{"id":4444,"date":"2010-03-26T08:41:17","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T13:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=4444"},"modified":"2010-03-26T08:41:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T13:41:17","slug":"sad-symbolism-amid-recession-d-c-continues-to-thrive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/4444\/sad-symbolism-amid-recession-d-c-continues-to-thrive\/","title":{"rendered":"Sad Symbolism:  Amid Recession, D.C. Continues to Thrive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps nothing symbolizes our nation&#8217;s sad state of political affairs than the fact that government-town Washington, D.C. thrives relative to other major American cities.<\/p>\n<p>As noted by a <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB20001424052748704534904575131770806611604.html#mod=todays_us_page_one\" target=\"_blank\">recent <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> report<\/a>, home prices in the D.C. area rose 2% in 2009, compared to a 3% decline in 20 areas covered by the S&amp;P\/Case-Shiller Index.\u00a0 The capital&#8217;s unemployment rate stands at 6.9% compared to 9.7% nationally, and restaurants have added workers in D.C. while other metropolitan areas bleed such jobs.\u00a0 The reason?\u00a0 Federal government employment in the area increased by over 20,000, whereas approximately 100,000 private-sector jobs were lost there.\u00a0 Not only has our bloated federal government increased its employment rolls even as the rest of our society cuts back, but $78.5 billion in federal contract work and the flurry of bureaucratic activity brings domestic and foreign visitors to town.<\/p>\n<p>Americans everywhere have had to trim their budgets and expectations during the downturn, but not the expanding federal government.\u00a0 What sad, albeit fitting, symbolism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps nothing symbolizes our nation&#8217;s sad state of political affairs than the fact that government-town Washington, D.C. thrives relative to other major American cities. As noted by a recent Wall Street Journal report, home prices in the D.C. area rose 2% in 2009, compared to a 3% decline in 20 areas covered by the S&amp;P\/Case-Shiller [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[602,1008,59,24,61,179,28,18,1007],"class_list":["post-4444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-big-government","tag-d-c","tag-deficit","tag-obama","tag-spending","tag-stimulus","tag-tea-party","tag-unemployment","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4445,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions\/4445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}