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Wayne Allyn Root
Barack Obama: The great jobs killer
As former President Ronald Reagan might have said, "Obama, there you go again."
The current occupant of the White House claims to know how to create jobs. He claims jobs have been created. But so far the score is Great Obama Depression 2.2 million lost jobs, Obama 0 -- a blowout.
Obama is as hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas as the manager of the Chicago Cubs in late September. This "community organizer" knows as much about private-sector jobs as Pamela Anderson knows about nuclear physics.
It's time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes -- rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners -- Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
Meanwhile, he has kept the union workers of GM and Chrysler employed (with taxpayer money). He has made sure that most government employee union members got their annual raises for sleeping on the job (with taxpayer money). He made sure that his voters got handouts mislabeled as "tax cuts" even though they never paid taxes (with taxpayer money). And he made sure that major campaign contributors collected billions off government stimulus (with taxpayer money).
As far as the taxpayers -- the people who actually take risks with our own money to create small businesses and jobs and pay most of the taxes -- we require protection under the Endangered Species Act.
You won't find proof of the damage Obama is doing on Wall Street, but rather on Main Street. My friends are all part of the economic engine of America: Small business. Small business creates 75 percent of new jobs (and a majority of all jobs). I called one friend who was a wealthy restaurant owner. He says business is off by 60 percent. He's drowning in debt. He won't last much longer. His wealth is gone.
I called another friend in the business of home improvement. He says business is off 90 percent from two years ago. My contractor just filed personal bankruptcy. She won't be building any more homes. The hair salon where I've had my hair cut for years closed earlier this year. Bankrupt. But here's the clincher -- ESPN Zone just closed all their restaurants across the country. If they can't make it selling cheap food and overpriced beer with 100 big screens blaring every sporting event on the planet to a sports-crazed society, we are all in deep, deep trouble.
I've polled all my friends who own small businesses -- many of them in the Internet and high-tech fields. They all agree that in this new Obama world of high business taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, and workers compensation taxes, the key to success is to avoid employees. The only way to survive as a business owner today is by keeping the payroll very low and by hiring only independent contractors or part-time employees provided by temp agencies.
The days of jobs in the private sector with big salaries, full benefits, and pensions are over. We've all seen where those kinds of jobs get you as a business owner -- in Bankruptcy Court or surviving on government welfare like GM and Chrysler. Or in the case of government itself -- completely insolvent, but surviving by ripping off taxpayers and fraudulently running printing presses at the Fed all day and night to print money by the trillions.
Unfortunately, small businesses don't have the power to impose taxes or print money. So unlike government, we'll just have to cut employees and run lean and mean.
It has now become clear that, outside of the burgeoning field of Census takers, there will be no major increase in new jobs for years to come. Outside government, Obama has created a wasteland of economic ruin and depression that looks much like the landscape of Mel Gibson's first movie "Mad Max." Without a printing press in Obama's world, you're just plain out of luck.
The days of believing the Obama propaganda about a jobs recovery are over. The trillion-dollar corporate handouts (neatly named "stimulus") may have kept big business in the money for the past 18 months, and artificially propped up the stock market, but small business is the real canary in the coal mine.
My small business-owning friends aren't creating one job. Not one. They are shedding jobs. They are learning to do more with fewer employees. They are creating high-tech businesses that don't need employees. And many business owners are making plans to leave the country. In a high-tech world where businesses can be run from anywhere, Obama has a problem. His one-trick pony -- raise taxes, raise taxes, raising taxes -- is chasing away the business owners he desperately needs to pay his bills.
So who is going to pay Obama's taxes? Not his voters. They want government to pay them. Who is going to create Obama's jobs? Not his voters -- they've never created a job in their lives.
So what is Obama going to do? Maybe he can get Pamela Anderson on the line.
Wayne Allyn Root, a former vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, writes from Henderson. His column appears every other week.
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are you suggesting that Barack Obama actually seek economic advice from Pamela
Anderson? That is, without a doubt, the most insightful thing you've written this year.
