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Obama’s jobless ‘recovery’ – unemployment at 9.5%

By: Dan Spencer (Diary)  |  July 2nd, 2009 at 01:34 PM  | 

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Despite all the happy talk that there are signs that the economy is improving, or at least bottoming out, there is little hope that the unemployment rate will improve anytime soon.

Job losses accelerated last month to 467,000, “an unexpectedly large amount.”

The unemployment rate rose to 9.5%, the highest level since August 1983.

According to the Associated Press, unemployment is actually much worse:

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994.

Even before the June unemployment numbers were announced, the Los Angeles Times reported many of the jobs are gone forever.

Also, instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes: General Motors Corp. and Chrysler, for example, closed hundreds of dealerships. Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. cut tens of thousands of positions.

It didn’t have to be like this. Obama’s $787-billion so-stimulus plan should have been more about creating jobs, rather than a vehicle to fund “every liberal, entitlement cause under the sun.”

As James Pethokoukis wrote, Obama’s stimulus boondoggle was a ruse. Some two-thirds of the Obama stimulus is not intended to be spent until after 2009. Obviously, immediate “stimulus” was not the primary intent of Obama’s stimulus. If it had been, the plan would have been front-loaded. The main goal of the Obama stimulus was to make a down payment on Obama’s health care, energy and education agenda.

Maybe now that even Obama admits unemployment will break 10 percent, the Obama stimulus ruse will be seen for the great deception it was.

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  • Trelaina

    and see this mess for what it is – liberals in charge.

    It’s only a matter of time before other numbers start to go out of control. What about inflation? Once it starts going up we can bring back the misery index….fun!!

  • texas214

    His actions, and their results, are speaking louder than his words.

  • GT350

    So I listened to the POTUS’ comments following the jobs report. He made no effort to take responsibility, only pushed it off to others (ie, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan) and claimed plenty of credit for his own efforts. What a load of cr@p.

    Here’s a play-at-home game: Can anyone spot the obvious crap in these statements?

    “It took us years to get us into this mess, it will take longer than a few months to get us out…”
    “The Climate change bill is good for the economy…”
    “… We’ll create millions of new jobs that can’t be outsourced…”
    “… We have to put aside the ideological differnces of the past and look forward…”
    “… We’ve underinvested in job creating infrastructure for too long…”
    “.. We’ve done more work [on energy independence] in the last few months than we have in the previous decades…”

  • Hera

    The point of the stimulus being “backloaded” was to help dems get re-elected in 2010.However the plan backfired because the GOP did not vote for the “stimulus”, giving Obama and the dems no political cover. Also unemployment went higher then Obama predicted would happen without the stimulus. With each passing day the preception is that the bad economy is the fault of Obama more then Bush.

    • izoneguy

      What are the dems going to do? Point out the Turtle Crossings and the studies for Pig Odors?

      Review this PDF

      http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=59af3ebd-7bf9-4933-8279-8091b533464f

      Here is one example:

      In Perkins, Oklahoma, residents are literally paying the price for the ?free? stimulus dollars provided by
      the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Perkins is receiving $1.445 million from a federal stimulus
      grant for new wastewater treatment plant. As a condition of accepting those funds, the town must
      comply with a number of federal requirements. These federal restrictions have increased the total cost of
      the project from $5.26 million to $7.2 million, offsetting any financial benefit from the grant. As a result,
      utility rates for local residents have risen by 60% to pay the costs for accepting the stimulus money. City
      Manager Pete Seikel said residents don?t understand why their sewer rates have to be increased if the city
      is getting federal grants to build the new wastewater treatment plant.

      Read about these projects:

      1. ?Free? Stimulus Money Results in Higher Utility Costs for Residents of Perkins, Oklahoma

      2. FutureGen: The Stimulus Earmark that Wasn?t, Becomes the
      Costliest Pork Project in History

      3. Little-Used ?Shovel-Ready? Bridges in Rural Wisconsin Given
      Priority Over Widely Used Structurally Deficient Bridges

      4. $800,000 for little-used Johnstown, Pennsylvania airport to repave a back-up runway; the ?Airport for Nobody? Has Already Received Tens of Millions in Taxpayer dollars

      5. $3.4 Million for Wildlife ?Eco-Passage? in Florida; Project Still May Take Years to Finish

      6. Nevada Non-Profit Gets Weatherization Contract After Being Fired For Same Work

      7. Non-Existent Oklahoma Lake in Line for Over $1 Million To
      Construct a New Guardrail

      8. Taxpayers Taken for a Ride: Nearly $10 Million to be Spent to
      Renovate a Century Old Train Station that Hasn?t Been Used in 30
      Years

      9. Ten Thousand Dead People Get Stimulus Checks, Social Security Administration Blames a Tough Deadline

      10. Town of Union, New York, Encouraged to Spend Money It Did Not Request For a Homelessness Problem It Does Not Have

      If you have a blog please post the PDF link to this paper.
      If you have the resources then please print out as many copies of this paper as you can or at least the top ten projects and hand them out at Tea Parties.