Thursday, August 25, 2011


We’ve all been waiting with pregnant anticipation for Dear Ruler to return from his vacation and explain to us his grand jobs plan … right? Oh yeah! We’re saved! Barack Obama, the smartest man ever to become president, has a plan! Finally, after more than two and one-half years in office, Our “sort of a God” president who had to “step down” into the office of the presidency is going to step forward and part the unemployment waters so that his people can march across a red-carpeted seabed to the wonderful world of employment!

I feel this strange tingly thing going up and down my leg!

Now since Obama is going to present us with his “plan,” we can imagine that it will be in the form of a comprehensive business plan, right? After all, that’s where we need to create the jobs. So I’m guessing Obama is going to present us with some goals for American Business and a detailed plan on how we will achieve those goals.
This is going to be just swell!

But, alas! Something has happened! After Obama left for his oh-so-well-deserved vacation and his handlers immediately started to downgrade expectations for his jobs plan. Now we are all saddened to learn that it isn’t actually going to be a plan any more. Drat! Not a plan? Now we’ve learned that suddenly it became an outline. Oh, okay .. so screw the specifics on how to achieve our goals. Now we are just going to get an outline. Fantastic. I’m sure it is still going to be a fantastic outline – something worthy of the Great and Powerful Obama.

Uh oh .. hold on. Now we’re hearing that perhaps an outline became too much for us to expect of Dear Ruler. Now, according to deputy spokesman Josh Earnest, we can anticipate “some reasonable ideas that can have a tangible impact,” Left in the lurch again. Now we’ve been downgraded to some “reasonable ideas.” Well, I’m sure that with all of his experience in business and finance, and considering his understanding of the dynamics of private sector business growth and hiring, Obama will come roaring in the game with “reasonable ideas” that are sure to empty the unemployment lines in no time flat.

Who the hell am I kidding here? The American people feel more negatively about our economy than they’ve felt in decades … and that’s because the American people know that we have a man in the White House that has no clue in the world what he is doing. He’s a freaking community organizer and leftist activist, for Gawd’s sake – not a brilliant economic mind. This man doesn’t have the knowledge or experience to run a sandwich shop, yet there he sits on his godly throne telling us that he is going to save our economy with some “reasonable ideas” that will be written on two stone tablets when he comes down from The Mount of Martha’s Vineyard. What a load of purified horse shit.

So at this point, what sort of “reasonable ideas” can we expect from Obama? They damned sure won’t be ideas that will encourage private businessmen to start spending some of their money to expand and hire. Remember … to Obama, the private sector is “the enemy.” His words, not mine. We did, however, have two more have surfaced as of yesterday. These ideas, by the way, would be able to be accomplished without any legislation or need to battle with Republicans in Congress. They would be:
#1: Increase the number of college graduates in engineering and give companies incentives to hire them.

Really? How many small business owners do you know out there who are sitting on their hands right now because they’re concerned that there’s just not enough engineering graduates to go around? And incentives? What kind of incentives? Know what this sounds like to me? Do something to artificially boost the number of engineering students in colleges and then use taxpayer money to entice businesses into hiring them when the graduate. Yeah, that ought to work. I can see the Dow going through the roof right now.

#2: Employ construction workers to retrofit commercial buildings to make them more energy efficient.

Oh yeah. Weatherization II. Oh … and green jobs. Gotta love those green jobs.
Roll the tape: “The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.”

Then there’s that weatherization program in Seattle. You remember that one, don’t you? And that’s what we’re talking about here in Obama’s “reasonable idea.” Weatherizing commercial buildings. In April of 2010 Bite Me Biden and Mike McGinn, the mayor of Seattle, had a little soiree to announce a $20 million federal grant (borrowed funds your children will have to pay back) for weatherizing Seattle homes. Oh yeah .. what a big deal THIS was going to be. Think about it! It was going to create 2000 jobs! Amazing! So fast forward to now, and what do we have? A total of three homes have been weatherized and 14 jobs have been created; most of them administrative and temporary.

But wait! There’s more! Here’s a peak at how that is working out for California:
Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development.

The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on.

Look, folks .. these ideas are all well-and-good but they are not based on any semblance of reality. This is nothing more than government picking the economic winners and losers: The government wants green jobs and construction workers to succeed, therefore it will create and fund a program to do something that otherwise would not be done in the private marketplace.

At one point in his presidency, Obama pledged to create five million green jobs over the next ten years. Five million green jobs. Instead, we have 2.5 million fewer people working today than the day he was inaugurated. From the looks of things, pushing green initiatives seems to be a jobs killer, not an economic boost: “A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more — 2.2 percent — in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.”

All Obama needs to do is unleash the private sector. Unshackle businesses from the binds of burdensome regulations and stifling taxes. Let the marketplace determine whether or not it needs energy efficient buildings or more engineers in the office place. Trying to create artificial demand will only hinder true demand and therefore true economic growth.

Here's an idea---Stay in Martha's Vineyard, let Joe Biden stay in Mongolia, send Pelosi and Reid to Libya to organize the new government and just stay the hell out of the way.