The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on January 9th that the national unemployment rate surged to the highest in nearly 16 years in December, as employers cut more than half a million jobs. The unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent, the highest since January 1993, from 6.8 percent in November, the BLS reported.
The U.S. economy lost a devastating 1.9 million jobs in the past four months alone, marking the biggest drop in employment in more than a half century. In all of 2008, 2.6 million people lost their jobs, the largest slump since a 2.75 million drop in 1945, when wartime industries shut down after V-Day—and the biggest crash in my lifetime.
The slump was driven by massive layoffs in all major sectors except government, education and health. The means that although unemployment numbers in Maryland and Prince George's County have nearly doubled since a year ago, (to 5.3 percent in PG County in November 2008), the worst is clearly yet to come.
The delay in shrinkage in government payrolls means the bloodletting will just be starting in 2009, as property and business tax revenues collapse, busting the pork and patronage-heavy budgets of the People’s Republic of Maryland, and dragging our beloved beltwaystan down with it. Watch out for the state and local statistics for December, which won’t be issued until January 27th.
So what’s fearless leader Jack “Brainiac” Johnson doing? For one thing, he’s making sure that his existing coterie of “consultants” (read: cronies) are producing more b.s. for each tax-dollar misspent. Remember his “Envision Prince George’s” economic forum last fall at UMD College Park? The Democratic “creative class” were out in full force, all babbling on about how “human creativity” has replaced physical resources as the basis for the American economy. Yep, folks, this is gonna be a change “as big as the Industrial revolution.” Planning Board sachem Samuel Parker explained that in PG County, economic creativity means an increased focus on “undeveloped land.” Environmentalists call this “cornucopia”-ism,” the cult-like belief that the laws of physical science and the traditions of American society are irrelevant to prosperity and limitless growth in the 21st century. “Now is the time. Everything is changing too fast to wait,” Parker burbled.
So, as the tax base collapses, leading to a permanent budget crisis, the Democrat’s solution is to encourage “creative thinkers” to move to PG County by weakening planning standards to build more tract homes and commercail sprawl on "undeveloped land." The new sprawl will of course require a massive taxpayer investment in new roads, schools, hospitals, etc. Does it matter that we are decades behind on providing infrastructure and basic services for the “less creative” class –those dummies like you and I who are already living here? Naw.
Remember the great Jack Johnson-Jesse Jackson “partnership” to save young black males, announced at Central High School back in 2007? Naw, we can build these new developments with illegal aliens from Langley Park, who are “hard working” and “do the jobs Americans won’t do” – Americans in this case being – you guessed it—young black American males.
I suppose the most “creative” aspect of the Democratic Cornucopia 2009 program is make those thousands of foreclosed homes in PG County--the ones that were “sold” to illegal aliens and “uncreative” poor African-Americans, by that unholy alliance of affordable housing pimps and greedy financiers--just disappear from the equation. "I think some of us just overbought into the American dream," said Stan Brown, a Largo real estate lawyer and Johnson crony who serves as “people’s zoning counsel” told the Post in 2007. Pardonnez my French, but that is just b.s. The “creative class” – players like Brown and Parker and Johnson -- have put stupid greed, blind ambition, and multi-culti hubris first for years.
If you don’t think “creative class” Democrats are capable of destroying the modest economic base and quality of life of Prince George’s County, just remember what they did to the public school system over the past half-century. //Sources – Reuters, PG Sentinel, Washngton Post//
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