Decoding Unemployment

Decoding Unemployment

Ryan Teague Beckwith
Congress.org

Each month the nation breathlessly awaits the latest unemployment and job growth numbers. 'D.C. Decoder' host Craig Crawford shows how those numbers are determined and why they don't tell the whole story.

There is another metric that he forgot to cover when it comes to jobs growth... that is the number of people entering the job force everyday as a result of graduation from school or college and the number of people leaving the job force due to retirement. The job force is not a static number and it would be good to know the ratio of those entering to those leaving as that would have an impact on how many jobs would need to be created every month in order to realize a net gain of new jobs.

Other than that, I think most people who have done even cursory research on employment numbers knows that the unemployment figures being routinely reported by the media are missing the underemployed and those that have given up.

dblboggie wrote:There is another metric that he forgot to cover when it comes to jobs growth... that is the number of people entering the job force everyday as a result of graduation from school or college and the number of people leaving the job force due to retirement. The job force is not a static number and it would be good to know the ratio of those entering to those leaving as that would have an impact on how many jobs would need to be created every month in order to realize a net gain of new jobs.

Translation: people filling a void versus an actual new job being created.

dblboggie wrote:Other than that, I think most people who have done even cursory research on employment numbers knows that the unemployment figures being routinely reported by the media are missing the underemployed and those that have given up.

I count as underemployed myself. I'm not part of that 9.8% figure.

TexasBlue wrote:

dblboggie wrote:There is another metric that he forgot to cover when it comes to jobs growth... that is the number of people entering the job force everyday as a result of graduation from school or college and the number of people leaving the job force due to retirement. The job force is not a static number and it would be good to know the ratio of those entering to those leaving as that would have an impact on how many jobs would need to be created every month in order to realize a net gain of new jobs.

Translation: people filling a void versus an actual new job being created.

Wouldn't have thought that that would have needed a translation... but thanks nonetheless.

TexasBlue wrote:

dblboggie wrote:Other than that, I think most people who have done even cursory research on employment numbers knows that the unemployment figures being routinely reported by the media are missing the underemployed and those that have given up.

I count as underemployed myself. I'm not part of that 9.8% figure.

As am I. There are weeks when I work only 8 hours. In fact, at this time a year, I am lucky to get 8 hours, and this week I am only getting 4 hours in.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics

Mark Twain

Calculation of the unemployed is an act of deception and fraud. The core data is readily available (uninsured hospital ED visits, police calls, foreclosures, collection actions in state courts, unemployment claims, food stamps, medicaid applications, etc.)

If anybody cares, here is the link to the bureau of labor statistics and how they calculate the number.

As a plaintiff's employment discrimination attorney, I've participated in at least a thousand unemployment hearings over the past 20+ years. (The transcript can be used in subsequent judicial proceedings - but not the holding of the administrative judge.) I'd hazard a guess that the real unemployment rate is close to 20% and that the underemployment (those who would qualify for a higher position or be paid more for the same job in a better economy) is close to 75%.

The US has topped Japan as the most productive workforce with the fewest days off and lower benefits - indeed, the US has the lowest benefits of ay 1st world nation. In 1975 a single earner could support a family (spouse and 2.5 children), buy a home, a new car every 3-4 years and take an annual vacation of at least 2 weeks. Health care was a standard benefit as was a Defined Benefit Plan (a pension) - but, those both went west in 1982 with the 401(k) and the IRA - followed by HMOs. Thanks, to Ronnie - the Great Communicator and his Voodoo economics.

Unemployment insurance was enacted in 1938 as one of the last acts of the FDR administration to attempt to prevent another depression.

Here is a stat to look up: what would minimum wage be today - December 2010 - if the first minimum wage had been fully indexed for inflation? Another way to say that is: what was the buying power of the first (Constitutional) minimum wage under the FLSA in 1938 at $0.25/hr? What would a 1938 12 hr day / $3.00 pay buy in today's dollars?

grolaw wrote:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics

Mark Twain

Actually, Mark Twain only popularized that saying. He himself attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli, but it is believed to have been originated by Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke.

But this saying was attributed to Twain; “Figures don't lie, but liars figure.” I think this is the more relevant saying.

grolaw wrote:Calculation of the unemployed is an act of deception and fraud. The core data is readily available (uninsured hospital ED visits, police calls, foreclosures, collection actions in state courts, unemployment claims, food stamps, medicaid applications, etc.)

If anybody cares, here is the link to the bureau of labor statistics and how they calculate the number.

An interesting read that link. Two things struck me as particularly interesting; one was the absence of a category or definition for “underemployed” and the other was this sentence: “Since monthly unemployment totals have ranged between about 7 and 11 million in recent years, the possible error resulting from sampling is not large enough to distort the total unemployment picture.”

