Year: 2019

It Appears That There IS Such a Thing as Too Corrupt to Investigate

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Among the more blatant bits of self-serving corruption in the Trump Administration, at least outside of Trumps close family, Elain Chao, Transportation Secretary and wife of Mitch McConnell stands out.

As the New York Times reported, Chao has repeatedly engaged in official actions calculated to boost her family’s shipping business and her husband’s political fortunes, up to, and including attempting to get the government pay for her representatives of her family’s business travel with her on an official visit to China. (also here)

Some Democrats want to look into this nexus of corruption, but others are afraid that Chao will cancel road projects in their districts in retaliation.

Seriously, this is akin to defending oneself against an accusation of witchcraft by threatening call upon her dark masters to turn the investigators into pious pink toads, (The Cerebus defense) and Chao doesn’t have to even allude to this, the congresscritters are terrified of her:

House Democrats are poised to launch an investigation into the Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao over allegations that she used her position to advance the interests of her family and her husband’s political career.

But even as some members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee say such a probe is inevitable, other Democratic lawmakers have expressed doubts about whether the current evidence is sufficient to warrant it, according to three lawmakers with direct knowledge of the conversations that have taken place over the last several days. And some lawmakers who spoke to The Daily Beast expressed unease—at this time—to call out the secretary for fear that doing so would affect their ability to advance infrastructure projects in their home districts.

Such hesitation reflects both the unique status Chao enjoys within the Trump administration—where she has heavy sway over federal funds that politicians of all stripes covet—and the wider conundrum that Democrats lawmakers face in going after the president’s team. With aggressive oversight efforts already launched into several other Trump Cabinet officials, senior Democratic aides say a sense of fatigue has set in among members, one that’s been exacerbated by the difficulty the party has had in making progress on already-launched investigative efforts.

I would argue that this calls for heightened scrutiny.

Given her position, secretary Chao must be as Caesar’s wife, above suspicion.

Kim Jong-un Isn’t Crazy, Just Evil

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When allegations that DPRK leader Kim Jong-un had his half brother, Kim Jong-nam, murdered in a Malaysian airport, first surfaced, the general response was to assume that the Kims are just crazy.

After all, what possible reason could he have to whack his own flesh and blood?

Well, if said half-brother is a CIA asset,  which technically means that he is working with people trying to overthrow you, it’s a reason.

In fact killing an exiled relative who is trying to overthrow you has a lot of historical precedent.

It doesn’t meant that Kim Jong-un isn’t a nasty piece of work, but it does mean that he is sane, which is reassuring, because a rational adversary is more predictable.

Oh Snap

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The White House and Congress are in a conflict over census documents.

Basically, it’s painfully obvious that the Trump administration wants to change the census to suppress the count of non-whites in America.

This embarrassing to admit, so they are refusing to turn over documents to Congressional oversight committees.

Congress has threatened Attorney General Barr and Commerce Secretary Ross with contempt citations over that, and Bill Barr has threatened to request that Trump claim executive privilege if they are held in contempt.

In response, the House House Oversight and Reform Committee voted to hold them in comtempt.

I think that committee chairman Elijah Cummings has no f%$#s left to give:

President Trump lashed out Wednesday against a widening web of congressional probes that demonstrated the limits of his strategy to declare victory and try to move past the 22-month special counsel investigation into Russian interference that has consumed much of his presidency.

Yet Trump’s latest efforts to defend himself ran into new obstacles as a House panel moved to hold two Cabinet officials — Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — in contempt of Congress over the administration’s efforts to shield documents related to its decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

The committee vote came several hours after Trump asserted executive privilege over the material related to the 2020 Census.By day’s end, there was more potential bad news for the White House as Hope Hicks, the president’s longtime adviser who left last year, agreed to become the first former aide to testify next week for a House Judiciary Committee probe into whether the president sought to obstruct the Russia investigation.

………

The Justice Department and the Oversight Committee are essentially on the same trajectory as the department and the House Judiciary Committee were last month, when the Judiciary Committee voted to hold Barr in contempt for failing to turn over materials related to Mueller’s probe.

Pass the popcorn.

Remember When VW Used Slave Labor and Killed Thousands?

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It turns out that the unionization effort at the Chattanooga VW plant is largely by management trying to work their employees to death.

This does seem to be a tradition for the boys from Wolfsburg:

“I’m only 33 and I can’t see myself working here for another 10 years,” said Ashley Murray. “I would be disabled by then. We need a union because they are a multibillion-dollar company and they treat us like shit.”

