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A Jobs Sigh of Relief

The November jobs report was greeted yesterday with smiles and sighs of relief, which speaks volumes about how rotten the job market has been for a long time. Only 11,000 lost jobs! Praise heaven.

The report is hopeful if not yet happy news, in that it shows employment finally catching up with the economic recovery that has been building since the summer. Economic expansions always lead to some job creation, especially when the downturn and layoffs have been as steep as what the U.S. has endured in the last year.

The surprise so far has been how long it has taken the job market to come around—surprising especially to a White House that predicted a jobless rate peak of 8% if the $787 billion spending stimulus passed. President Obama called yesterday’s report the best since 2007, which is true but is also like saying that this is the most tasteful season so far of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

The report’s details suggest that job growth will finally arrive in future months. The average work week climbed to 33.2 hours from 33.0, which means more workers are being hired back to full-time status. The jobless rate—which is determined by the household survey, rather than the business establishment survey—fell to 10%, from 10.2%. And the household survey, which measures more small businesses and home entrepreneurs, showed a gain of 227,000 jobs. In the early stages of the 2003 recovery, this measure proved to be a better indicator of future job-market strength than did the lagging establishment report.

On the other hand, most of November’s job gains were in services or government. If the stimulus spending has had any effect, it has been to preserve government jobs. Private hiring remains weak. Construction, manufacturing and business professionals are still shedding jobs. At more than 28 weeks, the average duration of unemployment is now longer than it has ever been, and overall employment is still down some 7.2 million from its 2007 peak.

The news of a better job market couldn’t have come at a better time politically given that Congress seems ready to waste more money on more government job creation. The same folks who planned the last stimulus now want to spend a few hundred billion on public works jobs, more aid to states, and another round job of jobless benefits. In some states, workers can now get paid for 18 months for not working. This will give many of them an incentive to postpone a job search even as their hiring prospects improve.

Meanwhile, the White House is thinking about paying home owners to weatherize their homes. Cash for caulkers, we suppose. Now, that’ll put millions back to work.

The real message of the November report is that the job market is healing on its own, if Washington will simply let it happen. If Democrats want faster job creation by next November, they’ll do nothing at all. Stop imposing new taxes on estates, payrolls, insurance, device makers, drug makers, small business, you name it. Start over on health care. Adjourn for the year, spend December with the family, come back in 2011. And watch Congress’s approval rating rise.

Knox convicted, sentenced to 26 years in Italy
PERUGIA, Italy — American college student Amanda Knox was found guilty of murdering her British roommate and sentenced to 26 years in prison early Saturday after a year-long trial that gripped Italy and drew intense media attention.

Her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted and sentenced to 25 years. They were also found guilty of sexual assault in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old student from England.

Knox burst into tears and murmured, “No, no,” after the judge read the verdict shortly after midnight following some 13 hours of deliberations. She then hugged one of her lawyers.

Minutes later, the 22-year-old Knox, who is from Seattle, and the 25-year-old Sollecito were put in police vans with sirens blaring and driven back to jail.

Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment, Italy’s stiffest sentence. Courts can give less severe punishment than what prosecutors demand.

The American’s father, Curt Knox, asked if he would fight on for his daughter, replied, with tears in his eyes: “Hell, yes.”

“This is just wrong,” her stepmother, Cassandra Knox, said, turning around immediately after hearing the verdict. Her family had insisted she was innocent and a victim of character assassination.

One of Knox’s attorneys, Luciano Ghirga, was asked if she was distraught. “Yes, I challenge anyone not to be,” he replied.

Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca called the verdict and sentence “satisfactory,” but he acknowledged: “There is deep suffering on all sides.”

A group of local youths who gathered outside the courthouse shouted insults and “assassin!” at the Knox family as they walked in to hear the verdict.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors depicted Knox as a promiscuous and manipulative she-devil whose personality clashed with her roommate’s. They say Knox had grown to hate Kercher.

