Excellent news, people. Let me put it to you as a number: 8.7 million. That’s how many new jobs the American economy has generated since the “Great Recession” officially ended in 2009 – and it also happens to be the number of jobs that were lost because of that recession. Don’t you see? You can break out the champagne, for the American economy is back, baby – all of the lost jobs have been recovered!
What? You say you don’t feel “recovered”? Well, it’s true that the US population has kept growing since the crash, so about 15 million more working-age people have entered the job market, meaning America still has millions more people looking for work than it has jobs. And it’s true that long-term unemployment is a growing crisis, especially for middle-aged job seekers who’ve gone one, two, or more years without even getting an interview, much less an offer – so they’ve dropped out of the market and are not counted as unemployed. Also, millions of young people are squeezed out of this so-called recovery – the effective unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is above 15 percent, more than double the national rate of 6.3 percent.
But take heart, people, for economists are telling us that full employment may be right around the corner. Is that because Congress is finally going to pass a national jobs program to get America working again? Or, could it be that corporate chieftains are going to bring home some of the trillions of dollars they’ve stashed in offshore tax havens to invest in new products and other job-creating initiatives here in the USA?
This is Jim Hightower saying… No, no – don’t be silly. Economists are upbeat because they’ve decided to redefine “full” employment by – hocus pocus! – simply declaring that having six percent of our people out of work is acceptable as the new normal. Wow – and you thought American ingenuity was dead.
“U.S. soon to recover all jobs lost in crisis,” www.cnn.com, June 4, 2014.
“Where are all the missing workers,” Austin American Statesman, June 10, 2014.

The NRA ducks a shot of common sense

Whoa, that was close! The National Rifle Association came dangerously close to shooting itself in the foot recently with a common sense editorial it posted online.
The group of rootin’-tootin’, bullet-spittin’, doctrinaire, guns-everywhere extremists finally saw something that even it considered too extreme. In Texas (naturally), worshippers of the Glorious Gun God have taken to shouting out their ideological absolutism in coffee shops, museums, chain restaurants, and other public places by having a dozen or more of their congregation walk in together with shotguns, assault rifles and other weaponry strapped onto them. “Any gun, anywhere,” is their message, expressed in an unsubtle, don’t-mess-with-us swagger.
“Scary,” exclaimed the NRA editorial, calling the macho show counterproductive to the cause of gun rights, adding that such peacocking is downright “weird.” That is, of course, a sane response. But sanity is not comfortable turf for gun dogmatists, and the NRA was quickly hit with a barrage of fire from its own ranks, plus an explosion of rage from gun groups that are – believe it or not – even gunnier than the NRA. So the big, bad, never-surrender rifle organization quickly threw in the towel, recanting its momentary lapse into sanity, and cravenly blaming some unnamed lowly staffer for the incident of ideological impurity.
So, apparently, you can expect to see newly-sanctioned NRA gun strutters parading into cafes near you. But let me ask this: How would those strutters react if a band of African-Americans or Latinos strided into one of their cafes, armed to the teeth?
This is Jim Hightower saying… I’m with the President on this one: “There’s no reason,” he said, “why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” Oh, that wasn’t President Obama. It was Ronald Reagan.
“Much to its chagrin, NRA said something sensible,” Austin American Statesman, June 8, 2014.