Age Discrimination

From time to time, I send e–mails to the White House about issues that concern me.

When you do that, you have the option of checking a box that serves as a request for a reply. I did check that box the first couple of times that I e–mailed the White House, but, frankly, I don't do it anymore because the responses I received never addressed the specific issues that I raised.

Now, I realize that, in a nation of more than 300 million people, the White House must receive a huge number of messages from people every week — every day — so purely personal replies simply are not feasible.

I can't speak for anyone else who contacts the White House by e–mail. In fact, I'm sure there are people who indicate on their e–mails that they do want a reply — but I don't.

When I was younger, I used to write to members of Congress on issues that concerned me, but, eventually, I got tired of receiving responses that were clearly form letters.

And the replies I got from the White House always had a distinct form letter feel to them.

At least, the old "snail mail" form letters attempted to be personal. They were addressed to me by name, and some even threw in a sentence or two that actually related to my specific concern.

But the e–mail variety doesn't even do that much — this one from the White House addressed me as "Dear Friend" — so, as I say, I stopped asking for replies from this White House a couple of years ago.

That hasn't kept the White House from sending out those digital form replies to me, anyway.

Case in point.

For quite awhile, I have been concerned about what has appeared (to me, anyway) to be age discrimination on the part of employers. All the emphasis seems to be on discrimination against racial and religious groups in particular and against women in general. Next to nothing is said about age discrimination.

I'm not alone in this, by the way. I have spoken to many people, and the overwhelming consensus is that employers do use age as a means for eliminating a portion of the applicants for job openings.

I can understand the temptation. I recently heard an estimate that there are about four times as many applicants for any given job as there were for the same job (or its equivalent) before the recession began in December 2007. There simply aren't enough jobs to go around, and employers are understandably reluctant to hire older workers.

They are fearful that they will have to go through all this again in a few years.

(They might go through it with younger workers, too.)

I don't know what the answer is. That's one of the things Americans hire their presidents to do — come up with solutions to problems. And I've been concerned about this one for quite awhile.

So, even though I have had no satisfaction in writing to this White House, I went ahead and sent an e–mail on this topic to the president. I did not check the box that indicated that I wanted a reply. I guess I just wanted to express my concern.

My mother's was the first and most persistent voice among those that urged me to pursue a life dedicated to the written word — but she also used to tell me that actions speak louder than words, and that is the only kind of response I really wanted.

Nevertheless, here is the response I received in my e–mail yesterday (note: I have omitted the opening and closing sentences that thanked me for the original e–mail):

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"In his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama laid out a blueprint for an economy that is built to last — an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values.

The President believes this is a make or break moment for the middle class and those trying to reach it. What is at stake is the very survival of the basic American promise that if you work hard, you can do well enough to raise a family, own a home, and put a little away for retirement.

The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive. We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while more Americans barely get by, or we can build a nation where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules. At stake right now are not Democratic or Republican values, but American values — and for the sake of our future, we have to reclaim them.

The economic security of our middle class has eroded for decades. Long before the recession, good jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores. Hard work stopped paying off for too many Americans. Those at the top saw their incomes rise like never before, but the vast majority of Americans struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that were not.

In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. Mortgages were sold to people who could not afford or understand them. Banks made huge bets and bonuses with other people's money. It was a crisis that cost us more than 8 million jobs and plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover.

Three years later, thanks to the President's bold actions, the economy is growing again. Over the past 22 months, our businesses have created 3.2 million jobs. Last year, we added the most private sector jobs since 2005. American manufacturing is creating jobs for the first time since the late 1990s. The American auto industry is back. Today, American oil production is the highest it has been in eight years. Together, we have agreed to cut the deficit by more than 2 trillion dollars. The President signed into law new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like the one we have endured never happens again.

When we act together, in common purpose and common effort, there is nothing the United States of America cannot achieve. That is why the President's blueprint for action contains policies that businesses can take, actions that Congress needs to take, as well as actions that the President will take on his own. The President intends to keep moving forward and rebuild an economy where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded — an economy built to last.

To watch the President's State of the Union address, read the blueprint for an America built to last, and connect with the President and Administration officials, please visit: WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU."

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My original e–mail was only two or three sentences, as I recall.

I stated my concern about age discrimination, and I asked the president to speak forcefully against it — and I got the text of his re–election stump speech.

Do you see anything in there about age discrimination? Me, neither.

Talk Is Cheap

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Today is Labor Day, and it is now little more than three days before Barack Obama is slated to give his landmark address on job creation.

He was, as you probably know, going to give his speech on Wednesday — but, as usual, someone in this White House failed to do the most basic of legwork, which would have quickly revealed that a debate between the Republican presidential candidates had been scheduled for that day.

In fact, it has been scheduled for several months, and it is taking place at the library that bears the name of the Republicans' 20th century idol, Ronald Reagan.

It took no special powers of prognostication to anticipate the donnybrook that would follow Obama's hasty and ill–advised announcement of the original scheduling of this speech — or to predict that Obama would be forced to back down.

Yep, a little legwork could have prevented this president from a totally unnecessary and embarrassing scheduling confrontation with congressional Republicans that he was sure to lose.

But it was really no surprise that this administration — in its leap–before–you–look fashion — didn't bother with the details. They would only get in the way of imposing The One's will.

Anyway, when he did lose that one — in what may have been the most predictable result in a lifetime of observing American politics — Obama moved his speech back a single day — putting it in direct competition with the first pro football game of the 2011 season.