Murray is a production employee at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, one of 18 hourly employees there I interviewed for this story. Comments like hers were almost universal.

According to these workers, on-the-job injuries are among the top issues at the sprawling plant nestled in the Appalachian mountains of East Tennessee. The union authorization election runs Wednesday through Friday this week; 1,700 workers are eligible to vote.

Many workers told variations of the same story. For the first time in their lives, they’re making good money—but they’re trapped in a job that’s chewing them up.

“My co-workers are getting hurt, I’ve been hurt, there is constant threat of injury, and if it doesn’t change, none of us will survive,” said one worker who’s been at Volkswagen for eight years but asked to remain anonymous for fear of management retaliation.

“I shouldn’t have to give Volkswagen my body in exchange for the house that I live in and the lifestyle I try to provide for my family.” Workers described a plant where high turnover and dangerous conditions lead to serious injuries, most commonly in the hands and shoulders. Some of the workers I met now suffer from lifelong disabilities.

Yeah, that whole, “Foreign workers in German factories,” thing?

Not good.

Listen to Admiral Ackbar

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The Koch Brothers are looking at finding Democrats to support in 2010.

It’s not a surprise. Koch Brothers funding was crucial to founding of the right wing Democratic Leadership Council, so the the conservative wing of the Democratic party has been full of Koch suckers for decades.

Koch Brothers money, and Koch Brothers ideology, are toxic to both the nation and to the Democratic Party.

If a candidate takes their money, they are dead to me.

How Convenient

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Yale law professor Amy Chua writes a glowing recommendation of Brett “I Like Beer” Kavanaugh, and people suggested that her daughter would get a Supreme Court clerkship.

Well, guess who just got a job clerking with Kavanaugh?

That’s right, Sophia Chua-Rubenfel:

The daughter of Yale law professor Amy Chua has landed a clerkship in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s office. Last year, Chua—who became known as “Tiger Mom” after the release of her controversial book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, on her tough parenting style—wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal after Kavanaugh’s nomination praising the judge and calling him a “mentor to women.” The op-ed was published before Christine Blasey Ford came forward with allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her decades prior when they were both in high school. He has vehemently denied the allegations. Chua immediately faced criticism that her op-ed was intended to guarantee her daughter a Supreme Court clerkship. Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld responded to the criticism of her mother on Twitter, saying she wouldn’t be applying for a Supreme Court clerkship “anytime soon” because she had to finish her ROTC obligation after graduating from Yale Law School. The court confirmed that Chua-Rubenfeld will serve as a law clerk to Kavanaugh for a year, beginning this summer.

This went exactly as predicted when Chua wrote that OP/ED.

Who am I to judge? If Brett Kavanaugh came to me and said: “Elie, I’m going to absolutely destroy the civil rights of low-income black children living in urban environments, but your boys, benefited as they are from the privilege you and your wife work tirelessly to provide them, will have a guaranteed Supreme Court clerkship and I will mentor them on how to deal with the white supremacy I support,” maybe I would write an op-ed praising Kavanaugh’s ability to “recognize talent” or some such nonesense. I can see the title now: “Kavanaugh Will Be A Good Massa For Black People!”

Oh wait, no I wouldn’t. BECAUSE I HAVE A F**KING MORAL CENTER.

One of the big reasons that Trump “won” in 2016 is the belief by a significant portion of the populace that the elites were uniformly self-serving and corrupt.

Unfortunately, they were correct about this.

Nostalgia

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I remember the Summer of 1973, when John Dean was testifying before the Watergate committee.

At the time, I would rather have watch cartoons, or Ultraman, but we had one TV, and my mom was determined to follow the hearings, so I watched a lot of testimony, Dean, Halderman, Erlichman, Porter, etc.

Needless to say, John Dean’s testimony about Trump’s obstruction of justice was a trip down memory lane:

The star witness of Watergate took a turn as the star witness for House Democrats’ inquiries into President Trump on Monday. And in doing so, he laid out a compelling series of parallels between the two situations.

Former White House counsel John Dean acknowledged at the start of Monday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing that he wasn’t there as a “fact witness.” Instead, he noted in his opening statement several ways in which he sees the report of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III echoing Watergate.

Dean didn’t run through each of those verbally during his testimony, but his written statement lays his case out in detail.

