Jim Hightower

On economic news, the media sometimes treats us like a crop of mushrooms. You know how they grow mushrooms? They keep em in the dark and pile layer-after-layer of manure on em.

For example, check this month s flurry of good-news headlines announcing that America s unemployment rate had fallen from 7.3 percent to 7.1 percent!

But wipe the manure off that statistic and you ll find that there aren t more people finding jobs these days it s just that more people have been rejected so often that they ve given up looking for work.

Yeah, you see, if you get discouraged and temporarily drop out of the hunt the government simply quits counting you! That s right: You re no longer unemployed just as though you d found work! There are more than a million discouraged job-seekers out there today who re not being counted as out-of-work. And that s why the government can point a little happy face on their official unemployment numbers.

There s one more reason, too. When the unemployment surveyors talk to you, they ask if you ve been paid for doing any work during the past month. Let's say you took 50 bucks to help that worthless brother-in-law pave his driveway Blaaat! You re off the rolls! Counted as employed.

No amount of statistical silly-putty can hide the cracks in our economy. Too many Americans have been out of work too long and too many more know that they re staring unemployment right in the face.

In fact, the week, they announced this drop in unemployment, more than a hundred thousand American workers had their jobs terminated - by blue-chip companies like Sears, United Technologies and Boeing.

This is Jim Hightower saying, the government s job-count is as flaky as mama s pie crust. You know, I know and they really know that you re only employed if you re employed.