The most intimate details of Knox’s life were examined, from her lax hygiene – allegedly a point of contention with Kercher – to her sex life, even including a sex toy.

Kercher’s body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in the bedroom of the house she shared with Knox while the two were studying in the medieval town of Perugia in Italy’s central Umbria region. Prosecutors said the Leeds University student was murdered the previous night.

In Seattle, relatives and friends clasped hands as they watched the verdict on TV. “Oh God, no,” her uncle, Mick Huff, cried when it was announced.

Other friends buried their faces in their hands and shook their heads.

“They didn’t listen to the facts of the case,” said Elisabeth Huff, Knox’ grandmother. “All they did was listen to the media’s lies.”

Madison Paxton, Knox’s friend from the University of Washington, said: “They’re convicting a made-up person … “They they’re convicting ‘foxy Knoxy.’ That’s not Amanda.”

Prosecutors argued that on the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. They say a fourth person was there, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Guede, who is appealing his conviction, says he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher.
PERUGIA, Italy — The prosecution says Knox and Kercher started arguing, and that Knox joined the two men in brutally attacking and sexually assaulting the Briton under “the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol.”

Knox said Kercher was a friend whose slaying shocked and saddened her.

Defense lawyers described the American, who made the dean’s list at the University of Washington, as a smart and cheerful woman, at one point even comparing her to film character Amelie, the innocent and dreamy girl in the 2001 French movie of the same title.

That is the film Knox and Sollecito said they were watching at his home on the night of the murder, where they say they smoked marijuana and had sex. Knox said she went home the next morning to find the door to the house open and Kercher dead.

The prosecution said a 6 1/2-inch knife authorities found at Sollecito’s house had Kercher’s DNA on the blade and Knox’s on the handle. Defense lawyers said the knife was too big to match Kercher’s wounds and the amount of DNA collected was too small to determine with certainty whose it was.

The defense maintained there was not enough evidence for a conviction and no clear motive.

However, prosecutor Manuela Comodi said violent crimes can lack a motive. “We live at a time where violence is purposeless,” she told the jury.

Knox gave contradictory versions of the night of the slaying, saying at one point she was home and had to cover her ears to block out Kercher’s screams and accusing a Congolese man of the killing. The man, Patrick Diya Lumumba, owns a pub in Perugia where Knox worked. He was jailed briefly but was later cleared and is seeking defamation damages from Knox.

Knox later contended that police pressure led her to initially accuse an innocent man.

Associated Press writer Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.

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Gay marriage bill up for vote in NJ next week

Gay rights activists in New Jersey pressing lawmakers to approve a same-sex marriage law while there is still a governor in office who would sign it won assurances Thursday that the legislation would be posted for a vote.

Sen. Paul Sarlo, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would keep a promise to gay marriage proponents by posting the marriage equality act on Monday. But, he said he’d vote against the bill, underscoring the proposal’s uncertain outcome.

Senate President Richard Codey said he’d bring the bill to the full Senate next Thursday — if it clears Judiciary.

A similar proposal was defeated in New York on Wednesday in an unexpectedly wide 24-38 Senate decision, eight votes shy of the 32 needed for passage. It had passed earlier in the Assembly, and Gov. David Paterson had pledged to support it.

The result in New York, where some Democrats saw the defeat as a betrayal, prompted Sen. Ray Lesniak, a Democratic co-sponsor of the New Jersey bill, to declare, “This is not the New York Legislature. The New York Legislature is dysfunctional. We’re better than that.”

Supporters of the New Jersey bill have ramped up pressure in recent weeks on officials who control the legislative agenda, as the term of Gov. Jon Corzine winds down. Corzine, who leaves office Jan. 19, has said he would sign a bill legalizing same-sex marriages; his successor, Gov.-elect Chris Christie, has said he would veto it.

