There they go again with their “jobs saved”
The Obama administration really knows no shame. It continues to say that its economic policies, and especially its stimulus plan, has created or saved a gigantic amount of jobs; a figure nobody can possibly hope to check.
Yet, the MSM play along. Except for Fox News, there is not one big news outlet willing to criticize the administration for its blatant attempt to lie to the public about the impact its economic policies have.
From a fiscal conservative perspective, Obama’s distorting, spinning and propaganda is extra dangerous, because the media’s willingness to play along and to function as a propaganda arm of the White House, means many Americans will be made to believe that Big Government works. Even when it does not.
See for instance this post by Ed Morrissey, who explains that the only jobs ’saved’ are bureaucratic jobs:
The “majority of funds” came from state governments because Porkulus distributed the money in block grants to the states. What did the states do with that money? They did save jobs, but primarily bureaucratic jobs. States used the money to temporarily paper over budget gaps which would have forced the layoffs of state employees, which should have been a necessary step in slimming down state-level spending…
The White House can claim that they saved the job of teachers, police officers, and firefighters whose jobs were never in jeopardy, and New Hampshire [and other states] avoided cutting jobs elsewhere by shifting the money to cover budget shortfalls.
Meanwhile, what happens to these jobs when Porkulus runs out? Almost none of these jobs are established on new economic growth. They’re either jobs that New Hampshire has to fund anyway (teachers, police officers, firefighters) or one-off project jobs that will disappear when the money does.
The Obama plan will cost jobs in the long run. At the very moment he took office, Obama declared war on the free market and capitalism; the two things that made the U.S. great in the first place.
Of course, we all knew social democrats and socialists would use propaganda to deceive the electorate. That’s not surprising nor shocking. But it is shocking that so many news organizations are letting them get away with it. Notice how the above criticism didn’t come from an established news organization, but from a conservative blog; the only ones willing to dig. And thát, not Congress or the White House, is the real problem nowadays.
Infuriating, there’s no other way to describe the way the ‘fourth estate’ is evading its responsibilities.
Morrisey is mostly on target, and hey, I told you so.
Not that a case can’t be made for the life support of local/state government in times of recession, but that’s not even remotely how Porkulus was sold to the public.
I say “mostly on target” because a huge chunk of Porkulus was simply pentup pork projects, and as such represents patronage life support rather than life support of local/state government.
Yes, yes. Strange that every friend of mine that was a teacher, police officer, or fireman has either been let go and can’t find a job or is on edge at all times.
I think you are delusional if you have not heard the plight of teachers and police/fire rescue. They fired so many where I live that the Sheriff had to flat out refuse to cut anymore police jobs in fear of crime increasing in all areas.
Police: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-09-10/story/jacksonville_sheriff_end_may_be_coming_for_community_service_officers
Teachers: http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/strange/news-article.aspx?storyid=146615&catid=82
These are not isolated cases – just search Google News and there are tons of examples.
And since you prey on the weak minded, let me give you a dose of reality with all of the logical fallacies in your article:
“The Obama administration really knows no shame.”
Ad hominem
“It continues to say that its economic policies, and especially its stimulus plan, has created or saved a gigantic amount of jobs; a figure nobody can possibly hope to check.”
Red herring – you are attacking the fact that “nobody can possibly check it” rather than the facts themselves. Check it, and get back to us.
“Yet, the MSM play along.”
Hasty generalization – you presume that all other media outlets are identical and biased except your precious Fox News.
“Except for Fox News, there is not one big news outlet willing to criticize the administration for its blatant attempt to lie to the public about the impact its economic policies have.”
First, the facts have only just come out. Are you telling me that you have analyzed their numbers in 2 hours and were able to come to your strong, furious conclusions? You obviously didn’t, so your seer-like characterization of the present effects seem bunk. You are calling them a liar. Well, the administration saved my job (but not the job of many around me). The layoffs in my sector have stopped and my company is beginning to hire contingent workers and some full time workers again. They have been in a freeze since Bush was in office. My stock is also going up. My pay also went up. This is anecdotal, but from my neck of the woods, “it’s getting better.”
“From a fiscal conservative perspective, Obama’s distorting, spinning and propaganda is extra dangerous, because the media’s willingness to play along and to function as a propaganda arm of the White House, means many Americans will be made to believe that Big Government works. Even when it does not.”
