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14 WAYS TO PUT AMERICA BACK TO WORK

Next week in Chicago, the Clinton Global Initiative will focus on America for the first time, inviting business and political leaders to make specific commitments in support of the former president�s jobs blueprint, which he details below.

1. SPEED THE APPROVALS

Harry Hopkins had nowhere near the rules and regulations we have now. (In 1933, Hopkins�s Civil Works Administration put 4 million to work in a month.) I don�t blame the people in the White House for problems in getting shovel-ready projects off the ground; sometimes it takes three years or more for the approval process. We should try to change this: keep the full review process when there are real environmental concerns, but when there aren�t, the federal government should be able to give a waiver to the states to speed up start times on construction projects. We gave states waivers to do welfare reform, so by the time I signed the bill, 43 of the 50 states had already implemented their own approaches. We need to look at that.

2. CASH FOR STARTUPS

If you start a business tomorrow, I can give you all the tax credits in the world, but since you haven�t made a nickel yet, they�re of no use to you. President Obama came in with a really good energy policy, including an idea to provide both a tax credit for new green jobs and for startup companies, to allow the conversion of the tax credit into its cash equivalent for every employee hired. Then last December, in the tax-cut compromise, the Republicans in Congress wouldn�t agree to extend this benefit because they said, �This is a spending program, not a tax cut. We�re only for tax cuts.� It was a mistake. The cash incentive worked. On the day President Obama took office, the U.S. had less than 2 percent of the world market in manufacturing the high-powered batteries for hybrid or all-electric cars. On the day of the congressional elections in 2010, thanks in large part to the cash�incentive policy, we had 20 percent of global capacity, with 30 new battery plants built or under construction, 16 of them in Michigan, which had America�s second�highest unemployment rate. We have to convince the Republican Congress that this is a good thing. If this incentive structure can be maintained, it�s estimated that by 2015 we�ll have 40 percent of the world�s capacity for these batteries. We could get lots of manufacturing jobs in the same way. I could write about this until the cows come home.

3. JOBS GALORE IN ENERGY

When I was president, the economy benefited because information technology penetrated every aspect of American life. More than one quarter of our job growth and one third of our income growth came from that. Now the obvious candidate for that role today is changing the way we produce and use energy. The U.S. didn�t ratify the Kyoto accords, of course, because Al Gore and I left office, and the next government wasn�t for it. They were all wrong. Before the financial meltdown, the four countries that will meet their Kyoto greenhouse-gas emission targets were outperforming America with lower unemployment, more new business formation, and less income inequality.

4. COPY THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

Just look at the Empire State Building�I can see it from my office window. Our climate-change people worked on their retrofit project. They cleared off a whole floor for a small factory to change the heating and air conditioning, put in new lighting and insulation, and cut energy-efficient glass for the windows. Johnson Controls, the energy-service company overseeing the project, guaranteed the building owners their electricity usage would go down 38 percent�a massive saving, which will enable the costs of the retrofits to be recovered through lower utility bills in less than five years. Meanwhile, the project created hundreds of jobs and cut greenhouse-gas emissions substantially. We could put a million people to work retrofitting buildings all over America.

5. GET THE UTILITIES IN ON THE ACTION

Let�s suppose you and I go to a blue-collar neighborhood in Rockland County, N.Y., about an hour north of midtown Manhattan. On each house we could do a simple job�in and out in a day�that would almost certainly save 20 percent in energy costs. You wouldn�t even need banks if states required the electric companies to let consumers finance this work through utility savings. At least 11 states allow the electric companies to collect the money saved and use it to pay the contractors. So why shouldn�t the utilities finance this? To give another example, our climate-change initiative worked with the state of Arkansas, with the support of the governor, to develop a program called HEAL (Home Energy Assistance Loan), in which a company first creates jobs by making its own building more energy-efficient. Then, with the savings from the utility bill, they establish a fund to offer interest-free loans to their employees to finance the same work on their homes. This could be done with a little government support by companies all over the country. You get 7,000 jobs for every billion dollars in retrofitting. Let�s start with the schools and colleges and hospitals, and state, county, and local government buildings. That would keep the construction industry busy for a couple of years, creating a million jobs that would ripple through the whole economy, spurring even more growth.

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6. STATE-BY-STATE SOLUTIONS

There may be some things that the states can do to loosen this up. One of the reasons Harry Reid won in Nevada is that, right before the election, two big Chinese companies announced they were moving factories there to make LED lightbulbs and turbines for the big wind farms down in Texas. Nevada is a little state, and it gained more than 4,000 jobs.

The thing I really liked about it was that the Chinese guys played it straight. They said the decision was pure economics. They didn�t say, �We�re coming here because Harry Reid is the leader of the Senate.� They said, �We�re coming here because Nevada has the best state incentives to go with the federal incentives.� They were very clinical. They said labor costs in China are still cheaper, but these turbines are big and heavy, and higher transportation costs to the U.S. market would offset the labor gains�and there was a tax credit from the federal government for green-energy manufacturing, and extra credits in Nevada.

7. GUARANTEE LOANS

Before the last presidential election, I tried for a year to get both Congress and the administration to deal with the fact that the banks weren�t lending because they were still jittery about the economy, and worried about the regulators coming down on them for bad loans still on the books. It�s not much better now. Banks still have more than $2 trillion in cash uncommitted to loans.

So I suggested that the federal government set aside�not spend�$15 billion of the TARP money and create a loan-guarantee program that would work exactly the way the Small Business Administration does. Basically, the bank lends money to a business after the federal government guarantees 75 percent of it. Let�s say that the SBA fund has about a 20-to-1 loan-to-capital ratio, and it�s never come anywhere near bankruptcy. If we capitalized this more conservatively at 10-to-1, we could guarantee $150 billion in loans and create more than a million jobs. We should start with buildings we know will stay in use: most state and local government buildings, schools, university structures, hospitals, theaters, and concert halls. We could include private commercial buildings with no debt. Even if many are strapped for cash, allowing the costs of the retrofits to be paid only from utility savings means the building owners won�t be out any cash. It�s a �just say yes� system.