The most obvious parallel Dean noted involved himself: It concerns the role of the White House counsel. Just as he was the most significant witness against Richard M. Nixon, former White House counsel Donald McGahn has emerged as the most significant witness in the Mueller investigation. McGahn didn’t technically flip on Trump, as Dean did when he pleaded guilty in Watergate, but as Dean pointed out, “McGahn is the only witness that the special counsel expressly labels as reliable, calling McGahn ‘a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the White House.’ “

I’m not sure that the outcome will be at all similar, Nancy Pelosi is no Carl Albert, after all.

Interesting Data Point

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Elizabeth Warren seems to have a detailed plan for everything, with one exception she has no plan on healthcare, not even an explicit endorsement of a vague form of “Medicare for All”.

This is clearly an intentional omission, since her whole brand is about having a plan for EVERYTHING.

Considering that she has staked out a position just to the right of Bernie Sanders, I consider this to be an important tell: She will not fight for a truly universal healthcare system:

In a recent MSNBC town hall, Elizabeth Warren put her policy platform on full display. Through emotional, personal anecdotes and with a depth of understanding, Warren gave the impression of a candidate well-aware of the problems faced by working Americans and armed with the policies needed to solve them. She detailed her plans to achieve universal childcare, cancel the bulk of existing student debt, and create over a million green jobs by progressively taxing the richest Americans. She boldly criticized Joe Biden’s conservative record and decried the greed of large corporations.

The performance supported Warren’s reputation as a candidate with a “plan for everything” — a reputation emphasized repeatedly by MSNBC moderator Chris Hayes throughout the event. Taken as a whole, however, the town hall revealed an alarming gap in Warren’s policy repertoire, one that has gone mostly ignored to this point in the campaign: she has no plan for fixing the broken US health care system.

Warren had several opportunities in the town hall to address the health care crisis. Instead, she avoided the topic almost entirely. Even when discussing issues directly related to health care like repealing the Hyde Amendment and improving access to hearing aides, she neglected to propose a comprehensive policy solution.

Unfortunately, this was not a simple case of forgetfulness. In fact, it continues a disturbing trend with the Warren campaign. Check her website: in a long and thorough issues page full of bold plans to alleviate Americans’ suffering, Warren makes no mention of health care. View her campaign materials: Warren has yard signs dedicated to several of her major policy proposals, but not a single one about health care. Follow her campaign appearances: you’ll hear the usual platitudes (“health care is a human right;” “everyone deserves access to care”), but you won’t hear her endorse a specific policy.

………

Take for instance Warren’s March town hall on CNN. When asked directly whether she supports Medicare for All, Warren suggested that Medicare for All is merely a slogan for expanded public coverage, rather than a specific piece of single-payer legislation.

“When we talk about Medicare for All, there are a lot of different pathways,” she said, before listing a slew of incremental proposals without explicitly endorsing any of them, from lowering the age for Medicare eligibility to allowing employers to buy in to Medicare. “For me, what’s key is we get everyone to the table on this.”

Taking this answer at face value, it seems Warren sees herself pursuing an incremental approach that expands public coverage while preserving the private insurance industry should she be elected president. This would likely surprise many of her supporters, who might view her cosponsorship of Sanders’s Medicare for All bill as an endorsement of single-payer health care.

It’s fair to ask why Warren, who supports bold, progressive policies on a number of major issues, is avoiding the most important issue to voters. It could be a reluctance to attach herself to a rival candidate’s signature policy, or it could be a way to avoid conflict with the powerful health care corporations in her home state of Massachusetts.

Either way, it meshes well with a years-long effort by Democrats to blur the meaning of Medicare for All by gesturing goodwill toward single-payer advocates while attempting to redefine the phrase and apply it to public option proposals that preserve the private insurance industry. By following this playbook, Warren is actively supporting the corporate effort to kill the growing Medicare for All movement.

I wouldn’t go quite that far, but her reticence is unsettling.

Finding the Way (Again): Building the Air Force’s New Century Series

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Mike Pietrucha thinks that the USAF needs to return its development and procurement programs to the mid 1950s, when it developed the 5 frontline Century Series fighters.

  1. Senior Staff (Major or higher) exempted from up or out.
  2. No rotation out until full production procurement, defined as 25% of the original order, is complete. 
  3. A prohibition on such staff working for defense contractors for 10 years after leaving the service. 

This would make decades long product development cycle a career killer, it would prevent program changes as management rotates in and out, and it would incentivize some alacrity, and time is (taxpayer) money.

