page 184)

26. "...Telephone fees [in Mexico]]...were among the highest in Latin America..." (page 185)

27. "...Mexican industry, as always, was the story of monopolies..." (page 185)

28. "...A handful of families in cahoots with foreign capitalists...controlled most of Mexico's beverage sales, cement, and even flour for tortillas..." (page 185)

29. "The telephone service [in Mexico] solld off to one of the richest men in the world, became Telmex, a national monopoly controlling most of the country's landline phone service as well as nearly three-fourth of the cell phone market..." (page 185)

30. "Televisa, a private company, controlled the nation's television [in Mexico]..." (page 185)


Sunday, July 14, 2013

Murdered At Howard Beach


(chorus)
Murdered at Howard Beach
By a band of white youths with bats
Murdered at Howard Beach
While people stood by and watched.

(verses)
Their car broke down on the wrong side of town
And a police tow truck never arrived
And so they walked in the dangerous dark
To the pizza place where racists hide. (chorus)

There are no police in Howard Beach
To protect a young Black man
And if you flee to the Belt Parkway
A cop's son may mow you down. (chorus)

Michael Griffith is dead after being stranded
And cornered in a white neighborhood
Racists rule New York, and they won't let you walk
Until power rests in Black hands. (chorus)

Griffith's car broke down on the wrong side of town
And a police tow truck never arrived
And Sandiford walked in the dangerous dark
To the pizza place where racists hide. (chorus)

There are no police in Howard Beach
To protect a young Black man
And Griffith escaped to the Belt Highway
But Dominick Blum mowed him down. (chorus)

Michael Griffith was corned and now he lies dead
And the D.A. won't jail his killers
Racists rule New York, and they won't let you walk
Until Black power arrests murderers. (chorus)

And people mow march and people now chant
From Howard Beach to Boys and Girls High
"No cover-up" is the shout and again people fight
For freedom right now and tonight. (chorus)

Friday, July 12, 2013

Mexico Revisited: Some Hidden Facts About Mexican History and Mexican Society--Part 2

In his 2010 book "Mexico: Why A Few Are Rich and The People Poor," University of California-San Diego Professor Emeritus of History Ramon Eduardo Ruiz revealed the following additional hidden facts about Mexican history and Mexican society:

11. "...Mexico inherited from Spain a society split by class and by caste...By the 1840s, Mexico's society had approximately 8 million inhabitants, over half of them persons of dark skin, largely owing to Indian ancestors, the large majority of them woefully poor..." (page 63)

12. "The [Mexican] army ate up 80 percent of the Republic's budget money for 90,000 men by 1850..." (page 66)

13. "The church was the biggest property owner and the [Mexican] Republic's chief banker..." (page 67)

14. "...As Mexico became fully integrated into the world market, the engine driving it was the flow of capital from United States..." (page 93)

15. "So attractive did Yankees find Mexico that they had invested nearly $2 billion dollars by 1911, monopolizing over 80 percent of all foreign investments." (page 93)

16. "[In 1911] U.S. corporations controlled over 80 percent of mining, owned over 100 million acres of land, and provided nearly 60 percent of imports [in Mexico]..." (page 93)

17. "...By 1900...foreigners owned 150 million acres , a majority of them in American hands, roughly one-third of the land of Mexico. Only 4 percent of rural families possessed any land..." (page 101)

18. "...By 1900, some 82 percent of the country's campesinos were landless; just 1 percent of the population owned 97 percent of the fertile land..." (part 102)

19. "Between 1810 and 1910, wages paid to the peon remained nearly stationary [in Mexico]..." (page 102)

20. "...In the census of 1930, just 1.5 percent of the landlords owned 97 percent of the rural property..." (page 126)

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Mexico Revisited: Some Hidden Facts About Mexican History and Mexican Society--Part 1

In his 2010 book Mexico: Why A Few Are Rich and The People Poor, University of California-San Diego Professor Emeritus of History Ramon Eduardo Ruiz revealed the following hidden facts about mexican history and Mexican society:

1. "If truth be told, Mexico has been, and still is, a poverty-stricken, hungry nation..." (page xii)

2. "Of the more than 100 million Mexicans, why do over half live in poverty, some 20 million of them enduring daily hunger, barely able to keep body and soul together?..." (page xiii)

3.  "Mexico, according to one United Nations report, ranks near the top of the list of countries with the most glaring inequalities of wealth and income..." (page 2)

4.  "...Mexicans are poor, while Indians, constituting perhaps 12 percent of the Republic's inhabitants, are wretchedly poor..." (page 2)

5. "At the top of the list of the poorest regions stands Chiapas, where 76 percent of the inhabitants, largely Indian, are as poor as the proverbial church mouse..." (page 2)

6. "...78 percent of urban dwellers across the country [of Mexico] know poverty..." (page 3)

7. "One Mexican, Carlos Slim, the telephone magnate, is one of the richest men in the world, and a dozen or so Mexicans lag not far behind." (page 3)

8. "[Carlos] Slim's bankroll totals almost 7 percent of the country's output of goods and services, one out of every 14 dollars Mexicans earn. Every 24 hours of every month of every year, his income grows at the rate of $22 million dollars, yet 1 out of 5 Mexicans survives on just $2 dollars a day..." (page 3)

9. "The triumph of the creollos in 1821 hardly altered the life of most inhabitants [of Mexico], especially of Indians and campesinos..." (page 56)

10. "For all intents and purposes, independent Mexico was bankrupt...Until the 1850s, some 20 to 50 commercial establishments controlled the country's financial market, their chief client being the government..." (page 58)

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

John Swinton: On U.S. Press and Role of U.S. Newspaper Editors

In a 1901 speech to a banquet of New York City newspaper editors, a late 19th-century U.S. newspaper editor and journalist named John Swinton characterized the U.S. press and the role of U.S. newspaper editors in the following way:

"There is no such thing in America as an independent press.