It is typical of the ham–handed way this administration operates.

Apparently, now that Obama's presidency is clearly in jeopardy (I have felt that way for a long time, but now, even Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, who was one of the first to climb aboard the Barack Obama Express, before it pulled out of the station, concedes that Obama is "a guy in a really bad spot"), job creation has taken on a new urgency ...

(The fierce urgency of now.)

In fact, I can only presume that, from Barack Obama's vantage point, the unemployment crisis must have emerged from out of the blue, like the attack on Pearl Harbor — because it is usually only that kind of emergency that prompts a president to address a joint session of Congress.

Presidents, of course, speak to joint sessions of Congress when they give their annual State of the Union speeches, but, otherwise, an address to a joint session of Congress typically is given when the nation faces an unexpected emergency — like a Pearl Harbor.

A speech to a joint session of Congress — whether it is by a president or a foreign dignitary or someone else — is not the sort of thing Congress likes to allow very often. It turns the lawmakers' domain into a stage for someone else.

I don't think anyone disagrees that the joblessness crisis is a serious emergency — even the moral equivalent of war — but it has been far from an unexpected emergency, just an ignored one.

Consequently, I do not think there is anything about the current situation that truly warrants a speech before a joint session of Congress. A speech from the Oval Office would be more appropriate, I think — but, for some reason, Obama doesn't like to give speeches there.

The unemployment situation was an emergency 2½ years ago, when monthly job losses were in six digits — but Obama obsessed instead about health care and his first Supreme Court nomination. That was how he chose to spend his political capital — along with spending the first Labor Day of his presidency preparing to address the schoolchildren of America.

Unemployment was 9.5% in September of 2009 — it's 9.1% now.

Why wasn't it a crisis worthy of a speech to a joint session of Congress then instead of now?

Probably because he hadn't been president for a full year in September 2009, and he still enjoyed (to an extent) the traditional honeymoon relationship a new president enjoys. But in September 2011, he is about 14 months from facing an increasingly frustrated electorate — a majority of whom, as Dowd correctly observes, "still like and trust the president," but that isn't what a re–election campaign is about.

Obama was able to win the first time because he has a knack for fancy speechmaking. He promised "hope" and "change," and that sounded good to a lot of people.

But that won't do it this time. No matter how much the voters may like Obama, he will be judged by the results of his presidency. How much change has there been? In Reagan's words, are you better off than you were four years ago?

And job approval surveys suggest that most voters do not believe Obama has delivered because he has been steadily losing ground.

Talk is cheap for incumbents. For an incumbent's words to have any meaning, any value, they must be in harmony with reality, however harsh that reality may be.

It is not necessary for a president to have perfect political pitch, but if he and the voters are in sync, so much the better. To accomplish that, he must enlist the voters as his allies. He must take them into his confidence and explain to them why he believes certain things are necessary.

I have often felt that this president must be tone deaf — because, in virtually every situation he has faced since taking office, he has taken the position that is all but certain to arouse the wrath of the most people or his response has been slow and plodding.

To say this president has been disengaged with joblessness is to severely understate the situation. He has been disengaged on practically all things. The "Obamacare" legislation that stands as the president's signature achievement wasn't even authored by the White House. That responsibility was turned over to congressional Democrats.

But this president isn't just tone deaf. He's dumb and blind, too, the "Tommy" of American presidents.

I don't really have a choice about whether to listen to him on Thursday. I have a news writing/gathering class to teach on Thursday evening, and if my students ask me about the presidential address, I will tell them it is important for working journalists to listen to a presidential address.

But if it is still in progress when I get home — and it probably will not be — I will choose to watch the football game.

As I wrote the other day, I've stopped listening to him — unless it leaks out that he is going to announce something truly bold.

Otherwise, I'll pass. I have no desire to hear another State of the Unionesque laundry list of general (and mostly unrelated) proposals or a rerun of his 2008 stump speech.

Talk is cheap, Mister President. Let's see some action. Real action.

It's the Jobless, Stupid

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"Given the history of recessions driven by financial meltdowns, it was inevitable we'd have a lingering unemployment problem. All the more reason to gear every possible policy toward augmenting job growth. Once he passed his ramshackle social–spending bill called the 'stimulus,' though, Obama devoted most of his attention to re–engineering key sectors of the American economy — health care, finance, energy — regardless of the economic consequences."

Rich Lowry
National Review

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OK, I know that National Review isn't what anyone would call a progressive publication.

And Lowry isn't a liberal thinker.

But I opened this piece with a quote from Lowry because he does a reasonably accurate job of summarizing the situation. Sure, he has an agenda, but just because he has an agenda does not mean he is wrong when he writes of "a wide–ranging blight that affects not just people's incomes right now, but their sense of self–respect and their futures.

"Yet it's often been an afterthought for the president," Lowry continues. "He has repeatedly said he was going to 'pivot to jobs.' How could he ever have pivoted off of them?"

It's a valid question. Obama's got a year to decide how he'g going to respond to that one — and I think he can be reasonably confident that the eventual Republican nominee is going to ask it (repeatedly) during the 2012 campaign.

What Lowry writes is nothing new to me. I've been reading articles that said virtually the same thing for the last three years.

What would be new — and refreshing — would be to see politicians giving more than lip service to the unemployed simply because the politicians want their votes.

The Job Isn't Finished

A couple of months ago, James Pethokoukis of Reuters observed that, for Barack Obama, the number for re–election may not be 270 (as in the number of electoral votes that are needed) but 215 (as in how many thousands of jobs need to be gained — on average — every month between now and November 2012 if the unemployment rate is going to drop below 8%).

