Maggie's Farm

First of all, it wasn't a crime when Powell did it. And while he recognized that he had done it, he also certainly knew it shouldn't have happened.
Secondly, passing it off as a 'problem of modern communication' as if anyone might do it by accident is pure and utter BS. Anyone in a job, such as my own, in which confidential information is passed, KNOWS what they should or shouldn't share.
Hillary said she didn't know what the parenthetical "C" in emails meant, that she ONLY understood it if it was applied to an entire email (cough, cough) and that she also skipped the meeting to discuss how these emails should be treated. As an employee at a large corporation, hearing her statements to this effect, I realized 2 things. First, she's lying or stupid. Second, if she skipped the meeting, she should be fired.

Basically, what you are seeking to do is excuse her for what APPEARS to be a rather 'simple' mistake. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as you'd like it to be.

Since you live in your mom's basement and get most of your information from Wikipedia, I can understand why you MIGHT fall for the lies which were perpetrated regarding her use of these emails. But perhaps you can also explain how she and her co-workers LIED to an FBI agent about all this and were not indicted (as Flynn was)?

Corrupt is the correct term. She knew what she was doing - and furthermore, IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS NOT AN EXCUSE. Finally, it WASN'T Comey's job to determine if she was engaged in passing email with criminal intent. That's the AG's job. Comey provided cover, as we're beginning to learn, to prevent any kind of issue arising from Bill's tarmac shakedown.

Private email servers existed in 1917? Fascinating. Tell me more.

You pointing it out that 'some leaks out' doesn't make me wrong and doesn't make Hillary less criminal. You're rationalizing, you're not responding to the problem. You frequently complain that people who oppose you are 'waving hands' but it's OK when you do it. Got it. Your pure assholery is starting play out here.

Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin claimed they didn't know about a private email server when interviewed by the FBI. That was a materially false statement to an FBI agent. Flynn basically did the same thing, which is why he got in trouble. Don't try to get around this one - I already had this discussion with several lawyers, and all of them pointed out that Strzok basically let them all off the hook. Your ignorance is fascinating.

Ignorance of the law IS ONE of the issues. Scienter may be part of the issue - and while Comey claimed that was the reason he didn't bring charges, I notice you didn't answer that question - why HE made the decision when it really wasn't his to make. For what reason did Lynch pass on making that judgment and leave it to him? Or...more to the point....did she recognize the problem she'd face by making that call and provide a back channel call to Comey asking him to overstep his bounds in order to provide HER cover after cutting the deal with Bill? Because, after all, even YOU are not stupid enough to believe that deal wasn't cut now that the evidence is there that the inital language was "grossly negligent" (and therefore criminal) and was changed by a Hillary sycophant to "extremely careless". But maybe, because your stupidity has consistently shown through ALL your commentary, you REALLY ARE JUST THAT STUPID. So I'm going with that. Living in your mother's basement has made you soft, ass-wipe.

Assigning job growth and/or economic performance to a president is dicey business, at best.
1. The president doesn't create jobs, businesses do.
2. The president doesn't manage the economy, nor does Congress.
3. IF you want to assign these things, assignation should begin no earlier than 1 year after election, when at least SOME of the president's actions are starting to have an effect.
4. Saying "expectations" or "confidence" improved may be legitimate, but are only partial explanations for increased value in the overall economy. This MAY apply to the stock market, which is driven by expectations, but the stock market is not the real economy.

I do not think Obama had anything to do with 'improving' the economy. It happened as it should, naturally. I do think his impact DAMPENED that improvement, and that we are, for all intents and purposes, in a recession (while Keynes was wrong about so much, he probably wasn't wrong about equilibrium occurring at levels below that which are optimal - other economists have given examples of this occurring). I do think presidents can hurt the economy more than they can help.

The ONLY ways which a president MAY have a beneficial impact is by creating an improved environment for business activity. Lowering taxes, removing obtuse regulatory restrictions, etc.

Giving Trump credit for the current state of the economy (or Obama, for that matter) is overly simplistic and makes no sense. Remember, labor force participation is still VERY low.

For the sake of discussion only, I'm ascribing recoveries to a president, it doesn't mean I'm saying they caused anything.

The Labor Force Participation Rate is not slippery at all. Retirees are not counted. There are age ranges for economically active people. We know the size of the population and the number of people who are economically active in those age ranges. We also know the number of people taking part in the workforce. So it's a straightforward calculation.

