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Double-dip red Friday, non-stimuli and government jobs-only summits

Gamecock just announced the dawning of the first Black Friday in his memory that won’t be black and Cockstradamus crows at the dawning of the feared double-dip recession; but JimmyCrackCorn and ObamaDems don’t care.

Red Friday I

DeVine Law won’t be in the North American shopping mall equivalent of the Running of the Bulls today, but he never is nor will be. His three main goals in life are to never get hot; never be forced to speak to a Police between Dusk and Dawn; and never, ever go to a shopping mall (Drug stores on Christmas Eve have plenty of presents to choose from, but I digress.)

But now that Thanksgiving Day 2009 (brought to you by Pilgrims, Washington, Lincoln and God) is over, can we get serious about how much more we would like to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day 2010 so that Black Friday 2010 has a darker hue than today’s in the red one?

Character Test

We spoke last year of being tested as a people no matter whether Obama or McCain prevailed, given the loss of so much housing and other wealth and given the state of debt held by individuals and government.

The test was going to be bad enough without a government, at one hostile to the Liberty that leads to wealth creation and enamored of economic-crisis driven blank checks for government growthulus.

Porkulus is more caring than Govenment Growthulus

Then we were served up a Dems Don’t Care about the poor and middle class non-Stimulus better characterized as Government Growthulus, not the more ubiquitous epithet of “porkulus.”

cockstradamus

Cockstradamus laughed on January 13th of this year when Hugh Hewitt’s wide-eyed economic optimist Brian Wesbury announced the “most intense” period of the recession behind us. We hope that HH. BW and Larry Kudlow-ites have enjoyed moving the shells of the Dow Jones game around as they have followed the wave of deficit spending on saved and created pencil-pushing state, local and federal government jobs as well as Bernanke’s assault on the once Almighty Dollar. Hope that 2.8% downward revised GDP in the Third Quarter warmed your soul for the intensity of accumulated long-term unemployment that will make January 2009 look like salad days even to Wesburyites, as they read CBO Director Doug Elmendorf:

CBO Director Elmendorf said today the country has not yet seen the worst of joblessness, despite some encouraging signs of economic growth.

Speaking at the American Association for Budget and Program Analysis’ fall conference, Elmendorf said the CBO projection of this past summer, which saw the unemployment rate peaking at 10.5 percent next year, underestimated the autumn’s rise in jobless numbers. The rate hit 10.2 percent in October.

“We are weighing our precise forecast going forward,” Elmendorf said, adding that the employment picture is expected to get worse before it gets better.

CBO has forecast that it will take years before unemployment falls to a “sustainable” level of 5 percent, Elmendorf said, because the current jobless numbers are so high.

“If one judges the pain of a recession by the excess of the unemployment rate over the long-run level … this picture is very clear that most of the pain of the recession is ahead of us, not behind us,” he said.

All things Stimulus

Stimulus I consisted of several parts:

a) safety-net unemployment and COBRA health insurance for the truly needy;
b) one-time, approx. $400 individual tax cuts for incomes under $250K;
c) public works pork; and
d) Government Growthulus increases in the federal bureaucracy and aid to states, who used them to retain government employees.

Ford has a better idea

Ford Motor Company and many other non-bailed out companies have so far weathered the creative destruction of this Great Recession to post profits with less employees. But never let government have to do that. We all know we need every last school administrator backing up the lowly teachers.

COBRA

But, Gamecock favored the extensions of unemployment and COBRA and favors even further extensions now. Unemployment comp has been extended, but I urge all to support H.R. 3930, introduced by Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., on extending COBRA.

We also favored a massive public works program to put people to work IN 2009! But instead, we got a puny public works program that mainly printed signs in 2009 with most all of the tiny budget for public works to be spent in the few months before Election 2010, so that voters see a shovel beside a “This project funded by the Recovery Act” sign.

ObamaDems don’t care about the poor

ObamaDems didn’t care about the suffering of the 10-17% unemployed in 2009 and the first half of 2010. They do care about getting re-elected and hope they have made enough of the unemployed victim dependents by next Election day.

