A Crush of Applicants

Huge, unexplained traffic jams began building up on the North Side of Chicago last Tuesday morning. Drivers struggled for half an hour or more to travel just four blocks. The police had to close entrance and exit ramps at a couple of spots along Lake Shore Drive. Baffled officers raised their arms in frustration as motorists demanded to know what was going on.

The traffic crush was caused by people desperate for jobs. Rumors that job applications for a Ford assembly plant would be accepted at a community college had swept through several of the city's neighborhoods. Chicagoans by the thousands responded, turning out in bitterly cold weather for a shot at gainful employment.

The first arrivals showed up well before dawn. By 7 a.m. more than 2,000 people had lined up outside Truman College, and the hopefuls kept coming throughout the morning. They shivered, and tears from the cold ran down some of their faces. It was like a scene out of the Depression.
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Our Children Will Pay the Bill for Bush's Budget

It was easy to laugh at the lockbox.

But now that it's gone -- blasted to bits by President Bush's federal budget -- it's worth pausing to consider what the lockbox represented. It was a promise between generations, a rare, perhaps unprecedented effort by the baby boom generation to put another's interests above its own.

Now that promise is broken. And the bright young things in Gen X and Gen Y will pay the price for years.
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