Who's gonna feel the pain? Only the millions who suffer. The Internet and mainstream media would have to close for good before enough people woulda figured it all out.

"If there was ever a time for bold government action it is precisely now. Obama should be storming the country, demanding the largest responses to the jobs emergency in history. He and the Dems should be giving Republicans hell for their indifference to all this."

At this point in the article my eyes glaze. Here is yet another so called liberal who is waiting for Barry to do the right thing.

When will Robert Reich and the rest of the Obamabots wake up to the stark reality that they have been suckered by a smooth-talking snake-oil salesman. He took your money and your vote, but he didn't (and will not) deliver the goods.

I agree with Robert Reich. And I don't feel I've been bamboozled by President Obama. I just think he was left with a friggin' mess, in the U.S. and overseas. That's why he's "all over the place"! Pres. G. W. Bush opened Pandora's Box in the Middle East with the War in Iraq. Who knows? Maybe HE was the "anti-Christ" they all talk about. And Vice-Pres. Cheney - Talk about a "snake-oil salesman"! Have you all forgotten the Halliburton scandals? I'm sure they've figured out a way to get the Iraqi oil (or at least a good percentage of it) from the Iraqi people inspite of all the bru-ha-ha that went on about it belonging to the Iraqis. We certainly don't know all the dirty little secrets, and no matter how diligent our news reporters, they can't get privy to the info.

Please read Waldon Bello:"Can you say ,FASCISM? The political consequences of stagnation"

On todays Commondreams 9/3

They are repaving Freedom Blvd. today.
Seriously, I live in Freedom California, and CalTrans is finally fixing one of the local major roads, with stimulus funding from the federal government. Must have been close to a hundred crew people working. This road also passes through mostly apple orchards, that are now ready to start picking with help from thousands of local and some migrant farm workers throughout the valley. Same for the berry fields, and organic farms and gardens. Building is kind of slow, but there are way too many houses anyway. Maybe, other parts of the country will start to see some improvement soon. We may be only a small exception here, but it's not quite a gloom and doom depression as it's made out to be everywhere else in the media. (Well...... unless you live in Detroit).

Just remember - you can't eat gold.

Public works programs, state banks, sovereign currencies are solutions: The blame game is easy, but it's over and now let's get to work!

"And because most families depend on two paychecks, the practical impact is almost double"

The facts are that, with the people's better interests in mind, a large chunk of USans' economic exchange today is unnecessary, and another large chunk is overpriced. So the elitevil economy hitting the skids certainly does NOT automatically call for economic stimuli of the status quo sort, but rather calls for a radical restructuring of the economy guided by the VISIBLE HAND of the people's better interests.

USans are caught, by elitevil, between a "rock and a hard place". On the one side USans are pushed by elitevil marketeering to consume/plunder materials/energy at four times the world average rate. While on the other side USans are enslaved by elitevil to pay grossly inflated prices for most everything, including education, healthcare, shelter and transport. And this doesn't even include the "externalized" costs paid.

So when liberals harp, and boy are they harping today, about economic stimuli, we see that they aren't thinking holistically but rather still wearing their blinders, to advance hidden agendas at the people's great expense (and the planet's too).

The liberals seem to be only marginally lesser evil and delusionary than their conservative opponents. Kaka on them both.

The people have a clear plan we know is right and we know will work: We're cutting our economic exchange by 75%, and what remains we'll exchange with our local small-scale farmers, craftsmen and merchants. We'll get best value this way, meaning work weeks reduced to 15 hours, and great economic stability, sustainability, maximum peace, and health.

It will do no good to throw another trillion of 'stimulus' taxpayer money to try and revive a dead economy. A government works program will last only as long as the government pays for it with borrowed money. The last time we tried that, about a year ago, it kept some people in their jobs for awhile, and now many of them are collecting unemployment. It bailed out crooked bankers, who promptly gave themselves billions in bonuses. The trilion should have been spent bringing the manufacturing and information technology jobs back to America. The millions of off-shored workers would bring billions in spending back to America. I guess the CEOs who off-shored jobs in order to get quick profits and justify their inflated salaries and bonuses didn't really think of that - or didn't care.

The economists should be shunned. Forget Reich and the others. We are beyond words and beyond economic theory. The hardship is upon working people and they alone. They will suffer the brutal consequences of failed economic policy. They will bear the daily and long term struggle to exist cast upon them by the greed of the wealthy, while at the same time, be blamed exclusively for their demise. They will become the punching bags of the rich and the doormats of politicians. They will be drubbed and scared. They will see or feel no mercy. They will live hell on earth. They will be the lucky ones.

"Business leaders have either gone silent or gone reactionary, as they did in the 1930s."

