I get a copyright distribution alert every day of articles and stories I can share. I generally try to stick to the mainstream articles and even those I investigate before I post – just in case.
Sadly I have become complacent with a few of the folks in the pool
Newsweek came out with an OP/ED story
No, 95 Million Americans Aren’t Unemployed
I have been listening to the back and forth banter between the left and the right for years about the unemployment rate so I thought this was going to finally be an insightful and meaningful report.
Instead it was a “National Inquirer” bash fest, going after big and small media, and spewing even more lies.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its unemployment figures for November on Friday morning, and the numbers are good: The national unemployment rate is at 4.6 percent, the lowest since 2007, with 178,000 people finding jobs last month.
What the writer, and the Bureau of Labor is failing to tell you is that most of the people coming off of unemployment have not found jobs, they have just run out of benefits. Once they can’t claim them anymore the BOL adds them to the list of “Newly Employed” as an assumption.
In our state the homeless rates are staggering. Most of those people are folks who’ve run out of unemployment benefits, or people who can’t afford base rent because of illness, age, or lack of training.
I do a free “clinic” where I give homeless folks with animals, food, flea treatments, dewormer, and shots at least once a year if I can save up the money or we are lucky enough to get the donations.
Sadly 3 of the folks who usually donate are facing homelessness right now themselves.
Now Newsweek and Politifact would have you believe (in their fantasy world) that we can all just retire at the age of 65 because our social security and medicare systems are doing such a great job.
PolitiFact, the nonpartisan fact-checking service, explained this pesky point when scurrilous Texas Senator Ted Cruz—who would say the Earth is flat if he thought it would bring him closer to the White House—claimed that 92 million Americans were out of work in February 2015. PolitiFact rated this claim “mostly false,” explaining that many Americans don’t work because they are either too young or too old to do so:
My mother is 71 years old and still has to work at a full time job just to be able to afford living in a house and not her car, and she still needs help from us kids with her basics.
I live in a minority neighborhood, and anyone over the age of 15yrs old works to help out the family. Most of the parents also have 2 jobs as well.
I also live in an area where in at least an 8 block radius most folks own their homes, so that is the dream they are working for.
Most of their children won’t get kicked out when they turn 18, they will either go to college, or just continue working and everyone will pool their money so they can also buy a house too.
Or they simply stay at home and raise a multigenerational type of family. We have an Asian family across the street and everytime one of their kids gets married they just build another wing to their home which now fills 3 lots.
All of their kids have graduated college and are professionals, they are not dependent on daycare and they just recently bought their own medical clinic.
When people around here can’t find work they all get in a truck and head to central Washington to pick in the fields.
The point is: The unemployment rate is not dropping and we are in trouble, as a society and as a nation. We have to stop getting caught up in the other Washington’s media circus and focus on our own Washington.
I don’t care what side of the political platform you stand on, parties don’t change anything, they just try to outspew each other. We need to get involved in our states political processes, go to council meetings, hold out elected officials accountable, and take care of our neighbors.
