President Obama is Veering off a Cliff

For those of us who never questioned whether we’d be casting our vote for President Obama in the next election, primarily because the Republicans have been hostile, extreme and uncooperative, President Obama’s speech today, 6/8/2012 is starting to make even the unreasonable seem more reasonable than the President.

Perhaps in response to the Scott Walker survival of his recall or perhaps because he really believes it or perhaps because he’s looking for a way to jumpstart the economy through governmental hiring without having to actually increase hiring by the Federal government directly by increasing money to states to expand their civilian government hiring, President Obama is teetering on the edge of losing blocs of independent and democratic voters with his push, emphasis and insistence that more government hiring at state levels will improve the economy.

In a stunning show of refusal to face reality, the President blamed Congress for failing to support giving money to states as a means for them to increase governmental hiring and therefore reduce unemployment. What a disaster.

First of all, the back-door approach to achieving results has not and will not work. Much like homeowner bailouts and much like the too-big-to fail bailouts, President Obama is proposing trickle down theories of bolstering the economy that are hoping, guessing and incorrectly predicting that by helping an industry by giving it money or by helping a government by giving it money the benefits will trickle down to citizens.

This democratic hypocrisy is as untrue as the hypocrisy put forth by Republicans that continuing tax breaks to the super-wealthy will work to reduce unemployment. We’ve had tax breaks for the super wealthy and guess what? They’re super wealthier and unemployment and wages for the vast majority of other workers have stagnated and gone down. There are too many loopholes and other places for rich people to hide or invest their money rather than in our economy and our workers. Trickle down doesn’t work.

Trickle down programs and policies are WRONG and many of us are tired of hearing them used as justification for policies that do nothing for the worsening citizen condition. While pointing at measly benefits in terms of retaining jobs at car manufacturers which included CONCESSIONS by union workers in addition to money to the car manufacturers, while providing relief to some homeowners although the number was substantially smaller than anticipated because of criteria required for eligibility for bailouts, President Obama’s policies have failed.

By proposing yet ANOTHER one-step-removed, “If we help this guy, this guy will benefit down the road,” scenario AND making the help money for governments, President Obama has now jumped off a cliff. He’d really have been better off taking the money invested in these programs and writing a check to each and every American citizen.

People don’t want to hear about government hiring expanding without provision for cutting out, cutting down and removing the costly perks that governmental workers get that the rest of the population does not contributing to the cost of government.

Take specific information for a job such as school janitor. In some places these union employees earn on the average $55,000 with the numbers ranging much higher in school districts such as some on Long Island. With college grads earning minimum wage and experienced professionals having to cobble together part time jobs to make ends meet this is practically obscene. More civilian government hiring?

It’s an outrageous suggestion that even contradicts other policies President Obama is pushing such as those for low-interest student loans to encourage young people to get an education. Why? Instead they should be getting a government job like janitor or getting a four-year degree to go teach in some school or run to get on a list to join law enforcement which promises to be more secure and more lucrative than the so-called “careers” available for educated individuals.

President Obama doesn’t talk about how state workers would be required to receive fewer perks for states to get money to hire, he doesn’t advocate that union workers such as teachers be required to sacrifice some of the superior health benefits they’re eligible for to reduce their real income from their jobs and he certainly doesn’t touch anything about strengthening the quality and training of police forces because nobody can touch that without enormous push back from police forces.

Instead he talks about funneling money to states to get their government to hire more workers which might help the President point to fewer unemployed people without having to admit to expanded Federal government but is not helping our economy in any sustainable way.

This is not the first time we’ve seen President Obama put forth a solution based on helping numbers that reflect on him such as how many Americans are unemployed. We saw this same disaster with healthcare reform with the inclusion of the penalty/fine for non-enrollment in health insurance plans which ignored the problems with healthcare and health insurance and focused on the number that reflected on President Obama, whether he could reduce the number of uninsured in our country.

As a democrat I’ve got to say, the Republicans have a real chance here. Not by continuing their, in my opinion insane over-analysis and obsession with sex from women’s rights to gay marriage to contraception.

Certainly not by arguing doing away with Departments of government or social security and Medicare instead of putting in the work to better weed out fraud in those parts of government and considering doing away with programs such as HIPAA which have done and do little more than protect patients from family members accessing their medical information (which is borne out by the number of HIPAA actions and enforcements taken over the years).

And definitely not by sticking with the absurd, here emphasized as wildly unreasonable, claims that Republicans don’t support big government. From spending to lobbying to passing special legislation to participating in programs that benefit government workers including themselves Republicans support big government as much if not more than democrats. Instead Republicans should emphasize they support DIFFERENT big government. And finally by doing more than saying NO and being intractable like stubborn children rather than moving towards reasonable compromise if they hope to represent the country.

It’s a lot to expect but President Obama is giving them a gift with his self-congratulation that ignores the reality of experience for most Americans.