Op-ed:

Don’t be fooled by the 8.1% number...it’s a smokescreen for the truth

By: Diane Sori

As the totally clueless Democrats herald the drop from 8.3% unemployment down to 8.1% unemployment the harsh reality for ‘We the People’ is setting in...this is the worst economic recovery in the past 40 years, if you can call it a recovery at all.

With the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growing at a mere 1.5%; with the number of Americans on food stamps now reaching 47 million; and with over 12.5 million Americans still out of work I would hardly herald this an economic turnaround or success story.

America is now facing its 43rd straight month of an unemployment rate at or above 8%.  And when you have a rate that actually reflects that 368,000 Americans are simply no longer looking for work as the reason why the unemployment number dropped at all, this country is hurting and hurting bad as Barack Hussein Obama’s economic policies simply do NOT work.

With only 96,000 jobs created in August, meaning 41,000 FEWER jobs created than in both June and July, there are other signs of a stalled jobs market that the Democrats seem to have overlooked as well. First, the numbers from earlier months were revised down, average hourly earnings fell slightly, and the number of part-time workers, which often is an indicator of future labor market developments, declined.  Second, the number of manufacturing jobs fell by 15,000 in August.  Third, the rate of unemployment among women has actually risen from 7.7% up to 7.8%, and lastly, the number of long-term unemployed (those without jobs for 27 weeks or more) changed little from the previous months and remains at 5.0 million. 

And here’s a few little more tidbits most do NOT know... while utilities employment increased by 9,000, what’s not being told is that the increase reflects the return of utility workers who were off payrolls in July due to a labor-management dispute.  In other words strikers returning to work, to jobs they already had, to numbers that were already there.

We all know Obama loves to bloviate his success with the auto industry but these true figures do NOT constitute a success.  With an 8000 decline in motor vehicles and parts made in August, this partially offset any gains made in July.  And while auto manufacturers did lay off fewer workers for factory retooling than usual in July, fewer workers than usual were recalled in August.  And jobs created in other major industries like mining and logging, construction, retail trade, transportation and warehousing, information, and government, showed little change from July.

And this Obama considers an economic recovery...I think NOT.

And here’s even more happy news.  The infamous Ben Bernanke has said that he will be watching the employment numbers very closely, and if the labor market continues struggling that more action from the Fed is likely.  What does this mean...how about another stimulus package just like the previous one...doomed to be a total and complete failure and more big government intrusion into our lives.

And yet Obama and the Democrats are still against the Bush Tax Cuts.  What these clueless Democrats and Obama still don’t get is that the wealthiest Americans are generally investors and small and large business owners, and it's these people who are the employers of a majority of the population.   Logic therefore dictates that in order to create more jobs giving tax breaks to these people will free up more capital for investment and growth, and also create incentives for growth as their take home from profits will be increased.

But when do Obama and the Democrats use logic...NEVER is when.

And while Obama and the Democrats love to bloviate that all the tax breaks should go to the middle class, whose votes they are desperately pandering for, what they are really proposing is simply redistribution of wealth through tax relief.  But by putting the tax burden solely on the wealthy, this creates a tax policy that leads to unstable tax revenues, because what happens when the middle class runs out of the small increase in money they got from the small tax cut they received.  And while the temporary economic benefits from middle class tax cuts might put a few dollars back into the economy through their now ability to purchase products they might not have been able to before, this alone is NOT going to be enough to create the jobs desperately needed because it’s at the expense of profits, and its profits that  fuel job creation and a strong economy.

So, the bottom line in all this is that the true level of unemployment, including the unemployed, underemployed, and discouraged workers, is really 14.7%, climbing more than 3% since Obama took office.

Is this the ‘Hope and Change’ we were promised by the man who assured us he would put Americans back to work...is this the promise of a brighter tomorrow for us all...NO, these numbers reflect the broken promises by a man who has NO idea how an economy works, a man who has NO idea how to lead, a man who is totally out of his league and who cannot tell us with a straight face that we are better off today than we were when he first took office.

Barack Hussein Obama is a failure, a complete and total failure, and its way past time for a change of leadership...it’s time for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to take over the stewardship of this country.

As always, November 6^th can’t come soon enough for me.