Not the America I Know

It dealt with an entirely new class of American -- the long-term unemployed.  These are people with skills and training, but who have remained unemployed for years in the Obama economy.  

The piece was heartbreaking and enraging.  What's more, it tapped into an emotion that I think the GOP presidential nominee would do well to voice: The sickening sadness and incredulity that so many American experience in seeing stories like this, and then thinking, "This is not the America I know." 

In a country that has always been good and strong and productive, one that's always sprung back quickly from economic downturns, it is a crime -- truly, a crime -- there are millions of hard-working, productive people suffering profoundly because despite every effort, they cannot regain the self-respect and the simple dignity conferred by earning a paycheck.  The reason is not a mystery: Almost half of small businesses (the real employment engine in this country) cite government regulation and potential health care costs (under ObamaCare) as reasons they are not hiring.

Note that the entity profiled by "60 Minutes" -- helping the long-term unemployed -- isn't a government agency.  It's a non-profit, supported by charitable contributions and business.  And that, friends, is the America I know.  What we need is a government that gets out of the way and lets it work.