We have an unemployment crisis of massive proportions with tragic consequences.   The people of the United States desperately need a 21st century New Deal.

But instead of Democrats fighting to put people to work, we have spineless DINOs acting like Republicans and/or in cahoots with the GOP.

As Art Levine writes at Working, In These Times:

"While pundits and Democratic leaders give lip-service to the notion that more needs to be done as they celebrate the victory over the GOP, [regarding unemployment benefits extension] the reality is that there's no urgency in Washington to create more jobs, the real solution to unemployment.

"Even as mainstream and progressive economists such as Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz have issued a new call for urgent stimulus spending now and putting off deficit cutting, Washington remains fixated on deficits and long-term debt, instead of the lost revenues, economic blight and wasted lives caused by unemployment.

".....the small-bore extension of unemployment, while clearly helpful, doesn't address the deeper economic chasm that is well on its way to destroying the career opportunities of an entire generation:

" 'In February on our site [ourfuture.org] we began calling for a plan to create 402,000 jobs a month over three years. It is true that such a level of job creation, sustained month after month, would be extraordinary by today's standards. But if President Obama and Congress had at least tried, the political arguments at center stage would be over bold interventions that would make working-class people in Nevada, Michigan, California, Rhode Island, Florida and Mississippi--all states where the June unemployment rate was 11 percent or higher--believe that some real leadership was being exerted on their behalf.

" 'Instead, Democrats are congratulating themselves that they have successfully gotten extended unemployment benefits past the "hell-no-you-can't" Republicans, but are not marshaling themselves or the progressive base in fighting what should be the real war: a program that moves the economy toward that 400,000-jobs-a-month goal through investments in infrastructure, investments in people, clean energy legislation and rational tax policies.' "

Robert Reich weighs in with this commentary:

"The 1.5 dip recession should cause the President to demand a large-scale national jobs program including a new WPA that gets millions of Americans back to work even if government has to pay their wages directly. Included would be zero-interest loans to strapped states and locales, so they didn’t have to cut vital services and raise taxes. They could repay when the economy picked up and revenues came in. The national jobs program would also include a one-year payroll tax holiday on the first $20,000 of income.

"The President should stop talking and acting on anything else – not the deficit, not energy, not the environment, not immigration, not implementing the health care law, not education. He should make the whole upcoming mid-term election a national referendum on putting Americans back to work, and his jobs bill. Are you for it or against it?

"But none of this is happening. The hawks and blue dogs are still commanding the attention. Herbert Hoover’s ghost seems to have captured the nation’s capital. We’re back to 1932 (or 1937) and the prevailing sentiment is government can’t and mustn’t do anything but aim to reduce the deficit, even though the economy is going down."

He says the following about Ben Bernanke who was part of the greedy financial industry disaster for which regular Americans are now suffering (yet re-upped for a second term at the Fed courtesy of President Obama who was either clueless or incompetent):

"He [Bernanke] admitted unemployment would probably remain high for a long time, and the likelihood of growth was 'weighted to the downside,' which in Fed-Speak means we’re still in trouble. And he said the Fed still has the tools to do what’s needed if the economy needs more help.

"But would he use the tools now? No. 'We need to look at them carefully to make sure we’re comfortable with any steps that we take,' This is like the captain of the Titanic looking carefully at his lifeboats to make sure he’s comfortable with using them as the ship starts sinking.

Absolutely unconscionable and disgusting.