Recently in jobs Category

The Associated Press reports:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.

Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president's chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, "I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform."

Everything in your power, Mr. President?

Does that mean you will not make jobs your "number one priority," like you said you would in your most recent State of the Union address, Mr. President?

Rasmussen March 4 reported a poll showing that by in large Americans want a government with fewer services and lower taxes:

Just 23% of U.S. voters say they prefer a more active government with more services and higher taxes over one with fewer services and lower taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. This finding has remained fairly consistent since regular tracking on this question began in November 2006.

Two-thirds (66%) of voters prefer a government with fewer services and lower taxes. In August at the height of the congressional town hall controversy over the health care plan, 70% felt that way.

Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans and 68% of voters not affiliated with either major political party favor a government with fewer services and lower taxes. Democrats are more closely divided: 38% like a more active government with more services and higher taxes, while 45% prefer one with fewer services and lower taxes.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of liberals favor a bigger, more activist government. Eighty-four percent (84%) of conservatives and 61% of moderates prefer a smaller government instead.

Rasmussen also found last week that fewer and fewer Americans believe anyone in this country can work their way out of poverty. Only 48 percent say it's possible while 35 percent say it is not and 17 percent don't know. That's down from 56 percent this time last year.

Well gee whiz, I thought the whole point of these massive government spending programs was to enable Americans to do just that -- to work their way out of property.

And it may be the point, but the American people increasingly are showing that they are not as concerned with good intentions as solid results. Charitable though the motivations behind enormous government programs and spending may be, what they accomplish is a culture of people who think they can count on themselves and their neighbors for zero, and the government for what little scraps manage to make it all the way to them from Washington, D.C.
***
And yet, the going criticism of Obama's administration is that they're failing to effectively communicate their message. David Axelrod, the White House spin maestro, is under fire as the president is, as the aforementioned polls indicate, losing the public relations battle.

I suppose it is not in the nature of progressives, or some in the press, for that matter, to ever question the merits of progressive ideas. If the American peopel do not see to be buying whatever progressive policy wonks, elected officials, advisers and spokespersons are selling, then by golly they must not be using the right phrasing!

The simpler explanation is that many people are dissatisfied with the substance of progressive ideas. Many people want approaches that will cost less in the form of taxes and government spending.

Reuters gleefully beams:

WASHINGTON - U.S. employers cut a smaller than expected 36,000 jobs in February, leaving the unemployment rate steady at 9.7 percent, bolstering views the labor market was on the brink of creating jobs.

The Labor Department said Friday it was unclear how the severe snowstorms, which hit much of the country last month, had impacted payrolls. Jobs losses for December and January were revised to show 35,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.

Did anyone in the press ask if it was at all "clear" how the continued break-neck spending in Washington has impacted the job market? The threat of new taxes on employers (excuse me, "the rich")? Sorry, it just amazes me that some in the press will sooner attribute the continued mediocrity of the economy to a snowstorm (caused by global warming, no doubt) than to the enormous regulatory uncertainty of a Washington that seems determined to spend the United States into an unfathomable level of debt.
***
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama promised 3.5 million jobs by 2010 during his presidential campaign, so the latest figures bring his jobs deficit to 8.3 million. Anybody seen those jobs? Anyone? Bueller?
***
Didn't this president and Congress say back in January, after Republican Scott Brown snatched the Massachusetts seat that had belonged to Ted Kennedy for half a lifetime, that they would focus on jobs now? The vast majority of the news I've seen lately has been on healthcare. Part of me wonders if the president can do more than talk a big game. Another part thinks if Obama gets involved in trying to create jobs it will only lead to the kinds of command-and-control policies, runaway spending, huge debt, and burdensome taxes that have the job market in its current state. No one, not even Barack Obama, can tax and spend a people into prosperity.

There is a lot of doubt out there about the competence of the United States government. Some 73 percent, according to Rasmussen, say that Washington is, in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, "broken."

Indeed, the very term "Washington" has become a sort of catch-all for bad ideas and red tape -- too bad for our nation's first president who helped guide our first armed forces to victory in the war for independence. President Obama has tried to portray himself as somehow above the Washington fray, mentioning Washington nine times in his most recent State of the Union Address, every time negatively. His first mention lamented that "Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems."

But he is not faring much better than the Washington establishment as a whole. His approval rating is 45 percent compared to 54 percent who disapprove, and those who strongly disapprove of his leadership outnumber those who strongly approve by 41 to 22.

This discontent translates to faith in government to handle the country's problems. Some 61 percent say the government should stay out of the housing market. Sixty-four percent of those polled believe government policies made it easier for people to purchase homes that they could not afford. In other words, in the minds of those polled, in Washington's zeal for "solving problems," it created new ones.

Only 28 percent of those polled believe the country is moving in the right direction. And -- most damning of all -- only 21 percent of those polled say the U.S. Government actually has the consent of the governed. The innovation of the United States Constitution was that it established a government that derived its authority from the consent of those governed. Some 71 percent view the government itself as a special interest group, and 70 percent think that government works together with big business in ways that hurt consumers, at a time when limited-government conservatives are hardly in any majority.