Let's put it this way - we know there are 225mm people in the US. If they aren't active (children, homemakers) who have never held a job or looked for one, they don't count, but they are part of the population. But we know the number of people have held a job at some point, so they become the basis of the potential workforce. While retirees are an issue, and that's structural, it's wrong to think that's important. When the "jobless recovery" after the 2001 recession occurred, the LPR had fallen to 66%. It didn't recover during the recovery. That, of course, means that people WERE finding jobs - but many who left the workforce simply didn't come back. We could assume there's a level of retirement taking place there, as well as a level of new entrants choosing to not look for work, and therefore not entering the calculation for unemployment.


So if you have 160mm people working or looking for work and it represents 62.7% of the population, the LPR is 62.7%. But if of that 160mm only 153mm are working, the unemployment rate is 4.4%. Let's say 500k find jobs, and 500k stop looking. The LPR falls by .2 percentage points - everyone says "no big deal". But the unemployment rate falls to 3.8% and everyone screams "IT'S A MIRACLE".

But, in reality, it's really not something meaningful...you're calculating unemployment off a lower base! Let's try it another way - let's say NO jobs are added, but people stop looking (which happened enough during the Obama 'recovery' to be of interest). So the working population stays steady at 153mm and the workforce falls from 160mm to 159.5mm. The unemployment rate moves from 4.4% to 4.1% and Obama says "I added jobs" (he didn't) and "unemployment fell, and that's meaningful (in this case, it DEFINITELY wasn't). Meanwhile the LPR still fell by .2 percentage points....and THAT IS meaningful.

Normally, during a recovery, you expect LPR to rise somewhat. 2001's recovery was not a great one. It was very tepid, to be sure. But Obama's was horrific, as massive numbers left the workforce.

Some CLAIM that it was retirees leaving the workforce. This is pure bunk. One sure way to determine that is to look at the number of 'retirees' working at WalMart. Obama's 'recovery' was horrible for anyone who wanted to retire and live on a fixed income. Rates of return were too low for funds to last. My father, who retired 7 years prior to Obama, found his wife returning to work (she is significantly younger and could work) in order to supplement their income. And his ability to retire and live on a fixed income was better than 90% of the population. More to the point, he began selling off holdings he originally intended to hold longer because the original estimates for his ability to live off the baseline amount was devastated by Obama's policies.

The other way you know it's pure bunk is the age groups who ENTERED the workforce. In addition, one of the biggest stories of the Obama "recovery" was the lack of young people entering the workforce. Many entered as part-time workers - which under Obama, constituted a significant portion of jobs created versus any other recovery.

The unemployment number is useful only for one reason - to determine the effect on federal payments to unemployed workers. From the standpoint of a meaningful economic statistic, it's not really all that useful. While economists will talk about it, usually it's when trying to push a political agenda or when they are trying to tell a story to people who don't understand the complexities of labor force dynamics.


Zach makes a point which, as usual, seeks to RATIONALIZE his absurd beliefs. While the rate has fallen over a period of time (really only since 2001...when the first boomers were 56 years old, hardly retirement age...even today they are only 72) as retirees left the workforce, he tries to use that as a structural change to hide the fact that it fell RAPIDLY AND SIGNIFICANTLY during the Obama recovery - far more than anyone would expect during a period of time when retiring was hardly a good idea (as I pointed out). While it bottomed out in 2015, and rose slightly 4 times since then, it's fallen back all 4 times. Since it bottomed out, it's risen only mildly...enough to recognize there is something more than a structural change taking place. This isn't retirees driving the issues...it's a lack of jobs. Obama's recovery didn't create many jobs on a monthly basis. He had, essentially, 90 months of recovery. Only 16 had job growth which exceeded 250k jobs, and to have a robust recovery, that's usually the amount of jobs most economists feel need to be created.

There is another issue, too. Wage growth. Obama actually performed very poorly here. His sycophants like to say "yeah well he INHERITED (he bought, he knew what he was getting and said he could fix it) a bad economy so his performance was actually really good." BS. Utter garbage. First of all, presidents don't impact wages. Secondly, even if you want them to, his performance in this regard is horrible.

So generally speaking, the idea that stuff has been so fun and rosy under Obama is really just pathetic nonsense. It's been barely OK.

But he did have good people when it came to manpulating statistics and make him look 'good' (HEY! LOOK at how LOW I got the unemployment rate - nevermind that all it really represents are people who left the workforce.)

I can't edit what I post, and there is a statement in there which was incomplete, and I intended to remove it but posted first. It says retirees aren't counted. That's incorrect. I meant they are not 'counted' insofar as they count in the workforce. The LPR will never (and probably shouldn't ever be) 100%. Children don't work, and retirees don't work.

But we do have to remember there are large numbers of 'retirees' working now because it's damn near impossible to live on a fixed income in this economy.