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photo by vpickering
Now that the debt ceiling fight is over, President Obama has promised to pivot to jobs. The problem is that most of the elements of his so-called jobs initiatives are seriously weak. Calling these items “”jobs programs” might help temporarily prop up Obama’s poll numbers, but in the long run the administration is setting themselves up for big political blowback.
The components of the administration’s jobs agenda are either too weak, only tangentially related to jobs, or even possibly counterproductive. The patent reform working its way through Congress is unlikely to produce many jobs. Similarly, the free trade deals Obama is trying to sell as a way to boost manufacturing jobs could easily do more harm than good. Even if all of them passed, it would be insufficient to address the scale of the problem.
I can understand why the administration is putting forward these items as a jobs program. They correctly know the American people want Washington focused on jobs and the White House also feels these are the only policies they have a chance of passing. It is even likely that by calling these “jobs bills” and then passing them, will cause Obama’s poll numbers to temporarily rise as people think the jobs situation might soon improve.
The problem with this plan is that the American people want Washington to focus on jobs because what they really want is more jobs.
If the unemployment situation improves Obama is good shape, regardless whether he passes anything called a “jobs agenda” or not. On other hand though, if Obama actually gets most of his weak jobs agenda passed and unemployment is still high in 2012, voters will blame Obama. It will be a repeat of the politics of the too-small stimulus bill.
If it is not going to deliver a lot of jobs, don’t call it a jobs agenda. It just fills people with false hope and eventually gets everyone even more angry and it makes the president look incompetent.
Obama would be better off politically if, in addition to the small stuff actually put forward, there was a big easy-to-understand jobs program like directly hiring 2 million Americans to replace every sewer line over 50 years old. It probably wouldn’t get through Congress, but if employment is still high in 2012 Obama could at least try to pull a Harry Truman, blaming the do-nothing Congress for not passing his big jobs plan.
That is not the best campaign message to run on in a bad economy, but it is better than trying to explain how Republicans are to blame for the failure of your jobs agenda, even though they passed it, because they made you preemptively ask for too little.
51 Comments
Shovel Ready
HooBamaVille
Did you all hear Tweety this evening? Pretty blunt for a guy who was tingled by Obama.
Yep.
‘Jobs agenda’ is a pathetic smokesreen. Without actual jobs, people are gonna grasp that the guy behind the screen is a fraud.
Anybody have an estimate of how many jobs in the U.S. are the result of government spending? Just the direct result (ignoring any multiplier)?
My own household example; I work for a private not-for-profit Medicare contractor. About 95% of our funding is federal. We employ about 120 people. My wife is Director of Quality for a privately held for-profit construction and environmental remediation company. They employ several hundred directly and have dozens of subcontractors. While they do commercial sector work, the vast majority of their revenue comes from federal contracts: DoD, DOE, EPA, TSA, Corps of Engineers, etc (along with various state contracts).
So, two people who directly know perhaps at least 500 or so whose livings are provided by public money.
Obama is now doing what the repubs have been doing for a long time – calling something the opposite of what it actually is. I think most readers here could cite several examples, so I won’t bother to name any.
And Tweety is a moderate. When you see Tweety miles to the left of Obama and my Senators Hoover and Coolidge, you know the Tea Party totally owns the Democratic Party. How did they ever buy or blackmail all of it!
The Big O is a stealth arch conservative who simply does not fucking believe in Democratic economic policies. He is just another fucking trickle down charlatan. Hell, he isn’t even stealth anymore, he is as transparent as cellophane.
There are three choices about Obama. First, he’s obeying his masters on Wall Street, #2 he’s trying to prove that he’s a MAN, or #3, he’s an idiot. Can’t think of any others.
I no longer think it is farfetched to believe that Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist bent on destroying America from within.
Read my post #10 for another plausible explanation.
707!
The patent effort is about making pharmaceutical corporations and the like richer. That has nothing to do with the jobs crisis. Likewise, “free” trade is also about enhancing corporate profits, typically at the expense of workers and the environment.
Obama appears to be pursuing a hard right response on the economy. Instead of listening to nonsense from his media relations people about how the White House would *really* prefer a mass public investment in public works and energy, etc just take him at face value. He has not championed *anything* publicly in terms of such an investment. It would be great politics if he did such a thing and the Congress killed it. People would rally to that. Obviously the Republicans aren’t the reason therefore that Obama has done nothing on jobs. Assume his real priority must be corporate profits and nothing for those who work. In other words, supply side Reaganomics.
