Republicans don’t want to create jobs because they’re hoping that the voters will punish Obama for continued joblessness and the wealthy can at the same time accumulate larger piles of cash to sit on. It’s a win-win, (well for the only people any of the beltway MOTU care about anyway). The “recovery” is over. Wall Street is rolling in cash again and the big banks are solvent. The financial “reform” is every bit as lame as the health care “reform” and Citizens United will keep it that way until we the people throw the bums out and insist their replacements make some real changes, possibly with pitchforks and torches.

Heckuva job Obama.

The problem is that so many millionaires don’t need “jobs”. They use old money to make new money by investing. The stock market is fine, so everything is great in the country.

Republicans don’t want to create jobs because they’re hoping that the voters will punish Obama for continued joblessness

Also.

Economy Still Hard on Millions of Americans

SO???

The only way Congress can create jobs is to fund programs similar to those Congress created during the Depression. With their idiotic spending cuts and austerity measures they can’t turn around and spend money to create jobs. The Regressives and most Vichycrats have dug themselves a hole they can’t get out off.

The Fed could loan money to communities that want to build employee-owned businesses that actually produce goods. The Fed’s corporate masters would never allow that, however, because it could affect their quarterly earnings and the stockholders would not be happy. To say nothing of the profits and bonuses the corporate pooh bahs would lose.

The depressing news is that over one million applied so only about 6% of those who applied were hired

The MOTU are doing a happy-dance about this. Serfs lining up to apply for very low wage jobs and being grateful for any crumbs tossed at ‘em. Big WIN for the MOTU!! Big LOSE for the serfs. The upper 1% dance with unbridled glee as they watch their secruities go up and are only taxed at 15%.

The other story is that the CEO of Walmart says many of its customers, who live paycheck to paycheck, seem to be running out of money much earlier in the month.

This, otoh, *may* start to give *some* of the MOTU pause. Maybe. What this portends is that good little authoritarian consumer serfs simply don’t have money supply to BUY stuff – and hence line the pockets of the upper 1%, like the Waltons in this case. Even dirt-cheap, crummy Chinese made JUNK is costing too much for US serfs anymore forced into poverty by the upper 1% crashing the economy and being amply *rewarded* for doing so.

Only time will tell if the declining ability of US serfs to buy stuff starts hitting the MOTU hard enough in their pockets/bank accounts to cause them to reconsider their greedy self-serving profligate ways. I won’t hold my breath.

Austerity doesn’t work. Ever. I can’t think of a single case in which austerity did anything but make a bad situation worse. One definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. I submit that any of our leadership caste who really think that austerity will help is unqualified to hold any power by reason of insanity and anybody who doesn’t believe it but is using it to gain their own ends is unqualified to rule for reasons of corruption.

Agreed. When Wal-Mart shoppers stop spending, things are worse than any of the MOTU care to admit out loud.

And when they lose all of that old money, (Trump), their rich buddies are always there to bail them out.

Any Repub candidate running on a jobs oriented message will make considerable traction vs Obama in 2012. Batshit crazy or not, Sarah, the Donald, Newt, and /or Mike Huckabee will find success by repeating “jobs, jobs, where are the jobs?”.

It will work because Obama no longer has a base of support left and he will find that corporations won’t vote in the numbers he needs.

Officially the recession has been over for many months, but it is clear that such a declaration is based only on measurements which affect the corporate elite. Foreclosures are still rising, unemployment is large and static, consumption is slowly diminishing. Who can create a new business or expand an existing one in this environment unless the consumer is a foreign country or foreign population? Commercial rental vacancy, which is not well monitored, is very high is most cities. This well-kept secret obscures the damage to small landlords whose income is severely reduced by such loss of income. The predatory banks are seizing upon the borrower’s loss in value to foreclose and punish property owners — to Republican’s silent cheers as the lenders reclaim and recycle wealth upward. It’s the SHOCK DOCTRINE depressing the middle class while the wealthy wallow in tax breaks and Citizens United election victories.

Actually, austerity is working for the wealthy and connected. Corporate and bank profits are higher than ever.

Austerity for the rest of us…not so much. But that is the neo-lib plan after all.

Fortunately our society maintains safety networks to help people in the hard economy.

