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05/09/2003 Archived Entry: "Good times are right around the corner - aren't they?"
Good times are right around the corner - aren't they?
Here are some choice bits of Bob Herbert's latest in the NYT, 'Trouble in Bush's America.' Sobering, to say the least.
"This is the worst situation I've been in," said Alfonso Shynvwelski, an unemployed waiter who stood in a long line of people waiting for food at the Washington Heights Ecumenical Food Pantry on Broadway in upper Manhattan. Mr. Shynvwelski, 36, has worked at a number of upscale restaurants, including the Russian Tea Room, which has closed. He's been unemployed for a year."It's the first time in my life I've had to look for food this way," he said.
This lament is being heard more and more often in the city, which has an official jobless rate of nearly 9 percent. The real rate is substantially higher, which means that more than 1 in 10 New Yorkers who would like to work cannot find a job.
Last week Local 46 of the Metallic Lathers Union announced that it would allow 200 people to apply for membership, which would mean a shot at high-paying work. The line of applicants began at Third Avenue and 76th Street and almost circled the block. The earliest arrivals waited in line for three days. They slept on the sidewalk.
In George Bush's America, jobs get erased like chalk marks on a blackboard. More than 2 million have vanished on Mr. Bush's watch. There are now more than 10.2 million unemployed workers in the U.S., including 1.4 million who are not officially counted because they've become discouraged and stopped looking.
There are also 4.8 million men and women who are working part time because they can't find full-time jobs...
Nearly a quarter of a million jobs have been lost in New York City in the past two and a half years. Taxes are going up and services are going down — and still that is not enough. Similar scenarios are being played out in city and state governments throughout the country...
Two forms of help from the federal government are needed. One is direct assistance to local governments to help alleviate the disastrous budget shortfalls. The other is an economic stimulus program that really works, that boosts the economy and creates jobs through investments in some of the nation's real needs, rather than simply transferring trainloads of money to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts.
Mr. Bush has no interest in such remedies. Easing the economic struggles of poor and working families in America is not part of his agenda.
Replies: 2 people speak up
Herbert is exactly right. Something that I wish he would also say is that Bush's agenda is to raise defense funding, starve the states and cities, wait and allow medicare and social security to get out of control with the baby-boom retirement explosion, which will starve tons of government programs and services. He wants to make government a goldmine for defense contractors and oil companies... Have you linked to that barely covered story from wednesday's LA Times reporting that Dick Perle was at a classified briefing on Iraq and North Korea and then went on to brief Goldman Sachs on how they could profit from the Iraq and Korean conflicts? These are f***ing scary times...
Posted by Kal @ 05/09/2003 01:56 AM NY
Agreed, any talk of how bush can help the middle class must necassarily include whether he WANTS to help. There is a chance these hard times are not unwelcome in neoconland.
Posted by TonyB @ 05/09/2003 12:13 PM NY
