Long-needed numbers that illuminate broad and on-going national economic policy failure. Add this to mortality rates that mirror AIDs numbers…
“Our research over the past year has found that local economies today are more divergent in terms of jobs and business growth than at any point in modern history.
EIG analyzed the presidential election results through the lens of two previous economic reports, The Distressed Communities Index and The New Map of Economic Growth and Recovery. In doing so, we found considerable evidence that the ripple effects of a weak local recovery may indeed have tipped the race in the all-important swing counties.
First and foremost, it appears that business closures helped the president-elect poach counties that had voted for President Obama twice before. Of these 209 counties, roughly 75% saw more businesses close than open from 2010 to 2014. It’s important to note that these counties ran the gamut from affluent to distressed; highly educated to below average; overwhelmingly white to majority-minority. In spite of their many differences, a decline in business dynamism is where the vast majority found common ground.
Swing Counties Faced Higher than Average Rates of Unemployment, Job Losses, and Population Decline(fladem?)…Looking more broadly than swing counties alone, we see that the urban-rural divide in this election was perhaps the starkest it has ever been.
How Struggling Economies Helped Decide the 2016 Election
Glenn G
Better hope it’s not too late to win them back.
Whoa — who saw this coming on 1/22/17: Benoît Hamon tops poll in first round of French Socialist primary race
Update:
Runoff election is on Sunday.
Also note:
So, that’s 54% for the two leftwing candidates in the SP primary election. Not looking as if Valls was the shoo-in everyone expected.
If Hamon wins, the hard slog begins.
Really great information. I tried to look up plant closings, but I could not get a decent list.
It is not a perfect fit – lots of green in PA and WI.
But really interesting
Naomi Klein — The Intercept — Get Ready for the First Shocks of Trump’s Disaster Capitalism
Two things to note:
1.
2.
Of the two, assuming that Klein is correct on “public-private partnerships”, the second one is the most damaging to the public (not that suspending Davis-Bacon isn’t a really big and bad deal). However, as phrased Klein doesn’t fully grasp what she’s seeing.
First of all, public infrastructure spending (federal, state, and local) always goes to the private players. The construction contractors (mostly engineering contractors). Corruption and outright theft by contractors as Klein details that occurred in Iraq and emergency Katrina contracts are almost negligible in domestic infrastructure projects and when they do happen, it’s not at the expense of the public purse. (All the players in getting infrastructure projects done, follow the same rules, processes, etc. and have been doing this for nearly a hundred years.) (I’m not including union construction trades corruption in the above statement, but that doesn’t seem to be widespread.)
These “public-private partnerships” are a relatively recent invention and can assume different forms, usually with the private partner ending up as the owner for some limited period of time or forever. States have been making some use of this form by approving private toll roads. These are very bad deals for the public, but are sold an almost free way to get good stuff.
NYTimes:
Assuming said journalists have integrity and skills higher than Judy Miller (and others at the NYTimes).
Glenn G response:
Would have worked a lot better if Obama had pardoned Snowden and the other whistleblowers he locked up. Too bad he rolled the dice on the best way to preserve his legacy and its come up snake eyes.
A possible explanation for why HC was caught flat-footed in the Rust Belt…from Frank Luntz
“…nobody projected the turnout in the small town and rural areas — that the people who had not participated in past elections came out in droves, and they were standing in line to make sure that their voice was heard, because they wanted to be heard. And second is that Trump voters actually told exit pollsters to go F themselves as they walked away. People who had Trump buttons or bumper stickers or pins or whatever they were wearing … they weren’t going to participate, because to do an exit poll is to acquiesce to the elite and to the media. So they told them to F off and they walked away. And that happened all across that Rust Belt.
I don’t think Americans realize how many millions of dollars are spent on exit polling and how badly they got it wrong. The actual surveys were not that far off. Hillary Clinton was supposed to win by three points, according to Real Clear Politics. She won by a a point and a half nationwide, but the state-by-states were wrong, because there is that segment in that Rust Belt area that was damn well determined to be heard and they voted in unprecedented numbers.”
http://apps.frontline.org/trumps-road-whitehouse-frontline-interviews/transcript/frank-luntz.html
Exit polls are after the fact and only good for analyzing a post-election forensic analysis.
Trump wasn’t winning by nearly decisive enough margins in the primaries for anyone to see f-you as a prevailing sentiment or mood in the electorate. What could be seen was the higher turnout and level of enthusiasm among GOP primary voters compared to the aggregate for Democrats. Similar to 2008 when the turnout was for Democrats. Whether or not it would have been higher for Democrats if the “I shall be the nominee” hadn’t been cemented by Hillary and the MSM will never be known. Bernie’s age worked against him in being more competitive and he didn’t have a chance in states dominated by the party institutional control (that was supposed to hold for Clinton in ’08, but didn’t because of Obama’s youthfulness in some states and skin color in others).
While I’m sure that a portion of Trump’s vote came from f-you voters, I don’t think it was decisive. They were just those that came out of the woodwork as they did in ’04 and their opposites came out of the woodwork in ’08. Part of that is inherent when certain demographics feel that they have been dismissed in the preceding four to eight years. I suspect that a difference between the ’08 and ’16 out of the woodwork voters is that ’08 it was FOR and ’16 it was AGAINST. Democrats don’t seem inclined to see that because it doesn’t compute with Obama’s approval numbers, but we saw the same thing in ’00 and then as now Democrats are blaming the outcome on anything but.