Obama Addresses Job Creation For Election Year (Video) and GOP ect..

Obama Addresses Job Creation For Election Year

“President Barack Obama’s “billion-dollar war chest”"

 

We are proud of it.

Still things seem to be going all right, toward reasonable directions. And there is an “INTRIGUING,“ “HILLARIOUS“  title of  Yahoo news.:

 

“The evangelical dilemma in South Carolina: adulterer or Mormon?” 

 

“For South Carolina conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, the 2012 campaign season is the year of magical rethinking. Look at the frontrunners:

If you want a president with a legacy of marital fidelity, you’re going to have to work around Newt Gingrich’s adultery.

If you believe that Mormons don’t really qualify as Christian, you may find yourself struggling with Mitt Romney.“

 

“almost-dead.bz.cm” you are none of my concern. you are too stupid, trivial, meaningless, filthy, same with your Russian whore and her stupid husband. YOU THINK I”M ALMOST DEAD?; your life has been useless, full of dirts with your dirty heart/eyes, even messing up churches with your filthy, dirty eyes. The LORD will deal with you, what you have done. not me. Despite all cruel/brutal things you’ve done to make me disappear, why do you think i’m still here?

“In your righteousness, bring me out of trouble. In your unfailing love, silence my enemies; destroy all my foes, for I am your servant.” “The LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight. To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shred. You saved the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty. You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light…..You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn. I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed. I crushed them so that they could not rise; they fell beneath my feet. You armed me with strength for battle; you made my adversaries bow at my feet. You made my enemies turn their backs in flight, and I destroyed my foes. They cried for help, but there was no one to save them – to the LORD, but he did not answer. I beat them as fine as dust borne on the wind…“ “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”;  Psalms 18″ Thank G-.

“The Real News on Jobs”: Who’s Blame for Job Losses and Gains?

There is good news that US job situation and economy. Private sector created 222,000 new jobs in Feb 2011 and the unemployment rate decreased to the lowest point of 8.9% since April 2009. These new jobs were dominantly created in the sectors of “factories, trucking companies, health care providers, construction firms, hotels and restaurants”. Economists say that the US economy needs 125,000 new jobs per month to maintain steady unemployment rate account for population growth, and 300,000 new jobs per month to get serious decrease in unemployment rate.(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_economy)

On the other hand, increasing oil prices, which is expected to continue through this summer, due to the political crises in Middle East and recent firing of public workers from state local governments are expected to be counteracting forces against this recovery of job-economy-condition.

Professor Robert Reich points out the problem of wage gap regarding the recent job growth (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-real-news-on-jobs_b_831493.html):

“New jobs created since February 2010 (about 1.26 million) pay significantly lower wages than the jobs lost (8.4 million) between January 2008 and February 2010. While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour. In other words, the big news isn’t jobs. It’s wages.”

This deteriorating wage gap is understandable if we considered that the most recently job creating sectors have been “factories, trucking companies, health care providers, construction firms, hotels and restaurants” as mentioned above.

He points out:

Regarding Prof. Reich’s statement, “Conservative economists have it wrong. The underlying problem isn’t that so many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech labor market. It’s that they’re getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie.”

If we look into the detailed view of this “smaller smaller share of American worker’s pies, there are multi-layers of problems:

-The American Pie piece in Global Manufacturing Market is shrinking smaller and smaller.

-Inefficiences and bureacracies in most of US political, industrial entities and even labor unions have collectively contributed to the “dwindling American pies.” Loose government regulations on industries/business allowed these entities to take slices from workers’ pays and benefits, as seen in healthcare, housing/financial market messes, to bloat the wealth of high income groups while dwindling middle classes. But some part of labor also have their portion of blame for their shrinking pies: instead of focusing on working hard and increasing productivity to cut production costs and their global competitiveness, some of them (I am not talking about hard working workers. I praise them) has taken lazy approach of taking unheardly high paid vacation/sick days of almost one month out of twelve months while demanding high pays/benefits and protection of workers’ right, which seems to be inappropriate abuse of their right to protect their jobs. All these inefficiencies, bureaucracies from every entities sum up to “Slashed American Pie.” Everybody demand their right but don’t meet their performance requirements.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

always been waiting.

“The Left Edge of the Possible?”: “Actually Beyond Right and Left”

Respectable Mr. Robert Kuttner depicts the current national situation pretty well. As he points out in his blog, “The Left Edge of the Possible” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/the-left-edge-of-the-poss_b_828907.html), the real serious national political/economic issues are economic recovery and the budget, the health system, the banking/housing mess, American economic competitiveness in the world, rising gas price and global climate change.

