Aug 10, 2026
Erika Jordan
Democrats need to put labor issues up near the top of their list.
Fuck the PACs and Super PACs, and fuck the big-dollar donors.
You've got the point of the spear, Dems - stick somebody with it.
Maybe We Just Don't Wanna Play
The labor-force participation rate has been skidding for months
The share of Americans who are working or looking for a job hasn’t been this low since the pandemic, according to a July jobs report full of gut punches.
It’s a signal of shifting demographics and a sign of the current mood, economists said — and it’s causing some worry.
The labor-force participation rate measures the share of people who are potentially available for work and either pulling in paychecks or out there looking for a job.
That rate fell to 61.4%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. February 2021 was the last time the rate was so low.
“Declines in the participation rate are becoming more concerning, as it’s currently near historic lows,” Dominic Pappalardo, Morningstar Wealth’s chief multi-asset strategist, said in a note.
Setting aside the pandemic, the participation rate hasn’t been this low in decades, Pappalardo said.
A declining share of people who are ready to work presents a challenge for long-term economic growth, said Cory Stahle, senior economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab.
The size of the workforce has fallen by over 1 million people in the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s now 169.1 million, compared with 170.4 million last July, according to agency data. The biggest decline occurred in the last couple of months.
It’s just one report, and hiring in the summer can be tricky. But experts say there are several forces pushing the rate lower.
First is the ongoing retirement of baby boomers. The youngest boomers are now in their early 60s, and their continuing departure from the workforce is “the most steady thing pushing [the rate] lower. That’s the clear, sustained decline,” said Stahle.
There’s also the birth rate, which has been declining for years, as well as tighter immigration rules and increased enforcement during President Donald Trump’s second term, said Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. As older workers continue their large-scale exit from the workforce, “we don’t necessarily have other additional young workers to fill their spot,” he said.
The waning labor-force participation rate is also likely a reflection of job hunters’ rising frustrations as they try to find work.
The BLS counts someone as actively looking for work if they’ve applied for jobs in the past four weeks.
In today’s sluggish hiring environment, that four-week period could amount to a heartbeat. The July jobs report showed it took unemployed Americans almost 25 weeks on average to find their next job. Around one-quarter of unemployed job seekers have been on the hunt for at least half a year.
So it’s possible that after a person sent out scores of applications with no reply, they took a break from looking — and that would technically push them out of the labor pool, said Stahle.
Also read: ‘Day-to-day dread’ haunts frustrated job seekers in era of low hiring. When will it end?
There were 503,000 “discouraged workers” in July, up from nearly 460,000 a year ago, according to the BLS. This category of people did not look for work in the past four weeks, and their reasons could include thinking that no work was available.
It’s possible those demoralized job seekers are pushing the participation rate lower, said Martin of Oxford Economics. “I don’t know if that’s noise in the data, or the start of a trend,” he said. “That definitely could be a piece of it.”
As Stahle sees it, stymied job seekers are showing in the numbers. “The fear here is we move to a state where people say ‘I’m no longer looking,’” Stahle told MarketWatch. “I’m just kind of giving up on my job search right now.”
Aug 9, 2026
Mr Global
Notice how Vance softens the term "nationalism" by adding the modifier "economic", making it sound less fascist-y.
The Big Shift
Quick reminder for all you pseudo-macho tiny-peckered would be conquistadors:
Better men than you have been trying to conquer the world for a good 40,000 years - and the world remains undefeated.
Flock Fuckup
I generally don't mind cameras that can help increase a law-n-order kinda thing, but as with most things, some jagoff is going to exploit it for nefarious purposes, and it's going to end badly.
It's not enough that cops are fucking around with it, using Flock as a dating tool, and &/or simply to harass random women - somebody's going to get killed because of this shit.
For most drivers, an automated license plate reader (ALPR) is just a piece of metal sitting quietly on the side of the highway. But when the technology powering those cameras makes a catastrophic mistake, the consequences for everyday citizens can be absolutely terrifying.
A high-risk traffic stop in Wisconsin is currently putting Flock Safety cameras under intense scrutiny. A digital mix-up in the system recently resulted in an innocent driver and their passenger being pulled over by multiple police cruisers and held at gunpoint on Interstate 94.
The incident occurred in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, when Brookfield Police Department officers received a severe alert from their Flock camera network. The ALPR system flagged a passing vehicle, indicating it was directly connected to an active homicide investigation out of Milwaukee.
Acting on the severity of the digital alert, officers initiated a high-risk felony traffic stop. In footage obtained by FOX6 News Milwaukee, the terrifying reality of the situation is clear. The broadcast highlighted the dashcam video, noting there were "multiple squads on I-94… officers with guns drawn and a passenger sticking their hands out the window".
The occupants of the vehicle were undoubtedly fearing for their lives, staring down the barrels of police firearms. But as officers moved in to investigate, they quickly realized something was terribly wrong.
According to the FOX6 report, the Flock alert was a complete failure. It was the "wrong person but also wrong car".
When officers on the scene contacted the Milwaukee Police Department to verify the homicide flag, the situation de-escalated just as quickly as it had begun. "Milwaukee said they no longer needed the car or the people inside, so officers let them go," the reporter confirmed.
The Danger of Flock's Ghost Hits and Lagging Hotlists
While the Brookfield Police Department was acting on the information provided to them, the terrifying incident exposes a massive, systemic flaw in ALPR technology.
Flock cameras and other ALPR systems don't operate in a vacuum. They rely on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to read a license plate, which is then bounced against regional "hotlists" or the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database.
However, these systems are notoriously prone to two major errors. First, the OCR software frequently misreads letters and numbers—confusing a 'G' for a 'C', or an 'O' for a 'Q'. Second, police departments often fail to update their hotlists. If a stolen car is recovered or a suspect is cleared, but the department forgets to manually remove the license plate from the database, the vehicle remains "hot" in the system.
This exact phenomenon has led to several high-profile lawsuits across the country. In 2020, Aurora, Colorado police notoriously held a Black family (including small children) face-down at gunpoint after an ALPR misidentified their SUV as a stolen motorcycle from another state. When officers trust the camera's algorithm over their own eyes, innocent citizens are placed in immediate, life-threatening danger.
The Growing Political Backlash
The I-94 incident is adding fuel to a growing anti-surveillance movement pushing back against Flock cameras. Lawmakers and citizens are increasingly uncomfortable with the lack of regulation surrounding the data collection and the very real dangers of system glitches.
During the FOX6 broadcast, the Dane County chair explained why his region recently decided to terminate its relationship with the surveillance company. Noting that the technology was "violating people's trust," the chairman stated, "we pulled the funding from the sheriff's office… to not continue that contract".
For their part, Flock issued a standard PR statement regarding the controversial I-94 stop. "We understand that people have legitimate questions about any technology used by law enforcement and we welcome that conversation," the company stated to FOX6.
While a conversation is a start, it likely offers little comfort to the innocent Wisconsin residents who found themselves looking down the barrel of a gun because a camera made a mistake.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)