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Rhode Island's Jobless Tell Different Story About 'Recovery'
PAWTUCKET, R.I. - For the frustrated folks who troop into the unemployment office in this fading industrial city every day to peruse the same paltry job offerings or tweak their resumes for the hundredth time, the trickle of positive economic data coming out of Washington is cold comfort.
Jobseekers fill out applications. New claims for jobless insurance benefits in the United States posted a surprise rise, the Labor Department said Thursday, February 18 amid concerns unemployment could dampen economic recovery.
(AFP/Joe Raedle) "All they got is figures. This is up 10 percent, that is up 2 percent," said Cynthia Roderick, 57, an unemployed hospital clerk who, like many in this solidly Democratic state, voted for President Barack Obama but now criticize his response to the jobs crisis.
"Let Obama come down here and see the real deal," said Roderick, who's been looking for work for four months. "Let him see what people are going through."
The nationwide jobless rate declined and retail sales rose last month, leading some experts to suggest that the economy is starting a slow recovery, but not even vague optimism is apparent in hard-hit states such as Rhode Island.
It's hardly surprising that jobless Americans are discouraged, but the gulf between reports and reality is sapping confidence in Washington's economic prescriptions.
The latest White House-backed plan is a Senate bill aimed at helping small businesses grow, but some watchdog groups have said it won't create many jobs. Tax write-offs for small entrepreneurs, one of the bill's provisions, aren't the kind of bold initiatives that Rhode Islanders think are needed to jump-start the Ocean State's moribund economy.
America's smallest state is experiencing outsize economic problems.
Rhode Island's unemployment rate, 12.9 percent in the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, is the third highest in the country due to the steady erosion of its manufacturing industries, which account for one in eight jobs, and a wave of layoffs and mergers in the health care sector. Only Nevada, at 13 percent, and Michigan, at 14.6 percent, are in worse shape.
If you count part-time workers who'd rather be working full-time, as well as people who've given up looking for jobs, however, Rhode Island's "real" unemployment rate is 18.3 percent, according to U.S. government data.
"President Obama wants to talk about small businesses - what, like a restaurant? What is that going to create?" Roderick said. "How many jobs? They need a strong (economic) foundation like they had years and years ago, and I don't really think they're going to get it back."
Pawtucket, a town of about 72,000 people along the Blackstone River, has seen better days. It was the site of one of the nation's first water-powered cotton mills, built in 1793 by British emigre Samuel Slater and credited with helping to launch the industrial revolution in America.
The prim, pale-yellow Slater Mill is now a national historic site, but the town around it is drab and decaying. The city's unemployment rate is 14 percent, according to the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, and its problems mirror the state's, where employment began declining in January 2007, nearly a year before it did in the rest of the country.
"Rhode Island really got into this mess before most other states," said Leonard Lardaro, an economics professor at the University of Rhode Island. "The state doesn't have enough of a presence in growth- and tech-oriented industries, which really helped some of the other states to have some margin for error."
In 2007, after she was laid off from her job as an accounts receivable clerk at the hospital where she'd worked for 16 years, Roderick hit a rough patch. She was forced to withdraw $30,000 from her 401(k) retirement savings account, plus the penalty for early withdrawal, to pay her bills for a year.
A widow with grown children, she briefly found work at a psychiatric hospital across in nearby South Attleboro, Mass., but she lost that job four months ago. To get her foot in the door at another hospital, she's been volunteering, without pay, for 20 hours a week, hoping that a job will open up.
She's pawned her gold bracelets and a treasured ring. She traded her reliable car in for a cheap clunker, and she sold her diamond earrings for gas money.
"I'm not living like I used to live. I don't know where things are getting better," Roderick said. "And I don't see it. I don't care what anybody says."
She and other job-seekers in Pawtucket described an exasperating hunt for jobs that don't seem to exist anymore: hospital workers, heavy machine operators, back-office clerks for the near-dead costume jewelry industry, which once employed thousands of people in and around the nearby state capital, Providence.
"When I was a youngster, I could quit my job at one jewelry store, walk down the street and in the next hour get hired by someone else," said Catherine Rini, 56, of Pawtucket. "Now you can't. A lot of our industries are vanishing."
