The really bad news is buried in the middle of the 38 page report.  The BLS data reveals an alarming and growing divergence between the number of white and the number of minorities that are unemployed.  Worse yet, it is clear that minorities, especially African Americans, are falling further behind.  If unchecked, the long term implications of that imbalance are nightmarish for the nation.

Larry Summers and others in the Administration have not yet shown much interest in the appalling unemployment rates for minorities and, instead, exude childlike enthusiasm at the nation’s overall jobless rate that held steady for the 2^nd consecutive month.

While the unemployment for white Americans averaged 9.3%, African Americans averaged 16.6%, just a little less than double the rate of white unemployment.   Hispanic Americans reported 13.3% unemployment, while recent, young veterans are averaging 14.7%.  Black men, over 20 years old, are showing 20.2% unemployment and teenaged, African Americans, ages 16-19, of both sexes, show a mind-boggling 39.3% unemployed.  Hispanic teens also report a staggering 30.3% unemployment.  The long-term repercussions of these unemployment numbers are troubling, yet the Administration is curiously silent.

Team Obama has spent trillions of dollars and enormous political capital advancing stimulus plans and other empty calorie policies that have failed to spark employment, especially among minorities.  Instead, Obama’s policies have only further eroded American competitiveness, hindered job creation.  African Americans, Hispanics and other minorities, are finding themselves out of work, for longer and longer periods of time.

Soon, Congress and the President are going to have to face the growing realization that unemployment rates have been so elevated for so long among minorities that minorities in the U.S. are now on the precipice of permanent unemployment.

We need to start asking ourselves: when do the temporary wards of the state, the unemployed, become permanent wards?  Is the presence in the United States of a permanent, non-working class, comprised predominantly of minorities, the change that Obama promised?   What does this shift mean to us as a nation, where there is a strong likelihood that a growing majority of white citizens will be working and a growing majority of minority citizens, such as African Americans, will not?

It seems rather clear that without a job, and with little hope of finding one, the end result is that those minorities may become increasingly dependent on government entitlements.

What is especially troubling about Team Obama, is that they do not yet seem to be thinking about solutions to these problems.  Instead, they exhibit a keen desire to maintain the fantasy that recovery is just around the corner, and the nation will soon return to a period of full employment.   But, most likely, those days are gone.

What Congress and Obama have yet to fully grasp is that they have expanded the social safety net and further extended entitlements but at a cost of diminished entrepreneurial energies, less job creation, and potentially, permanently higher unemployment rates.

Young men and women with no job, and little hope of finding a job, represent a strain on the social fabric of the nation as they become angry and resentful over the lack of employment opportunities.  They will need, and demand, additional aid and support from the government, so social spending is likely to only grow.

These new social costs will require even higher taxes to pay for all of the new programs, so our nation can probably expect rising social tensions from the mostly white Americans that will be asked to pay higher taxes to support the many new forms of government spending and more expansive entitlements and social spending.

The consequences of a growing and prolonged unemployment within the minority community, combined with preferential legislation, create a dangerous racial cocktail of time, idleness and increased expectation of entitlements.  As a result, the things that divide us as a nation will likely grow.

How sad that a likely result of Obama administration policies may be that the steady improvement of race issues over the past 60 years could come to an end.

There is a growing likelihood that, with significantly more white Americans having jobs and paying taxes than African Americans or Hispanic Americans, anger over bearing an unduly heavy tax burden may be perceived as racism when it’s nothing of the sort.

Racial tensions may grow and resentments may fester, as a large group of young minorities become permanently underemployed.  George W. Bush, several years ago, kicked off a heated debate with his notion of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”  Who could have foreseen that the unintended consequences of President Obama’s “audacity of change” would be a different sort of bigotry that could increase national racial tensions based upon no expectations and a permanent dependency upon the federal government?

Picard’s introspective and analytical nature bluntly assessed his actions, refusing excuses, with a plan to improve his performance.  Obama may spend time on the White House holodeck, envisioning “what if” scenarios, but an assessment of the year since his election, shows that few of Obama’s campaign promises have come to fruition.

The deficit of $459 billion, which President Obama inherited from George Bush has grown to $1.4 trillion, while the economy has shrunk.  The 3.5-million-jobs-created campaign promise has been watered down to claim 600,000 jobs “saved” .