Current national and global economic situation seems to become increasingly beyond the capacity of left and right of US politics. In other words, the right and left of US politics are increasingly limiting their abilityto smaller issues while being oblivious to eminent, bigger issues.  For example, Wisconsin Governor Walker’s attempt to rip of public workers’ right to organize that caused the consequent labor movement against it seems to be a complete sidetrack from what need to be done for the sake of solving current national issues of recession and joblessness, making things worse. Like there are not enough problems now.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Llord anoints Kking;”rainforest waterfalls”.

Progressive Canaries in a Political Mine

Regarding Mr. Norman Solomon’s statement, “the president has empowered, not countered, the right wing by moving in its direction on a wide range of basic policies and governance formulatio­ns….Rath­er than staking out decent, progressive, populist positions and defending them with moral fervor, “

The statement, “the president empowering the right wing,” seems to be incorrect. The blind objections of the opposite political party against whatever the president’s agendas, opposition for the sake of opposition seem to have resulted in empowering itself. it sounds almost nonsense to state that it is the president who empowered the opposition party.

I believe liberals are people that are well informed, well educated of politics with passion for better society. But they also need to learn how to take in different contributing factors in judging policy outcomes. Also, sometimes, even the outcome may not agree to what they really wished for, for the sake of country, maybe sometimes sacrifice what they believe to certain extent and support their leader if there are still value on him. Choose Big One at the costs of small ones. It wouldn’t make things better if they let down their leader to let the opponents win.

In Asia, there’s a saying that if too many people row a boat, the boat will climb a mountain (instead of sailing water.) If there are too many voices and nobody know when to be silent, or give in, nothing works.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

US Jobs, Trade: In Defense of WTO, NAFTA

This blog post is written in response to complains of US unemployment, manufacturing job losses, WTO, and NAFTA (Source: Robert Kuttner, Not Just Jobs — Good Jobs, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/not-just-jobs-good-jobs_b_706209.html)

Opening, liberalizing trade in forms of WTO, NAFTA, or other forms of multilateral or regional trade agreements has not been political agenda of one specific presidency, but the general trend of every administration since the mid-1970s, regardless of republican or democratic presidency. It may have incorporated the political influence of large corporations’ business and profit pursuits via international venues. But also not opening trade and global markets would have had the serious downside of collectively impoverishing American people by reducing their purchasing power of goods and consumption based on their income by, my guess is, one-third or more of their levels under trade. Because not-trading increases prices of products and reduces the choices of products available in the US markets, so we have to buy, consume less with same amount of income and feel more poor or less rich.

There is a reason that Wal-Mart has become the largest US and world corporation; because it has provided those choices of lower prices and more varieties of products through its multinational manufacturing or procurement of goods as much as the WTO, NAFTA or other trade agreement rules allow the corporation to do so. And Americans have “Crazily” enjoyed the “Benefits of Wal-Mart’s international operation while condemning evil Chinese or Mexican workers to take away American jobs. If people complain about WTO, NAFTA or other open trade issue and the consequent losses of US jobs, they should do it while abstainning themselves from going wal-mart or buying any cheap imported goods, or buying Japanese cars to reduce maintenance costs and reduce (the chances of losing workdays or income because of frequent car troubles before go to work) and bear with living with far less. They should put their acts together in belief; they cannot do A while pursuing conflicting B because of convenience.

Flattening American wages for decades. One of reasons is, the world is changing. In the Past, America was often the best or a leader in many manufacturing industries because the Europe was growing old and the Asia was not that much in the picture as it started its industrial infancy in 60’s and 70’s. Now, America is one of those growing old folks as Europe. We have to see where this country is standing in the world, to have correct understanding of the situation.

Obama’s Dillema and Multi-faces of Public

Time article, “How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular”, (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2015629-3,00.html) carries the tone that President Obama became unpopular because he has carried on unpopular, big reform agendas and bailouts of auto and financial sectors which the public didn’t want, instead of pursuing publically popular policy agendas such as government deficits/spending reduction.

It’s regretful that President became unpopular by mid-term because public doesn’t like his main policy agendas. But, to be sure, what public wants are not necessarily what is good for this country. We have to remember how easily public has been manipulated by wrong media messages and how often they change their opinions. There is saying that the worst enemy of you is yourself. There have been many cases that the public has been so wrong to cause harm to themselves.

It is critical to see pieces of information in the context of big picture. As so many experts pointed out, cutting back government spending and focusing on deficits in the heat of recession and high unemployment is like blocking economic recovery, growth, and job recovery further, extending the recession longer. It is the politics of “Myopia.”

