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Reid and Obama Abandon the Jobs Front
What planet are Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrats on?
Obama's own economic advisers say that unemployment is going to average 10 percent this year and 9.2 percent next year.
And yet all that Harry Reid now is proposing to spend on a new jobs bill is $15 billion over the next decade, which is peanuts. And most of those peanuts are going directly to businesses, which is the least efficient way to stimulate the economy.
There is no money to extend unemployment benefits.
There is no money to extend health care coverage to the unemployed.
There is no money to support state governments, which are having to make vicious cuts to balance their own budgets.
There is no money to create a federal jobs program.
It's as though Reid and Obama don't care that there are almost 15 million unemployed Americans right now and that this number is unlikely to get much lower any time soon.
It's as though they don't understand the magnitude of the crisis that poor people are facing.
"Low-income Americans are facing a higher unemployment rate today than at the height of the Depression," reports DemocracyNow. "The Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston's Northeastern University divided U.S. households into ten groups based on annual income. The lowest tenth, with an annual household income of $12,499 or less, had a fourth-quarter unemployment rate last year of 30.8 percent. The next lowest-income group had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent."
Oh, Reid and Obama talk about the unemployed. But those words amount to just crocodile tears since they have the power to do something about this but choose not to do so.
They seem allergic to power.
They were elected with a mandate to provide jobs and fix the economy. They have majority control. They blew the first stimulus package by designing one that was half as big as what was needed.
And now they're blowing this one.
They could, by the reconciliation process, at least ram through the House bill, which would spend ten times as much on job creation as Reid's pathetic bill.
But no, they're content to lowball the recovery once more, to let millions of people grow desperate worrying about not having a job, to let families strain to the breaking point, to force families to cut back on bare necessities, and to create huge psychological scars for adults and children alike.
All because Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrats refuse to exercise the power they hold in their hands.
This isn't just gutless. And this isn't just bad politics. It's a sin to let so many people in this economy suffer so needlessly.
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51 Comments so far
Show AllThere's plenty of money to pay for bankers bonuses and Wall Street's elective wars of agression.
Only corporations count. Remember?
BO, being the orator that he is, will say "I feel your pain" and then proceed to give us a swift kick in the arse.
BS is all that can be expected from BO.
Thanks for re-hashing old news and stating the obvious Matt, my mainstream liberal friend. ZZZZZZ
PS you have a lot to learn from Hedges, Parenti, Fisk, Pilger, Hill, Wolin and others, maybe you should start reading them, before writing another article.
What planet are Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrats on?
They are on this planet: Bushplanet, Moneyplanet, Fuckyouplanet. Third from the sun.
Obama's state of the Union address:
- "I have never been more hopeful about America's future than I am tonight"
- "That is why jobs must be our number-one focus in 2010"
Response: The centerpiece of the plan is that employers don't have to pay matching social security payments for new hires. Wonderful idea! (sarcasm) Add more workers and accompanying social security liability while not funding the social security liability; thus accelerating the demise of social security.
Yeah. Caught that too. Someone has an evil plan. Who is it?
We need to throw them out.
Impeach.
Hoo, boy, this:
"Obama's state of the Union address:
- "I have never been more hopeful about America's future than I am tonight"
- "That is why jobs must be our number-one focus in 2010""
is the biggest laugh yet!
Yes they are-blowing it all. Blowing Democrats too.
And are we prepared to see them walk away and retire "happily" satisfied with the destruction they have wrought..all for the rich? Its everywhere.
There is money for all the corrupt- and we now have money for war in Marjah?
They just don't care about the American people- or this country's innards.
They all act like they're on something. Maybe they are all doing dope together to find out firsthand whether it's harmless and worth legalizing, although so far I haven't heard any uncontrollable giggling.
/cm
Get ready for the privateization of Social Security and Medicare. We just can't afford to give our money away to those who refuse to work. We prefer to give our money away to those who are obscenely rich and squandered other people's money in the Wall Street casino.
Get ready for the privateization of Social Security and Medicare. We just can't afford to give our money away to those who refuse to work. We prefer to give our money away to those who are obscenely rich and squandered other people's money in the Wall Street casino.