Also, the perfect is the enemy of good enough:  It makes no sense to bankrupt ourselves in an attempt to completely overmatch any potential opponent.

We are spending more on defense than the next seven countries combined, and our roads are falling apart, our schools are underfunded, healthcare is unaffordable for much of the population, and life expectancy is falling in many regions.

We cannot afford our bloated military or our bloated weapons anymore.

    Tweet of the Day

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    If you gave a billion dollars to the top 10 news companies, the chance of a dime being spent on news would be pretty slim. You might as well give a pound of hamburger to a shark and hope to get meat loaf.

    How many billions have passed through their hands in the last decade?

    — Steve Yelvington (@yelvington) June 10, 2019

    Remember this whenever the big media starts whining about how Google News is so unfair to make money from directing readers to their websites.

    These days, these organizations are run by finance types, and finance types don’t care about journalism.

    Finance and journalism mix like Ebola and French kissing.

    Ineluctable Evil

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    Just when I thought that Trump and his Evil Minions™ could not get any more evil, they propose charging grocery stores for the privilege of accepting food stamps.

    It’s pretty clear what is going on here: They want to push SNAP out of food deserts, so as to reduce enrollment, so that they can eventually force people to starve.

    Impeach now:

    The White House proposal to overhaul the U.S. food stamp program — and the deep cuts it would make to benefits for the poorest households — has sparked public outrage on both sides of the aisle. But there’s another change tucked into the proposal that businesses say caught them off guard — and could wind up costing them more than $2 billion.

    That provision is a new fee that the White House wants to charge retailers that accept food stamps, which is now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

    ………

    Beyond the new fee, the Trump administration is proposing $191 billion in cuts over the next decade to the food stamp program. The U.S. budget office said the reductions would come from tightening the work requirement to qualify for the benefits, but said the details would be left up to individual states. The administration also expects states to make up some of the lost funding.

    These folks should have been drowned at birth.

    Nope, No Racism Here: Republicans in Maine Are pro Confederacy

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    The great state of Maine has adopted a new state ballad, which I guess is in addition to the state song.*

    It honors the 20th Maine volunteer infantry regiment, which is best known for saving the Union at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.

    It appears that some Republicans in the state are objecting, because they feel that the song is insufficiently considerate of the sensitive feelings of the traitors on the other side:

    With Governor Janet Mills’ signature today, the “The Ballad of the 20th Maine” became Maine’s official state ballad.

    The stirring anthem recorded and performed by the band The Ghost of Paul Revere tells the story of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which fought for the Union Army under General Joshua Chamberlain in the American Civil War. The regiment is best known for its brave defense of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.

    ………

    The bill to enshrine the ballad was sponsored by Rep. Scott Cuddy (D-Winterport) and passed without objection in both chambers. It did see some initial opposition in the legislature’s State and Local Government Committee, however, where two Republicans raised objections that the song’s unabashedly pro-Union message may be unfair to the South.

    “I find it a little bit, we are united states, we are not Union, we are united states. And I find it just a little bit – I won’t say offensive but that’s what I mean – to say that we’re any better than the South was,” said Rep. Frances Head (R-Bethel) during a May 1st public hearing on the bill.

    “I am a lover of history and especially a lover of the civil war period and regardless of what side people fought on, they were fighting for something they truly believed in,” said Rep. Roger Reed (R-Carmel), who specifically praised Confederate General Robert E. Lee. “Many of them were great Christian men on both sides. They fought hard and they were fighting for states’ rights as they saw them.”

    Let me translate:  “Great Christain men,” means let’s keep those n*****s from getting uppity.

    ………

    Reed eventually voted in favor of the ballad legislation. Head voted against it.

    They may represent a minority position, but the statements of these Republicans show just how far the Myth of the Lost Cause, a systematic effort to rehabilitate the racist legacy of the Confederacy, has spread. These objections were raised in Maine, which contributed a largest number of Union soldiers in proportion to its population of any state.

    The American Civil War was fought on the issue of slavery. That’s the “state right” that Confederates were seeking to defend. To ignore or elide that history doesn’t just denigrate the sacrifices of our ancestors, but bolsters the resurgent white supremacist movement we’re seeing across our union today.

    This is a feature, and not a bug of the modern Republican party and the myth of the lost cause serves their political agenda, even in Maine, where the 20th saved the Republic.

    F%$# their bigoted small minds.

    *Which is called, interestingly enough, State of Main Song.

