June 17th / 19th
"Doctor Obama's 'Bump in the Road'"
Last week while speaking to Jeep workers in Toledo, President Obama said
that our economic recovery had "hit a bump in the road". But later in that
same speech he went off script and said, "It's like getting hit by a truck,
it will take some time to get over".
For a moment, I thought I was listening to Sarah Palin or George Bush who
are known for using inappropriately mangled metaphors. One minute we've hit
a bump in the road, and the next, we've been crushed by a tractor trailer.
There's a big difference, so which is it? Truth be told, the truck analogy
was probably a more accurate description of our current condition.
For example, the Obama administration had projected that 150,000 jobs
would be created in May, but by the end of last month, the nation had netted
only 54,000 new jobs. Meanwhile, political pundits joked that had it not been
for McDonalds hiring summer help, Obama might not have created any jobs.
That sentiment was reminiscent of earlier this year when the administration
bragged about jobs being created, only to discover that most of them were
for temporary census workers. The White House also likes to boast about
bringing the unemployment level to under 10%, but that is a misleading
statistic. As Fareed Zakaria observed, if you add up the number of people who are
unemployed, plus those who have stopped looking for work, and those who have
settled for part time jobs, there are actually 24 million Americans either
unemployed or underemployed. Even more telling is the fact that over 40% of
unemployed persons have been out of work for six months or longer, and
that hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Speaking of which, a CNN poll
released last week reported that 48% of all Americans think we're headed
for a another depression. Public perception may not always be an accurate
economic barometer, but where there's smoke, there's fire, and right now,
Washington is blowing plenty of smoke up our butts while the economy goes up
in flames.
In all fairness, the President and his party don't have the market
cornered on failed economic policies. GOP lawmakers throughout the nation believe
that budgets must be slashed at all costs. But those costs include the loss
of hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them teachers. Republicans
obviously don't realize that the more people without a job means less people who
can afford to buy goods and services, and that means less tax revenue.
There is, however, one way to fix our economy, but neither political party
has had the courage to do it. I'm referring of course to the repeal of our
lop-sided trade agreements.
In 1992 Ross Perot predicted that NAFTA (and later, CAFTA) would suck jobs
out of America and ruin our economy. His prediction came true. In the last
ten years alone, over 50,000 manufacturing plants have been closed in the
United States, and millions of people thrown out of work as a result of so
called free trade. But the plants weren't shuttered because companies
couldn't compete globally. They were closed because bad trade agreements and
unethical tax breaks made it attractive and profitable for greedy corporations
to send their jobs overseas, pay slave wages to third world workers, and
ship their goods back into America without having to pay high tariffs. China
has an import tariff of 22%. India's trade tax is 44%. But we let
anything and everything into our country for just 2%. We must stop this madness by
re negotiating all of our trade agreements, and make it attractive for
American companies to hire American workers once again.
And while Congress is deliberating on how to reform our trade deals and
the tax loopholes that encourage the continuing decimation of America's
workforce, the President should sign an executive order that will require all
retailers to post signage that says the following: "Warning, purchasing cheap
goods made overseas is hazardous to our economy". This kind of federal
warning isn't a new concept. We have it on cigarette packs in order to save
lives, so we should be able to have it in store windows in order to save
jobs.
America hasn't hit a bump in the road. We have been run over by a big ass
truck while it was hauling our jobs away, and we're in traction as a
result. That's why the only way for us to fully recover is for the government to
repeal our trade deals, and stop rewarding American corporations for moving
their workforce overseas. It's up to Doctor Obama to heal us, and if he
can't prescribe the right course of action, then we need to get a second
opinion in 2012.
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