Rini was laid off in June from a jewelry company for the second time during this recession. She's found a smattering of job openings across the bay in Newport, but she can't afford the $4 toll to cross the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge every day, so she's restricted her search.
As she searches fruitlessly - "There are like 80 applicants for every one job," she said - Rini is three months behind on her mortgage and she has no health insurance.
She had sharp criticism for Republicans and Democrats, in Washington as well as in Providence, for "mismanaging" the economic crisis, noting that last year Pawtucket used some $550,000 in federal stimulus money to build a skateboard park.
"That didn't create long-lasting jobs," Rini said. "I just wish all the politicians would work together for now, considering all the problems we have."
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Show All"That didn't create long-lasting jobs," Rini said. "I just wish all the politicians would work together for now, considering all the problems we have."
It's hard to imagine politicians working together in a representative government that is skewed to those with the money.Alas it seems we are doomed unless we the people somehow work together. Teabaggers and Progressives unite!
A New New Deal would be this simple yet it will never happen. Here's my pipe dream although I don't touch no drugs. Come down hard on the military death contractors and stop making weapons. Tax the top 1 percent of the fat cats for one year- 30 percent of their income goes to their fellow citizens for jobs-building housing for homeless and food banks for the hungry. Monies go for immediate relief from the crappy economic situation that people are suffering through. Re direct the death machine monies (approx 400 bill per annum) to local projects to make these localities self sufficient in 1/ food production 2/ energy 3/ transportation 4/ health care. These are jobs centered industries. On a national scale start manufacturing bullet train systems, light rail systems, mag lev systems, monorail systems. fix existing rail systems like the NY Subway and LA's miserable transportation situation..Start producing our own solar panels instead of buying them from China. That's my pipe dream, whats yours? How can we help our fellow citizens from the pain they are going through as I write this?
Good post Rico 11:59
I can't think of anything else. This has been my pipe dream, too.
Here's what we're doing so far in New York -- and most specifically, Long Island. We're about to close down large routes on the Long Island Rail Road. Nothing on this rail road is ever improved to make it more of a true Long Island Rail Road that gets cars meaningfully off the road -- which is where I thought we were supposed to be headed. No, just more route and station shutdowns, less service on existing lines. Bus service to Jones Beach is planned to be cut out this summer. Now who do you suppose that affects? Train service to Belmont Park is also slated to be shut down. 10 State Parks are slated to be closed down in New York in general. Can you see the cascade of layoffs in State workers and all those ancillary businesses? The State Parks didn't close down during the Great Depression. All of these shutdowns affect those on the lower economic strata. The rich can continue to party on in their private gardens, private beaches and private parks.
Good points. While we propose high speed rail, we neglect to take care of what we already have. So the trade-off ends up in the minus column. Lots of stable jobs are lost in return for a flash in the pan.
I have observed that most government projects are designed to give contracts to a favored few. On the national level it is the military, banks, agribusiness, pharma. On the local level, it is often connected companies. For instance the skateboard park mentioned in the article undoubtedly benefits the local cement and concrete industry.
I want to find out more about what kinds of spending lead to the maximum number good jobs, the most long lasting jobs, the most long lasting benefits for a community. Does anyone know of a study about this?
PS - Rico has a program!
Joe
Love everything you said, Rico!
Thank you for your pipe dream. Here"s my pipe dream that will never be read by Obama, but maybe some people will?
President Obama: November 21, 2009
Dear Mr. President,
The time has come that we the people of America demand a government that represents all of America's people; a government that can not be bought off. An idealistic thought indeed, but a good thought nonetheless.
Coming from the lower east side of Cleveland, I have a unique perspective of America that I would like to share with you.
It is a perspective that needs to be seen if you intend to keep your promise of a real change for America and a reelection shoe in.
I would imagine that most of the Great Lakes cities are in dire need of infrastructure reconstruction. I know that the City of Cleveland, on many levels, is in disrepair and blight. The blight in our neighborhoods has perpetrated a youthful
blighted mindset which does nothing good for our country. It is a mindset that has no hope and no work ethic. It is a mindset that keeps entrepreneurs and investors alway from our inner cities. At some point America must look at the problems of the inner city and the economic hopeless situation with which our youth are faced. I believe that time is now.