One wonders just how large a distortion might result from a CPS survey when unemployment numbers are much lower than those cited above.

However, I would challenge you on what you call readily available core data. Uninsured hospital ED visits, police calls, foreclosures, collection actions in state courts, food stamps, Medicaid applications, etc. are not reliable measures of employment or lack thereof. Any one of these categories could and are being done by employed people all over the country. There are fully employed persons who make uninsured hospital ED visits (I’m assuming these are ER visits). I have no clue how police calls would be an indication of employment or lack thereof, and I know of no mechanism by which this information could be gathered and assessed for the purposes of determining employment or unemployment as laid out in the CPS. Employed people are foreclosed on all the time. Collection actions in state courts – lots of employed people face collection actions. Food stamps and Medicaid applications – there are lots of employed people on both. This data does not strike me as either core or readily available.

grolaw wrote:As a plaintiff's employment discrimination attorney, I've participated in at least a thousand unemployment hearings over the past 20+ years. (The transcript can be used in subsequent judicial proceedings - but not the holding of the administrative judge.) I'd hazard a guess that the real unemployment rate is close to 20% and that the underemployment (those who would qualify for a higher position or be paid more for the same job in a better economy) is close to 75%.

First, I would like to know what you base this real unemployment guess on. Second, by underemployed I meant that portion of the population who wants full time work but is only working part-time because that is all they could get. This is a valid definition of underemployed, and that number would be far smaller than 75%. Of course if you are going to consider those cases in which a worker is employed, but not in the desired capacity, whether in terms of compensation or level of skill and experience, then yes, the number could be much higher; though these situations aren’t nearly as bad as working part-time hours or being unemployed altogether.

grolaw wrote:The US has topped Japan as the most productive workforce with the fewest days off and lower benefits - indeed, the US has the lowest benefits of ay 1st world nation. In 1975 a single earner could support a family (spouse and 2.5 children), buy a home, a new car every 3-4 years and take an annual vacation of at least 2 weeks. Health care was a standard benefit as was a Defined Benefit Plan (a pension) - but, those both went west in 1982 with the 401(k) and the IRA - followed by HMOs. Thanks, to Ronnie - the Great Communicator and his Voodoo economics.

Ah yes... the old “voodoo economics” nonsense. I’m guessing you’re a fan of Keynesian economics. Well suffice it to say that big-government liberals will argue all day long that Regan was the devil incarnate, but his economic policies (despite the Twainsian stats that attempt to refute it) led to one of the longest peace-time economic expansions in U.S. history. It’s just too bad that he could not push through the Democratic majority on the Hill the rest of his desired agenda – most notably the reduction in government spending.

grolaw wrote:Unemployment insurance was enacted in 1938 as one of the last acts of the FDR administration to attempt to prevent another depression.

Unemployment insurance, as a concept, is not bad at all. But I would look for better ways of turning the employee contributions into a self-sustaining fund, as should have been done with Social Security, rather than having the federal government seize the money and lump it into the general fund and spend it wantonly.

grolaw wrote:Here is a stat to look up: what would minimum wage be today - December 2010 - if the first minimum wage had been fully indexed for inflation? Another way to say that is: what was the buying power of the first (Constitutional) minimum wage under the FLSA in 1938 at $0.25/hr? What would a 1938 12 hr day / $3.00 pay buy in today's dollars?

The minimum wage is not constitutional; not that that matters. The Constitution has been being treated as list of suggested guidelines for better than a century. That said, I challenge anyone to find that section of the constitution that allows for the federal government to dictate to the two parties in an employment contract what the one party must pay and what the other party must accept as pay.

The minimum wage has been a disaster for young people newly entering the workforce, and others with few or no skills seeking employment. The minimum wage has been responsible for the rise in the automation of entry level jobs once done by young and unskilled people. It is nothing more than federal philanthropy with other people’s money and has done far more harm than good.

It is as Edmund Burke once said: “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”

So many targets and so little time today....

The minimum wage is not constitutional

You're wrong about the issue of Constitutionality. When I make that strong a statement I am always prepared with PRIMARY SOURCES to support my position.

In 1933, as a part of the FDR Administrations' response to the depression The National Industrial Recovery Act was passed and codified at 15 U.S.C. Sec. 703, et seq. NIRA Link. As is noted in the statutory link, the act's minimum wage and other provisions were held Unconstitutional in the case of A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), link. Schechter was a criminal case involving violations of the Live Poultry Code, and additional counts for conspiracy to commit such violations.

The Court overturned the NILA as an ancillary holding in the case. Id.

Subsequently the The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was enacted. (The FLSA is one of the core areas of my practice.)

