Obama's Jobs Speech: What Americans Want to Hear

[chill_wind]

Obama's Jobs Speech: What Americans Want to Hear
By Tim Skillern Tue, Sep 6, 2011

It's not only the traditional unemployed who fret about jobs. It's college students. Seniors. Military veterans. Single parents. The middle class. It's Americans of all backgrounds, and they all will listen closely to President Obama's jobs speech Thursday evening. They say they need Obama to tell them something -- anything -- that will give them hope and restore faith in the sleepy U.S. economy.

"It is very hard not to live in fear," says Angela Loreto DeMeyer, an unemployed New Yorker.

She is a 99er, one of the nation's job-seekers who has exhausted her 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. "Those of us going without benefits the longest want to hear there will be help on the way in the form of an extension. Many 99ers have already lost everything. Now we just want, and need, to survive."

When Obama addresses the nation, he'll speak to Americans like DeMeyer. He'll also be talking to the 9.1 percent of Americans who are unemployed.

While jobless numbers illustrate the unemployment story, it's everyday Americans who put a human face on the statistics. Yahoo! News asked them: What should Obama talk about in his jobs speech to Congress?

Good article interviewing everyday Americans speaking up about what they want to hear from Obama about jobs and unemployment. See the many responses:

http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-jobs-speech-americans-want-hear-200000188.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. Oh, my local talk/news radio station this morning solicited comments

on what people wanted to hear--of course, since they're the station of Laura Ingraham and Limpballs, the comments they aired were along the lines of "That he's quitting his job." Had to shut it off.

[chill_wind]

2. RW hate talk radio. Ugh. This article does a decent job

of hearing from a cross-section of people's thoughts about what they hope to hear or would eagerly support him on.

[KOfan]

3. The wealthy have to pay!

No other excuses from them any longer, pay up or get out!

[dtexdem]

4. Oh, 'pay up or get out' is too narrow a set of options --

pay up AND get out also has to be on the table. ;-)

[chill_wind]

5. +1 :-)

[The2ndWheel]

6. We live in an increasingly complex and changing civilization and, even more so, world

I think what people really need to hear is that nobody has the faintest fucking clue as to what to do.

We can't seem to stop and take a minute to think about it, since everything moves so quickly these days. There is always a need here, or a want there, or the global race without a finish line between different countries that we for some reason must keep running in.

We can't continue to do what we've been doing(growing the economy, faster and faster, bigger and bigger), since what we've been doing has gotten us here, and here of course is a place where our environmental predicament has only grown larger.

Nobody has a grip on this thing. Whatever we do, it's just trying to hang onto the wing while the plane is in the air.

[TwilightGardener]

7. There is a lot of truth in your post.

:thumbsup:

[chill_wind]

8. Yes and no. There have been plenty of consistent

calls and recommendations from hundreds of sane, progressive economists about what to do and focus on and what not to do. (hints- hiring the economic malfeasers/arsonists from the prior Bush/Clinton job pool to serve as the "fixers"; Cat Food Commission and handing Republicans and corporate-owned Third Wayers the platform to reign on, with their perilous obsession on deficits at the expense of jobs creation)

No progressive economists have had any voice or power in this admin. The as yet untried prescriptions are there. The obstacles are political ones.

[The2ndWheel]

9. "The obstacles are political ones."

I'd say they're physical obstacles. Tougher to solve, and more damage done when accomplished.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. Problem with that is, we DO know what to do.

Break up the banks - separate investment banks from commercial banks, so they can't create the kind of criminal feedback loops that crashed the economy. Reinstating Glass/Steagal would be a good start.

Invest (not spend) in infrastructure - it is appalling that China and Japan and Europe have high speed rail, while we can't keep Amtrack running on time. We have 10,000 bridges on the verge of collapse. We have a wonderful electric grid - for 1950. We are about to lose our goddam weather satellites, which mitigate the damage of tornadoes and hurricanes, because NASA is going out of business.

We can't continue to do what we've been doing (growing the economy...) UNLESS WE PAY FOR IT.

We know how to fix it - but that might compromise some company's quarterly profits.

[The2ndWheel]

12. Unless we pay for it...just not in that way

Environmentally, humans are increasingly privatizing the profits of the planet, and socializing the costs to the rest of life. That's where we have to pay up, and we're not going to. Not voluntarily anyway. The same way Exxon, or Wal-Mart, or whatever, won't just voluntarily pay their fair share.

"We can't continue to do what we've been doing (growing the economy...) UNLESS WE PAY FOR IT.

We know how to fix it - but that might compromise some company's quarterly profits."

These are very human-centric ideas. That's why it doesn't work. You could also say we know how to fix it, but it might compromise human convenience and progress. That's why our environmental issues just keep growing. We're trying to write the rules which govern us. It doesn't work when corporations do it in relation to a government, and it doesn't work when humans do it in relation to the planet.

[chill_wind]

11. Opinions outside the DU bubble

on Obama and jobs speech expectations may be less than welcome (judging by unreccers) but the speech and the policies to come out of it will impact 2012 and many more millions of voters than just us.