Today’s Department of Labor monthly employment report shows a 5.1% unemployment rate (an increase of 0.3% from last month) and a loss of 80,000 jobs across the country (a year to date reduction of 288,000).

This month’s figures also highlight a disappointing trend in the kinds of jobs that are being lost: manufacturing jobs. In 2007, only six states — Washington, Utah, Nevada, Kansas, Nebraska and Louisiana — created manufacturing jobs. The bulk of those positions being industry-specific, such as airplane production or transportation. In the more traditional manufacturing, rust belt states — Indiana, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Michigan — manufacturing employment was either stagnant or declined.

Just before Michigan’s January Republican primary, McCain made his now infamous pronouncement:

I’ve got to give you some straight talk: Some of the jobs that have left the state of Michigan are not coming back… They are not. And I am sorry to tell you that.

Michigan, which has an unemployment rate over 2 percent above the national average, lost 5.3 percent, or 76,500 manufacturing jobs in 2007 — the largest job loss of any state. Michigan’s non-farm economy is comprised of 15 percent manufacturing.

Note to McCain: this is how you get manufacturing jobs back.

Our guest blogger is David Abromowitz, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The bi-partisan Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 is a big step towards helping America’s troubled housing market, especially with its fast infusion of funds to localities, which enables responsible local organizations to move quickly in neighborhoods drowning in a tidal wave of recent foreclosures. Mirroring a Great American Dream Neighborhood Stabilization Fund proposal of the Enterprise Foundation, Center for American Progress and others, these funds would allow foreclosed and bank-held properties to be bought at a discount, vacancies and arson prevented, and stability restored to hundreds of communities teetering on the brink of blight.

Yet one component of this admirable package stands out like the odd item in a “One of These Things is Not Like the Others” mind-teaser from elementary school.

As now written, the bill would change current rules law dramatically by extending the Federal taxcode’s “net operating loss (NOL)” carryback provision to four years (back to 2004) from the current two years limit. But what kinds of corporations need this special extended NOL carryback? The short answer is a formerly profitable company hit by sudden, sharp losses that does not expect to recover and produce taxable income in the near term, but paid taxes in earlier years.

Certainly some corporations were innocent bystanders to the subprime Wall Street market meltdown, and are now saddled with large losses as a result of other parties’ bad investments. Small businesses caught in the market turmoil and strapped for cash in the coming year are one group for whom a sensible, carefully crafted case could be made. Homebuilders argue they need such help.

But some of the largest losses around are on the books of the wealthiest financial players at the very center of the debacle. Banks, servicers, packagers of loans, Wall Street underwriters and a host of related parties whose aggressive peddling of no-document and similarly risky loan products would be covered as well. Even creditors and maybe even shareholders of companies whose practices led them into bankruptcy might benefit.

If enacted the NOL carryback clause will have taxpayers writing a direct 35 cents on the dollar subsidy to parties who made billions off mortgages that are now being foreclosed on millions. And while the NOL provision is said to carry an estimated $6 billion cost to the Treasury, the current version apparently has no cap — if banks lose another $150 billion in 2008 and 2009, the taxpayers might cover more than $50 billion of their bad business bet.

The President’s advisers have repeatedly cautioned against the “perverse incentives” that might arise from mitigation of “outcomes of risky behavior”. But even more perverse will be if the NOL carryback windfall provisions become the price of moving forward this otherwise worthy bill.

– David Abramowitz

Our guest blogger is Daniella Gibbs Leger, the Vice President for Communications at American Progress Action Fund.

Today, John McCain is scheduled to speak in Memphis on the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. To most, this probably seems like an un-extraordinary event –- a presidential candidate is paying tribute to one of our nation’s heroes.

But it is a big deal to me. McCain was against a federal holiday recognizing MLK in 1983. And while his position evolved –- he eventually came around to supporting the holiday in a 1990 Arizona referendum that failed –- it is a problem to me that he voted against it in the first place.

This happened in 1983. It wasn’t like it was the 60’s. By that time people around the world understood the significance that King had on moving our nation peacefully out of the days of segregation. But in 1983, McCain didn’t. That’s bad enough, but he also consistently sided against the interests of the African American community while in the House and Senate, including the 1990 Civil Rights Bill, affirmative action, and raising the minimum wage. And his stance on the Iraq war is completely out of tune with not just African Americans but the entire country.

McCain has an opportunity today that I doubt he’ll take. He has an opportunity to embrace the goals that King was fighting for the day he died –- the improvement of the lives of every day American workers. He can embrace an economic policy that works for all Americans, not just the wealthiest; he can embrace universal health care coverage; and he can embrace ending a war that King most certainly would have spoken out against. I am sure none of that will happen, but today –- of all days –- a girl can dream.