8. PAINT �EM WHITE

Look at the tar roofs covering millions of American buildings. They absorb huge amounts of heat when it�s hot. And they require more air conditioning to cool the rooms. Mayor Bloomberg started a program to hire and train young people to paint New York�s roofs white. A big percentage of the kids have been able to parlay this simple work into higher-skilled training programs or energy-related retrofit jobs. (And, believe it or not, painting the roof white can lower the electricity use by 20 percent on a hot day!)

Every black roof in New York should be white; every roof in Chicago should be white; every roof in Little Rock should be white. Every flat tar-surface roof anywhere! In most of these places you could recover the cost of the paint and the labor in a week. It�s the quickest, cheapest thing you can do. In the current environment it�s been difficult for the mayors to get what is otherwise a piddling amount of money to do it everywhere. Yet lowering the utility bill in every apartment house 10 to 20 percent frees cash that can be spent to increase economic growth.

9. DEALS TO MAKE THINGS

Every analysis shows that TARP and the stimulus saved us from a second Great Depression. After the GM and Chrysler bailouts, we have something like 75,000 more jobs in the industry. Closure of the factories and the suppliers with them would have cost a million jobs. The stimulus should have been more vigorously defended in the last election. It did work, but it didn�t �fix the economy� because it was an $800�billion stimulus trying to fix a $3�trillion hole. Nobody can fill a $3�trillion hole with $800�billion, so it didn�t make ordinary people feel a lot better, but without it, the unemployment rate would have been 1.5 to 2 percent higher than it is.

I�m sympathetic with the objectives of the Bowles-Simpson commission; we do need to do something about long-term debt. It�s a question of timing, really. If we cut a lot of government spending while our economy still has so little private investment, we risk weakening the economy even more and increasing the deficit because tax revenues can fall more than spending is cut. That�s why the Bowles-Simpson report recommends we delay big spending cuts until next year. So what should we do? More infrastructure initiatives now would put a lot of people back to work. But President Obama doesn�t have the votes in the Congress to get another stimulus package. When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton said, �Because that�s where the money is.� We have to unlock that money and take steps to get U.S. corporations to invest some of the $2 trillion they have accumulated.

Without regard to their party or their philosophy, Americans have always been great at the art of the deal. The real thing that has killed us in the last 10 years is that too much of our dealmaking creativity has been devoted to expanding the financial sector in ways that don�t create new businesses and more jobs and to persuading people to take on excessive debt loads to make up for the fact that their incomes are stagnant. That�s one reason why we�ve been suffering from anemic employment for years. In the seven years and eight months that preceded the meltdown, our economy produced a meager 4 million new jobs, far too few to cope with millions coming into the workforce, and virtually all those jobs were created in housing, finance, and consumer spending.

10. TRAIN ON THE JOB

Andrew Liveris�s book on how we can bring manufacturing back to America cites a company that interviewed 3,600 people for 100 jobs and hired 47; the others didn�t have the necessary skills. One answer to the skills roadblock comes from the former labor commissioner in Georgia, Michael Thurmond. After job vacancies go unfilled for a certain period of time, the state offers businesses the money to train potential employees themselves. During the training period, the companies don�t become employers, so they don�t have to start paying Social Security taxes or employer benefits. They train people their way, then hire those who succeed as regular employees, reducing the time lag between when a job is advertised and when it is filled. With unemployment at 9 percent and the real rate of those without full-time work higher, there are 3 million posted job vacancies. Filling them faster could make a big difference.

11. TEACH SKILLS WE NEED

I�m trying to figure out why job seekers don�t have the skills companies need; why the community colleges and vocational programs, which have done such a great job for America, are not providing more people with the skills to fill these vacancies. Do people just not enroll in the right programs or do they drop out because of the economy? I hope we can find out.

12. CUT CORPORATE TAXES

It�s true that our corporate rates are the second-highest in the world. But it�s also true that what our corporations actually pay is nowhere near the second-highest percentage of their real income in the world. So I�d be perfectly fine with lowering the corporate tax rates, simplifying the tax code, and saving some money on accountants, but broadening the tax base so that all of them pay a reasonable amount of tax on their profits. That�s what the Bowles-Simpson commission recommended, and it�s the right policy. Lower the rates to be competitive, but reduce the loopholes that cause unfair disparities. We all need to contribute something to help meet our shared challenges and responsibilities, including solving the debt problem.

13. ENFORCE TRADE LAWS

We lost manufacturing jobs in every one of the eight years after I left office. One of the reasons is that enforcement of our trade laws dropped sharply. Contrary to popular belief, the World Trade Organization and our trade agreements do not require unilateral disarmament. They�re designed to increase the volume of two-way trade on terms that are mutually beneficial. My administration negotiated 300 trade agreements, but we enforced them, too. Enforcement dropped so much in the last decade because we borrowed more and more money from the countries that had big trade surpluses with us, especially China and Japan, to pay for government spending. Since they are now our bankers, it�s hard to be tough on their unfair trading practices. This happened because we abandoned the path of balanced budgets 10 years ago, choosing instead large tax cuts especially for higher-income people like me, along with two wars and the senior citizens� drug benefit. In the history of our republic, it�s the first time we ever cut taxes while going to war.