“There are many ways to win marriage equality; certainly to win marriage equality legislatively — which is our goal and, indeed, our obsession, we have to win while Jon Corzine is governor,” said Steven Goldstein, head of Garden State Equality, the state’s largest and most visible gay rights group.

Legislative leaders in New Jersey have been reluctant to put the bill to a vote — thus forcing lawmakers to take a public stance on a complex moral issue — unless they are fairly certain it would pass.

The bill needs 21 votes in the Senate, and its prospects in the chamber remained uncertain Thursday.

“God be willing, we’ll have 21 votes,” Lesniak told scores of gay rights advocates who had assembled outside the Statehouse.

Len Deo, president of the conservative New Jersey Family Policy Council, said he’ll continue to try to defeat the bill.

“Changing the definition of marriage is not like approving a budget,” said Deo, who believes the issue is too weighty for lawmakers and ought to be put directly to voters.

Gay marriage opponents, including Orthodox Jews, also rallied outside the Statehouse on Thursday.

Both houses of the Legislature must pass the bill before it goes to the governor. The legislative session wraps up a week earlier.

New Jersey currently has a civil unions law, which gives gay couples the benefits of marriage but not the title. About 4,200 couples have entered into civil unions.

Gay rights advocates say the separate-but-equal status isn’t enough. Opponents argue that marriage should remain between one man and one woman.

On Thursday, Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts, who has been waiting for the Senate to act first, said he strongly supports the marriage equality bill, “especially considering how our civil union law isn’t even living up to the most modest of hopes and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children.”

Roberts said he would continue to discuss the issue with members of the Democratic majority caucus to gauge whether there are sufficient votes for it to pass.

Recent polls show New Jerseyans divided on the issue.

Maine voters rejected a measure, and last year California voters rescinded their law. Vermont and New Hampshire adopted gay marriage bills this year, while the city council in Washington, D.C., is expected to legalize gay marriage next month.

Iowa’s Supreme Court also recognized gay marriage this year. Gay marriage was already legal in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Obama calls for new ideas for creating jobs

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama promised at a White House jobs forum on Thursday to take “every responsible step to accelerate job creation,” including some ideas he said could be put into action quickly. He cited an expanded program to help make more U.S. homes energy-efficient as an example.

He also mentioned trade measures and possible new tax incentives among ways to stop job losses that are the worst since the 1930s.

“This has been a tough year, with a lot of uncertainty,” Obama said as he wrapped up the half-day brainstorming session with more than 100 CEOs, academics, small business and union leaders and local officials. “There’s no question that it’s difficult out there right now,”

The president said there were some ideas that could be put to work almost immediately and other ideas that will become part of legislation for Congress to consider. He listed “moving forward on an aggressive agenda for energy efficiency and weatherization” as a prime candidate for quick action.

With unemployment levels above 10 percent, Obama said “We cannot hang back and hope for the best.”

But, mindful of growing anxiety about federal deficits, Obama also tempered his upbeat talk with an acknowledgment that government resources could only go so far and that it is primarily up to the private sector to create large numbers of new jobs.

He said while he’s “open to every demonstrably good idea … we also though have to face the fact that our resources are limited.”

In an interview with USA Today and the Detroit Free Press, the president rejected calls for a follow-on to the $787 billion economic recovery bill he signed into law shortly after taking office.

“It is not going to be possible for us to have a huge second stimulus, because frankly, we just don’t have the money,” Obama said.

Obama spoke a day before the Labor Department was to report unemployment figures for November. The October jobless level soared into double digits to 10.2 percent, and forecasters don’t expect the November figures to be any better — and they could even be worse.

The president was expected to stay on topic with a Friday visit to economically distressed Allentown, Pa.

As Obama and participants focused on the big picture, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was more narrowly focused, telling reporters that Congress will tap unused funds from last year’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout to pay for new spending on roads and bridges and save the jobs of firefighters, teachers and other public employees.

Pelosi didn’t give a price tag on the initiative.

