Tag: Unemployment

Elusive Goal of Greening U.S. Energy

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE, Dec 2, 2009

The Great Green Hope for lifting America’s economy is not looking so robust.

[…]

Growth in clean energy industries and in green jobs has been considerably slower and bumpier than anticipated, industry experts say.

[…]

Last week, the Gamesa wind turbine plant in western Pennsylvania announced it was laying off nearly half its 280 workers. Last month, General Electric said it would close a solar panel factory in Delaware

[…]

There are myriad reasons why green jobs have grown more slowly than hoped. The clean energy component of the $787 billion stimulus package has only recently started to kick in. Energy experts say that banks, which have been reluctant to lend generally, have been especially loath to lend for alternative energy projects.

And renewable-energy companies are hesitating to invest in new plants and equipment before Congress enacts new environmental mandates, like cap and trade, to limit carbon emissions.

[…]

  The big economic news today is the unemployment rate dropped slightly.

 The rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent in October, as employers cut the fewest number of jobs since the recession began. The government also said 159,000 fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported.

  If part-time workers who want full time jobs and laid-off workers who have given up looking for jobs are included, the so-called underemployment rate also fell, to 17.2 percent from 17.5 percent in October.

 Understand that I’m suspicious of any government numbers, especially positive economic numbers, because politicians have a long tradition of lying with them. So when these numbers came out so much better than everyone expected, I decided to look at the raw numbers.

Hey, don’t everyone thank me at once!

As my gift to this country that I love so much, I personally fixed that whole unemployment problem there by lowerin’ the unemployment rate from 10.2% to 10.0% last month.  It was obvious that rampant socialism wasn’t gettin’ the job done, and that someone had to goose the free markets to get things rollin’ again.  And I am that goose.

How, you may ask, did I save the country?  With my book, of course!  The publishing company had to hire millions (-ish) of new workers to print additional copies, plus all those pilots, stewardesses, and associated airport employees needed for my bus tour, and also all those additional mall employess for the crush of humanity linin’ up to get there books signed.  The waves of free market activity are like a giant tiramisu rollin’ across the ocean!

There’s nothing like having a good job.

So WHY is Corporate America so keen on giving those good jobs to someone other than Americans?

The Geography Of A Recession 2007-2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Of course, the answer to that WHY — is to increase their bottom lines, whatever it may cost their country in the long run.

It’s just Business, right?

It has been declared that health care must be deficit neutral; and Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements must be cut or they will destroy the country.   Yet, somehow, there is always ample money for bank bailouts, wars, and tax cuts.  

So as Washington pisses away trillions of our dollars, millions of Americans are experiencing a financial crisis unprecedented by anything since the Great Depression.   And just like Katrina, they are being left to fend for themselves.  

 

NOTE: This is my own version of the entry produced the other day by MinistryOfTruth.

I’m not homeless (not yet), but every day holds over it the threat of existence on the streets.  Although I’ve been technically unemployed since December of 2007, nearly two years, my official period of unemployment goes back to March 2006 – at least.  This is because my last “official” job was for a telemarketing firm that laid me off after four weeks in 2006.  My last actual job was as an Americorps VISTA (a volunteer position that offers a monthly stipend), which went from December 2006 to December 2007.  Since then, I’ve been enrolled in classes at the Parma campus of my local community college.  I’ve had to subsist on what money I get from financial aid as my sole source of “income.”  Often, I must raid the student food bank just to get myself through the weeks between semesters.

I have no car, public transit options are increasingly limited, and the longer I go without work further cripples my chances of obtaining employment.  No one wants to hire someone who can’t get a job.  It’s a vicious catch-22 situation.  I’ve had exactly one interview this year, with a bagel restaurant, and that went nowhere.

Like MinistryOfTruth, I need a job – BADLY.  It has to be in Cleveland’s west side or Middleburg Heights, Ohio, along bus routes.  At this point I couldn’t care less what job it is.  I just need one I can get out to in a timely manner so the manager will deign to hire me.  The problem is that I don’t know what else I can do besides what I’ve been doing, which is to keep my résumé updated and keep filling out applications.  I can’t relocate, because I haven’t got the money.  I can’t get a job because no one will hire me. I’m thirty-five, always broke, jobless, and ever on the brink.  I can’t keep doing this.  So, like MoT, I’m asking you for help.

The Problem: Unemployment, is just supposed to keep getting worse:

Unemployment rate rises to 10.2%

It’s the first time it has hit double digits since 1983.

