To cushion the crush of the recession, Congress has repeatedly extended the duration of unemployment insurance until now it's possible to receive benefits for as long as 99 weeks in some states especially hard hit by joblessness. Around 11.4 million people are receiving the benefits, half for longer than six months, at a cost of $10 billion a month. And the average length of time that jobless workers in Georgia are drawing benefits is up to 15.8 weeks, the longest on record.

There are six unemployed Americans for every available job, according to the National Employment Law Center. Those numbers are reflective as well of what's happening in Cobb, where the jobless rate went up again in January to 10.1 percent, the second-highest rate ever here, topped only by the 10.8 percent rate measured in January 1976. the only consolation is that our numbers are better than those of metro Atlanta, the state and nation.

Since the start of the recession, the economy has shed 8.4 million jobs, and only recently has it begun adding jobs faster than it's losing them.

But by the same token, it's also clear that President Obama's much-ballyhooed "stimulus" plan has been a monster-sized bust. As many noted at the time, it was a pork bill, not a jobs bill. Favored politicians got the pork, but few got jobs.

As Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens noted last week, "We were surprised by the size of the (jobless) increase. It is clear that excessive spending in Washington is not creating jobs."

No surprise there. Sucking money out of the job-creating private sector to send to Washington for public-sector pork merely increases the tax burden and takes money out of circulation that the private sector might otherwise use to expand and hire additional workers.

So keep in mind as we go forward that the path to increased employment leads not via bigger government, but smaller. And that more "stimulus" bills and higher taxes will hurt, not help.