Don’t think so. Someone would have noticed that he prayed 5 times a day.
How many pivots to jobs will this guy have? And why, indeed, does he not demand a direct jobs program to hire several million over the next twelve months? And let the thugs tell him NO. Oh yeah, that would require some deficit spending. Ahh but he has some cute ideas that sound good. But you know eeveryone of those unemployed needs a job. Fuck it. We should ignore him and get some good people in congress.
The Rs have already made him irrelevant.
“How many pivots to jobs will this guy have?”
___
Twyla TharpBama.
Now that’s funny.
Tea Party citizens didn’t do anything, nor do they really have a seat at the table (although they may think they do).
It’s the super-mega-wealthy who bought off the politicians. The Tea Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries and has nothing to do with listening to and/or taking care of the needs of any of us serf-citizens, no matter how we vote.
Barack Balanchine.
Obama is bought off by the mega-wealthy. It’s useless (no offense) to pay attention to Obama and wait for him to change or do something “useful” for average citizens. Simply put: not gonna happen.
The left v. right paradigm died in 2000 when the SCOTUS installed the Bush Crime Syndicate in the White House.
We serfs are currently being oppressed by the mega-wealthy and the corporations. All politicians at the fed level, esp in the White House, are just POODLES working for the super rich. Let go of any expectations that they will do something for YOU; no offense, you ain’t rich enough to command the slightest bit of their attention or time.
Obama is just their shill paid to make citizens believe that, as POTUS, Obama is “leading” the country. Obama’s doing no such thing. He is acting at the command of his rich bosses.
Listening to the NPR noon news in the car when Obama announced the “Returning Heroes Tax Credit,” to encourage businesses to hire and train veterans. I hit the “off” button before my blood pressure spiked.
Listen to yourself, Mr President! “The Returning Heroes Tax Credit.”
What’s next? “The Over 45 and Jobless for Two Years Tax Credit?”
“The Senior Citizen Alternative to Eating Cat Food Tax Credit?”
The country has been hemorrhaging jobs for the last decade – millions of jobs have disappeared to other countries. The employed to working age population ratio has declined from the mid-sixies to just over 55 %. We would need to add hundreds of thousands of jobs each month just to start to dig us out of the hole we’ve been sinking into for the last 10 years.
My computer is littered with gobs of hair pulled from my head as I listen to the MSM commentators cheerily babble on about the “good news” of a pathetic job growth number and a totally spurious drop in unemployment.
As they pointed out at HuffPost Obama has been saying job creation has been his priority since he took office. It’s all bullsh*t. If corporate tax cuts and subsidies created more jobs we would be at 3% unemployment by now. Finally after they cut Federal spending certain to cause more layoffs he says this time jobs are really, really his priority.
You must stop! I keep seeing Obama in a tutu. Probably won’t sleep tonight. :)
“The first thing on my mind when I wake up every morning, and the last thing I think about at night when I go to sleep.”
What unadulterated fucking crap.
I call it the “Knob Job Agenda – Now With New and Improved WANKING!”
LOL. I could grab a Chicago movie poster or dance scene jpeg and Photoshop Mr. Pivot into it, ‘eh?
I vote for #1 (flashback to Kitty Carlisle!) but I’m guessing the real masters are further submerged into the woodwork than you’d find on Wall Street. Remember the incident of Michelle’s plane getting “bumped”? That was doen so he wouldn’t forget who’s really charge or even think about going against their agenda.
Aye, Twain, the image and notion of Obama being on pointe in his tutu imperious way is the stuff of nightmares, almost every single day.
I only wish ’twere snark.
;~DW
If you look very closely at that tutu you keep seeing Obama in, you’ll find a name tag that reads “Rahm Emmanuel”.
The picture of him today in the big wig and the fancy dress has probably harmed millions.
Part of his “jobs” agenda is passing the FTAs that are pending in Congress. These always sell these things as job creators. They do create jobs, but the net jobs are always negative. Something they fail to mention.
One of these is with Panama. The banksters really want this one, because it will allow them to set up a corporate structure where they can avoid paying taxes.
Panama FTA link
We could do a “pivot” Photoshop on this, ‘eh?
http://www.bangkokpost.com/media/content/20100828/175624.jpg
Would work well, I think. Those guys need to eat something.
The engine of US meritocracy is the Patent Office. Reform on many levels, including funding, is absolutely critical. Under the current arrangement, which the oligarchs love, they can steal or block whatever patents they please.
If the “reforms” actually protect intellectual property, it should have strong right left appeal.
