The RAnts of RA

Despite new articles with headlines proclaiming “Jobless rate falls slightly in Mother Lode in Oct.“, the unemployment rate, in fact,  continues to climb.

Jobless rate falls slightly in Mother Lode in Oct.
November 25, 2011 03:24 am

Unemployment Continues to Climb

The unemployment rate fell in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties in October compared to last year, according to a recent study completed by the Employment Development Department which tracks local labor statistics.

Tuolumne County saw modest job creation and its unemployment rate fall to 12.5 percent in October, compared to 13.1 percent during the same period last year. However, it was a slight increase from September, when unemployment hit a two-year low of 12.4 percent.

The number of people filing for unemployment benefits fell from 3,320 last year to 3,160 in October, with the number of employed people climbing slightly from 21,980 last year to 22,020 in October.

Most job sectors saw falling or flat employment figures last month, with modest gains in government jobs and hospitality.

I guess if you don’t mind serving the Chinese and Japanese tourists, instead of going on vacation yourself, the increase in hospitality employment is a good thing. However, adding even more government jobs continues to take our nation down the wrong path to increased government spending. It’s a bleak outlook, no matter how the media tries to paint a rosy picture.

Related articles

• Weekly jobless claims above 400K (hotair.com)
• NC prepares to announce October unemployment rate (charlotte.news14.com)
• MNI Survey: Japan Oct Jobless Rate Seen Unchanged at 4.1% (forexlive.com)

In with the new and out with the old. Screw the taxpayers in the process. The government continues to have a free-for-all with our money,  expecting our unborn grandchildren to foot the bill.

As an IT content manager, I see government waste first-hand, and to be frank, it pisses me off.   I spend hundreds of wasted hours on my numerous websites,  redirecting links that have been moved or removed  — the vast majority of them are tax-funded government websites.

Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to find information on government services? I can only hazard to guess that this is done intentionally, but I simply can’t fathom a reason, other than perhaps  to pay back web designers for campaign contributions. In other-words, you work on my campaign  and if I win you can work for the government creating my new identity.

The problem is these wonderful new website guru’s never bother to clean up the mess they have created by actually redirecting former URLs to the proper location. That would be too easy. Many times, they don’t even bother to archive the old information, often the site is simply dumped and they start over from scratch.

Every election there is a new round of candidates, a new set of paybacks and more wasted tax dollars. Data that is created at public expense belongs to us — you and me. Why isn’t that information being archived and preserved for public consumption? If the data is being stored, is it readily and easy obtained by John Q. Public?

I don’t have a problem with a newly elected official creating and maintaining their new online identity for their position, but IT content managers should create a usable archive of data, along with properly executed redirects. It would make my life much nicer, and provide far better usability and public access. I am so sick of hearing about our trillion dollar budget (Budget, now  that is totally laughable.  The  word budget implies  accountability, the numbers are so huge,  they are all but meaningless.).

The only thing that makes sense is that our elected officials don’t believe any of us will live long enough to have to worry about paying back the money. Only time will tell.

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