Author: hankkalet

The knee-jerk reaction to the state jobs report issued yesterday is likely to be a big smile. Afterall, the 12,900 jobs added to state payrolls in February — accompanied by a decline in the jobless rate to 9.3 percent — can be taken as a sign that the state is in recovery.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to acknowledge a few realities.

First, half of the jobs were in the public sector, a direct contradiction of how the governor views the economy. His argument has been pretty straightforward since he took office: Slash the public sector and the private sector will grow. But aside from the December report — which likely benefited from a surge in temporary post-Sandy construction jobs — private-sector growth has remained anemic.

Joseph Seneca, a Rutgers University economist, noted that the state has added just 6,000 private sector jobs in the first two months of 2013, or about 3,000 a month.

“If continued, (that) would be a modest pace for the rest of the year,” said Seneca. “The state’s labor markets are still improving, but the current pace, based on the first two months of data, remains tepid.”

Public-sector growth, if it were to continue (though I suspect it is nothing more than an unexpected blip on the radar screen), could turn out to be the engine for recovery, a fact that would seem inconvenient to the governor.

The other issue, of course, is the unemployment rate, which remains well above the national rate.

Seneca and Patrick O’Keefe, director of economic research at CohnReznick, noted that the drop in the unemployment rate is not a sign of growth, because it wasn’t driven by people finding jobs – but people leaving the workforce.

While the number of people who said they were unemployed fell by 11,700, the number of people who said they were employed rose by only about 300, the figures show. Instead, the size of the labor force fell by 11,300.

“That decline, reflected the exodus of some 11,000 job seekers,” from the workforce, O’Keefe said. They left, he added, “not because they found jobs, but because they stopped looking for work,” because they were discouraged at what they saw as little chance they would be successful.

 “So the unemployment rate came down for what I think most economists view as a negative reason – a discouragement rather than a rise in job holding,” he said. He called it a “positive, but mixed report.”

That’s not how the  administrative is seeing it. Charles Steindel, the treasury department’s chief economist, issued a press release (quoted by The Record), saying things were looking up.

“This is another solid jobs report that continues the general, upward trend of growth and progress,” he said.

I’m not so sure he’s right.

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Johan Santana is probably done as a Met. As sad as that is, the reality is that he was probably done last year and any expectations that he would be productive for New York might best be described as wishful thinking.

So, where does that leave the men from Flushing?

In exactly the same place they were expected to land. In nearly every other division in baseball, this is a last-place club. If it weren’t for the Florida Fire-Sales, the Mets would be destined for the cellar — and they still could be.

Or they could surprise. It is baseball, after all. And it is not yet opening day.

But realism requires us to judge what we have before us and what we have is a handful of legitimate major leaguers, some aging losers and a number of ballplayers who probably should be playing for the Somerset Patriots.

So, who are the legit big-leaguers? David Wright, obviously. While the third-baseman struggled in the second half under the weight of being the only legitimate stud in the line-up, he still showed why he is among the top players at his position in the game.

Who else? Ike Davis. His second half was lost amid the team’s collapse, but he is young, outstanding defensively and he hit more than 30 dingers a year ago. That gives the Mets promise at the corners.

Anyone else? The other two infielders — shortstop Ruben Tejada and second-baseman Daniel Murphy — have proven they belong in the majors, but it remains unclear whether they are longterm solutions as everyday players. Tejada is young and an excellent fielder who has shown a surprising ability to hit when everyone expected him not to. Murphy is a solid batman with minimal power and no position, but he gets the nod everyday because the alternatives are pretty slim.

The rest of the lineup? Is Lucas Duda a legitimate power threat or just the second coming of John Milner, a player with promise who never quite lives up to it? And what about Kirk Nieuwenhuis? He had his moments last year, but he strikes out too much for a guy with nominal power and while he runs well he’s not a threat on the basepaths. He probably will have a decent career as a fifth outfielder/journeyman — and here he is penciled in as the opening day centerfielder.

