The Reticulator

Robert Rupert Murdock certainly isn’t making the Wall Street Journal into a better newspaper. He may know how to make more money with it, but it’s clear now that it won’t be by making the paper more interesting.

I refer to the lead headline on Monday’s paper: “Gasoline Hits Average of $4 a Gallon : Price Shock, Among the Worst in a Generation, Could Push Economy Into Recession.”

The WSJ used to be a refreshing change from such inanities as we’d get from tabloid journalism. The front page was never immune from the bad effects of journalism schools, but who would have thought it would make such a steep dive to the lowest common denominator?

At least in the old newspaper, the writers would have known that the price of gasoline was having effects even when it was at $3.90 per gallon.

Barak Obama says we need to talk about how to bring jobs to Anderson.

BTW, I liked this headline from WISHTV.com: “Obama focuses on jobs during town hall meetings in Anderson, Marion.” I read the article and watched the TV clip. The one thing I didn’t find was a focus on jobs, either by the news reporters or by Obama. You could say there was a focus on what Obama was wearing (shirt sleeves, blue-collared look). But the article was remarkably unfocused about jobs.

Well, if Obama won’t focus on how to bring jobs to Anderson, maybe The Reticulator can. It turns out there is a way. (Drum roll, please.)

Governments can create government jobs! True, the cost of government will eliminate some private sector jobs, at about a ratio of 3.7 private sector jobs lost for every government job created. But at least jobs are being created.

I read about it in USA Today

Federal, state and local governments are hiring new workers at the fastest pace in six years, helping offset job losses in the private sector.

Governments added 76,800 jobs in the first three months of 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

That’s the biggest jump in first-quarter hiring since a boom in 2002 that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. By contrast, private companies collectively shed 286,000 workers in the first three months of 2008. That job loss has led many economists to declare the country is in a recession.

Job numbers for April, out Friday, will show if the trend is continuing. Some economists say a government hiring binge could soften a recession in the short term.

“Government jobs are an important cushion for the economy when the private sector falters,” says North Carolina State University economist Michael Walden.

286,000 private sector jobs lost and 76,800 government jobs gained. Isn’t government a wonderful thing to have?

I don’t usually read New York Times editorials, but I got interested in one because of an item in the WSJ Law Blog, “Scalia to News Media: Focus on the Text!”

It’s a pet peeve of mine when the news media no longer report on how courts rule on points of law, but only tell us that the court “handed a victory” to this or that party. Go google for “court handed victory” and you’ll see what I mean.

Well, Scalia’s comments are about that, sure enough, but the particular New York Times editorial being referred to, “No Recourse for the Injured,” is a fascinating one.

Whoever would have thought the NYT would favor original intent. Whoever would have thought the NYT would provide ammunition to those who like to remind affirmative-action supporters that Hubert Humphrey promised to eat a copy of the 1964 Civil Rights law if it ever led to racial quotas. But here’s the NYT talking about how unfortunate it is that the words of a law are bringing about results different from what the sponsors intended:

When it passed the 1976 law, Congress almost certainly had no intention of removing the right to sue. Senator Edward Kennedy, the Senate sponsor of the law, and Representative Henry Waxman, who sat on the House panel that approved it, have both said that Congress had no intention of granting the manufacturers immunity from lawsuits over injuries caused by their devices.