I just thought that with time
Thoughts of you would leave my head
I was wrong, now I find
Just one thing makes me forget
Red, red wine
Stay close to me
Don`t let me be in love
It`s tearin` apart
My blue, blue heart
UB40
We're all familiar with the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid," but these days the stakes are so high and those lulling us down the wrong path is so powerful I want to change the phrase to "drink the wine." UB40 sang of red wine helping to ease the pain of lost love whereas these days I see the mass media as serving up red wine to ease the reality of our economy condition. The media is so enthralled with President Obama and the anti-capitalism agenda it acts as an army of deflectors, finding silver linings in the rubble of disaster or villains in pools of honest people.
The dangers of mass media lying to the public ranges from less informed people to angry people ready to harm others that have never harmed them or people being pardoned for their own short-comings allowed to heap them onto strangers or mythological bogeymen. When most Americans look out their windows they know this is not the country it can be and it doesn't matter on what side of the political aisle one stands. We simply aren't the vibrant nation that was propelled to the top of the world. There's something wrong, something awfully wrong with the economic "recovery" that barely exists.
So we all long for those days of yore, better economic times, now a fading memory or lost love.
Helping us forget is the mass media, which has assisted the administration in the redistribution of accountability. These days guns and the NRA kill people instead of people pulling the trigger and communities that have made excuses for the genocidal for decades. These days fat people are fat because of fast food restaurants and so-called food deserts. These days lazy students and indifferent parents are cleared if their schools don't have whiteboards and laptops.
All of those examples pose immense threats to the future of America as there is no way we can remain the most amazing nation on the planet by allowing massive killings by young people of others that look just like them yet innocent, law-abiding citizens, get the blame.
We can't stay on top by allowing schoolchildren to be subpar because their schools aren't brand new-it's a cop out. People are responsible for their own actions-it's a wonderful gift from God called free will.
Bending Our Mind & Softening Our Will
The March jobs report was such a disaster, it called for an extra large dose of red wine, a bottle in the range of the Balthazar.
(Bet you didn't know those giant wine bottles actually have names and after "magnum" they are all inspired by names in the Bible beginning with Jeroboam also known as a double magnum -keep away from Chris Brown. By the way, there are five sizes larger than the Nebuchadnezzar shown on the chart below with the largest being Melchizedek king of Salem for which tithing is associated.)
With only 88,000 jobs created last month the mass media immediately leaped on the unemployment rate which declined to 7.6% from 7.7% ignoring the fact 496,000 people dropped out of the labor force. The not in labor force has surged to 89,967,000 from 80,699,000 since February 2009. It's a sobering thought or would be if the media wasn't plying the public with happy faces and superlatives for polices that have been nothing but destructive. The jobs numbers for March were not just ugly they were heartbreaking and underscore trends we can no longer afford to look away from.
There are serious problems and any attempt to blame it on sequester or the fiscal cliff battle or anything other than official fiscal policy is inexcusable. This recovery has been doomed from the start and only the might of the great American Economic machine has made the difference. The DNA of success from scratch lives on although like all success it is chipped and growing discouraged. This would-be economic recovery is beyond disappointing. If it was working it would bring new meaning to jobless recovery but there are few areas of the economy outside of energy that are really booming.
Dropout Nation
If you are saying to yourself what about housing and the auto market, there are serious issues with those segments of the economy.
Last month saw "strong" vehicle sales but General Motors lost a big swath of market share in cars (Ford a slight dip as well) and had to pay $7,500 to move the Silverado off lots. Then there are subprime loans which have exploded.
Home prices are increasing but off considerably as the rush to buy homes has eluded Main Street, still willing to rent and wait out the recovery. Housing is benefiting big time from investors and flippers but first time buyers remain elusive.
Not only haven't there been a lot of big monthly jobs reports (only two under President Obama) but the more worrisome part has been the dropouts. People are simply dropping out lured by the a bevy of benefits and a sofa that doesn't care if you get up when the alarm clock goes off. The mass exodus from the jobs market is a trend that could ultimately send the unemployment number toward 0.0 now that would make for an amazing newspaper headline- if only there was anyone that could afford to purchase the newspaper.
As people drop out of the jobs market they are no longer counted in the unemployment number.
Let's say a crew of five are stuck on a deserted island and must survive on coconuts. They go out each day and typically find three coconuts for a 60% success rate but one day a disgruntled survivor states his intention to stop looking for coconuts. Four of the survivors head out and find three coconuts for a 75% success rate. If you're the New York Times and a liberal is in charge of this shipwreck the headlines would tout the improvement in finding coconuts even though somehow that guy that stayed at camp has to eat and will be a drag on the rest.
But, it just gets better, because another guy gets angry and stops going out to search for coconuts. The three that do head out find three coconuts and the Times gets the message in a bottle and proclaims "Coconut Hunts Never Better 100%". This charade goes on until there's only one guy left, the guy the rest call "greedy", he typically finds a coconut each time out so the headlines still read "Success" but by this time it's a mess and only gets uglier.
America isn't a deserted island but policies have left the economy shipwrecked and more coconuts given away for free has only attracted those that once were willing to go on the hunt. So last month, because half a million people abandoned the work force, each racial group saw a decline in its unemployment rate.
I scanned the Sunday talk shows and the topic wasn't jobs or lack of jobs. Instead the red wine that flowed sought to make us focus on North Korea or immigration reform where a single person threat of filibuster resulted in a comment about all republicans trying to snuff out any bills. That was on "Face the Nation" which incidentally didn't mention jobs once during the entire show. Praise mediocrity and make us forget the love of excellence.
I don't know about you but its tearing apart my blue, blue heart.