Chicago Tribune: Bush touts it, jobless doubt it

[PhilipShore]

Chicago Tribune
Bush touts it, jobless doubt it
By Mark Silva
January 30, 2006

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0601300221jan30,1,4547206.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

ST. LOUIS -- Angie Totten was 19 when she started on the night shift at Ford Motor Co. She met her husband on the mini-van assembly line. They had two children. In the good years, with overtime, they made close to $100,000 a year.

Now Totten, 39, and her husband, Jeff, 40, have no clue about the future for them or their kids, ages 9 and 7. The Tottens, along with more than 1,300 others, lost their jobs last week when Ford announced it would idle the old Hazelwood assembly plant outside St. Louis in March and close it in 2008.

It is against a backdrop of bad news from U.S. manufacturing giants such as Ford and General Motors Corp.--companies that once empowered an American middle class and now struggle for survival--that President Bush will deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday.

The president will trumpet the nation's economic successes, with unemployment down and productivity up, crediting his tax cuts and calling on Congress to make them permanent. But the gap between the president's view and that of many working Americans is a yawning one and quite apparent in this once proud but dramatically shrunken middle-American city where good-paying work is hard to find.

[OneBlueSky]

1. the illusion that is BushCo's "strong economy" . . .

[ClintonTyree]

2. It is strong.........

for the already wealthy. The middle class, the class that MADE this country is disappearing faster than an "all-you-can-eat buffet" in front of Candy Crowley. Soon there will only be two classes in this country, the rich and the slave (poor) who will always be beholding to the rich for their meager existence. THAT is when the feces will hit the air circulation device!

[Sadie5]

3. The wealthy don't have to worry

Bush will give them another tax cut at middle class expense if the going gets tough.

[Skittles]

4. BUSH DID NOT INHERIT A RECESSION

THAT BASTARD CREATED IT