December’s unemployment report shows the jobless rate hovering at 10 percent, which fails to reflect the number of working class citizens who have given up entirely on the job hunt.

Our government has spent only 40 percent of the federal stimulus Christmas gift — a gift from the taxpayers to the taxpayers is nothing but a liberal shell game. The spineless, apologetic Obama administration leaves us asking the ever-burning question: Where are the jobs?

Desperate for some good news on the jobs front, Pres. Obama acquiesced to business-minded scholars and acknowledged that it is the private sector that must take the lead in job creation.

He stopped just short of admitting that government meddling in free markets is what keeps the economy languishing.

At the recent White House Jobs Summit, Pres. Obama said he was “open to every demonstrably good idea.” For him, any old idea will do, except for the tried and true.

The folly of Obama’s approach is that he and the Democrats refuse any plan that does not involve:

• Increasing costly entitlements
• Implementing failed protectionist policies
• Hiking punitive taxes on the job creators

Tax cuts for business is a proven means of creating opportunity, jobs and prosperity for all, for it is the entrepreneurs and corporations who do the vast majority of all hiring. Besides, when has a tax cut ever failed? In contrast, the only thing that Democrat plans do is take away an individual’s incentive to prosper. In their unending quest for political power, Democrats are working at a fevered pitch to keep the unemployed unmotivated. Gotta keep their constituents begging for more! Ditto for those on welfare.

Meanwhile, we can expect the White House to hail as a grand accomplishment the marginal improvement in the unemployment rate — from 10.2 to 10.0 percent. For those folks taking Obamanomics 101, the difference is a mere two-tenths of one percent.

The official jobless rate now stands at 10.2 percent as the nation lost 190,000 non-farm jobs last month. Almost 16 million Americans are now jobless. If you count those who dropped from full-time to part-time and those who simply gave up looking for work, the rate escalates to 17.5 percent.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration signs an extension of jobless benefits that pump more taxpayer money into an economy that instead needs profit-driven incentive to grow. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a festering wound. And, when those benefits run out, then what?

With a Saturday vote coming on Pelosi Health Care Reform, America demands to know, “Where are the jobs?” And the silence from Washington is deafening.

This month’s chart comes courtesy of InnocentBystanders.net.

Garnering little attention is a meeting of the County Council on Thursday to discuss its own budget shortfall. The County Council will meet Oct. 8 at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers at the Madison County Government Center, Room 110.

An Oct. 6 story in the Herald Bulletin revealed Democrat councilmen reluctant to touch that “third rail” of politics: job cuts — a task they would rather leave for Republicans.

Council President Bill Savage (D-Dist. 1) sees shorter work hours as a solution, and Councilman John Bostic (D-Dist. 3) is calling for a shorter work week in what amounts to a 20 percent pay cut for all. In fact, Bostic would rather hurt taxpayers with higher taxes than to “hurt personnel.” He added, “Somewhere down the line, that tax has got to come.”

Despite meeting four times in a week, County Councilman Buddy Patterson (D-Dist.2) said the Democrat-led council has yet to find a solution that trims 10 percent of the budget. Accustomed to year after year of increasing budgets, Patterson claims most county departments are unable to find savings. For Democrat councilmen, cutting back is an absurd notion.

“We’re really going to try and prevent layoffs,” Patterson said. But at the expense of taxpayers? Why are higher taxes acceptable — and reducing the workforce is not? It boils down to reasons of political expediency.

Gentlemen, government is not in the business of saving or creating jobs. That’s a task best left to local entrepreneurs, who by the way, can only thrive in this dire economic climate with lower taxes. Unfortunately, as long as Democratic councilmen continue pandering to the people who elected, the local economy will suffer as a result.

These dodgy wimps will do anything to latch onto power and forever avoid carrying the albatross of job cuts. What heroes they could be if they only had the courage to do their jobs and represent us taxpayers! Is this too much to ask?

Links

• County Wrestles with $3.8 Million in Budget Cuts
• Madison County Council Home Page

U.S. payrolls plummeted by 260,000 in September as the unemployment rate inched upward to 9.8 percent, the highest level since 1983. State and local governments are reeling, and businesses small and large are posting losses.

“Where are the jobs?” is a rightful refrain Republicans like Rep. Mike Pence have been repeating for months now, and the Obama administration continues to lose focus.

In a statement, Pence said:

The American people know that true economic recovery starts with fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C., and tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms.

The Democrat-led Congress is letting those wise words fall on deaf ears.

Adding insult to idiocy, Vice Pres. Joe Biden gave the not-so-brilliant assessment that “We don’t think that ‘less bad’ is good.”

Entrepreneurialism Not a 4-Letter Word

The problem at hand is a lack of jobs, caused by government meddling in what should be left to individuals acting in their own self-interests. This is free-market capitalism, where the unintended consequence is that everyone benefits.

It’s amazing what happens when liberals tax and spend other people’s money. Just look at how our government has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on an inefficient pet projects like John Murtha’s airport. The bottom line is that individual “greed” motivates an entrepreneur to allocate his own resources efficiently, where his past profits become his future investments.

It takes money to make money, and coincidentally, it takes workers to make the widgets in the capitalist’s factory. As my economic professor used to say, “What greedy little capitalist piggy wants to stop at making $50,000? $100k? $500k? $1 million?”

Competition is a capitalist’s constant threat. It keeps him in line; it keeps him honest and on his toes. Liberals seem to ignore that fact and are eager to portray entrepreneurs as evil-doers. However, it is their complete and utter ignorance of how the world works that poses threats to our liberty and prosperity.

