I was watching this week on ABC and I heard George Will say..

[butterfly77]

that he was at Walmart yesterday and they had openings for 325 jobs and there were 25,000 or 2,500 people there applying for them I am quite sure he said 25,000 but that seems to high. The point was that they were trying to say that the economy is not an issue and they seem to think that it is no big deal. I say it is and the only ones who believe that it isn't is the upper middle class or someone who already has a job and thinks that it won't affect them. I would like to see some regular people on some of shows talking about issues because these people don't have a clue. Some live in their communities and don't see what is going on in other areas so they believe anything they are told by these talking heads in the media. These people will say anything to protect their investments.

[Horse with no Name]

1. I sit at a position that I have no worries

My job is safe no matter what happens to the economy.
However, I also know that I struggle every month with bills and raising kids and college expenses and gasoline expenses and gasoline, etc.
I cannot even imagine how someone that works at WalMart for minimum wage or even $1 above minimum...makes it.

[demosincebirth]

5. They don't make it, they just survive.

[Horse with no Name]

15. One lady that works with my daughter at a fast food restaraunt

She is in her late 20's and is a single mother of two kids.
She couldn't afford car insurance so she couldn't get her car tagged and licensed and couldn't get her drivers license renewed.
She got stopped with her kids in the car. She was taking them to school. The officer took her kids to school and arrested her (I think she had a warrant for a bad check). They impounded her car.
I was worried sick about her. She isn't a bad person, just a desperate person and desperate people do desperate things.
Her car was incurring charges of $20 a day for the impound as well as the towing fees.
It started looking like she was going to lose her car because she couldn't get around the money situation.
I shared this story with several people about this in prominent positions throughout town hoping for a solution.
One day last week, the officer brought her car home to her. They had taken the plates and stickers off of it, but they dropped all of the impound fees,etc. Now she just has to get it registered and inspected.
I was thankful that someone intervened, although it is still going to be difficult for her to get the necessary stuff.
I don't think she is the only one in the day to day struggle for survival. Not by a long shot.
But she works 6 days a week, her kids are in school, she is trying hard.
That is what is unfair and that is why we need a living wage.

[butterfly77]

19. Not to mention the gas prices and higher food prices..

and other expenses. These liars up in washington are making laws that make it harder and harder to survive and usually it is harder for people to pay the rent let alone these other things.

[demosincebirth]

37. A living wage will help, but will not solve poverty,

We need to shrink poverty and expand the middle class. To do this we have to go back to the forties, fifties and sixties and see what it was like then, when a workingman could buy a house, support a family and raise children all on one paycheck. Forty percent of all workers belonged to a union - thats the key. Today, only 12% belong to unions. Every time we have a republican in office, they try and pass laws, at the behest of Corporations, to make it harder for workers to organize.
These past six years have been the hardest for the workingman because we've had the republicans in charge of the three branches of government and the working poor have taken the brunt of the anti-Union policies this administration and its corporate hacks have shelled out.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel until we elect a democratic president and a democratic congress. Even then, they need then to be in office for at least 16 years for the tide to turn in our favor. Good example was FDR, when the best Labor Laws were passed that are still protecting some U.S. workers.

[butterfly77]

38. And these are the same workers who needed the

unions to get where they are today, or their parents did. Now its I got mine so I don;t give a damn.

[butterfly77]

7. They also try to pretend that crime is not up and ..

they know that some of this is the reason and this is how they make it...

[AlCzervik]

2. he did say 25,000 so i don't how in his own mind he can square

that circle of "the economy is doing great!" if everything was so peachy than Wally World would be having trouble finding applicants. Prices are up on nearly everything in the supermarket and retail stores but no one dare calls it inflation. Wages are not keeping up with inflation at all but to George Will and his ilk everything is fab.

[butterfly77]

6. I thought that I heard 25,000 and the ..

other guy the reporter who is an bush apologist was trying his best to make excuses as though everything is wonderful. He said Indiana, so why in the hell do these people keep voting for these lying asses.

[AlCzervik]

9. could be the "God, guns and gays" crowd voting against their own best

interest. Of course the real irony for that voting block is that Bush didn't deliver jack shit for them on any of those issues and you know most of them financially are probably worse off now than they were in 2004.

