Obama’s Dangerous Appearance As Community Organizer in Chief
Note: This column originally appeared at Pajamas Media on Thursday.
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His statement in support of law-breaking workers has undermined his attempts to appear economically moderate.
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You’ve got to hand it to Team Obama. Politically, when under control and on message, they are very good.
Take the economy (please). The president-elect has lowered the bar, telling us that it “is going to get worse before it gets better.” He’s talking tough about imposing conditions (”We are not going to simply write a bunch of checks”) on any bailout of Big 3 automakers General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. The statements themselves may or may not be sincere, but they play well.
But in spontaneous moments, Obama blows it. This occurred several times during the campaign, and it happened again Sunday. In another one of those “off the teleprompter” moments that became infamous during the presidential campaign, Obama may have undone all of his team’s market-mollifying efforts.
First, though, let’s look at where we are.
It became very clear last Friday that the architects of what I have been calling the POR Economy since early July — Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid — have created a doozy of an economic debacle. Since June, when it became obvious to employers and investors that, deliberately or not, the POR Triumvirate were driving an economic downturn with their willingness to starve the economy of energy and their grim determination to raise taxes in the face of sluggish conditions, the economy has deteriorated terribly, and, along with it, the employment situation.
The following two charts from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows just how bad the decay in Joe Biden’s three-letter word — J-O-B-S — has been. The first shows monthly seasonally adjusted job losses:
Since June, when Pelosi, Obama, and Reid began working their “magic” in earnest, the economy has lost over 1.5 million seasonally adjusted jobs. What had been an employment slump turned into a quagmire as the prospect, and then the reality, of an Obama win became ever clearer.
As bad as the seasonally adjusted results are, they actually mask the how extreme the deterioration has been, as the following not seasonally adjusted BLS chart demonstrates:
This year, the economy has alternately added fewer or lost more jobs in every month compared to 2007. But what had been a troubling trend clearly became alarming in September and October, and simply awful in November. This occurred as the energy starvation, high-tax postures of Pelosi, Obama, and Reid continued, and the decades-in-the-making crackups at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became obvious. Those Democratic-driven failures at Fan and Fred marked the beginning of the bailout mania, otherwise known as the SUCKUP (the Seemingly Unlimited Cash Kitty Under Paulson), that appears to have no end in sight. It is no coincidence that November’s wrong-direction swing of 947,000 — the worst since the early 1960s, even after adjusting for smaller workforce sizes — occurred in the month Barack Obama was elected.
But maybe the markets have misread him — or, more correctly stated, maybe Obama as president will bear no resemblance to Obama the candidate.
It’s easy to make too much of this, but there have been a few hopeful signs:
- Team Obama has deferred its plans to dramatically increase Social Security and other taxes. Abandoning them would be better, but it’s a start.
- The president-elect’s economic nominees, while not necessarily ardent free-market cheerleaders, are mostly not the socialist flamethrowers some had feared.
- It appears that the Big 3 bailout of General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford, which to be sure shouldn’t be happening at all, will “at least” not be the open-ended $125 billion nightmare that some advocate.
- The domestic economic mess they have created, the need to ensure that the Big 3 somehow survive if bailout money is disbursed, and the growing worldwide resistance to extreme measures designed to combat so-called global warming that hasn’t been occurring for about 10 years, may all cause Obama to back away from the worst elements of his fossil fuel-curtailing agenda. He has already reneged on his promise to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
But in one statement Sunday, reacting to the factory sit-in at Republic Windows and Doors in his native Chicago, Obama set off alarms in the offices of entrepreneurs, businesspeople and investors everywhere:
Obama: Workers staging sit-in ‘absolutely right’
President-elect Barack Obama is weighing in on behalf of workers staging a sit-in on the factory floor of their former Chicago employer to protest abruptly losing their jobs last week.
Obama told a news conference Sunday that Republic Windows and Doors should follow through on its commitments to the 200 workers, who say they won’t leave the plant until they are assured they’ll receive their severance and vacation pay.
“The workers who are asking for the benefits and payments that they have earned, I think they’re absolutely right and understand that what’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy,” Obama said.
Regardless of the facts and circumstances, Obama’s statement is a dangerous, de facto endorsement of lawlessness that has the potential to shut business owners’ wallets nationwide. As IBDeditorials.com noted:
If he believes the workers deserve the pay they are demanding, he is free to say so. He has no place, however, to support anyone’s decision to trespass on another’s property. To advocate offenses against society is to legitimize them.
It won’t take very much of this before businesses conclude that putting employees on the payroll must be avoided as long as possible, if it’s to be done at all. They will more frequently use temporary agency employees as long as they legally can. They won’t replace employees who retire or leave. They’ll have more work done in other countries. They won’t pursue business ideas that require US employees. The trend toward Professional Employment Organizations (PEOs, or “leased employees”) will accelerate.
More such appearances by Obama as rabble-rousing Community Organizer in Chief will go a long way towards ensuring that his “get worse before it gets better” prediction about the economy becomes tragically true.
Obama condoning the illegal trespass of private property is reminiscent of Hugo Chavez’s mob rule mentality. Setting aside the law seems to be a tactic used by many would-be leaders who exploit the misery of others by co-opting their pain. When Calderon won the presidency of Mexico in 2006, Obrador, his opponent had his supporters engage in mass demonstrations in an attempt to force himself into the government and declare the election invalid.
Once you set aside the law, you cross the line into arbitrary and capricious whims of those in power, that’s called tyranny. In the heat of the moment what most people forget is the laws that govern us are enacted by the mutual consent of the people via their chosen representatives. Mob rule ironically is about the invalidation of self governance via the substitution of emotionalism of the moment in place of deliberative reasoning.
