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"This morning we got some good news: The nation added 121,000 new jobs
for the month of June..."
George W. Bush
News Conference - Chicago 7/7/06

In his July 7, 2006, George W. Bush celebrated the creation of 121,000 new jobs around the nation for the month of June. In a nation of millions of inhabitants, surely, 121,000 new jobs in one month is like trying to find spit in the vast oceans of this planet. Bush may have had an inkling about the fact that 121,000 jobs is really pittance in a nation as vast and wide as this and, hardly a cause for celebration because he added, "That's 5.4 million jobs since August of 2003." I will leave it to the statisticians to decide whether 5.4 million jobs since August of 2003 is a another one of Bush's cause célèbre, or not, but I will forever wonder, where on this earth, and in this country, or in this world, have these jobs been created?

The headline for the local newspaper yesterday, Sunday, July 9th, was, "Owners losing homes". Foreclosures are up. People around here are hanging on to their jobs for dear life. And, jobs that afforded them a worry-free breakfast in the comfort of their homes each morning, hardly affords them that worry-free breakfast anymore.

Bush plows on, however. "People are better off. Things are working." He says. Yes. Perhaps they are working for him, and for the Halliburton crowd, and the Exxon Mobile crowd, but I hardly think that they are working for county and city employees, pool cleaning services, fence installers, pipe fitters, office workers, or, I dare say, even for doctors who bill HMOs for services rendered to HMO subscribers only to have payment for services rendered slashed more than 50% by most of the HMO companies.

Keeping economic vitality alive, he says, is a fundamental question faced by himself and others in Washington. "What are the policies necessary to keep this growth strong?" He wonders. Get ready for the butcher's knife now because he wants to keep taxes low. "One policy is to keep taxes low. If you raise taxes, you take money out of the pockets of small businesses and entrepreneurs, which makes it harder to increase employment."
He said.

As a former solo practitioner in mental health counseling-something that qualifies me to say I once owned a small non-profit business, paying taxes never broke my back. And it made the nation better off when there was money, collected through our taxes, to keep up with our infrastructure; money to go to our States, to go to our counties, to go to the cities and towns in our counties to pay for the upkeep of our roads and highways and hospitals (hey! Those were jobs and people worked at them, and they got paid a salary, and they ate a breakfast free from worries in the comfort of their homes each morning as they prepared to go to work). As a result of a government which collected taxes, our property taxes were kept low and within easy reach of our pockets. Gasoline prices were affordable and people could commute to and from work, without having to worry whether filling up the gas tank was going to eat-up all of their hard-worked, hard-earned, wages, and whether they were going to have to quit work and hope to find some equal paying job near their homes. Food was affordable. The cost of transporting food from one state to another across our nation's highways was not prohibitive. Due to the cost of gas prices today, Supermarket prices are becoming mind-boggling and oxygen snuffing. Many tables go without, one or another, essential nourishment, but, I am willing to wager, that, like his father in 1992, Bush has no idea of what goes on in supermarkets and at supermarket counters across the nation where people tell cashiers, "This is what I have. If the amount on my shopping bag exceeds this, then I am going to have to put some things back."

I still fail to see how raising taxes makes it harder to increase employment. I am about to believe (or, I already believe) that tax collecting is about keeping the middle class healthy, thriving, and alive. Perhaps raising taxes, or tax collecting, is something that goes counter to the ambitions of power grabbers, elitists of any and every sort, garden variety snakes and evil sorts. It is certainly something that the Bushes have never believed in.

Bush also said, "...one way to make sure we continue to grow our economy is to have a work force that's capable of filling the jobs of the 21st century." He did not however clearly say what the jobs of our 21st century are.

Bush did go on to tout reading scores for Chicago area students. He said, "The mayor said something interesting. He said, reading scores are up. That's a good sign. It means people are measuring and teachers are teaching. And when you have the basic-you know, the basic foundation for a good education laid, then you can focus on math and science. So the truth of the matter is, we have to make sure our kids have got the math and science skills to fill the jobs of the 21st century."

But he seemed to leave an empty there, a void: what are the jobs of the 21st century that need math and science skills? And are we going to develop people with math and science skills without giving them the benefits of a well rounded education? An education which would also help in developing the side of their human equation which teaches them to think, to feel, to have empathy?

