In Search of a Real Job

There has been a lot of talk during the current economic downturn about a so-called jobless recovery. It’s confusing, to say the least, that you can have a recovery without creating any new jobs. For starters, consider the use of the term jobless recovery.  It strongly implies a recovery.  But the bottom line is what it is – no jobs, no recovery.  The reason is simple.  The engine of the nation’s economic growth is consumer spending and without jobs consumers will have less to spend.

The only way to make the country’s economy grow is to produce something of value (e.g. cars, machinery, food, raw materials).  Instead, the government has chosen to allow jobs (and production) to go overseas under the guise of free trade.  Never mind that free trade is never free.  Somebody profits, but in this case it just isn’t us. Of course, the problem is that interference with the market system is usually doomed to failure.  As Ronald Reagan said, “government is not a solution…government is the problem.”

So then what’s with the use of the jobless recovery terminology?  Well, the government couldn’t very well tell everyone that the stimulus plan didn’t work (and was never really necessary), so they created the fiction of a jobless recovery.  After all, a recovery of any kind, even in name only, is better than the alternative.  Psychologically, the government couldn’t have Bill Maher’s stupid Americans waking up to the fact that Wall Street was bailed out by Main Street.  They had to hold out the hope of a recovery, even if it was an intentionally false hope. Keep the little people in the dark, so to speak.

Their theory is that you only need to occasionally throw your poor dog a bone. Under that theory, the thinking is that people will be happy as long as they get their food stamps and unemployment benefits. Further to that theory, Nancy Pelosi recently said that food stamps and unemployment benefits are leading ways to help the economy grow. Say what!  I have my own theory which I think explains this bizarre kind of thinking rather nicely.  It’s called figures lie and liars figure.  Under my theory, the inflation and unemployment numbers are fictions created by the government to keep the masses from revolting and Nancy Pelosi…well, I’m sure you get the picture.

For all those who are currently in search of a job – good luck.  A lot of jobs today are not exactly what people are looking for. You know, working in a fast food restaurant or any one of a plethora of part-time jobs.  Of course if you take a part-time job, or give up looking altogether, it will make the government very happy as they will not have to count you as unemployed!  Presumably, that means that you would then have a real job.

So the next time you hear the term jobless recovery, make note if you are one of the14.5 million people out of work or one of the 44 million people living below the poverty level. If you are fortunate enough to still have a job, check the last time that you got a wage increase; then check how much food prices have gone up, say, in the last twelve months.  Now, a show of hands. How many of you agree with the government that the recession ended over a year ago?

The Choice Is Yours

It’s almost election time and on November 2nd some of us will trudge off to the polls to vote.  It seems like it has become a chore for many voters what with voter turnout only slightly more than half.  The other half, then, apparently think that voting is a waste of time. Of course, it just could be general voter apathy or it could be that they’re too busy paying the bills and seeing how many chickens they can demolish. Either way,  it’s your right as a citizen to be able to cast a ballot.  Some would say that it’s your civic duty, even moral responsibility, to vote.

 Regardless all of that, I’m pretty sure that a lot of conservatives will turnout with the prospect of recapturing control of Congress this year. Let’s hear it for the Elephants. It’s also a given that a lot of independents will try to vote out incumbents on both sides of the aisle.  As for the liberals, they will probably have to concentrate on minimizing the damage by re-electing their standard bearers (the Harry Reids and Barney Franks of the world).

Just one piece of advice though – be careful that your vote isn’t simply irrelevant (not unlike a hanging chad). The great illusion is that because we can vote we therefore think we are free.  The reality is that elections are only of value if there is a meaningful choice.  Many countries are actually one-party systems, even though there may be some token opposition party.  Even in so-called democratic countries, two or three party systems are almost always controlled by the same people.

Now I know that some of you are going to say: “but not in the good ole U.S. of A”.  Of course, you could say that… but you’d be wrong. The whole left/right ideological food fight is all about distraction.  Needless to say, most people have bought into this paradigm and their focus is, therefore, strictly limited to who wins and who loses.  In reality, we the people all lose every time.

The conservatives voted Bush into office (twice) and I think that we can all agree that he was a conservative in name only; just look at his spending record.  Obama? Well, he wasn’t really for change unless you count changing things for the worse. Today, we still have runaway spending by the government and two wars in the Middle East (and don’t believe that speech about how all the combat troops have left Iraq either).  On top of that, the two of them are related!  Fancy that. The elite families always seem to groom their own to participate on both sides of the political spectrum.  That’s because there’s only one ideology that they really believe in… and that’s the ideology of control.

 Just look at who the biggest contributor was to both the McCain and Obama campaigns.  Surprise, it was the same people who control our economy through the Treasury and The Federal Reserve.  While you’re at it, check out who owns The Federal Reserve (here’s a clue: it’s not the government).  Then you will realize how The Fed is able to refuse to allow Congress to audit their books.  Bottom line: they are the real power in Washington.

