Pirate's Cove

I’m not quite sure which is more delusional and clueless: Team Obama or the NY Times (anonymous) editorial board: The Worst Time To Slow The Economy

It was not surprising to hear the Republican presidential candidates repeat their tiresome claim that excessive government spending and borrowing were behind Friday’s terrible unemployment report. It was depressing to hear President Obama sound as if he agreed with them.

It’s rather tiresome watching the Fish Wrap editorial board take meth before snapping out their editorial, but, at least it gives them an excuse to be so drastically wrong.

There has never been any evidence that the federal debt is primarily responsible for the persistent joblessness that began with the 2008 recession. The numbers have remained high because of weak consumer demand and stagnant wage growth, along with an imbalance between jobs and job skills. Republicans have long tried to link unemployment and debt so that they can blame Mr. Obama for the poor economy, and build support for their ideological goal of cutting spending.

Wait, these are the Smartest People In The Room? Jobs are weak because wages haven’t been going up? Sure, that is a minor, tiny part of it: if people aren’t making more money, they won’t have as much disposable income to spend on consumer products…..hey, that sounds like a recipe for…..tax breaks! People have less money taken from them by The Government, they tend to spend more. That money flows through the economy, putting more money in the state coffers through sales tax, more people need to be hired to support the increased spending, then….well, you know how this works, you aren’t a liberal idiot.

And then “an imbalance between jobs and job skills”? Seriously, this is their rationale, along with the wage growth? DERP.

Anyhow, good news! The Fish Wrap blames Republicans

There is plenty of evidence, in fact, that the spending cuts already imposed by Republican intransigence are responsible for a great deal of joblessness. Although the private sector added 57,000 jobs in June, that tiny progress was reduced by the 39,000 jobs shed by federal, state and local governments, much of which came from education. As David Leonhardt noted in The Times on Friday, cutbacks in state and local spending have cost the economy about a million public-sector jobs over the last two years, in part because the federal stimulus program, bitterly opposed by Republicans, ended too soon.

See how easy that was? Because the GOP has done, well, nothing, it’s their fault. In reality, states are having to lay off workers because they’re budgets were out of control, they are no longer getting all the Stimulus money to prop them up, and, with people out of work and not spending, they are not receiving as much sales tax, property tax, and income tax. Of course, in Times World, the GOP has been in charge of Congress for the last two years. Anyhow, here we go

The president may have a nebulous approach to unemployment, but he is hardly indifferent to it. His re-election hinges on reducing it. It is hard to understand, though, why Mr. Obama has adopted the language of his opponents in connecting the economy to the debt. To his credit, he talked about the one step that would work — investing money in rebuilding the country. But the debt-ceiling ideas he is now considering would make that investment much less likely by pulling hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy at precisely the moment when the spending is needed most.

So, without government spending money (it doesn’t have) to pave roads that do not need paving, painting bridges, and building turtle tunnels, the economy will collapse, and, more importantly to the Times, Obama won’t be re-elected. Wait a second, didn’t Obama and the Donkeys attempt the whole “investing money in rebuilding the country” with the Stimulus? Perhaps the Times can tells us why that didn’t work.

Yes, government is an important part of the economy. Yet, all the money they spend comes from confiscating money from citizens and companies who could put that money to better use, and be more responsible with it.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.