According to the BLS …
The number of employed people dropped by 119,000
… from 142,220,000 to 142,101,000
So, how did the unemployment rate go down?
Simple.
The BLS estimated that 368,00 stopped looking for work
In other words, the denominator changed more than the numerator.
I guess if Team Obama can get more people to stop looking for work, we’ll have unemployment problem licked.
Hmmm.
Earlier this week we posted re: the platform bruhaha at the DNC
On Wednesday, there was a do-over on the controversial parts of the platform: reinserting the words “God” and “Jerusalem“
If you haven’t seen the video, check it out … it’s great theater.
Pay attention to the number of votes taken (3) , how the chairman had to talk very slowly so that the Dem delegates would understand what to do, and draw your own conclusion whether the two-thirds threshold was met.
Here’s the most interesting part of the drama: floor photos taken at the time show that the vote’s results were already loaded to the teleprompter … before the vote was taken.
Apparently, the votes were counted before they were cast.
Having loved in Chicago for many years, I can tell you: that’s the Chicago way.
That’s an easy one … but, the latest CNN poll was the first I spotted that divides the population along those lines … or, at least, sorta does.
CNN breaks the sample by those earning less than and more than $50,000 .
$50,000 is about the point where folks have to start paying Federal income taxes.*
No surprises in the data.
Romney has the edge among Federal tax payers.
Obama gets those who don’t pay Federal income taxes … by a whopping 57% to 42%.
Uh-oh.
* P.S. Yeah, yeah, yeah about payroll taxes … but they are “insurance” payments with directly associated benefits.
I promise that I’ll stop writing about BLS reporting bias when the streak ends.
Now we’re up to 77 out of 78 weeks — and, at least 18 weeks in a row — that the BLS’s “headline number” has under-reported the number of initial unemployment claims … and cast the jobs situation as brighter than it really is.
Based on yesterday’s BLS report, the number for the week ending August 25 was revised upward from 374,000 to 377,000.
In itself, the 3,000 isn’t a big deal.
But, in context it is
Again, I ask: statistical bias or political bias?
If the former: fix it already, BLS.
Hint to BLS: just add 2k or 3k … or .8% to your prelim forecast !
Punch line: Despite a 95% share of presentation software, many companies are now starting to encourage stepping away from traditional power point slide presentations.
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Excerpted from Businessweek, “Death to Power Point!”
No matter what your line of work, it’s only getting harder to avoid death by PowerPoint.
Since Microsoft launched the slide show program 22 years ago, it’s been installed on no fewer than 1 billion computers and an estimated 350 PowerPoint presentations are given each second across the globe.
On June 18, the Iranian government made the case for its highly contested nuclear program to world leaders with a 47-slide deck … Two years back, the New York Knicks tried to woo LeBron James with a PowerPoint pitch, which may explain why James won his first NBA championship in Miami.
As with anything so ubiquitous and relied upon, PowerPoint has bred its share of contempt.
Plug the name into Twitter and you’ll see workers bashing the soporific software in Korean, Arabic, Spanish, and English as each region starts its business day.
Part of this venting may stem from a lack of credible competition:
PowerPoint’s share of the presentation software market remains 95 percent, eclipsing relative newcomers Apple Keynote, Google Presentation, Prezi, and SlideRocket.
Sometimes … PowerPoint slides …do more harm than good. They bore audiences with amateurish, antiquated animation and typefaces and distract speakers from focusing on the underlying structure of their creators’ speeches.
The best speakers at any corporate level today grip an audience by telling a story … The boldest among them do away with slides entirely
Even if you’re a middle manager delivering financials to your department in slides, you’re telling a story.
Many of the top presentation gurus advocate judiciously limiting the role of PowerPoint.
Edit by BJP
The Dems are touting 4.5 million jobs created by President Obama.
CNN says that the number is an accurate description of the growth of private-sector jobs since January 2010, when the long, steep slide in employment finally hit bottom.
But – and it’s a BIG but — while a total of 4.5 million jobs sounds great, it’s not the whole picture.
Nonfarm private payrolls hit a post-recession low of 106.8 million January 2010 … The figure currently stands at 111.3 million as of July.
While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it’s only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date since the private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.
And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There’s been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.
Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren’t the same ones that were lost.
