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I found myself in a sour mood this morning by news of Chris Dodd trying to cut off Elizabeth Warren at the knees. I've since been somewhat buoyed by reading this article in the Washington Independent. The Republicans have gone out of their way to refer to the unemployed as lazy and shiftless, have said that they are chronically unemployed and have compared them to stray animals. Well, many unemployed people are fighting back - they're organizing, and according to Annie Lowry, it might make a big difference:
There are more than 30 million people left without work at some point during the course of the recession; 14.6 million are currently unemployed. As many as 4 million people have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits. In each case, Jordan is among these millions, and for an uncountable number of people like him, the experience with income insecurity has led to a political awakening.
Among the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots is LayoffList, managed by Michael Thornton, a native of Rochester, N.Y. Thornton stared LayoffList in 2008; five months ago, he began writing articles and posting legislators' information. He now receives hundreds of emails and has logged more than a million hits. Thornton is finding that, rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are "energized and motivated" and have started looking forward to the fall.
"Even Republicans say they aren't voting Republican anymore," the soft-spoken former technical writer says. "You have millions of unemployed people out there. If even half of them voted, they could swing a nationwide election."
While extending tax cuts for the wealthy and repealing the estate tax requires no offsets, any and all Federal help to those suffering from the Great Recession is held hostage to the deficit. Maybe people are paying attention despite the CW from MSM.
The Bloomberg poll(pdf warning) released yesterday was interesting in that it highlighted where the advantage is for Democrats this election cycle. The economy is painfully slow in recovering and people feel it.
71% of respondents believe we're still in a recession and by almost a 3-1 margin (70-28), respondents believe it is more important to reduce unemployment than to reduce the deficit. Dems would do themselves a big favor by not running scared from the deficit hawks. There's also interesting results on SS. Don't mess with SS, raise the cap on FICA.
The economy stinks, people are out of work, and someone will pay. Probably Dems - but I'd like to see a coordinated effort to hammer the Republicans on this. Unless people feel that their concerns are being addressed, they will be punishing pols in November.
The attached news brief from Reuters says it all - one in 7+ Americans is receiving food stamps. The USDA expects an average enrollment in 2010 of 40.5 million people.
http://www.forexyard.com/en/ne...
The BLS is reporting the U6 unemployment rate at 16.5% - more than 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.
When viewed through the lens of tightening credit markets and skyrocketing health insurance premiums, it's hard to see where job growth occurs. To be polite, the president's $5K tax credit for job creation is grossly inadequate for creating any meaningful employment. There's simply no demand.
