The White House Jobs Forum
President Obama has decided the unemployment situation is bad. He has a point. It’s now as bad as it was when Reagan fixed Carter’s mess. So, he decided to have a get-together with minds that he thinks will fix the problem. Now, in my relatively simple world, the best way to cure unemployment is to get them jobs. The best way to get them jobs is to get private sector employers to hire them. I’ll tell you why real quick, OK? In this world you’ve two kinds of people, makers and takers. Makers make the money, takers take the money. In the business world, makers make the taxes, takers spend the taxes. You want to fix the economy real quick? Fire up the private sector so they can crank out more taxes. Firing up the takers doesn’t help anything for very long. When they run out of the makers’ money, they don’t hire people. Simple, huh? That’s why TARP hasn’t worked so far.
Now, so far, Obama’s list of people who are supposed to fix the unemployment problem is still incomplete, but looks something like this. I’ve categorized them for everyone:
| Makers | |
| Eric Schmidt | |
| Randall Stevenson | AT&T |
| Surya Mohapatra | Qwest |
| Frederick Smith | Federal Express |
| Brian Roberts | Comcast |
| Bob Iger | Disney |
| James McNerney | Boeing |
| Andrew Livens | Dow |
| Peter Solmssen | Siemens |
| Stephanie Burns | Dow Corning |
| David Ickert | Air Tractor |
| Woody Hall | Diversapack |
| Rose Wang | Binary Group |
Those are thirteen “makers”. These are people who generate tax revenues. Then there’s this list:
| Takers | |
| Phaedra Ellis Lamkins | Green for All |
| Reed Hundt | Coalition for the Green Bank |
| Larry Mishel | EPI |
| Alan Blinder | Princeton |
| Paul Krugman | Princeton |
| Joe Stiglitz | Columbia |
| Bob Greenstein | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities |
| Jeffrey Sachs | Columbia |
| Anna Burger | Change to Win |
| Leo Gerard | United Steel Workers |
| Joe Hansen | United Food and Commercial Workers |
| Randi Weingarten | AFT |
| Mayor Frank Cownie | Des Moines, IA |
| Mayor Julian Castro | San Antonio, TX |
| Mayor Ed Pawlowski | Allentown, PA |
Those are fifteen “takers”. Those are people who spend taxed revenues.
Anyone see a problem with this list? Well, I do. Now, suppose Woody Hall tells the group that if they lower corporate tax rates 2% he could hire 5,000 people. Not much of a problem there. What if Frederick Smith told that same group that reducing the demands of unions would allow him to hire 20,000 people? Wanna guess how far that would get with this group? What if Obama went around the table and asked each person what they needed to create jobs? What exactly would Phaedra Ellis Lamkins suggest? What exactly would Bob Greenstein say? Anna Burger? Yeah, right. No one on the “Takers” list has ever created a job. The only way they know how to create a job is to take money from those who generate the money. Right now, the big problem is, those people have run out of money.
When criticized about the make-up of this list, the White House was quick to add there were 130 people attending. They just don’t know who the other 102 are. I’m gonna guess they have the same thing in common this 28 does. I don’t think it’s any secret where union loyalties are. I doubt there’s much of a secret where “green” loyalties are. Obama wants everything green and paying union dues. However, the greedy private sector looks something like this:
| Eric Schmidt | $ 803,396.00 | |
| Randall Stevenson | AT&T | $ 264,411.00 |
| Surya Mohapatra | Qwest | $ 35,618.00 |
| Frederick Smith | Federal Express | $ 46,368.00 |
| Brian Roberts | Comcast | $ 177,081.00 |
| Bob Iger | Disney | $ 430,093.00 |
| James McNerney | Boeing | $ 196,652.00 |
| Andrew Livens | Dow | $ 17,980.00 |
| Peter Solmssen | Siemens | $ 42,046.00 |
| Stephanie Burns | Dow Corning | $ 1,950.00 |
No pay, no play.
This ain’t an economic forum, it’s a wine and dine fundraiser.
Constitution Club