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Prosecutors Friday recommended four years in prison for former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., following his guilty plea this year on criminal charges that he engaged in a scheme to spend $750,000 in campaign funds on personal items.

The government suggested an 18-month sentence for Jackson's wife, Sandra, who pleaded guilty to filing false joint federal income tax returns that understated the couple's income.

The government is also recommending that Jackson pay $750,000 in restitution to the campaign and that Sandra Jackson make a restitution payment of $168,000.

Because the couple has two children, prosecutors proposed that the sentences be staggered, with Sandra Jackson going first. According to the government, she could be out of prison in little over a year with credit for satisfactory behavior and serving the end of her sentence in home confinement. Both Jacksons are scheduled to be sentenced on July 3.

Jesse Jackson's lawyer, meanwhile, asked the judge to sentence Jackson to a term below guidelines. Under federal sentencing guidelines, the range is 46 to 57 months in prison. The lawyer, Reid H. Weingarten, argued that Jackson's ongoing treatment for depression and bipolar disorder, his record of good works and his family and community ties all support leniency. Jacksons' sentencing memo includes about five pages of redacted material on his health issues, and a few redacted lines on other issues.

Jackson, who had been a Democratic congressman from Illinois from 1995 until he resigned last November, used campaign money to buy items that included a $43,350 gold-plated men's Rolex watch and $9,587.64 worth of children's furniture, and his wife spent $5,150 on fur capes and parkas.

In Friday's 45-page sentencing memo, prosecutors urged the judge to take into account the advantages Jackson, the son of a famed civil rights leader, had in his life. Jackson "chose to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars despite having advantages in life and financial resources that few possess and that most can only dream of obtaining," the prosecutors wrote.

They noted that his yearly salary as a congressman ranged from $133,600 to $174,000, and that his wife's salary as Chicago alderman was also six figures. The memo said that Jackson's campaign paid his wife's consulting firm $5,000 a month during the time of the conspiracy — $340,500 in total.

"Before defendant or his wife stole a dime, they received substantial incomes," the government wrote, adding that in 2011, for example, their combined income was around $344,000 — putting them among the nation's high earners.

"This offense, at its core, is about greed and entitlement: defendant wanting more than even his substantial resources could afford him and believing he was entitled to both the items desired and campaign funds to purchase those items," the government said.

Prosecutors also argued that Jackson's behavior threatened to deter people from making campaign contributions and participating in the political process.

In a 22-page statement filed by prosecutors in February, Jackson admitted that he and his wife used campaign credit cards to buy 3,100 personal items worth $582,772.58 from 2005 through April 2012. Personal expenditures at restaurants, nightclubs and lounges amounted to $60,857.04. Personal expenditures at sports clubs and lounges were $16,058.91, including maintaining a family membership at a gym. Spending for alcohol was $5,814.43. Personal spending for dry cleaning was $14,513.42.

Prosecutors credited Jackson with cooperating with them in the investigation, which helped the government wrap up in weeks what could have taken months. While Jackson deserves credit for accepting responsibility and his level of cooperation, the government said, he already received that significant consideration in how the plea agreement was structured.

In Jackson's sentencing memo, his lawyer wrote that the former congressman's mental health may worsen under the stress of incarceration.

"During sentencing, federal courts have the authority to determine whether a defendant's mental illness warrants a below-guidelines sentence," Weingarten said.

"His public fall from grace has already made an example of him, warning other politicians and elected officials of the dangers of personal use of campaign funds," wrote Weingarten, who went on to detail Jackson's accomplishments in Congress and his help to others.

In a separate memorandum prepared for Sandra Jackson's sentencing, prosecutors said she was personally involved in the thefts, and they noted she served as treasurer of her husband's congressional campaign from January 2005 to November 2006. But prosecutors also credited her for cooperation and accepting responsibility.

June is a nice month for treading water — if you happen to be in a swimming pool.

But if you are in the labor pool and trying to make your way toward a job, a stronger current in the right direction would be appreciated.

Unfortunately, the jobs report released Friday by the Labor Department showed that the economy continues to drift along at a languid pace.

"This rate of growth is right in line with the average growth rate of the last year and is a perfect example of the ongoing slog in the labor market," Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a research group, said in her written assessment.

Four Years After The Recession

The Labor Department report showed employers added 175,000 jobs in May, a slightly better number than most economists had been forecasting. But the unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a point to 7.6 percent as more people entered the labor market, seeking paychecks but not finding them.

The latest jobs report was issued at a time when the U.S. economy is marking the fourth anniversary of the official end of the Great Recession. The economy hit bottom in June 2009 and has been growing ever since, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

She found her brother's finger in the grass by the shed.

The grass glistened with the morning dew, but the finger did not.