Well, actually, Pethokoukis reported that Matt McDonald, an analyst for Hamilton Place Strategies, made that observation.

No matter who said it, I was reminded of that number when yesterday's jobless report came out. Lo and behold, 216,000 jobs were added in March.

Mission accomplished — for March.

That is a significant number, and it will continue to be significant for Obama's electoral hopes because, as McDonald told Pethokoukis, the national unemployment rate has been above 7% in only four presidential election years since 1960. The incumbent was on the ballot each time — and, in three of those elections, the incumbent was defeated.

The exception was Ronald Reagan, who had seen unemployment drop by 1.3 percentage points in the year leading up to his re–election campaign.

So, using that as an historic yardstick, Obama needs unemployment, which currently stands at 8.8%, to drop to about 7.5% in order to have the expectation that joblessness won't be the crushing election issue that it was for Presidents Ford, Carter and Bush I.

That still would be higher than the rate under Reagan, McDonald acknowledges, but the decline in a year's time would be comparable, and that should lead to a sense that joblessness is easing.

McDonald gives Obama a break. Based on his calculations, the unemployment rate would slip below 8% — barely — by Election Day.

He sets the bar much lower than I do. I look at it in terms of duplicating what contributed to the only successful re–election strategy under comparable conditions in the last 50 years. To get close to the unemployment rate that still permitted Reagan to campaign plausibly under the slogan "Morning in America," way more than 215,000 jobs need to be added to the economy on a monthly basis.

I'm not an economist, though, so I'll rely on McDonald's figures, and he does make a compelling case:

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"If we assume a straight–line projection of job growth and further assume 120,000 new entrants to the job market every month, the economy would need to create 215,000 jobs per month every month between now and November 2012 to get the unemployment rate below 8 percent. Every month we are above 215,000 new jobs, it gets a little easier to reach that 8 percent goal and every month we are below 215,000, it gets a little harder."

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Well, we broke even in March.

According to McDonald's formula, the ultimate goal is neither easier nor harder to achieve than it was before.

There is still much work to be done.

State of Obama

The 2012 presidential campaign will begin tomorrow during the State of the Union speech.

It isn't being advertised that way, of course, perhaps because the politicos think most Americans, regardless of their leanings, are just burned out on politics right now. But Barack Obama will be laying out his blueprint for the next couple of years when he speaks tomorrow night — and the voters are likely to judge him on how it works out.

It's a little late to be offering Obama advice on what he should say. Besides, no one ever really knows how these things will work out. If someone comes up with a foolproof method for looking into the future, at the very least we will know if a presidential address is going to be a make–or–break moment for that president.

As I recall, that was a problem with George H.W. Bush in the last year or so of his presidency. Every time he was about to make a speech during that period, the public was told that it was the most important address of his presidency.

But the speeches never seemed to match the expectations. In fact, they often fell far short of them.

By the end of his single term, Bush had become the president who cried wolf.

Now, the State of the Union speech is a little different than most presidential speeches. It is an annual event. It is not inspired by special circumstances, and only rarely does it coincide with something else of equal or greater importance (25 years ago, it was scheduled to coincide with the first space shuttle to carry a civilian teacher — but that mission was terminated by an explosion shortly after takeoff).

And I will admit that Obama has certain oratorical skills that neither of the Bushes possessed. Consequently, the emphasis on the performance may not be as great for him as it was for the Bushes — although that could change if he is not up to his usual standards.

I think the pundits' emphasis, in this case, will be on the specifics of his recommendations — and, frankly, focusing on substance would be a nice change.

One of the problems with a substantive discussion is that it can't be argued and resolved in a few hours. It will require some time before the success or failure of Obama's policies can be determined, so those who are inclined to grade the speech the day it is given should be afforded no credibility.

But the window of opportunity for every president in my lifetime, not just this one, has been brief. As technology advances, the window gets smaller and it starts to slam faster. I think people are as patient as they have ever been, but the speed of their gadgets accelerates everything else.

Two years ago, Obama's inaugural address was hailed by friend and foe alike, but, within a few months, it was clear that his stratospheric approval ratings were crashing to earth. Those who cried "racism" may have been right in some isolated instances, but, by and large, they did their president and themselves a disservice by ignoring the underlying problems.

Was the problem that, as some of his critics have suggested, he tried to do too much, or was it, as others have said, that he didn't do enough? I don't know, but there is little to be gained from looking back — unless it is to look for ways to improve. A little self–analysis is a good thing, but it can be over done.

Personally, I have never been as impressed with Obama's delivery as the folks who elected him, but it usually seems to impress most of his listeners, even those who disagree with him — so I don't think there is much to be learned from watching tapes of his past speeches.

And, with the speech coming up in a couple of days, it's really too late to be thinking about substantive changes in speaking style — for this address, anyway.

But there may be some things to learn about following up.

I have heard that the speech will emphasize job creation, and that is a good thing — if it is earnest.

We heard lots of lip service about this a year ago, after the Republicans captured Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, but it disappeared, aided by the ongoing BP spill and the general unwillingness of Democrats to tackle the problem.

When it re–emerged last fall, it was a campaign issue, a cynical ploy to win votes that failed miserably.

Now, there are no votes to win. Or are there?

Alex Kowalski of Bloomberg.com reports that the outlook for jobs is improving. Unemployed Americans — both those who are counted using the government's arbitrary methodology and those who are not — would like to believe that is true.