14. ANALYZE THE OPPORTUNITIES

I�m hosting this month�s CGI America meeting on the assumption that there will be no federal stimulus and no further tax incentives targeted directly toward creating new jobs. Going on these assumptions, we want to analyze America�s economy: What are our assets? What are our liabilities? What are our options? There must be opportunities to be tapped, given all the cash in banks and corporate treasuries. If we have some success, we might be able to influence the debate in Washington in a nonpartisan way because we�ll have economic evidence to show them. I don�t have any problem at all if Congress wants to give tax credits to companies that actually hire people. But I think we have to pay for them, so I�d be happy to go back to the tax rates people at my income level paid when I was president in order to pay for the tax incentives to put more people to work.

The whole purpose of CGI America is to highlight good ideas because not everyone is aware of what�s out there. I�m going to try to get enough commitments that are representative enough of the circumstances facing diverse industries and different cities and states to persuade people across America to try their own version of them in a discussion of our economic stagnation. There�s been a remarkable lack of attention to �microeconomics,� the untapped growth potential of American corporations, entrepreneurs, and workers.

Let�s be realistic here. This is a massive economy. No matter how many impressive commitments we get, we won�t move the numbers. They�ll move the numbers only if enough people say, �Wow, I wish I�d thought of that.�

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/19/it-s-still-the-economy-stupid.html”

“borrow, print, borrow, print, borrow, print

42 cents out of every dollar we spend is borrowed”

“CBO Issues Ominous Report on Debt: Could be on Verge of ‘Sudden Fiscal Crisis’

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/cbo-issues-ominous-report-on-debt-could-be-on-verge-of-sudden-fiscal-crisis/”

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Obama�s Original Sin

The president�s failure to demand a reckoning from the moneyed interests who brought the economy down has cursed his first term, and could prevent a second.

By Frank Rich Published Jul 3, 2011

After 9/11, Rudy Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live to give New Yorkers permission to laugh again. But Mayor Bloomberg never did tell us when we could resume conspicuous consumption after the crash of 2008. And so, as we stumble through the second year of the official �recovery,� it�s been an improvisational return to high-end carousing in Manhattan.

A case in point was the late-May celebration of the centennial rededication of the New York Public Library. Surely no civic institution could be a more unimpeachable beard for a blowout. The dress code�no black tie�was egalitarian. The Abyssinian Baptist Church Gospel Choir, the New York City Gay Men�s Chorus, and that cute chorus from P.S. 22 in Staten Island�Glee diversity on steroids�were in the house along with some 900 invited guests, marquee names included (Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen). Bloomberg delivered a pre-dinner benediction from an altarlike perch on the main reading room�s balcony. �Free and open access to information may be the single most important component of any democratic society,� he said.

But it was impossible to banish toxic trace memories of the financial meltdown. Some two weeks earlier, the mayor had restricted the �free and open access� he now extolled. His fiscal 2012 budget called for slashing $40 million from the library system, a cut that would have mandated four-day weeks and the shutdown of a dozen branches.

There was also the awkward matter of the gala�s �corporate chair,� Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America. In the pageantry preceding Bloomberg�s remarks, the slightly flushed Moynihan, looking like a nervous ring bearer in a stately wedding ceremony, was among those singled out by the announcer while marching down the reading room�s long center aisle in a processional of library trustees. No doubt he earned this honor by ponying up to give more New Yorkers more books. But free and open access to the unexpurgated books of his own bank�and of its gutted acquisitions, Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial�would be a far more valuable gift to our democratic society. Just a week before the library f�te, the Huffington Post reported that B of A was stonewalling the Department of Housing and Urban Development�s investigation into fresh charges of defrauding taxpayers. Down in Naples, Florida, one Bank of America victim, Warren Nyerges, a 45-year-old retired cop, was getting ready to take the law into his own hands. Through a bureaucratic blunder�or worse�the bank had hounded his family for over a month, trying to foreclose on his house even though it was entirely debt-free. Unable to recover the legal expenses inflicted by this harassment, Nyerges staged a ruckus by hiring a lawyer who �foreclosed� on the bank�s local branch instead.

Nyerges, at least, would pry loose a settlement of $5,772 in early June. We could use him in New York, perhaps packing heat. Justice has not come to the city or its publicly funded institutions, which wouldn�t be in the fiscal hole they�re in today had malefactors like Bank of America not wrecked the economy in the first place and required taxpayer bailouts (two in B of A�s case). Still, you can�t blame the NYPL for collecting whatever reparations it could from Moynihan. One of the library�s formative patrons, present at the original dedication exactly 100 years earlier, was Andrew Carnegie, a ruthless tycoon second to none. But Carnegie did build a steel empire that sped the growth of the nation. Our own Gilded Age�s legacy is the financial �products� that greased the skids of America�s decline. At the centennial gala, you couldn�t escape the paw print of Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone Group billionaire whose library gift had entitled him to blast his name on any stray expanse of marble on the 42nd Street building. Schwarzman is nothing if not a representative 21st-�century titan. His principal monument has been to himself�, namely a notorious over-the-top 60th-birthday party, exquisite in both its bad timing and bad taste, that he threw the year before the crash. (If you�re shelling out a million bucks for an entertainer, is Rod Stewart the best you can do?) He is perhaps most renowned of late for comparing Obama to Hitler because the administration dared propose taxing private-equity firms� share of client profits at a rate higher than 15 percent. (He later apologized.)

On that Monday night, the Republican Schwarzman was a political outlier in the crowd, which was dominated by New York�s liberal elite, financial and cultural divisions. Even Moynihan has been a faithful Democratic donor. These were Obama�s people (myself, yes, among them), and the worldly, let�s-turn-the-page spirit in the library that night uncannily reminded me of the hubristic vibe of Obama�s White House: The worst of the downturn is past, the wobbly economy will eventually creep forward, let the healed too-big-to-fail banks move on, and pray that the lagging indicators (i.e., employment) will catch up. Indeed, it�s a certain swath of the New York liberal elite that helped reinforce that Obama mind-set to begin with. Uncorrected, it could lead the president to defeat in 2012, even against a roster of opponents that almost everyone there that night would cavalierly dismiss as clowns.