    If it Becomes a Wypipo Problem, ALEC Loses

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    Arkansas is repealing its ban on municipally owned broadband. because they are sick and tired of getting screwed by the cable and telephone companies:

    Pat Ulrich can’t make water-cooler talk about The Handmaid’s Tale or Shrill. “I can’t get Hulu or anything like that,” she says. If it’s on a streaming service, she probably hasn’t seen it.

    Her home, in Arkansas, has no broadband internet connection. A cable company once quoted her $44,000 to install one, so she and her husband get mediocre Wi-Fi through a satellite provider. “It’s 20 gigabytes” per month, she says, “no different from using your phone.”

    Connectivity isn’t just a problem for the state’s sizable rural population. Ulrich lives in a suburb of Little Rock and commutes into the city each day to work as a web developer for the Arkansas Arts Center. Needless to say, she never works from home.

    Arkansas is the least connected of the 50 states, according to BroadbandNow, a group that tracks consumer options. Since 2011, the state has banned cities and towns from building their own networks, outlawing a local solution that has been hailed as an effective way for communities to connect themselves when they don’t have internet providers.

    This year, however, Arkansas appears to be having a change of heart. Under the weight of constituent complaints about lousy internet—and after years of waiting for subsidies to goad telecom giants into expanding the infrastructure—the state legislature in February passed a bill to repeal its ban. Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson said he will sign it.

    That this is happening at all is significant. That it’s happening in a deep-red state is perhaps monumental.

    Arkansas outlawed municipal broadband in 2011 as a wave of other states passed similar laws. It was, in part, a factor of the Tea Party movement, which ushered small-government Republicans into state capitols. By 2018, 21 states had some law banning or restricting municipal broadband; many were cut-and-paste “model legislation” from the American Legislative and Exchange Council, backed by telecom giants. They sought to kill municipal broadband under the belief that “such services should not be offered by government in competition with private-sector providers.”

    Yes, the cable companies are so awful that they are getting municipal broadband in Arkansas.

    These companies got $250 million from the FCC to build out broadband, and didn’t do squat.

    They are the most hated businesses in America for a reason, and the ALEC sponsored ban on municipal broadband has become toxic.

    A Profound Lack of Intestinal Fortitude

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    I am referring, of course, to Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats, otherwise known as the worst Nickelback cover band ever.

    This time, they wimped out on holding Attorney General Barr in contempt.

    Don’t worry though, they are still going to file a very strongly worded lawsuit:

    After weeks of pledging to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II in contempt for defying subpoenas, House Democrats appear poised to pursue an alternative path to try to force them into sharing information.

    A resolution that the House Rules Committee unveiled on Thursday would authorize the House to petition a federal court to enforce its requests for information and testimony related to the report of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, but without mentioning contempt. The committee is expected to consider the proposal on Monday, followed by a full House vote on Tuesday.

    The resolution appears to be something of a tactical reversal by Democrats, who did not immediately explain their decision. The Judiciary Committee approved a report last month that formally recommended the House hold Mr. Barr in contempt, and lawmakers continue to use that language to describe next week’s vote.

    This sort of bullsh%$ is why people don’t vote for Democrats.

    They have no belief that, when push comes to shove, Democrats will fight for them, because they never fight for themselves.

    This Plane Does Not Fly, It’s Ugly Enough to Repel the Ground

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    We are seeing some interesting claims about the performance of the Celera 500L Aircraft, which is expected to make its first flight in the near future.

    They are claiming a cruising speed of in excess of 460 mph and a maximum altitude of at least 65,000 feet, all while achieving something on the order of 30 miles per gallon of fuel.

    They plan to achieve this with two 500 hp liquid cooled piston engines.

    I call bullsh%$. That sort of performance would require some changes to the laws of aerodynamics, if just because the performance that they are claiming would require :

    More than two years after The War Zone was first to report on a mysterious bullet-shaped aircraft appearing at the Southern California Logistics Airport near Victorville, a refined version of the plane has conducted taxi tests and looks to be getting close to its first flight. Even though much about its design and purpose remain unclear, we do know now that the aircraft, which is called the Otto Aviation Celera 500L, is definitely focused on potentially game-changing high-efficiency flight that has the potential to disrupt the aerospace marketplace.

    ………

    “Such a transportation system requires a unique aircraft. It must be capable of operation from any current airfield,” one of the patent documents says in its background section. “Preferably, it would have operating costs well below current costs and competitive with commercial airliners, cruise at higher system speed than current commercial aircraft, have a longer range with full passenger and luggage load than most current business aircraft, provide passenger comfort comparable to commercial aircraft, and be capable of all weather operation. The plane should also provide for ease of maintenance and require only a single pilot.”

