U.S. middle class disappearing into abyss

Run time: 04:02 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PsUyEYO16E   Posted on YouTube: May 12, 2011 By YouTube Member: RTAmerica Views on YouTube: 5807   Posted on DU: May 14, 2011 By DU Member: LongTomH Views on DU: 1275

 
Why do we have to hear this from foreign sources? Our media, with notable exceptions like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, are mostly silent.

The young man in the basement said that military recruitment is doing well these days.

Is that really true? I remember at the onset of America's "wars of mistakes" that it was hard to get troops of any sort and so they deployed massive amounts of weekend warriors (National guard) and mercenaries and contractors to do the job. Not to mention forcing many to endure multiple deployments. Those conscripted in Viet Nam only had to serve one tour then they could go home. Don't know for how long, but it was relatively less brutal than what we forced servicemen to do in the last decade.

Does this explosion in military sign ups mean we no longer have to pay 300-500% premiums to get a contractor to do a lesser job than the military personnel?

It has got to suck really really bad to be graduating from college in these times. I recall in my youth the worst shame you could have is to end up living as an adult with your parents. It was real important to me at the time to escape that fate and by sheer dumb luck I entered the job market at the end of the 70's recession.


-90% jimmy

As soon as the body count started dropping and the economy really went bad, the recruiting problems went away.
I'm in the Coast Guard and they have had to cut the size of their boot camp classes by about 40% because people aren't leaving. They are also pushing officers out any way they can because the same idiots who will vote republican no matter what are now too scared to jump into the economy they helped create. So they are insulated from the consequences.
I'd like to stay in longer, but I have to get promoted to stay in and there is a fraternity like culture in the officer corps and the academy graduates watch out for each other. I can't even get a fair evaluation from them, so we'll see what happens.

and also thanks for your service. I have never been in the military (Thank God - they abolished the draft in 1972 - the year I became eligible), but I've got thirty years in the workplace, which can be very unfair and darwinistic.

Personally, I think America is in the mess it's in, in part because current corporate leaders get their management positions by self-promotion and genuflection. It has got to be brown-nosing squared in the extremely hierarchal military!

-90% Jimmy

"all our institutions are failing us, almost simultaneously, because they are all run by sociopaths" - my comment to CT gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont in early '08 when he came to town.

many still just don't get what's going on. And any investigative reporting in the US on MSM is laughable, and many would probably not watch it as "tooooo boring."

Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, as you said, are notable in coverage, but I think that correlates with the people watching them. Somewhere recently I read or heard that even if investigative reporting were brought to the masses, viewer ratings would fall off greatly and hence MSM profit. Therefore, we get the garbage that passes as news, reporting and journalism in the US.

hours a day of good reporting of news, and hardly any minutes a week devoted to the recession, its effects upon the middle class, and the misery out there.

Other than MSNBC, there's hardly a mention of the recession that isn't delivered to the audience without the implication that IT'S ALL OBAMA'S FAULT!!!!

Bush is blameless, according to Fox, it was Barney Frank that single-handedly brought on all this suffering, and Obama and the libruls "let him stay" in Congress, despite being a bad gay man!


<please note the irony>

and sucking up to the rich,Hence the disintegration of the " Comfortable People ".