“Creating Jobs” is Counter to Everything the GOP Believes
September 3, 2012

 
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Rooting for failureYou already know that Republicans have been “rooting for failure” since the day President Obama took office. Rush Limbaugh took heat for declaring on his radio show just days after Obama’s inauguration that he “hopes Obama fails” to fix the economy, and rather than apologize, he defended his comment and repeated it a second time, making sure there was absolutely no question that he was rooting for the failure of the president… and by extension the United States of America. You also know that also in 2009, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the GOP’s “single most important goal”… wasn’t to create jobs or improve the economy, but “hold Barack Obama to a single term”. When outraged critics lambasted him for it, he made no apology but instead altered his claim to say it was the GOP’s single most important political priority” to deny Obama a second term. Not much different in my book (Will Ann Coulter be writing “Treason II”, after accusing Democrats of rooting for harm to come to the country just to prove themselves right? Don’t hold your breath.) Republicans have been anything but shy about “rooting for failure” these past few years. (UPDATE: Almost on cue: Newt Gingrich on “Meet the Press” said he’s hoping for a bad Jobs Report to overshadow Obama’s DNC speech.) But I’m not talking about “just since Obama” was elected. No, on this Labor Day, I thought it necessary to state the obvious: It is absolutely 100% not in the GOP’s interest to create jobs or increase wages. Period. Not even when a Republican is in the White House. So voting Republican because you’re out of work, thinking they can fix the economy is like (as they say) “a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders”. Let me explain:

As you are probably aware since you are reading this, the #1 concern of Republicans are the “job creators”. “The Wealthy”. Corporations and businesses that hire people (they don’t “create jobs”, only DEMAND does that) hire as few people as possible to meet their needs, and pay them as little as possible to maximize their profits. It’s not in a company’s interest to hire more people than necessary or pay them more than they need to. When unemployment is LOW, employers must fight for talented/skilled workers, and they’ll pay more to get them. They’ll even pay bonuses and offer perks like Benefits.

But when unemployment is HIGH, there’s a glut of skilled workers willing to work long hours for little pay and no benefits, saving corporations millions. And it’s the GOP’s role to ensure unemployment remains high enough to keep wages depressed so employers pay as little as possible for skilled labor, yet low enough to keep the economy moving.

You may remember (and I find I must frequently remind people) that the last election wasn’t 2008, but 2010, when the GOP retook the House and made gains in the Senate by promising “Jobs, jobs, jobs”. So where are they? Romney and the GOP are campaigning on President Obama’s failure to create jobs, yet they are to be held totally blameless? You heard Paul Ryan blame the President last week for the drop in our National Credit Rating, for which the GOP was to blame, so Yes, the GOP… which never tires of blaming the President for blaming Bush… believes they are blameless for not creating “jobs, jobs, jobs” since taking charge 21 months ago. (And please ask Bill Clinton what he thinks about people blaming the previous president YEARS after leaving office.)

Still don’t believe me? You might remember that one of the first bills President Obama signed into law upon taking office was the “Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act”. NOT ONE SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted for the Act. Not even Republican women. Because it’s not in the corporate interests to ensure women are paid as much as men.

Republicans would also like to do away with the minimum wage because it’s the only thing preventing employers from paying as little as they can possibly get away with. Republicans will actually argue that companies might hire MORE people if they didn’t have to pay so much. But WHY WOULD THEY? Seriously. Why would any company hire one more employee than needed? Low wages don’t create more jobs. In fact, just the opposite is true.

Heck, forget the “Minimum Wage”, some Republicans even think “Child Labor Laws” are “Unconstitutional” and should be abolished, glutting the Market even further by forcing people to compete with children for jobs.

Even “Global Warming”… which any enterprising entrepreneur can see the incredible profit-making potential, from making/selling high-mileage cars, building Wind Turbines and Solar Panels, constructing more energy efficient buildings, updating our power-grid so it wastes less electricity, is vilified by Republicans. Because it would mean corporations might have to spend money modernizing, while Big Oil might see its enormous profits fall as people use less oil (Republicans think nothing of the money it would save consumers, which then gets pumped back into the economy in FAR more diverse ways). They ridicule and fight against Climate Change legislation (even if you don’t believe in it, the money to be made is undeniable.)