I only wish Stimulus I had served up more pork, as we await the likely servings of no better than Tofu with the Jobs Summit and Stimulus II.

Yes, I would love for a real stimulus to come out of Obama’s December Jobs Summit and that it be called Stimulus II, or even, Barack Obama We Love you II, if it were a real stimulus.

While I don’t share the optimism of Rush Limbaugh and others that even the supply-side tax and regulation cuts that have always worked in the past (see 1920s, 1960s and 1983-2006) would work as quickly as in the past, until we start laying the foundation for wealth and job creation, we are simply prolonging suffering unnecessarily.

Or is the suffering necessary?

Maybe it is necessary that we suffer so that our minds are concentrated on the hideous results of Big Government and failed liberal Democratic Party policies.

Democrats took over the House and Senate in January 2007. The Great recession started in December 2007, nine months before the credit crunch. The repeal of Bush Republican policies on taxes and regulations is the reason, even before the Dems’ Fannie Mae protection plan via Senate filibusters took hold.

Is it possible that fears of a massive Gingrich-like 1994 repeat could get ObamaDems to rethink the spread the wealth already accumulated strategy and actually enact policies that would encourage, rather than demonize private sector job and wealth creation?

I doubt it, but if we are to have more to be thankful for next year, the Reagan, JFK, Coolidge way is the only way.

Savings are key to future growth

But one other way will also be a necessary part of any recovery, and that will be the way the author of Thanksgiving set out in his Holy Bible, and that will be to build houses on solid rock rather than sand and to store up goods for rainy days.

The fact is that Obama can push housing tax credits (and I favor them); small business loan subsidies (and I favor them), but until people save up money that makes them feel secure enough to risk money on a business and until lenders see the likelihood of profits being earned from new loans, there won’t be any real, REAL job producing loans. Instead, all we will get are the next moves towards the next bubbles.

Want to have a more stimulating 2010 with more to be thankful for on the last Thursday in November and really, really Black Friday?

Dare ObamaDems

Dare Blue Dawgs to vote for any health care bill that doesn’t end state monopolies and enact federal tort reform. Dare them to pass an energy tax assault on the poor and middle class cap and trade. Dare them lest we cap them and trade them in for Republicans that won’t make Pelosi and Reid sycophants for ObamaDems and JimmyCrackCorn, because them don’t care.

We do remain thankful for God’s Providence, especially including Obama’s inexperience. Can you imagine the threadbare clothing we would be in crisis over if the Obama Administration were actually competent?

We are also very thankful for the good work that Rush Limbaugh (no thanks to Newt) has done over the years in exposing the hoax of man-made global warming, which forms the latest basis for post-Berlin Wall socialists to tear down Liberty and the wealth it produces that makes us lemmings less dependent on Obamas.

Yet, even in the face of the exposed hoax, President Obama is going to Copenhagen to vow the continues assault on American Tiny Tims this winter.

The Ghosts of Christmas past, present and future await Scrooge in 2010 and 2012.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

COMMENTS

  • JadedByPolitics

    who are unemployed vis a vis their vote then isn’t any extension of unemployment/cobra EXACTLY what gets them those 10-17%….I believe our country is extending unemployment benefits for over 12 months now isn’t it? does that help someone get up off their duff after a depressing 6 month job search when all they really want to do is stay under the covers? I think the continuous extensions ARE making hardworking Americans settle into to a government teat mentality don’t you?

    In past history when you were out of work and had 24 weeks to find another job WELL you found another job even if that job were not to your liking but now with up to 12 months worth of benefits SOME are likely to just hang around for 11 months before taking that job they would NEVER have wanted prior!

  • nessa

    There needs to be a deadline to provide the motivation necessary for some to take a job. Benefits being cut off will provide that. continuous extensions provide no motivation to do anything other than continue to draw benefits.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    given the depth of this recession, the lack of any policies in place to shorten it and the relatively puny dollar amount numbers involved (as compared to the govenment growthulus, bailouts etc) vs the fact that this type of shock absorber aid is the best Keynes had to offer along with public works, I favor it.