I have a proposal for you, Mr. President. It is a proposal which will help all of America through an effort to reinstate our inner city youth with something substantial, something which is spiritually rewarding, and something that will stop the blight.
A work and educational program will bring carpenters and other unemployed tradesmen to our inner cities to help with construction and renovation. Simultaneously, this will teach a trade to disadvantaged youth. Hope will come back to the table. That will bring something to our cities that is truly needed for our youth ~ pride and self esteem. It will regenerate a pride in our country and a pride in our cities. It will bring visitors to the Great Lakes region to spend their money and bring a livable economy back. This will also help with how we feel towards our government and your reelection.
I call this project ~ Project for Renovation and Pride. It will be inspired by the work and the word of a great carpenter. It came to me through carpentry and I pass it on to you through my love for Cleveland. Some call our potentially great city The City of Deliverance, which I believe is quite appropriate. If this brings success, as I believe it will, we will see a real change in America; change that will have an uplifting spiritual reawakening that will hopefully eliminate the corruption which holds US down. Come to Cleveland and we will help you keep your promise.
I believe in miracles, Mr. President, and I hope this letter helps you to believe in them as well.
Yours truly, Alan Baker Schultz
p.s; bring the boys back home
So why is this not on the front pages of newspapers, or on CNN, MSNBC, CBS etc.? Because it is more important to show Tiger Woods issuing an apology. WTF??!!
Tiger Woods IS helping the economy. He's creating lots of jobs for reporters and cameramen.
And so what will Rhode Island residents do?
So will Rhode Islands continue to vote Republican and Democrat in the coming elections? Nader only received 1% of the vote in the 2008 election, and McKinney received less.
As a former Rhode Islander I am proud to say we DID give Nader 7 percent of the vote in 2000. And yes, Green Party organization played a role in that.
But to be fair, at least Little Rhody has the half way decent Jack Reed and had the anti-Bush Republican Lincoln Chafee.
And Linc Chaffee (who was to Republicans what Joe Lieberman is to Democrats)is an example that party has nothing to do with whether a pol is any good or not. I will always have great respect for Chaffee when I met him in Washington in March 2003 before the Iraq War and he was outspoken and determined to oppose it. And he was one of two (I believe) Repubs in the Senate to vote against the war. Rhode Island's Democratic House member, Patrick Kennedy, on the other hand voted for the war.
And by the way, my last vote as an American was for Nader in 2008. Still proud.
"Let Obama come down here and see the real deal," said Roderick, who's been looking for work for four months. "Let him see what people are going through."
This is beneath Obama, as was accepting Wendell Potter's invitation to visit the free health care clinics in L.A. last August. He was too busy holding a false town hall in Baucus's backyard and having yet another see-the-world-summer-vacation tour with the family -- this time to the State Parks. I remember how much scathing criticism I got from the bots for bringing this up on HuffPo at the time.
Well, summer vacation is long over and when is the last time Obama met with real people -- a lot of real people -- not the letters handpicked by staff to pull at the heart strings, or the carefully-picked audience at yet another town hall? I cannot believe he still holds these things and that people buy into it -- or how many still buy into it?
jobs kill the planet...jobs kill people...jobs kill...
we work, killing ourselves and destroying our planet around us, to pay others for what this planet has provided freely...others that hoard such at gunpoint...
the logic does not hold...we must take back, and return to, the land...
"The State Parks didn't close down during the Great Depression."
Well there you have it, times have changed haven 't they. We live in selfish times. Me first. Don't show me poor people on tv or on park avenue, show me Tiger Woods statement, repeated over and over and over again. God what a bore. What gets first cut? Anything that relieves the everyday folk. - Rail service, public transportation, parks, health care for the indigent, housing for the homeless, food for the hungry. the fat boys skim the money from the powerless poor folk. The influence and power have seeped like sewage to the wealthy fat boys.
"Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous."-Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
ty mr. ford
Time to tell the people the truth..Here it is.
It was George H W Bush who tutored Slick Willie Clinton on Globalization and Nafta. Two moves that outsourced our industrial base to China and Mexico. We now produce nothing.
