Daily Clips: May 12th, 2016
Congress is failing to fight Zika virus: Deja vu all over again. “Republicans played politics two years ago with the Ebola epidemic, and now they’re stalling on the president’s funding request to fight Zika.”
We are so dysfunctional. It pains me.
US jobless claims hit more than one-year high: Here’s a sober reminder that the American economy is not nearly as wonderful as (some) Democrats make it sound.
Despite the jump last week, claims have remained below 300,000, a threshold associated with healthy job market conditions, for 62 consecutive weeks, the longest stretch since 1973. The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, increased 10,250 to 268,250 last week, the highest level in almost three months.
The middle class is shrinking everywhere in the US:
The decline of the American middle class is ‘a pervasive local phenomenon,’ according to Pew, which analyzed census and American Community Survey data in 229 metros across the country, encompassing about three-quarters of the U.S. population. In 203 of those metros, the share of adults in middle-income households fell from 2000 to 2014.
Tweet of the day:
"Don't let mosquitos bite you" – almost as bad as, "Try not to get pregnant" #zika #publichealth pic.twitter.com/tgirlYgiUr
— Steph Herold (@StephHerold) May 12, 2016