Why would Obama care about them? Rahm is whispering in his ear, "forget about them--they don't vote."
"There is no money to extend unemployment benefits."
The reasoning is simple. As unemployment benefits evaporate, those who are receiving unemployment benefits will eventually lose them and no longer be counted as being unemployed. As a result, the number of those being counted as "officially" unemployed drop.
The "official" unemployment rate dropped in 2010 from 10% to 9.8% (snicker). I wonder if we can have our "official" unemployment rate down to 5% by June? Then, everything would be *normal* again and we would be in full recovery...politically.
Very frustrating overall, but Reid was right to kill a very bad so-called jobs bill that was more corporate/lobbyist giveaway and tax cut trickle down crap than job creation bill.
We need extension of unemployment benefits.
We need an actual federal jobs program.
States need continued relief.
The federal government needs to continue to spend. The federal budget deficit is a long-term concern, not a short-term one. The need to cut spending is a bogus argument that Obama and Reid seem to have boughten into.
Clinton II? I hope Obama does not privatize social security and medicare in the name of bipartisanship.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
What was formerly the government of the American people is now being
openly and brazenly looted (as is the public directly itself) by war
profiteering & domestic capitalist robber barons on a scale I think is
unequalled in the history of world empires. They know Obama is a
weakling and that the DLC is desperate to toady up corporate campaign
funding--especially since the recent Supreme Court overreach striking
down 100 years of campaign finance laws in one partisan swoop.
The robber barons have used their campaign lucre and their Big Media
to insure that the DLC Dimocratic & Rethuglican agendas are now
virtually identical and framed in the same neo-liberal economic
mythology. Both Parties know that most of the Democratic-leaning
electorate is badly informed and desperate to cling to this or that
good looking politician as a "savior" who will tow the line for their
preferred fantasy of a return to an American prosperity for the many
that is dead and gone and was only being temporarily masked by the
housing bubble.
Neither Party nor their funders have any intention whatsoever of
rebuilding the middle-class by reintroducing old school manufacturing
jobs or subsidizing the creation of new green manufacturing jobs.
They think they can skate along for years by simply giving lip service
to job creation while relying on Big Media to pretend the problem out
of the public consciousness (especially the consciousness of that
growing portion of the public hanging on to the economic basics by
their fingernails until it's too late and they slip into lower-class
existential daily survival mode with no time or money to participate
in politics even if they wanted to).
The only real (and shrinking) difference between these two Parties
anymore is that the Republicans seem hell-bent on creating a wider war
fully dragging in Pakistan & Iran (and growing several secondary
conflicts from Yemen to Columbia & probably Venezuela) and the
Dimocrats seem to prefer a slower entry into a 3rd quagmire in
Pakistan, growing cold war with Iran and a somewhat slower pace of
feeding all the secondary conflicts going on.
"It's as though Reid and Obama don't care..."
Duh.
*Comment deleted by site administrators for violating our Comment Policy.*
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
This is an extremely distasteful statement - uncouth and uncalled-for.
If people can't find work. and after so many people are hurting, you tend to have an overflow of dangerous social problems. The US had some infamous riots during the 30s and 40s and people were shot and killed for bascially trying to defend themselves. Which must be part of the reason that so much money is being spent to militarize the country, or as Paul Craig Roberts concludes - is already a police state. Robert Reich says some jobs are gone for good:
" The basic assumption that jobs will eventually return when the economy recovers is probably wrong. Some jobs will come back, of course. But the reality that no one wants to talk about is a structural change in the economy that's been going on for years but which the Great Recession has dramatically accelerated." We need a second massive stimulus aimed right at street level. We've tried Ayn Rand/Friedman for over 30 years, it isn't working, and more "Defense Spending" is going to worsen the situation.
The immediate problem limiting employment is demand. As a small business owner I can tell you no amount of tax credits is going to entice me to hire new employees until there is more demand for my products/services; with so much unemployment, under employment and fear of the still-employed that they may lose their jobs, people are not spending money on anything but necessities and paying off current debt.