The fact that there is no election looming in the near future leads one to believe such talk might be serious this time. But there is no time to waste, and neither party controls enough seats in Congress to impose its will on the other. For anything to be accomplished in the next two years, it will be essential for Democrats and Republicans to work together

Bipartisanship wasn't really necessary to accomplish anything in the first year of the Obama presidency, but it will be in the last two years of this term. What will be different about this president's appeal for bipartisanship this time, now that his party no longer controls the House?

Now, most people seem to realize, even if they don't openly acknowledge it, that the crisis is spiraling out of control and what remains of the middle class is likely to be demolished.

If Obama really does focus on job creation in his State of the Union address, his listeners — both those on Capitol Hill and the millions watching on television — seem certain to agree with him. The disagreements will come on how it is to be achieved.

There has been some talk of the conciliatory, centrist tone Obama sought in his speech at the Tucson memorial service. And polls have shown that Obama's standing with the voters improved slightly in the aftermath.

But the polls have consistently shown that the majority of Americans likes Obama. They also think he is taking the country in the wrong direction.

When they go to the polls in November 2012, that may be the decision they have to make — whether to re–elect a president most folks like personally but about whose policies they have serious doubts or to elect someone else.

Tomorrow night is when he can start to make his case.

On Your Own

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"You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging
For your next meal.

"How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?"

Bob Dylan
Like a Rolling Stone

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In less than a year, Bob Dylan will be 70 years old.

That's probably hard to comprehend for a lot of folks who can remember the lanky twenty–something fellow who burst onto the music scene in the early 1960s and composed songs that became anthems for social and political movements in America, a seemingly hesitant troubadour of unrest.

But those ballads may be due for a comeback, and, in the years to come, the twilight of Dylan's career may be remembered as a revival of the songs he wrote when his career was dawning half a century earlier.

I say that because, with each passing day, I get a greater sense of a growing unease and frustration. The middle class is being squeezed out of existence. People with college degrees, even advanced college degrees, have been out of work for months, even years. Many are losing the unemployment benefits that have kept them going — and with them, they are losing their faith in the future and in their leaders.

Speaking of unemployment benefits, I heard some people speaking optimistically recently about the fact that initial unemployment claims were below expectations for the first time in four weeks.

But Jeffry Bartash of MarketWatch quoted Brian Levitt of OppenheimerFunds, who wisely warned that the number of new claims (473,000) is "still an elevated number."

No kidding.

"Nevertheless," wrote Bartash, "investors welcomed the news and U.S. stocks rose modestly in early Thursday trades."

What do you suppose is the message that is being received by long–term unemployed Americans and those who are partially employed or "underemployed?"

Do you think it could be that, as long as you have deep pockets, deep enough to invest in stocks — and political campaigns — you won't be abandoned by your government, but if you're an individual who has worked hard for years to feed his family and keep a roof over the heads of his spouse and children, but you lose your job, not because of anything you've done but because of the mistakes of the higher–ups, then you're not even close to being too big to fail — and your government will throw you under the bus just to show that it can pinch pennies?

"[T]here are well over 14 million Americans without a paying job," writes Mortimer Zuckerman of U.S. News & World Report, "so the level of discontent is very high. Just how are they going to regain control of their lives?"

I've heard a lot of people worrying about Barack Obama's plunging job approval numbers. And, I'll grant you, those numbers are alarming, especially when you compare them to the incredible approval numbers that accompanied him into office (when, if you want to be technical about it, there was nothing, other than rhetoric, of which to approve or disapprove) or some of the numbers of his predecessors.

For example, Gallup currently has Obama's approval rating at 43% and his disapproval rating at 50%. That was the same approval rating George H.W. Bush got in a Gallup poll about two weeks after he lost the presidency to Bill Clinton in 1992. It is also the same approval rating Ronald Reagan — the same Ronald Reagan who is now revered as a conservative icon — had when his party suffered setbacks in the 1982 midterm elections.

And it's lower than any of the job approval findings for Clinton right around the time of the 1994 midterm elections — when Clinton's party lost control of both chambers of Congress.

Obama and the Democrats insist that things are better than folks think, a proposition that seems to me to be so fantastic that it belongs in a Monty Python movie. When Joe Biden, for example, talks about how great the economy is doing, he sounds to me like the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," swearing that his injuries, which left him with no limbs, were merely "flesh wounds."

Maybe they are right — it's a tough point to prove or disprove, with much of it relying on the largely unverifiable claim that jobs have been "saved," which has an almost evangelical ring to it — but, if they are right, the president's got a helluva publicity problem.

And it is a perception to which Obama himself appears to contribute willingly, sometimes eagerly. There is a growing disconnect between this president and the people that Obama is unable — or unwilling — to see. Sometimes — the mosque near ground zero controversy is a good, and timely, example — he seems determined to take a position that is practically guaranteed to antagonize the most people.

To be fair, though — even though it is part of the overall picture — that doesn't specifically address the economy in general or joblessness in particular. But, for that matter, neither did Obama last Labor Day.

It seemed like the ideal time to encourage — or even inspire — the jobless, maybe talk about what he was doing to promote job creation. At the very least, it was a time to reassure the unemployed that he hadn't forgotten that they were hurting and he was doing everything he could to relieve their pain.

But he never did. His focus on that day was on campaigning for health care reform and preparing to address the school children of America.

