Weekly Audit: One Nation with No Jobs

To the surprise of no one who’s paying attention to the American economy’s stall, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz yesterday called for a second federal stimulus, saying Americans face a significant reduction in standard of living because they no longer have home equity on which to borrow, spend, and live.

The economy is terrible. Jobs are nowhere to be found. Wall Street bonuses are through the roof. But mainstream business journalism is still praising the con-men who created this mess, yet attacking anybody who takes real solutions—like government spending to create jobs—seriously.

Ever the unprincipled opportunist, Joe Lieberman announces he’ll obstruct the growing consensus and demand we give income and estate tax breaks to the richest Americans, even though it will make the economy worse.

George Will threw some ill-informed mud at President Obama’s economic agenda this morning. Fortunately for Will, his pieces run in the fact-free zone of the Washington Post.

How is it that America finds herself in the position of schoolyard patsy, woe-is-me victim of China’s illegal trade practices that are destroying U.S. renewable energy manufacturing and foreclosing an energy-independent future? Come on, America. Stand up for yourself. Tell China that America isn’t going to hand over its lunch money anymore; international trade law will be enforced now. That’s the demand the United Steelworkers union made this week when it filed suit detailing how China violates a wide variety of World Trade Organization obligations.

President Obama sounded a bit like FDR during his Labor Day speech. The questions remains, will he begin to act like FDR and do what is best for the economy, meaning focusing on small businesses.

Remember how it became a running joke that the surest way to see if George W. Bush was going to cut a group’s funding was if he’d done a recent photo-op with it? I mean, it happened again and again.

Well now, today we see Tom Emmer, a tax cut fanatic in the mold of George W. Bush and outgoing governor Tim Pawlenty, had a photo-op at a company that, if Emmer had had his way, would likely have gone under.

Over the next few weeks, we will learn what the Obama Administration intends to do in response to the economy not recovering as promised with the 2009 stimulus. Today’s developments on that front are profoundly disappointing.

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