Poll after poll indicates that the majority of people in the US are concerned about jobs and the economy....not the deficit.  However, the tone deaf administration and an almost 50% millionaire Congress composed of obstructionist minority GOP and spineless majority Democrats are deliberately ignoring the majority's concerns to focus on inflicting more suffering on regular Americans while coddling the wealthy few.

Two excellent, brief articles shine a spotlight on this.  Here are some excerpts:  

Les Leopold writes at Huffington Post about unemployment and the insane a**holes blaming the jobless.

"My wife, a labor economist, is upset with NPR's "The Take Away" (and many other news programs) for reinforcing the myth that somehow the unemployed are to blame for not having a job. We all should be angry as well because the jobs just aren't there. In fact, the latest unemployment statistics show that there are five unemployed workers available for every vacant job. Why blame workers when it's so clear that Wall Street's reckless gambling caused the jobs crisis?

"By now, you'd think we'd have buried this issue. But like Dracula it refuses to die. And so, I return to the subject with the hope of driving a stake through its heart and giving it a proper burial. Among the claims we need to put to rest:

"1. Extended unemployment benefits are causing unemployment. Extending benefits for the long-term unemployed will only encourage them to sit at home on their extended derrieres and let vacant jobs go begging.

"What jobs? We're down 8 million since the start of the Great Recession. We aren't even creating enough new jobs to keep up with population growth. So what jobs are the unemployed not taking? 

"If the Democrats are so worried about unemployment benefits deepening the deficit they should start plugging that money hole by raising taxes on billionaire hedge funds executives. Just ask the billionaires to pay the same income tax rates as the rest of us, instead of dodging behind the lower capital gains rate.

"(Meanwhile, Timothy Geithner is signaling that the Administration will hold down capital gains taxes on the super-rich.)

"2. Unemployment is caused by "structural" problems in the labor markets. Labor markets have to be freed from constraints like decent pensions, a reasonable retirement age, and adequate health care benefits. These public benefits -sometimes known as the social wage -- are keeping employers from hiring. So, sorry, Americans, we'll just have to work longer and harder for less.
This chilling proposal, now on the lips of Republicans and Democrats alike, will clearly make the markets happy. But what about the rest of us?

"Is this grim belt-tightening really going to bring back the 8 million jobs we lost?

"If we cut the social wage, corporations certainly will save on labor costs and accumulate more cash. But will they productively invest it? Not according to Yves Smith and Rob Parenteau, They argue that corporate America greatly prefers to pocket the cash and use it for gambling on Wall Street:

"3. The only real jobs are private sector jobs. You see, only the private sector can rescue our economy because the jobs they create spring from consumer supply and demand, not the dictates of corrupt or know-it-all politicians. When you work for the public sector, you're practically on the dole because your wages come from tax dollars. That's quasi-socialism.

"Has anyone noticed that private industry has been on the public dole for decades? We have millions of alleged private sector jobs funded by the Defense Department and through subsidies for industries from sugar to oil, and of course banking. We've given so many tax dodges to corporate America that most companies pay almost no taxes at all. The idea of a purely private sector is pure fiction, a soothing fairy tale for Tea Partiers and faith-based, free-market ideologues.

"There's a one-sided war going on between financial elites and the rest of us. They've engineered the economy to enrich themselves at our expense, with Wall Street taking the lead.

"The numbers don't lie: In 1970 the top 100 CEOs earned approximately $45 for every dollar earned by the average worker. By last year, it was $1,081 to one. (See The Looting of America.)

"There is no economic theory that can explain this obscene gap. It has nothing to do with talent or productivity or even luck. It's just raw power. And the only thing that financial power understands is countervailing power in the form of a popular mass movement - a movement that only can start once we stop blaming ourselves for the jobs crisis.

"We have our work cut out for us."

James K. Galbreath writes at The New Republic:  "The financial crisis in America isn't over. It's ongoing, it remains unresolved, and it stands in the way of full economic recovery. The cause, at the deepest level, was a breakdown in the rule of law. And it follows that the first step toward prosperity is to restore the rule of law in the financial sector.

"First, there was a stand-down of the financial police. The legal framework for this was laid with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000......Second, the response to desupervision was a criminal takeover of the home mortgage industry......Third, the counterfeit mortgages were laundered so they would look to investors like the real thing.....Fourth, the laundered goods were taken to market.

"When the crisis went public in August 2007, Henry Paulson's Treasury took every step to prevent the final collapse from happening before the 2008 elections, extracting billions from the Federal Housing Authority and from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relieve the pressure on bank balance sheets. It worked until it didn't. In September 2008 the collapse of Lehman triggered the collapse of American International Group (AIG) and the steps that led to the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and to the effective nationalization of the commercial paper market, meaning that the Federal Reserve has become the primary short-term funder of major American corporations.  

"Upon taking office, President Obama had a chance to change course and didn't take it....

"Today the former middle class is largely ruined: upside down on its mortgages and unable to add to its debts. With housing prices low and falling, banks are delaying foreclosures because they don't wish to recognize their losses; it is a sick fact that the cash homeowners conserve by non-payment is one source of the anemic recovery so far. But construction remains depressed, state and local budgets continue in a death-spiral of spending cuts and tax increases, the stimulus will soon end, and exports may soon fall victim to international austerity and the rapidly declining euro. Meanwhile the deficit hysterics seem determined to block unemployment insurance and aid to states today, and to cut Social Security and Medicare tomorrow.

"In this way, the financial sector remains a fatal drag on the capacity for strong growth.

"What to do? To restore the rule of law means first a rigorous audit of the banks and of the Federal Reserve. This means investigations—Representative Marcy Kaptur has proposed adding a thousand FBI agents to this task. It means criminal referrals from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, from the regulators, from Congress, and from the new management of troubled banks as they clean house. It means indictments, prosecutions, convictions, and imprisonments. The model must be the clean-up of the Savings and Loans, less than 20 years ago, when a thousand industry insiders went to prison. Bankers must be made to feel the power of the law in their bones.

"We are in the post-financial-crash. We need to do what the U.S. did during the New Deal, and what France, Japan, Korea, and almost every other successful case of post-crash (or postwar) reconstruction did when necessary. That is, we need to create new, policy-focused financial institutions like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to take over the role that the banks and capital markets have abandoned.

"A reconstructed financial system should finance the reconstruction of the country. Public infrastructure. Energy security. Prevention and mitigation of climate change, including the retrofitting of millions of buildings. The refinancing of mortgages or conversion to rentals with “right-to-rent” provisions so that people can stay in their homes at reasonable rates. The cleanup and economic renovation of the Gulf Coast. All of this by loans made at low interest rates and for long terms, and supervised appropriately by real bankers prepared to stay on the job for decades."