As for John Buck and Marlon Byrd, these guys are placeholders — Buck is holding down the catching slot until the other catcher they received in the R.A. Dickey trade, Travis D’Arnaud, is ready. Byrd, well, the fact that he is being penciled in for actual at bats is a comment on the rest of the Mets outfield prospects. Mike Baxter is a solid backup with grit, and Jordany Valdespin is a converted infielder who has shown enough versatility and acumen with the bat to warrant a roster spot.

Sadly, the Mets lineup features two, maybe three guys who deserve everyday at-bats and five back-ups, while the bench is AAA all the way.

Then there is the pitching. Jonathan Niese is the opening day pitcher. This is not a good thing. I like Niese, but he is a solid middle- to back-end-of-the-rotation guy and not the stud you need to go up against the other teams’ aces. The rest of the rotation, save for stud-in-the-making Matt Harvey, is filled with no. 5s and placeholders. Shawn Marcum, Dillon Gee and Jeremy Hefner will be pitching to see who loses his rotation spot to the inevitable call-up of Zack Wheeler and maybe Jenry Mejia.

As for Harvey, he looks to be the real deal, but he also has only a handful of games under his belt and the season is going to require a learning curve. Still, I am more upbeat about the likely second-half rotation — Harvey, Niese, Wheeler and maybe Mejia and Gee — than the misfits being asked to shoulder the load now.

The bullpen, well, the less said the better about that crew — unless Bobby Parnell finally takes to the closer role. Let’s hope that happens, because the rest of the bullpen is composed of retreads like Latroy Hawkins and Brandon Lyon.

Prediction: Fourth place, though they could make a run at third if a) Harvey, Wheeler and D’Arnaud prove ready and can be successful; b) Parnell and Duda live up to prior expectations, and c) the Braves succumb to injuries and the Phillies continue to age.

No one, however, is going to catch the Nationals.

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Just finished being a guest on The People’s Mic with Doug Cunningham (here is the podcast), a Wisconsin radio show. We talked about low-wage workers — I thought we were going to talk more about my article on home health aides in this month’s issue of The Progressive, which is why I sound a bit like a deer in headlights when he asked me about the domestic workers bill of rights. (I should say, I probably sounded like a deer in headlights were deer to make sounds in those situations). Overall, I think I settled in some. Let me know if I made a fool of myself.

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With Supreme Court proceedings closed to cameras, we are left to divine the direction the court might take from reports from the handful of reporters covering today’s arguments. Here is one particularly illuminating — if likely irrelevant — snippet from the proceedings, brought to us by Talking Points Memo:

Scalia jumped in to make his point when liberal justices were grilling Charles Cooper, the lawyer arguing in favor of Prop 8, California’s ban on gay marriage, about what harm it would cause opposite-sex couples.

“If you redefine marriage to include same-sex couples,” he said, “you must permit adoption by same-sex couples, and there’s considerable disagreement among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not. Some states do not permit adoption by same-sex couples for that reason.”

“I don’t think we know the answer to that,” he said. “Do you know the answer to that, whether it harms or helps the child? … That’s a possible deleterious effect, isn’t it?”

Forget for a minute that the research is pretty conclusive — the American Psychological Association issued a statement eight years ago that said that “research has shown that the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish.” 

And forget, as well, that Scalia is really offering nothing more than a kinder, friendlier version of the “slippery slope” argument usually offered by opponents of same-sex marriage (at least he didn’t say that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to bigamy, polygamy and bestiality).

And forget that Scalia may be the least intellectual intellectual in American life, a man so beset by his own prejudices that he is unwilling to examine any of the assumptions that underlie his arguments.

What is important here is that what Scalia says may not matter. We know how he is going to vote. We know what his reasoning is going to be and we know that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are going to join him.

What is less clear is where Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy will side. Kennedy is considered the swing vote, but there has been some speculation that Roberts is concerned about the court’s legacy and, if that is the case, it makes him a wild card.

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NPR, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of our misguided adventure in Iraq, offers an interview with the Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail, whose book The War Works Hard I read several years ago. An excellent read and an excellent interview.

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