Today’s dismal jobs report shows yet again that help is not on the way for the 8 million U.S. workers who lost their jobs since the start of the Great Recession. In many parts of the country more than one in eight workers can’t find any job; among younger males, especially African-Americans, the number is much higher—in many areas one in two workers is without work.
Yet Congress, with a Democratic majority, can’t get it together to extend unemployment benefits. Our solons just flew out of town for a weeklong holiday vacation. Republicans, joined by Democratic deficit hawks, insist that any extension be “deficit neutral” and come out of unspent stimulus money. But it’s worse than that: the price Senate Republicans want to extract for helping the jobless includes extending an array of special tax breaks for business while slashing spending at a range of federal agencies.
Let it be noted that Congress has never before let unemployment benefits expire while the official jobless rate remains at such a high level.
Meanwhile, the New York Times filled us in yesterday on the heavy lifting that Congress is willing to do before skipping town for a week. Robert Pear and Jeff Zeleny reported on all the sumptuous wining and dining that went on as legislators rushed to push up their second quarter fundraising totals. As the reporters noted dryly, “The burst of fund-raisers takes place as lawmakers are considering the fate of energy legislation and a sweeping financial regulatory bill.”
So who do you suppose is buying high-priced tickets to these events? Well, you could get an idea about that from a profile in today’s Times on the rise and rise of corporate fixer Tony Podesta (“The Proud Lobbyist” reads the Times headline). Tony boasts that he lobbied on 25 different issues related to Wall Street regulation for major players like Bank of America. And yes, this proud lobbyist is indeed the brother of uber-Democrat (and former Clinton chief of staff) John Podesta. Is it any wonder that disenchanted voters mutter, “They’re all alike”?
It’s Independence Day. Let us soberly consider the state of our democracy to observe that what remains is but a hollow shell. We retain the marble façade of formal democracy, but these well-fed people in no way represent us. They represent the fixers and the string pullers.
The ancient Hebrew prophets would have something to day about this. “Hear this, you cows of Bashan who are on Mount Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy…Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood and bring righteousness to the ground!” That’s Amos. Or for a prophet nearer to our own time—and one who saw the rot of democracy with crystal clarity—consider this from Langston Hughes:
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