One in six Americans are now getting assistance. Medicaid enrollment topped 50 million in June 2010, Food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) now go to a record 44.2 million, and Unemployment insurance is paid to more than 8.4 million people (state or federal)

Actually, austerity is working for the wealthy and connected.

I said that in my comment @ 1 but please feel free to only read that which suits you.

Fortunately our society maintains safety networks to help people in the hard economy.

Bullshit alan. There are at least four million of us who have exhausted our UI benefits and are still unemployed. I’ll bet it’s easy to be sanctimonious when you have a steady job.

It’s not about Obama, it’s about Congress. Rick Scott and the Regressives ran on creating jobs in FL. The legislative session ends next week and they’ve yet to address the jobs issue. They’ve loosened gun laws, further restricted women’s reproductive rights, taken money from schools and other programs, but jobs, not. one. bill.

You can bash Obama on jobs until the sun falls from the sky but he’s not the one that can do it. He can try to persuade, beg, scream, holler at Congress but he can’t create jobs out of thin air. Might as well fart to try to put out a fire. Do you really think the Resgressives in Congress would do anything Obama wanted, even if it was the right thing? If so, I’ve got some lovely swamp land I’d like to sell ya.

Horseshit.

Just one example: FL wants to limit UI to 20 weeks.

…all that investment, and the peeps still can’t buy cheap Chinese-made crap at Walmart. Maybe the government should create a living-wage jobs program.

Profits are up. Gasoline went up 19 cents a gallon yesterday. Grocery sales will dip, new car sales will tank, homes sales stagnate, the country is lurching to the edge of the abyss but Congress and their Masters don’t give a shit. No one is creating jobs. The bleeding of jobs started under Clinton. He was on a high because of the Tech bubble. Billions being made lots of taxes being funneled to the government but NAFTA and the shift of jobs overseas has all caught up with us. Robotics and Technology hasn’t given us more free time as predicted it has replaced us. Robots don’t complain about heat or cold, low pay or working conditions. Technology allows companies to do more with less. There are no new jobs to replace them with. We all want a $200 26 inch tv. etc., etc. the circle is now unbroken.

Obama could push for jobs which he really hasn’t done but you’re right, he can’t create them. Sometimes I wonder if government is ever even taught in high schools anymore.

Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled post is up: Time for Another Rebrand, Conservatives: Tea Party Now Toxic at the Polls

Because people who can’t find a job in 20 weeks are just pure-d lazy, as evidenced by the fact that an average of 16.129 people competed for each of those McDonald’s jobs.
Spit!

I remember you commenting on your UI benefits in the past. That sucks. I wasn’t intending to be sanctimonious. I’m just glad there are programs out there to help people.

Any Repub candidate running on a jobs oriented message will make considerable traction vs Obama in 2012. Batshit crazy or not, Sarah, the Donald, Newt, and /or Mike Huckabee will find success by repeating “jobs, jobs, where are the jobs?”

As I was explaining to Bo Cutter yesterday, Donald Trump is all over this. To quote from a Sean Hannity interview he did last week:

“the best thing for balancing the budget is to have a strong economy. And the economy can never come back if we are going to always have high unemployment.”

Oh yeah, and came out against Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan and then against the President on Wisconsin.
“And I will tell you, me, I’m protecting, I don’t care what plan the Republicans put, I’m protecting the seniors. The seniors are in a certain way the heart of this country. And I’m protecting the seniors.”

“You know, it is interesting with too Obama if you look at Wisconsin. He made a pledge that he was going to March in Wisconsin. He was going to put on his walking shoes and march with those teachers. Where is he? He’s all talk. He’s all talk. Unfortunately, he’s also action but it’s always the wrong action.”

Well, then excuse my vehemence, I’m staring homelessness in the face. Stop being so glib. Those safety nets you are so pleased about are inadequate as hell as I honestly hope you never have to find out.

Austerity?? What austerity?? We’ve run the highest deficits ever by a large margin the last 3 years; spending is at levels of GDP well above historical averages, and all we’ve gotten out of it is 8.8% unemployment and 1.8% growth the last quarter. The spending hasn’t worked guys!!

Government (civics) is not taught in school anymore, except as a one-day segment of Social Studies, which has nothing to do with sociology and requires no study. Of course even basic economics is not taught – certainly not the difference between micro- and macroeconomics – and I’m beginning to wonder about any math beyond simple arithmetic.

They don’t want an educated public. They only want the wealthy to be educated while everybody else gets educated just enough to make them useful in their serfdom.

