Fake Political Crisis and Real Economic Crisis-

[Omaha Steve]

http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/fake-political-crisis-and-real-economic-crisis/

Posted on August 5, 2011 by dcampbell1


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Fake Political Crises and Real Economic Crises – A Call for
Leadership and for Action

AFL-CIO Executive Council Statement

The United States is in a continuing and severe jobs crisis.
Our economy is growing at less than 2 percent per year, and
growth is slowing. Official unemployment is 9.2 percent and
rising – driven now by mass layoffs of teachers, first
responders and other public employees. The real unemployment
rate is almost twice as high – once labor market dropouts
and involuntary part-time work are taken into account.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are real solutions to
the jobs crisis, but real solutions require government
action.

Yet Washington is inexplicably focused on measures that will
make the situation worse – both in the short and long run.
Our nation’s leaders are offering working people the choice
between bad and worse policies. Instead of addressing our
profound economic crisis, they are adding to it an unending
series of fake political crises.

Real wages have been stagnant for three decades and are now
falling. The housing market, the largest market of any kind
in our country, continues its downward slide, driven by the
collapse of an enormous bubble. Millions of American
families have been or will be thrown out of their homes by
banks, guaranteeing that this drag on our economy will
continue for the foreseeable future. Our trade deficit keeps
growing. We invest less and less in our nation’s
infrastructure while unemployment in construction is nearly
double the national average. Veterans return home and
struggle to find work. Our education budgets at every level
are shrinking, and fewer and fewer of us have adequate
health insurance or a pension.

FULL story at link.