| Items You Could Have Missed
By Bob Weaver
ILLEGAL GUN BUYS BY REGISTERED TERRORISTS - 247 people who are registered on the US governments terrorist list purchased guns in the US in 2010.
DEFENSE BUDGET - The US defense budget has doubled since 2001. No figures on the cost of US intelligence, but it has likely doubled.
EXXON-MOBIL PROFITS - Why America languishes in its biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression and gasoline prices are surging toward $5 a gallon, Exxon-Mobil just recorded its biggest quarter profit in its history - almost $11 billion.
WV HAS LOST 30,000 AVAILABLE JOBS - It should not be startling to read the latest report that says more than 30,000 West Virginians have dropped out of the labor force since the start of the recession in December 2007.
Those 30,000 jobs are part of the jobs that have been globalized, the globalization of jobs rarely mentioned by the government or media as part of America's economic slump.
The federal government has clung to a long outdated statistical program that it pumps out every month for at least 40 years that is used to reflect the employment of American workers.
Far more people than the statistic represents do not have jobs.
Their statistic is based on the number of current workers drawing unemployment benefits.
West Virginia's workforce participation rate dropped to 53.5 percent, the lowest level in 20 years.
This population of workers is related to those West Virginian's that are work brittle, and at one time aspired to be part of the now faded American Middle Class.
"People get frustrated when they can't find a job, and they may get so discouraged they drop out of the labor force," said Ted Boettner, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, who issued the report.
WV POLL REFLECTS REPUBLICAN'S VIEWS - The most recent independent poll regarding the race for governor, also showed Republicans saying that Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump are at the top of the list of possible GOP candidates for president in 2012, each drawing 24 percent support. It showed Sarah Palin at 13 percent and Mitt Romney at 11 percent.
Fifty-three percent of the Republicans said they don't believe President Obama was born in the U.S. The poll was taken just before President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, although dozens of official and media sources already confirmed he was born in Hawaii.
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