NoJobSurvivor.com

Job losses from the start of the recession are by far the worst since WWII in percentage terms. Employment peaked in December 2007. The depth and potentially the length of significant unemployment is illustrated in the graph below from calculatedriskblog.com.

The Senate is moving to kill the public option as part of healthcare reform, thanks to a minority of "moderate" republicrats. Firedoglake.org is organizing to petition President Obama to not allow the first real opportunity to reform healthcare in this country in a decades. Failure to provide a worldclass viable healthcare system in the US now will kill any real reform for a generation or more.

Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Clinton and Professor at UC Berkeley doesn't like Obama's job plan. Today, in response to Obama's Brookings speech, he states:

The President's Job's Initiative Doesn't Measure Up
Barack Obama is trying once again for balance. On the one hand, he wants enough government spending to offset the timid spending of consumers and businesses. Otherwise, the jobs and wage recession could drag on for years. On the other hand, he doesn't want to set off more alarm bells about the budget deficit. Otherwise, conservative Democrats might join forces with Republicans to block heath care. So what does he do? A little bit more stimulus spending, but stimulus spending that doesn't look like more stimulus because it's not really adding to the deficit. It's coming out of savings from money already authorized to be spent on the bank bailout. Hmmm?