According to a study released last week by the liberal-leaning National Employment Law Project, low-wage fields such as retail sales and food service are adding jobs nearly three times as fast as higher-paid occupations.
In marketing, there’s a measure called the net promoter’s index … in essence, it’s a company’s percentage of avid supporters minus the percentage of avid disapprovers.
Gallup tracks presidential approval daily … below is Obama’s net approval rating (% approve minus % disapprove) since inauguration.
Note a couple of big picture points:
The big election question: will Obama continue to slide until election day or stage enough of a bounce back to squeak out a win?
A couple of related items caught my eye.
First, people polled by Pew Research said that they were more interested in party platforms than convention speeches.
Then, new services started reporting some potentially controversial aspects of the Dem platform:
1. For the first time ever, making no mention of God in the platform … much to the delight of the atheist groups and raising the question “How Will Christian Democrats React?”
2. The platform directly endorsed tax payer funded abortions: “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports … a woman’s right to … a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.” Pundits are saying that “regardless of ability to pay” is an endorsement of taxpayer-funded abortions (thru Medicaid and ObamaCare), a policy that President Obama has personally endorsed. According to a 2009 Quinnipiac poll, 72 percent of voters oppose public funding of abortion and 23 percent support it.
3. The platform doesn’t state that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Pundits are saying that’s a nuanced but significant a change from prior years that “could provide fuel to critics who say President Barack Obama’s commitment to Israel is weak.”
It will be interesting to see how much play these issues get in the mainstream media.
I’m betting the under …
Well, well, well.
According to the most recent CNN poll, more likely voters (53%) view Romney favorably than view Obama favorably (51%).
And, more view Obama unfavorably (48%) than view Romney unfavorably (43%).
BTW: Ryan is viewed way more favorably than Biden
Think the mainstream media will pick up on these poll results?
I’m betting not.
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CNN Question #4:
We’d like to get your overall opinion of some people in the news. As I read each name, please say if you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of these people.
Punch line: Corporate giants spent millions during the Olympic games with the expectation of a return on that investment. What sales levels can Adidas, P&G, and McDonald’s expect to see after Olympics advertising?
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Excerpted from WSJ, “Companies Seek Olympic Legacy”
The Olympics has highlighted the boost that companies can get from sports sponsorship in the short term but experts say that the real benefit is brand awareness over the long term, which isn’t so easy to quantify.
Over the past few weeks several companies have trumpeted how sports sponsorship has paid off in terms of sales, with Adidas reporting an 18% jump in second-quarter profit tied to sponsorships.
Procter & Gamble expected its sponsorship of the London Olympics to bring in $500 million in incremental sales, with the hope that a bevy of commercials around the events would propel consumers to pick up more Bounty paper towels and Gillette razors.
And U.S. fast food giant McDonald’s Corp. will receive a boost to sales with the exclusive right to sell fries at four sites around the Olympic stadiums.
“There are not that many opportunities for brands to get the massive audiences that sporting events such as the Olympics, soccer World Cup and Euro 2012 attract,” said Graham Hales of Interbrand. “The value of being associated with, say, the Olympics, definitely makes for a stronger brand but working out the financial benefit is a trickier call.”
Adidas, as the sole sportswear partner of the Olympics and with individual deals with athletes including sprinters Tyson Gay and Yohan Blake, sped away from rivals Nike and Puma to post an 18% second-quarter jump in profits thanks to its strong sponsorship deals. The German company invested $157.1 million in this summer’s Olympics which it has already made back in the past 12 to 18 months in license product sales alone, which have more than tripled since the 2008 games in Beijing.
Procter & Gamble were similarly vague about returns on sponsorship investment. CFO Jon Moeller didn’t disclose how much the world’s largest consumer-products company spent but said that a $600 million figure floating around some circles “is not the number we are spending,” and that the company is pleased with its expected return on this year’s games.
Paying for sponsorship must be weighed up in the context of a company’s overall marketing budget. Each sponsor pays only to be allowed to be associated with the Olympics—you don’t get much more than that for your money particularly because there is no sponsorship allowed inside Olympic stadiums. A company must judge whether a $300 million marketing bill with no direct Olympic association is better or worse than paying $100 million for sponsorship and then $200 million to activate it.