The FLSA is codified at 29 U.S.C. Sec. 201 et seq. The FLSA has withstood numerous challenges since 1938 and was only substantively amended once (aside from raising minimum wage rates) during the George W. Bush Administration. If you want to read the substantial body of cases Here is a link to the Department of Labor's history of the FLSA.

I challenge anyone to find that section of the constitution that allows for the federal government to dictate to the two parties in an employment contract what the one party must pay and what the other party must accept as pay.

That would be U.S. Const. Art. IV, Sec. 2, paragraph 3.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

It is the mechanism for enforcement of indentured servitude and slavery, and is but one of the ways that the Constitution regulates "service or labor" and though it has been superseded by the 13th Amendment, it certainly addresses your challenge to find Constitutional authority.

Now, what do I get for winning your challenge? I'm suggesting a couple of beers someday.

I anticipate that our debate on the Constitution and its interpretation will be prolonged. I'll challenge you to find authority for the "personhood" of non-living artificial "persons" within the Constitution. Get right back to me on that one, please?

In my opinion, minimum wage should be a states issue. California already has it's own. I'm a big fan of states rights (10th Amendment).

Also, just because something has been found constitutional doesn't make it constitutional. I'm obviously not a lawyer but I also know that when a court (USSC) finds something constitutional and it was (for instance) a left-wing court, it's law. It cant be changed until (or unless) it's brought back to the court again. If a right wing court overturns it, then you know the rest of the story.

Many issues going to the courts shouldn't be an ideological issue but a constitutional issue. In this country, things are becoming an ideological war.

Also, just because something has been found constitutional doesn't make it constitutional.

ER, bud - when the Supreme Court rules something "Constitutional" then that's the end of the argument. The only ways to change the status of a Constitutional decision are by another Supreme Court ruling overruling the first decision or else by amending the Constitution. See, U.S. Const. Amends. 18 and 21.

Today we have the holding in Citizens United v. the FEC that conveys 1st Amendment rights to corporations to engage in political speech. No law, short of an amendment (I'd amend the 14th to define "person" as a human being or a living organism (assuming that the first people to receive Stem Cells or the folks walking around with pig valves might not be considered "human" - not to mention the off-world life forms we may some day deal with...)) is going to change that holding in our lifetimes.

Just because you don't think something is Constitutional doesn't change anything.

The 10th Amendment only provides:

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

You are familiar with Art. I, Sec. 10, right?
Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Obviously, you are aware that the 10th Amendment is not construed as as broadly as you might prefer. There was this little dustup in the 1860's that cost at least 618,000 lives. It was called the Civil War and it means that your state's rights aren't what you think that they are.

A weak grasp of jurisprudence and history seems to be the leading edge of the nonsense promulgated about our laws and judicial system.

We don't have "ideological issue v. constitutional issue" in our cases. We have plaintiffs and defendants who have brought a lawsuit pursuant to statutes, or treaties (that have the force of law) or under the common law or as an appeal from an administrative law decision, and we have conflict of laws and then there is res iudicata and collateral estoppel - that govern the law of the (individual) case. We even have the Napoleonic code - that governs the lives of residents and businesses in the state of Louisiana. French law! For an entire state!

The scope of a judicial system is vast - and ours is a direct descendant of the English Common Law and our right to jury trial is directly attributable to the Magna Carta of 1215. We have recorded cases (court decisions) dating back to the 13th century that guide our courts through the doctrine of stare decisis. Our courts are a joinder of the English Law Courts and the Courts of Equity (originally, canon law courts) and our courts exercise the powers of both courts in their adjudications.

The abbreviation for the United States Supreme Court is "SCT" or, when writing about a case decided by the SCT you use a capitol letter to name the Court. Lower courts and pleadings in lower courts are only permitted the use of the upper case "Court" when referring to themselves.

grolaw wrote:ER, bud - when the Supreme Court rules something "Constitutional" then that's the end of the argument. The only ways to change the status of a Constitutional decision are by another Supreme Court ruling overruling the first decision or else by amending the Constitution. See, U.S. Const. Amends. 18 and 21.

Today we have the holding in Citizens United v. the FEC that conveys 1st Amendment rights to corporations to engage in political speech. No law, short of an amendment (I'd amend the 14th to define "person" as a human being or a living organism (assuming that the first people to receive Stem Cells or the folks walking around with pig valves might not be considered "human" - not to mention the off-world life forms we may some day deal with...)) is going to change that holding in our lifetimes.

Just because you don't think something is Constitutional doesn't change anything.

I understand all that and have accepted that over time. But you probably should explain that to folks on your side of the aisle also.

The USSC is the last stop for any legal matter unless it's overruled at a later date by that same court.