Now, in a strict technical sense, the government does have our consent. We voted these people into office. They have a mandate that derives from that fact that they won the last general election. But it is evident that the people feel that the spirit of the consent of the governend has been violated. People feel that they have made their voice heard loud and clear and Washington is just not listening. Healthcare is a prime example, as 61 percent believe it is time for the government to start over on reform. And 51 percent trust business leaders with economic decisions more than government officials. Even if I agreed with the prevailing policy proposals in Washington, I would think that those advancing them were doing a lousy job of explaining themselves.

Yet only 43 percent of those polled believe that Republicans would actually change things if they were voted into a majority, versus 32 percent who do not. If government is to regain ts credibility, it must do so not on the basis of party but on the basis of ideas. There is no reason why certain ideas, like low taxes, reduced spending, and basic fiscal responsibility cannot exist in each party. The problem is that in the eyes of many, such principles are non-existent in one party, and all too often abandoned in another.

The lack of trust in government may simply be an indicator that people believe the United States government is stretching outside of its intended scope, which has historically been understood to be insure the safety of its citizens, and protect their rights and liberties under the rule of law.

Conservative leaders across the country are looking to seize upon this documented lack of faith in the competence of our governing institutions by signing a document called the "Mt. Vernon Statement," named for George Washington's home. I'll be watching to see if its signatories can translate the statement of principles into actual policies that don't involve new spending or taxes and can stand a real chance of rebuilding the private sector to get real jobs into the hands of so many who are looking for them these days.

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the first African American president met with African American leaders to talk about how to address the huge unemployment of the African American population.

Prominent African-American leaders pressed President Barack Obama on Wednesday to pursue an economic agenda that includes targeted help for blacks, whose unemployment rate is much higher than the national average and nearly twice that of whites.

1) Isn't "targeted help" exactly what so many black people have been receiving from the federal government for decades now? At disproportionately high rates African American individuals and families signed onto government assistance programs since they first started mushrooming out of the Washington ground under LBJ. And how much good has it really done them?

2) How ironic is it that on a black president's watch the African American population is langusihing in higher degrees of unemployment than ever? When he said "the road would be long" in his acceptance speech on Election Night, could Barack Obama really have meant that over a year into his presidency that his own ethnic group would be doing worse with no sign of getting better? Wasn't he supposed to bring hope and change for the better to his own ethnic group as well as the country entire?

Of course, someone may object that if African Americans' plight started to actually improve in the United States, while other ethnicities held constant, Obama's policies might still face criticism for being too "targeted." But that would depend on why African Americans did uniquely better. If Obama suddenly decided to step back and let the free marketplace actually be "free at last," and African Americans uniquely seized upon the opportunities afforded to them by the loosening of Washington's command-and-control policies, by working hard and gaining marketable skills, then more power to them. That is how Asian Americans have prospered in this country for decades.

The story continues:

"We worked very hard to share with him ideas around the need for targeted relief - and that means to urban communities, to areas of high unemployment," [National Urban League President Marc] Morial said. He said the next challenge is to "create the political will in the Congress. My argument is that when cities do well, America does well. Cities are the economic engines."

Indeed, the story does not at all discuss the Asian American unemployment rate, which, like with all ethnicities in the United States, is higher now than it's been in a long, long time.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures show jobless rates for whites, African Americans, and Asian Americans. But how much are Asian Americans hurting in comparison to blacks and even whites?

In Jan. 2010 the unemployment rate for:
*Whites was 9.6 percent,
*African Americans was 17.3 percent, and
*Asian Americans was 8.4 percent.

Asian Americans must be receiving some serious targeted help from the United States government, right? The National Association for the Advancement of Asian American People (NAAAAP) must really be breathing down Barack Obama's neck. Right? ... No?

At a press conference on Wednesday, the President said:

the best thing that I can do for the African American community or the Latino community or the Asian community, whatever community, is to get the economy as a whole moving.

Somebody should tell him the economy is already moving for the Asian (American) community and has been moving for decades. Why would that be the case? Because they're the ones who aren't going to Barack Obama to get their economy moving. They rely (mostly I mean -- wouldn't want to stereotype anybody) on themselves. They don't play (generally I mean) the victim. They work hard, they educate themselves, they learn marketable skills, they build their incomes over time, and whaddaya know, they get jobs, even the few that are out there. And they prosper.

It ain't rocket science.

(And no, I'm not suggesting that African Americans as a group play the victim or don't work hard or anything like that. To the extent that any of the 17.3 percent of African Americans who are unemployed do not work hard and do play victims, it is only because they have been persuaded to do so by the well-intentioned policies of central planners in Washington D.C. in recent decades -- policies that place African Americans in a state of dependence on government rather than on themselves for goods and services.)