That statement might be true, but there's more to the problem as well. American corporations have loads of cash on hand, but they won't invest in talent or anything else. I heard it said on one of the cable shows that the total amount of money being held onto by corporations exceeds $1 trillion. The exception is mergers and acquisitions. Corporations are still doing that. many paying cold hard cash for those transactions. They still want to grow their businesses, but they don't want to hire more people to take on the added workload. So God help those who do have jobs with those tightwad corporations. They're being asked to do more and more with less resources, be more productive, but aren't seeing any change in their salaries. "Do more with less," is the catch phrase we hear constantly. the new reality in the world of work. The American workers lose on all fronts, whether they are employed or not.

"The practical choice we face is this: Either major action to reverse the jobs emergency or years of intolerably high unemployment coupled with demagoguery and scapegoating."

It won't be the either; so it will be the or. Obama could have nearly total control of the Congress and he still wouldn't do anything meaningful. He's thinking about reelection in '012 and beyond that, how he can become a multimillionaire after leaving office, like Clinton. The rest, as Raymond Chandler once wrote, is "spillikans in the parlor".

Nobody in the Democratic party told Reich to pen this article and then have it appear on CD or anywhere else. The same holds true for people like Eugene Robinson or Ruth Marcus or any other Obama apologist who regularly makes it into print. These people are true believing members of the Democratic party and their mission is to keep alive The Big Lie that the Democrats care about ordinary people and, therefore, deserve your vote. The only thing the Democrats deserve is the back of everyone's hand.

power only concedes to the demands of power. We are acting and being powerless by 'waiting' for corporate politicians to do what is never in them.
We have to build huge bottom up workers/middle class movements that demand a change in economics and end to militarism. There is NO other way.
Our school system works so well, even moreso at the university level that most common dreams posters so called progressive etc....actually THINK any sort of democratic or economic rights came from people sitting at home waiting for the next election...and sending off letters.
stop beggin and start demanding.
you can't even discuss a long general strike...cuz you are all on a different planet with a different history.
While the rest of the world knows exactly what to do.
my god.
meanwhile we are , the US military especially(biggest sole user of fuel on the planet), and the ag corporations are BURNING THE PLANET. You think pelosi or barny frank are gonna stop that???????

Jobs depend on real resources and ecosystems. When these cannot be obtained or exploited, locally or by global conquest and trade, the economy collapses.

The world ecosystems are in terminal exhaustion, relative to human demands. Major climate change unstoppable. Runaway climate change causing major extinctions is probable. Our own long term status as a plague species is not assured.

The number one resource has been very cheap oil.
Thats nearly all gone now.

Number two resource has been the efficiency of labor.
All the factories and money go to the cheapest labor.
There is a large number of Eurasian competitors, with globalisation.
Whatever the state of economies, US competitors are converting the worlds resources into economic products cheaper and faster than the USA. The competition is intensifying, pushing up demand for oil and carbon fuels.

To some extent, the increase in transport costs due to oil price, start to favour more local production. Peak population, peak affluence demand, and declining resources are making production more expensive. Transport of bulk raw materials is becoming more expensive. Even recycling becomes more expensive, as it requires energy processes and transport. A sufficient switch to renewable energy plants has not been made yet, and sufficient future capital investment might not be available in the declining economy. Even now, why are we still making new fossil fuel power stations?

Number three is world currency denomination, the US dollar, which is falling down in fits and starts, to be replaced by more stable alternatives. Eating away at the US dollar is enormous US debt, and a growing enormouse pile US treasurey bonds in the hands of foreign investors that can never be paid back. Eating it away is the decline in real world resources which can be still purchased. If resources exist and products are made in other countries, they can back there own currencies.

Number four is the US attempt to dominate by using its costly and declining military, by a series of occupations of a few little nations, which it cannot occupy without ongoing insurgency. This adds to US debt and is not realizing great material gains to the US. Whether the US empire still plans to strategicly extend these wars to go against the other Major Powers remains to be seen.
Its large number of forces are widely spread, with long supply chains, costly and oil dependent.

Number five is the great wealth inequality and corresponding self interested corruption of US elites, added to the games of corporations. Its a money war. They play and fight with everyone elses money. Money is supposed to represent the availability of real resources. The global financial crisis is a US dollar crisis, because we still mainly use US dollars.

Number six is the still growing populations, multiple races and religions, all competing for living resources on our declining planet. Conflict will occur inevitably to decide apon who gets to be the survivors. The winners may be those that manage by luck to keep out of the way. At the last exhaustive stage, after global systems have declined, local resources and conflicts are the determinants. Local defence and social cohesion, backed by sufficient local resources, will determine the winners.

A much thinner tribal world will conflict locally, all declining as the planets life support systems go offline, gradually moving from the equator up to the poles. Everywhere will look something like Afghanistan. The last survivors may fight it out on the new shores of the northern continents, and maybe Antartica. Welcome to terminal world. There can be no global winner.