At one time, slavery was not unconstitutional. That's the point I make here. Man is flawed.

grolaw wrote:The 10th Amendment only provides:

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I'm well aware of the 10th.

grolaw wrote:You are familiar with Art. I, Sec. 10, right?
Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

I'm also very familiar with this article. It places limits on the states. The 10th provides what the states may do in absence of what it not written in the constitution. I also understand that the states may not trump US (federal) law.

grolaw wrote:We don't have "ideological issue v. constitutional issue" in our cases.

Tell me you don't think Citizens United v. the FEC isn't ideological.

grolaw wrote:So many targets and so little time today....

The minimum wage is not constitutional

You're wrong about the issue of Constitutionality. When I make that strong a statement I am always prepared with PRIMARY SOURCES to support my position.

In 1933, as a part of the FDR Administrations' response to the depression The National Industrial Recovery Act was passed and codified at 15 U.S.C. Sec. 703, et seq. NIRA Link. As is noted in the statutory link, the act's minimum wage and other provisions were held Unconstitutional in the case of A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), link. Schechter was a criminal case involving violations of the Live Poultry Code, and additional counts for conspiracy to commit such violations.

The Court overturned the NILA as an ancillary holding in the case. Id.

Subsequently the The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was enacted. (The FLSA is one of the core areas of my practice.)

The FLSA is codified at 29 U.S.C. Sec. 201 et seq. The FLSA has withstood numerous challenges since 1938 and was only substantively amended once (aside from raising minimum wage rates) during the George W. Bush Administration. If you want to read the substantial body of cases Here is a link to the Department of Labor's history of the FLSA.

I challenge anyone to find that section of the constitution that allows for the federal government to dictate to the two parties in an employment contract what the one party must pay and what the other party must accept as pay.

That would be U.S. Const. Art. IV, Sec. 2, paragraph 3.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

It is the mechanism for enforcement of indentured servitude and slavery, and is but one of the ways that the Constitution regulates "service or labor" and though it has been superseded by the 13th Amendment, it certainly addresses your challenge to find Constitutional authority.

Now, what do I get for winning your challenge? I'm suggesting a couple of beers someday.

Well, first you have to convince me you’ve won the debate. And I am far from convinced. Actually, I should confess that I am not likely to be swayed on this issue. Let’s face it, there have been many, many laws passed which were clearly not constitutional, been found so by the Supreme Court, but have been vindicated on the very flimsiest and most specious of terms. Such as the insanely twisted thinking expressed in Wikard v. Filburn, which held that Filburn could not grow wheat to feed his own farm animals because farmers growing wheat for personal consumption could have a “substantial cumulative effect” on interstate commerce. This is such a twisted reading of the commerce clause as to be obscene! And such outrages have been committed by the high court numerous times throughout our history. If one gives careful attention to such things as the constitution’s ratification debates, and the writings of various of the framers on this subject, it becomes clear that they NEVER intended the federal government to have such broad and sweeping powers over the lives of individual citizens.

This intent was made quite clearly by none other than Patrick Henry who said: "The Constitution is not an instrument for the Government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the Government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."

Sadly, our Supreme Court has presided over the radical transformation of constitutional intent from restraint to control of the very people it was designed to protect from federal domination. There is not a single aspect of our life that is not touched by federal law or regulation.

It truly is as Jefferson said: "Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

grolaw wrote:I anticipate that our debate on the Constitution and its interpretation will be prolonged.

Yes... I do believe that it will be.

grolaw wrote:I'll challenge you to find authority for the "personhood" of non-living artificial "persons" within the Constitution. Get right back to me on that one, please?

There is no reference in the Constitution to corporate personhood; though US courts have interpreted the word “person” in the 14th Amendment to extend to corporations. Of course not everybody agrees with that, but what else is new?

But we do have 1 U.S.C. §1.

Let's define our terms here. The legal standard to challenge a statute's Constitutionality is by attacking it as "facially invalid" or "invalid as applied".

If a statute passed that banned you from practicing your religion's belief that God Hates Fags and that you must proselytize at U.S. Military Funerals you could attack that statute by:

(1) The statute is Constitutionally invalid on its face where the 1st Amend. specifically limits Congress:

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech...

Where a law (in this simple example) abridges freedom of speech - it is invalid on-its-face; and,

(2) If a law is facially neutral - say, "No public assembly permitted within 5,000 ft of a military funeral unless the assembly shall consist of members of the funeral party."

Then the law limits your 1st Amendment rights:

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The law directly prevents your speech and free exercise rights to picket funerals - so the attack on the statute is that it is "Unconstitutional, as applied" where it doesn't effect the vast majority of individuals who don't picket funerals - but does directly effect your rights.

That's all there is to attack a statute's constitutionally: it is either unconstitutional on its face or, as applied.

