What a difference a year makes.

A little over a year ago, a close friend of mine was chosen by her company to attend a GOP fund-raiser. Her company paid a zillion dollars and in exchange, she and a handful of other VIP's from her Defense contractor, engineering firm were going to get to go through a line and shake hands with President Bush, then get to sit and listen to an hour of speeches.

For this to happen, her company had to write the big check and then submit the names of those who were going to attend so they could be vetted (I assume by the Secret Service).
Actually, getting to the event itself was a whole other story.

Although it was being held in a public convention center, the Secret Service had cordoned off a two block area around the facility, to include a public park. NO ONE gets in. In order to attend this event, my friend had to drive to a separate parking lot some miles away where she was to be screened again before being allowed to board a bus. The bus was then to take these vetted and thoroughly screened, paying guests to the event where they would be screened again before entering the venue.

Fast forward to a little over a year later. Now we have a new President at his first State function. An event in the White House itself. A facility where the most state of the art surveillance and screening equipment have been in place for some time now.
Yet, a couple merely playing the part of guests, two people who apparently didn't even have to produce any credentials what so ever, are allowed by the Secret Service to merely walk in the front door and shake hands with the leader of the free world.

This is simply unfathomable to me.

In a time in which public already has very little trust in our governments ability to do it's job, it would seem our secret service couldn't even manage to perform the most very basic function of their job, checking credentials at the door, in order to protect a Democrat President. Our first Black President. A President who had received a record number of death threats before he even swore the oath of office.

I just can't even begin to understand this incident. Because the simplest answers are simply unconscionable.

Unemployment - can you handle the truth ?

With all this talk about a "jobless recovery" and claims that we can't actually have a recovery unless the job situation gets back to normal, I've begun to question what normal really is (was?).

Looking at an "unemployment rate" graph from google, I see that since 1990 during any given 4 year Presidential term, the most the rate has changed (up or down) is about 3%.

I picked the "4 year term" time period because (right or wrong) "we the people" seem to correlate unemployment directly to actions taken (or not taken) by a Presidential administration. I only went back to 1990 because that was the only graphed data I could find at the moment.

So ... after the cataclysmic economic events in the Fall of 08, in which the unemployment rate spiked nearly 6% to a high of now 10.2% , the most we should seem to rationally expect out of an administration would be to lower that back down to around 7%
To get unemployment back down to the 4 - 5 % range would take the sort of extraordinary economic prowess not shown by either party in nearly 2 decades.

However, even that wouldn't really be "back to normal".

From the beginning of the Bush Presidency until the extraordinary events in the Fall of 2008, the unemployment rate only decreased 0.1%
Yes, they did have about a 3% change between their high and their low but in the end, almost 8 years later, all their efforts just managed to hold unemployment steady.

But the job scene was changing rapidly.
Corporate America was in full scale "right-sizing" mode and was trying to trim as much "fat" as they could get away with. The outsourcing of work to foreign countries and even the relocating of corporate headquarters was in high gear. Jobs were disappearing at a voracious rate.

The main thing that prevented the unemployment rates from drastically climbing during the last administration was long unemployed workers being dropped from the unemployment rolls and a massive amount of Government hiring.
The birth of the Office of Homeland Security was the creation of one of the largest, open-ended Government programs since Social Security! This massive expansion of the Federal Government helped to offset the number of "private" jobs that were being lost.

Where we now stand.

Pun-dents keep talking about the Obama stimulus effort not "creating jobs" yet "normal" would be to just stop the bleeding and hold steady where we are. As for actually lowering the unemployment rate, that may be a dream of decades long gone. With productivity on the rise (doing more with less) and overhead now as lean as it has been in decades, does it really make sense for corporations to return to the "bloated days" and hire all these U.S. workers back?

What about massive government spending to create jobs? The public didn't so much as bat an eyelash at the previous administration for doing this. Now though, with a LOT of cheer-leading from FAUX News and Hate Radio, it seems that the public has no stomach for the current administration's suggestions for doing the same.

So now what?

I really couldn't say but I do know that it is past time to embrace the changing reality of the U.S. employment situation and start making plans based on what we face and NOT on nostalgia for an era gone by.

Good news about the "TARP"

With everyone taking their shots at the administration's plans to save our necks, I thought I might share this example of where "Troubled Asset Relief Program" IS working.
Seems it can work when you can find bankers who want to make it work.

How the TARP Should Work: A Prime Example

One other note;
The Republicans are on a massive PR tour to try to talk up the amount of "pork" that was in the budget that got passed yesterday. They keep throwing out figures that are specifically tweaked to try and enrage the masses.
What they are NOT telling you is that the amount of earmarked projects that are in this Omnibus budget have been reduced to just 2% of the total. One of the lowest amounts of such spending in a long, long time.

BTW: I saw an interview with one of the chief Republican congressmen who is attacking the amount of earmarks in this budget. When the reporter pointed out the millions that had been put in for earmarked projects in HIS state, he said he would put those items back IN the budget if they were to get removed. Apparently it is only "pork" when the money goes to someone else.
Hypocrite.

Take. A. Deep. Breath.

If you watch CNBC or pay any attention to the news, you may be ready to throw your hands into the air and yell "We're screwed".

Commentator after commentator gets in front of a camera and talks about what is wrong with the Obama administration's economic plans and why they won't work.
This is where the controlled breathing needs to come into play.