Or, has training in and learning of any of the Humanities become something to be had only by the elite and the children of the elite? Why do I think that Bush was only talking about masses of workers taught to press a level on an x-ray machine, or to press a key on a computer board, or ... But when all of that is done, then what? Should the masses not have an appreciation of philosophy, art, music? Should they not be able to go home and enter the land of those higher instincts and learning that have moved civilized societies forward from time immemorial? Has that no been the charge of education, including the masses?

Did Bush himself ever learn the basics of a good education? Is this the reason why our country has been set adrift by him?

Authors Bio:
E.T.SIMON ... Keeping the Bio Real and Transparent ...
E. T. SIMON is more often like a transplanted palm tree from the land of Santiago de Cuba where she was born to a Cuban, Tulane University, lawyer educated father and, a Mississippi, mother, great-granddaughter of American Revolutionary War hero, Brigadier General Andrew Pickens who is credited with the victory against the British in the Battle of the Cowpens. Although at times, E.T. Simon is more like, the fruit of the pecan of her Mississippi grandparents pecan farm of long ago, or even like the Sycamore so firmly rooted in the Florida Peninsula. As such, the daughter of bi-cultural, bi-lingual parents, E.T. Simon navigated the bi-cultural ties, bi-lingual shores of her birth, while learning to appreciate Cuban and Southern cuisine and cultures, from a very early age.

At the age of 15, two years after her mother's death, she dreamt about running away from her home to join the , "Bohemians" of the 1950s in New York's Greenwich Village and become a writer. She did not. In 1961, at the age of 18 her father sent her across the pond to her mother's family in Mississippi in an effort to keep her from falling prey to Fidel Castro's repressive agents who were on her trail for her opposition to Fidel Castro.
Bumpy rides, or not, In 1976, E.T. Simon, after twelve years of part time studies, with in-between times-off for parenting, obtained her B.A. in English with a Major in Literature and a double minor in Psychology and Philosophy. In 1985 she obtained her Master's Degree in Counseling and in 1987 her License in Marriage and Family Therapy.
Her quest to pursue a MFA in Creative Writing was derailed when a stuffed shirt Chaucer Literature Professor graded her paper on The Prioress Tale short of the A she needed to establish her credentials in the MFA Creative Writing Program, even while receiving the support of the Academic Dean who told her with a certain urgency, "don't stop writing. You'll find a way."
Prior to pursuing her graduate studies in counseling, Ms. E.T. Simon joined a Creative Writing Group where she honed in on some of the art and craft of writing and had the pleasure of attending poetry readings by Tess Gallagher, Denise Levertov, Rutabaga Rose and others.
Following her 1985 graduation, Ms. E.T. Simon proceeded to work as a counselor/family therapist until 1998 when, following surgery, she became a near recluse and has remained a near recluse for the last twelve years or so.
It was during those years that she worked as a counselor/family therapist that Ms. E.T. Simon learned that grief is a powerful agent which often contributes to the derailing of families; that human hearts can bury grief for generations and generations with the grief popping up unexpectedly as a symptom anywhere, sometimes even in someone else further along in the generations.
Ms. E.T. Simon also learned that when careful unearthing of buried grief happens and a person is enabled to truly grieve the pain of a loss they have been holding on to for years, then rebalancing of the derailment takes place and true healing occurs.

Writing is a lifelong love of E.T. Simon's, and whether she kept her writings buried in dusty drawers, or shared them with university professors, writers' groups, editors, or published them, the writer's flame burns undying in her. The flame of truth also burns in her along with the need to stand up for the underdog, of which, today, she finds herself to be one. This blended well in her throughout her years of computer activism for peace and social justice.

E.T. Simon's articles have been published under the name of TERESA SIMON-NOBLE, the pen name of ELENA DUMAS; and at times, under the additional pen name of SKYAGUNSTA, or SKYAGUNSTA PICKENS, both of which are a direct reference to her great-great-grandfather Brigadier General Andrew Pickens who was named "Skyagunsta," by Native Americans who came to appreciate him as a man of conscience. Please also know that whether the articles have been signed with one name, or another; with a pen name, or another, the writings have always come straight from my heart, my perception, and my core values.
In other words, it has always been me, and only me, writing the articles.