Bob Herbert just keeps talking about the things no one else seems to notice:
The crippling nature of the joblessness that has moved through the society like a devastating virus has gotten neither the attention nor the response that it warrants. One of the more striking findings of the Pew study was that a college education has not been much of a defense against long-term unemployment.
“Twenty-one percent of unemployed workers with a bachelor’s degree have been without work for a year or longer,” the report found, “compared to 27 percent of unemployed high school graduates and 23 percent of unemployed high school dropouts.”
Whole segments of the U.S. population are being left behind, even as economists are touting modest improvements in some categories of economic data, like the creation of 162,000 jobs in March. Jobless workers who are 55 or older are having a brutal time of it. Thirty percent have been jobless for a year or more.
Blue-collar workers are suffering through a crisis characterized as a “depression” by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. Blue-collar job losses during the so-called Great Recession surpassed 5.5 million, and many of those jobs will never be seen again. This disastrous situation will not be corrected, as analysts at the center have noted, “by a modest recovery of the U.S. economy over the next few years.”
We need to pay less attention to the Tea Party yahoos and more attention to the very real suffering of individuals and families trapped in an employment crisis that is unprecedented in the post-Depression era. I’ve been in inner-city neighborhoods where residents will tell you that hardly anyone at all is working at a regular job.
Speaking of yahoos, wasn’t Bob Herbert all about shoving Obama down our throat during the primary? If so, fuck him and his insight. He needs to stand up and say he backed the wrong horse, if he’s to have credibility on this issue. I’m fed up with the cretins who put this joker in office pretending like they didn’t know he would govern this badly.
If Herbert wasn’t backing Obama, then I apologize for the screed.
Stupid Fucking Democrats will ignore their supporters until every last one of them goes away. When November rolls around what’ll they have to show for their Stupid Fucking Republican policies, legislation, and governance? Jack shit. I hate those Stupid Fucks and will never ever vote for those Stupid Fuckers ever again.
i was in my doc’s office today and saw a time or newsweek cover that said that we were in a remarkable recovery. and by remarkable they didn’t mean non-existent. what a load of crap. i predict that we will have another huge crash in september after gas prices skyrocket and crash again. then we can all be slaves to the oligarchs, which is the whole point of this exercise as far as i can deduce.
I don’t think Bob Herbert was all that enthusiastic about Obama:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
The reason the ‘Tea Party Yahoos’ exist and get so much corporate support is to distract from the true crisis of unemployment and income inequality. Rethug policies pursued by both parties at the behest of our Plutocrat overlords has destroyed America.
My Two Cents: To Lori especially—-it’s not about whether you or I supprted Obama, or not. I don’t agree with much he’s done, either, but that question takes us back to the election. What choices did we as voters REALLY have? Would you feel better if Hillary was President? And if you would, what choices would Hillary have that are different from Obama’s. What would she have done differently? Or, better yet, do you think McCain/Palin would be serving our purposes any better? My point is get your ass out of the “dreams” you may have thought this president would bring to the fore, suck it up, and vote for , I dunno, FDR in 2012!
Anyone who thinks, especially in light of the Obama continuation of Bush policy, that our government works for “we the people” any more is completely deluded. Politics will not change anything (for the better) for the citizenry of this country going forward. Promoting the corporate agenda, non-prosecution of the people who created this financial mess, continuation of bad foreign and domestic policies, our so-called “watchdog” agencies being useless and having no effect on the continuing corruption, and ignorance of the environment will sink us for sure.
yes, YES, YES!!!
Still want to know what the fixation is with things getting shoved down throats…
Now we see that it is not just a male tea bagger phenom, but also a female bitter dead-ender phenom!