A Laborless Labor Day

A Laborless Labor Day

This labor day it seems that with the amount of unemployment going around you'll be surprised to see anyone still even halfheartedly celebrating labor day. Can you really blame them? Just look at the jobs market report that came out late last week where it stated that there was zero jobs growth in August.

August brought no increase in the number of jobs in the United States, a signal that the economy has stalled and that inaction by policy makers carries substantial risk.

The government report on hiring, released on Friday, prompted another round in a relentless diminution of economic expectations. The unemployment rate, at 9.1 percent, did not change last month, and the White House said it was expected to stay that high through at least 2012.

When you factor in other reports that have actual figures

U.S. job growth ground to a halt in August as government layoffs erased meager gains in the private sector. The Labor Department says American businesses added only 17,000 jobs last month, far short of the 100,000 jobs analysts were expecting. To make matters worse, cuts in state and federal employment offset those gains

Add in that they just shut down the space shuttle, so you can add in a few thousand more highly skilled workers to the surplus labor army.

From all this it's pretty clear that the U.S. Government is obviously very much on the side of the people. The proletariat inside of us all. Otherwise explain tome why they're trying to get citizens so angry that they'll rise up and kill it while it says "Finally, the sweet release of death!"

So... not to mention the huge elephant in the room, but who reading this feels good about Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack H. Obama now? Or should I ask if there's anyone who doesn't think that he's such an empty suit? Take a look at the following poll and the results from each group:

Which do you think should be more important for the Obama administration: reducing the deficit, even if unemployment might remain high or creating more jobs, even if it might mean less deficit reduction?
ALL
Reduce deficit: 30
Create jobs: 68

REPUBLICANS
Reduce deficit: 44
Create jobs: 54

INDEPENDENTS
Reduce deficit: 32
Create jobs: 66

DEMOCRATS
Reduce deficit: 16
Create jobs: 83

You see, Obama has been under a lot of pressure from the left, and he allowed himself to be pushed by it... to the right. It's only logical, right?

It seems that the Obama administration is considering adopting the Georgia Works program. This is a program that the government gives people a two hundred dollar a month stipend to volunteer for an unpaid "trial period" at a private company, and the company can decide whether to let go or hire the intern after two months.

At the end of that time it seems that around 59% of the people participating in the program eventually get hired some where, including those who have to go through multiple trials. So Obama's plan to reduce unemployment is literally to "create/expand programs where companies don't have to pay their employees"

God fuckin' damn. What the hell is wrong with this president?

The White House has indicated it is considering something similar as part of a forthcoming jobs package., which the administration may consider politically palatable because it can be seen as kind to businesses and workers both. President Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack H. Obama recently praised the program: "If they hire you full-time, then the unemployment insurance is used to subsidize you getting trained and getting a job."

But the 60 percent of workers who participated in the Georgia program and supposedly found steady work may not have done so. The statistic means only that at some point within 90 days after a person completed the training, the person's Social Security number popped up in state payroll data. It doesn't mean the trainee had a job at the 90-day mark; it could even mean that a person worked just one day during those three months. In addition, economists have not studied the program and there is little data to recommend it.

There is also concern that even though the program is voluntary, Obama's plan of attaching it to the unemployment insurance system could eventually lead to a worst-case scenario in which jobless workers are forced to work for free as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits. Some sources in the US Labor Department are even worried Obama's proposal may run afoul of federal labor laws

Enrollment in the Georgia Work$ program slowed drastically this year after the state labor department restricted access to only those workers receiving unemployment benefits (it had been opened to nonrecipients in 2010). As of this week the state program boasts just 19 trainees.

So let's do a break down on the numbers here.

-$200/month this is fair to both employers and employees

-40 hours/week @$200/month means an hourly wage of about $1/hour

And if you're wondering, yes. That's $200 a month in addition to unemployment payments. Which I guess you may feel like it's nice, but really this whole act is pretty appalling. How can you seriously suggest someone go to work on a trail basis for $50 dollars a week?

I also think it's fairly appalling when companies give college students unpaid internships where they do real work - especially when it's mandatory for the degree in question and say it's okay because they call it "training" so the government allows it.

But hey, I'm a huge commie socialist so what do you know. It's just sad that unpaid jobs have become literally the new normal. Of all the depressing news stories I've read over the last few years, the one about people my age taking an unpaid internship in hopes of a job have been one of the worse.

I still don't know how the following thoughts could go through anyone's head:

"the problem with communism is that nobody will work without getting wages for it"

"abolish all labor laws, and corporations shouldn't have to pay their workers"

I'm amazed that somehow these two thoughts grow and flourish simultaneously in the same mind. Though it seems that

Then again, the same minds that think those things are the ones who honestly believe that when freed of all regulation, corporations will give workers the saved money out of the goodness of their heaaaahahahahahahahahahahha. Okay, I pray no one actually believes that shit. I just don't know how this will work anyway. How exactly does anyone try to sell this bullshit?

"Conservatives will love it because it undercuts worker's rights, liberals will love it because it's stimulative government spending!"

Meanwhile everyone not criminally insane is just going to be scratching their heads and wondering what the fuck here. Oh Obama is a fucking terrible president.

Or maybe it's just that Barack Obama might not be a bad president. In fact, he may be a great president. Only, the difference is that we should consider presidents to be an otherwise terrible thing.

Take for example the media and their occasional comparison of the pictures of a president getting grayer and more wrinkled throughout his term to try to portray him sympathetically. Oh look how this heavy burden weighs upon the crown. But the grim truth is that they are literally eroded, body and soul, by wielding the powerful dark energies of the presidency, in a manner not unlike that of Palpatine's transformation.

What it actually comes down to is that stress doesn't affect hair color and the supposed toll that the presidency has had on recent president's appearances is primarily due to the fact that the last three presidents have been elected during their forties and fifties, a life stage wherein people almost universally experience changes in their physical appearance.

If anything, the presidency does turn you into Reagan as Obama at the very least is making some people some money - Gun runners.

Newly obtained emails show that the White House was better informed about a failed gun-tracking operation on the border with Mexico than was previously known.

Three White House national security officials were given some details about the operation, dubbed Fast and Furious. The operation allowed firearms to be illegally purchased, with the goal of tracking them to Mexican drug cartels. But the effort went out of control after agents lost track of many of the weapons.
The supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Phoenix specifically mentioned Fast and Furious in at least one email to a White House national security official, and two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official.

But the senior administration official said the emails, obtained Thursday by The Times, did not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert "investigative tactics" of the operation.

"The emails validate what has been said previously, which is no one at the White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk," said the official, who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. "To the extent that some [national security staff members] were briefed on the top lines of ongoing federal efforts, so were members of Congress."

HA HA HA HA. Obama is literally becoming Reagan. We thought the cough of ûdùn had killed him but he has returned, changed but quite the same! Gone is Reagan the White, all hail Reagan the Black!

Yeah.. in short Happy American Labor Day. Go out and hug a union member while you can still find one.