The Patriot Post® · 'The Private Sector Is Doing Fine'?

The Foundation

“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” –Benjamin Franklin

For the Record

“In now-infamous comments on Friday, President Barack Obama informed America that ‘the private sector is doing fine.’ This, of course, was news to the 12.7 million people who are out of work and the millions more who are struggling with the part-time jobs they can find, or have simply given up looking. While the President’s comment is astoundingly out of touch with the public – and economic reality – perhaps even more distressing is that this wasn’t a passing verbal gaffe. This is actually a consistent talking point of the President and Democratic leadership that goes largely unchallenged by the media. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) made the same case last fall when he was pushing a $35 billion bailout for state and local governments. ‘It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine,’ Reid argued. ‘It’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about.’ This is the President’s and the Majority Leader’s solution to the jobs crisis: more so-called stimulus and more government employees. As Heritage’s James Sherk has explained, this thinking is completely backwards: ‘If the recession has barely touched one sector of the economy, it is government.’ … Following a flurry of outrage over his Friday comment, the President backtracked, saying what he meant was that ‘we’ve actually seen some good momentum in the private sector. That has not been the biggest drag on the economy.’ Moving from 8.1 percent unemployment to 8.2 percent can only be considered ‘good momentum’ in this White House. However, he’s correct about one thing: The biggest drag on the economy isn’t the private sector, but Washington.” –Heritage Foundation’s Amy Payne

Political Futures

“Two weeks ago the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped a bomb on the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama when it released data showing only 66,000 jobs had been created in May – far below estimates – and that the top-line unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.2 percent. This past Friday at a press conference, in response to a question about the GOP’s contention that it is his Administration’s policies that are strangling job growth, President Obama said, ‘the private sector is doing fine.’ He went on to explain that the rise in unemployment is largely due to budget difficulties at the state and local government level because mayors and governors are not getting the ‘kind of support they need from the federal government.’ … Which leads us to ask the question: What world was Obama describing? … Obama’s ‘private sector is doing fine’ gaffe was not the only problem he had last week. Bill Clinton – who is supposed to be helping Obama – said that those ‘Bush-era’ tax cuts should be extended for all Americans – even the wealthiest, assumedly because the private sector is not doing fine. … Clinton, after suffering that moment of clarity in thinking, walked back his comment on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer saying he was mistaken in when the tax increase would hit. He thought they needed to be acted upon before the election, instead of before the end of the year. It is not clear to me why that makes any difference as to the tax rates’ effect on stimulating or further stalling the economy, but there you are. ‘The private sector is doing fine’ might not be the determining gaffe in this campaign, but it does show that as far as Obama is concerned, the bloom is off the prose.” –columnist Rich Galen

Insight

“The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the government. Every dollar that we save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.” –President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

Government

“Consider why shrinking government is moral. The more the federal government provides for people, the more it deprives them not only of their dignity, but of one of the most sacred rights, penned by Thomas Jefferson: the right to pursue happiness. Why? Because fulfilling happiness comes from earned success, not from unearned handouts. Think about the person we all knew growing up whose parents spoiled him or her. Even if that person wasn’t unhappy at the time (though chances are he or she was unhappy), it teaches that individual to expect handouts, which will likely result in an unhappy adulthood. … Private charities are able to make distinctions between people who truly need help and those who do not, as well as between those who need material assistance and those who need moral refocus, personal counseling, relationship repair or spiritual commitment. … Though well-intentioned, leftism’s commitment to government undermines both the individual pursuit of happiness … and private charity of families and communities who can best provide it to those experiencing hardship. Conservatism, on the other hand, is committed to both, and is precisely why moving the country to the right is moral.” –Heritage Foundation’s David Weinberger

Opinion in Brief

“Obama’s calls for a new civility four years ago are apparently inoperative. … Obama once called for a focus on issues rather than personal invective. But now we mysteriously hear again of Romney’s dog, his great-great-grandfather’s wives, and a roughhousing incident some 50 years ago in prep school. The ‘hope and change’ slogan for a new unity gave way to a new ‘us versus them’ divide. … ‘Romney would do worse,’ rather than ‘I did well,’ is the implicit Obama campaign theme of 2012. To be re-elected, a now-polarizing Obama believes that he must stoke the fears of some of us rather than appeal to all of our hopes by defending a successful record, while smearing with the old politics rather than inspiring with the new. That cynical calculation and constant hedging and flip-flopping may be normal for politicians, but eventually it proves disastrous for the ones who posed as messianic prophets.” –historian Victor Davis Hanson

Essential Liberty

“Nebraska’s congressional delegation sent a justifiably angry letter to Administrator Lisa Jackson [recently] complaining that her Environmental Protection Agency had exceeded its legislative and constitutional authority by conducting drone surveillance flights over Nebraska and Iowa farms looking for violations of the Clean Water Act. … America is awash in surveillance cameras, from red-light cameras at intersections to cameras in and outside businesses. For the most part, we tolerate their intrusiveness if the pictures are triggered by actual lawbreakers or are in a public place for legitimate security purposes where the expectation of privacy does not exist. But a drone flying over farmer Jones’ farmhouse seems a stretch that sets a dangerous precedent. … Under current guidelines, information gathered deliberately or accidentally by military drones over the U.S. can be kept by the military up to three months before being purged. They can also be turned over to ‘another Department of Defense or government agency to whose function it pertains.’ … ‘Our Founding Fathers had no idea that there would be remote-control drones with television monitors that can feed back live data instantaneously – but if they had, they would have made darn sure that these things were subject to the Fourth Amendment…,’ Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, told Fox News. It’s been said that those who sacrifice liberty for the sake of security will likely wind up with neither.” –Investor’s Business Daily

