done according to my doctrine, then i would rather see people suffer than to make progress and i think that is the spirit of what gibdz is saying. have you told that to your colleagues in what gibbs calls the professional left? well, i don t know how you define the professional left, but i have said that to them and i have talked to them. i think it is the height of arrogance to sacrifice progress on indoctrinal inflexibility. well, let s talk about the economy, because jobs, jobs, jobs is the key to the elections, and it is 9.5% overall and among whites 6.8% and hispanics 12.1%, and african-americans 15.6%. and those numbers don t even include folks who have just given up looking for jobs. it is a lot higher in all of those categories. is the administration doing enough right now to help? i think the administration and the congress is challenged
hardest hit by the recession, unemployment at 15.6%. a great depression level. why was the african-american community hit so hard? the african-american community unlike the white community has not profited as much from the education revolution that s taken place over the last 20 or 30 years. they have fewer college graduates. among the males in the african-american community, the education performance has not done well as all. women have done better through the process of civil rights and so forth. a lot of it is the problems of poor inner city neighborhoods and the kinds of trouble and difficulties adolescents get into. they eventually work their way through that but tend to get into blue collar jobs in an economy where there is not a lot of manufacturing happening. had manufacturing jobs lost 5 million over the last ten years, those are the kind of jobs african-american males have
these other millions of folks who just have left the labor force, it would be much higher. it would be. here is another very disturbing number in today s numbers that just came out. among everyone, 9.5% unemployment. among whites 8.6%. among blacks it s 15.6%. among latinos 12.1%. among those looking for work. let s talk about blacks. 15.6%. is there anything special you the labor secretary are doing to help these folks, almost double the unemployment rate for the country as a whole? one thing we did do through partnership grants is target areas that had for example 15% or higher rates of unemployment. that definitely hits that target population including other people of color and people that are just dislocated because michigan, ohio, other states were hard hit as well. we know that we have to do more. we know that education training, those dollars went out to communities that are also being
from sheriff association in sacramento county, california. gary, you say it s time to stop scare tactics. absolutely. i m sure that mark will get out of the violin. they love to say oh, my gosh, no education system, there won t be teachers or firefighters. let s just use some of the examples. throughout the recession while areas like construction have gone skyrocketing, in terms of unemployment, you know what the unemployment rate is amongst teachers, all public officials? full employment. it s 4-5%. a lot of states have hired more teachers than they ve seen increase of the students. let s just say god forbid, 100,000 teachers were laid off. that only moves the needle. the student to teacher ratio from 15.3 to 1 to 15.6 to 1. firefighters in l.a., you know how many firefighters there are in l.a.? 1,100. do you know how many they are
87.6% of the people surveyed said no, they are not using it well. they have priorities for those tax dollars that makes so much sense, but washington isn t listening. big research out of ohio did it exclusively for us, for the dolans and our cnn segment. 18% said we want a comprehensive number one choice, by the way, 18.6% said we want a comprehensive jobs program for the millions of unemployed americans. 16.7% want to reduce the budget deficit. also 16.7% say, please return the money to the social security trust fund that has no money. we would like to continue to get checks. 15.6% want their taxes lowered. those are the four. something else to talk about when we come back, folks want to