Category unemployment
The Dead Zone–parsing out the past year
This is (per WordPress math) my 400th blog posting. I started my blog in 2012 when the memes of Occupy Wall Street were not getting traction in Main Stream media. I also was working on touring a number of my plays–I was writing about protest and revolution and income inequality. Lots of gigs, very little money. […]
Clueless proposal on older workers
Bad few days for my personal/family economic outlook. And not just me personally–while all the happy people are crowing about how well the economy has come back, I’ve been hit with one story of personal crisis after another. A friend forced out of his job due to injury; another friend given notice from a place she’s […]
The fight for $15–bring on the briar-hoppers
How the people of my father’s social network looked on the UAW membership in Ohio–the briar-hoppers. This is a post about the fight for a $15 an hour wage for people working in Fast Food. Apologies for taking a long detour to get there. My dad was a snob. You do not need to get me […]
93 million out of the workforce
There has been much jubilation over the latest unemployment report, which shows that the economy had grown by 223,000 jobs last month. Market analysts and economists were watching the April numbers closely, after an anemic 126,000 jobs added in March had to be ‘adjusted’ down to 85,000 jobs. Remember that anything below 150,000 new jobs […]
Brooklyn Culture Jam Radio–The BP Human Extinction Bayou Blues
If you didn’t catch my performance on Monday at the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout/Disaster, I have put it up on radio at my Brooklyn Culture Jam gig. The play is titled the BP HUMAN EXTINCTION BAYOU BLUES. I play the part of Lonnie, a Louisiana based musician whose life […]
The search for a man on horseback
Noam Chomsky has just crossed a Rubicon. In a recent interview with Chris Hedges, Chomsky lays out his fears for the US and what is happening here: “I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far […]
Cheap gas and economic collapse
I was hoping to keep this short when I started writing it back in early December, but (to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson), “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” Oil prices have fallen off a cliff in recent weeks, declining some 45%. It has been a good time for motorists–and for the peak […]
Unemployment ticks down in October
The BLS figures are in today–employment ticked down by a tenth of a percent last month to 5.8%. Total jobs added was approximately 214,000. There were also upward adjustments on previous months’ hiring. Huzzah. Would such a report have been enough to help Obama and the Democrats in last week’s elections had it come out a […]
Tuesday’s election results–why the surprise?
On Election Day, I got a job as a Brooklyn, NY poll worker, which was fortuitous. I was far too busy telling voters how to insert their ballots into the scanner to keep up with developments in the electoral auto da fe that hit most of the US. Some of the news was really shocking–I […]
The Brooklyn Culture Jam 