Your propaganda is dangerous. You are not a “Fiscal Conservative.” Barry Goldwater was a fiscal conservative. If you were a fiscal conservative, you wouldn’t have let Bush run up the LARGEST TAB IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY ON A BUNK, NEEDLESS WAR.
You and your breed are actually neocons – divisive and arrogant ideologues that wish to overtly force-feed your brand of policy and religion on a nation that was created to allow freedom from exactly this type of power hoarding. My mother is now a conspiracy theorist, due to all of the bunk emails you send around, and I honestly fear for her health. Thanks for using people that lack critical thinking skills as sheep for your party.
Look, I WAS A FISCAL CONSERVATIVE. I VOTED FOR BUSH. I thought gas would be 20 a barrel; I thought social security would be privatized… but gas became 80 a barrel and the stock market crumbeled. Bush blew more money than any president, EVER. You are so full of it, claiming to be a fiscal conservative.
“See for instance this post by Ed Morrissey, who explains that the only jobs ’saved’ are bureaucratic jobs:”
Oh – BRAVO. That is called the fallacy of appealing to authority – your authority is a conservative blogger. BRAVO, SIR, BRAVO. What an excellent authority. A radio host. ::clap clap:: You must’ve done well on your school papers if you used such people as citations.
“The White House can claim that they saved the job of teachers, police officers, and firefighters whose jobs were never in jeopardy, and New Hampshire [and other states] avoided cutting jobs elsewhere by shifting the money to cover budget shortfalls.”
Blah blah blah, again, see my comment above. What dream world do you live in when you think fire-fighters, police officers, and teachers have jobs that are not in jeopardy!? Keep up the lies for your bizarre agenda.
“The Obama plan will cost jobs in the long run.”
Slippery slope – you give a pointless, long-term attack with no evidence.
“At the very moment he took office, Obama declared war on the free market and capitalism; the two things that made the U.S. great in the first place.”
Hahaha what a straw man – You are putting some strong words in Obama’s mouth. I don’t see the government making toothbrushes quite yet. Man, he is doing a piss poor job at controlling all aspects of the economy and society if my 401K plan is growing and I just bought a new BMW (a foreign car??? God forbid! Oh no, wait, it is made in NORTH CAROLINA). If you love capitalism so much, please, get rid of the US postal service, Medicare, public schools, social security, &c &c.
“Of course, we all knew social democrats and socialists would use propaganda to deceive the electorate. That’s not surprising nor shocking. But it is shocking that so many news organizations are letting them get away with it. Notice how the above criticism didn’t come from an established news organization, but from a conservative blog; the only ones willing to dig. And thát, not Congress or the White House, is the real problem nowadays.”
If it were news, they would be jumping on it. The fact that Fox News is failing to report the stimulus numbers shows that they are exactly what you are claiming everyone else is – a propaganda station. Have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor? Come on, what is more likely, that EVERY OTHER NEWS ORGANIZATION IN THE WORLD is biased and psychotic, or that Fox and Friends are delusional? Fair and balanced my butt.
You should know that Fox News does not claim to be a news channel except in off-hours, and if you compare footage, the supposed “real” news casters that nobody has ever heard of on Fox with all the editorial personalities, they are just as bunk (but far less famous).
Infuriating, there’s no other way to describe the way the ‘fourth estate’ is evading its responsibilities.”
Blah blah blah. Please quit whining. God, I will be happy when the Baby Boomers are gone. Go smoke some grass and water the flowers in the bug, hippies. It’s all about you. Wah wah wah.
Wow Shane,
SO much rhetorical ammunition you have given for us to fire back at you.
Point 1:
When the editor said that the Obama administration has no shame, this was not an ad hominem attack, it was a reference to the boldness in which they tell bold faced whopper of lies. For example, when they said that this health care bill was negotiated in the most transparent process ever, this is laughable because the Republicans didn’t even see the new House version until it was released to the public as it was all negotiated behind closed doors. If this bill goes to conference it will be changed and added to behind closed doors again.
While many politicians tend to stretch, spin and occasionally dissemble; never in my lifetime have I seen such boldness in telling exactly the opposite of easily verifiable facts. This long list of whoppers has been very well documented indeed.
Point 2:
You say:
“Hasty generalization – you presume that all other media outlets are identical and biased except your precious Fox News.”
There is no presumption about it. Study after study have been done my the Pew Research Center, Rasmussen, The Center for Media and Culture, the Media Research Center and other have shown that Republican Candidates get more negative stories than positive and vice versa for Democrats. Issue by issue far left talking points get more positive play. This all has been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt.
