Manufacturing has been in freefall for more than a decade, but the trend seems to have been reversed during the Obama administration, according to a new analysis (paywalled) by Bloomberg Government:

The BGOV Barometer shows U.S. factory positions have grown since early 2010, arresting a slide that began toward the end of the 1990s. It’s the best showing since the era of Bill Clinton …

“This is the first sustained increase we’ve seen in a long time,” Macpherson said. … The progress so far also contrasts with the job losses seen during the recovery from the 2001 recession, when George W. Bush was president, he said. More jobs at factories are mainly an outcome of longer-term trends including rising productivity and innovation, a weaker dollar and free trade agreements, he said.

To be sure, Obama started his term when manufacturing jobs were approaching historic lows, largely due to the forces of globalization outside of the Bush administration’s control. And not everyone is convinced that the turnaround will last: In August, for instance, manufacturing activity contracted for the third consecutive month. But the numbers do suggest that manufacturing has been one of the few bright spots of the recovery.

After spending the better half of last week bickering over whether or not to support veterans, the GOP just killed the Veterans Jobs Corps Act of 2012. The bill would have increased hiring and job training for veterans over the next five years, with a focus on jobs restoring and protecting our public lands.

Actually, the bill won the majority of US Senate votes. Fifty-eight senators (including five Republicans) voted in favor of extending job opportunities to veterans. Unfortunately, procedural rules in the Senate required sixty votes to move this bill forward.

If any two issues exist, that should break the partisan divide and unite us as a nation, they are support for veterans and protecting our natural heritage. The Veterans Jobs Corps, a top priority for the Obama Administration, was detailed in the President's budget recommendations to Congress earlier this year. The bill would have increased skills training and job placement for veterans, primarily those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, while at the same time start to whittle down backlogged maintenance projects overwhelming our nation's public lands. According to the bill's sponsor, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), the National Park Service alone has deferred maintenance totaling over $11 billion. The Veterans Jobs Corps would also increase employment among our returning service members as police, firefighters and first responders. Experts say the $1 billion bill would have paid for itself in ten years.

While the Veterans Jobs Corps may not have led to world peace, or even brought work to the 720,000 unemployed veterans across our nation, it would have been a big step in the right direction. The bill was supported by groups like the American Legion and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. It's also supported by the Sierra Club.
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With a major national election just seven weeks away, senators would have to be out of their minds to reject a jobs bill for U.S. military veterans, right?

Apparently not.

Veterans won't be getting a new, billion-dollar jobs program, not from this Senate. Republicans on Wednesday afternoon blocked a vote on the Veterans Job Corps Bill after Jeff Sessions of Alabama raised a point of order -- he said the bill violated a cap on spending agreed to by Congress last year.

The bill's sponsor, Patty Murray of Washington, said that shouldn't matter, since the bill's cost was fully offset by new revenues. She said Mr. Sessions and his party colleagues had been furiously generating excuses to oppose the bill, and were now exploiting a technicality to deny thousands of veterans a shot at getting hired as police officers, firefighters and parks workers, among other things.

The bill needed 60 votes to advance. The final tally was 58 to 40, and all 40 opponents of the proposal were Republicans.

As proposals go, this should have been a no-brainer. The Veterans Job Corps Act of 2012, sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), sought to lower unemployment among military veterans, giving grants to federal, state, and local agencies, which in turn would hire veterans -- giving priority to those who served on or after 9/11 -- to work as first-responders and in conservation jobs at national parks.

The bill was fully paid for, and entirely bipartisan -- Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) had his own set of ideas for the bill, and Murray incorporated all of them into her legislation.
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Last year, Citizens for Tax Justice found that 30 major corporations had made billions of dollars in profits while paying no federal income tax between 2008 and 2010. Today, CTJ updated that report to reflect the 2011 tax bill of those 30 companies, and 26 of them have still managed to pay absolutely nothing over that four year period:

– 26 of the 30 companies continued to enjoy negative federal income tax rates. That means they still made more money after tax than before tax over the four years!

– Of the remaining four companies, three paid four year effective tax rates of less than 4 percent
(specifically, 0.2%, 2.0% and 3.8%). One company paid a 2008-11 tax rate of 10.9 percent.

– In total, 2008-11 federal income taxes for the 30 companies remained negative, despite $205 billion in pretax U.S. profits. Overall, they enjoyed an average effective federal income tax rate of –3.1 percent over the four years.

Amongst the 30 are corporate titans such as General Electric, Boeing, Verizon, and Mattel. The only four companies that slipped into positive tax territory were DTE Energy, Honeywell, Wells Fargo, and DuPont, with DuPont the only one that paid more than 4 percent over the four years.

Corporate taxes in the U.S., contrary to the constant protestations of conservatives, are at a 40 year low, with many of the most profitable companies paying nothing at all. CTJ noted that “had these 30 companies paid the full 35 percent corporate tax rate over the 2008-11 period, they would have paid $78.3 billion more in federal income taxes.” And this is not a problem that only afflicts the U.S., as the UK found out last week that online retailer Amazon made billions in sales in 2011, while paying nothing in corporate taxes.

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2. In an interview on the Bill Bennett radio show, Mitt Romney lashed out at what he considered to be false ads by a pro-Obama super PAC. In the course of his tirade he lamented that “in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad.” [font size="3"]Romney said this even as he refused to pull his own ads that had been rated “Pants-on-Fire” lies by PolitiFact. Subsequently, the Romney campaign decided to abandon any pretense to honesty and declare that fact-checkers had “jumped the shark,” and that they would no longer “let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” In other words, we will lie if we feel like it.[/font]

3. At the GOP convention in Tampa, Ann Romney gave a keynote speech in which she told women, “You are the best of America. You are the hope of America. There would not be an America without you.” It was a naked attempt to appeal to women voters the GOP is having trouble connecting with. However, beyond her flattery she never uttered a word of support for issues of importance to women. There was no mention of equal pay, gender discrimination in the workplace, parental leave, or child welfare services like healthcare or nutritional programs. The only references she made to education were how fortunate her husband and children were to have the benefit of attending first-rate institutions that most Americans will never see. And the GOP platform strikes a markedly different tone by banning access to family planning services and effectively asserting that women, “the hope of America,” are not competent to make decisions about their own bodies.

4. The comments of GOP senate candidate Todd Akin regarding “legitimate rape” caused a firestorm of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. Many on the right insisted that Akin withdraw from the Missouri senate race. However, most of the criticism was directed at the harm Akin caused to the GOP’s prospects of winning the seat, rather than to the offensive views he articulated. There was abundant gnashing of teeth over Akin’s stupidity for putting the election at risk. But when it comes to women, the right’s policies are actually a logical conclusion of Akin’s dumb outburst. In fact, Paul Ryan and Akin cosponsored a bill in the House that sought to redefine the term “rape.” Their bill would make federal funds unavailable for victims unless the crime was deemed “forcible,” which would have excluded many assaults that were statutory, incest or under duress.

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9. Romney was a vocal opponent of the auto industry bailout orchestrated by the Obama administration. He famously wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with the title " Let Detroit Go Bankrupt ." Fast-forward a couple of years to a newly profitable and growing automobile industry and we find that Romney has shifted his position. [font size="+1"]Today he not only claims he supported the bailout, but he considers himself responsible for its success. He told ABC News that “I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.” [/font]That’s a little like Pontius Pilate taking credit for Jesus coming back.
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