No more feeling like a number

    The really sad thing about the current state of affairs is that "you [don't even] feel like a number," and in some ways you want to keep it that way.
   In what should have its own glorified alcove in the Labor Department's Hall of Fame would be the edict which eliminated certain laid-off ranks from earlier unemployment equations in order for the 'official unemployment number' to artificially lower the actual number of those who have lost — yet want — jobs.
   Investors' Business Daily and Christian Science Monitor recently found "27.8% of households with at least one member who's unemployed and looking for a job, while the latest poll conducted in the second week of July showed 28.6% in that situation. That translates to an unemployment rate of over 22%, says Raghavan Mayur, president at TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, who has started questioning the accuracy of the Labor Department's jobless numbers.
   Currently, the Labor Department 'tracks' the unemployment rate at around 9.5%. You cannot have double-digit unemployment numbers.
   And hell, this all was probably made possible by Our First Quitter and his historic '70s trip to embrace the Yellow Horde; afterward poor Jimmy Carter didn't have a chance with an oil crisis, a hostage crisis and saddled with the criminally inept Bert Lance.
   The unemployment numbers at the time didn't help, but when Carter came in the rate stood at 7.5%, dipped to 5.8% and ended at 7.2%. Shocking. It was a time of malaise.
   It was time for Ronald Reagan.
   The economy's recovery [which runs on its own schedule], the demise of the USSR, and a global celluloid face, all helped Reagan's populist posturing as he decimated the unions, starting with the air traffic controllers...
   {this does not wipe the blood from the unions' outstretched hands as the country took another bold step not for mankind but for greed}
   ... and despite an unemployment rate of 9.7 in 1982, 'The Great Communicator' kept us feeling good about ourselves.
   It was time to feel good and charge, charge ahead.
   Then an equally undomesticated, over-FBI fed, New World Order George Bush fell victim to economic angst, an unemployment rate of 7.5% and the great sucking sound of Ross Perot.
   Thankfully, that good ol' boy Bill and his entourage {"Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow"} came to the rescue during a time of economic rebound through the '90s: a time too feel good ... and time to play with some numbers.
   It was time to tinker with those nettlesome negative numbers that take the shine off economic news. Such as "let's quit including a segment of the unemployed which has always been part of the formula."
   SGS (Shadow Government Statistics) unemployment includes "discouraged workers" who the Clinton administration simply dropped from the labor force in 1993. After all, they can't be looking for work after 6 months, so let's just drop them off the list.
   "Yeah, that's the ticket. Just quit counting the bums."
   So since 1994 the jobless rate has never been above 6.1% and shrank to 4.0% by 2008.
   Obama now only has to pray every day that the 'official count' remains under ten and is enough to offset the 'actual number' between 20 and 25 percent.
   It doesn't look promising.