[Peace-discuss] Obama: billions for bankers & killers, not one cent for jobs

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Where is the federal jobs program and/or the guaranteed annual income?]

	Buffalo billboard petitions president for "a freakin' job"
	Thu May 13, 3:52 pm ET

"I need a freakin' job." That's the message President Obama saw as he arrived in 
Buffalo, N.Y.,  this afternoon for an event talking up the administration's 
success in creating new jobs. He also pitched Congress on approving a $30 
billion credit for small-business growth.

Yet critics say Obama has been focusing his recovery efforts too narrowly and 
hasn't done enough to help people find work. After all, the latest job figures 
show 9.9 percent of the country still out of work. That inspired a group of 
unemployed Buffalo residents — who also have a website called INAFJ.org — to 
appeal to the president in the form of a billboard along the route his motorcade 
took into town. Here is a photo of the billboard:

The group has also produced a video, which can be viewed here:

Yet jobs aren't a huge priority for either party heading into the midterm 
campaigns, as Politics Daily's Jill Lawrence notes. That might be because other 
issues have taken precedence. A new Gallup poll finds that for the first time in 
two months, the issue of "jobs" has fallen to No. 2 on the list of issues 
Americans are most concerned about. The new No. 1 issue: The economy in general. 
White House officials defend their efforts on jobs, saying the president has 
been focused as much on creating new jobs as on "saving" current positions.

[Lost jobs that won’t come back]

But here's a sign the job seekers' message to the administration may be getting 
through: The White House just announced Obama will travel next Tuesday to 
Youngstown, Ohio — where unemployment hit 15.1 percent last month, the city's 
highest jobless rate in more than 15 years. The focus of Obama's visit: "jobs 
and the economy," according to the White House.

And a more direct sign still: Obama press aide Bill Burton was asked about the 
billboard in today's press gaggle. His reply was, "The President is here to talk 
about jobs, what his administration has done to create jobs, what we need to do 
in order to create an environment where small businesses can create jobs. So the 
answer is, we're on the path to creating more jobs, and we've got a lot more 
work to do."

—Holly Bailey is the senior politics writer for Yahoo! News.

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