I wonder what Newt thinks of this?

Children as young as 12 toil on farms as long as 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week, often in sweltering conditions, a recent report by Human Rights Watch found. Because of biological characteristics (such as a greater surface-area-to-body-mass ratio and a lower sweat capacity) and a reduced tendency to know when to take a break in response to heat symptoms, young farm workers are particularly at risk of excessive heat exposure, Public Citizen said in its comments.

Reserving its objections to the practice of child labor, to which it is opposed, Public Citizen called on the DOL to establish a heat-stress threshold that requires employers to take immediate action to prevent the onset of heat injury, among other protective measures.

via citizen.org

Do we deserve a Great Depression because the Greeks were irresponsible?

Rod Dreher seems to think so. Here he is, commenting on David Brooks' column sticking up for Germans who don't want to bail out their Eurozone counterparts:

I wonder what would be worse: a Depression that serves as nemesis for the hubris of the Eurozone tower of Babel, or saving the Eurozone by throwing overboard the “precious social construct” of moral hazard and an economic system that rewards virtue and punishes vice.

Those are two bad choices, but you know what? The Depression is worse. In the latter scenario, people who don't deserve to live comfortable lives get to do so—but so do the people who do deserve to. In the former scenario, people who made bad choices pay for them—but so do a lot of other people who don't. I'm not a fan of tripping lightly over moral hazard, but I'm even less a fan of the misery that accompanies a Depression.  And there's no telling where those ramifications would end. The last Depression ended with a genocidal world war, after all.

Is Islamic terrorism worse than other terrorism?

I'm perusing a Congressional Research Service report on "homegrown jihadism" in the United States—it'll take a bit to digest—but I couldn't help but notice the kicker to this paragraph:

How serious is the threat of homegrown, violent jihadists in the United States? Experts differ in their opinions. In May 2010 congressional testimony, terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman emphasized that it is, “difficult to be complacent when an average of one plot is now being uncovered per month over the past year or more—and perhaps even more are being hatched that we don’t know about.”By contrast, a recent academic study of domestic Muslim radicalization supported by the National Institute of Justice reveals that “the record over the past eight years contains relatively few examples of Muslim-Americans that have radicalized and turned toward violent extremism” and concludes that “homegrown terrorism is a serious but limited problem.” Another study has suggested that the homegrown terrorist threat has been exaggerated by federal cases that “rely on the abusive use of informants.” Moreover, the radicalization of violent jihadists may not be an especially new phenomenon for the United States. Estimates suggest that between 1,000 and 2,000 American Muslims engaged in violent jihad during the 1990s in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. More broadly, terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins notes that during the 1970s domestic terrorists “committed 60-70 terrorist incidents, most of them bombings, on U.S. soil every year—a level of activity 15-20 times that seen in most years since 9/11.”  Few of the attacks during the 1970s appear to have involved individuals motivated by jihadist ideas.

So, no big deal then, right?

Now, it's true that jihadists scored one really spectacular attack with 9/11—and that attack, not all the small-bore and (mostly) ineffective operations since then is what we've decided to address with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the reorientation of our national security infrastructure over the last decade. It's understandable, if not always laudable.

But the truth is that 1970s radicals were, on an ongoing basis, more deadly than American-grown jihadists. And it's also true that a government agency that points out that fact feels compelled to add something along the lines of: "Sure, the radical hippies committed a lot more bombings. But they weren't Muslim or anything."

Don't celebrate those new job numbers too much.

However, at this pace of job growth, it will be more than two decades before we get back down to the pre-recession unemployment rate. Moreover, a shrinking labor force is not the way we want to see unemployment drop.  At this rate of growth we are looking at a long, long schlep before our sick labor market recovers.

via epi.org

Something is really, really wrong with the economy

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that in the third quarter, wages as a share of gross domestic product were the lowest they’ve been since 1929, and compensation (that includes health insurance) as a share of GDP was at its lowest point since 1955. Corporate profits as a share of GDP, by contrast, are the highest they’ve been since 1929.

via washingtonpost.com

It's not a depression. But it's depressing.

According to the study, to be released Friday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, just 7 percent of those who lost jobs after the financial crisis have returned to or exceeded their previous financial position and maintained their lifestyles.

The vast majority say they have diminished lifestyles, and about 15 percent say the reduction in their incomes has been drastic and will probably be permanent.

via nytimes.com

About those defense budget cuts

Here's a graph from the Congressional Research Service showing what proposed "cuts" to the defense budget mean: We still spend more ... just not quite as fast as we expected to.