Posted 5:56 AM by Blah blah

Sigh. Reality

While the government spends millions of dollars a day playing war, the less glamorous but most important problem in America keeps getting worse and bleaker. Yes, Bush, we have more important problems than terrorism:

Workers Who Feel Discarded (NY Times):

"I've gone through a few stages of depression and frustration," said Dina Ziskin, who is 31 and lives in Brooklyn. "Why is it taking me so long? I panic a lot. I did not think it would be this difficult to find a job."

"I can't tell you the number of divorces we hear about," said Janelle Razzino, who runs an executive search firm in Westwood, N.J. "The job loss in these cases was probably the final straw. Nobody needs that kind of pressure, stress, whatever."

"It's like someone ran an electric shock through your system," said Dr. Steve Korner, a psychologist in Cresskill, N.J. "People are anxious, depressed, feeling unwanted, powerless. The job market is really awful for a lot of people."

Among the many things overshadowed by the war is the substantial human toll that is quietly being taken by the faltering U.S. economy. Putting Americans to work is not part of the agenda of the Bush administration, and the fallout from this lack of interest is spreading big time.

The U.S. is hemorrhaging jobs. On Friday the government reported that 108,000 more jobs were lost in March. Some 2.4 million jobs have vanished since the nation's payrolls peaked two years ago.

The jobless rate held steady at 5.8 percent last month, but that is extremely deceptive. People who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work are not counted when the unemployment rate is calculated. This keeps the official rate artificially low. There are five million people in the discouraged category and their ranks are growing....

There doesn't seem to be much awareness in the Bush administration of the terrible distress of the unemployed American worker. This is an ache that does not extend to the gilded towers of the very wealthy, which is where the administration has always focused its concern.

The White House response to the latest job loss figures is the same response it has had all along to bad economic news: more tax cuts are the cure.