THE WAY I SEE IT
by Don Polson Red
Bluff Daily News 2/17/2015
Oregon scandal; lousy recovery
Every so often, spending time in California’s liberal
soul mate to the north (Oregon motto: Keep Portland Weird) provides a front row
seat to an occasional unraveling of the progressive experiment. “Experiment”
would be the operative description of a century long effort to prove that
Americans’ lives, needs, wants and finances can best be “guided” by illuminated
oversight: government-centric, top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions. Whether
it’s health care, energy usage, population growth, residential/commercial
development, transportation or even the Internet—central government regulatory
control is their answer. Trust me that the governing, academic and intellectual
left has no limiting principles to their redistributionist, cradle-to-grave
welfare society.
Back to Oregon, Governor John Kitzhaber won reelection
last November in spite of having presided over the biggest failure of an
Obamacare state exchange in the nation, complete with a website that never
successfully registered anyone. Way to show taxpayers how effectively state
government can blow through hundreds of millions of dollars. Officials resigned
in embarrassment over Oregon’s failed efforts to socialize health care.
Investigations pointed no culpable fingers at anyone
beyond the administrators involved, allowing Kitzhaber to skate blame-free.
Voters should have overcome their infatuation with their multi-term, cowboy
boot wearin’ Ted Turner look-alike liberal-in-chief and fired Kitzhaber.
The resignation of Oregon’s Gov. John Kitzhaber is
both a classic and contemporary morality tale involving the corrupting
influences of government money dedicated to the chimera of “green energy,” the
politically incestuous back-scratching between consultants, advocates and
providers of said “green energy” projects—and the close proximity of a greedy
“significant other.” Since there is no
free market use or demand for exorbitantly priced wind and solar power, only
mandates and ill-advised goals enable all of this.
John Hinderaker, in “Requiem for a Governor”
(powerlineblog.com), summarized it: “In this case, the woman is Kitzhaber’s
fiancé, Cylvia Hayes. The problem is that Ms. Hayes is a wheeler-dealer in her
own right, in the field of green energy. To make a long story short, she has
traded on her unique access to Oregon’s governor by earning consultant’s fees
(DP: $200,000+) from various ‘green’
energy organizations who stand to benefit from the state’s support.
“To make matters worse, she apparently failed to
report some of those consulting fees on her tax returns. There are other
embarrassments, too: she once accepted $5,000 to enter into a sham marriage
with an African who needed a legal basis to stay in the U.S.—a marriage that
she forgot to mention to the governor. Also, she bought, or tried to buy,
Oregon real estate for the purpose of running a marijuana farm. Before it was
legal.” Perhaps blinded by love, Kitzhaber heeded bipartisan calls to step
down.
On the economy, there is more to the story of the
weakest recovery since WWII. Wall Street Journal writers assembled “The State
of the Economy, in Eight Charts” on Jan. 19. The good: Gas prices are in the
$2+ per gallon rather than the mid-$3 range (which is widely recognized as
having occurred in spite of Obama’s anti-drilling policies). Also, about 7
million jobs have been added to “Professional services,” “Education and
health,” “Leisure and hospitality” and “Retail trade.” The loss of over 600,000
jobs in federal, state and local government is a gain as government at all
levels is overcompensated relative to the private sector (up to 2x for much of
the federal sector) and can do what is truly needed with less people.
Bad: Manufacturing and construction jobs have declined
by almost 750,000. The Obama-promoted gain of manufacturing jobs is
illusory—that sector (a core, high-wage factor in a rising middle class) hasn’t
increased as either a share of employment (under 9%) or as a share of GDP (12%).
More bad: Obama mouthpieces proclaim lowering deficits
as proof of an improving fiscal picture but the reality is that the massive
Obamacrat deficits have doubled America’s debt and, at over $400 billion this
year, will only rise dramatically as entitlement programs grow. Current levels
of both debt and deficits cannot be other than a massive drag on our economy
going forward. Private sector growth requires a ready pool of investment and
startup capital which, in a vicious cycle, is less likely to be offered when
investors see government as a taxing, regulatory and borrowing anchor on the
economy.
Here’s the really ugly side: The unemployment rate, at
5.6%, is still higher than the 5% rate under President Bush in early 2008.
Obama’s “underemployment” rate, including part time workers wanting full time
work and those who’ve given up looking, is still over 11% (Bush’s rate was only
9%). More on unemployment next week—it is uglier than you thought and most of
you “Don’t buy Team Obama’s claim unemployment improving” (Economist/YouGov
poll).
The worst part of Obama’s pathetic economic recovery
is simply this: The pre-recession median income under Bush was $56,436 and was
$54,059 when Obama took office. At 2013’s end after almost 5 years of Obama’s
policies, that median income level (half of incomes above, half below) had
declined to $51,939. Americans are almost $4,500 poorer than pre-recession;
they are over $2,000 poorer than when Obama took office—again, the worst
recovery in modern times.
Tea Party Patriots will have as guests Sally Rapoza
and Sylvia Milligan for an important program on California Air Resources Board
with DVD.
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