Bob Herbert: Recognizing size of economic woes necessary

[question everything]

I suppose there are people who still believe that enormous tax cuts for the very wealthy will lead to the creation of millions of good jobs for working people. In the twilight of his first term, the president, stumping for votes in regions scarred by the demon of unemployment, continues to sing from the tattered pages of his economic hymn book:


(snip)

Despite the rosy rhetoric that comes nonstop from the administration, millions upon millions of American families, including many that consider themselves solidly in the middle class, are in deep economic trouble. Friday's Wall Street Journal featured a page-one article with the ominous headline "New Group Swells Bankruptcy Court: The Middle-Aged."

Personal bankruptcy filings in the United States are at an all-time high. The story focused on "an emerging class of middle-age, white-collar Americans who make the grim odyssey from comfortable circumstances to going broke." Among the villains of this disturbing piece are the unstable job market and staggering amounts of personal debt.

(snip)

There is no plan from the administration that I've heard of to brighten this bleak picture of the American economic landscape. John Kerry and John Edwards have an opportunity in the presidential campaign to offer their prescriptions. The first essential step for anyone serious about a search for solutions would be to recognize and acknowledge the sheer enormity of the problem.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/opinion/3359329.html

Bob Herbert is a columnist for The New York Times. His e-mail addresss is [e-mail] .

[PATRICK]

1. GOP system is bleak cyclical dreariness

with planned downturns of hope depressing pain, but sometimes, usually succumbing to outlaw bursts of speculative greed that threatens to take the whole system(they believe in more than God) down to the bottom. The party of greed, depression, misery and continued planned subjugation of the little guy.

In so many weary words any economist could paint the historic and unchanging picture of GOP economics that has become dangerously synonymous with capitalism itself, insofar as it actually only represents the top interests of the predators lording over the food chain.

They, if you're greedy it's only reasonable to assume you are very competent to sustain it and trickle down to everyone else who makes it all possible and sustainable? Cruel people will be "tough" enough to defend us. Right?

So the suckers think, and hope, and are endlessly disappointed. And much much worse.