    Reagan favored this safety net for the truly needy: soc sec, unemployment comp and food stamps in a modern industrial society.

    Do I agree with you that there is a risk of providing too much govt incentive not to work? yes.

    Problem is that in this economy, even the threat of starvation is not going to make jobs appear if those on the dole got off.

    Savings have to accumulate and supply side policies have to be in place before this economy can provide jobs.

    Caleb Howe made a point back during the bailout heydays of Sept 2008-April 2009, that if only we had mailed checks to taxpayers equivalent to the bailouts total amount, we would have had a recovery. I objected at the time. I was wrong. Caleb was right.

    So how can I now not favor some scraps from Scrooge’s table going to some of the We the ordinary tiny tim People when so much of our future is going to government jobs saved and created; Goldman Sachs and other friends of Paulson and Big Tiny Tim Geithner?

    I can’t.

  • pilgrim

    …but until people save up money that makes them feel secure enough to risk money on a business and until lenders see the likelihood of profits being earned from new loans, there won?t be any real, REAL job producing loans. Instead, all we will get are the next moves towards the next bubbles.

    For me this is really the bottom line. All the talk of being favorable or unfavorable to extending unemployment or COBRA relief are just distractions from what we really need to be concerned about. The complete destruction of the US free market economy is about “bubble” away from occurring.

  • JadedByPolitics

    NON-EXISTANT…there is NO MONEY….it is ALL DEBT! The money is GONE! There needs to be an IMMEDIATE 6 month tax holiday for all tax paying Americans so that they will boost their spending thereby creating jobs. There also needs to be an incentive to business ie: STOP this fake Obamacare bill….if there is EVER going to be REAL money those two items are where the “vapor” money should to be extended. JOBS, JOBS, JOBS that is the ONLY way to save the day!

  • Richard Mullins

    in order to give a reason for more federal government jobs. I don’t see that as healthy kind of thing. What we need to have as a bill in the 112th congress is the Explosion of Small Businesses on the landscape. When that bill ever get enacted, unemployment will fall to a very low number. On one side of my family is nothing but small business people(the Piano’s not the Mullins’) and I see a lot of good coming from them. So I really don’t want to have Cobra benefits extended because it doesn’t fix the problem at all. It only makes it worse.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    to banks, GM union, govt employees, etc

    May only Obama’s pals get the no money? Can’t the poor and suffering middle class have some the “spoils” during the Age of Obama?

    smile

  • Richard Mullins

    and they should have used the Monopoly money for better use than it is. We need to have the “Explosion of Small Business Act” to happen in the 112th congress to get things on track. That needs to be on the lips of very one running for congress in 2010. When that happens, I’m sure that it make jobs everywhere.

  • nessa

    …that’s another subject. Provisions to incentivize small business expansion/growth/new hiring should be part and parcel of any thing which portends to address unemployment. But that’s not happening, and it won’t with this administration/congress. Putting people back to work and improving the economy is not the goal. At least not until closer to election time. We see it, we know the plan for the porkulus, it’ll hit just before the election, by the dems self centered view, making them look like the cavalry in an old western, riding to the rescue “just in the nick of time.” The last thing we need is to help them add to the entitlement rolls between now and then.

    I certainly didn’t mean to disagree with GC, just echoing Jaded’s thoughts against the gov’t providing charity. That is the responsibility of your fellow man, not the government.

  • JadedByPolitics

    mentioned should have gotten a dime. I have been very vocal that the banks NOT get a bailout but President Bush gave one and Obama continued the payout….I will NEVER agree that ANY business is too big to fail….fail away that is the price you pay for doing BAD BUSINESS!

    I do not agree that the “suffering” middle class needs a bailout anymore then the bankers did. I just don’t agree EVER that the Federal Govt should be in the business of taking from one American to give to another….that is the job of each of us to give as we see fit to help those WE want to help.

  • pilgrim

    It’s like the bonuses to AIG employees…Obama was happy to have everybody be outraged over the 160 million in bonuses so they would not think to be outraged over the 109 BILLION that went to banks in France and Germany.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine