Misery Bus.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Economy: Feeling low about job prospects? Then avoiding the AFL-CIO's Depression Tour -- also known as the Show Us the Jobs mission -- was the right move.

The bus tour, also sponsored by Working America, was a malcontent's forum and an activist's dream. The riders and the locals who attended discussions on the tour stops freely blamed others for their misfortunes -- and the person who got most of the blame was President Bush.

Reading the descriptions of the 51 bus riders will leave most anyone in despair. There's the 19-year-old from Des Moines, Iowa, with an 8-month-old son who says she can't get a secretary's job or find work in the fast-food industry.

There's also the 55-year-old white collar worker from Marietta, Ga., who lost his $90,000 a year job as a Georgia Pacific systems analyst a little more than a year ago. He says he's earned $112 this year.

Another 19-year-old on the bus, this one from New Hampshire, has a job, but it's only a $5.75 an hour dishwashing gig. He had to take it and put off his college plans because his family was evicted after his mother lost her job. All that, of course, is Bush's fault, too.

Cram all these and other equally unfortunate people into a bus plodding across the country and there's a lot of misery to go around.

Not every rider on the March 24-31 St. ...