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Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Jobs market

Fired!
Eight hundred thousand American families began to lose their unemployment benefits Wednesday morning, after Republican senators blocked an emergency move to continue providing aid to jobless Americans.
Column goes on and on about how the Republican congressional agenda is only interested in protecting the wealthy but if you don't understand that by now you aren't paying attention. The key is, what is "our side" doing to counteract this agenda?

As the unemployment benefits were running out, President Obama was meeting with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and suggesting that it was possible to work with the GOP in a “productive” manner. And Obama was dispatching Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner—“the guy that caused (the problem) among other people on Wall Street,” says McDermott—to cut a deal.

The president is making a mistake, says McDermott.

“He keeps making the same diagnostic error. He thinks that you can shame the Republicans,” the congressman says. “They have no ability to be shamed by children without food, or people being thrown out of their homes or all the problems that come with unemployment. And so it’s wasting your time doing that.”


In other words, the ineffectual Obama administration honestly couldn't give a shit about unemployed people.

In a related story,

Hired!
Citigroup Inc., recovering from its $45 billion bailout in 2008, is in advanced talks to hire former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Orszag, 41, may take a job in the New York-based firm’s investment-banking division, the people said, declining to be identified because the discussions are private. An announcement may come as early as today, one of the people said.

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