Saturday opinion.
Bob Herbert:
Wherever you choose to look — at the economy and jobs, the public schools, the budget deficits, the nonstop warfare overseas — you’ll see a country in sad shape. Standards of living are declining, and American parents increasingly believe that their children will inherit a very bad deal.
We’re in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around. It will likely take many years, perhaps a decade or more, to get employment back to a level at which one could fairly say the economy is thriving.
WSJ:
Fewer new businesses are getting off the ground in the U.S., available data suggest, a development that could cloud the prospects for job growth and innovation.
n the early months of the economic recovery, start-ups of job-creating companies have failed to keep pace with closings, and even those concerns that do get launched are hiring less than in the past. The number of companies with at least one employee fell by 100,000, or 2%, in the year that ended March 31, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
That was the second worst performance in 18 years, the worst being the 3.4% drop in the previous year.
A different twist on a theme. It's all about jobs.
Gail Collins:
Zombies are in. This cannot possibly be a good sign. ...
What’s the attraction of zombies? They don’t really do anything but stagger around and eat raw flesh. The plot possibilities seem limited. Zombies come. Humans shoot them. More zombies come. Humans hit them over the head with shovels. Nobody ever runs into a particularly sensitive zombie who wants to make peace with the nonflesh-devouring public. ("On behalf of the United Nations Security Council today, I would like to welcome the zombie delegation to the ... aaauuurrgghchompchompchomp.")
Maybe that’s the whole point. Our horror movies are mirroring the world around us.
Don't forget zombie politics, like trickle-down, Reaganomics and other horrible ideas that haunt and threaten us but won't die.
Charles Blowon another zombie idea (whites as victims):
This whole hollow argument is further evidence that many whites are exhibiting the same culture of racial victimization that they decry.
The latest evidence of this comes in a poll released this week that was conducted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute and financed by the Ford Foundation. The poll found that 62 percent of whites who identified as Tea Party members, 56 percent of white Republicans, and even 53 percent of white independents said that today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. Only 30 percent of white Democrats agreed with that statement.
It’s an extraordinary set of responses. And my question is the same one used by the right to defend the Tea Party against claims of racism: Where’s the proof? There’s a mound of scientific evidence a mile high that documents the broad, systematic and structural discrimination against minorities. Where’s the comparable mound of documentation for discrimination against whites? There isn’t one.
National Journal:
A new survey from the Pew Research Center suggests that Americans have a better understanding of Google’s smartphone operating system than they do the specifics of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Only 16 percent of respondents correctly stated that more than half of the loans made to banks under TARP have been paid back, while 25 percent of those surveyed could correctly identify Android as Google’s mobile operating system. Another 16 percent thought that none of the TARP money had been repaid.
This is but one indication from the survey that many Americans struggle with the specifics when it comes to policy and politics. It seems, that while the country has a basic understanding of what’s going on economically and politically, the details are elusive.
Mark Blumenthal:
[John] Sides and [John] Judis are absolutely right when they argue that outcomes and economic performance matter far more to true swing voters than the political process. But whether you agree or disagree on strategy, the most important take-away is that not all self-identified independents are created equal.
Remember that swing voter ≠ independent ≠ moderate.