The only meausreable demand in the economy right now other than food, shelter, gasoline and emergency medical treatment, is through government spending, and the bulk of that spending is military. The only option the government has to create jobs is to hire people to work directly for the government, such as the massive hiring programs - WPA, CCC, etc. - created by FDR during the Depression. Unfortunately that was not done early last year when it might have been possible, and now those more concerned with deficit spending than putting people to work have managed to capture the zeitgeist. There is no way a direct-hire government jobs program will make it through Congress now that the "we are stealing our children's future" meme has caught on with the public.
So I return to my original point. Without demand, there will be no new hiring or re-hiring. There is no consumer demand, and it will be a long time before consumers' debts are paid off and unemployment or the fear of unemployment will abate so that people are willing to spend again. The government is unable to spend because the deficit hawks have taken over the national conversation. So we are looking at a very bleak future for economic growth for perhaps ten years or more.
Creating jobs and more economic growth are excuses for not taxing the rich.
why be surprised - just consider the "green energy" debacle.....
you hear the obomba admin talk about "green jobs"
but in fact the oil industry receives around 60 billion a year in subsidies......
the nuclear industry receives around 25-30 billion a year
green energy 8 - 10 billion a year....
so in order to claim his green energy mantle obomba has changed coal and nuclear into "green industries"
just another example of double-speak....
which is why I no longer listen to or care what obomba says cause it's all lies!
Harry Reid has been enjoying his comfortable job in Washington for too long. He must go. Obama, you had better wake up or you'll be next too.
I wish Obama cared that he'll be next, but I really get the feeling he doesn't. His manner of speaking shows that he doesn't care. He speaks in monotones, except when he's speaking about the free market -- and it's all excitement. I can understand that. He's counting the millions he's going to make off his beloved "free market" after he gets kicked out of office. It will be good for him. He and Michelle will no longer have to do photo ops in the soup kitchens or hang out with any of the unsavory non-elite.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The Democrats in Congress are under a much worse threat of losing their offices than Obama faces, yet, according to recent polls. Public approval of the Dimocratic Congress is plummeting while Obama is holding at about 49%. But it's 9 months between now and November and Obungle is on a clear track to ritually disembowel his own presidency relying on too many neo-liberal capitalistic rituals. And I used to think George Bush Sr. was the most Disney animatronic of all presidents.
But that 49% figure to me is very depressing at this late date because it shows that around 50 million Americans are clinging to the Party & media manufactured image of this loser/weakling/betrayer out of desperation instead of paying attention to what he really is doing and leaving undone.
What good will it do to throw money at creating jobs if we don't amend or scarp the present trade agreements. Better to extend unemployment benefits and give it to the people outright. Still, it will not address the core issue at why there are no jobs.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Creating a long-term government-dependent 3rd class of unemployment benefits recipients is bad for several reasons.
1) In a non-productive economy sinking deeper in overextended debt from multiple wars, still preserving war-time tax cuts for the super-rich, growing in trade deficits and concentrating wealth in the richest 1%, unemployment benefits and all other anti-poverty programs will become increasingly unsustainable as the real economy moves towards real bankruptcy.
2) Unemployment benefits represent two-thirds of regular take-home pay are not gainful income. They force families to exhaust savings and sell off valuable possessions over time and thereby lead inexorably to impoverishment.
3) Long-term reliance on unemployment benefits creates a mass psychological loss of purpose and self-esteem with negative effects on spouses and children that will reverberate for decades.
4) They do not address either the underlying political or economic reasons for unemployment.
Yes, our economy is moving quickly toward real bankruptcy. But there are some things that can be done that are all listed in Metal's first reason for why creating long term unemployment benefits is a bad idea.
He says it is a bad idea to do this while we continue to overextend the multiple wars, suffer the trade deficits, concentrate the wealth in the top 1%, and continue tax cuts for the super-rich.
There is our plan to avoid the bankrupcy. 1.)Tax the rich like they were taxed before Reagon 2.) Repeal the 'free trade' rules that encourage the loss of manufacturing jobs here at home, and 3.) address the underlying politcal and/or ecomomic reasons for unemployment.
