You know the era of big government is alive and well when you see a mainstream news outlet praise the growth of the public sector as a "bright spot."
Leading up to and throughout the 2008 national election cycle, CBS News was generally downbeat on the economy, even when times were much better than they are currently. However, now that government has taken a much larger role in the private economy, the "CBS Evening News" has now been running a so-called "Economic Bright Spot" segment. And on the May 18 broadcast, "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric explained how government was going to save us all.
"Back here on earth, government agencies like NASA seem to be the only places hiring during this recession," Couric said. "Last month, there were 72,000 new government jobs - 66,000 federal. That's up more than 2 percent from the month before. As Kelly Wallace reports, for thousands of graduates who need jobs this hiring boom is one of the economic bright spots."
The problem - in a down economy, the job market for recent college graduates is struggling, as most job markets are, except for the government, as CBS correspondent Kelly Wallace pointed out.
"What's changing is fewer students are leaving campus with jobs," Wallace said. "According a new national survey, of 7,000 graduates looking for a job this year, less than 20 percent found one. That's down from 51 percent in 2007."
However, now colleges are gearing their strategies to government jobs, according to Wallace.
"Most employers are cutting back," Wallace added. "Not Uncle Sam. That's why City College of New York held the held the school's first-ever job fair for strictly government jobs."
Wallace said the strategy for graduates is to use a government job as a resume builder. Somehow, Wallace believes that masses of young workers joining the bloated public sector because there are few jobs in the productive segments of the economy is positive.
"It's good for the country and the resume," Wallace added.
Earlier this year, Congress passed a $787-billion stimulus bill into law. Democrats in Congress and President Barack Obama claimed it was necessary to stem unemployment. Although the stimulus has clearly benefited bureaucrats and grown the already vast public sector of the economy expanding as the CBS report has pointed out - the stimulus, has made things worse, according to Ed Morrissey, and will saddle many future generations with massive government debt.
"Not only did the stimulus plan not work, the unemployment actually rose faster with the ‘recovery plan' in place than the Obama administration predicted unemployment would rise without it," Morrissey wrote for the American Issues Project on May 14.
