You may want to keep it local folks.  Oil rose again today teasing a new record high of $146 a barrel before easing to roughly $144 a barrel, bringing prices at the pumps ever higher, now sitting at a national avg of $4.10

Not that anyone can afford to buy a tank of gas these days anyway, as payroll across the U.S. continues to be cut for the 6th straight month. 

Payrolls fell by 62,000 after a 62,000 drop in May that was greater than first reported, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The unemployment rate held at 5.5 percent after soaring the most in two decades in May. The Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing index sank to a five-month low.

Falling employment, along with record gasoline prices and tumbling home values, may cause consumers to tighten their budgets after spending the more than $100 billion of tax rebates. The longest string of payroll declines since the economy was pulling out of the last recession indicates limited scope for a Federal Reserve interest-rate increase this quarter.

“After the tax rebates are gone in another 30 days, you’ll see consumer spending drop back,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief U.S. economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. in Pittsburgh. “There will not be any employment or real wage growth to help real spending in the second half of the year.”

So while the band-aid of the Tax Stimulus Check was nice for about a month after you got it, after it’s gone, nothing has improved, infact, things have still been getting worse.  And for the next 6 months all we have to look forward to is the continued free-fall of our economy as jobs continue to be lost along with houses, and with the ever rising price of oil- our ability to drive as well.

Happy Independence Day America!

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Could this finally be the beginning sign that the shrinking middle class and the working man have had enough, and are now ready to do something about it?

West Coast ports were shut down on Thursday as thousands of longshoremen failed to report for work, part of what their union leaders said was a one-day, one-shift protest against the war in Iraq.

Cranes and forklifts stood still from Seattle to San Diego, and ships were stalled at sea as workers held rallies up and down the coast to blame the war for distracting public attention and money from domestic needs like health care and education.

“We’re loyal to America, and we won’t stand by while our country, our troops and our economy are being destroyed by a war that’s bankrupting us to the tune of $3 trillion,” the president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Bob McEllrath, said in a written statement. “It’s time to stand up, and we’re doing our part today.”

About 25,000 union members are employed at 29 West Coast ports, but the protest took place only during the day shift. A spokesman for the main West Coast employers’ group, the Pacific Maritime Association, said it appeared that about 6,000 workers did not show up for work, which meant that about 10,000 containers would not be loaded or unloaded from about 30 cargo ships.

In Oakland, Calif., some truckers who said they were angry about high gas prices decided not to cross picket lines at the port.

“I got here ready to haul,” said César Lara, 41, a resident of Richmond, Calif., born in Zacatecas, Mexico. “They told me it was a picket but if I wanted to go in I could. But I’m supporting them and to end the war.”

Several drivers said truckers were planning their own nationwide work stoppage in the next several days to protest record-high gas prices and surcharges.

Port shutting down, even if only for a matter of hours, cargo delivery trucks threatening to stop hauling, if all of this were to happen all at once, a vast portion of America’s basic day to day would suddenly stop. And if the people are going to make a change- it is this kind of bold action, action that has visible consequences, that will make the people in charge of big decisions sit up and take notice.

So is this a one time thing, or the beginning of a movement of the folks stuck under the thumb of the government and big business? That remains to be seen.

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