Most statistics released by the U.S. government of late are bald-faced lies. The unemployment statistics released each month and at the end of each year are lies at bottom, worsened by fakery by official of the current administration.
        Fascism is when corporations and the government and the military collude to prevent the government services and freedoms desired by The People.
        The Bush administration works very hard to replace legitimate government operations with privatized entities, operated inefficiently and at high profitability – less or no results for as much as two and three times the cost of civil service workers.

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        Go to the Labor Department website and you will not find statistics on ‘workers’; what they report on is ‘consumers’, i.e. if you are not employed and spending your paycheck, then you do not count.
        The employment numbers for each recent month have no basis in reality. For years now, how these numbers are created is that folks at the Labor Dept. make a thousand phone calls during the month and ask questions like “Are you employed?” and “Are you getting unemployment payments?” and “Are you looking for work?”
        The fakery is this: The callers simply do not call Detroit or Louisiana and other hard-hit areas. If the numbers still look bad, then Labor Dept. management simply revises the numbers before release to the public.
        That way they have some data to support the bogus reports, just in case. Recent national figures are being reported around 4.5%, while the real national unemployment number is 10%, and the number is as high as 12% in many areas.

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        The reported number of illegal workers is highly variable, but usually given as 12 million. Note that they have probably displaced legal workers from 6 million jobs, or roughly 4% of the workforce. Enforce existing laws against the illegal employers, and the economically-enslaved illegal workers will have to return home, and the real unemployment rate will drop that 4% – or pretty much the official, tolerable employment rate.
        Nothing is done about illegal entry thru our porous borders because the fascist corporatocracy likes it that way. Enforce existing labor law and the workplace flips from a corporatist market to a worker-shortage, labor-has-power situation.

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        The long-term, official employment statistics are skewed because they count only JOBS (still avoiding the existence of workers, per se). There is no consideration of the many, many households with two and three jobs. Why are multiple jobs so popular? Because downsized pay scales force workers to seek and manage multiple jobs, very often part-time, in order to keep their heads above water. (And, of course, with the 6-fold increase in the price of oil, treading water is more and more difficult.)
        Employers refuse to hire people full-time – no benefits under 32 hours per week in most states – and each such job is counted as one by the officials.
        True figures can be constructed in several ways, such as counting the taxpayers (not jobs) and then subtracting that number from able-bodied members of the workforce (those seeking work), and computing UN-employment from there.
        Different number, real different.

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        The Middle Class is disappearing in America, and similar changes are following this pattern around the world.
        The euro has grown to US$1.50 now, and the British pound is worth US$2.06, but the six-fold increase of the barrel-price of oil in seven years cancels much of that seeming benefit.
        Combine the shrinking job market and the shrinking of the dollar, and any American worker who is paid the exact same pay now as in 2000 is receiving HALF that 2000 salary. Same for pensioners, such as people on Social Security.
        And the millions who have gotten pay cuts and-or lost their jobs and careers, towns with closed factories, entire industries moved offshore – all getting screwed. Their chances of a decent livelihood are torn to shreds, and their children have a dire future.
        Meanwhile, salaries of corporate officers have increased hundreds-fold, and they pay less tax than you do. Complain and you are out on the street, blackballed, and any ailments become ‘prior conditions’ to the healthcare cartel.
        When I was growing up, a job was real, you kept it if you showed up on time and did the work. Now, a job is merely an opportunity to compete for survival, in the faint hope that the next downsizing or closure or off-shoring won’t eliminate your livelihood.
        And freshly-minted college graduates leave the podium with their hard-won paper degree and $100,000 in debt, and soon find that they qualify only for 60-hour work weeks in some corporate hive or part-time work with no future.

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        The Economic Class War has begun. We are in a fight for our country against ‘enemies foreign & domestic’. The situation can and will get worse.
        The Oligarchy tells the Bush administration what they want done, and Congress obeys the corporatists who pay for their campaigns (even the Democrats).
        The energy industry is a cartel, transportation is a cartel, the media is a cartel, agriculture is a monopoly. The infrastructure is crumbling, U.S. healthcare is a joke, education in America is a disgrace.
        The United States is a Third World country, a fomenter of state terrorism, and a bankrupt nation.
        America died when George W. Bush was sworn into office, and there is no chance for recovery until and unless Dubya and his gang are all impeached and imprisoned.
        If Americans do not have the moral character, the political will, the responsibility for keeping Freedom alive in the world, then The Great American Experiment will end. Forever.

        The U.S. Constitution begins with the phrase ‘We the People’, and the future of this country depends precisely on that same concept – We the People are and have always been the source of everything good about this country.

        We the People need to do our job, which is to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”.
        The choice is between Freedom and slavery. Again, and perhaps always.