Shadow Boxing with Obama

Obama is rigorously exercising his ability to box shadows. He's on the road pounding the message home -- two years and 8 months after becoming president -- that jobs is "issue #1" and is a crisis.

Funny... he didn't notice this crisis back in January 2009 when 800,000 jobs a month were being lost. He didn't notice it during the two years after March 2009 while he crowed that his stimulus was "just right" and that America was on the road to "recovery".

But now he's working on his left jab and his powerful right uppercut. Ready to lay out anybody who would complain that he wasn't "on the job".

Sadly... while he boxes shaddows, the real government in the US is going about slicing and dicing peoples' future. Here's Robert Reich's take:

If governors try hard enough, though, they can create lots of lousy jobs. They can drive out unions, attract low-wage immigrants, and turn a blind eye to businesses that fail to protect worker health and safety.

Rick Perry seems to have done exactly this. While Texas leads the nation in job growth, a majority of Texas’s workforce is paid hourly wages rather than salaries. And the median hourly wage there was $11.20, compared to the national median of $12.50 an hour.

Texas has also been specializing in minimum-wage jobs. From 2007 to 2010, the number of minimum wage workers there rose from 221,000 to 550,000 – that’s an increase of nearly 150 percent. And 9.5 percent of Texas workers earn the minimum wage or below – compared to about 6 percent for the rest of the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state also has the highest percentage of workers without health insurance. Texas schools rank 44th in the nation in per-pupil spending.

The Perry model of creating more jobs through low wages seems to be catching on around America.

According to a report out today from the Commerce Department, the median income of U.S. households fell 2.3 percent last year – to the lowest level in fifteen years (adjusted for inflation). That’s the third straight year of declining household incomes. Part of this is loss of jobs. Part is loss of earnings.

The problem with America is too many politicians are busy getting their own job security and not given a damn about the "average Joe". Too many politicians are at the beck and call of billionaires but are missing in action for the bottom 90%.