Recently, China has reportedly become the number 2 world economic superpower. The U.S. is shrinking in its capacity in world economy and politics. This country’s old hegemony over the world is fading away and giving way to China. The major reforms that President Obama have pursued are the fundamentals to resuscitate the vitality of declining US economy in long-term in this critical time. Sure, there have been problems in the procedures of this approach and many times people wished President to be more aggressive.

Under this situation, US public is demanding the government to take policy measures that will result in ignoring recession and unemployment by only focusing on reducing deficits and spending. If the government does as public wishes, so reduces the government deficits/spending, but unemployment and recession still persist and still many people can not bring food to table, “will the public praise or curse the government for taking the policy measures that the public forced the government to take?” My bet is, public will change their faces, bark, curse at the government, accusing that the government took wrong measures to maintain recession and keep people’s suffering continue.

One good news is, as the article cites,

“At the White House, advisers take comfort in the fact that at this point in their presidencies, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton scored slightly lower approval ratings than Obama. And the dominant analogy for the past few months has focused not on 1994, when Clinton lost a Democratic Congress in a huge Republican wave, but on ’82, when Reagan lost just 26 seats in the House. Like Obama, Reagan was facing rising discontent at the midterm, driven by huge unemployment numbers that peaked at 10.8% at year’s end. But as the economy rebounded, Reagan’s governing philosophy, “Stay the course,” was vindicated. He won re-election by an enormous margin.”

Opportunity for American Manufacturing, Jobs: The Case of Luxury Goods – Export?

In the beginning of Obama Administration, there had been voices that the US is in need of comprehensive analyses of US industrial competitiveness, strategic identification / development of industrial portfolio of which industries are viable, competitive, sustainable, or have growth potentials. At that time, there had also been some notion that “New Deal” style economic stimulus will not be viable, that “New Deal” failed as the New Deal construction boom of infrastructure for a few years (1933- 1937) went into another deep recession……

US market has been considered saturated as too many foreign and domestic competitors fight in a aging market while US producers have been defunctional in adapting to consumer demand but mainly surviving by manipulating US policies. Despite that, many giant US firms without competitiveness have still fallen, including labor intensive industries and auto industry.

However, despite worldwide recession, reportedly worldwide-widening income gap between rich and poor means means that there are sizable, lucrative foreign markets for US manufacturing of luxury goods, especially in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Asian tigers, India, China where riches are competing with those in this country. Rich people’s consumption are recession-resistant, meaning they will buy whatever they like, no matter it is recession or not. Do you remember the old news of some Koreans smuggling Viagra into Korea and got the whole country mad about those reckless, non-patriotic rich sons of etc. who care for those while the whole country suffers from financial madness?  On the other hand, US has unbeatable competitiveness in luxury goods that has cajoled the luxury lifestyles of American mass modern dynasties of rich and famous entrepreneurs, hollywood, basketball stars, etc. US entrepreneurs can strive to export these luxury goods to leisurely classes of foreign countries, such as bollywood (or dollywood? what was that) stars of India or you name them; foreign consumers can not buy American luxuries because they are not available either because of their governments’ import restriction or Americans don’t exports them.

“Krugman’s View of President Obama’s First Year Sounds Reasonable.”

Professor Krugman stated that “The Obama administration’s troubles are the result not of excessive ambition, but of policy and political misjudgments. The stimulus was too small; policy toward the banks wasn’t tough enough; and Mr. Obama didn’t do what Ronald Reagan, who also faced a poor economy early in his administration, did — namely, shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.” -”What Didn’t Happen”, NY Op-Ed Column.

Prof. Krugman’s above statement sounds reasonable. Maybe it’s wise for the White House to incorporate his suggestions in modifying its policies & strategies. Pushing hard for health care reform and straigtening out the mistakes done in financial reform. Especially, although I don’t quite like blaming games, it seems to be “VERY” important to stress out “Who’s the Actual Cause of Current Economic and Job Crisis” and take that blame away from President. Regarding job situation, Prof. Krugman doesn’t seem to see any magic bullet at this point, as I haven’t seen any either (“US Job Situation: No Magic Bullet to Solve It; http://mikyunglim.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/us-job-situation-no-magic-bullet-to-solve-it/)

“What Didn’t Happen,” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/opinion/18krugman.html

Current Recession: Isn’t It Rather the Problem of Malfunctioning Public than Incompetent Leader(s)?