If you file a lawsuit challenging a statute and you don't make one, or both, of those challenges - your petition will be dismissed for failure to state a cause of action for which relief may be granted.

dblboggie wrote: However, I would challenge you on what you call readily available core data. Uninsured hospital ED visits, police calls, foreclosures, collection actions in state courts, food stamps, Medicaid applications, etc. are not reliable measures of employment or lack thereof. Any one of these categories could and are being done by employed people all over the country. There are fully employed persons who make uninsured hospital ED visits (I’m assuming these are ER visits). I have no clue how police calls would be an indication of employment or lack thereof, and I know of no mechanism by which this information could be gathered and assessed for the purposes of determining employment or unemployment as laid out in the CPS. Employed people are foreclosed on all the time. Collection actions in state courts – lots of employed people face collection actions. Food stamps and Medicaid applications – there are lots of employed people on both. This data does not strike me as either core or readily available.

The mechanism is statistical variance.

Do you know what a "weighed moving average" is? Where core service demands have a usage curve derived from historical patterns of demand you can discern fundamental changes in a market or service by analyzing the shifts away from historical usage patterns.

Visits to the ED (emergency department: ER is an out-of-date term-of-art) fit a demand curve that stays within 2SD of the mean seasonally - though, huge spikes in demand show up where disasters occur - take Hurricane Katrina as an example - so we apply the weighed moving average transformation to the data to fit the usage spike to the historical data set. Unique and devastating events will cause a significant increase on demand and use of the ED, but the spike soon drops off with the end of the exigent event - and an analysis of the usage curves will show a statistically significant upward shift, but as disasters are self-limiting and this kind of statistical analysis is designed to detect trends - the ED demand in a disaster will not shift the ED usage curve outside of 2SD from the mean where a weighed moving average analysis is applied to the data set.

That said, when usage curves for the ED trend into the 3 SD from the mean (the 99th percentile) after correction by weighed moving average analysis - then you have a statistically significant upward trend. EDs are the places that sick people go to when they do not have any insurance nor a family physician. In financial downturns ED use trends upward and beyond the margins of the 2SD curve. The duration of that trend maps directly to individuals who have no other access to healthcare and it is also a bellwether to a subsequent upward trend in state Medicaid enrollment. Mortality figures across all age groups also show a significant upward trend. These public-use data sources are examples of hard data points collected by state and federal agencies as well as by the private sector. The analysis eliminates uncertainties caused by minor aberrations "There are fully employed persons who make uninsured hospital ED visits..." and reveal, with much greater precision, the actual status of the nation's financial wellbeing.

When I point out that millions of homes have been the subject of foreclosure actions and then state that the foreclosure curve is into the 3SD range, then something unusual and prolonged is going on. I can't say that a specific foreclosure is defective, but I can say that the statistics reveal an aberration that bears investigation. And, that's exactly what is happening in the US - the trend was extraordinary and examination of the basis for that trend revealed a pervasive failure to properly document real property transactions - leading to the creation of a new industry - the ancillary-file creation business. Unfortunately for the paper-hangers, statistics derived from hard data that had been rigorously analyzed - betrayed the scam and my colleagues in the practice of property law have demanded (through "discovery") and been provided the documents that were created to bolster deficient mortgage transactions. A pervasive pattern of fraudulent foreclosures have created clouded titles with substantial implications for millions upon millions of parcels of property for decades, if not centuries.

Unmasking fraudulent foreclosure practices is but one example of the power of scientifically-sound statistical analysis - and we could easily be using hard data from all of the services I mentioned in my first post to obtain a much more comprehensive understanding of the scope of the unemployment and under-employment of citizens in the U.S.

With far fewer data points our public health departments detect and respond to contaminated foodstuffs in the U.S. marketplace, see, e.g. Wright County Egg and Peanut Corporation of America.

I'm a sustaining member of NELA (the National Employment Lawyers Association) and we have our own, internally developed, employment statistics. I can't disclose proprietary research - but I can point out that attorneys who work in the field of employment discrimination have access to vast amounts of data accumulated during the discovery process - corporate proprietary data that becomes, in whole or part, a public record (some data can be subject to a "protective order" limiting the disclosure of the data - though the Judge and Jury and the parties and their counsel all know that data, e.g. the net worth of a privately-held corporation). Anybody can buy a PACER account and read, for a price, the pleadings filed in every federal court in the US. Anybody can go to any state court and read or copy almost every case file (no, you don't get to read every document in ongoing criminal cases, adoptions, most dissolutions, trade secret litigation and the like). As attorneys who work in the field, we share our discovery with our professional organization and we employ in-house statisticians to help us identify significant trends. The massive Wal-Mart gender bias case is the direct result of this kind of analysis.

