ECONOMICALLY STUCK

There is not a single patriotic American who does not hope that the economic data being released almost daily from Washington will carry good news. Unfortunately, the best description of these business figures is sad and weak.

The Obama Administration was quick to proclaim that last week's reduction in the number of first-time unemployment claims proved that the American economy, thanks to the efforts of the White House, was turning around. It is not surprising that today's disclosures have drawn only silence from Obama. The reason for the silence is not predicated upon time consuming meetings with members of the House and Senate on how to best utilize a "lame-duck" Congress but rather by the fact that the weekly first-time unemployment claims rose from last week's relatively low figure of 410,000 to the current figure of 436,000.

By federal figures, there are 8,909,882 of our fellow citizens (as of the week of November 13th) receiving unemployment benefits compared to the prior week's total of 8,532,502.

As is true with almost all items of numeric data released by Washington, it is almost impossible to confirm accuracy by adding and subtracting these various reported figures in that these data items are always subjected to federally imposed "seasonal adjustment". However, there is no doubt that far too many American are out of work and dependant on government funds to just exist.

Of our 50 States, during this most recent weekly reporting period only one, Indiana, showed a significant increase in employment while 19 States showed a significant decrease. Leading this "bad news" group was California, Pennsylvania and Kentucky which each had over 4000 of its citizens lose their jobs.

The obvious question is, "What are we as a nation to do to confront and cure this employment problem?"

There are really only two viable solutions. The first is to allow Obama to push Americans further into debt with federal programs of already proven limited benefits. These programs will continue to advance the not so secret desire of Obama to have all Americans totally dependant upon Washington with the goal of America being a socialist nation totally controlled by the federal government. The other choice is to stop all but the most needed governmental assistance programs and allow Americans to tighten their own belts and reverse the economy.

The fact that the House of Representatives will no longer be an Obama ally once January gets here gives credence to the ability and the desire of a majority of Americans to address and solve the economy by their own efforts.

UPDATE:

Today, December 3, 2010, Washington announced that unemployment had risen to 9.8% with 15,100,000 American out of work. Truly the efforts of the Obama Administration on the employment issue have been without real merit.