Point 3:
You said:
“If you were a fiscal conservative, you wouldn’t have let Bush run up the LARGEST TAB IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY ON A BUNK, NEEDLESS WAR.”
Excuse me, don’t you mean the largest tab in the history of the country until Obama, who according to CBO numbers, is going to have more spent in 20 months, than ALL previous administrations COMBINED.
I would like to remind you that while Bush did not combat Congress on the spending problem, the yearly deficit was dropping from 2004 to 2007 down to $211 billion as compared to 1.7 trillion deficit just so far this year.
On the Iraq War, it cost $620 Billion, which in a few years will be equal to the YEARLY interest on the debt. Since Obama signed into law the reversal of Clinton’s hugely popular and successful welfare reform, the cost of welfare is now skyrocketing and the cost of welfare programs just or next year is estimated at $620 billion dollars.
So to put it bluntly, your description of the cost of the war is nonsense. The failing stimulus package was $787 Billion and was followed by another $411 billion pork earmark bill.
As far as your statement that the Iraq War was “bunk” and “needless” I doubt that Saddam’s victims would agree. How many Iraqi ex-pats have you talked to?
Your statement shows that you simply have not thought this through and/or are too partisan to attempt it. Iraq had a cease fire agreement with the United States, they violated it repeatedly and boldly. With that said do you have any idea how many lives have been saved and how many wars averted simply by the diplomatic credibility of the United States?…of course you haven’t. To let Iraq continue to do so would have had consequences down the road that are very serious.
Also, I am one of the handful of people on the earth who has read the inspection team reports from Charles Deulfer and David Kay. While they did not find the stockpiles of WMD that previous UN inspectors had. They did find stockpiles of the raw materials used in WMD production. They also found the labs and personnel that would have allowed Saddam to rebuild his stockpile in very short order. Saddam was not allowed such material or labs.
Point 4:
You said:
“God, I will be happy when the Baby Boomers are gone. Go smoke some grass and water the flowers in the bug, hippies. It’s all about you. Wah wah wah.”
Didn’t you just accuse the editor of launching ad hominems?
I scoffed at this “news,” but only so much as I’ve scoffed at this kind of “news” from every other previous administration since I’ve been able to follow news (which is two others).
Every President does this. The biggest argument here is it lends more credence to Obama as typical politician.
I learned a long time ago that Presidents cannot create jobs. The most they can do is help create the conditions for job creation.
Shane wrote, “If you were a fiscal conservative, you wouldn’t have let Bush run up the LARGEST TAB IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY ON A BUNK, NEEDLESS WAR.”
Michael, I want the job that you had during the Bush administration. Apparently it was in your power to either let, or not let, the president spend all of the taxpayers’ money. I have to say, though, that when you had that one-man fiscal veto authority, maybe you didn’t do such a good job with it. Yeah, I know 9/11 and all, but why didn’t you NOT LET Bush keep funding the EPA and the NEA at such high levels, for example?
I want to respond directly to Shane, as well, but I’m afraid to make a counter argument because he is sure to dismantle all of my logical falacies. So, I will just list 3 chronological facts without trying to provide logical inferences between those 3 items – I’ll leave that to logician Shane . . .
1. January 2009 unemployment rate: 7.6 percent
2. By early October, about $90 billion of the $789 billion stimulus had been spent.
3. September 2009 unemployment rate: 9.5 percent.
In closing, I knew a guy once who was the general manager of a restaurant chain, which lost a lot of money under his watch. When I asked him about it, he told me that he had actually saved the chain a lot of money. I was confused until he explained to me that many of the company’s other locations were also struggling and that he knew his location would have been even worse off under different management. Thus he saved them money. Of course, I just took his word for it because I didn’t have access to all the relevant data and the limted amount of data he was presenting to me really sounded favorable to his case!
Whew, I managed to write the above without having to take a single logical leap.
Apparently Shane has a reading comprehension problem, being unable to distinguish between “life support” and “miracle cure with extra cowbell.”
CFN: You read the Deulfer report too? Small club.
Hey, the Dear One has promised us the best staff ever to serve the US of A.
er…. okay.
But the VP must know.
Whatever the case. You can believe Mr. 44 – he’s the MAN!
… or maybe not.
The Stimulus Jobs Inflation Map:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/maps/Bogus-jobs-created-or-saved-by-the-Stimulus.html