The Equality of Opportunity

The real evil is the United States’ fiscal irresponsibility that has empowered indirectly other countries, including our enemies, at the expense of blacks and minorities in this, a U.S. welfare state. Instead of economic equality and racial reparations, we need the equality of opportunity, where everyone starts the race from the same starting line.

Add to our nation’s woes a looming crisis in the Middle East, a belligerent, tyrannical dictator in North Korea, and not to mention an ongoing war in Afghanistan. All the while, Democrats keep conjuring up new ways to legislate the way to prosperity. It will never work. I can’t think of a better way to drive investors and jobs out of this country.

Will liberals ever admit that government is the problem?

Instead, these events have captured our imagination in recent months, overshadowing the urgent need for jobs:

Top 10 Reasons the U.S. is Losing Focus on Jobs

10. Cash for Clunkers
9. Health Care Reform
8. Cop, Educated Idiot Meet for Beers
7. Chicago-style Olympics Pitch
6. National Energy Tax
5. Soft Drink, Fatty Food Sin Tax
4. Where to House Guantanamo Bay Prisoners?
3. United Nations Apology Tour
2. A Hate Crimes Bill for Gays and the Transgendered
1. Presidents Clinton and Carter Form Racial Tag-Team

Watch for Pres. Obama to host another prime time news conference soon. Or maybe this time, we’ll be treated to a long-winded speech live from the Oval Office?

Links

• September Unemployment Data
• Pence Statement on Latest Unemployment Figures
• Biden on Unemployment: “Less Bad” Isn’t Good
• Republicans Seize on Jobs as Proof Obama’s Policies Have Failed

In an ongoing display of incompetent leadership, the Democrat-led city of Anderson has the community’s blood boiling over higher fees and taxes.

Rebuild Anderson, the eponymous, bipartisan group recently posted City Salaries for 2009 on its web site. Surprisingly, the list includes three husband-and-wife teams collectively taking home nearly half a million dollars.

The city has already levied trash fees and hikes in the water, sewer, and electric rates. Then came an increase in the County Option Income Tax (COIT). Now, city officials are pitching a Local Option Income Tax (LOIT).

Mayor: Traditional Cuts Won’t Work

Salary cuts are always a last resort for Democrats because cuts endanger the public perception of them as champions for the common worker. It’s a sham. Propped up salaries not only reduce the budget but also eliminate employment opportunities for capable and qualified workers.

If we could reduce the salaries of the city’s Top 10 earners by 5 percent, we could save $40,745 — nearly enough to hire another police officer or another firefighter. With the city’s finances in such dire straits, perhaps deeper cuts among the Top 100 earners would get us where we need to be?

Former Mayor: It’s a Financial Train Wreck

“The Ockomon administration is a financial train wreck,” former Mayor Kevin Smith said in a June 9 interview with the Herald Bulletin. Since leaving office, Smith is now a business owner, media producer and radio host of the program Kevin Smith Reports heard Saturday mornings on WHBU 1240 AM.

“In 2005, I outlined these exact same issues where we called together the employees, we explained we had a reduced revenue stream and we took proactive measures,” Smith said. “We publicly announced and documented the decrease in revenues the city was facing, including the pending legislation House Bill 1001, which capped property taxes. By 2010, we knew the city had $5 million less.”

Power-Hungry Democrats

For Democrats, salary cuts are never an option. Instead, they prefer to blame the previous administration and make the case for layoffs, wage freezes, overtime cuts, and increasing insurance deductibles.

Democrats ignore the economic reality of regular hard-working citizens being priced out of the market by over-compensated employees. Willing to do anything to protect the salaries of their political cronies, power-hungry politicians cannibalize the city’s budget. They would rather service themselves by reducing services to you.

In contrast, a conservative fiscal policy helps hire good people willing to work harder for reasonable compensation. The Ockomon administration clearly lacks the business savvy that could propel the city forward.

Links

• Belt Tightening? City Salaries for 2009
• City Employee Salary List 7-31-2009.pdf
• Layoffs, Furloughs on City’s List of Cost-Cutting Measures
• Anderson Officials Brainstorm Budget Fixes
• Kevin Smith Reports

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation’s jobless rate jumped to 9.7 percent — a 26-year high. And although experts scoured the data for positive signs, all Standard & Poor’s economists could muster was that reports were “close to expectations.”

In this graph, we see the actual jobless rate plotted alongside the predictions made earlier this year by the Obama administration. It shows unemployment with — and without — the gargantuan $787 billion economic stimulus that was notoriously hurried through Congress shortly after Pres. Obama took office.

Note: This chart comes courtesy of InnocentBystanders.net.

In anticipation of today’s disappointing jobs report, Vice President Joe Biden yesterday tried to paint a rosier picture when he boasted of federal projects, namely 192 airport projects intended to benefit from a share of the stimulus. Unfortunately, federal investigators recently launched an investigation into some of those projects, specifically $1.1 billion of federal grants that were mishandled by the FAA and the Obama administration.

With all this bad news, can there possibly be a silver lining? Well, with increasing voter discontent sweeping across America these days, positive change in the 2010 Congressional elections is just around the corner.

Links

• August Unemployment Data
• Business Week: Jobless Rate Jumps to 9.7% in August
• AP: Biden overlooked stimulus problems

Today, Congressman Mike Pence gave the following speech from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, touching on subjects of the economy, PAYGO, health care reform and fiscal discipline.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ7J–OqXOU

Next, Congressman Mike Pence responded to the Democrat Majority Leader Steny Hoyer after Rep. Hoyer personally attacked Congressman Pence’s record and still failed to answer the fundamental question: “Where are the jobs?”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1NEs9Ss88Q