"You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

"I am paid $150,000 a week [in late 19th and early 20th-century money] for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with--others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things--and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.

"The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.

"You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an `Independent Press.'

"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

 

Friday, July 5, 2013

Black Youth "Not Seasonally Adjusted" Unemployment Rate Jumps To 48.6 Percent In June 2013

The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age jumped from 42.3 to 48.6 percent between May and June 2013; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all Black workers (youth, female and male) in the United States jumped from 13.2 to 14.3 percent during the same period, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data.

Between May and June 2013, the official “not seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed Black youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased by 125,000 (from 308,000 to 433,000); while the “not seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed Black workers (youth, female and male) in the United States increased by 134,000 (from 2,464,000 to 2,698,000) during the same period. In addition, the number of Black workers who still have jobs decreased by 72,000 (from 16,226,000 to 16,154,000) between May and June 2013, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Black female workers over 20 years-of-age jumped from 10.5 to 12.4 percent between May and June 2013; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed Black female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 187,000 (from 999,000 to 1,186,000) during the same period. In addition, the number of Black female workers over 20 years-of-age who still have jobs decreased by 166,000 (from 8,531,000 to 8,365,000) between May and June 2013, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

Between April and May 2013, the “not seasonally adjusted” number of Black male workers over 20 years-of-age in the U.S. labor force decreased by 21,000 (from 8,432,000 to 8,411,000); while the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age was still 12.8 percent in June 2013.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased from 21.9 to 22.7 percent between May and June 2013; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latino youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased from 28.5 to 29.6 percent during the same period. In addition, between May and June 2013 the number of unemployed Latino youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased by 63,000 (from 320,000 to 383,000), according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latina female workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 8.1 to 8.6 percent between May and June 2013; while the number of unemployed Latina female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 42,000 (from 815,000 to 857,000) during the same period. In addition, the “not seasonally adjusted” number of Latina female workers over 20 years-of-age who still had jobs decreased by 146,000 (from 9,203,000 to 9,057,000) between May and June 2013; while the number of Latina female workers over 20 years-of-age in the U.S. labor force decreased by 103,000 (from 10,017,000 to 9,914,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

The “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all Latino workers (youth, male and female) was still 9.1 percent in June 2013; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latino male workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 7.2 to 7.5 percent between May and June 2013. In addition, the “not seasonally adjusted” total number of jobless Latino workers increased by 148,000 (from 2,129,000 to 2,277,000) between May and June 2013; while the number of Latino workers who still had jobs in the U.S. decreased by 45,000 (from 22,743,000 to 22,698,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

Between May and June 2013, the “not seasonally adjusted” total number of officially unemployed white workers in the United States increased by 486,000 (from 8,009,000 to 8,495,000); while the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all white workers (youth, male and female) increased from 6.5 to 6.8 percent during the same period.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed white youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased by 237,000 (from 1,019,000 to 1,256,000) between May and June 2013; while the “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white male workers over 20 years-of-age was still 6 percent in June 2013.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed white female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 325,000 (from 3,021,000 to 3,346,000) between May and June 2013; while the “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white female workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 5.6 to 6.2 percent during the same period. In addition, the “not seasonally adjusted” number of white female workers over 20 years-of-age who still had jobs decreased by 497,000 (from 51,390,000 to 50,893,000) between May and June 2013; while the number of white female workers over 20 years-of-age in the U.S. labor force decreased by 172,000 (from 54,411,000 to 54,239,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

According to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, the total number of unemployed Asian-American workers in the United States increased by 70,000 (from 365,000 to 435,000) between May and June 2013; while the unemployment rate for Asian-American workers increased from 4.3 to 5 percent during the same period.

Between May and June 2013, the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased from 24.3 to 26.6 percent; while the total “not seasonally adjusted” number of officially unemployed youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age in the United States increased by 460,000 (from 1,400,000 to 1,860,000) during the same period.

For all male workers over 16 years-of-age in the United States, the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate was still 7.8 percent in June 2012;while the total “not seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed male workers over 16 years-of-age in the United States increased by 244,000 (from 6,316,000 to 6,560,000) between May and June 2013.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all male workers over 20 years-of-age in the United States was still 6.8 percent in June 2013; while the “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all female workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 6.2 to 7 percent during the same period. In addition, the total “not seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 575,000 (from 4,343,000 to 4,918,000) between May and June 2013; while the total number of female workers over 20 years-of-age not in the U.S. labor force increased by 152,000 (from 48,753,000 to 48,905,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all U.S. workers increased from 7.3 to 7.8 percent between May and June 2013; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” total number of unemployed workers in the United States increased by 954,000 (from 11,302,000 to 12,248,000) during the same period. In addition the “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all female workers over 16 years-of-age in the United States increased from 6.8 to 7.8 percent between May and June 2013; while the official total number of unemployed female workers over 16 years-of-age increased by 702,000 (from 4,986,000 to 5,688,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July 5, 2013 press release:

“…The unemployment rate for adult women…edged up in June…In June, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 4.3 million. These individuals accounted for 36.7 percent of the unemployed…

“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 322,000 to 8.2 million in June. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

“In June, 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey…

“Among the marginally attached, there were 1.0 million discouraged workers in June, an increase of 206,000 from a year earlier…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them…

“Federal government employment continued to trend down in June…Employment in…mining and logging, construction, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing showed little change in June…”