What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust�s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet�s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they �are burnt and purged away.�

After the 1929 crash, and thanks in part to the legendary Ferdinand Pecora�s fierce thirties Senate hearings, America gained a Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and the Glass-Steagall Act to forestall a rerun. After the savings-and-loan debacle of the eighties, some 800 miscreants went to jail. But those who ran the central financial institutions of our fiasco escaped culpability (as did most of the institutions). As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama�s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers. The Justice Department�s bally�hooed Operation Broken Trust has broken still more trust by chasing mainly low-echelon, one-off Madoff wannabes. You almost have to feel sorry for the era�s designated Goldman scapegoat, 32-year-old flunky �Fabulous Fab� Fabrice Tourre, who may yet take the fall for everyone else. It�s as if the Watergate investigation were halted after the cops nabbed the nudniks who did the break-in.

Even now, on the heels of Bank of America�s reluctant $8.5 billion settlement with investors who held its mortgage-backed securities, the Obama administration may be handing it and its peers new get-out-of-jail-free cards. With the Department of Justice�s blessing, the Iowa attorney general, Tom Miller, is pushing the 49 other states to sign on to a national financial settlement ending their investigations of the biggest mortgage lenders. What some call a settlement others may find a cover-up. Time reported in April that the lawyer negotiating with Miller for Moynihan�s Bank of America just happened to be a contributor to his 2010 Iowa reelection campaign. If the deal is struck, any truly aggressive state attorneys general, like Eric Schneiderman of New York, will be shut down before they can dig into the full and still mostly uninvestigated daisy chain of get-rich-quick rackets practiced by banks as they repackaged junk mortgages into junk securities.

Those in executive suites at the top of that chain have long since fled the scene with the proceeds, while bleeding shareholders, investors, homeowners, and �cashiered employees were left with the bills. The weak Dodd-Frank financial-reform law that rose from the ruins remains largely inoperative, since the actual rule-writing was delegated to understaffed agencies now under siege by banking lobbyists and their well-greased congressional overlords. The administration�s much-hyped Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being sabotaged by Washington Republicans intent on blocking any White House nominee, whether Elizabeth Warren or some malleable hack, to lead it. �We can�t let special interests win this fight,� said Obama when he proposed the agency in October 2009. Well, he missed his moment to fight for both it and Warren, and the special interests won without breaking a sweat.

Rather than purge the crash�s crimes, Wall Street�s leaders are sticking to their alibi: Everyone was guilty of fomenting this �perfect storm,� and so no one is. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, and �Masters of the Universe swagger is back. Even Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, about the only bank chief not to be caught with a suspect balance sheet or a $1,400 office trash can, has taken to channeling Schwarzman. In June, he publicly challenged Ben Bernanke about the intolerable burdens of potential regulation�this despite a 67 percent surge in JPMorgan�s first-quarter profits and a 1,500 percent raise in his own compensation from 2009 to 2010. As good times roar back for corporate America, it�s bad enough that CEOs are collectively sitting on some $1.9 trillion in cash�much of it parked out of the IRS�s reach overseas�instead of hiring. (How many jobs can you buy for $1.9 trillion? America�s total expenditure on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over a decade has been $1.3 trillion.) But what�s most galling is how many of these executives are sore winners, crying all the way to Palm Beach while raking in record profits and paying some of the lowest tax rates over the past 50 years.

The fallout has left Obama in the worst imaginable political bind. No good deed he�s done for Wall Street has gone unpunished. He is vilified as an anti-capitalist zealot not just by Republican foes but even by some former backers. What has he done to deserve it? All anyone can point to is his December 2009 60 Minutes swipe at �fat-cat bankers on Wall Street��an inept and anomalous Ed Schultz seizure that he retracted just weeks later by praising Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein as �very savvy businessmen.�

Obama can win reelection without carrying 10021 or Greenwich in any case. The bigger political problem is that a far larger share of the American electorate views him as a tool of the very fat-cat elite that despises him. Given Obama�s humble background, his history as a mostly liberal Democrat, and his famous r�sum� as a community organizer, this would also seem a reach. But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature. While he has never lusted after money�he�d rather get his hands on the latest novel by Morrison or Franzen�he is an elitist of a certain sort. For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama�s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys.

He stocked his administration with brilliant personnel linked to the bubble: liberals, and especially Ivy League liberals. Nearly three years on, they have taken a toll both on the White House�s image and its policies. Obama arrives at his reelection campaign not merely with a weak performance on Wall Street crime enforcement and reform but also with a scattershot record (at best) of focusing on the main concern of Main Street: joblessness. One is a consequence of the other. His failure to push back against the financial sector, sparing it any responsibility for the economy it tanked, empowered it to roll over his agenda with its own. He has come across as favoring the financial elite over the stranded middle class even if, in his heart of hearts, he does not.

The economic narrative of his presidency has been bookended by well-heeled appointees with tax issues. First came his Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, introduced to the public as a repeat tax delinquent, just too important to attend to the fine print that troubles mere mortals. This January, when Obama at long last created a jobs council, he appointed Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of G.E., to lead it. The Times did the due diligence the White House didn�t and found that G.E. paid essentially no U.S. taxes on $14.2 billion of profit, even as it has shed one fifth of its American workforce since 2002. Were Immelt creating more new American jobs in his new administration role than he has at G.E., perhaps we could understand why Obama kept him on. But his only visible achievement has been to co-write a �progress report� on his efforts for The Wall Street Journal op-ed page in June. It read like a patronizing corporate annual report aimed at small shareholders�a boilerplate wish list of bullet points followed by a promise that �a more strategic view� would be unveiled by September, a full nine months after he took his assignment. Maybe he and the president can hash it out this summer on the Vineyard.