Could ya reverse the “spin” Obama will put on it, vegasboomer?
There’s the pirouette and then there is the pique.
DW
Well, not to be glib or anything, they’ve been selling the sizzle so long that they forgot there’s supposed to be a steak somewhere. The only bovine product involved here is bullshit.
I downloaded the shot and have Photoshopped out the heads. Next I’ll have to find 2 Obama shots with the same head position angles. We shall see.
Ah …. LOL707LOL707 … gasp!
But don’t “they” say they veal our pain?
Great comment, BTW … glad I was without a drink in hand, cwnidog.
;~DW
Look for Phase 2 to have Obama shipping jobs overseas while he and the Democrats “save” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by cutting them in the name of National Security.
The “sizzle,” which peaked during the past decade, was transaction fee model recursively flipped leveraged bad paper (I worked in subprime risk mgmt from 2000 to early 2005), all of which was masking a tangible economic decline. As we have seen, leverage cuts both ways.
I’m looking forward, vegasboomer …
And, I have not been able to use that term without cringing for quite some time.
DW
There must be an incredible level of hubris inside the Washington bubble, otherwise how could they expect people to believe this incongruous shit?
The bullshit from this White House is especially odious, thanks to its Orwellian character and cynical cruelty.
OK, I can do LOTS better than this. This was all of 3 minutes…
http://www.bgladd.com/TwylaTharBalanchineBamaPivot.jpg
The Obama admin does not have and never has had a jobs agenda. I doubt that it would have the first clue how to even put such an agenda together. Why anyone would expect this admin to suddenly be competent to put such an agenda together is beyond me. It’s a real shame.
that’s always a question for me too. how could they have the cojones to believe anyone would fall for it. Do they actually believe that everyone is that stupid?
Forget jobs. Our insolvent banking system is about to collapse. Obama is finished.
Yet from this fast approaching financial collapse proceeds a plus side: the means for Congress to regain its power over the purse (throwing into the dustbin of history the “Super Congress”), as well as put Social Security back on solid footing.
Soooo, somebody in Washington is now focused on JOBS.
First Up, Tax Breaks for Employers who hire veterans. Not new. In 1978/79, similar Tax Breaks for Employers who hired veterans was was available. MY JOB at that time was to convince employers to use tax breaks for hiring veterans, with emphasis or priority afforded to Disabled Viet Nam Era Veterans. The only real problem is that if employers do not have orders for products, all the tax breaks in the world will not do a bit of good; not get anyone hired. The up side, when employers DO start to go into production, there is nothing like a good tax break to help an employer defray the cost of hiring AND training, and the veteran helping veteran was a good model. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Let me be clear on why this nation is where it is today. It’s because this arrogant, narcisstic president came into office more interested in his legacy than actually doing the job. I know this sounds harsh, but its true. From day one, he’s worked to make sure the GOP had a say in anything that passes, even if he had to water down any policy to get it done, like the stimulus bill. Doris Kearns Goodwin is the person never mentioned who has had the biggest effect on policy in America. She put in Obama’s head this Lincoln analogy and his team of rivals crap, and that Obama could leave a great legacy if could bring the nation together in a sense of shared purpose, much like Lincoln did after the civil war.
Obama took a Republican party on life support and returned them into the ruling party again, after Bush destroyed them. Let’s face it, with the Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate, the GOP is running this nation. We’re still following George W Bush’s economic, financial, and national security policies, 2/5 years into Obama’s presidency.
Everything that’s happened is a direct result of this president pursuing his legacy and also appeasing Wall Street from the day he entered the White House. Thus this guy focused solely on repairing the banking system, while letting home owners fall by the wayside, and focused on passing a health care bill, not an effective health care bill that would make a true difference in people’s lives, but a health care bill for building his legacy. This president figured if he could pass a long standing priority of the Democrats, no matter how flawed it was, and if he could convince the GOP to abandon their destructive ways, and work with a willing Democratic administration, he’d establish his legacy early on. His blind focus on his legacy caused him to ignore the most urgent crisis facing this nation, JOBS!
Robert Rubin said on Charlie Rose that job creation was not a priority because the people are still in the process of deleveraging debt.Considering Rubin”s control over the dems,and his stature as the the world”s most politically-juiced bankster.one need not be a paragon of deductive reasoning to believe Obama is marching to his tune. It must be noted that banksters thrive upon the debt -induced impoverishment of a depressed economy to advance their takeover agenda of privatization and deregulation.