The exercise is complicated by “ambush marketing” strategies which enable companies to associate themselves strongly with a sporting event even though they aren’t official sponsors. Nike, for example, which isn’t an official sponsor of the International Olympic Committee or the London 2012 Olympics, but does sponsor the U.S. team, launched a global TV campaign featuring everyday athletes competing in places around the world named London timed to coincide with the Olympics 2012 opening ceremony.
Awareness is not an issue for these large companies and the short-term boost to sales is not significant in their world-wide sell, but being a sponsor is definitely a benefit and justifies the cost of the sponsorship.
Edit by BJP
Last Thursday nite I was dismayed to watch Clint Eastwood live delivering his now infamous chat with Obama-the-empty-chair.
I thought the skit diminished the prime time pitches by wasting valuable time and setting, setting a wrong tone, and potentially monopolizing the next day news cycle.
Maybe I was wrong …
I think the GOP lucked into something.
First, the Eastwood pitch went viral … landing some grand symbolic punches on Obama (emperor has no clothes, empty suit, etc.) …. and coining a new pop culture expression: “Eastwooding” .
Just Google the word and you’ll see what I mean. It was most-Googled over the weekend.
Here are my favorite web posts … and the White House’s response.
I guess, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be smart.
According to tvnewser.com, total viewership of Romney’s speech:
.
Ken’s Take:
FOX’s share was greater than #2 ABC and #3 NBC combined … before you say “yeah, it was the GOP convention” … I’m betting FOX outdraws the other nets for the DNC
Only about 25 million people watched … down over 31% from 2008. So much for an informed electorate … I guess if if the vast majority of undecideds watched it’s ok.
I channel switched between FOX and CNN … felt sorry for CNN … pretty good stable of commentators – arguably better than FOX’s, save for the leftie flame-throwers like Begala …. surprised their ratings free-fell
MSNBC has become a parody of a news network … does anybody take them seriously? It should merge with Comedy Central.
Speaking of which … What if Comedy Central had broadcast the convention – hosted by Stewart & Colbert? Would be interesting to see the draw since many young voters and older liberals get most of their their news from Comedy Channel.
On balance, I’m disappointed more people didn’t watch …
Interesting op-ed by a Williams College prof in the WSJ last week touted the perils of online education and benefits of faculty-student interaction …
Most of us in higher education take the long view about the value of what we do.
Sure, students graduate with plenty of facts in their heads. But the transmission of information is merely the starting point, a critical tool through which we engage the higher faculties of the mind.
What really matters is the set of deeper abilities — to write effectively, argue persuasively, solve problems creatively, adapt and learn independently — that students develop while in college and use for the rest of their lives.
Which educational inputs best predict progress in these deeper aspects of student learning?
By far, the factor that correlates most highly with gains in these skills is the amount of personal contact a student has with professors.
Not virtual contact, but interaction with real, live human beings, whether in the classroom, or in faculty offices, or in the dining halls.
Nothing else — not the details of the curriculum, not the choice of major, not the student’s GPA — predicts self-reported gains in these critical capacities nearly as well as how much time a student spent with professors.
These rich, human interactions can’t be replaced by any magical application of technology.
Technology has and will continue to improve how we teach.
But what it cannot do is remove human beings from the equation.
Now, there are new purveyors of massive, open online courses.
One even proposes to crowd-source the grading of essays, as if averaging letter grades assigned by five random peers were the educational equivalent of a highly trained professor providing thoughtful evaluation and detailed response.
To pretend that this is so is to deny the most significant purposes of education, and to forfeit its true value.
Yet the only way to achieve higher productivity, as the National Academy would define it, is to reduce each student’s time with the faculty. [To have faculty teach more students and more classes, and to put more material online.]
We know that while such approaches may allow us to deliver some facts to some students more efficiently in the short run, the approaches will undermine the fundamental purpose of education in the long run.
Ken’s Take: Technology doesn’t replace classroom interaction, it liberates and enhances it.
How?
One way is to change the nature of the classroom from “seat time” to “quality time”.
My rule: If I catch myself talking for, say, 10 minutes without a student comment or question, I try to outboard the material to an online tutorial.
That way, I’m able to free up class time for more rigorous interaction that can deepen learning … rather than just running out the clock.
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Sidenote: I bet some of the profs who demean online crowd sourced grading use the off-line equivalent: having classmates rate peers’ class participation or having group members rated by their teammates. Hmmm. What’s the difference?
The Homa Files 