She picked it up. She had seen it fall. He'd been running for the house, away from the toolshed, and he'd been holding onto the finger and onto the space where the finger had been, and despite his concentration, and in his haste, he had let go of the one to hold on tighter to the other.

She took it to her room and put it on her nightstand and then sat on her bed and looked at it for a while. She lay down on her bed and looked at it some more. She pretended it was fake and then she had to convince herself again that it wasn't.

It was altogether stiffer and thinner and lighter than she would have imagined, if she had ever considered imagining what her brother's index finger might feel or look like separated from the rest of his fingers, which she had not.

By the time her parents had brought him back to the house from the hospital, she had pressed that finger to her tongue, twice. The finger first, then her own, and then the finger again. She had wanted to see what the difference might be, but there wasn't any, not that she could tell.

She did not hold it in her mouth long enough to see if it had a taste, something different than what her own finger, her own skin might taste like because that would have been gross. Even she knew that that would have been gross.

She had pressed it wetly against the bridge of her nose and had tried to imagine her brother's weight behind it.

She had poked it against her forehead and poked it against her cheek and poked it against her shoulder like her brother had in the past but wouldn't any more. Not with this finger, anyway.

She'd clipped the nail with her father's toenail clippers. Her brother kept his nails long and sharp for when he would grab her by the arm and grip and squeeze. She clipped it, but not very well and it was still sharp and pointed and jagged and, somehow, even uglier than it had been before.

And finally, before they brought him home, she had considered giving it back to him, in a box maybe, or wrapped in a ribbon and left outside his door. She was good at making something pretty out of stuff that was not. Old beer bottles, the brown and green glass smashed into pieces and fit together on construction paper, and then covered in glitter-glue. The bleached, crumbling jawbone — of a possum or raccoon, she couldn't tell — that her brother had dug up, or maybe their dog had dug it up and her brother had found it, had found it and snuck it into the house, and snuck with it into her bedroom late one night and laid on her pillow.

She hadn't made that into anything, not yet, but she would, and it would be pretty, she knew.

Then she decided that she didn't want him to have it back, so she took the finger back beyond the toolshed out to the pond at the far end of their property, and then she threw that finger as hard and as far out as she could throw it, hoping that it would sink to the bottom, down to the very bottom of the pond, and that the catfish would find it there, and then pick it clean.

June is a nice month for treading water — if you happen to be in a swimming pool.

But if you are in the labor pool and trying to make your way towards a job, a stronger current in the right direction would be appreciated.

Unfortunately, the jobs report released Friday by the Labor Department showed the economy continues to drift along at a languid pace.

"This rate of growth is right in line with the average growth rate of the last year and is a perfect example of the ongoing slog in the labor market," Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a research group, said in her written assessment.

Four Years After The Recession

The Labor Department report showed employers added 175,000 jobs in May, a slightly better number than most economists had been forecasting. But the unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a point to 7.6 percent as more people entered the labor market, seeking paychecks but not finding them.

The latest jobs report was issued at a time when the U.S. economy is marking the fourth anniversary of the official end of the Great Recession. The economy hit bottom in June 2009, and has been growing ever since, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Alan Krueger, head of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that steady improvement.

"The economy has now added private sector jobs every month for 39 straight months, and a total of 6.9 million jobs has been added over that period," he said in a statement. "So far this year, 972,000 private sector jobs have been added."

Digging Out Of A 'Deep Hole'

But he also recognized that, with 11.8 million people still unemployed, things aren't exactly going swimmingly. "We continue to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007," Krueger said.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement that the "modest job growth is a positive sign," but he noted that "millions of Americans have been out of work for more than several months, wages are stagnant, and the unemployment rate is still far higher than the Obama administration promised."

Most economists and Wall Street investors were just glad the economy didn't do a spring swoon, as it has for the last three years. In those previous years, the economy would start the year fairly strong, then lose momentum in the spring. This year, the pace has held steady.

Keeping The Fed On Hold?

That steadiness bolstered confidence among investors, who interpreted the report as good news because it was neither strong enough to push the Federal Reserve to suddenly stop pumping money into the economy, nor weak enough to signal a looming recession. Most stock indexes moved up in the wake of the report.

This latest employment report showed that private employers added 179,000 jobs last month, while the federal government cut 14,000 positions. Local governments added 13,000 jobs.

The U.S. labor force grew by 420,000 in May, and average hourly wages nudged up 1 cent to $23.89. The average workweek held steady at 34.5 hours.

Consumers have been helping the economy with additional spending, and that caused retailers to add 28,000 jobs while restaurants added 38,000. Because of growth in residential housing, construction companies added 7,000 jobs, but manufacturers pulled back, lopping off 8,000 jobs.