It's not only a new career for an actress that can't act, it makes some sense. Besides
film and TV, what has she ever screwed up? AND, if an octopus in Germany can predict
the outcome of World Cup soccer, perhaps Pamela Anderson can set this country on a
positive economic course. Germany will never part with that octopus
konabailey, banks can't be forced to lend money. It is taking with due process. The current crisis was created because banks were providing mortgage at 3% down, sometimes at 0% down, and at the leak in 2005 at 115% of equity. This created more demand for homes and prices rose. Banks could do this because their mortgages were insured, by AIG in the form of derivatives. When prices fell, AIG had to payout and eventually went bankrupt.
Of the loans made by these banks, 95% were to suburbs and commercial lending. None of those fall under the CRA category.
Would you say Obama is overgrazing his pasture? All income has to originate in the private sector and this would be the pasture. Currently I don't think we could raise a jack rabbit on a ten acre pasture, one that was lush a few years ago and could support a cow and her calf per acre.
No government job from the president on down is a revenue producer. It can recycle revenue lifted from the employee over and over as it fades away but there is no way it can produce revenue. At some point the pasture will no longer support grazing.
Mike.Peters
Fact : The Community Reinvestment Act from Carter, created the crysis we are all in now. Carter created it, Clinton added to it, and obama was the lawyer with acorn that forced banks to make those loans. Don't take my word for it. PLEASE GOOGLE IT.
About Carter. Facts are facts. You are entitled to your beliefs but not to your own made up facts. Gentrification, if you understand what that means, was one of the major forces of growth in the US. It is the process of buying old buildings and remodeling them, usually in places people ignored, like old downtowns. Whom do you think revived these places - Congress and Carter.
Believe your right-wing media stories. Facts remain facts.
Alinsky, when your insurance company goes bankrupt, you don't. Therefore AIG could have gone bankrupt without affecting CSRS (teh Civil Service Retirement System). Your "facts" stem from too much right-media and too much conspiracy thinking and not enough analysis.
AIG is many things, and one of the things it was is that it sold credit default swaps. This is a form of insurance that pays when the creditor fails. Creditors in this case were mortgage holders, 95% of which were people with excellent jobs who purchased homes that had lost substantial portion of their values. AIG was over-exposed because real estate values popped. No conspiracy. Just the plain news. I am surprised that given all of the press about real estate values dropping and foreclosures, that individuals can't figure out that we are in for a very serious downturn in the economy. This all happened while Bush was in office. Stop blaming all of your delusions on Barney Frank.
Mike.Peters As for the Carter Facts Do we really need to bring that NUTS fact record up? You should be embarrassed just to mention him.
Mike.Peters
You are soooo wrong! Let me set your FACTS STRAIT
One of AIG's biggest businesses is insuring pension plans and retirement funds for large corporations and groups troughout the world. In this capacity, they either guarantee the funds or actually manage them for their clients, and collect a fee for doing so. They actually perform this function for many of the world's largest corporations and governments. Among their clients are the CSRS, a rather innocuous acronym that draws little attention in their client listings.
Congress decided rather quickly and arbitrarily that AIG had to be saved, was too big to fail, and needed massive cash infusions from us, the taxpayers. The same taxpayers who saw the values of their investments and 401K's diminish significantly in gthe meltdown, including some corporate bankruptcies that also wiped out the pension funds associated with them.
So, who is CSRS, and why is it of interest?
It is the Civil Service Retirement System, the very pension and retirement fund that Representatives and Senators draw their pensions from. CSRS Link Here
And AIG also insures at least twenty state government pension plans, administering about half of that number, including California. AIG Link Here
So, it's pretty obvious that our illustrious Congress made sure their pensions were protected........ big surprise...... and that Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, and even Obama himself are hypocrites of the first rank.
OH, what you said: obama should be at the top the top FBI most wanted list; I will go one step further, he needs to be investigated for treason,Atleast fore high crimes and misdemeaner'and Impeached at warp speed before he finish's off america. Or was the wrong rev wright words might come true about our chickens coming home to roost.GOD help us
I agree with this statement I read, "I am not so much worried about the people in office now, as I am the people who continue to vote these politicians back in"...Obama does not do this alone..he has support from his party. If Nevada votes Harry Reid back in, I will be disappointed. I am not a member of any party...I just vote against any "Incumbent"...I believe in term limits and these guys are not going to get off the gravy train themselves..