•Do the Pandora Papers revealing billions of dollars in offshore tax dodges by politicians, business leaders and celebrities matter? Scroll below today’s News & Notes for our quick debate.
Disappointing Jobs Report for September -- The economy added 194,000 jobs to the workforce in September, while the unemployment rate dropped by 0.4% to 4.8%, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. The favorable unemployment rate juxtaposed against the smallest employment gain of 2021 indicates that many previous job-seekers left the workforce.
The statistics measure total non-farm employment. Notable job gains, according to the BLS, came in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, retail trade and transportation and warehousing.
Employment in public education declined, the BLS reported. President Biden is scheduled to address the nation on the unemployment rate today.
Note: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said he will not lift economic stimulus tools imposed during the pandemic until he sees a good jobs report, NPR notes, and last month’s BLS numbers won’t do it.
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Senate Kicks Can to December 3 – The Senate passed Thursday in a 50-48 vote a $480 billion boost in the debt limit, extending it to December 3, after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and 10 other Republicans voted to break the filibuster, say reports in Punchbowl News and Roll Call.
Meanwhile on the House side, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, reset the deadline for a vote on the $1.2-trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill to October 31, Punchbowl News notes (originally it was September 27). This also sets up a Halloween deadline for the $3.5-trillion Build Back Better budget reconciliation bill, which Roll Call says looks likely to have a final price tag in the $2-trillion neighborhood as Democrat senators hash out proposed program cutbacks.
The House is scheduled to take up the debt extension Tuesday.
“I’d like to see all of the different provisions funded at some level,” Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, D-HI, was quoted as saying. Other Democratic senators indicated that provisions to fight climate change are a top priority for surviving cuts.
Note: When he took to the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, harshly criticized Republicans over blocking the debt limit vote, Punchbowl News says. This prompted complaints from Minority Whip John Thune, R-SD, directly to Schumer, and Sens. Mike Rounds, R-SD, and Mitt Romney, R-UT, to reporters. Schumer apparently believes he won this one – let’s ask him again in December.
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Biden Under Water — Barely — Forty-seven percent of Americans surveyed by Morning Consult disapprove of President Joe Biden’s performance, while 46% approve. Given that the margin of error is ±0.5%, one could argue that it isn’t all that bad.
Note: Dissatisfaction with Biden’s performance has had a slow but steady increase so far this year. On January 21 there were 28% who disapproved. His best months were March and May, when his approval hit 56%.
Biden as well as other leaders may envy Narendra Modi, prime minister of India. His approval is at 72% and disapproval at 23%.
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January 6 Rioter Indicted for Stealing Pelosi’s Laptop – Prosecutors have charged Riley Williams for stealing a Hewlett-Packard laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, Politico reports. She is one of more than 600 charged so far following the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Williams allegedly shot her own video showing her “parading” through the Speaker’s office, and suggests she nicked the laptop. Witnesses, including Williams’ former partner, said she had intended to sell it.
Note: According to the Politico story, Williams intended to sell the laptop to a “foreign adversary,” probably Russia. The only problem with that reporting is that Vladimir Putin’s Russia was not quite an adversary during the Trump administration.
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Journalists Fighting Authoritarianism Win Nobel Peace Prize – A journalist from the Philippines and another from Russia have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Maria Ressa , co-founder of the Rappler website, who also has covered Southeast Asia for CNN for two decades, has been the target of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte for her coverage of his authoritarianism, including severe crackdowns on the country’s drug trade. Ressa, who was one of several journalists named as Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2018, was found guilty of “cyber libel” in 2020.
Ressa reacted to the award saying, “the fact that a journalist from the Philippines and Russia won the Nobel Peace Prize tells you about the state of the world today,” reports The Washington Post.
Dmitry Miratov, editor of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, told the Tass news agency, (per WaPo) the Peace Prize he was awarded “is for those who died defending the right of the people to freedom of speech. Since they are not with us, they (the Nobel committee) apparently decided that I should speak for them.” Six Novaya Gazeta reporters have been killed over their reporting since he founded it in 1993.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics