It is high time we vote these bastards out! If I wanted to vote Republican, I would vote for a real Republican. These turncoats need to be shown the door, and as soon as possible!

November 5, 2009

Should Jobs be an Easter Egg Hunt?

"Having brought the economy back from the brink, the question is how are we going to make sure that people are getting back to work and able to support their families. It's not going to happen overnight, but we will not rest until we are succeeding in generating the jobs that this economy needs." President Barack Obama - 11/2/2009

Why is this so hard? Why can’t we find countable jobs created in the economy? The Tarp money allocated, was $750 Billion and we have spent only a little over $400 Billion. Did the US create 35,000 or 650,000 jobs or did we count pay raises also? Did we actually count anything? We do not know. No one in the Government seems to be able to count. Why not? Let’s look for countable American Jobs.

President Obama says he will not rest until this issue is solved and yet there are no definitive plans or 2,000 page bills on jobs that seem to be forthcoming. We already know that the “shovel Ready Jobs” were not really “shovel ready”. We also know that Treasury keeps pumping money into GM to extinguish jobs; 10,000 lay offs announced for Opal yesterday. It is very hard to create jobs when you pay people to end them!! Are we looking in the wrong places?

I remember my children hunting for Easter eggs in the spring. There were always several eggs that seemed to me to be hidden in obvious places that were, for some reason, hard for them to find. The result, of course, was to give the children hints about where they might look, “in case there were eggs hidden in certain places”. I did dislike the kids struggling too much looking for the eggs on a day when life should be happy. Similarly, I hate for President Obama to go without sleep looking for jobs.

Our organization, Savingpontiac.org has relentlessly given hints to Treasury, Congress, and the UAW to help find jobs. Our proposal is simply that we use the General Motors assets that the taxpayers have purchased (Brands and manufacturing facilities) to save Pontiac and perhaps Saturn. We believe that these assets divested to the hands of entrepreneurial management could, literally overnight, create as many as 200,000 countable American jobs. (almost as many as were lost in October of this year)

Imagine the happiness with our Administration if tomorrow 200,000 jobs were announced. Imagine the new found confidence in the country’s direction and the reawakening of belief in courage of commitment with President Obama. Every day that goes by without jobs plans or economic improvements further erodes the country’s enthusiasm for the leadership.

Were my children afraid to look behind the birdbath because there might have been snakes in the garden? We can assure The President that there are no snakes with the Savingpontiac.org solution and the result is jobs for Americans NOW!!! A President needs his rest.

Blue Dogs loose their jobs....oh gee "wouldn't that be lover-ly wouldn't that be grand"...darn I hope you are correct.

I would give anything to see those republicans out the door. And no need to say, they are democrats...the DIRTY DAWGS are republicans who ran as democrats just to get elected. Kick em out.

The discussion about the economy needs to move from whether to have fiscal stimulus; that is, from whether to spend money, which the Republicans had no trouble wasting on two unnecessary wars and their cronies (it's only when the public benefit that they're up in arms) to how to craft policies that keep the economy and employment stable as well as distribute the wealth of society more equally. That is, we need to replace Neoliberalism with a new, tightly regulated social market policy order, or the crisis will just repeat itself.

Of course, for now, there should be large deficit spending by the government on public works, just as Keynes said; the only reason 'ordinary' Americans wring their hands about stimulus spending is because of the scare tactics the Right are waging about the deficit (which they actually brought about!) All conservative parties in opposition today are parroting the same line: which is, that we should cut our spending before the national debt grows too large (except when they're in power since without such spending the economy would lapse into deep recession or depression). By waving scary national debt figures in our face they hope they can frighten us into opposing the stimulus, just as they hope by polluting the information highway with global warming deniers people will turn away from wanting the government to do something about climate change. In other words, they deliberately set out to create confusion.

What they fail to tell you however is just what is it they think should be 'cut' (certainly not the tax giveaways the wealthy receive). By 'cuts', they mean the services the public depends on (services for the disabled, the elderly, rape victims) and things like education, public infrastructure and health. Meanwhile those who caused the crisis--bankers, financiers--are asked to sacrifice nothing. While we're asked to bear the costs of their mess, they award themselves enormous bonuses with our tax money. The Republicans want only to line the pockets of their pals: the very rich.

Whatever the politicians and the mainstream press say the recession is not ending. That's ridiculous given unemployment has risen sharply; the fact is, people won't be buying very much as they won't have that much money to spend which in turn means low growth. Cuts in the public sector would only make this worse. Much of the current debt has been incurred because of the two wars you're waging, Bush's tax cuts to the rich, and the bail-out to the banks (against which the stimulus plan is a mere pittance). When the American public worry about the stimulus they're actually confusing it with the bail-outs. Besides the debt will start to be paid off as things recover; that is, as soon as the economy reflates. But to reflate the government needs to inject capital to stimulate the economy. The way to do this is to expand the public sector, which the ruling class don't want because they're afraid it will empower labour. All that talk about public debt is really fear on the part of the establishment that the public sector will grow and give workers the upper hand, given the wages would be better than the slave wages of the private sector. Hence their calls for cuts. They want the dog-eats-dog system to continue because it keeps workers in line, just as not having a universal health care system keeps Americans from taking time off work and keeps them doing unpaid overtime for fear they will lose their jobs and hence their employer-funded health plans. It's how the rich control you. They want you to keep lining their pockets with little in return for yourself.