The roots of Obama�s capture by the corporate axis of influence inexorably trace back to his own personal Zelig, the former Clinton Treasury secretary and Harvard Corporation stalwart Robert Rubin. In The Audacity of Hope, published in late 2006, Obama called Rubin, then busily cheerleading the excessive risk at Citigroup, �one of the more thoughtful and unassuming people I know.� Two years later, when Citi cratered and threatened to take the economy with it, Rubin demonstrated his unassuming thoughtfulness by denying that he had anything to do with the toxic investments that cost taxpayers a $45 billion bailout and 52,000 Citi employees their jobs.

In his unseemly revolving-door career, Rubin not once but twice sped the Citi apocalypse�first in government, where he and his eventual successor as Treasury secretary, Larry Summers, championed the deregulatory policies that facilitated the consolidation of too-big-to-fail banks, and then in his $15 million-a-year role as Citi�s �guru,� where, by his own later account, he had no idea what was in the worthless paper the bank peddled to greedy dupes. You�d think Obama would have dumped him faster than he did the Reverend Wright, but that�s misreading him. Obama is preternaturally secure on thorny matters of race�as his magnificent speech on the subject made clear�and could distance himself from his preacher with no ambivalence. It�s �unassuming� braininess that�s his blind spot.

And so a parade of Rubin acolytes entered the White House, led by Geithner, a nearly lifelong civil servant so identified with the financial Establishment that even Mayor Bloomberg mistakenly introduced him as a Goldman alumnus at a public event in New York last year. It�s Geithner�s influence on policy, however, not his persona, that proved fateful. Not until March 2010 did the White House get its first explicit, modest jobs bill through Congress.

Obama had taken office at a true populist moment that demanded more than this. People were gagging over their looted 401(k)s and underwater homes, the AIG bonuses, and the bailouts. Howard Dean rage has never been Obama�s style�hope-and-change was an elegant oratorical substitute�and had he given full voice to the public mood, he would have been pilloried as an �angry black man.� But Obama didn�t have to play Huey Long. He could have pursued a sober but determined execution of justice and an explicit, major jobs initiative�of which there have been exactly none, the too-small stimulus included, to the present day.

By failing to address that populist anger, Obama gave his enemies the opening to co-opt it and turn it against him. Which the tea party did, dishonestly but brilliantly, misrepresenting Obama�s health-care-reform crusade as yet another attempt by the elites to screw the taxpayer. (The Democrats haplessly reinforced the charge with marathon behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurance and pharmaceutical-�industry operatives.) Once the health-care law was signed, the president still slighted the unemployment crisis. A once-hoped-for WPA-style public-works program, unloved by Geithner, had been downsized in the original stimulus, and now a tardy, halfhearted stab at a $50 billion transportation-infrastructure jobs bill produced a dandy Obama speech but nothing else.

Obama soon retreated into the tea-party mantra of fiscal austerity. Short-term spending cuts when spending is needed to create jobs make no sense economically. But they also make no sense politically. The deficit has never been a top voter priority, no matter how loudly the right claims it is. At Obama�s inaugural, Gallup found that 11 percent of voters ranked unemployment as their top priority while only 2 percent did the deficit. Unemployment has remained a stable public priority over the deficit ever since, usually by at least a 2-to-1 ratio. In a CBS poll immediately after the Democrats� �shellacking� of last November�a debacle supposedly precipitated by the tea party�s debt jihad�the question �What should Congress concentrate on in January?� yielded 56 percent for �economy/jobs� and 4 percent for �deficit reduction.�

Geithner has pushed deficit reduction as a priority since before the inauguration, the Washington Post recently reported in an article greeted as a smoking gun by liberal bloggers. But Obama is the chief executive. It�s his fault, no one else�s, that he seems diffident about the unemployed. Each time there�s a jolt in the jobless numbers, he and his surrogates compound that profile by farcically reshuffling the same clich�s, from �stuck in a ditch� to �headwinds� (first used by Geithner in March 2009�retire it already!) to �bumps in the road.� It�s true the administration has caught few breaks and the headwinds have been strong, but voters have long since tuned out this monotonous apologia. The White House�s repeated argument that the stimulus saved as many as 3 million jobs, accurate though it may be, is another nonstarter when 14 million Americans are looking for work.

In early June, the unemployment rate�7.8 percent when Obama took office and as high as 10.1 percent during his tenure�ticked upward to 9.1 percent. That cued a ubiquitous press refrain that no president since FDR has been reelected with an unemployment rate higher than 7.2 percent (as it stood when Reagan overcame a recession to win in 1984). Later that month, a plurality in a Bloomberg survey said the economy was worse now than when Obama took office.

The ultimate indignity, though, was a Washington Post / ABC News poll showing Obama in a dead heat with Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney! If any belief unites our polarized nation, it�s the conviction that Romney is the most transparent phony in either party, no matter how much he�s now deaccessioning hair products. It�s also been a Beltway truism that a Mormon can�t win the Republican nomination, let alone a Massachusetts governor who devised the prototype for �ObamaCare.� But that political calculus changed overnight. That this poseur could so quickly gain traction, even if evanescently, should alarm Obama.

It was on Monday, June 13, that the new state of play crystallized. That morning, Immelt unveiled his vacuous op-ed and rendezvoused with Obama in Durham, North Carolina, for a double-feature dog-and-pony show: a meeting of the otherwise invisible White House jobs council (only its second to date) and yet another small-bore presidential photo op promoting yet another green-tech employer illustrating the latest dim-wattage administration slogan, �Winning the Future.� Unfortunately for the White House, the Times front page delivered another message above the fold that morning: OBAMA SEEKS TO WIN BACK WALL ST. CASH. Among the objects of Obama�s affection interviewed was an unnamed Democratic financier who found it ironic that �the same president who once criticized bankers as �fat cats� would now invite them to dine at Daniel, where the six-course tasting menu runs to $195 a person.�

That Monday morning was also when Romney unleashed a web video startling in its brazenness. Mockingly titled �Bump in the Road,� it dispatched a diverse parade of unemployed Americans (or actors impersonating them) to a desert, where each in turn plaintively announced in close-up, �I�m an American, not a bump in the road.� Though Romney (wisely) stayed offscreen, the ad cast him in the unlikely role of Tom Joad leading the downtrodden dust-bowl masses to salvation. Hours later, Romney aced that night�s first major GOP presidential debate by again offering himself as an economic savior. His jobs plan? �Keep government in its place� and let �the energy and passion of the American people create a brighter future.�

No one doubts that Romney is a shape-shifter par excellence, whether on abortion, health care, cap and trade, or the Detroit bailout (which he predicted would speed GM and Chrysler to their doom). In his last presidential run, he was caught fabricating both his prowess as a hunter and a nonexistent civil-rights march starring his father and Martin Luther King. But to masquerade as a latter-day FDR is a new high in chutzpah even by his standards. The only examples he can cite as a job creator are his �turnaround� of the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 and his ability to grow Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he founded, from �ten employees to hundreds.�

The most significant workers he added to the payroll in Salt Lake City were sixteen lobbyists, at a cost of nearly $4 million, to solicit taxpayers� subsidies��more federal cash than any previous U.S. Olympics,� according to The Wall Street Journal. That�s hard to square with Romney�s current stand that jobs will bloom across the land if government stops giving any handouts (even to tornado victims, he said in the GOP debate) and lets the free market work its magic. As for his fifteen years in the corporate-buyout business, he was best known for the jobs Bain shredded at the once-profitable companies it took over and then demolished for parts.

It�s a record Romney perennially tries to cover up. It may have cost him his Senate race against Ted Kennedy in 1994. In that campaign, Romney was stalked by a �Truth Squad� of striking workers from a Marion, Indiana, paper plant who had lost jobs, wages, health care, and pensions after Ampad, a Bain subsidiary, took control. Ampad eventually went bankrupt, but Bain walked away with $100 million for its $5 million investment. It was an all-too-typical Romney story, which is why Mike Huckabee could nail him with his memorable 2008 wisecrack: �I want to be a president who reminds you of the guy you work with, not the guy who laid you off.� Stephen Colbert recently topped Huckabee, portraying Romney as a cross between Gordon Gekko and Jack Kevorkian because of the profitable mercy killings of companies in Bain�s care. When Romney was governor, his record was no better. A Northeastern University analysis of his term (2003�6) found that Massachusetts was one of only two states to have no growth in their labor forces. The other was Louisiana, which happened to have an excuse named Katrina.

That Romney thinks he can pass himself off as the working stiff�s savior and Obama as the second coming of the out-of-touch patrician George H.W. Bush of 1992 truly turns reality on its head. Obama�s palling around with Rubinistas may be too much for his administration�s or the American people�s good, but Romney is a bona fide plutocrat whose financial backers include David Koch and whose idea of a joke was to tell a group of out-of-work Floridians on the campaign trail, �I�m also unemployed.� Yet so far, Romney is getting away with it, and the Republican Establishment, smelling a savior, is happy to embrace and embroider his proletarian masquerade. Peggy Noonan recently anointed this well-connected son of a Detroit CEO and Michigan governor a �self-made� financial success. Should the ersatz Horatio Alger end up on a ticket with a right-wing pseudo-populist�Michele Bachmann, unlike Romney, is quite at ease with bashing Wall Street�it�s not inconceivable he could ride a sputtering recovery further than anyone expects.

There�s not much Obama can do to alter the economy by 2012, given the debt-ceiling fight, the long campaign, and nihilistic Capitol Hill antagonists opposed to any government spending that might create jobs and, by extension, help Obama keep his own. But the central question before the nation couldn�t be clearer: Who pays? The taxpayers bailed out the elite; now it�s the elite�s turn to return the favor. Massive cuts to the safety net combined with scant sacrifice from those at the top is wrong ethically and politically. It is, in the truest sense, un-American. Obama knows this, and he hit a welcome note last week when he urged some higher corporate taxes for hedge funds and the like. But his forays in this direction are tentative and sporadic. You have to wonder why he isn�t seizing the moment to articulate and fight for the big picture instead of playing a lose-lose game of rope-a-dope with the Republicans on their budgetary turf.

Some Obama fans think it�s tactical genius that�s holding him back�his fabled long ball. Americans are no longer as angry as they were in January 2009 so much as they are defeated, depressed, and jaded by the slow recovery and by four decades of raging inequality that tells them the deck is stacked no matter who�s in Washington. Better, then, not to ruffle these still waters�or those easily rattled independents fetishized by political consultants�and instead scare seniors about imminent Medicare cutbacks and plot deep-think policy initiatives that (like health-care reform) might fix America over time. But the voters� placidity hardly augurs well for Democratic turnout in 2012. And it may not last. All that�s required is one more economic panic to shatter the phony peace and whip the rage back to center stage, once again to the right�s advantage.

�A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,� Obama declared at his inauguration. What he said on that bright January morning is no less true or stirring now. For all his failings since, he is the only one who can make this case. There�s nothing but his own passivity to stop him from doing so�and from shaking up the administration team that, well beyond the halfway-out-the-door Geithner and his Treasury Department, has showered too many favors on the prosperous. This will mean turning on his own cadre of the liberal elite. But it�s essential if he is to call the bluff of a fake man-of-the-people like Romney. To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years.

The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation�so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope�would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there�s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.”

“Google any DETROIT video

Its the people stupid

Was your foreign ride worth it and tell me how its so so so much better”

“Good read. Thanks, V.”

