The Republican Jobs Plan

This morning lots of headlines said no jobs had been added to the economy in August. But that’s not the whole story. Matt Yglesias writes,

Looks like we had 17,000 new private sector jobs in August, which were 100 percent offset by 17,000 lost jobs in the public sector.

The striking zero result should galvanize minds, but it’s worth noting that this has been the trend all year. The public sector has been steadily shrinking. According to the conservative theory of the economy, when the public sector shrinks that should super-charge the private sector. What’s happened in the real world has been that public sector shrinkage has simply been paired with anemic private sector growth. This is what I’ve called “The Conservative Recovery.”

As Matt goes on to say, in the whacky world of Republican economics, laying off public workers is supposed to grow jobs in the private sector. I’ve never quite understood how that’s supposed to work, though. I think it’s something like the tooth fairy leaving you money when you lose a tooth.

Matt is right that the loss of government jobs is what’s dragging down overall job growth. Steve Benen wrote almost a year ago,

The monthly employment picture from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is starting to look repetitious. September’s totals were published this morning, and the new report looks a lot like the last few reports — the private sector is slowly adding jobs, but we can’t get our head above water because of the loss in the public sector.

Remembering Sherri Finkbine

Something of a follow up to the last post — some of you younger folk (I assume at least a few younger folk beside my nephew Ian read this blog, although you wouldn’t know it from the comments) might not know about Sherri Finkbine. And the rest of you more mature (ahem) readers might have forgotten.

Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, Sherri Finkbine of Phoenix, Arizona, was one of the “Romper Room” ladies (it’s coming back to you now, isn’t it?). Romper Room was a popular children’s television program that I used to watch, although the only parts of it I remember is the stuff about “do bees” and “don’t bees” and the “magic mirror” segment in which the Romper Room Lady said happy birthday and such to various children watching at home.

Anyway, sometime in the early 1960s, Finkbine was pregnant with her fifth child when she took some tranquilizers. Back then we didn’t know about drugs crossing the placenta and getting into the fetus; pregnant ladies smoked and drank too. It turned out these tranquilizers contained Thalidomide. Thalidomide was a new drug not approved for sale in the U.S.; Mr. Finkbine, a high school teacher, had bought the tranquilizers in London while chaperoning a school trip.

But doctors in Europe had just figured out that Thalidomide was causing a rash of extreme birth defects, including missing limbs, deafness, and blindness. This was actually one of the first big clues doctors had that things women eat and drink might affect a fetus.

Finkbine’s physician advised her to terminate the pregnancy; she and her husband agreed. A local hospital tentatively agreed to do the procedure. But state and local law enforcement got wind of this and told the hospital, the doctor, and the Finkbines that they would all be subject to prosecution under Arizona abortion law if the abortion was performed.

But then Finkbine gave an interview to a local newspaper about her situation, possibly in hopes of gaining public support (although she said later she had expected anonymity) and to warn pregnant women not to take the tranquilizers. And then all hell broke loose.

Finkbine’s pending abortion became global news. Wingnuts from the Atlantic to the Pacific publicly vilified her. The Finkbines appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court to allow the abortion, but lost. And time was passing.

Finally, in August 1962, Finkbine and her husband flew to Sweden and had a late-term abortion performed there. The Swedish hospital confirmed that the fetus was missing both legs and had only one arm.

After the Finkbines returned to Arizona, Mrs. Finkbine was dismissed by the television show and Mr. Finkbine was suspended from his teaching job. “Their children were hounded, anonymous death threats poured in by post and telephone and the press swarmed around their home,” the BBC said. The Finkbines had two more children but eventually divorced in 1973.

Just a reminder of what America was like before Roe v. Wade.

Reproduction Rights News

This week a judge in Texas blocked parts of a new abortion law that requires women to receive sonograms, including trans vaginal sonograms, before an abortion and for physicians to provide a description of the sonogram written by Texas state politicians. As I understand it, the sonograms themselves are not blocked, but the judge said that for the legislature to mandate to a physician what to say to his patients about anything is a violation of free speech rights.

The judge also said that a woman can’t be compelled to look at the sonogram or read the propaganda leaflets the state wants provided to her. As I understand it, this reverses one part of the actual law that says women may refuse to listen to the description of the sonogram only under some circumstances.

However, to receive the privilege of not hearing the propaganda, she would have had to sign an affidavit declaring that she is a victim or rape or incest, or a minor receiving an abortion without her parents’ knowledge but with permission of a court, or that the fetus has an irreversible medical abnormality. The law doesn’t make clear how public those affidavits would have been. I’m also not sure who’s going to pay for all those sonograms.

This law was high on the agenda of Gov. Rick Perry, the current front runner for the Republican nomination. And I suppose I’ll have to change this photo from Holsteins to Longhorns.

In better news, NPR reports that the Obama justice department is more aggressively prosecuting abortion protesters who block access to clinics.