When you narrow it down to that, however, it's more of the same. He claims that he's been working on and promoting job creation since Day One, but many of the unemployed have seen no evidence of it. They don't know if he's arrogant or flippant or if he takes it for granted that the voters will never turn on him, that they will always adore him as they did in 2008.

But, whichever it is, he's living in a fool's paradise.

You can be sure that the voters do know that, nationally, unemployment is at 9.6%. It was about three percentage points lower when Obama was elected.

Even those voters who are the least knowledgeable of economic theories can tell you that doesn't sound like progress, never mind those who have gone farther in their economic studies than the principles of supply and demand.

Yet I continue to hear the same excuses I've heard since 2008 — this is Bush's fault and all criticism of Obama is based in racism.

The voters can't hold Obama responsible this year. He isn't on the ballot. But more than one–third of the Senate seats, all of the House seats and three–quarters of the governorships are on the ballot. And many of those jobs are currently held by Democrats.

It's no surprise that Congress gets low marks from voters. Congress always gets low marks from voters. But who is affected the most really depends on which party is in the majority. And, with so many Democrats holding congressional offices, a big thumbs down from the voters in 2010 is an expression of dissatisfaction with the Democrats that seems likely to be transferred to the ballot box.

It's really pretty simple, isn't it?

So, Democrats, let me ask you this. How's that working for you?

I can tell you what the latest congressional approval ratings say:

• Let's start with the best news for Congress. It comes from the Associated Press/GfK, which reports that 24% of respondents approve of the job Congress is doing. That's a pretty significant drop, though, from the response to polls three and four months after Obama took the oath of office — when nearly 40% of respondents approved of the job Congress was doing.
  
  That might not sound great, especially compared to the 60s Obama was receiving around the same time — but, in the context of the history of this kind of polling, you can take my word for it. It's pretty impressive.


• CBS News chose to emphasize the fact that, in its recent poll, Obama's job aproval rating went up slightly.
  
  But, while you had to hunt for it, the poll found that only 22% approved of Congress' job performance.


• The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey has been polling cell phone users only.
  
  The fact that those respondents are all cell phone users suggests that they are among the most receptive to emerging technology, but they haven't been as receptive to Congress, with only 21% approving of the job Congress was doing.
  
  And these surveys have consistently shown that the cell phone users are unimpressed with the direction of the country. Currently, the survey reports, 58% believe the country is going in the wrong direction.


• Gallup's findings were even more discouraging, in part because Gallup's surveys usually are the most reliable.
  
  And Gallup found that only 19% approved of the job Congress was doing.
  
  Like Associated Press/GfK, Gallup found much higher approval ratings for Congress in the spring of 2009, but that approval has declined steadily ever since.
  
  On the plus side, 19% approval represents an improvement over Gallup's finding from last spring. But it shows virtually no change in Congress' rating this summer.

I guess the bottom line is that, if you're out of work, you're on your own. Brush up on your Dylan.

If you've got a job, do whatever you have to do to keep it — even if you hate it.

And if you're a congressional Democrat running for re–election, you've got plenty of problems. Many of those Democrats, I am convinced, will not be successful in November. Make room in the unemployment line.

In the meantime, maybe Obama will say something — anything — about joblessness on Labor Day.

But don't hold your breath.

Here We Go Again

Remember the bad old days of 2008 and 2009, when the economy was losing jobs at a monthly pace in the six–digit range?

But, thank God, we've turned the corner on that one, though. Right?

Wrong.

The Labor Department reported this morning that the economy lost 131,000 jobs in July. Those temporary census jobs are ending, and private employers are not adding many workers to their payrolls.

Temporary help services, which are usually seen as an indicator of coming job growth, fell, and economic growth in general fell to a 2.4% annual rate.

At a time when much of the country is sweltering in a severe summer heat wave, it seems the economy is the only thing that isn't hot right now.

If you're looking for good news, Reuters' Lucia Mutikani offers this: "[T]he pace of layoffs has moderated significantly from the first quarter of last year, when employers were culling an average of 752,000 jobs a month."

In other words, things are better now than when the economy was in free fall more than a year ago.

I don't think this is going to improve the Democrats' standing with the voters.

The Democratic Daily blog says things would be worse if not for the federal government's financial assistance. And I think that's likely to show up as a campaign argument this fall.

But I think it's going to be a hard sell.

I guess things could still turn around between now and November.

But not nearly enough to make a difference.

Doobie or Not Doobie?

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It may be an issue whose time has come. And, if that is the case, there may be no more appropriate place for it than California.

Voters in that state will decide in November whether to legalize and regulate marijuana use, an issue that has come before voters in other states in other election years but has always failed.

In 2010, however, there is an unusual confluence of issues, like two mighty rivers that meet and create an even greater force, that might make this vote different from the rest. Even if the eventual result is the same, the margin may be closer than it has ever been — and it may be a sign that the tide is turning.

First, there is the recession, which has produced — thus far — a 13.2% unemployment rate in California and a shortfall of the state budget that has forced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to call for "draconian" spending cuts while warning that there is surely more/worse to come.

The folks in Washington seem to have lost sight of the fact (assuming — and that is a huge assumption — that they ever fully realized it in the first place) that this recession — and the unemployment it has spawned — is different from the others with which they have dealt. And they appear determined to fight it the same way they initially chose to fight Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis — on the cheap.

On the cheap didn't work in Iraq, and it won't work against the recession.

Policy analyst Samuel Sherraden, in an article for CNN.com, says the new jobs bill, in which the president and the members of his party seem to place so much faith, is doomed to fail because it focuses on inadequate tax credits instead of promoting infrastructure.