We could fund our domestic programs with redirected military funds if we would end the illegal wars. We could use those public funds for univeral health care, free good quality public education through the university level, and put people to work repairing our decaying infrastructure.
If we had a democracy this could happen; but under our current corpacracy, I doubt it will. We can end the corpacracy by not voting corporate. No D's and no R's.
Speaking of Ronnie,why not reinstate all the interest that we were once able to deduct on our our taxes? Like car interest and credit cards? Being charge 30% and being able to deduct that would sure come in handy for quite a few families. But no, let's just let the rich keep screwing over the middle class. I think that is the goal anyway with all the foreclosures and unemployment. Keep us poor so that we don't rise up. It will happen someday. But they will be ready for us. Blackwater roaming the streets of America will happen someday
It certainly sounds like a bad idea on paper, but with few or any jobs to be had, it's the only means (well, that and food stamps) that many workers and their families have to keep them from going homeless and/or hungry in the short term. I doubt there will be 'long-term' benefits with this tight wad country we live in. Also, consider that that money is pumped back into the economy as soon as it is handed out.
Unsustainable? No more so than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, probably much better to create a massive FDR style jobs program and invest in infrastructure. Nevertheless, that will only be a band aid measure if we do not revise or rescind the insane trade agreements we've signed. By the way, if we do not rescind them, it will be done for us when China and other countries refuse to provide goods and services on credit (China will do this once the status quo is no longer profitable for them).
In my view, this is when the sh** will really hit the fan. I wonder if that will be a turning point where taxes are raised substantially on the rich. Even if they don't use them to help the middle class and working man, they'll need them to keep the military going. And what the MIC wants the MIC gets.
Until I can read up more on this, I'm going to cut Harry Reid some slack on this one. It may be that Mr. Reid finally grew a pair. It is possible that this is the only way Reid could figure out to kill the permenant reauthorization of the Patriot Act which is supposedly buried in this jobs bill. It would be typical of the Republicans and/or the Democrats to bury something that fucks the people over in a bill that is suppose to help people.
Are you beginning to understand that we have one Corporate Imperialist Party, with two branches, the Democratic Corporate Imperialistic Party and the Republican Corporate Imperialistic Party? The goal of both branches is to maximumize (sic) corporate greed. The Senate Dems love the filibuster, so they can pretend to be progressive and go through the motions, but never quite get progressive legislation enacted...
US imperialism has been going strong for one hundred and twelve years: over five million uppity third world people murdered by US forces in that period. The dreaded Al-Kida has murdered say, five thousand people in the last twenty years, so the US military is about two hundred times more lethal to third world residents than is Al-Kida...
I wanted to be a small business green entrepreneur but thanks to government, I have to settle for working for a corporation or go homeless. Government meddles for the wrong interests.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
You should do what some other American green entrepreneurs have done and go to northern EU countries who might be interested in subsidizing your plans. One such group of jobs creators got substantial funding from the Danish government to build a nationwide system of wind-powered electric car refueling stations.
The only jobs those two bozos are interested in is military recruitment. Just like Dubya, it always has to end up like this. "No jobs, then sign up and join the army !"
New Phase, Not Just Another Recession
http://www.counterpunch.org/zadeh02122010.html
It's as though Reid and Obama don't care that there are almost 15 million unemployed Americans right now and that this number is unlikely to get much lower any time soon.
It's as though they don't understand the magnitude of the crisis that poor people are facing.
**********
I don't know about you, but I am fed to the teeth with hearing all of these clueless, "progressive," chattering hyenas--such as Mr. Rothschild--whine on and on and on about how the Democratic Party's leadership "just don't seem to get it" when it comes to jobs, the environment, the economy, health care and etc., etc. Hey Matt, THEY GET IT! The question is, when the hell are you finally going to "GET IT?"
And seriously, folks, have you ever seen or heard a more pathetic political specimen in your life than Harry Reid? Even his name is Hollywood perfect; as he's nothing more than an exceedingly weak and slender reed that bends over backwards in even the faintest political breeze.
Or is he?
I mean, if his real job is to get up in front of the cameras and, day after day, cold as a mackerel, explain to the wailing, dying, American middle class why he can't seem to do a thing to help them, then he's not half bad. You might even say he serves his corporate and Wall Street masters with a steely resolve.