Last Friday, the non-stop cry on CNBC was how terrible it was that The White House was leading us towards the "Nationalization" of our financial institutions. On Monday afternoon of this week though, the CNBC "Fast Money" folks were just tearing into the President because he wasn't going to "Nationalize the banks and get it over with".

Anecdotally speaking, if you had 10 "experts" come on CNBC to talk about what we need to do to fix this problem, the 1st might say that the President's plan was exactly what was needed and the other 9 would say it's the wrong direction.
However, if you took ANY of the other 9 and adopted ONE of their plans you would get the same "wrong direction" reaction from the remaining 9 "experts" !

It is also important to keep in mind that many of these "experts" represent the failed economic policies of the previous administration and they are just as terrified that this administration's plans WILL work as those who are worried that they won't! Also, many more of these "experts" are far more worried about what the stock market will get out of all of this then they are worried about how "mainstreet America" will fare. When a corporation ships it's work overseas, it's profits and stock price go up while life for it's former employees just gets more desperate.

The bottom line? Right now, there is simply NO consensus on how to fix things. We are in un-charted waters here. This global economic disaster is not like anything that has come before it. While there are many "plans" out there, none has any more support among the "experts" than does President Obama's.

This President is a very smart man. We trusted him enough to elect him. Giving up on him before his plans have even had a chance to be implemented just doesn't make sense.

"Confused" Grampa, Thriftfully Drives Car Off Cliff !

Old Grampa's confused state may make him a cute and cuddly member of the family ... but would you really pick him to lead you and your family out of a burning office building?

The group that is currently getting the most press coverage as they attack President Obama's stimulus efforts, has decided to choose Senator John McCain as their leader.

John McCain, the man who admitted just a few months ago that,

“The issue of economics is something that I’ve really never understood as well as I should.” (Boston Globe,12/18/07),

and then at the GOP debate in Fla clearly demonstrated his economic cluelessness by stating,

“I don’t believe we’re headed into a recession. I believe the fundamentals of this economy are strong, and I believe they will remain strong.” (GOP Debate, Myrtle Beach, FNC, 1/10/08)

Yes, this very same man is now saying that he has all the answers and we should scrap the plan of the man we just chose as our President and instead, follow him.
Either he has copious amounts of audacity or he suffers from short term memory loss.Or perhaps, both.

Still, he just might succeed in gathering a mob. Because, while the President is giving us the straight, hard news - Senator McCain is telling everyone what they want to hear.
This man, who told us that he didn't really understand the economy, is now saying that with his plan we can fix the economy at half the cost.
Swell.

Our economy is very very sick and the danger with Senator McCain's fairytale ending is that we will skimp on our unpopular meds, taking less then the prescribed dosage to save money.
The result? Instead of spending $850 billion and being on the road to recovery - we will have spent just $421 billion and be even sicker then we are now.

Specialists, (people who's profession IS understanding the economy) have prescribed some nasty tasting, VERY expensive medicine. No one wants to have to do this thing, Mr. McCain but sometimes you have to make the tough choices and you have to be strong and you have to take your medicine - ALL OF IT.

Thank you Mr. President

In a press conference today, President Obama finally spoke out against his critics and said what I had been writing here for days.

http://tinyurl.com/bsfxom

Obama said the criticisms he has heard "echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place, the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems."

"I reject those theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change," said the president, who was elected with an Electoral College landslide last fall and enjoys high public approval ratings at the outset of his term.

President Obama continues to "reach across the isle" and allow the Republicans to have their say on what spending items stay or go ... but it's time for them to come to terms with the fact that they are no longer steering this ship.

Welfare queen

Some of you kids out there may not remember this term. It was heavily used during Ronald Reagan's 1976 presidential campaign when he described a "welfare queen" from Chicago's South Side. In this "made for sound bite" tale, there was a woman receiving government assistance and she had supposedly used the money to buy a Cadillac and was living the "high life" on the Tax payer's money.

Soon, the far right was in full on "foaming at the mouth mode", crying out against an imagine army of "project" dwelling freeloaders.

All of this was far from the truth of course. While you can always find a handful of people to support ANY stereotype (especially when you are talking about the MILLIONS that require government assistance just to survive) this "living the high-life on taxpayer money" just wasn't a reality. Those that were abusing government assistance were a barely visable blip on the budget radar screen. The Reagan mob could have had every one of those who were mis-using their "welfare" checks shipped off to Gitmo and it wouldn't have reduced the money that was needed by even a 10th of a percent.

Still, the OUTRAGE behind this idea - the idea that ANYONE would take Government assistance and selfishly spend it on themselves - was pivotal in swinging voters to Reagan's side.

Fast foreword to NOW.

Through a series of VERY bad financial decisions based on terrible and inept judgment at best and simple greed at worst, Wall Street financial firms have destroyed themselves and much of this nations economy. Wasting no time, they marched into Congress and demanded that the Taxpayers bail them out of this mess or they were going to take everyone down with them.
So congress wrote them some REALLY BIG WELFARE CHECKS with the intention that they use that money to continue making payroll, pay their debts and lend it to Americans in need.

Instead, these modern day Welfare Queens used the money to go shopping for smaller banks, to prop up banks overseas, to share with their stock holders, and to pay themselves multi million dollar bonuses.
They took tax payer assistance money, meant to keep their doors open and paid themselves bonuses for the previous years disastrous efforts. Do you know how many Cadillacs 1 million dollars is?

Why is what they are doing any different then what the Regan administration was vilifying?

Where is the national outrage?