Re: The Left

“While most of the mainstream media focused their attention on Wisconsin and Scott Walker’s victory Tuesday night, an equally, if not more significant vote occurred in two California cities. Voters in San Diego and San Jose overwhelmingly approved cuts to retirement benefits for city workers. … Progressives and their enablers have consoled themselves with the idea that, in both Wisconsin and California, being decisively outspent is what led to their defeat. But this is a misleading claim. The reality is that the wages earned by union political operatives don’t get counted as funds being spent on a campaign. Yet even if unions were thoroughly outspent, that is hardly a comforting rationale: it means more and more Americans are fed up with government employee unions and are willing to spend money to say so. … In the ultimate progressive stronghold of California, where unions have run roughshod over the interests of taxpayers for decades, vote totals such as these, aimed at curtailing their power, are unprecedented. In other words, something truly profound has occurred. All of the so-called current wisdom regarding government unions and their ability to sway politicians with massive campaign contributions and/or thuggish tactics is no longer current. In the space of a single evening, the aura of invincibility government unions have long enjoyed has been irreparably damaged. It’s as simple as taxpayers beginning to realize that government should provide services to all of its constituents, not just the privileged few – who have long viewed those privileges as entitlements or rights.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

The Gipper

“I’m sure everyone feels sorry for the individual who has fallen by the wayside or who can’t keep up in our competitive society, but my own compassion goes beyond that to the millions of unsung men and women who get up every morning, send the kids to school, go to work, try and keep up the payments on their house, pay exorbitant taxes to make possible compassion for the less fortunate, and as a result have to sacrifice many of their own desires and dreams and hopes. Government owes them something better than always finding a new way to make them share the fruit of their toils with others.” –Ronald Reagan

Culture

“The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald notes that sinecures in academia’s diversity industry are expanding as academic offerings contract. UC San Diego, while eliminating master’s programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate ‘a student’s understanding of her or his identity.’ So, rather than study computer science and Cervantes, students can study their identities – themselves. Says Mac Donald, ‘"Diversity,” it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism.’ She reports that UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a Vice Chancellorship for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. UC Davis has a Diversity Trainers Institute under an Administrator of Diversity Education, who presumably coordinates with the Cross-Cultural Center. It also has: a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; a Sexual Harassment Education Program; a Diversity Program Coordinator; an Early Resolution Discrimination Coordinator; a Diversity Education Series that awards Understanding Diversity Certificates in ‘Unpacking Oppression’; and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in ‘Understanding Diversity and Social Justice.’ … So taxpayers should pay more and parents and students should borrow more to fund administrative sprawl in the service of stale political agendas? Perhaps they will, until ‘pop!’ goes the bubble.“ –columnist George Will

Reader Comments

”What should be done to get the economy moving again? Eliminate all government agencies which have no direct authorization in the Constitution. Convoluted reasoning which has no direct authorization is NOT acceptable. This would automatically remove all agencies that conflict with those agencies in the individual states. As the state agencies are closer to the problems, they are the ones that should solve the problem.“ –Chuck in NV

"If the government would just get out of the way and cut regulations instead of increasing regulations the economy would fix itself. It always does. Everything goes in cycles and the more the government gets involved the longer it takes.” –The Donald in Yucaipa, CA

“Regarding President O’s 153 fundraising events since announcing his candidacy for reelection: WHO PAYS for Air Force One taking him all over the country, for the lodging and food, for the staff that it takes to support him in the manner he thinks he deserves? Is it the DNC, his re-election committee, or, perish the thought, we humble taxpayers?” –Brad in Minneapolis

“Congratulations to the intelligent people of Wisconsin on supporting Gov. Scott Walker. Really proud of you for having the courage to take a stand against the ‘out of control’ unions. The rest of our country should look to the great people of Wisconsin and the model you have set for the rest of us.” –CRG in San Marcos, CA

The Last Word

“The huge gap between the young and their elders can be seen in the way they respond to Obamian rhetoric. For instance, generations of Americans understood that the American Dream translated to people of different races and religions having an equal opportunity to achieve everything and anything they were willing to work for, no matter what was required of them in terms of study, honest effort and perseverance. But we now have Obama giving a speech in which he refers to the American Promise. Who the heck is he to promise results? Who is he to tell anyone they will be successful, even if they’re as dumb as doornails and as lazy as mules? Since when is success in America a guaranteed entitlement? We used to speak about equal playing fields, but only a socialist would dare promise equal results, and only a bunch of young slackers would applaud him. There are exceptions to the rule. They are mainly to be found in the U.S. military. They understand the meaning of such words as patriotism, sacrifice and responsibility, unlike their civilian cousins who can’t even spell those words.” –columnist Burt Prelustky

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team