Of course, it is understandable — to a point — why infrastructure is not emphasized. Infrastructure costs money, lots of money, but revenue is down because fewer people are working and paying taxes — so there isn't as much money available as there once was.

"The House of Representatives passed a relatively strong bill in December, which included $48 billion in infrastructure spending," Sherraden writes. "Now the House and the Senate have adopted a bill that consists primarily of a payroll tax deduction for employers who make new hires and keep them on for a year. The original House jobs bill was $154 billion. The new bill is one–tenth the size."

I'm not an economist, but I don't think you have to be to see that Sherraden is right. The money simply isn't there, and the jobs bill doesn't provide the sources for the kind of revenue that is needed to repair the infrastructure and put millions of unemployed Americans back to work.

Legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana has the potential to produce the kind of revenue — I've heard it estimated that legalizing marijuana in California alone can produce $1 billion annually in tax revenue for the state — that will address the infrastructure issue. And it will keep doing so beyond 2010, unlike the tax credits the Democrats have proposed.

As Sherraden observes, "It is unwise to pass a temporary hiring incentive that will expire during a year when the unemployment rate is forecast by the Congressional Budget Office to average 9.5 percent."

Yet, in addition to providing the kind of revenue that could be used to make meaningful improvements in the nation's infrastructure, legalizing marijuana could create, virtually overnight, the demand for all kinds of jobs. Those people in occupations that would be adversely affected by legalizing marijuana — for example, lab workers who perform drug tests and law enforcement officials who have been waging a losing war against marijuana for decades — would simply be reassigned to more productive pursuits. It is doubtful that their jobs would be eliminated, only the functions of the jobs. If marijuana is legalized, attention can shift to testing for the use of demonstrably deadly drugs and the enforcement of laws against violent behavior.

Then there is health care reform, an issue that has dominated the thinking of Barack Obama (who seems to have devoted more attention to his NCAA Tournament predictions in the last couple of years than he has to unemployment) and the Democrats in Congress for more than a year. With the passage of health care reform legislation, the thoughts of many have turned to the subject of easing the pain of those afflicted with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, etc. And that is where the issue of medical marijuana comes in.

Marijuana has been proven — repeatedly — to be effective at fighting the nausea that is a by–product of some treatments (most notably, chemotherapy). It has also been shown to stimulate appetite, which is helpful for those whose medical treatments have robbed them of the desire for food. For glaucoma patients, it eases intraocular pressure that robs people of their vision.

However, fear mongers continue to spread inaccuracies (I prefer that word to lies even though this is one of those times when the latter is more appropriate) about marijuana. I can only assume that, because medical science has established a connection between tobacco consumption and life–threatening illnesses like lung cancer, opponents of legalization have jumped to the conclusion that smoking anything will cause lung cancer, too. I am aware of no medical studies that have shown that marijuana causes cancer. In fact, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, which makes its research articles from the last 86 years freely available online, has demonstrated precisely the opposite. JCI's research shows that marijuana kills cancer cells, which is one more therapeutic benefit.

Of course, it is unlikely that most of the people who consume marijuana do so as a preventive measure — although there may be some who smoke it because they are concerned about the prevalence of cancer in their families.

But it is ironic, I believe, that this issue comes up now — not just because of the passage of health care reform but because it was one year ago that, during his celebrated online town hall meeting, Obama ridiculed the 3½ million people who submitted questions about the legalization of marijuana.

This comes at a time when officials have observed a reversal in marijuana use among the young. For many years, propaganda campaigns succeeded, to an extent, in discouraging marijuana consumption, but recent surveys have noted a shift in the behavior of the young.

Such a shift has been increasingly hard to ignore — or write off as the behavior of those who are unmotivated and untalented. Just a few days ago, Don Banks reported for SI.com that folks in the NFL "are concerned about the increased number of prospects who have a history of marijuana use in their background."

Banks' article goes on to observe that eliminating players — given the success that some marijuana users have had in the NFL in recent years — because they failed drug tests doesn't make sense if the NFL's personnel people are interested in winning — and keeping their own jobs. Some, no doubt, cling to the long–disproved allegations that have been used to justify keeping marijuana illegal — that it causes death, that it leads to madness and violent criminal behavior, that it serves as a "gateway" to other drugs.

Well, Pete Guither debunks a lot of the myths. As he clearly demonstrates, prohibition was on the wrong side of history in the 1930s.

And it's on the wrong side now.

A Simple Question

I'm like most people who went to college, I suppose. I didn't major in economics.

Neither — I would guess — did most of the people who are unemployed today. That's another group to which I belong, although I would be happy to give up my membership in that particular club.

Since I have no academic training in economics — beyond those basic courses I was required to take — I hope someone can enlighten me.

Let me explain.

Obviously, economies are complex things, and the one that dominates our lives today may be more complex than any in my lifetime. There is no one factor that could be corrected that would turn things around. I assume that, if someone could pinpoint such a factor, a Nobel Prize would be waiting with his or her name on it.

Nevertheless, it is fashionable — and, perhaps, justifiable — to blame George W. Bush and the Republicans for policies that made conditions favorable for companies to outsource jobs to foreign countries where labor was cheaper. That isn't the only reason why millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the last couple of years, but it certainly is one of them.

When Barack Obama became president, he and the Democrats embarked on a radical — there are those who would use the word "extreme" to describe it — course of action to deal with the economy.

Perhaps what I am about to suggest is a case of closing the barn door after the horses already have escaped, but this is a question I simply can't answer on my own. Maybe someone with a greater knowledge of economics can answer it.

Why didn't the Democrats enact legislation that would make it more difficult for companies to outsource jobs to foreign countries?

On the campaign trail — and, then again, recently, when his attention was briefly diverted to the crisis of joblessness in the days after the special election in Massachusetts — Obama proposed tax breaks for companies that hired Americans.

When the stimulus package was being worked out, that proposal was dropped because the amount of the proposed tax break ($3,000) wasn't thought to be a sufficient incentive. When Obama revived the proposal earlier this year, he raised the amount (to $5,000), but it still isn't considered sufficient.

If the incentive is not adequate to achieve the desired effect, what possible good is the policy?

Which brings me back to my original question ...

Maybe I've missed something, but why hasn't a disincentive been discussed?

I've heard it said that the jobs that were shipped overseas are never coming back. Well, maybe some of them would if the government insisted that it would penalize companies for maintaining overseas workers on their payrolls when Americans could be doing those jobs — and I'm not talking about a slap on the wrist, either. I'm talking about fines that would be high enough to get employers' attention — and could be used to help offset the costs of getting the economy back on track.

Well, that's a rough idea. Perhaps there are legal issues that would have to be addressed. Certainly, a grace period would be necessary for existing companies to make the transition from foreign to domestic employees. Exceptions would need to be made for some jobs and some industries.

But doesn't it make sense to do whatever can be done — beyond the politician's best friend, lip service — to help unemployed Americans? Maybe filling jobs with Americans instead of Indians or Chinese would raise production costs, which would, in turn, raise the costs of goods and services.

But it seems to me that, if the choice is between paying more for a cell phone or a video game and leveling the playing field for unemployed Americans, the choice is obvious.

Flesh–and–blood Americans are more important than inanimate objects.

Aren't they?

The Challenges of Revolution

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The word "revolution" seems to be tossed about rather carelessly by some people.

Well, it seems that way to me, anyway.

I don't mean to say that it is a careless concept. Far from it. A revolution is serious business — by definition, according to Random House, "a sudden, complete or marked change in something."

Clearly, that wasn't an idle question the Beatles asked some 40 years ago, and it was asked at a time when revolution was almost literally in the air.

In fact (if you will pardon just one more musical reference), I have often thought that, when history has had enough time to absorb the revolutionary changes that were wrought in national thoughts and attitudes by the 1960s, the best song — if not the only song — a filmmaker could use as the backdrop for images of that time would be Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move."

That's a song about the awakening of love and sexual desire, but it is also descriptive of the helpless feeling that can overwhelm a person when something that has been virtually an article of faith is being proven false — or, at least, inoperative.

Anyway, it seems to me the word revolution has been used somewhat frivolously since the days when the guidelines governing just about all of our social relationships — age, gender, race, religious, sexual — were (and, in some cases, remain) under a very public assault. It hasn't always been that way.

Eighty years ago on Friday, Gandhi launched his campaign of non–cooperation and non–violence against British rule of India with the Salt March to the village of Dandi — a truly dramatic and, yes, revolutionary moment in human history.

I've heard many things described as revolutions, whether they actually were revolutions or not. But the bar is set sorta high for genuine revolutions.

Other than an actual armed revolt, the only other kind of revolution that could have as wrenching and far–reaching influence on people as the social unrest of the 1960s or Gandhi's campaign that was ultimately successful in liberating India would be economic upheaval.

And that certainly seems to be what we are experiencing today.

At the moment, it is far from certain which side will emerge victorious. But a few basic facts are known. The most important, it seems to me, is that millions of Americans have lost their jobs since the recession began in December 2007.

Some of those jobs may return as the economy rebounds, but most probably will not. To date, few, if any, actually have.

Some of those jobs were shipped overseas, where workers do the same tasks Americans did but for a lot less. In some cases, their efficiency might be limited by their linguistic skills — but not always. In those situations where productivity has been hindered by language barriers, I suppose CEOs have simply looked at the balance sheet and seen that they were still saving money.

And some of those jobs were eliminated by emerging technology. From management's perspective, I guess, the best possible solution is to make a one–time investment in a machine that can do what one person (or more) did in the past. A machine will work nonstop and will not charge overtime. It just requires routine maintenance.

It's not the best solution for an unemployed American with a family to feed, but that isn't management's problem, is it?

That doesn't make it less of a problem, though, does it?

There isn't a day that goes by that there isn't a story in your newspaper, on your TV, on the internet about the impact that the economy is having on people's lives. The other day, for example, I saw a video on CNN.com about an auto worker in Wisconsin whose plant closed down. Rather than accept a severance package, he took a job at a company plant in Texas — and began making a "1,000–mile commute" to work instead of selling his home for a loss in a bad economy.

In the end, though, the pressure of being away from his family for five days (sometimes six days) each week was too much, and the family joined him in Texas, vowing that their hearts would stay in Wisconsin and they would one day return. Well, they're young. There's still plenty of time (probably) for them to regain control of their lives and move back to the land they love.

It's becoming more of an impossible dream for older displaced workers.

There must be some way for these workers to remain a vibrant part of the economy. After all, the point behind revolution is to make things better for all, not to leave some behind so others may prosper, isn't it?

Maybe there is a lesson to be found in history that can be applied to the 21st century. It was on this day in 1794 that Eli Whitney received his patent for the cotton gin.

The cotton gin, a deceptively simple device that automated the tedious process of separating cotton seeds from cotton fibers, is considered one of the crucial inventions of the Industrial Revolution.