Everything is made in China and Obama a product of Minority Benefits for College and Politics, does not get it and never will as his income is of the Ivy League mentality. He and Clitnon never had a job or ever worked like the Working classes of this country. Obama has been catering to the Wall St Crowd, and the Banksters. The Democratic party has doublecrossed the working classes. Time for workers to get a wakeup call. The unemployment problem has now become countrywide and we are in an emergency period. The Stimulus was for the Banking system, not us.
The Dimocrats will not want to hear the truth about their hero Slick.
Most of them already DON'T want to hear it.
At least the poor people of RI have that champion of the underdog, Joe L, to fight for them.
Except when he's fighting for Israel.
Or for the insurance industry.
Or for backing by the Republican party, as a candidate next time around.
What's Joe L. got to do with Rhode Island? Did I miss something?
A pipe dream is something gathered around an opium pipe, used to placate the masses.
This problem was set in motion over seventy years ago and is now bringing the crows to roost. Carter was the first to taste the Cool-Ade but Ronnie and his boys blew the door open by gutting the unions, slashing taxes on those who got the most benefit and opening the free trade agreements. Clinton and NAFTA put the nails in that coffin Georgie gave the uberclas much deserved tax breaks while foisting the biggest burden upon what remains of the middle class.
Forget about health insurance reform. Forget about fiscal reform. Forget about rational trade policies. Forget about those who benefit the most paying their fair share. Forget about a vibrant and healthy middle class. It just can't happen with a corrupt Congress and politicized Supreme Court The powers that be have it the way they want it and without substantive, comprehensive and far reaching Campaign Reform it just ain,t gonna happen. If we can't stop the corporations from buying votes then we, as a democracy, are ready for the fork. Say hello Plutocracy.
Your points are well taken, except there's one difference, namora. The decline of unions here in the United States actually began in the late 1960's, when President Nixon took power.
Welcome to the land of deregulation and free trade in reality instead of fantasy. The constant recalculating of government data to hide the level of unemployment, inflation, income etc. has come home to roost. No one believes that things are as good as the government says. But people still don't strike, join unions, or put the fear of the people into the heart of politicians. A few crackpots pushed harder than their sanity could handle have lashed out - the latest with an airplane. The political system is not providing an out so the pressure is still climbing. If the right wing nuts are returned to power or maintain the stalemate on health care and the economy expect more violence from individuals in radical groups. Frankly, it is a shame that the timing of the latest (and predictable) bubble happened so late in the Bush term. The Republicans accelerate the bad economy faster than the Democrats although both have made heavy contributions to this new DEPRESSION. The latest Republican answer is to cut taxes for the rich and privatize Social Security (does this ring a bell?). It is only a recession to the rich to everyone else this is depression. The Democrats would have had to act if the shit hit the fan a little sooner to show they were not like the HOOVERITES.
Leadership better choose to help people soon or violence will sweep many away. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are some of the last fragments of the safety net. People with nothing to lose are very dangerous.
The last sentence in your above post says it all, in a nutshell, shakker. These "dangerous" people are mostly present in working-class neighborhoods such as Southie (South Boston, MA), Charlestown, MA, or even Brooklyn's Bensonhurst section and other places like those neighborhoods throughout the United States. However, if people from better-off communities begin losing what they have and begin to really feel the squeeze, then who's to say that THEY won't join the ranks of "dangerous" people?
Nobody, regardless of who they may be, or where they're from, is immune to violence, either as victim, or perpetrator.
>>>>People with nothing to lose are very dangerous.
Maybe in Europe, but not in America. They don't call them "sheeple" for nothing.
Sheeple or not, when the dollar collapses and the well runs dry America will see more violence than any nation has ever seen.
The guns will come out and the National Guard will be off some where killing foreigners, as Americans will be killing Americans. Sheeple with guns will be very dangerous!
A few "nuts" will be swatted and that will put the fear of God into the onlookers. It's a MO of the IRS when it conducts audits: swat a few flies to make examples of them and the rest scatter.
So long as the super rich run the show and most jobs are lost to overseas or foreign labor so that our top guys can make a greater profit without concern for workers and without fear of rising labor unions, it "ain't gonna' change much."
The pipe dream is just a pipe dream. The real way to tackle the unemployment problem is to make the unemployment benefits permanent as they have in the UK.
