Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The failed jobs program that dare not speak its own name

Over ten months into his term, President Obama will address the nation’s unemployment problem which the Labor Department does not expect to improve when it rolls out the latest figures tomorrow.

The President will hold a jobs summit starting tomorrow that will include a lot of different people but a lot of other different people are worried about any jobs program sponsored by the federal government would contribute mightily to our already spiraling-out-of-control debt while still other people(D) are mostly concerned with saving their electoral bacon next November.

That’s essentially the tone of the article here that fails to address the fact that we’ve been down this road before. President Obama’s first legislative baby was the $787 billion monstrosity called porkulus signed into law back in February and which was not going to let unemployment go above 8%. We are at 10.2% right now and probably climbing and the President’s big idea? More government.

Not that anybody at this summit is going to be as impolite to address the point of why they are there to spend more tax dollars when porkulus is continuing to do it quite nicely, thank you, without any discernable results.

Mr. Obama invited academics, business and labor leaders to a White House seminar to hear their suggestions for what might spark them to begin hiring again.

(because academics and labor are always at the forefront of job creation ideas. Just ask the city of Chula Vista how they fared with labor leaders' job creation ideas during negotiations in developing that city’s waterfront)

That Obama “invited” labor leaders had an odd ring to it as a summons to the West Wing would not consist of anything more than a shout down the hallway to the nearly ubiquitous White House presence of Big Labor.

And more proof that an Ivy League affiliation is actually becoming a liability, here’s somebody named Alan Blinder of Princeton:

Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, a summit attendee and a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, supports public works programs for low-wage workers. But he warned in a recent article against providing tax credits to employers. It would be difficult, he said, to distinguish between new hiring tied to the economic rebound versus hires sparked by tax credits.


Whaaa? So, there are “good” jobs and “bad” jobs? Blinder doesn’t want the jobs situation to improve if it cannot be tied directly to the wondrous programs that will be generated by this jobs summit? Idiots like Blinder are leading indicators that this jobs summit will be every bit the Charlie-Foxtrot one would imagine it to be.

Good luck with that, Mr. President.

1 comment:

B-Daddy said...

Isn't Charlie Foxtrot a Harvard man?