Misgiving # 11: The President's Jobs Plan is Merely Dessert

"Desserts only, no spinach?. We’re still waiting for 'the rest of the story'."
- J.D. Foster
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We all remember the night, September 8th, 2011, when President Obama presented a grand, inspirational-sounding message about hope and change on TV in front of millions.

No, this is not 2008.

Or 2009.

…..no its not 2010 either. Those were different.

This time he really, REALLY meant it. And less people watched it. And even his own Party couldn't pass his bill, which still sits like a cadaver fully dissected on the table, serving no purpose but his own self-aggrandizement.

The “post-Martha's-Vineyard-36-holes-of-golf-and-campaign-bus-tour-jobs-plan” is President Obama's “Stimulus 2.0” intended to jumpstart a stalling economy by increasing the activity among 6 categories of jobs:

Teachers
Police
Fire
Transportation workers
Highway workers
Small Businesses (but only if looking for a job longer than 6 months)

5 of these 6 categories are government-dependent or related jobs.

About Unemployment Insurance:
"Every place that, that money is spent has added business and that creates growth and income for businesses that leads them to decisions about jobs, more hiring. So, there are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance" - President Press Secretary Jay Carney

Well, then maybe Obama's American Jobs Act is really about getting us either...
1.) all on unemployment
2.) all working for the government

...or rich enough to pay the taxes to pay for both of those options, since the lower 49% of wage earners pay no fair share of the tax burden through credits and deductions.

He envisions “managed prosperity” for America. Is this really what people want? It feels good when someone hands you money or a job, but it feels different when you begin to dream and you’re told “you can’t do that, it doesn’t meet our requirements or fit our plan”. THAT is the end result of EVERY Progressive system ever tried. There are only so many ways to skin a cat, but this President is trying his best to invent new ways to label the methods. It’s NOT WORKING.

His speech sounded wonderful. It was passionate. It struck all the right cords that make us feel good: security, prosperity, family-time and kicking the Chinese’ @$$, right?

Any way you slice it, his plan is like asking the American taxpayers to take a home equity loan out on our Chinese neighbors' house to hire our cousins to build a driveway on our own property, then call THAT "economic stimulus".

If there was anything the last 10 years taught American workers and small businessmen and women is that you cannot live, build and grow solely on debt based on future income. The credit bubble was entirely built on this premise, and yet the President's vision is based entirely on this concept.

The beauty of the Free Market that Milton Freidman so often praised, and the reason it works best is because when mistakes happen - and they most assuredly do within any economic system - lessons are learned and corrected, naturally. The problem with Keynesian philosophy is that it erects institutions and spending streams that are perpetual and tasked with blindly picking winners and losers (like Obama's small business tax credit for hiring employees that meet his criteria only), which they cannot possibly accomplish fairly or accurately.

The Free Market determines winners and losers based upon ability, quality and creativity.

The Progressive Market determines who should win based upon intangibles that cannot be forced upon individuals, they must be born within.

"We can make America the greatest nation on earth!"
Please... after 2 1/2 years, let US make America great again by getting out of our way. I don't want to be made great by my Government; I'd rather make my nation great by being myself.

Everyone wants prosperity and equality… in freedom. But our system is built, and is successful upon the liberty to PURSUE happiness. There is no reasonable guarantee of happiness, simply the liberty to pursue it. So when a benevolent Government protects us from ourselves through too much regulation, then places a burden of supporting inactivity on the productivity of those who are successful, and hands that reward to those who never earned it, we become numb to the idea of cause and effect, learning from consequence or the sense of merit.

We become and entitlement generation, and a permanent voting block.

So we heard a nice speech that hit all the right chords and rang the ears of Conservative Independents and the subjects of focus groups everywhere. But at the end of the day, it was the same, tired, proven policies of failure. When everyone was yelling about Rush Limbaugh saying he wanted the President’s policies to fail, I took a more direct, less rhetorical approach: I KNOW that his policies will fail, and THAT is why I oppose them.

I’m not playing politics here, I cannot afford for this economy to sit sluggish until a new President comes along. I WANT prosperity for my country, and most of all, for the community I run my business in. But I KNOW this President believes Government can affect change from the top down, and that’s the problem.

He says “everyone must sacrifice”, but he wants to be the one to determine what that sacrifice is. I will sacrifice my sweat and my fortune to hire more people and expand my business… but not with this climate of fear that results from being managed at every turn.

It appears the only "job" created last night was an acting job. Nothing he proposed will come out in the final product, and all the rhetorical flourish his TelePrompter could muster will change the mood of America’s producers until a real leader stands up and tells his Government what to not do, instead of telling the PEOPLE what to do.

This speech also assured me of one thing: this bill guaranteed the elimination of at least one job - his own.