On President's Day Barack Obama Posterizes Ronnie Reagan

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours. - Harry S Truman, in Observer, April 13, 1958

GM is Alive and Bin Laden is Dead. President Obama inherited a Nation on the brink of Collapse after years of purposeful neglect, callous indifference, selective mistreatment, and pandering to the 1%, or known more simply as Republican "Governance".

What President Obama did in arresting the Fall of America was spectacular. If only Barack was an ardent socialist instead of Sean Hannity Fantasy Socialist his successes would have been even more spectacular. As the Top 5 Happiest Nations in the World are all Democratic Socialist Countries.

But, Harry Truman's wisdom shows focusing on jobs is both the correct metric it is also the least correct one. Ezra Klein asked several economists: How much of national job creation during a presidency can we properly attribute to the president? In Their Words:

“Very little,” wrote Harvard’s Martin Feldstein in an e- mail. Feldstein led the council under Reagan, and he didn’t see much role for the president in normal economic times. “The key is growth of population and labor force participation. Policy -- primarily monetary policy -- affects cyclical conditions and therefore the unemployment rate. Fiscal policy is usually irrelevant but with interest rates at the current level there has been a role for fiscal policy.”

Laura D’Andrea Tyson, a Berkeley economist who served under Clinton, emphasized the need to consider timing in our evaluations. “There are significant lags between the time a President proposes a policy, the time it is enacted by Congress and the time necessary for it to take effect,” she wrote to me. “These lags should be taken into account in measuring the economy’s job performance under a President. The first year probably should not count at all in terms of assessing the effects of a new Administration’s policies.”

N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard economist who served as the council chairman under George W. Bush, directed me to a blog post he had written on the subject. “Randomness is a fact of economic life,” Mankiw wrote, “and it would be a mistake to judge a president by the economic outcome during his administration. It is better to look at the decisions the president made, and to acknowledge that the outcome is a function of those decisions and many other factors not under his control. As an economist, I have views about what best practices are for economic policy, and I judge presidents by how closely they adhere to those principles.”

What is more at stake is what the President's long term planning does to the Nation. President Reagan and President Bush both instituted Recessions by ramping up the insourcing of illegals and outsourcing jobs.

From 2001-2009 under President George W. Bush, the Worst President in American History, multi-national Corporations laid off 2.9 million workers in the US, while creating 2.4 million jobs overseas in Slave Labor Nations. Median Income declined outright from 1999 to 2009. From 1960 to 2000, manufacturing accounted for 20 million jobs in the U.S. from 2000-2009 America lost a 1/3rd of those jobs. Between 2002 and 2007 2 out of every 3 dollars of Income growth went to the Richest 1%.

It's a spectacularly bad record for Americans but a spectacularly great record for Bush and his 1% Lords.

Republicans hate American Labor because they are beholden to the 1% who views high labor costs as a wholly unnecessary and easily correctable expense. Corporate leaders have always sought to keep costs down by taking advantage of the next wave of immigrants but post-WWII as labor reached it's epogee and power they have been able to take advantage of the World's manufacturing base and export jobs as easier than they once imported "cooliees".

But, while the 1% was easily able to sell this plan to the various President's and Congresses they've owned, selling it to the American consumer was harder.

So, they went for the easiest sell, Lower Prices. It's what Wal-Mart continually advertises. They fooled enough Americans into believing the pair of jeans made in Mexico was going to be as high of quality as that pair of LL Bean trousers you've had for 15 years but cost a fifth as much! Your GE refrigerator made in Indonesia and Taiwan and "assembled" in the US will last just as long as that one your dad had for 25 years made by US Union labor but, be half the price!

So while President Obama saved General Motors and millions of associated American Jobs, the Vultures, the Republicans have been doing everything they can to destroy American Jobs and institute an economic policy of Neo-Feudalism.

As I wrote in a blog post on December 19, 2008:

The son of auto executive, not a filthy line worker, Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney wants Detroit to go bankrupt and millions lose their jobs and benefits. That way the poor will have to take whatever wage he and his Kleptocratic friends deem them worthy of, which is just enough to ensure they work themselves to death before the age 67. Romney even cites the Toyota Avalon being superior to Detroit autos. The same Toyota which is losing $1.7 Billions USC this year.

Confederate Yankee offers this insight seemingly taken from Romney's Op-Ed:

"What separates the successful companies that aren't asking for a bailout from the leaches grubbing for tax dollars from your already empty wallet? Greedy, bloated, self-serving and uncompetitive union labor, particularly the United Auto Workers (UAW). Non-union car factories are cranking out the smaller, higher-quality, more fuel efficient fleets that America wants to buy, while the unionized Big Three are cranking out bloated beasts that carry and estimated $2,000 of overhead per vehicle because of concessions the automakers have made the unions over the years in noncompetitive benefits and pensions."

Of course, he's not satisfied with just crushing the UAW,

"For that matter, much of the manufacturing in this country doesn't deserve to live, particularly that created with non-competitive union labor so prevalent in the Northeast and upper Midwest."

You see we need to reduce workers to the status of wage slaves as we find in Vietnam or Nigeria, receiving whatever their feudal lords deem them worthy of earning, i.e. just enough to live; while using up their youth and discarding the workers as worthless when they get old, sick or injured. (Sadly, No has an excellent dissection of Confederate Yankee's H8Red of the plebeians)

Republican Richard Shelby, who spent more than $1 Billion USC in taxpayer money to lure in foreign auto manufactures to Alabama

Because Republicans are against everything which helps extend the lives of the poor and middle class in America. Foreign Auto Makers, especially with automotive plants in the South are allowed to pay cut throat capitalism wages and disbar unions while receiving US Government Subsidies and tax incentives to treat American workers unfairly.

Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama ensured Mercedes -Benz received $253 Million USC, Honda $158 Million USC and Hyundai $234 million USC tax breaks for building plants in in his state, Republican scum Bob Cooker gave Volkswagon $577 million USC for a factory in Tennessee and "Mississippi paid $284 million for a new Toyota plant; Kia got $324 million from Georgia. Texas had to fork over only $133 million for Toyota's Tundra plant in San Antonio, while Tennessee gave $197.6 million so Nissan would move its American headquarters to Nashville."