And the Re_Pukes just keep putting road blocks in the way of any progress…..Cuz they won’t vote for the stimulus unless it gives their friends in big business more tax breaks…...

I think we should THROW THE REPUBLICANS OUT….....
IMPEACH THEM…..FIRE THEM….......

If only the unemployment were that low where I live. In Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 911, at that time the unemployment in my home town mentioned in the film-that those still collecting benefits was about 25%. It was estimated that an additional 25% were unemployed but not counted, bringing that total to about 50% of the population. Actually it was probably much higher back then than 50%+ and now 4+ years later, we have seem the loss of more local business at a faster rate than ever before, Circuit City, Laz-y-boy furniture, Value City, numerous dollar stores, not counting eateries and gas stations. I would guesstimate unemployment in Flint, Michigan closer to 75% or higher. So if we only had 7.6% unemployed we would be doing great.

The voice of The People is telling.  The Nation, ran this article caputuring just some of the voices of the unemployed:

“I was a successful senior writer/instructional designer with more than twenty years of hard-earned experience, and I lost my job on November 19. I worked for BBDO, an advertising agency whose primary customer in the Detroit area is Chrysler. I had a good salary, good healthcare for my family, benefits like a 401(k) and paid time off. That’s all gone now, and my family and I are struggling with the realities of this new situation we find ourselves in.

Joris B. Rapelje
Clinton Township, Mich.”

(more at this link)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/von_hoffman

As I look back, I begin to wonder. In the myriad of phoney numbers the government and big business throws our way every month claiming false prosperity, when was the last time that the US saw real economic good times. since the early 1980’s we have been lied to about the GDP numbers, Inflation and unemployment rates. Nobody liked the way the true numbers looked. They thought that it depressed people. So they changed them. The GDP was changed to weight service production the same as manufactuing. Inflation rates no longer reflected the price housing, energy and food. And unemployment rates reflected only those collecting an unemployment check. Americans bought it hook line and sinker, and thus the Reagan recovery of 1983 was born.

Since then, massive spending on the pentagon and the military industrial complex have created jobs and along with corporate tax cuts, have created a huge goddamn deficit that we will never be able to pay down. Nearly all of the jobs created in the last 25 years have been lower wage replacements for the industrial jobs they replaced. So now, even those lucky enough to work are doing it for less money and less benefits than before. Our standard of living has dropped dramatically. Yet the numbers didn’t reflect it. the numbers said that GDP was still good, that unemployment was under 5%, and inflation was non-existent. We permitted ourselves to be lied to. And now we are in a downward spiral that we may never come out of.

That’s right kiddies, things are that bad. And like an unrepentant drunk, we still refuse to see the problem. This could be america’s swan song. One of the shortest lived empires ever.

Lets hope we do it better next time.

Troublesum, I think the reason for the stock market rally yesterday was the bankers now know for sure their paychecks are coming in.

So there are 25 million unemployed and the stimulus bill is going to create 3 million jobs.  If the wall street bankers were offered a bailout deal on those terms we would have martial law within a week.  The point of the stimulus bill is not to help the unemployed but to stimulate the economy through increased spending.  When the unemployment figures were released yesterday trading soared on the stock exchange.  Trillions of dollars of taxpayer money is being used to bailout institutions which thrive on the suffering of the same taxpayers.

Re: CJ

“A lot of those laborers denizens of rural America, where being flat broke is even worse than being that in urban/suburban America. Gets really cold out there, with no place to go, not even outta tiny town if near to town at all.

Good post.  I would tend to agree as I’ve witnessed this myself, up close and personal.  However, it’s difficult to ascertain the suffering of one group over another and of course vice-versa.

The larger realization of SUFFERING, regardless of environment is the overridding factor.  The needs may be very different, but suffering is suffering just the same.

Correct me if I’m wrong (and trust me, MANY have…LOL), more likely your point is that SOME are unaccounted.  They live lives in the “wide open spaces” of abject poverty with very little recognition of their true hardships.

What Cyrena said, which is fact. The rate is usually about double the official “rate.” Including all those no longer looking for a job and whose unemployment benefits have run out. A lot of those laborers denizens of rural America, where being flat broke is even worse than being that in urban/suburban America. Gets really cold out there, with no place to go, not even outta tiny town if near to town at all.

Speaking of which, the gubmint has long made a fuss of distinguishing between “non-farm” workers and farm workers. (Here in this piece yet again.) Discriminatingly enough. Distinction—presumably—based on fact that farm work tends to be seasonal. Okay then! Lucky farm workers? Mostly undocumented labor paid the most insulting wages for breaking backs. 

Each day of dismal news reminds me constantly of Steinbeck’s remark concerning how he never knew a banker to pick up a shovel. If I had my way (PP&M), clowns who lately got fat bonuses would be working at picking strawberries or digging trenches for 10 to 20 seasons, finally sorta, maybe earning those fat bonuses, which pending my pipedream should not only be returned to taxpayers but then dispensed to farm workers also outta work. Yes, they do provide only food on tables. Which isn’t much, is it?

Not that Wall Street gang could actually perform the job of a farm worker. Any and all would wind up flat on back in pain in the space of an hour after bending over to pick. Which I have to confess I’d mightily enjoy witnessing up-close and personal.

By troublesum, February 6 at 10:59 am #

AP release today: “If part time workers, the discouraged and others were factored in, the unemployment rate for January would have been 13.9%, the highest on record.”

~~~

This is actually pretty close to correct troublesum, as it has been since at least 2000. The people who lost their jobs at the beginning of this disaster (and since) are still largely unemployed, and the stats have never figured them in. But, they DO include part-time workers as ‘employed’ despite the fact that for the most part, part-time workers represent a negative because it costs them more to work part time than if they didn’t work at all. Of course these are also the workers who have fed the tax base. Highly skewed, eh?

Yep, the numbers are much closer to 13 or even 14 percent.

This was not an unforseeable event.  Once union labor was undermined, homes, jobs, pensions, healthcare and lives began a steady race to the bottom.  Sherwood Ross:

“Bethlehem (PA) is no isolated example. As Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless and reporter Lizzy Ratner write in the February 9 The Nation magazine, “Long before subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and the most recent stock market crash, the United States was in the grip of the longest period of sustained mass homelessness since the Great Depression.”

Last year, 3.2-million foreclosures were filed nationally, the magazine said, and Markee predicts “the number of homeless families will likely continue to spike.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12117

13.9% of the labor force is 25 million people.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/home.htm

I rather like the way in which Obama turned the annual retreat for House Democrats into a bully pulpit last night:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2009/02/conviction-trumps-ceremony.html

As political theater, it may for a good way to rally the troops.  However, he could also use it to rally the support of folks in Republican Congressional Districts.  The basic message seems to be that the Republicans don’t get it and are falling back on partisan thinking that created the mess in the first place.  If he can get people who put those Republicans in the Congress to write to their Representatives, he may yet pull off the recovery with at least SOME Republican support.  I am still cautious about such plebicitary strategies:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2008/12/table-or-peanut-gallery.html

Nevertheless, I recognize that this may be the only way to put the recovery process in motion.

AP release today: “If part time workers, the discouraged and others were factored in, the unemployment rate for January would have been 13.9%, the highest on record.”

This doesn’t include the millions who have given up on finding a job, so a more accurate figure is probably 3-5% higher.