Giving up hope

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Saturday January 08, 2011 · 3:24 AM PST

2011/01/08 · 03:24

I predicted that unemployment would lessen in December. I was right, but not for the reason I thought. Yeah a 102 thousand jobs were added. But that was less than one third of the reason unemployment went down. The big reason was 260 thousand people gave up hope and stopped searching for employment.

In Private Sector Improves Jobs Picture Only Slightly you can read the numbers.

The United States economy ended 2010 by adding 103,000 jobs in December and with a lower unemployment rate, the Labor Department said Friday. But as thousands of Americans gave up looking for work, the numbers suggested that joblessness could continue to weigh on the recovery for some time to come.

The unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent, its lowest rate since July 2009, from 9.8 percent in November. But the figures also showed that the civilian labor force declined by 260,000 in December, as many Americans stopped applying for jobs.

Many Americans have given up hope of finding gainful employment. That is the headline that needs to be put in Extra Large Extra Bold font and run across the top of all the newspapers.

Worse we are faced with more spending cuts at every level of government from the federal government, to your smallest local government. All the public servants are being hurt, teachers, police, snow plow operators, if you are a public servant your pay has been frozen or reduced; you live in fear of losing your job; your pension threatened or reduced; and worse laid off.

And now we have the union busting republicans. Yup bust up the unions as if that will make life better for anyone.

Are we democrats up to fight for the country and the world. I hope so, because republicans are bringing the fight to us. They want to cut services under the mistaken impression that will help economy. They want to enable states to go bankrupt under the mistaken impression that will help the economy. They want to reduce Medicaid so that in Al Grayson's words you can get sick and die. They want to privatize social security so that the wall street firms can make billions while our money is lost on scams. They want to get rid of "Obmacare" because that will help the economy. They want more tax breaks for the wealthy so the "structural" problems of deficit reduction will get worse. I can go on and on and on.

Somehow we must convince President Obama to use the bully pulpit to bring some common sense to argument. Our voices are insufficient, only the president's voice will work. I pray that his new team will persuade him to come out swinging in the state of the union and to fight hard for what the country needs.

Poll
41 votes Show Results
The time to fight is

Now

Tomorrow

Never

Yesterday - all my troubles seemed so far away

41 votes Vote Now!
The time to fight is

Now

22 votes

Tomorrow

5%

2 votes

Never

8 votes

Yesterday - all my troubles seemed so far away

9 votes

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