Week of 09/19/2011

“Will Lie About Jobs”
– by David Matthews 2

You’ve probably seen them along the road… people who carry signs that say “Will Work For Food”.

These are people that are supposedly so desperate that they’ll beg motorists along the side of the road for work, and not in exchange for money, but rather in exchange for food. After all, who can’t afford to give up an extra can of beans or a loaf of bread?

The problem, though, is that we’re told to ignore these people.

“Ignore them! You don’t know who they are! They could be con-people! They could be thieves, ready and willing to take full advantage of your generosity. There are services for these people to turn to! They don’t need to be out there on the streets if they really need help!”

That’s the “official statement” that we’re told about them. Even when they’re dressed like they’re ready to go to a job interview, we’re supposed to assume that they are loafers, deadbeats, and hucksters. Yes, there are supposedly “services” for them to turn to… in theory… if that help wasn’t already exhausted or else slashed into oblivion by political budget cuts.

The problem, though, is that the real hucksters aren’t the ones on the side of the road carrying signs. The real hucksters are in Washington, and if they had to carry around a sign, theirs would say “Will Lie About Jobs”.

The name of the game now is “Jobs”. Everyone wants to talk about “Jobs”. Everyone has a “plan” about creating “Jobs”. “Jobs” is the new magic word for politicians. It used to be “Stimulus”; now it’s “Jobs”, “Jobs”, and “Jobs”.

President Barack “Fail” Obama has a plan to create “Jobs”. House Speaker John “Oompa-Loompa” Boehner has a plan to create “Jobs”. Every one of the presidential wannabes in the GOP are either touting their own plans to create “Jobs” or are squabbling over who created more “Jobs”.

If wishes were horses, then we’d all have stables of Triple Crown winners, and if all of these ideas for “Jobs” translated into real jobs, then we’d have negative unemployment numbers. But we don’t have the horses, only the horses’ dung; and we don’t have jobs, only lies and schemes to make certain people rich and keep everyone else in misery and destitution.

Obama’s much-touted “jobs plan” is nothing more than a rehash of the same programs that have failed before, only now with a few more caveats. States can’t take the money and “repurpose” it like they did in 2009. They can’t use the money to pay off other budget shortfalls or fund old programs put on hold. But it’s still money for teachers, money for “infrastructure”, money for those still able to get unemployment assistance, and more empty talk about still more education for people who already have college degrees and doctorates and enough certificates to wallpaper a house.

And all of it does absolutely nothing to create jobs. All it does is tread economic water, which did not work in 2009, it did not work in 2010, and we are seeing that it does not work today.

Unfortunately the “alternative” is nothing of the sort. The GOP’s collective plans all seem to follow the same message: give Big Corporate huge stinking tax breaks, let them run roughshod without any kind of regulatory oversight, let them scavenge America like they’ve been doing, and maybe – just maybe – if we ask them enough times with the words “pretty, pretty please with sugar and a cherry on top”, they may throw a hiring bone in there somewhere when they’re not busy giving themselves huge stinking bonuses.

In fact Bank of America is getting rid of some 30,000 jobs, and most of them are executives that would otherwise get a smaller bonus check. 30,000 more people added to the unemployment roles so BoA executives can reap more bonus money. If there was ever a need to “Ma Bell” these kinds of institutions, now is just a good of a time as any… and it would actually create jobs in the process.

The problem is that this is the same “genius idea” from the 2000’s that the previous President touted while driving us into two wars that were kept off the budget books. While Big Corporate celebrated huge stinking record profits, the rest of the Americans were getting meager raises that failed to keep up with the cost of living increases. What made up the difference was convincing families into taking part in the biggest land swindle in human history, which is still going on this very day, and one where the criminals are not only getting away with it, but they’re doing so with big stinking bailouts and big stinking profits.

And the GOP expects this to somehow be the same “solution” that would create “jobs”! Well, it certainly creates jobs for themselves and their staff members. After all, business is always booming for K-Street lobbyists and think tanks.

Let’s get brutally honest here… all of this talk about “Jobs” and having a “Jobs program” is nothing more than just talk. It’s just lies, lies, still more lies, and still more lies on top of those lies.

The McClatchy News Service recently did a report about the lack of jobs, and they discovered that the biggest hindrance to real small businesses hiring people is not from taxes or regulations, but rather from the banks. The same banks that got billions in taxpayer bailout money and then posted record profits. As long as the bank officials are allowed to get away with their criminal activities, as long as the banks continue to get preferential treatment from both the Democrats and the GOP, and as long as they continue to get away with hiding behind the fraudulent banner of “Too Big To Fail”, then this recession will continue. The same economic death spiral from the early 1930’s will continue here, only this time without an FDR-style figure to step up and put on the brakes.

We need real solutions, not talk, and certainly not lies about rehashed programs that either failed or were responsible for putting us into this situation in the first place. And we need real and tangible solutions today, because tomorrow there will be more of us out on the roadsides holding up signs that say “Will Work For Food”, only by then the only people on those roads will be the ones who have never given a care about the American people in the first place.