Last month we were told that “Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the second quarter of 2010, (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 3.7 percent.” Sure it did. The government says so and they would surely never tell us something that wasn’t true!!
Meanwhile, in Realityland, the FDIC took over 6 banks Friday afternoon. Canadian news sources are writing about the decline and coming fall of the United States as a “superpower.” This week we learned that the poverty rate rose to a 15 year high, with a 51 year high in the number of people actually living in poverty, 3,800,000 more than last year, including just under 1 in every 5 children who contrary to what some people think have no control over their circumstances. Despite the passage of a new health insurance reform bill, the number of people with health insurance dropped for the first time ever. The net worth of Americans has dropped roughly $12,300,000,000,000 since 2007. The small businesses that are vital to creating jobs both now and in future decades can’t get loans, and the new law that was supposed to “help small businesses” will likely do nothing of the sort. Big businesses are hoarding cash. Some people are calling it a “lost decade.”
Meanwhile millionaires are whining about the very idea that they might have to pay more taxes (when they aren’t screaming about the federal budget deficit) and admitting that they have had illegal immigrants working in their homes (rather than hire an unemployed American).
And the experts wonder why more Americans think a “third party” might be just the thing we need.
Next time, unless I am otherwise distracted, The BAMTOR Principle.
In Closing: let’s hear it for Elizabeth Warren!; “that guy who agrees with me is an expert, that other guy who doesn’t is a quack”; Senator Reid mad at Republicans blocking food safety reforms; “Sorry soldier, you’re too fat for this exercise program”; new rules to make it harder for banks to hide debt (like that will stop them).
One in 7 Americans are impoverished. Yes they are. And a lot of them, who have worked hard all their lives, are on Social Security. But we didn’t get an incease this year, and we won’t in 2011 either. Oh, wait! I get it now! It’s part of the war on obesity! Clearly if we can’t afford food, we’ll all loose weight! What a PLAN! Maybe if we cut out ‘free lunches’ at school the children would all slim down too.
When I was a lad many of the roads in America were tarmac or oiled gravel, if not just plain ole dirt (In RE: Canadians see the Decline.” ) And the cars made to drive them were big heavy brutes with giant tires, big shocks and springs to handle the beating. I wonder how the Prius is going to hold up. I also wonder how many rural Michigan-ites [Michiganese?] own Prius… but I digress…
I recall many school mates lacking basic clothing, and living in houses with no central heating (one of my school mate’s house lacked a front door!) or hot water that wasn’t warmed on the stove.
On the farmland owned by my friend’s family we played in the old abandoned slave houses, out yonder over the hill from the farm house, relics from days past, but some of our (white and black) schoolmates still lived in houses that were scarecely, if at all different from these…
The Appalachia dipicted in The Hill Billy Bears is going to return to wider America? Who’dda thunk?