As we head into the July 4th weekend, some awful news that should put a damper on celebrations.....the economic crisis is not in recovery and jobless rates are still in double digits.

And, for the first time since the 1950's , the government, especially the GOP and their Democratic enablers, have turned their backs on the unemployed, regular Americans struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. 

Tens of millions are jobless (with five applicants for every available job) through no fault of their own but because of corporate greed and fraud, aided and abetted by corporate controlled Washington puppets, federal elected officials.

From Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute: 

"The June 2010 employment report released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a sobering snapshot of where we are now, two-and-a-half years since the start of the recession in December 2007.  Unemployment is at 9.5%, 45.5% of the unemployed have been unemployed for over 6 months, and there are 25.8 million workers who are either unemployed or underemployed. 

"The unemployment rate declined 0.2 percentage points in June, but that was primarily due to a decline in the labor force of 652,000 workers.  If these workers had remained in the labor force and were unemployed, the unemployment rate in June would have been 9.9%. 

"The number of payroll jobs declined by 125,000 in June, though the shedding of 225,000 temporary Census jobs more than accounted for that loss.  Excluding changes in temporary Census employment, (which, in order to get a handle on the fundamentals of the labor market, is the right way to look at the payroll numbers this summer), the number of payroll jobs increased by 100,000 in June.  This underlying rate of growth is nowhere near fast enough to put this country's 15.2 million unemployed workers back to work. 

"With a 9.5% unemployment rate and the private sector not yet able to provide a robust recovery, Congressional inaction in passing policies that support economic growth, including renewing the extended jobless benefits in the Recovery Act and providing fiscal relief to states, is inexcusable."

And what has happened?  Brent Budowsky at The Hill comments: : 

"What did American workers ever do to Republicans to deserve this?

"First the Republicans oppose almost every major jobs program.

"Then the Republicans use the obstructionist filibuster to destroy any hope of passing jobs programs.

"Now the Republicans oppose and filibuster to death jobless benefits for American workers who have lost their jobs.

"Make no mistake, I thought the president looked a little ridiculous yesterday with another campaign-style appearance out of Washington, when he should have been here fighting for jobs and jobless benefits.

"And make no mistake, Democratic leaders did not look heroic, leaving town for their holiday and leaving more than a million jobless workers without benefits that expired June 2.

"But the Republican performance is a work to behold. The Republican war against workers is an outrage against decency. The Republican economic philosophy is one of the great failures in American history, causing recession after recession, depression after depression, again and again, across decades of history. They never learn.

"Today American workers are without jobs because Republicans opposed programs to create jobs and obstructed them with filibusters. Today jobless Americans are without benefits because Republicans opposed them and obstructed them with filibusters.

"It is not enough for Republicans who cannot escape the ghost of Herbert Hoover to keep causing crashes with their failed economics. It is not enough for Republicans to oppose programs to create jobs and offer benefits to those without them. That is not enough for Republicans today; now they must destroy the essence of democracy, in a way never done in the history of our republic, by filibustering every bill to undo the damage they created or help those whose misery their policies caused.

"Today more than 1 million jobless Americans are without benefits they lost a month ago. They will be huddled at home tonight, those who still have homes, fearing for where they will get their food to eat and how they will pay for the health of their children.

"Here's what I think:

"The Democrats who failed to fight harder for them are surely not heroes, but the Republicans who made this happen sure are bums."

A question many of us have been asking repeatedly:  What happened to the country of the New Deal and the Great Society? 

"Never before has Congress dropped extended benefits with a jobless rate this high."  This is cruel and "unfair to the unemployed, who face a historically difficult situation through no fault of their own..."

The US has lost its democratic, common good compass to a plutocracy of greedy GOP and DINO fellow travelers implementing government of, by, and for the wealthy few.  

This is unconscionable.