New Jobs? At What Cost?

After almost nineteen years in the restaurant business, the last two in which she co-managed a restaurant of 120 employees, our younger daughter was laid off this week. And are there any new jobs out there in the marketplace for her?  According to The Washington Post:

The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims rose by 2,000 to 414,000 for the week ending Sept. 3. The department said last week that no net jobs were created in August.

(picture courtesy of CBS News)

Last night's speech, in which President Obama said "PASS THIS BILL"  (the $447 billion American Jobs Act proposal) more times than I bothered to count, was disappointing and disingenuous.  In less than 45 seconds:



From this site:

Essentially, the jobs plan is an IOU from a president and lawmakers who may not even be in office down the road when the bills come due. Today’s Congress cannot bind a later one for future spending. A future Congress could simply reverse it.

Currently, roughly all federal taxes and other revenues are consumed in spending on various federal benefit programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, food stamps, farm subsidies and other social-assistance programs and payments on the national debt. Pretty much everything else is done on credit with borrowed money.

So there is no guarantee that programs that clearly will increase annual deficits in the near term will be paid for in the long term.

The Los Angeles Times this morning said that Obama

... then provided a joint session of Congress with a broadly ambitious list of goals that sounded to many people very much like a lot more spending, like, say, the $787 billion economic stimulus bill of 2009 that didn't stimulate much of anything except that national debt.

I am so disheartened for my daughter Heidy.  She is a hard worker and I have been told by many of her co-workers that she rules fairly and with a velvet hammer.  Hopefully, she can obtain another position she likes and in which she will prosper.

My thoughts are with all those seeking work.

"It's recession when your neighbor loses his job, it's a depression when you lose your own."  Harry S. Truman

Tonight on TV

stolen taken from my brother's blog

York, South Carolina

The weekend was spent with our daughter and SIL in York, SC.  Julie is feeling just fine, thank you, and is visited at home three times a week by an RN, and less than a dozen times a week by a CNA.  Her CA prognosis is up in the air, as a PET scan will be reviewed by the tumor board this week.  Her chemo has been suspended for a while as her tumors have responded well to the drugs.

We celebrated her birthday with presents, a lunch in Rock Hill, SC and champagne.  This is Julie:

Julie, Jack, Gene and Jack's dad on their porch...very hot and very humid!

Historic York and its ancient cemetery and tombstones gave a glimpse into the past and occupied some of our hot and humid time in the outdoors.  Next time, I will take pencil and paper for rubbings so I can get the oldest dates on the marble that have been obscured by moss and the ravages of weather.

Engraving on the stone above shows that Isabella Davis died in 1834, a consort of the Reverend William C. Davis.  A consort?  That was odd wording, but she would have been born in 1767, so terms were different back then.  (Mrs. Davis would certainly not know what a microwave, airplane, digital clock, battery or the internet was, so why do I think the term "consort" is odd?)

To round out the history of the graveyard, a Civil War veteran's stone:

Kudzu, originally imported from the Orient to prevent soil erosition, is an invasive species in the South, growing a foot a day under optimal conditions.  This picture showing kudzu covering both land and power lines is around the corner from Julie and Jack's house:

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Historic homes abound in York, SC, population of about 10,000 people.  Here are a few old homes on Congress Avenue:

Now we are home.  The brief interruption in the South did allow one visit to a Pineville, NC yarn shop.  Yes,  the credit card was used for some pettable and pretty fibers at The Yarn Shop by Rainy Day Creations in Pineville.