Back in 1993 I had a case against Wal-Mart - where my client was a female assistant manager (and, the only female assistant store manager in the Kansas City area) who's boss, the store manager, repeatedly told store staff and my client that he would like to butt-f**k her. This was a daily statement as the pre-opening store walkthrough went on - The manager would point to various products and incorporate them into his statements. He also told my client that she would have to perform fellatio - from the "cubbyhole" in his desk, if she screwed up. The facts continue, but the upshot is that I obtained the pay records for the preceding five (5) years for all Wal-Mart store assistant managers for the states of Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Arkansas - and, women were always paid 30% less than men with exactly the same job duties. My 10 year-old discovery data was used as part of the evidence that showed that Wal-Mart has a pervasive pattern of gender bias in pay in the 9 million plaintiff class action filed in 2003; now before the SCT.

We have the data and the tools to identify far, far more relevant information about the state of our nation's employment status. We don't use those tools because we have decided that we don't want to know that information.

grolaw wrote:Let's define our terms here. The legal standard to challenge a statute's Constitutionality is by attacking it as "facially invalid" or "invalid as applied".

If a statute passed that banned you from practicing your religion's belief that God Hates Fags and that you must proselytize at U.S. Military Funerals you could attack that statute by:

(1) The statute is Constitutionally invalid on its face where the 1st Amend. specifically limits Congress:

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech...

Where a law (in this simple example) abridges freedom of speech - it is invalid on-its-face; and,

(2) If a law is facially neutral - say, "No public assembly permitted within 5,000 ft of a military funeral unless the assembly shall consist of members of the funeral party."

Then the law limits your 1st Amendment rights:

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The law directly prevents your speech and free exercise rights to picket funerals - so the attack on the statute is that it is "Unconstitutional, as applied" where it doesn't effect the vast majority of individuals who don't picket funerals - but does directly effect your rights.

That's all there is to attack a statute's constitutionally: it is either unconstitutional on its face or, as applied.

If you file a lawsuit challenging a statute and you don't make one, or both, of those challenges - your petition will be dismissed for failure to state a cause of action for which relief may be granted.

All this is wonderful, and I am quite well aware of the basics of law and the need to state a cause of action, but we are not filing a lawsuit here. We are debating whether or not the law, as is, violates the original intent of the framers when our Constitution was written and ratified. Now, I’ve worked with enough lawyers over the last 30 years or so to understand perfectly where you are coming from, but this isn’t a law forum, it is a politics forum. Not that I don’t appreciate the legal expertise that you can bring to a specific topic like the legality of the minimum wage; but it misses the larger point that we are debating, and that is the intent.

For instance, my point, as illustrated by my citation of Wikard v. Filburn, is that the Supreme Court has deliberately violated the intent of the Constitution to serve as a restraint on federal power over citizens by using the most twisted and unnatural logic to accrue to the federal government to power to tell a farmer he could not grow his own wheat, on his own property to feed his own chickens! How on earth can you possibly say that such a ruling is consistent with the original intent of the Constitution? We are talking about denying that farmer of the use of his personal property – one of the unalienable rights that government is NOT supposed to have rule over – the right to property.

In this case, the federal government is telling this farmer that no, he may not plant his legal property, wheat, and use it to feed his property, chickens. Without a right to property, all other rights are meaningless.

Do you honestly believe that the framers intended that outcome? Do you really believe that the Framers intended that the federal government should regulate nearly every aspect of our daily lives? Do you think that unelected bureaucrats, should be allowed to make law by fiat without being answerable to the people?

Well that is what we have today. We have an out of control federal government that rules rather than serves the people. And all of this has come about by the slow operations that Jefferson warned of. Little by little, our federal government has encroached upon our liberties in the name of the "common good" and seized those liberties from us for "our own good." A seemingly benevolent process that will lead to tyranny as Jefferson said.

At some point, we either succumb to this federal tyranny or we take a stand to turn it back.

grolaw wrote:

dblboggie wrote: However, I would challenge you on what you call readily available core data. Uninsured hospital ED visits, police calls, foreclosures, collection actions in state courts, food stamps, Medicaid applications, etc. are not reliable measures of employment or lack thereof. Any one of these categories could and are being done by employed people all over the country. There are fully employed persons who make uninsured hospital ED visits (I’m assuming these are ER visits). I have no clue how police calls would be an indication of employment or lack thereof, and I know of no mechanism by which this information could be gathered and assessed for the purposes of determining employment or unemployment as laid out in the CPS. Employed people are foreclosed on all the time. Collection actions in state courts – lots of employed people face collection actions. Food stamps and Medicaid applications – there are lots of employed people on both. This data does not strike me as either core or readily available.

The mechanism is statistical variance.

Do you know what a "weighed moving average" is? Where core service demands have a usage curve derived from historical patterns of demand you can discern fundamental changes in a market or service by analyzing the shifts away from historical usage patterns.

Visits to the ED (emergency department: ER is an out-of-date term-of-art) fit a demand curve that stays within 2SD of the mean seasonally - though, huge spikes in demand show up where disasters occur - take Hurricane Katrina as an example - so we apply the weighed moving average transformation to the data to fit the usage spike to the historical data set. Unique and devastating events will cause a significant increase on demand and use of the ED, but the spike soon drops off with the end of the exigent event - and an analysis of the usage curves will show a statistically significant upward shift, but as disasters are self-limiting and this kind of statistical analysis is designed to detect trends - the ED demand in a disaster will not shift the ED usage curve outside of 2SD from the mean where a weighed moving average analysis is applied to the data set.

That said, when usage curves for the ED trend into the 3 SD from the mean (the 99th percentile) after correction by weighed moving average analysis - then you have a statistically significant upward trend. EDs are the places that sick people go to when they do not have any insurance nor a family physician. In financial downturns ED use trends upward and beyond the margins of the 2SD curve. The duration of that trend maps directly to individuals who have no other access to healthcare and it is also a bellwether to a subsequent upward trend in state Medicaid enrollment. Mortality figures across all age groups also show a significant upward trend. These public-use data sources are examples of hard data points collected by state and federal agencies as well as by the private sector. The analysis eliminates uncertainties caused by minor aberrations "There are fully employed persons who make uninsured hospital ED visits..." and reveal, with much greater precision, the actual status of the nation's financial wellbeing.

When I point out that millions of homes have been the subject of foreclosure actions and then state that the foreclosure curve is into the 3SD range, then something unusual and prolonged is going on. I can't say that a specific foreclosure is defective, but I can say that the statistics reveal an aberration that bears investigation. And, that's exactly what is happening in the US - the trend was extraordinary and examination of the basis for that trend revealed a pervasive failure to properly document real property transactions - leading to the creation of a new industry - the ancillary-file creation business. Unfortunately for the paper-hangers, statistics derived from hard data that had been rigorously analyzed - betrayed the scam and my colleagues in the practice of property law have demanded (through "discovery") and been provided the documents that were created to bolster deficient mortgage transactions. A pervasive pattern of fraudulent foreclosures have created clouded titles with substantial implications for millions upon millions of parcels of property for decades, if not centuries.

Unmasking fraudulent foreclosure practices is but one example of the power of scientifically-sound statistical analysis - and we could easily be using hard data from all of the services I mentioned in my first post to obtain a much more comprehensive understanding of the scope of the unemployment and under-employment of citizens in the U.S.

With far fewer data points our public health departments detect and respond to contaminated foodstuffs in the U.S. marketplace, see, e.g. Wright County Egg and Peanut Corporation of America.

I'm a sustaining member of NELA (the National Employment Lawyers Association) and we have our own, internally developed, employment statistics. I can't disclose proprietary research - but I can point out that attorneys who work in the field of employment discrimination have access to vast amounts of data accumulated during the discovery process - corporate proprietary data that becomes, in whole or part, a public record (some data can be subject to a "protective order" limiting the disclosure of the data - though the Judge and Jury and the parties and their counsel all know that data, e.g. the net worth of a privately-held corporation). Anybody can buy a PACER account and read, for a price, the pleadings filed in every federal court in the US. Anybody can go to any state court and read or copy almost every case file (no, you don't get to read every document in ongoing criminal cases, adoptions, most dissolutions, trade secret litigation and the like). As attorneys who work in the field, we share our discovery with our professional organization and we employ in-house statisticians to help us identify significant trends. The massive Wal-Mart gender bias case is the direct result of this kind of analysis.

Back in 1993 I had a case against Wal-Mart - where my client was a female assistant manager (and, the only female assistant store manager in the Kansas City area) who's boss, the store manager, repeatedly told store staff and my client that he would like to butt-f**k her. This was a daily statement as the pre-opening store walkthrough went on - The manager would point to various products and incorporate them into his statements. He also told my client that she would have to perform fellatio - from the "cubbyhole" in his desk, if she screwed up. The facts continue, but the upshot is that I obtained the pay records for the preceding five (5) years for all Wal-Mart store assistant managers for the states of Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Arkansas - and, women were always paid 30% less than men with exactly the same job duties. My 10 year-old discovery data was used as part of the evidence that showed that Wal-Mart has a pervasive pattern of gender bias in pay in the 9 million plaintiff class action filed in 2003; now before the SCT.

We have the data and the tools to identify far, far more relevant information about the state of our nation's employment status. We don't use those tools because we have decided that we don't want to know that information.

Ah... I see. Well not being an NELA member, much less a lawyer or a statistician, you will forgive me if I am not conversant on the subject of weighted moving averages, data stream analysis or how the inputs from ED visits, police calls, foreclosures, collection actions in state courts, food stamps, Medicaid applications, and so on can be used to determine the employment status of the American workforce. I’m not saying they can’t, you just haven’t shown how employment status data flows from these disparate sources to a single point to then be crunched to produce an accurate national employment picture.