As anyone who has studied American history can tell you, the Industrial Revolution brought many changes to American life. The cotton gin came on its cusp, when patent laws were still emerging, and the ramifications of technological advancements were not always readily apparent, but, in hindsight, it can be said that the cotton gin rejuvenated slavery. Because slave labor could be devoted almost entirely to planting, maintaining and harvesting the crop, plantation owners could grow larger crops and reap greater profits, making slave ownership more sustainable.

In fact, in the half century after Whitney's invention, the slave population more than quadrupled in the South. Without the invention of the cotton gin, the costs of housing and clothing and feeding slaves might well have been impractical for many, and other choices might have been made.

It's possible, therefore, that America might have been spared the agony of the Civil War and, perhaps, the anguish of dysfunctional racial relations, particularly in the South, in the century after the war ended.

But, without the cotton gin, the Industrial Revolution might have been delayed — or, worse, might never have happened at all. America might never have become the economic power it became — and the story of human development would have been entirely different.

It may seem odd, then, that, while many plantation owners became rich thanks to Whitney's invention, Whitney himself and his business partner, Phineas Miller, did not.

Theirs is a cautionary tale. And it is one that I think is applicable to the field to which I have always gravitated, journalism.

Whitney and Miller were visionaries in their development of a solution to a production problem, and, consequently, they appear to have had one foot in the future — but they clearly had the other foot planted in the past. Their plan was not to sell cotton gins; apparently, it was to monopolize the market to a certain extent, by contracting with farmers to clean their cotton for them, in much the same way that sawmills cut lumber into boards for loggers.

Cotton growers resented this, especially once they discovered how simple the gin really was, and other cotton gins, based on the original design, began to pop up. Whitney and Miller tried to stem the tide by filing patent infringement lawsuits, but, ultimately, this devoured their profits because of the primitive state of patent law. Eventually, they went out of business.

So what relationship does this have to the newspaper industry?

Well, I have observed over the years that newspaper management responds to economic adversity in a predictable way — by cutting its payroll.

Even when the complaint is a decline in editorial quality.

Frankly, I have never understood how cutting the number of copy editors — the ones who are charged with checking facts and correcting spelling, grammar and punctuation errors — can possibly address that kind of issue. The only issue it seems to address is the bottom line, but never to the extent that it can solve the economic problems faced by a publication. It is a temporary solution at best.

It seems like even less of a viable strategy in today's economic climate. But that hasn't prevented newspapers from falling back on it, just as they always have.

Maybe their mistake was not realizing that this recession, coming after a decade of zero job growth, is different from the ones that came before.

The real problem, as I have written before, goes back many years — to a time when the internet was not the pervasive presence in American households it has become. Newspaper management's great failing was not anticipating the kinds of changes that the internet would force upon them and taking steps that would allow them to co–exist — perhaps, even, to thrive.

No one has a crystal ball, of course, but, even though I have no training in business administration, that seems like an obvious thing.

And here is something else that seems equally obvious to me.

These are times that require creative, innovative solutions — even if they are temporary — that will put people back to work. Hundreds of thousands of people who would prefer to be bringing home a paycheck rather than receiving unemployment assistance are, nevertheless, losing their benefits every week.

The times cry out for leadership like Franklin Roosevelt provided in the 1930s. Within days of becoming president, Roosevelt was addressing problems that had brought America's economy to its knees. When something didn't work, FDR tried something else. He never shifted his focus from his primary mission. His attention was unwavering.

That is the kind of leadership that America needs today — not the kind that gives momentary lip service to pressing problems while pledging to focus like a laser on them and then, at the first opportunity, turns its attention elsewhere.

That is the challenge of revolutionary times.

At Long Last, Panic

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The Democrats baffle me — and I've been a Democrat all my life.

Rich Lowry writes at the National Review about how Democrats, under Barack Obama, "have perfected the 'impatient style' ... a headlong rush to a slapdash social democracy, justified by whatever arguments happen to be at hand and effected by whatever means necessary."

To me, "impatient" suggests an unwillingness to listen to those who disagree — even when the disagreement is really a matter of a few degrees. And, instead of listening to constructive criticism that might make a good but flawed idea (to, say, promote job creation) better, the Democrats insist on answering a question that was not asked.

It was Bush's fault.

Well, Michael Luo and Megan Thee–Brenan did ask that question in a good overview of joblessness for the New York Times — although, as the article makes clear, the long–term unemployed aren't worried about history. They just want someone to do something to deliver them from their nightmare.

"In terms of casting blame for the high unemployment rate," they write, "26 percent of unemployed adults cited former President George W. Bush; 12 percent pointed the finger at banks; 8 percent highlighted jobs going overseas and the same number blamed politicians. Only 3 percent blamed President Obama."

And now a sense of panic seems to be settling in.

Perhaps the Democrats, rigidly obsessed as they seem to be with assigning blame, are starting to get the message. Voters don't blame Obama for the economy. They elected him to do something about it, as the writers for the Times make clear in their next paragraph.

"Those out of work were split, however, on the president's handling of job creation, with 47 percent expressing approval and 44 percent disapproval."

It's hard to make the case that anything has been done about unemployment when joblessness has risen to double figures.

The Democrats remind me, more and more, of the Black Knight from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" — unwilling to yield until all his limbs had been cut off and he was forced to seek the best possible result from a bad situation that was of his own making.

I pray they get the message before it is too late and they have to say to the Republicans, "All right, we'll call it a draw."