[butterfly77]

11. Do you think that any of the 25,000

pull yourself by your boot strap bush apologists?

[AlCzervik]

12. nevermind, and yes i think that some are.

[butterfly77]

13. I noticed that George Stephanopholis was doing his ..

damndest to change the subject he cut off George Will.

[butterfly77]

17. I don't know what you mean..

aren't these the red staters who claim everyone can make it if they pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

[AlCzervik]

18. some of the 25,000 people on line to get a job at Wal-mart, are

some of them Bush apologists--was that the question? If that is then yes i'm sure some are.

[butterfly77]

20. Yes. and these are the same people who will..

get so angry that they want to kill you if you even mention the real facts about bush adm.

[AlCzervik]

23. yup, the "Values" voters, what are their values--i don't know?

I think it's ignorance coupled with jingoism and that imo is a very bad combination.

[butterfly77]

24. I wonder how bad their situation has to become....

before they see the light.

[AlCzervik]

27. everybody has their own rock bottom before the switch goes off in their

heads, at least most people do but the 30 percenters may be the exception to that rule and they will find previously unknown lows before that happens---if ever.

[butterfly77]

30. I think that they hate Democrats so much..

and they believe the leftist label that they will continue to believe the garbage.

[InkAddict]

32. Add religious fundamentalism to the causations. n/t

[butterfly77]

34. They try to pretend that...

all dems are the same when they know that dems are diverse and all don't believe in the same issues, but they all disagree with them.

[Jamastiene]

3. You are right about having regular people on those shows.

Maybe a regular person could point out that those people are lining up for the Wal-Mart jobs because they lost their last jobs to NAFTA, SAFTA, CAFTA, etc. I'm sick of rich people who are so out of touch telling me how good I have got it. The fact is that when I get my pitiful little Associate's Degree, I'm probably going to end up using it for maybe $.20 per hour over minimum wage being an associate at Wal-Mart because the vast majority of the jobs have left America. We are not stuck with retail jobs and only slightly over minimum wage if we have any sort of education. Pathetic odds, huh?

[butterfly77]

10. How many of those 25,000 do you think ...

have went to trade schools or have a degree.

[Jamastiene]

28. I know of quite a few personally who have here.

They only get a little over minimum wage for it too. I worked at Wal-Mart for a short time years ago. I had a 2 year diploma in TV/VCR Repair, which back then would have qualified me for at least a position in the Electronics department, you'd think. They gave me the $.20 over minimum wage for having that extra two years of education over high school and they stuck me in the Pets department with crappy hours all over the place. No set schedule from day to day damn near kills a person. I mean all I'd like to have is a set schedule so I do not have to spend my precious time, and yes we poor folks have precious time too, trying to figure out how I am going to get things done at home when I have to check my shedule day by day to know what hours I work. I hated working there. Didn't last that long either. Hopefully, I will not have to go back, but if I want a job inside my own community, I will have to go back. All the other jobs besides government jobs (you have to wait for someone to retire or die to get one of those) are retail jobs. We no longer have a KMart or Roses or other options. It's either Family Dollar, Dollar General, JCPenney, or Wal-Mart.

[butterfly77]

33. I know quite a few people who.,,,

have seen their hours cut on their jobs and they have resorted to day labor jobs. This is where they get up at 5 am and wait until someone at the Labor pool offers a job for the day.

[napi21]

4. I would like to see a small groupfrom the House & the Senate take

3 months of accepting $5.15/hr and live on it. I'deven be willing to remove their mortgage payment from their responsibility, and substitute a flat $750 for each one as a rent expense. Allow NO free meals or donations from anyone, including lobbyists. Maybe 10 people from the House & 4 from the Senate because of the difference in the size of the two bodies. They would have to be monitored, and I'm positive we could find 30 or 60 citizens to volunteer for that job!

I really don't think very many of those we've elected who have EVER experienced what it's like to haveNO MONEY until payday!

[OwnedByFerrets]

16. Its a great idea

I would even go further and say 50% of them should do it. There is only ONE problem. They wont do it. They dont want to know. Have you ever heard the old saying: What you dont know wont hurt you. That must be their mantra. They dont want to know how it feels to be an average american.