However, congressional Democrats who have talked with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other administration officials are eyeing up to $70 billion in funds, said a House Democratic aide who required anonymity to describe the private talks.

Obama opened the session by challenging participants to help him come up with innovative ideas for putting millions of Americans back to work, saying he wants the “biggest bang for the buck.”

Then the guests broke into different working groups to brainstorm with administration officials.

Dropping in on a session on “Green Jobs of the Future,” Obama said, “Not to tip our hand too much, but one of the things I would be surprised if we don’t end up moving forward on is an aggressive agenda for energy efficiency and weatherization. Because that is an area where we can get it up and running relatively quickly. You don’t need new technologies.”

Obama told the group that clean energy was the nation’s best candidate “if we are to shift from the bubble and bust model that we have. … We want to make a push in this area.”

He cited the success of the administration’s Cash for Clunkers program, noting that car companies carried much of the marketing responsibilities that helped make the effort so popular. Home improvement companies like Home Depot would be key as partners in any future jobs program focusing on energy efficiencies, Obama told company chairman Frank Blake.

Obama also dropped in on a group looking at job creation tied to spending on the nation’s aging infrastructure. He told participants he believed a number of “tensions” made development of green jobs difficult, including a struggle with Congress on legislation to combat global warming, the federal government’s limited ability to invest the billions needed and the short-term push to create immediate jobs that might clash with long-term environmental initiatives.

The forum was kicked off by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who called the present unemployment rate “a stark reminder of how much we have to do.” She said the administration “will not rest” until it had been successful at job creation.

Vice President Joe Biden also addressed an audience that included the CEOs of Google, Xerox, Boeing and General Electric, labor leaders and prominent economists and told them they were vital components in any strong recovery. “Without you, it will not become a reality,” he said.

Perhaps unwittingly, Biden took the event a bit off-message at the start, painting a more dire picture of the nation’s economy than typically heard out of the administration.

He recalled an old Ronald Reagan line that people see the problem as merely a downturn when a stranger is out of work and a recession if it’s a relative who is unemployed — but a full-blown depression when they themselves lose a job.

“And it is a depression” for the nation’s more than 10 million unemployed, Biden added

Obama said he’d heard some “exciting ideas and proposals” on how to spur hiring. He also said he welcomed the suggestions as well as some “good, hardheaded feedback” from some people who don’t always share his views, including the former top economic adviser to 2008 Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who also addressed a rival GOP jobs forum earlier in the day.

Obama said. “Digging ourselves out of the hole we have dug into is not going to be easy.”

Republicans invited mostly conservative economists to their competing round-table discussion on jobs.

At that session, Holtz-Eakin suggested the single best thing Obama could do to create jobs was “to reverse course on a dangerous agenda of debt-financed spending, crippling regulation, expensive mandates and intrusive government expansion.”

Another person invited to the White House forum who was not a fan of the president during last year’s campaign was Jim Whitehurst, the president and CEO of open source software company Red Hat.

But after sitting through his session, he was surprised how officials were asking business leaders for specifics.

“It really was trying to get some practical perspective on what of these things would work,” Whitehurst said.

Whitehurst said he expected Obama would tell the nation in a speech on the economy on Tuesday that their first steps were to stabilize the economy and now the White House’s economic team would focus on jobs, based on the rhetoric he heard repeatedly during his session.

Meanwhile, Obama rejected criticism from black members of Congress that he is ignoring the more dire economic problems of minorities. Blacks for instance have a much higher unemployment rate than the already high national average. The president said it would be wrong for him to focus narrowly on blacks or any other minority group.

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Philip Elliott, Jennifer Loven, Joan Lowy, Brett J. Blackledge and Sam Hananel contributed to this report.

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Same-sex Marriage Bill Fails
Advocates of legalizing gay marriage in New York State suffered a resounding defeat on Wednesday afternoon.

The New York State Senate rejected a marriage equality bill by a vote of 38 to 24.

All 30 Republicans voted against the legislation.

Eight Democrats went against their conference leadership and voted against legalizing same-sex marriage.

The Democrats who voted “no” are Senator Joseph Addabbo, Senator Darrel Aubertine, Senator Ruben Diaz, Senator Shirley Huntley, Senator Carl Kruger, Senator Hiram Monserrate, Senator George Onorato, are Senator William Stachowski.

Wednesday’s debate lasted about three hours.

Senator Tom Duane, the openly-gay Manhattan lawmaker who championed the legislation, says he feels disappointed and betrayed following the vote.

Duane tells us, “Though I am entitled to and am a person that has some righteous anger, I turn that into action and I believe that the senate will be able to rehabilitate itself.”

Senator Hugh Farley says he would support a bill allowing same-sex couples to enter into civil unions but calling that union “marriage” is out of the question for him.

“I believe very deeply that marriage should be between a man and a woman and I think most of the general public does and that was a resounding vote,” Farley explains.

Many advocates of same-sex marriage are disappointed following the historic vote but some remain optimistic.

“This is not a community that walks away from a fight,” says Alan Van Cappelle, Empire State Pride Agenda Executive Director. “This is not a community that backs down easily. We’re just seven votes shy in the state of millions of people from winning marriage equality and I’m absolutely convinced that the day is coming and it’s going to be sooner than most people think – it’s just not going to be today.”

Supporters of the marriage equality bill are encouraged that Wednesday’s vote showed them where each senator stands.

Beth Relyea says, “Now we know what senators we need to talk to and make them understand that it’s about love and it’s about protecting my family and who we need to get out of office.”

Relyea and Joanne Trinkle have been together for almost ten years.

The Scotia couple has resisted the urged to move out of New York State in order to be able to tie the knot legally.

“I grew up in this area,” explains Relyea. “I like this area. It’s just that the people that are representing me aren’t representing me.”

Robert Voorheis and Michael Sabatino have been together for 31 years.

The Yonkers couple got married in Canada and was at the center of the court battle to get New York State to recognize same-sex marriages that were performed in other states and countries.

“I think it is a disgrace and a travesty that bigotry won out today,” says Voorheis, referring to Wednesday’s senate vote.

Voorheis says it’s a victory that the bill made it to the floor for debate.

He says he’s emboldened.

“We are going to continue to fight year after year,” he says. “We are going to do our best to get those senators out of office that need to be removed. They need to retire. They need to be replaced by people who understand that civil rights belong to all citizens of New York State – not the ones that are just like them.”

While supporters of legalizing same-sex marriage say the change is inevitable, opponents disagree.

“Actually, the vote came out higher than we even anticipated so I think, once again, it demonstrates today was a good day for marriage in New York,” says Reverend Jason McGuire, of New Yorker’s Family Research Foundation.

After the bill was defeated, Governor David Paterson visited the third floor of the Capitol to try to bolster the spirits of the defeated supporters of same-sex marriage.

“Let’s get up tomorrow and redouble our efforts,” Paterson says. “Now we know who we have to talk to.”

Some lawmakers are optimistic that they’ll be able to hold another vote on marriage equality soon but the general consensus is that the current senate will never pass such legislation.

Move to Repay Aid Helps Bank of America Shed a Stigma
Less than a year after grasping two multibillion-dollar bailouts from Washington, a resurgent Bank of America announced on Wednesday that it would repay all of its federal aid, underscoring the banking industry’s swift recovery from the gravest financial crisis since the Depression.
Despite continuing problems with its loans to struggling homeowners and consumers, Bank of America plans to return the $45 billion in aid that it received at the height of the financial panic — a step that, only months ago, would have been almost unimaginable.

But like many other big banks, Bank of America is once again making money, in large part through Wall Street businesses like trading stocks and bonds, rather than by making loans. Its recovery, while many ordinary Americans are still struggling, is an important milestone in the government’s yearlong effort to stabilize the nation’s financial industry.

