Government

This brilliant Congressman has decided the best way for economic recovery is for the Government to lay off a bunch of people, since I guess the 500,000 government workers who've lost their jobs (or the ones still around with pay freezes) in the last two years isn't enough.

Also, yes, one thing that could surely help the unemployment rate is by unleashing even more people into it's ranks while simultaneously reducing the services government provide that could either offer assistance to gain employment, or employment via government contracts.  Of course! After all, as I wrote before, the gub'ment isn't made up of, you know, ACTUAL PEOPLE.

But Republicans across the land must be thrilled about this, because as you know it's not as if 500,000 people are going to be added to the already extraordinarily large unemployment rolls, lose their livelihoods, and therein won't be able to spend any money in the very same communities with small businesses these GOP members pretend to champion since of course government on any level bigger than the Junior Women's Club is not made up of real people that you may know and live amongst but are instead a faceless, nameless phantasm of evil, socialist energy that will merely be forced into some backroom to shake it's fists at the sky "damn you, freedom, you've beaten me THIS time!!!" and rub it's hands with glee at the prospect of coming back again and trying to destroy America as if in some Spy vs. Spy cartoon or Jerry muttering "Newman!!" through clenched teeth.

This guy's idiocy links nicely into an Robert Reich article  HERE.

In particular, this part of "What Obama is failing to make incredibly obvious" jumps out:

Second, we’ll recreate the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps — two of the most successful job innovations of the New Deal – and put people back to work directly. The long-term unemployed will help rebuild our roads and bridges, ports and levees, and provide needed services in our schools and hospitals. Young people who can’t find jobs will reclaim and improve our national parklands, restore urban parks and public spaces, recycle products and materials, and insulate public buildings and homes.

From what I can tell, there's nobody who denies our infrastructure is in bad need of repair.  And we have an inordinate amount of able-bodied people standing around wishing they had work.  This shouldn't be complicated, but Obama for some reason can't connect the dots for everyone on this one.

The reason at least partly is this notion that any WPA/Infrastrucure project is just "government flushing money down the shitter just to pay people to be paying them."  A glorified helicopter drop.  But besides the fact that this would be putting money in people's pockets that they'd be using to support all the small business we pretend to fetishize, the truth is that if you fix a bridge that needs fixing today, guess what?  It doesn't get torn down the second we all decide we're out of a recession; for decades, people using the bridge will be pretty happy that the odds of their being on a YouTube video featuring a catastrophic bridge collapse has been greatly lowered.  Just because the government paid for it doesn't mean it disappears once Obama's rainbows and puppies are out of office.

But alas - corporate and military welfare are a noble cause; government workers are just a buncha people looking for handouts.