A commentator,  jeanrenoire, made a comment of this country’s problems in response to Dr. Robert Reich’s blog, “What’s Ahead for the Economy and Politics in 2010” at Huffington Post.  Although the language is too rough for my ears, his/her comment contains  some truth regarding the core problems of this society, which have driven this country into wrong, self-destructive direction and led to current recession and historical unemployment. The comment is as below:

“No, the real “irony” is that the American masses are so stupid that the Republicans can get away with their economics for the rich, as they have ever since Reagan seduced the dumb mob of workers into believing that it was “morning in America” for them, when it was only “morning” for the fat cats he fronted for. Now, with Fox, Rush, and Palin fronting for these same fat cats with 24/7 spin-control, the stupid white American mob is more hypnotized and dumber than ever. The dolts have neither an attention span, a memory, or the rational capacity to do anything other than be dittoheads. Hence they can hardly wait to vote the Republicans into power, to reward them for the glorious eight years under Bush, in which the economy was bubbling, New Orleans was obliterated, and we wasted thousands of the mob’s kids’ lives in Iraq, along with a couple of trillion dollars of debt any of their kids who survived will be paying for for the rest of their lives. We spent MUCH more on nothing in Iraq than Obama’s stimulus plan and all his other efforts (wildly successful, by the way) to keep us out of an economic abyss of unique proportions, all caused by Bushonomics and benign neglect of Wall St. and everything else on earth, including the rebuilding Taliban and Al Qaeda, “left behind” in Afghanistan/Pakistan. White lower-class, uneducated voters are America’s tragedy. They’ve voted for disaster, and they’ve gotten it.”

There’s little hope for “CHANGE” without clearly communicating and educating the facts of current economic /social problems with the mass public, especially those who live in isolated regions, such as farming, mountain, or remote areas where people less or seldom communicate with neighbors, receive less internet service, less TV channels and less current information, and more cling to old ideas and believes. Changes come faster, more easily in urban areas, cities because people keep talking, communicating with each other and information/news travel fast among people. Sure, there must have been some misjudgments and mistakes on the administration’s part in dealing with the details of reform efforts. But, when the bulk of public (and politicians) don’t understand facts well, are thinking wrongly, block every reform efforts, and claim it’s all the reformer(s) falts, does it make sense?”

Without solving these communication/education problems with the mass public, there would be few real solutions to dig this country out of current chronic structural diseases.

Dr. Robert Reich’s blog, “What’s Ahead for the Economy and Politics in 2010”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/whats-ahead-for-the-econo_b_411640.html

US Job Situation: No Magic Bullet to Solve It.

Regarding current “ job situation” or high unemployment rate, I don’t believe that there is any magic bullet to quickly solve it. In many senses, job recovery can be pretty much independent from how much the public outcries for the administration’s mistakes or incompetence in solving this problem.

Current bad job situation is the outcome of this country’s industrial and political structural misfits and the crash of bubble economy after being buoyed by the financial sector’s reckless gamblings. In this country, everybody cares only for themselves and demand that the rest of country, people should sacrifice for their benefits. There seems to be no common goals, collective wisdom, or cooperation among individuals or different entities. The finacial industry, health care industry, labor union, and many social sectors have been out of sync, manipulating government policies and social structure in their favor, demanding to protect and maximize only their rights, benefits, and profits withouth considering, accepting the reality, often at the huge sacrifices of the rest of the economy and industrial competitiveness. The current recession and job losses are just the simple outcome, side effect of this social,  structural failure of this country and an event that happened to accelerate the gradual process of winding down this economy within a short time.

Most manufacturing industries with high labor components have been destined to either disappear from this country or hugely downsize, which have been predicted from long time ago. This process will continue regardless of whether the public likes it or not. Computerization, modernization and automation of human labor parts in industries / manufacturing processes have been expected to eliminate physical jobs and replace human labor with computers, robotics, or machines. In grocery stores, we have seen human cashiers at checkout desks to be increasingly replaced by self-checkout desks and scanners. We are talking about mess in health care industry’s administration and the need to computerize the administrative work to reduce the industry’s operating costs.

This country was expected to rely on high tech industries, financial industry, and retailing and service industries to provide enough jobs that people need to survive. But nobody knows how many new jobs these so-called newage industries will be able to create in contrast to disappearing manufacturing jobs in this country. The whole social system has been structured to hugely disadvantage US manufacturing: high labor costs (symptom of rich country), high health insurance/medical costs (both of which put the operating costs of US manufacturing at huge disadvantage) and often incompetitive marketing capability of US industries despite the existence of worldwide renown business schools in this country.

From NPR, I heard that many disappeared jobs from the financial sector would not come back even after recovery. Nobody is able to fundamentally solve this problem and just kind of waiting for time to solve this problem.

Once Prof. Krugman suggested to reduce US working hours from current 40 hours to less, to make more people share existing jobs and reduce unemployment rate. This suggestion is actually what Germany (which has similar problem as US in creating enough jobs) has relied on to make more people work as job supply in that country has not been enough to meet job demand over time.