The Obama administration has begun talks with lawmakers about using unspent money from the financial bailout program to help offset the costs of spending to create jobs.

For Bank of America and its beleaguered leader, Kenneth D. Lewis, the turnabout is particularly sweet. Mr. Lewis was driven first from his role as chairman and then from his post as chief executive after the bank’s controversial takeover of Merrill Lynch last year. Now, with only weeks remaining in his tenure, he has managed to extricate Bank of America — not long ago regarded as one of the nation’s most troubled big banks — from Washington’s grip.

Wednesday’s announcement followed months of heated negotiations between the bank’s board members, executives and federal regulators. It is a particularly delicate time for Bank of America, which has struggled to find a replacement for Mr. Lewis. By paying back the money that it received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, Bank of America will free itself from exceptional federal oversight of its executives’ pay — a thorny issue in recruiting a new chief executive.

Indeed, Bank of America’s board has been riven by dissent over just who should lead the bank into its post-bailout period. Several potential candidates have said they were not interested in the job, in part because of the bank’s federal bailouts and the strings attached to them.

But by paying back its rescue funds, Bank of America will shed much of the stigma associated with financial companies that received not one but two federal bailouts. Its repayment will leave Citigroup and GMAC standing alone as the only giant banks that have received such extraordinary aid, although other banks big and small have yet to repay single bailouts.

Bank of America, the nation’s largest traditional bank, will repay part of its relief funds by selling $18.8 billion in stock that is expected to be converted into common stock, a move that will further dilute its existing shares even as it strengthens the bank’s financial footing.

But most of the money will come from money that Bank of America has generated in recent months with its wagers in the financial markets. After its acquisition of Merrill — a takeover that was once panned but now appears to be paying off — Bank of America has taken greater risks to compete with Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.

The bank said it would put $26.2 billion of its cash toward repaying its bailout and would also sell off $4 billion in assets.

Mr. Lewis was criticized for paying too much for Merrill Lynch, whose gaping losses prompted Bank of America to seek a second lifeline from Washington. The events surrounding the takeover, and the government’s role in it, remain highly controversial. Some shareholders contend that Bank of America failed to disclose adequately the risks associated with the deal, which remains under state and federal scrutiny.

A Treasury Department spokesman said the bank’s repayment represented a major step in removing the government from the banking sector.

“As banks replace Treasury investments with private capital, confidence in the financial system increases, taxpayers are made whole, and government’s unprecedented involvement in the private sector lessens,” said Andrew Williams, a spokesman for the Treasury.

The months-long struggle between the bank and regulators focused on the amount of capital that Bank of America would have to raise to repay the bailout funds. Regulators are pushing major banks to increase their common equity, and the decision about Bank of America’s financial makeup raises questions about whether regulators will demand increases at other banks like Wells Fargo.

Now Bank of America’s board will focus on appointing Mr. Lewis’s successor, a process that began in October when he surprised even close associates by saying he would retire early. The board plans to meet in Charlotte early next week and hopes to interview a few of the final candidates.

Once the bailout money is repaid, the bank will no longer have to consult with the Treasury’s special master of compensation about what it awards its new chief executive, or any other employee. That may open doors for outside candidates for the job who were wary of accepting a job under the government’s thumb.

Bank of America executives have insisted for months that the bank’s underlying businesses were far stronger than those of some other banks and that the Merrill merger would pay off quickly. Indeed, Merrill’s businesses have improved this year as Wall Street’s traditional business of trading and deal making picked up. At the same time, Bank of America’s core consumer lending units suffered greater losses as the economy weakened.

The bank’s negotiations with the government were led by Greg Curl, who took over as its chief risk officer in June. Mr. Curl negotiated the bank’s merger with Merrill last year, and he has been considered a potential successor to Mr. Lewis.

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