[butterfly77]

22. I think that the people should vote and decide if they ..

get raise and how much also the benefits. They have too much power.

[Marr]

8. I don't understand. If thousands of people lined up for 325 low paying

jobs, that means the economy is not doing well at all by the average person. I don't see how George Will interprets that situation to mean the economy is doing well.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

14. Yes if people are scrabbling for low paying Walmart jobs with no health

benefits, I don't see how it's a good thing...

[Justice Is Comin]

42. Exactly. Is he trying to tell us 2,500 people applying for 300 jobs

means Americans without yachts are loving bush's economy? pfftttt and duh.

[LostInAnomie]

25. Those were my thoughts exactly

Even if he meant to say 2,500 that is still horrible. That's like saying "As a sign of how we are winning the fight against poverty. A new homeless shelter opened up this week containing 70 beds. As of now there is a line around the block of people waiting to get a cot."

[butterfly77]

26. Because they are rich and ...

they can't see it from others points of view, they need to live like a lot of the poor for a couple of months and they will may change/

[BuelahWitch]

21. A coworker of mine was bragging about all the "jobs created" in August

I called him on it. "Where?" I asked. He looked at me perplexed. He asked me if I read thepapers. I told him I knew about the figures, but I wanted him to tell me where all these jobs were created. "If there are all those jobs Mark, why are we working here?" (in a call center. Better pay than Walmart, but the shittiest call center in town) He then muttered that maybe they were lying about all the jobs created. I just said, "Thank you!"

[HughBeaumont]

29. Tell him those are shitty numbers.

You need at least 150k to match Birth/Death rate, not 128k as created last month. Also, a strong month wouldn't have 11,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector.

[butterfly77]

35. Some of these people are the main people who find..

any excuse not to vote or get involved. But...mention the draft and their ears perk up

[HughBeaumont]

31. When a sentence starts off with "I heard George Will say" . . .

. . .dollars to donuts it's usually followed with assloads of neo-con, pro-business, pro-"stay the course", jingoist steamers like that one about Wal Mart. George, ANY amount of people applying for a limited number of shitty-paying, no-benefit jobs is NOTHING to celebrate and certainly NOT a sign of a "strong and gettn stronger" economy, you insufferable BASTARD!

[butterfly77]

36. He seemed to be saying it as though ...

he was proving a point about how good it is....

[SmokingJacket]

44. I don't get this... HOW can that be spun to say the economy's good?

Most of those people will not get a job at that Wallmart.

[HughBeaumont]

45. That's the thing . . . they think it IS good.

And that's what's painfully sad about it all. They think "A job's a job's a job". Don't matter how much it pays or whether it can adequately feed and clothe you or not, or provide you with benefits the family desperately needs (because, after all, that's not what the corporation is supposed to DO) .. . it's a JOB that us miserable peons should be grateful it was created at all.

See, that what they miss, or they know and just flat out don't care either way because they got theirs and that's all that matters. Mankiw, Dreier, George Will, Marc Andreessen, Elaine Chao and the rest of these shithead neo-clown free-trader Reaganomics scumbags; they remain apathetic and see evidence of jobs being created as "Bush's economic policies are WORKING". Wrong on all counts, these idiots are.

[butterfly77]

46. 25,000 people applying for 325

jobs and he says this shows how good the economy is.

[cornermouse]

39. You don't see George working there do you...

And you never will. Because he knows he's lying.

[butterfly77]

40. That is why these shows should be set

in a town meeting style.

[TahitiNut]

41. Cheap-labor conservatives think 100 people applying for each job opening

... is a "good thing." They can only regard wages paid to labor as EXPENSES, not income.

In fact, "productivity" in their mind is getting more labor for fewer dollars. That's why they need to be ousted from making any kind of public policy. They're nothing but wannabe slave owners.

[Redneck Socialist]

43. Ummm, people applying at wal mart isn't a sign the economy is doing well,

it's a sign the economy sucks. People generally apply to wal mart out of desperation, not as a first career choice.

[undeterred]

47. I'm trying to picture Geoge Will at Wal-Mart.

:crazy: