Unemployment

From Charleston, South Carolina

Lost in the unseemly, inappropriate, and childish cheering and jeering about Barack Obama's trip to Copenhagen to try and win the 2016 Olympic games for his hometown of Chicago (of which I was a willing and enthusiastic participant) was the matter of the monthly unemployment numbers for September.

They checked in at 9.8 percent.

According to Slate Magazine, more than 5.5 million jobs have been lost since June 2008. That means this pattern of job losses started during the administration of George W. Bush, but that doesn't leave the administration of Barack H. Obama off the hook.

It is going to get worse. As Alan Greenspan said on ABC's "This Week" after the numbers came out,

"[My] own suspicion is that we're going to penetrate the 10 percent barrier and stay there for a while before we start down."

Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman - who wears his Liberal bias as proudly as I proclaim my predisposition toward Conservatism - wrote on his NY Times blog (which is aptly named "The Conscience of a Liberal"):

Bear in mind that if you add in people who have stopped looking because it's hopeless, who are working part-time when they want a full-time job, and so on, the unemployment rate is actually 17 percent."

Yikes! Can you imagine the bleating from Democrats on the House and Senate floor if these numbers hit during a Republican administration?

When was the last time you read that someone in a position of power or influence was complaining that Wall Street is doing fine, while Main Street is starving.

If they both Greenspan and Krugman are correct (which is hard to type, much less believe) and this maintains for months or even years, there are going to be serious implications, culturally and politically.

The last time unemployment rates of more than 10 percent met a mid-term election, was October, 1982. Just before the midterm elections of Ronald Reagan's first term, the unemployment rate hit 10.4 percent and the GOP lost 26 seats in the House.

No one should cheer for high unemployment rates. Anyone who has had to go look for a job - when they didn't already have one - knows that it is one of the most demeaning of modern human activities.

Who wants to have to tell their child he or she can't go on a field trip because there isn't enough money. Or watch a tow truck take the family car because they couldn't make the payments.

You can think about other examples.

None are funny.

Friday's spike in unemployment, not a Presidential trip to Holland, should have led the news all weekend.

Foreclosures will increase. Retail sales will decrease. The economy will bump along until people go back to work.

Extending unemployment benefits is a must. Extending COBRA is a must. This is not a time for economic ideological purity.

Long term real unemployment numbers of 17 percent will lead to civil disorder which will make the post-Katrina looting look like an Easter egg hunt. Think about your local Safeway having to board up its windows and provide armed guards, not bag boys, to get you and your groceries to your car.

The Obama Administration should stop everything else it is spending its time on and focus on two things: Afghanistan and jobs.

Not necessarily in that order.

Absolutely New Topic:

Elizabeth Taylor is going to have surgery to repair a faulty heart valve. While I wish her well, that's not what got my attention. What got my attention was a Reuters report that Taylor announced this to her Twitter followers, thus:

Dear Friends, I would like to let you know before it gets in the papers that I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart. It's very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better. Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate. I'll let you know when it's all over. Love you, Elizabeth

Which is, including spaces, 408 characters.

Twitterers know that the limit for any given Tweet is 140 characters which means either (A) Reuters lied about Taylor having announced this on Twitter, or (B) Twitter has a super-secret method for the Elizabeth Taylors of the world to double or triple the character limits which is not available to you or me.

Either way, I want an investigation.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to Slate Magazine, the Greenspan article, the Krugman blog and an interactive chart showing unemployment and election results. Also a Mullfoto showing another insult from Holland and a Catchy Caption of the Day which will make you smile.