Meet me at the bottom, don't lag behind, bring me my boots and shoes

I call bullshit:

Factory Jobs Return, but Employers Find Skills Shortage

BEDFORD, Ohio — Factory owners have been adding jobs slowly but steadily since the beginning of the year, giving a lift to the fragile economic recovery. And because they laid off so many workers — more than two million since the end of 2007 — manufacturers now have a vast pool of people to choose from.

Sounds good so far but ...

Here in this suburb of Cleveland, supervisors at Ben Venue Laboratories, a contract drug maker for pharmaceutical companies, have reviewed 3,600 job applications this year and found only 47 people to hire at $13 to $15 an hour, or about $31,000 a year.

Wait, isn't this where your beloved 'the free market' comes into play!?

If you can't find a skilled worker at $15/hr shouldn't you pay better wages? And/or pay for training?

Not to mention companies like this shipped as many of their jobs overseas as possible to make their stockholders happy, (IOW, help the rich get richer), and now they complain that their dog they wouldn't feed is biting them.

Just a guess, but if you didn't pay upper management 100x more than labor then maybe you could afford to find/train qualified workers. At the least qualified workers could afford to move there.

Not since right before the Great Depression has income inequality been so large. One would think MBAs and CEO's would get this: Henry Ford was an *hole in so many ways, but even he understood if people can't afford to buy your product it severely limits your product's profitability.

Now for the post's title song, Working Man's Blues #2

Say it again, say it again

Think about the great promise of America and the great legacy we have inherited. Our wealth as a nation and our energy as a people can deliver, in the words of my predecessor Samuel Gompers, “more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”

What he said. Please read the whole speech.

The best economic times for America was when the middle class and the unions were strong and the rich had the highest taxes. We all made money, we had money to buy things, and the rich got moderately richer, but all boats floated higher.

Speaking of taxes, did you notice your Federal taxes went down this year? Well I did. But then I'm middle class, do my own taxes, and I've had my wages frozen for a couple of years. Math is easy, changing minds is hard.

Get a job

Not to go all Krugman on your ass, but when the dude's right, he's righteous:

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

Booyah. Here's a bit from the CBO report he mentions in the article:

As the possibility of another round of fiscal stimulus is debated, it is not a surprise that employment effects of stimulus have emerged as a key measuring stick. According to CBO’s estimates, with enactment of H.R. 1, the number of jobs would be between 0.8 million and 2.1 million higher at the end of this year, 1.2 million to 3.6 million higher at the end of next year, and 0.7 million to 2.1 million higher at the end of 2011 than under current law.

Hope your job isn't one McCaskill, Nelson, and the centrists pissed down the drain.

Sitting in the classroom, Thinking it's a drag, Listening to the teacher rap, Just ain't my bag

Bush sez: What the heck do I know about the economy?

Here it is:

In case your video tain't workin', here's the exchange:

QUESTION: Do you think there’s a risk of a recession? How do you rate that?
BUSH: You know, you need to talk to economists. I think I got a B in Econ 101. I got an A, however, in keeping taxes low and being fiscally responsible with the people’s money.

Alrighty then. So here's talking to some respected economists:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the odds of a recession remain ’somewhat more’ than one in three even after this week’s cut in interest rates, with home prices likely to drop further and hurt consumer spending.

Yale University economist Robert Shiller, an economist who has long predicted this decade’s housing market bubble would deflate said the residential real estate downturn could spiral into ‘the most severe since the Great Depression’ and could lead to a recession.”

CBO Director Peter Orszag notes that “the housing issues and problems in the subprime mortgage markets have created a yellow level of concern. ‘The risk of a recession is clearly elevated,’ he says.”

Speaking of fiscal responsibility, economists who did manage to pull in 'A' in Econ 101 blame Bush's tax cuts as a prime contributor to the enormous budget deficits. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you cut taxes (mainly to the rich, of course), but keep spending billions upon billions in a money pit mistake called Iraq, as well as promoting corporate welfare and welcoming in millions of cheap uneducated illegal labor which, due to their mainly poor status, will over their lifetime take more from the system than they put into it, well... doesn't take a math genius to see how a deficit will grow and grow.

And sorry Georgie. But all the programs that you want to see cut to make up for your war spending, like healthcare, education, infrastructure, programs for the poor, etc, can only be sliced so much.

Thus, the result of Bush's low grade economics education:

· 2003: -$378 billion (2nd largest deficit in U.S.history)
· 2004: -$413 billion (largest deficit in U.S. history)
· 2005: -$318 billion (3rd largest deficit in U.S.history)

We're talking 6 years of Republican pork. They ruled the roost. Fiscal conservatism my heinie. The truth is, Republicans like to call Democrats "tax and spenders", but what the Republicans do is cut taxes and still spend like drunken sailors on all their pet projects and corporate cronies and then feign shock at the huge credit card bill that comes in the mail at the end of the month. But, hey, no problem. The next administration can deal with it.

With the corrupt mismanagement of this country's coffers, the only reason the house of cards hasn't collapsed from it all is the Chinese money that holds it together. Smoke and mirrors and duct tape.

Bush puts forth as proof of the economy being strong the fact that stockholders are happy and corporations are making huge profits. He just doesn't see beyond the doors of the country club and how the rich getting richer doesn't really "trickle down" into the pockets of the middle class and poor. Not when the trend seems to lean towards driving down wages and benefits with a cheap illegal workforce and outsourced jobs. Oh yeah, sure, that means a rosy outlook for those at the top, but for the rest of Americans.. hoo boy!

Oh, and by the way. A look at Bush's college transcripts shows he got grades of 71 and 72 in Economics which, on most grade scales, would put him around a C-. Which certainly would help explain his current 'grasp' of our economy.

One class there's no doubt he would get an 'A' in - heck, he could teach it - is Advanced Pathological Lying.

Perhaps he could still benefit from a night school class in Remedial Economics. But only if the teacher... talks... real.... slow.