Perhaps you could elaborate on that last paragraph (in English please neither stats nor math is a strength of mine) as to the referenced data and tools and how these are, or could be, more accurate and even more detailed than the CPS.

Have you noticed that the businesses in your town/city/burg are closing?

Have you seen the explosion of the "title loan" companies and the check cashing companies and the pawn shops?

Noticed any "for rent" and "for sale" signs that stay up for a long time; or forever?

Had a raise recently? A bump in your benefits? Have any family members looking for work?

Noticed that the price of gasoline is up?

Roads full of potholes?

Bridges out?

How about those $1.00 fast-food meal deals popping up all over?

Been to your doctor or dentist recently?

Priced glasses recently?

Spotted any homeless people?

Noticed any lines outside of churches and food pantries?

Have you noticed an increase in the number of tickets - speeding, etc? Observed police cars using radar from new locations, or more often? (A typical city can make a good 25% of its annual revenue from traffic fines. I call them disguised taxes.)

It doesn't take my five degrees to observe that the economy has never been this bad in your lifetime - or, mine.

Why don't we want the true economic figures? Well, let's see - the Iraq War and Afghanistan / Pakistan wars have been carried "off the books" until a year ago. They were paid for by selling U.S. Treasury bonds to China. If China and our other creditor nations had a solid grasp of how badly our nation is mortgaged to the hilt - we wouldn't get as high a price for our debt instruments (that's assuming that there were any buyers).

The value of the dollar on international markets would drop making imports (oil) even more expensive and our economy would become even worse.

Do you know that the GAO publishes our budget? According to the GAO, in Fiscal Year 2010 we spent $324 billion dollars, or 65.81% of our nation's entire budget on DOD Contracts? Lockheed Martin Corporation was paid $25,585,579,416.40 making it the single largest contractor with the government and Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop all in the 15-10 Billion/yr range.

Looking at the data that we publish - we convey one financial image to the world and we are careful to keep the scope of the economic disaster as unofficial as we can. No citizen of the average 1st world nation can relate to what we're experiencing because their nation either provides or mandates an entirely different set of economic standards.

Look at the top banks in the US: BOA, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. - the Federal Reserve (The Federal Reserve System is considered to be an independent central bank because its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President, but are regulated by Congress) loaned a tad over $4 Trillion to those four US banks and to certain European banks in 2008 - and until a specific law was passed, they were not required to tell the Senate or the House how much or to whom they loaned money - much less, the terms of the loans.

Today we have these four monster banks investing "free money" (NO or minuscule interest - (0.00048%)) in 30 year U.S. Treasury Notes at 3% interest. These banks are set - but there is no cash reserve for business, personal and mortgage loans. So, we're screwed - because there really isn't any competition.... Well, possibly not - because the Canadian Banks are fighting to do business in the U.S. at the consumer and business level. We have about 800 Canadian bank branches doing business in the US today. That's great news in that they are filling a need - but it is bad news because the profits flow into Canada.

The economy, and reporting on the economy, is complex and convoluted and crafted to benefit a very small group of people. I used to read the WSJ - I read it for decades - today, I only read the Financial Times for the coverage that I used to have from the WSJ. The fix is in. We don't have the kind of transparency that we need to understand what's happening with the economy within the US any longer.

I don't see you complaining about the bunch in DC that have spent a shit load of money in the last 2 years. I bitched about it when Bush was prez relentlessly. This place didn't exist but where I used to post (during the mid-part of the Bush presidency circa 2002 to 2005), I was very critical of so-called conservatives acting like Democrats. No this bunch gets in and haven't done shit for this economy. I call it like I see it. It's the very reason I left the GOP and went to the "crazy" and "far-right" party (Libertarian Party).

Uh.... ok. Nothing here that's exactly a state secret to anyone paying attention. Although I would refute this bit from above:

grolaw wrote:Do you know that the GAO publishes our budget? According to the GAO, in Fiscal Year 2010 we spent $324 billion dollars, or 65.81% of our nation's entire budget on DOD Contracts?

First of all, $324 billion is a far cry from 66% of the entire federal budget. The federal budget for 2010 was $3.6 trillion dollars. Second, even the actual DOD budget of $782 billion dollars is not 66% of a $3.6 trillion dollar budget. The thing that is going to sink this nation financially is unfunded entitlement liabilities, not defense spending.

But more to the point, how is this responsive to my post on the intent of the Constitution?

Cite your source. Defense is more than 66% of our budget. Period.

grolaw wrote:Cite your source. Defense is more than 66% of our budget. Period.

Honestly? This is the ground you are going to stake out? Defense spending?

How about my point on constitutional intent?