Remember, freedom is not a god-given right. It is something that has to be fought for and then jealously protected on a continuous basis. The founding fathers earned freedom for this great nation over 200 years ago and there will forever be someone trying to take it away.  Unfortunately, Americans have grown fat and materialistically self-centered.  The young generation has come to expect that the world will be handed to them on a silver platter.  Life is too good.  There is no national awareness that it could be any other way. However, today as always the choice is between governing ourselves or being ruled by a small elite. The choice is yours.

Bill Maher Says

I saw a George Clooney movie the other night entitled “The American.” It was, in small part, a European perspective about what Americans are like.  It wasn’t a pretty picture, if you know what I mean.

Much closer to home, Bill Maher has said that Americans are flat-out stupid.  He even repeated it while being interviewed on national television. According to Bill, Americans need to be dragged (presumably by the hair) so as to get them to accept Obamacare. So tell us Bill, just exactly what makes you so smug?

It seems everyone has it in for Americans these days, so much so that we’re becoming an endangered species.  First it was Bill Maher and then there was the remarks by the chairman of BP saying that they care about the “little people” in the Gulf.  Attorney General Eric Holder chimed in with we’re a nation of cowards and, oh yeah, there’s Obama’s science czar, John Holdren, who once wrote that the government should sterilize people through the food and drinking water supplies. All this in the name of population control.  Maybe, we should make it easy by volunteering for extermination (can anyone spell Soylent Green?).

But Bill Maher is in a class by himself.  He attacks just about everything American and it seems like it’s almost personal with him.  He particularly has a penchant for off-color remarks, such as his comment that Obama doesn’t act like a real black president with a gun in his pants.  In my book, that’s going too far, even for a political satirist. 

Bill also bemoans that Democrats aren’t liberal enough and that Republicans are just angry white people and Jesus freaks. If Democrats aren’t liberal enough, just what kind of nation do you suppose Bill would support?  After all, he did initially back Obama’s plan to fundamentally transform America, didn’t he?  And now that’s not liberal enough?

Maybe, we should ask Bill what kind of world he envisions (or maybe not). Ultimately, I suspect that Bill would never be satisfied unless the whole country was playing a game of “Simon Says” and Bill got to be Simon. 

Maybe, we should ask Bill about his belief in God, or lack thereof, and how that fits into his vision of Utopia. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t do that either, especially since he considers Christians to be nothing more than Jesus freaks and Mormonism to be a fake religion.

Of course there’s always the chance that Bill Maher was right after all. Maybe, as Bill says, it is easy to fool the American voting public. They elected Barack Obama, didn’t they.  What were they actually expecting from a fascist anyway? Just go ask Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck.

I’ve got it.  What we need to do is hand the reins of power in this country over to King Bill.  He most assuredly is smarter than the rest of us.  At least, he thinks he is.  So why doesn’t he simply change the introduction for his TV show to “I’m right. I’m Bill Maher and you’re stupid.”  Now wouldn’t that be just plain “Religulous”?

Death by Proxy

Healthcare reform mania has faded into the background, although I must admit that I think about it now and then when I have to go to the doctor.  I still bemoan the fact that we have chosen a course of action that has already failed in counties like, say, Canada or the UK. It’s also now academic that countries like Germany, Sweden, and Australia are looking for free-market alternatives while we’re looking to implement nationalized healthcare.  Nonetheless, it appears to be a road that we will have to travel, and no doubt endure.

The highlight for me in the healthcare debate was Sarah Palin coming out with her “death panels” comment. Not surprisingly, she was roundly criticized by the liberal media for her claim that Obama’s healthcare reform would result in the medical needs of the elderly (and others, like her handicapped son) being reviewed by bureaucrats and a decision rendered as to whether or not they were worthy of healthcare, based on a subjective judgment of the person’s level of productivity in society.

But then along came that great humanitarian Bill Gates. Bill’s foundation, you may know, is spending billions of dollars (that’s billions with a B) to fund the production of vaccines for third world countries. All this in the name of reducing world population.  You see, at the 2010TED conference, Bill gave a speech entitled “Innovating to Zero” in which he unveiled a formula for managing global concerns.  One of the key components of his formula is the number of people in the world, which he proposes be as ideally as close to zero as possible. Thus, innovating to zero. Bill said that vaccines (his vaccines) would be a big driver in holding down world population.  Sounds pretty much like eugenics to me.

But Bill wasn’t finished, not by a long-shot. Recently, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bill brought up the issue of choosing to spend money on school teachers instead of on dying patients.  He said, “But that’s called death panel and you’re not suppose to have that discussion.”  Death panels?  Sounds like the liberal media got it wrong again.  I’m sure that they will be immediately apologizing to Sarah Palin, or in any event soon…or maybe not at all.

So I don’t know if this whole thing is someone’s idea of a sick joke or just an Orwellian nightmare.  Either way, when I go to the doctor next time, I expect that I will have to take a ticket and stand in line.  The only question is whether or not I will be allowed to live.

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.”

–    Norman Thomas, American socialist