By Don Lee and Jim Puzzanghera — Nov 7, 2009

Not since 1983, after a double-dip economic downturn had sent the auto, steel and housing industries plunging, has the jobless rate gone so high. And many economists predict that it will go higher still in coming months — and remain high for most if not all of next year.

Some 15.7 million workers now have no jobs, the government said in releasing its monthly unemployment report, and an estimated 5 million more are working fewer hours and drawing smaller paychecks than they were before the country fell into the worst recession in a generation.

http://www.latimes.com/busines…

Funny, you’d think that a Country with SO Much to Fix, in the Backlog, could find SOMETHING for ALL those Millions TO DO?

Back in 2008, Candidate Barack Obama, invited average American Citizens, to provide their thoughts, on what should be INCLUDED in the ‘New’ Democratic Platform for Change.

Here is one such reply, that made it to the ‘final draft’:

Citizen Statement – (pg 10)

“I worked for a manufacturer for over fifteen years. My wages stayed the same for six years as I found myself paying more and more for health care. Co-pays went up, deductibles went up.

In late 2006, the company sent my production job to Mexico and China and I was laid off.  I could not afford COBRA premiums.  I am two years away from Medicare and unemployed and on the ‘faith based’ health care system — meaning I just pray I don’t get sick.  

Oh yeah, and I’m a cancer survivor and I haven’t done the yearly checkup in 3 years.”

— Listening to America – National Hearing

Renewing America’s Promise — The 2008 Democratic National Platform

Such is the America Dream as of 2008.

The Problem: Unemployment, is just supposed to keep getting worse:

U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Rose More Than Forecast

By Shobhana Chandra

Oct. 22, 2009  (Bloomberg) — More Americans than forecast filed claims for unemployment benefits last week, a reminder that the labor market will be slow to recover.

Initial jobless applications rose by 11,000 to 531,000 in the week ended Oct. 17

[…]

Economists project the unemployment rate will reach 10 percent by the first quarter of 2010, underscoring the risk to consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy. Companies cutting costs remain reluctant to hire, even as they’ve eased dismissals from levels seen earlier this year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…

I heard a news Report this weekend that the +10% is expecting to last throughout most of 2010 too … Uh Oh!

Crossposted at Daily Kos.  Look in the Comments Section of Daily Kos for more cartoons on the economy and sports.  Somehow, I couldn’t fit them in the main text of the diary.

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Glenn Beck’s Fear and Paranoia

Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com

I used to think that Obama was, at the very least, a very intelligent human being.

Now I’m starting to wonder.

How smart is it when the people you listen to are all Goldman Sacks employees or ex-employees (which means future employees)?

Sure, if you’re at Goldman Sachs, things are just ROSY.

For everybody else?   Well, is he fucking BLIND?

US President Barack Obama defended his administration’s response to the economic crisis over the last six months, declaring: “The fire is now out.”

“I think that we have stepped back from the abyss. I think we’ve put out the fire,” he said in an interview with PBS, according to a transcript released by the TV station.

No, Obama, you’re either a liar or a bonehead (or both).  

The fire is most certainly not “out”.  It’s more like one of those coal seam fires in coal country, those fires that burn and smoulder for years and years, and nobody ever knows how to put the damn things out.   I mean, do you think we’re gonna go back to “home loans for all my friends!” and CDO’s and McMansions and Cadillac Escalades and cheap gas?  No, of course we’re not going to.  And you damn well know it.  The new economy has yet to be built.   You wasting billions, TRILLIONS of goddamn dollars by handing it over to your Goldman Sacks buddies and giving it to your Pentagon buddies so we can keep slaughtering our own troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and slaughtering civilians in distant countries, well that is one of the big reasons WHY we do not, and WILL NOT, have a “new economy” here.

And when your own Fed Reserve Chairman doesn’t even know where half a trillion dollars went, and who he fucking GAVE IT TO, well that doesn’t exactly bode well.

But, Barry, if you really want to go with the “fire is out” metaphor, fine.   But we’re on a ship.  And the fire is out.  But the ship is sinking.  

You’re like the captain of the Titanic saying “well at least we’re not smashing into that damn iceberg any more!  Things are looking up!”

Obama, you expect to have any credibility after this bullshit remark?

Well, you don’t.  Not any more.

You’re either a lying dumbass, or you think we’re all just fucking stupid.

Well we’re not.

We know when we’re being lied to, and you’re absolutely fucking lying to us right now.