Talking Points Memo has this interesting article Labor Force Participation Is Lower Than It Has Been In 30 Years — Why It Matters And Why It Doesn’t.

There’s no single, tidy explanation for what triggered the increase in the first place or why it’s come to an end, but the single clearest factor is that last century women began pouring into the work force — a phenomenon that came to an end in the last decade.

“The women who are going to enter have entered,” says Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. All else being equal that explains why the labor force participation rate would flatten.

Other factors have combined to bring it down. The country’s aging population means we have an aging workforce — and that means a bigger-than-usual segment of the labor force is retiring in large numbers. Compounding that is the fact that large numbers of young working age men are not working. The Chicago Fed explored these trends in greater detail and concluded that the labor force participation rate will continue to decline well into the future.

The following graph shows how labor participation rate varies from country to country and over time.  The article explains many of the reasons for this beyond the few reasons I quoted above.

The explanation for a lot of this behavior falls smack, dab in the middle of Elizabeth Warren’s area of expertise.

Somebody has to tell the Republicans that “this is what mission accomplished looks like.”

If the above Comedy Central video fails you, as it fails me, try this bug fix link.

Stephanie Cutter, Deputy Campaign Manager, shares the facts about Big Oil’s latest attack.

The only way to combat the big lie is with the bigger truth repeated many more times than the big lie.

Found another Elizabeth Warren sound bite on her YouTube Channel.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren says, “We need a cop on the beat so no one steals your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street.”

I am completely mystified about why there are voters who recognize the need for the common defense against foreign enemies (our military forces) and against local criminals (our police force), but think that Wall Street should be left to pillage and rob. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the agency invented by Elizabeth Warren, is just another part of providing for the common defense. Apparently some people prefer Warren’s opponent who thinks that economic recovery depends on the continued thievery in the financial markets.

Elizabeth Warren has just come out with a new ad that reminds people what she has done that explains why she has a national reputation as an expert in financial matters.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren worked with President Barack Obama to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to hold the big banks accountable and give working families a strong voice in Washington.

If you go to the ad on her web page, you can contribute to help put it on the air.

The O’Zone blog has posted the press release announcing the May 12 visit of Elizabeth Warren to Southbridge. The press release is from the southbridgedemocrats@gmail.com.

Don’t forget the Sturbridge For Elizabeth Warren has also posted this event on Facebook. If you RSVP on Facebook, then you will get automatic notifications if there should be any change to the event.

There will be phone banks calling to invite people to the event in Sturbridge tonight, May 2, at 6:30PM, Monday, May 7, and other days next week yet to be announced. To request more information, send an email to WarrenEvent@ssgreenberg.name.

For those who attended last night’s Southcentral Massachusetts for Elizabeth Warren organizing meeting, we forgot to tell you that we have phone lists for the towns of

• Brimfield
• Brookfield
• Charlton
• East Brookfield
• Holland
• Southbridge
• Spencer
• Sturbridge
• Warren
• Wales
• West Warren

Using our phone lists allows us to give feedback to the campaign about who you called.  If we can show the campaign how hard we have worked to promote this event, then it will be easier for our official Warren Campaign Field Organizer to sell the idea that it is important for Warren to visit our area more frequently.

There is an 8 flyer per page document you can print out and distribute to announce the event. There is even a sign you can carry that may attract people to ask for a flyer.

To show you how clueless Brown is, he claims that he just doesn’t like the health care law being a federal law. He says that the states could all adopt the rule he is using to get health care coverage for his daughter. Apparently Brown forgets that his Senate health care coverage is a federal plan since as Senator he is a federal employee. If Massachusetts adopted the rule, but the federal government did not, then Brown could not cover his daughter under the plan. He doesn’t get his health care from Massachusetts. He gets it from the federal government in Washington, D.C. which is not in any state.

You may think that Scott Brown is a nice enough fellow to have as a Senator. On the other hand, Elizabeth Warren knows so much more about how the major financial institutions of this country and around the world took advantage of the unwary consumers and almost brought down the world economy.

Who should we have in the Senate to start to fix the problem? Should we have a person who really knows what is going on? Or should we have the nice fellow without a clue who thinks that favoring the financial crooks will somehow make the economy better.

Truth Out has the interesting article Understanding Iran’s Diplomatic Strategy.  The link takes you to a written part by Gareth Porter, whose position is summed up by the following quote:

For Obama’s advisers, assuming Iran was simply “playing for time” justifies a heavy reliance on “coercive diplomacy”, which combines a boycott of the country’s crude oil exports and hints that an Iranian failure to come to agreement would open the way for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. But that conventional wisdom, which the Obama administration inherited from the Bush administration, ignores the accumulated evidence that Iran’s diplomacy strategy is to accumulate centrifuges, not in order to support a weapons programme, but rather to negotiate a larger bargain with the United States.

There is also a 25 minute video program with a Russian, an Iranian, and an American.  I suppose you might say that each expert is of “undetermined expertise and objectivity”.  However, some of them do present what are logically possible explanations.

To figure out among the four opinions which one to believe is beyond the scope of this blog.  Maybe the best we can do is to keep an open mind.  I suppose it is possible to stand back and see why some of the actors believe the way they do whether or not it turns out that their beliefs match reality.  The American’s argument as to what the North Korean example ought to mean to Iran amounts only to wishful thinking that Iran could accept his point of view.  I can see lots of reasons why his argument would carry little weight with Iranian leaders.

Being such a success at bringing peace to Sturbridge :-(, I am not sure anyone should trust my view at all.

According to the commentary that went with the video Jimmy Fallon – Slow Jam The News with Barack Obama:

When Jimmy talks to the UNC audience about student loans, he decides a slow jam with President Obama and The Roots is appropriate.

Thanks to MattM for suggesting this video.