Rico is not adept at English, but his ideas are exactly the prescription America needs, wants, and must have if it is ever going to get well. Watch out Congress. Watch out Wall Street. You didn't get the point about World Trade being totally unfair.
There are plenty of Mr. Stacks out here (the IRS kamikaze bomber) who never went to Harvard or Yale for their MBA's or Congress for their corporate bribes, but who know what Rico knows. Don't blow us off as misinformed dummies.
Stack (the IRS kamikaze bomber) explicitly cites history in thought, word, and deed: the Great Depression, the 1986 Tax reform Act, the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis and "bailout," the Oklahoma City Bombings, the dot-com bust, 9/11, and the recent 2008 bailout. The rest of us should take heed: America suffers from amnesia. We ignore the historical, yet recurring, lessons that would make millions of our lives more financially, emotionally, and physically secure.
Get "down here" with ordinary folks and listen to the plain-spoken genius of Rico: Come down hard on the military death contractors and stop making weapons. Tax the top 1 percent of the fat cats for one year- 30 percent of their income goes to their fellow citizens for jobs-building housing for homeless and food banks for the hungry. Monies go for immediate relief from the crappy economic situation that people are suffering through. Re direct the death machine monies (approx 400 bill per annum) to local projects to make these localities self sufficient in 1/ food production 2/ energy 3/ transportation 4/ health care. These are jobs centered industries. On a national scale start manufacturing bullet train systems, light rail systems, mag lev systems, monorail systems. fix existing rail systems like the NY Subway and LA's miserable transportation situation..Start producing our own solar panels instead of buying them from China.
Lots of us don't own an aircraft we can fly into a building, but lots of us are just as desperate as the suicide bombers in Baghdad, and we can still afford the clunkers the wealthy dumped.
There's a rising tide of revolution coming. Rolling-stone was trying to tell you:
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
The American people are castrated. When pushed to the brink they will just roll over and die. Trust me on this one. The millions of homeless living in in quiet desperation in tent cities and on the streets who go out to pee in the bushes and building corners have already proven I am right.
The United States has about 4% of the worlds population and uses about 25% of the worlds resources such as oil. This is changing and until there is an equilibrium people in the USA can expect a continual reduction in their standard of living. This reduction could have been gradual but through massive borrowing (which continues) the day of reckoning has been postponed. Now, that reduction in living standard will not come so gradually. By refusing to accept the inevitable the people of the USA have set themselves up for a catastrophic fall.
kayaker,
BULLSEYE.
Thank you.
It's coming faster than anyone wants to think, and that includes Obama.
I always thought it'd come sooner than this. Better get ready. They're coming to the rich men's houses to take back what they stole. Modern poetry doesn't seem like Shakespeare's economical language that "lean and mean" Cassius. But, at the expense of probably boring CD readers:
You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?
Or those of you familiar with Pearl Buck's _The Good Earth_, remember the good and honest farmer, Wang Lung when he "goes south" and camps out with his family Haiti-style next to a rich man's wall; rather than sell his starving daughter whom he cannot adequately feed working the ricksha, he listens to his impoverished co-slave say, When the rich get too rich, the poor take it away from them. Dragged along with the crowd, he finds himself in the back of the innermost court of the house. Wang Lung sees a big, middle-aged, well-dressed man who has not yet escaped who pleads with Wang Lung to spare his life. Wang Lung threateningly demands money from the frightened man who eagerly gives him gold coins. Clutching the gold, Wang Lung returns home, telling himself that they will go back to the land tomorrow.
Call them "terrorists" or what you will, the poor and downtrodden are coming to take back what we stole from them. And we cannot kill them all.
I disagree. I think if the people were going to protest they would have done something by now. Realistically, they will just die gently and without a peep because the power elitey have so euthanized them psychologically, mentally, spiritually---every way except physically, which may be coming soon to a theatre near you.
Nope, they got us there too. Have you seen the number of fat fatties out there addicted to fast food? Just look at the photograph. The percentage for the whole country is about the same.
Obama's "stimulus" package to fix the hole in the economy was similar to trying to fill an Olypmic sized swimming pool with a squirt gun.
And, he's crowing about that.
People are buying into it.
"I just wish all the politicians would work together for now, considering all the problems we have."
That's the problem, they HAVE!
Only they aren't working for you.
Their master is named corporate greed.