Yes, Obama by his tactics of emotionalism is a very dangerous person who has the potential to bring down this country into tyranny.
Comment by dscott — December 13, 2008 @ 9:59 am
Rather than endorsing the sit-in, I believe Obama was merely agreeing that the workers were owed severance and vacation pay, as the owners of Republic Windows and Doors had closed the plant in an unlawful manner. Considering how fast the workers’ claims were settled, Obama almost certainly had it right.
Comment by Tony B. — December 14, 2008 @ 12:09 am
#2, That’s not how it came across, simply because P-E he didn’t also make an accompanying remark that taking over private property isn’t an acceptable means to achieving what may be a noble end.
With great power comes great responsibility ….. of course, never having held any kind of executive position, he wouldn’t know that.
Comment by TBlumer — December 14, 2008 @ 7:12 am
As someone who is entering my tenth week of unemployment, and who is fast approaching the loss of what little I have left in this world, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the job market in this country, and particularly here in Georgia, which has traditionally avoided much of the job displacement that usually accompanies economic recessions.
I have been firing loads of resumes and no less that 60 fully filled out job applications around since October 5th. In that time, I have landed a total of four interviews, one of which was with a temp agency.
It seems to me that, just like stock market investors have been cashing out and running for the hills, employers are doing much the same thing in trimming their employment rosters and electing not to hire people, even if they need them. I had one six month contract CAD job fall apart due to the last minute pull-out of the largest investors, or so I was told.
I have to believe that Obama’s impending presidency has much to do with the sudden dearth of new jobs, and his comments on the Republic situation have probably only served to make it worse.
I first entered the job market in 1979, the last year of the Carter administration, and I landed a job in a restaurant in less than three days of looking.
This is getting really scary.
-Dave
Comment by D Helm — December 14, 2008 @ 11:05 pm
[...] (he doesn’t believe he has made any), the disastrous shape of the economy, the enormous loss of jobs or the real prospect that the graduates to whom he was speaking may have as one of their too-few [...]
Pingback by Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind! — December 15, 2008 @ 9:05 am
#4, I don’t wish to sound flippant, so please don’t take it that way. I have been urging people to take their welfare in their own hands by considering voting with their feet. If you are renting or loose your home consider very strongly that moving to another state is the most successful option. http://www.bls.gov/web/laummtrk.htm As of December 2nd when this site was updated, one third of the country’s metropolitan areas have 5% or less unemployment. Huntsville, AL has 3.9% unemployment, Tuscaloosa has 4.4%. Life is not fair (on it’s own), it’s up to the individual to make it that way. Don’t be a victim, be a survivor.
Comment by dscott — December 15, 2008 @ 9:16 am
But Zheesh, Alabama?
No one is immune to this save for the uber wealthy (and I hope they continue to buy things and hire people).
Our [small] company’s A/R has been hit due to the credit crunch (clients not being able to pay for services already rendered). As part owners, we are the last to get paid (if we do at all) to keep current business going. As such, we have dug into our savings (what’s left) top stay afloat. As a young family, there’s only so long that will fly so we have been fielding out our options – including a move.
What suckers we are…work hard, buy a house we can afford, cars we paid off, save for retirement, the kids’ college and for what? Only to be punished and made to pay for every horrendous personal & business decision ever made by others.
Why work hard if we’re only going to be made to pay for others ahead of our own families?
Someone should read about how William Bradford took care of the problem of socialism…
http://mises.org/story/336
Comment by Rose — December 15, 2008 @ 5:04 pm
#7, it is not a matter of being immune to unemployment, this is a case of labor distribution. There are parts of the country that unemployment is 2.2%! Moving won’t solve all the problems of the country, however, it will solve the unemployment problem for a great number of people.
In the El Centro, CA metropolitan area, unemployment is above 27%! They are in a regional depression and one of their own making. A move from El Centro arcoss the state line to northern Arizona would greatly improve the odds of gainful employment, a move to New Mexico would virtually guarantee a job. Check the stats.
http://conservablogs.com/publiusforum/2008/10/14/freedom-of-movement/
Illegals drawing unemployment benefits:
http://conservablogs.com/publiusforum/2008/09/13/rising-unemployment-and-illegal-immigration/
Comment by dscott — December 16, 2008 @ 10:24 am
An interesting observation made by Matt Spivey on AT http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/the_new_standard_of_living_sta.html
But I get confused by another set of numbers: Careerbuilder offers over 648,000 job postings this month. Yahoo’s Hotjobs lists over 197,000. And Craigslist posts over two million new jobs every month…
…In my home state of Arizona, one can “earn” up to $240 per week while unemployed. In New York, a recipient can get up to $405 per week, and in California, the rate can be as high as $450 per week. Now let’s put that into a practical comparison. Let’s say the only available job in town is a part-time offer of $10 per hour for 20 hours per week. One could be contributing a valuable service, such as tutoring at a school, cooking in a restaurant, or handling luggage at the airport. Yet, at $200 a week, before taxes, why would anyone take such a job when he or she could earn as much as twice that amount sitting at home in pajamas?
So why would a person in NY or CA work a $10/hr job for 40 hrs a week when they can make more drawing unemployment? This is insane why would you have unemployment compensation this high? This might explain some but not all of CA high unemployment rates. Then comes the illegals who are drawing unemployment, for them this is a bonanza, no wonder remittances haven’t dropped but just leveled off. Everyone it seems is scamming the taxpayer, it has to stop!
Lord Woodhouselee wrote:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.
From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”
Are we seeing the beginning of the end for our Republic?
Comment by dscott — December 17, 2008 @ 2:54 pm