Racial unity and the audacity of change, promised by the election of our first, Black President, is a farce within a farce, epitomized by rantings from leftist liturgists and  beer-summit photo-ops that mask real, and growing tensions, exacerbated by the man who promised to end them.

Instead of confronting problems and “boldly going where no one has gone before”, Team Obama, trots out a shopping list of dodgy, leftist ambitions which they blindly follow.  Telling Nancy Pelosi and Democrats in congress to “make it so” and create a Stimulus package for him to sign immediately after his inauguration was a bone-headed move.

Obama issued his command, to a congressional crew that wasn’t top notch, and what ensued was a chaotic, 1000 plus pages of legislative pork for projects to study the sexual habits of college freshman, as well as high speed rails from L.A.’s La-La land to Las Vegasland .

Not surprisingly, the Stimulus hasn’t delivered the promised results.  Few critical infrastructure projects were begun as a result of the Stimulus.  Why?  Because President Obama doesn’t understand  how Executive Agencies work.  Obama may  have thought, like Jean-Luc, he could just say “make it so”.  But he was wrong.

Obama didn’t know that regulatory relief  was needed to get critical infrastructure projects moving.  Not $787billion dollars of borrowed money.  Just regulatory relief –for the many wickets and hurdles that every government building project has to go through.  The President could have provided regulatory relief through an Executive Order, costing taxpayers nothing.  So why didn’t the President do it?  Because he’s an inexperienced captain and his crew isn’t very good.

In Star Trek, even Captains of the USS Enterprise make judgment errors, miscalculations.  But, the crew doesn’t sit quietly by and let the Captain plunge them to ruin.  The crew, feels empowered to speak up.  Why?  Because the crew understands that the ship of state is more important  than any ego, more important than any perception of who’s on top.

Cash for Clunkers may go down in history books as one of the most delusional panderings to the populus since Caesars provided bread and circuses to quiet the Roman mob.  Cash for Clunkers cost three times more than advertised— why?  Not just because of complicated calculations concerning cars bought  this month versus the next, but because President Obama doesn’t understand the costs of the bureaucracy that he leads.

Neither Obama nor Democrats in congress understand that federal programs have huge execution risks.  They cost money.  Programs require people, office space, equipment and staffing.  Instead, Obama thought he could just say “make it so”,  and, immediately, checks would be issued and citizens would be appeased.

Small businesses have also been victims, used as Obama’s public relations prop these many months.  He sure says all the right things, but the programs put in place by the Obama Administration are anti-small business and have had a devastating effect on the small business community.   Makes you wish the White House included a Spock-like character as one of the many policy Czars who could always provide the President with the actual facts on issues.

Spock could have told the President that small businesses would  be shut out of stimulus spending.  Why?  Because President Obama doesn’t understand how federal procurement works.  Layering mountains of new requirements on an already over-burdened and shrinking cadre of federal procurement professionals, forces them to move slower, not faster.  Increasing reporting and oversight requirements on this shrinking work force, while allowing  Congress to pressure and intimidate them about speed regarding Stimulus procurements, ensured that federal procurement professionals would be forced to take short cuts, to use existing federal contractors, to bundle lots of small projects together into one contract.

Spock was great at pointing out  the unintended consequence of actions and would have understood that allowing Congress to implement Continuing Resolution after Continuing Resolution, without approving the baseline federal budget meant that no new hiring of procurement personnel was possible, despite the hollow claims of government officials.  Obama ensured, by his very actions, that small businesses would get screwed.  There was no Spock on board to save him.  Or them.

A good first officer would have told the President that Healthcare reform should be off the table, when the GDP is falling, job creation is nil and our debt to the Chinese is growing,.

Instead, we see Obama, continuing to campaign, continuing to promise everything to everybody at the expense of a shrinking group of increasingly exasperated taxpayers.  “Make It So” works, when it’s issued by a leader, who understands the vessel he commands, who has respect for those whose life’s blood he is risking or raiding, who recognizes that there are often unintended consequences that must be considered, carefully, before moving forward, and who always, always, always, limits the risks to his enterprise.

I’ve seen Jean-Luc in action, and I can tell you, Obama is no Jean-Luc.