The unemployment rate in the United States is 9.4 percent. But if you went to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night looking for a job, you came away empty. The president did not even mention the word "unemployment." The stock market "has come roaring back," he told America, and "corporate profits are up." But aside from one reference to "the shuttered windows of once booming factories, and the vacant storefronts of once busy Main Streets," Obama devoted precious little time to the current plight of Americans who might be facing foreclosure or the expiration of their unemployment benefits. Instead he told us that the "worst of the recession is over" and that we had "broken the back of the recession."Leonard notes reality: with the congress we've got, there's almost no chance that unemployment will be directly addressed. The president is working within practical restraints. That doesn't change the discouraging feeling that we've been given up on.
Doesn't change the fact that you can train 100,000 science teachers, but you can't get them hired without direct investment. You can promote clean energy development and transportation infrastructure, but you can't make it happen without direct investment.
And even if investments here and there make it through congress, the fact remains that tens of millions of us find ourselves having to start over, while there are five people for every available job in this country, we're heading into the second big housing market decline, foreclosures continue apace, and the safety net has run out.
And even if the Republicans were to eliminate every "job killing" regulation on their wish list and capitalist heaven materialized on Wall Street, high unemployment and stress means that we won't be spending the money that drives the economy, not like we used to.
I'm a person who likes to think in terms of the long arc, and maybe there's still the chance that Obama can enact policies which will have a positive impact on my son's generation. But I have to say, I sort of feel like roadkill, and that sucks.
2 comments:
Totally agree. I respect the President too, but the lurch -- one in a series -- to the center we saw last night is disheartening. MoveOn.org sent out a last minute appeal to members to boycott CNN for airing two right wing responses to the speech without airing a progressive response. After seeing the speech, I wish I'd pushed that out there. Because Obama's speech could have been a Bush speech in almost every particular.
Where is the voice urging that stimulus spending is too low, that corporate taxes should not be cut, that qualified people in the building and engineering and housing sectors could be put to work building green infrastructure NOW, not for the enrichment of BofA and Halliburton and 3M and Ford, but for the betterment of those who are hurting most, NOW? I suppose there's legitimate debate to be had over economic policy, but no one -- beyond what the right seems to have successfully demonized as the lunatic liberal fringe -- is even putting these ideas on the table.
The fulcrum of the political scale in this country is dangerously, depressingly moving rightward (Obama's speech received 91% approval in polls), and unless liberals and progressives find a voice (hint, it's not Kucinich, not Nader, and it now seems certain it won't be Obama), and soon, it will be a long time before we're heard again.
And while I was posting that, received an e-mail from MoveOn announcing a campaign to fight for just those things on the economy. Quoting:
"Huge budget cuts vs. investment and jobs. This will be the fight of the next two years. And our only chance is to expose what "cutting spending" really means: laying off teachers and firefighters and police officers by the millions, cutting unemployment benefits, slashing Social Security, and zeroing out everything from NPR to the EPA.
Republicans control the spending process. They've shown that they're willing to "take hostages." When that's happened, Democrats have rolled over. Worse, the President is sending mixed messages—he's calling for more investment, but also a spending freeze. So we're in trouble.
We need speak up LOUDLY for progressive solutions to the economic crisis and make the case that the GOP vision will be devastating."
https://pol.moveon.org/donate/sotu2011_econmo.html?id=25920-2878494-kSbYX_x&t=
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