The “spending” that you think is so out of control the last few years is mainly due to the recession in the aftermath of the collapse of the housing bubble. The “spending” represented by the stimulus passed in 2009 consisted mostly of tax cuts (about 2/3), most of the rest on financial aid to the states and a few infrastructure projects.

The GDP has tanked (except for the financial sector), and everyone from households to banks are deleveraging (paying down debt) – it’s just that banks are being given money by the Fed to pay down their debt and households aren’t.

The deficit is not the problem. Bad as our economic problems are, they’re due to the collapse of the housing market. The only solution to those problems is to put people back to work so they can pay taxes instead of drawing government support payments and at the same time pay down their own debt. Until deleveraging is done, taking steps to decrease the deficit by reining in government spending will only make things worse, because the government is the only sector of the economy that has the ability to spend. Businesses can’t; households can’t; corporations won’t. Spending is the only way an economy grows.

Now the nitwits in congress want to cut off the only sector that could possibly spend while trying to convince the rest of us that miracles will occur and we’ll all get ponies. It’s time to emigrate.

I’m curious, when will congressional Republicans turn their focus on “jobs, jobs, and jobs” as promised?

You’re being facetious no doubt. The only thing Republicans ever suggest to create jobs is to cut corporated and personal taxes on the wealthy elite. They’ll never lose trickle down economics (even though it’s proven to be complete bullsh*t), as a guise to transfer more wealth to the already wealthy.

jesus christ, margaret, we’re all, well most of us, are on the same goddamn side here. I feel for your circumstances, i really do, but you seem to think that no one but you is entitled to feel angry about how fucked up things are. If you don’t agree with me fine, but quit trying to pick fights with folks who are actually on your side.

Sorry guys 8% is the new “full” employment. Country has become too efficient to warrant a huge manufacturing workforce.

Actually, there is precedent for the President creating jobs out of thin air: FDR created nearly 11 million WPA jobs via Executive Order.

The problem is that Obama doesn’t share the concern for the unemployed that FDR had nor does he share the courage.

The other problem is that Obama knows nearly nothing about economics and has been seduced by Friedmanite economic philosophy.

Sometimes it seems Oscar would have been more befitting (he says in jest so as not to experience new wrath).

Heh.

We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some may not yet have heard, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come–namely, technological unemployment.

The other problem is that Obama knows nearly nothing about economics and has been seduced by Friedmanite economic philosophy.

To follow up on my Donald Trump quotes @ 24. The Donald’s comments in his Human Events interview sound like he’s been reading Jamie Galbraith instead of Ayn Rand.

“When this country becomes profitable again, we can take care of our sick; we can take care of our needy,” he told Human Events. “We don’t have to cut Social Security; we don’t have to cut Medicare and Medicaid. We can take care of people that need to be taken care of. And I’ll be able to do that.”

And he says we won’t need to raise taxes either. Trump is suggesting that, as our economy improves, it will expand to cover trillions of dollars in future deficits.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53562.html

They won’t be there for long as we will likely start hemorhagging more jobs as service sector jobs get hit(think hospitality and restaurants) and the GOP refuses to raise taxes on those most able to afford it.

We already have seen cuts to WIC and other safety net programs. I can’t go to the store with pleas for donations of $1 to pay for juice for kids or to help fund somebody’s medical costs. If we continue along this trajectory I expect to hear children hawking “gum” on street corners just like in the other third world countries I’ve visited.

yup… in this “new normal” of an economy it’s tough for everyone, and it’s just not getting any easier. It’s heartbreakingly bleak for a lot of folks.

If I had any idea that a Dem White House and Congress (both houses!) would be so pig in slop happy with un and underemployment at these levels i never would have bothered voting for the bastards in 2008. This is what pisses me off about O’Sellout. He had the gall to promise “Hope” and “Change” when he knew he wouldn’t lift a finger to deliver on any of his broken promises, playing us for suckers in the process.

Exactly? Has anyone in DC even mentioned that people are struggling out here in the so called recovery? NO and we all know why. THEY DON’T give a shit!

I’m curious, when will congressional Republicans turn their focus on “jobs, jobs, and jobs” as promised?

that’s an easy one.

they will when the congressional Dems turn their focus to “jobs, jobs, and jobs.”

iow, when hell freezes over.