If you'd like to see and hear a razor sharp analysis of the progressive reality and what we need to do to move forward, hop over to The Real News site and watch all 4 segments of Paul Jay's interview with Jeff Cohen. You'll be glad you did.
Right now, I'm just so disgusted with the Democratic Party at large that I find myself (almost) wishing that people such as Louise Day Hicks (anybody remember her?) were still alive and holding office.
I'm not Nostradamus. But I did a prescient YouTube video about Obama more than a year ago, entitled "The Democrats' Answer to George W. Bush," which seems pretty a propos right now.
Both Reid and Obama are useless, pandering opportunists. If they represent the best the democrats can offer, then we absolutely need a third party. Get the dems out of the way nad let some real progressive forces make the changes we need.
For someone reputed to be bright, Obama is a pretty shallow thinker when it comes to analyzing the lessons of history. Just as his contrast of Vietnam to Afghanistan a few months ago missed the mark, his take on '90s-era Rubinomics is similarly facile.
I guess their view is that unemployment declined steadily through the '90s, while real wages (for about the only time in the last 35 years) rose. Therefore, attack government deficits again and the same thing will happen. Get government out of the way, and the markets will work their magic. The whole neoliberal hymnbook from the Clinton era.
This "thinking" misses some obvious differences now. Much of the current unemployment is now structural -- these jobs have been outsourced and they aren't coming back. And there's no technology revolution in the offing comparable to '90s IT that will replace them. Also, the whole game of substituting credit cards and second mortgages for actual wages has played out its skein. Debt at the governmental and personal level has reached a completely unsustainable point. As SARose notes below, the problem now is one of demand -- credit just won't suffice to create enough of it anymore -- and where that demand is going to come from, other than government spending, is anybody's guess.
For a free download of Words that Draw Blood -- choice invective useful to the left -- go to www.lost-vocabulary.com.
"There is no money to extend unemployment benefits.
There is no money to extend health care coverage to the unemployed.
There is no money to support state governments, which are having to make vicious cuts to balance their own budgets.
There is no money to create a federal jobs program."
Oh, but there always seems to be plenty of money available to give the serpents on Capitol Hill their "automatic" cost of living increases; and of course, there's always plenty of money to bail out the too-big-to-fail banking/hedge fund cartel that was primarily responsible for the global economic catastrophe we are in.
"The results of these literally bankrupt economic and financial policies are now coming home to roost here in the states, and worldwide, as the pernicious financial architecture crumbles around us." - Dr. James Glenn
By the way, according to John Williams at Shadowstats.com, the real unemployment rate is over 21% today.
I also recently discovered that the federal government defines interest on CREDIT CARD DEBT as “consumer spending” and adds it to GDP. Any wonder why the GDP looks better than it really is?
Goebles was right, tell a population something long enough, and eventually they’ll believe it!
"By the way, according to John Williams at Shadowstats.com, the real unemployment rate is over 21% today." -- Gail
Exactly! I am sick and tired of writers using the government approved statistics. Rothschild should know better!
"I also recently discovered that the federal government defines interest on CREDIT CARD DEBT as “consumer spending” and adds it to GDP. Any wonder why the GDP looks better than it really is?" -- Gail
Thanks for this piece of information! 30% interest rates can certainly slant the stats! Our elected officials and so-called public servants will do anything to mislead and confuse their constituents, a.k.a. "we the people."
As is so often the case this man at the Progressive is right on target!
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Jobs?
Jobs?
Silly people, surely they know something like Jobs cuts into the profits that Wall Street loves to show on CNBC every day.
Jobs?
Just live in a gated community.
The walls will protect you from the millions of destitute men when they finally catch on to your scams.
It's 2010........Welcome to your Post-Industrial society.
We were just muscle to build the desired state.
We thought technology would ease our suffering and lead to more leisure time.
A better planet for all.
Wrong......we're just useless eaters now as Kissinger was fond of saying.
What do you do with useless eaters?
This society will collapse under the desire to maintain the current unsustainable paradigm.