Jobless Rate Shows Minor Decline: Happy Days Are Here Again?

For Any And All Conserve-ative Constitutionalists:


It was reported in the mainstream media today that the jobless rate had a minor decline the month of July, the first such decline since August of 2008, with the Obama Administration then taking credit and predicting this was a "strong indication" that perhaps the jobless rates and unemployment would begin to correct after the losses which have occured this past few years.

The jobless rate according to the Department of Labor is hovering at about 9%. I would say those figures would be low, since it doesn't take into consideration those individuals who have lost their small businesses during this economic tsunami (who are not eligible to collect unemployment) nor those whose benefits have expired and are still not working with little likelihood that their situations will change anytime in the near future in their former lines of work. Also July is a big vacation month for many, and vacation pay can and is lower than workweek pay in many instances and also many are now working as temporary help for any overflow. Temporary labor needs are higher now in seasonal industries such as retailing and the needed temporary "back to school" workers specifically hired for short term employment needs.

After all, Obama himself laid off literally thousands in Detroit with the prediction that those jobs would not be coming back. So what is an ex-autoworker really to do that has spent his entire life on a production line what with the outsourcing that has occurred that has eroded our industrial base here at home to less than half it was during the Industrial Revolution which, along with our agricultural base, kept this country a major economic power for well over 150 years?

Mr. Obama and this Administration's focus is on green jobs and science based technology. In other words, promoting Silicon Valley most of all and the large public utility companies. But these measures have been tried before, in the late 1960's and 1970's and it actually was the environmentalists and such that actually prevented new energy sources from being developed and utilized during the last gasoline crisis when prices went from less than 30 cents per gallon to well over $1.00. The largest price increase since the automobile was invented by Henry Ford.

The wind tunnels and turbine energy sources were banned since none of those liberals wanted those ugly towers in their communities. Nuclear power was developed as an alternative source of energy with promises to local communities that cleaner nuclear energy would result in lower energy costs for all. What then happened after all those bond elections and federal grant and ratepayer's monies were spent to build those nuclear power plants?

Those public utility companies were then privatized by the local governments for added revenue in sales taxes, and the rate payers utility bills did not go down - they went up in order to provide for the investors dividends and other capital gains on their investment.

Thus, the costs of energy now in Phoenix who has the largest, Palo Verde Generating Station, less than 50 miles from the metro area have exploded due to its privatization and lack of any true regulation anymore by the state in the costs it now passes on to the ratepayers for their investors' profit.

And now has stooped so low as to recently institute a rate increase based upon an "inspection" done by the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency (instituted after both the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters) supposedly calling for some expensive repairs that were then passed off once again to the rate payers for the fines and costs of bringing the plant now into compliance (although this plant is actually much newer than some on the East Coast which was finished in 1988, and thus was built after those disasters and included upgraded safety precautions and measures during its construction).

After work on Palo Verde was finished, Arizona unemployment also climbed considerably since it had started also on the science and technology bandwagon as the home of Hughes, Honeywell, and other government contractors, and its reliance on its historic sustainable industries - copper, cattle, cotton and citrus - fell by the wayside in furtherance of those objectives, and as a state marketing itself mostly to retirees for their early retirement years. In the process, the climate which had made the state a haven for those with respiratory diseases and afflictions, ended up driving out more than it brought in insofar as permanent or long term residents, which has contributed to the urban sprawl and transient nature for the majority of those that call Arizona a "temporary," at best home.

Now it is also one of the states facing the largest number of unemployed and homeless due to the mortgage foreclosure mess, since along with many of those new and "transient" residents came also the East Coast, Western and Midwest real estate speculators and land fraud "get rich quick" artists.

The focus now of the state has swung to the Obama agendas in the health care sector specifically, although at this point most of the retirees that do end up retiring in Arizona usually when their health begins to truly fail end up moving back to their homes of origin in order to be closer to extended family members.

But I digress except to make a point.

Since a good portion of the population is not at all gifted in the field of science and technology naturally, no matter how much the focus of our state and private universities and money is poured into them in order to facilitate this agenda, just where is Washington planning to "outsource" our agricultural base for all the land that is going to be needed for these wind towers, nuclear generating plants, and new "green" manufacturing plants anyway?

Are they planning on turning Kansas and Nebraska into one huge wind turbine, or nuclear generating station in order to meet the entire Northern Hemisphere's future energy needs? And the State of Texas or New Mexico into one huge solar panel for those in the Southern?

We already have the technology, but the people were not at all impressed with the technology that came along with that technology, after all, in the 1970's.

So what does Mr. Obama and this Administration think has changed since that time, other than the fact that due to those same environmentalists our petroleum reserves and offshore wells have been literally hamstrung by regulatory codes and laws on limits of production, atmospheric or environmental particulates that have been so broad based that Nebraska's farmers are fined during planting seasons for excess particulates, and we are now in wars and buying more and more foreign oil due to a segment of the population that is never satisfied no matter what "alternative" fuels or greener technology is proposed.

Including, from Mr. Obama's positions during the election campaign, himself as one of those liberal leaning wackos for whatever reason, Wall Street or his base.

So other than placing all Americans health care records on a national database and invading their rights to privacy over their most personal property and information, their very own physical health, and passing a stimulus for Wall Street again at the American public's expense fining now those power plants or setting up galactic bidding wars for Wall Street's benefit without removing the environmental restrictions which have gotten us into this mess to begin with, just where are all those now laid off GM workers and the other now unemployed going to find their own job stimulus for jobs in which they are qualified since it is clear they would also not meet the criteria for the loans now being offered up by those banks and lenders for educational purposes due to either their age, or their financial prospects and ability to repay?

I suppose what I am really saying here is that I'd put the cork back on that champagne if I were you.