job losses and other random quibbles

"Do you know someone who has lost a job?"

CNN poses this as a question on its web-page today. I ask philosophically, what does this question mean?

There are several ways someone can ’lose’ a job. They can quit. They can be dismissed for poor job performance (or other related factors, such as substance abuse or sexual misconduct/harassment). Or the company can either transfer their job elsewhere or cut jobs generally (or go out of business entirely). I’m presuming that it is this last subject that CNN is truly concerned with, given the level of interest in recessions. But guess what. The question doesn’t specifically ask do you know someone whose job was downsized or outsourced. It is plainly asking if you know someone who ’lost’ their job, as if they simply misplaced it and it was a separate feature from their performance or the performance of their company/business (some people actually start businesses of their own). The bland availability to mis-characterize this question is sickening. It doesn’t even have a specified time frame. How many people ’lose’ their jobs over a lifetime?

More importantly it doesn’t ask what that person has done about it. Did they get a new job, if so what kind, or even did they start a business of their own? Did they go back to school, if so for what purpose? Or are they sitting around collecting unemployment while they decide what to do about it. All of these are much more pertinent questions than: Did you or someone you know lose their job. Jobs are constantly being lost, moved, restructured and so forth. To expect that people will receive life-long employment is ridiculous as it essentially freezes their abilities in place without some internal motivations (a resource that I see both underrated when it rarely exists, and overrated in that it usually doesn’t).

When the media asks pertinent questions again and honest questions again, I will be impressed. Perhaps they’re too busy watching politicians evade such simple questions as "so that’s a no?" by saying they don’t understand the question (yes that’s a dig at Hillary). So now they’re tired of asking honest and direct questions of real people, presuming they can’t understand what a reporter is asking them either. Obviously if educated and intelligent politicians can’t answer questions, surely the great unwashed masses will have no better luck; forgetting that it is these masses that somehow put these morons in office in the first place.

Incidentally the pork book came out for the FY 2007. Hillary was 13th on the list of Senate porkers. Barack is 70th. McCain had a fat zero next to his name, which tied him with precisely 4 other Senators. Only 5 (McCain, DeMint, Coburn, Feingold, McCaskill) . The House was worse with only 10 out of 435. Even Ron Paul had 8 earmarks. Worst offender wasn’t "the bridge to nowhere" guy (Stevens). It was Cochran from Mississippi, and yes, he’s -R.