    The patent goes on to describe a notional aircraft that would cruise between 460 and 510 miles per hour at an altitude of up to 65,000 feet, yielding a fuel efficiency rate of between 30 and 42 miles per gallon. To put this in perspective, the Pilatus PC-12, a popular light, single-engine turboprop aircraft has a service ceiling of 30,000 feet, a cruising speed just under 330 miles per hour, and still burns, on average, 66 gallons of jet fuel per hour, for a fuel economy of roughly five miles to the gallon. Even going to a Learjet 70, which has similar speed performance to what’s stated in the Celera patent documents, but still nowhere near as high a ceiling, we are talking about roughly three miles per gallon of gas at cruise. So, Otto Aviation is talking about performance that is at least 10 times more efficient than existing light business jets with similar cruise capabilities.

    ………

    One of Otto Aviation’s patents also says that the intakes and exhausts we mentioned before are supposed to help leverage this engine design to provide even greater efficiency. The exhaust setup is also supposed to include a novel heat exchanger that combines heated cooling air with exhaust gases provide a small additional boost in thrust. It all remains to be seen whether or not the combination of an A03 optimized for the Celera 500L specifically, together with intercoolers and specialized exhausts, will be enough to get the plane anywhere close to the kind of high-altitude performance Otto is clearly aiming for broadly

    Just a few notes from my decidedly non-aerodynamicist  perspective:

    • For the speed and altitude that they are targeting, we are looking at about ¾ Mach, which means that you are going to see transonic effects.
    • There are no provisions for area ruling to prevent shock wave formation and the resultant drag rise.  (i.e. area ruling)
    • The propeller is unswept, and at the speeds that they are talking about, the tips would (again) lose efficiency at high mach numbers.

    I can see this as offering similar performance similar to something like the the Piaggio P.180, but that is about 100 mph slower and 20,000 feet lower altitude.  (As an FYI, the fuel sipping P.180 gets about 9 mpg)

    Reliability would probably be lower, as pistons are less reliable than turbines, and the payload would likely be less too, as piston engines are also heavier.

    The claims are so outrageous that I expect someone on the management team to have a last name of Bede.

    Linkage

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    Godzilla will never die, except, of course, in his very first movie:

    I want some fan to splice in a digital avatar of Raymond Burr.

    Look Out Below

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    We just got the May job numbers, and it’s pretty grim.

    Of course, the stock marked soared, because they believe that this will lead the Federal Reserve to cut rates, because investors are psychopaths.

    More significantly, it appears increasingly likely that we are at the leading edge of a downturn:

    As of 8:29 a.m. Friday, things were shaping up for the Federal Reserve to face a real conundrum at its policy meeting in less than two weeks.

    Some financial market indicators, mainly in the bond market, were suggesting that the economy was weakening and that the Fed would need to cut interest rates in the coming months to prevent a recession. But there was little evidence of a major slowdown — only a few soft data points here and there.

    In particular, the United States labor market has been booming, not at all suggesting an American economy in need of rescue with interest rate policy.

    The good news out of the Labor Department’s May employment report released at 8:30 a.m. Friday is that the Fed no longer faces a conundrum. The bad news is that it showed a job market that was not as robust as it had seemed.

    It’s not just that the economy added only 75,000 jobs last month, far less than the 180,000 forecast. That might be chalked up to the statistical randomness that can cause the numbers to bounce around in ways that don’t reflect the underlying reality of the economy.

    More worrisome is that the report also revised previous months’ numbers down by 75,000, meaning that the blockbuster spring job creation rates were considerably more modest.

    It is now clear that there really is softer job creation in 2019 than there was in 2018 — an average of 164,000 jobs a month so far this year, compared with 223,000 last year.

    ………

    Perhaps most significant, wage growth is also steady or slightly declining, rather than accelerating. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose 0.2 percent in May, and are up 3.1 percent over the last year. Wages rose 3.4 percent in the year ended in February.

    If this really were a situation of softening job growth because employers were up against the constraints of full employment, you would expect them to have to pay more to find scarce workers. Instead, the wage growth picture is steady as she goes.

    ………

    More worrisome is that the report also revised previous months’ numbers down by 75,000, meaning that the blockbuster spring job creation rates were considerably more modest.