Mustang Rambles

There are countless reports on how the unemployment rates are setting records, especially in the Western states. Rates of 10 or 11 percent are touted as record rates. Then the article states that they are the records since 1983. That’s not a very long time to be keeping records, but apparently it does make for sensational headlines and supports the Democratic Obamanation in its’ difficulties in pulling us out of this mess. Just remember, that 1983 is an artificial baseline determine by statisicians who can always use figures to lie and to prove any point they want.

For the real record, I was around in 1983, and I don’t remember any real headlines or angst over the situation. We were in a mild recession, but Reagan pulled us out of it by cutting taxes. The only time unemployment hit me was in 1975, eight years earlier when I got out of the Army and returned to my home in the Northwest. In my college town where I was born, unemployment was 18 percent, and it seems to have overwhelmed the 20 percent mark once. Most of the lumber mills were shut down and one had dismantled and sold off all its equipment to Paraguay. That was a tough time. While there were jobs, they were hard to get and I was over-qualified for most of them because I had a college degree. I spent six months on unemployment, went to grad school for a year on the G.I. Bill and did find work as a security guard for a nickel over minimum wage. After that school year, I lived in an old VW bus while on unemployment and looking for work again. I ended up living in a shed behind a farm house courtesy of the four nurses who lived there who felt that a man around the place gave it more security. I used kerosene lamps, had a wood burning heater, and carried my water.

What got me off the dole two years after I entered the job market was a government program called CETA, Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. I was picked up to work with the Oregon State Employment Office as a Disabled Veterans Outreach Planner. It was a Stimulus Plan of sorts that actually created jobs for a period of time. I was eventually hired by the Employment Office.

The point to all this is that while it may be tough now, it is not as tough as it has been in living memory. Maybe in the memory of all the young reporting and governing pukes who never read their history, but not for folks who have been through hard times. When the economy comes back, and it will, put the government accolades in perspective. Was it really the stimulus package of the Big O? Or did it happen because America does work for a living and that work brought us around while the Stimulus Package dollars were laying out there waiting to be diverted or misspent.