They attack Unions because Unions mean higher pay. And they aren’t afraid to admit it. Just listen to any speech by some  rabid  Republican attacking Unions. They always couch their hatred for Unions in terms of “greedy workers” (former Obama adviser Van Jones put it best yesterday, stating, “We never heard the term ‘Public Sector Workers’ when I was growing up. It was always ‘Teachers’, ‘Firefighters’, ‘Cops’… all people we called ‘Heros’.”)

You may remember that Mitt Romney made a lot of money at Bain Capital buying up companies, cannibalizing them for their assets, then putting a lot of people out of work. Because it’s just not in the Republican mindset that hurting The Many to profit a few is something undesirable. Yes, Romney was incredibly successful… for himself. Not so much for the workers.

The “Party of Lincoln” wants to bring back slavery… “wage slavery”. What made the Old South Cotton Plantations so wealthy was all the free labor. Once Lincoln freed the slaves and ordered plantation owners to pay them a decent wage, many went out of business within a few years. Low wages may be inhumane for workers, but just dandy for the people they work for. You don’t have to be black to be a “wage-slave” (which is why there was nothing racist about Biden’s recent “back in chains” remark to a mixed crowd of supporters.)

The lowest day of unemployment during the Bush Administration was the day he took office (4.2%). George Bush campaigned in 2000 on the idea that the great economy under Bill Clinton was all the doing of the Republican Congress his last six years. From this, Bush surmised that the economy would have done “even better” if we had just had a Republican president over that same period. Then we got a Republican president with the SAME Republican congress that supposedly deserved all the credit under Clinton, and disaster ensued. The Stock Market plunged, the Bush Tax Cut caused the National Debt to explode (after nearly grinding to a halt), and unemployment was up more than a full point by the time of the 2004 election (by comparison, unemployment was 8.3% the day president Obama took office (not “7.2%” or “7.8%” as some have claimed), and despite unprecedented GOP obstruction and a record number of filibusters, is back to 8.3% today. The DOW was 8,279.63 the day President Obama took office, continued its slide to just 6,547.05 barely a month later as we shook off the last vestiges of Bush, and is now up over 13,000… an increase of ALMOST 200 PERCENT. By comparison, when George Bush-43 entered office, the DOW was 10587.59 (and as I noted above, was “8,279.63” the day he left, a decline of 22-percent.)

High unemployment means less money in the economy, so businesses lose money. You’d think Republicans would see that. But they don’t. Republicans have a demonstrated complete and total inability to see beyond immediate gain. That’s how we ended up in Iraq with no exit strategy, why Republicans think privatizing Social Security and Medicare won’t hurt the system even after a disastrous Stock Market crash, and why high unemployment means companies can save Billions paying lower wages despite the fact employees with less money buy less.

And now they’ve told us they want to return to the failed policies of the Bush presidency. Why on Earth would anyone want to do that???
 

BTW: In his big speech last week, Romney criticized President Obama’s “lack of business experience” and suggested THAT is why the economy hadn’t fully rebounded. He followed that up with: “We weren’t always successful at Bain. But no one ever is in the real world of business.” The United States of America is NOT “a business“. It’s not run “for profit” and “FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.”

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September 3, 2012 · Admin Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: Economy, Election, General, Jobs, myth busting, Politics, Rants

One Response

  1. Mugsy - September 3, 2012

    It occurred to me this morning that A Republican might read:

    What made the Old South Cotton Plantations so wealthy was all the free labor. Once Lincoln freed the slaves and ordered plantation owners to pay them a decent wage, many went out of business within a few years.

    …and cite that in DEFENSE of lower wages, suggesting a “low” wage is better than “no wage at all”. But those Plantations didn’t go out of business because “wages were too high”, they died off because of a poor Business Model that relied on unrealistically high profit margins just to survive.

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