Get ready – President Obama says he is now ready to “pivot” to that nagging issue of American joblessness!
Pivot? How about focusing on it relentlessly, even (dare I say it?) presidentially? After all, our economy is in the ditch, not because of government deficits, but because of our deficit in good, middle-class jobs. It’s way past time, Mr. President, for you to put on your FDR hat and get cracking on a real jobs program.
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So, what does Obama’s pivot amount to? “There are things,” he recently said, “that Congress could do right now that will help create good jobs.” And – cue the trumpets – those things are: first, pass more free-trade agreements, and, second, overhaul the patent laws!
What, you expected boldness?
This is pathetic. We already have a mess of free trade scams, and they’ve led to job losses for America. Patent reform? Any jobs that might come from that are years down the road – are people just supposed to sit still and wait? These proposals are nothing but more trickle-down economic tinkering, not a jobs program. They make Obama seem not only small, but ridiculous.
He wasted a ton of political capital on his senseless debt-ceiling deal with ideological know-nothings in the Republican House, when the American people were crying out consistently and emphatically that THE issue is jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Labor Day is coming up. What better time to propose a national recovery program that would hire millions of people to go to work on infrastructure and green-energy projects that America urgently needs? Put something real on the table, let the right-wing Koch-heads howl against it, then go to the countryside a lá Harry Truman and hammer them with their own know-nothing do-nothingism.
The people are waiting. Do they have a president, or not?
“The Wrong Worries,” The New York Times, August 5, 2011.
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