At some point, you have to come to the conclusion that they just don't
want to create jobs, and it's as simple as that. By "they" I mean everyone: the Republicans, the Democrats, the House, the Senate, the White House, the Fed, the Wall Street and other business lobbyists that influence them, the banks, and so on.
Now, I imagine the appropriate response to this statement is "no sh-t, sherlock," but it's still one of those things that's impossible not to grumble out, because it's just so damn flabbergasting. The group or political party that starts producing actual jobs, lifting the nation out of recession (and bite me, it's still a recession: nine-point-anything unemployment counts as a "recession" if anything does) would be praised as heroes, and yet not only is it not happening, there seems no actual path forward to make it happen. Not one.
The Republicans have overtly given up all premise of helping the working class, and have gone on to openly insulting them instead. When tasked with coming up with their own economic plan to create jobs, they came up with a plan to help the "job creators", not the actual job-havers or job-seekers. They balked at trade deals because a bit of minor help for American workers had been included. Governor after governor, on the Republican side, whines about how we need to cut even more help for the poor (Christie), and that the dastardly unions are demanding the state live up to prior commitments (Walker, et al)—remember when the nearly-failed banks started shoveling out massive bonuses, and we couldn't dare do anything about it because hey, contracts are contracts? Yeah, contracts aren't contracts anymore. Sucks to be you, everyone who doesn't have a few million dollars of bonuses on the way. Sucks to be you, working poor.
You would think this would leave a grand opening for the Democrats to be the party of the working class. You would think so, but you would apparently be really, really wrong. It is a given that the Democrats cannot accomplish much, in the face of Republican intransigence: remember, even when the Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate and the House, they still found it "too difficult" to do much. But Democrats and the White House have abandoned even the rhetoric of the working class in favor of the rhetoric of the better off. We are concerned with deficits now, of all times, why? Merely because the GOP demands it? We are stone-cold committed to the rhetoric of austerity now, of all times, why? What group of idiots first thought that was a good idea, and what collection of other idiots cemented it as brilliant plan for climbing out of a recession?
The problem remains the same as it was at the very beginning of the economic collapse: our elected leaders are very eager to solve problems of the massive banks, and they are very, very loathe to solve the same problems for actual run-of-the-mill Americans, no matter how many Americans might need that help or how much not helping them ensures the economy will remain damaged. If the banks need bailing out, we'll get legislation bailing out the banks, and we'll meet at midnight if necessary, and we'll come back from recess early if necessary, and so on and so forth. But collective groups of other Americans, ones without pockets quite that deep? Forget it. There is no midnight legislation for helping homeowners, and the government effort, HAMP, was so badly mismanaged it may have actually done more harm than good. Unemployed Americans? Not even an issue. Forget finding them jobs, the way you prove you are a serious politician is to look at ongoing nine-point-something unemployment, stare blankly for a while, and then pipe up with something like "You know what we need? We need to cut assistance to the unemployed. There's just too damn many of them these days."
There is no movement, and no convictions, within our self-important body of elected officials, to make a serious effort to reduce unemployment. None. There are token efforts; there is the occasional speech. But we have known how to actually get people back to work for a very long time, thanks to basic economic theory, and we know in turn that getting people back to work will reduce the long-term deficit, as opposed to letting the economy stagnate. We know, but it is somehow an impossible dream, because the needs of the banks, of the bankers, of Wall Street, of the politicians' close friends, of the people that wait in line outside their office all day (well, not really: they have people wait in line for them, they don't actually sit in the hall themselves, like common peasants)—all those people can make their needs known daily. I suppose "unemployed people" or "people behind on their mortgages" or "people for whom unemployment insurance has completely run out, threatening to leave them homeless and foodless" don't have multimillion-dollar contracts with lobbying firms and so their needs, however large they may be, in aggregate, and no matter how much their needs are actually what is crippling the economy...
Nothing for them. Not a damn thing.
I'll tell you this: I don't think I could possibly be more pessimistic. No, frankly, I don't have any faith in the Democrats anymore. I don't expect a damn thing from them, which probably is still more than any of us are going to get: I would be nearly gleeful if they simply did not adopt the same rhetorical devices and beliefs as the Republicans they were opposing, but even that seems a comical thing to hope for. I have faith in the Republicans to get worse and worse, for they have discovered the grand magic of politics: what you tell people and what you do can be entirely opposite things. You can base an entire election around protecting Medicare, for example—then cut it. Works like a charm.
I have faith that the full force of United States policy will protect Bank of America from any past excesses or any future liabilities. I have faith that the television will tell us all how pro-Wall-Street policies will help us all, through the magic of job-creation that never arrives. I have confidence that whatever the Super Committee does will be ridiculous, and insulting, and stupid, but that whatever they do will simply be undone by another Congress on another day. I have faith that deficits will stop being a bad thing the very moment the next Republican is elected president, and that deficits will balloon again, regardless of what we do.
And I have faith that we will be in a jobless, flat economy for a very, very long time. Japan did it before: I think we can top them. Our politicians are more corrupt, and heaven knows our politicians are more stupid.
So what's there to do? A third party would only ensure a more solid victory by the current crop of well-fed dimwits. Advocating for either of the other two seems a job best left to fools, at this point. The corrupting flow of corporate money seems unstoppable. And, unfortunately, we live in a "civilized" era when we can't simply light them all on fire and be done with it.
It is a shame, because the "Tea Partiers" could have been on to something, if they were sincere and not merely an astroturf-created front group. There is an anger, in the population, and the sense that our politicians, regardless of party, are too self-interested and/or corrupted and/or dull to pay attention to the dismal state of things. But as with most astroturf groups, the "solutions" they see manage to merge rather impressively with the solutions urged by their financiers. Even our angry mobs are lobbyist-drenched, these days!
I don't have an answer. If we had a phalanx of senators or representatives that was absolutely insistent on doing right for the unemployed, and half as willing to gum up the works as a Jim DeMint is, just because he didn't like the flavor of toothpaste he was stuck with on any given morning, we might get somewhere. Or would we—given that any efforts to "do right for the unemployed" would run up against a pundit monolith, be tsked at mercilessly, and probably never get any publicity more encompassing than that?
Maybe if we got hit with a truly horrific natural disaster, that would encourage government hiring. No mere Hurricane Irene, since Eric Cantor has already announced we can't possibly repair the damage from that without cutting the budget (and, of course, jobs) elsewhere. No, it would have to be something on the scale of giant freeway-eating space lizards. No, wait—giant bank eating space lizards. That might actually get some goddamn attention, don't you think?
Rather dismal thoughts, all around. All I know is that making donations to the Democratic Party is feeling more and more like a sucker bet, or like paying protection money to one half-assed school bully to protect yourself from another.
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