“

Like Democrats, dogs have a very limited list of possible solutions for all problems. For Democrats, it's demagoguery or tax and spend. For dogs, it's taking a nap or licking themselves. And in many cases, the dogs' options are not only more effective, but trillions of dollars cheaper.

As a case in point, Obama's Council of Economic Advisors just released their report on the president's stimulus bill...apparently unaware (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) that with all of the 4th of July parades, celebrations, and fireworks, and with all the conservative commentators on vacation, their findings would escape close scrutiny.

Obama's own experts found that the government spent $278,000 of taxpayer money for every job "created or saved." Meaning we could have just hired 2.7 million street sweepers for $100,000 each...and we would not only have saved $427 billion dollars, but we'd have streets so clean you could eat off them. Or in this economy, sleep in them.

But the report also notes that the number of jobs "created or saved" by the president's use of a monetary fire hose has recently declined from 2.7 million to 2.4 million...meaning that in the past 6 months, the "stimulus" has actually caused 288,000 people to lose their jobs. And experts speculate that our economy would now be hiring at a faster rate if no stimulus had ever been passed.

But at least spending all of that money felt really good for the president (and surely felt pretty good to all the politically connected types who actually received the money).

Still, for the future of our country, we think the president should replace his current economic advisers with dogs.

And perhaps take up yoga.


http://hopenchangecartoons.blogspot.com/”

“It's all going to be okay, as long as the church CAN do it, so can the gov. Isn't that really what it's all about; Lie at will, take from the poor, promise more than will ever be possible, make others pay your way, call the non-believers sinners and worship some imaginary figure like Gropper Noquest, eh?”

“Is this what you're talking about , uncliff?

Faith Lib Author: Christians Like Bachmann ‘Hate’ the U.S., ‘Love a Fictional, Christian America

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/lib-author-christians-like-bachmann-hate-the-u-s-love-a-fictional-christian-america/”

“U.S. unemployment rate rises to 9.2%.
Obama blames Americans for not hoping enough.

http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/news/unemployment-rises-to-92-as-us-adds-only-18000-jobs/6255651/?tag=breakingnews”

“'Faith Lib Author: Christians Like Bachmann ‘Hate’ the U.S., ‘Love a Fictional, Christian America.'
Fictional, in this case becomes F(R)ictional.”

“Thanx V for that read. I didn't know all that much about Romney (who names their kid Mitt anyhow, hehe).”

“Did you hear the one about the man in a room with two doors? One door on the left and one on the right. He went to the door on the right and opened it. There stood a guy with a t-shirt that read "GOP" who had a ballbat in his hand which he immediatel­y used to knock the man back into the room. When he came to he immediatel­y went back to the door on the right. Same guy there and same result. He continued to go to the door on the right and continued to be knocked back into the room. Finally, after 10 attempts, he went to the door on the left and opened it. There stood a guy in a t-shirt that said, "DEM" on the front. In his hands he held an ice pack and a first aid kit. The man quickly shoved him aside and went running down the hall screaming, Where's the guy with the bat, where's the guy with the bat!!" Nuff said.”

“

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com”

““Thanx V for that read. I didn't know all that much about Romney (who names their kid Mitt anyhow, hehe).”

Papa was out in the back yard playing catch with Joe Smith and a flying Saucer dropped something and Romknees caught it in his Mitt, thus Mitt the flip flop space sortah cowdude.”

“So, the GOP don't really want to cut spending now that Prez does, eh? Kanter and his Korporate Kowgirls can't keep up, because they can't agree with anything Obama ever says our does.”

“

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com”

“Funny how CEOs are still making even MORE MONEY than they ever have before, even during/after the recession, but Congress can't see the light of recinding all of the coroporate handouts and actually saving the country trillions.

Seems pretty clear cut to me: end corporate welfare and enact campaign finance reform and this country will start getting back on the right track. These two monsters must be tamed. End the oligarchic plutocracy immediately!”

“Why don't we raise taxes on unions. I mean they've done VERY well under Obama. Then they funnel back money to the DNC. We're talking hundreds of millions.

Hey, lets end Media Matters' tax exempt status, since they an are of the DNC.

We could quit fundind Planned Parenthood, Acorn and the NEA....

OH! Let's raise taxes on Charlie Wrangle, John Kerry, and Tim Geitner, since they all want to raise taxes on us but they all CHEATED on theirs and got away with it!

Do you think you could get away with that?

DOH!”

“But, that doesn't deal with the billions of communese hiding under the COSTitution@Wallyworldorbust.”

“Raise tax on unions, the biggest union is the Chamber of Commerce, sure 91% top rate, see how much they spend on Illegal Alien Groups then.”

“Gimmie a break Strat. even you know that the corporate welfare total is far, far, faaaarrrr in excess of monies granted to any rinky dink non profits. FAR.”

“They were surrounded and they surrendered.”

“Number one rule of poker: Don't Play Drunk.

”

“They should've replaced or repaired them qweer curly CFbulbs in the Bachman Clinic, maybe they'd all get cured more fasterer.”

“Gimmie a break Strat. even you know that the corporate welfare total is far, far, faaaarrrr in excess of monies granted to any rinky dink non profits. FAR.”
roseymonster

Let's look at the facts....

According to the Federal Highway Administration, the government (federal and state) takes an average of 48 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in the United States.

For ExxonMobil, in the first quarter of 2011, it generated $2.6 billion in earnings in the United States but it also paid $3.1 billion in government taxes, according to its public revenue filings. Between 2005 and 2009, ExxonMobil paid $63 billion in U.S. taxes. Its worldwide taxes in 2009 totaled $81 billion.

Furthermore, according to the American Petroleum Institute, U.S. oil companies paid nearly $150 billion in income taxes to the federal government between 2004 and 2008. The API also reports on its Web site that the oil and gas industry in America supports 9.2 million jobs throughout the economy and contributes 7 percent of total GDP.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ending-oil-company-tax-breaks-money-grab

“We’d welcome that comparison any day,” Johnson said at the National Press Club. “Our companies have an average 41 percent effective U.S. tax rate – that’s higher than almost any other company. We pay almost $90 million in taxes and other payments every single day to the federal government, that’s about $37 billion a year.

Big oil employs more than 8 million Americans. And the progressives think punishing them is a good economic move?”

“Then lookk at GE, run by Obama's buddy, job czar Jeff Immelt, who made 18 Billion last year, closed 20 factories and layed off 21,000 Americans....AND PAYED NO TAXES! WTF! ANd this guy's giving Obama jobs advice?”

“To get to that $3.1 billion number, ExxonMobil is including the federal and state gasoline taxes that the company collects from drivers and passes on to government coffers. It also includes payroll taxes the company pays on behalf of its employees, taxes they simply did not pay.

You are passing on a dishonest propaganda piece.”

“Things are all SO Rupert!!!!”

“Other than Republicans giving tax breaks and subsidies to their rich friends who line their pockets at our expense and, in turn, funnel some of that money back to the Rebublicans in one form or another, do Big Gov/poor caring Democrats give any other tax breaks or subsides to business? If so, why would they do that?”

“Sorry "V" but ALL corporate taxes are paid by passing them on to the end consumer.”

“sorry 'V' they pay absolutely zero tax as you said. hehe”

“Pay tax to who? A congress that cant balance the budget. Do you actually hear yourself hehe Do they want more because they spend it so well or they are sorry things got out of control and it will be a one time need. Listen to yourself hehe Its out of control Do Not FEED anymore”

“[/url]http://cnsnews.com/news/article/top-3-us-oil-companies-paid-428-billion[url]

the top three U.S. oil companies alone paid $42.8 billion in income taxes in 2010, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

The top three oil companies in the United States are ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. According to the SEC filings of those companies, as analyzed by Forbes, ExxonMobil’s pretax income in 2010 was $52 billion, from which it paid $21.6 billion in income taxes worldwide, leaving a net income of $30.5 billion. That equals a tax rate of 45 percent, which is 10 percent above the statutory corporate rate of 35 percen

oil and natural gas companies employ 9.2 million Americans and account for 7.5 percent of GDP

oil and natural gas companies averaged a net profit of 5.7 cents per dollar of income. Also, an average of 49.5 cents of every dollar oil companies made in 2010 went to income taxes.”

“Strat - I was addressing the specific claim that ExxonMobil paid $3.1 billion in "government taxes" in the 1st quarter of 2011. As I pointed out, they are including payroll taxes paid on behalf of their employees and taxes collected from consumers. To count them as taxes on ExxonMobil is misleading/dishonest.


NoProb - Actually all corporate taxes are not passed on to the consumer. It has to do with the elasticity of demand for a particular product. For most commodities, consumers will cut consumption as the price rises. Producers can't simply charge whatever they want - there is an ideal price that will be most profitable. If the producer is taxed and tries to pass on the full cost of the tax to consumers, they will be in a less profitable position than if they raise the price somewhat less than the tax. The consumer does pay some of the tax, but the producer does too by accepting a lower profit margin. People who repeat that common refrain are ignoring basic economics.”

“http://cnsnews.com/news/article/top-3-us-oil-companies-paid-428-billion

Ticky tacky minutia semantics, V. People aren't as dumb as progressives think they are. A new ruling elite is rising out of the ashes of the progressive train wreck of the last century . One based on common sense and honesty and.

We The People will take it from here....”

“"We The People will take it from here....”
..... and become even more owned by the
International Corporations and america's four hundred Kings”

“What we need is good ole privitaization of the federal government! They'll give us a fair shake! They'll be sure to run a tight ship! They'll completely hose everyone except for for the upper eschelon! Oh wait...CEO median pay was up 27% in 2010? I guess the economy HAS recovered! Oh wait, average worker pay plummeted? Hmmmm...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/story/CEO-pay-2010/45634384/1”

“Government Salaries Soar Under Obama

Here's where the real pay dirt is. In the last five years, the number of federal employees making $150,000 or more per year increased tenfold, according to an investigation by USA Today. Those high wages increased by twofold under the Obama administration. "The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years," the paper reports. "Since 2005, average salaries for this group climbed 25% compared with a 9% inflation rate." Here's how the blogs are reacting:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm”

“Corporate like wages is what you get when the Corporations buy the Government ( Ecepting the debt of course). Air Farce [u]One Half (out of the picture)is a registered trade mark of Sarah Palin[u/].”

“dOOd, why don't you worry about corporate salaries as you do the governments? You pay their salaries just as you do the gov's, if you buy from that company. The Companies also charge you taxes for private jets, health care, Lobby cost, etc, but you never B1tch about paying that, is it because you have the same choice of which company just as you also have a choice of which country, state, county and town?”

“Welcome to Connies&Commies with your host with the most and soaking milk toast.”

“Experts: US Economic System Near ‘Collapse’
Monday, 18 Jul 2011 12:53 PM

By Tom O'Connell


http://www.newsmax.com/US/debtlimit-FreedomFest-Schiff-economy/2011/07/18/id/403996?s=al&promo_code=CA05-1


“I think that all the talk about default is really an admission that the United States is running a gigantic Ponzi scheme,” said Peter Schiff, CEO of Conn.-based brokerage Euro Pacific Capital.

Decreasing global demand for the U.S. dollar will eventually trigger an inflationary crisis, said Schiff. “When interest rates go up in the United States, there is no way the U.S. government can pay the interest, let alone the principal, on its debt,” he said.

The country’s entire financial system was described by another speaker as being close to “collapse” as the nation continues to spend more than it produces.


You are being played.”

“Yes let's pretend, everything is book, chapter and verse and not a true statement in sight, that's where our economy lives in 'Let's Pretend'.”