Tragic Comedy

The AFL-CIO is calling on Congress and the Obama administration to take five steps now to care for the jobless and put America back to work.

Extend unemployment benefit, food assistance, cobra for another 12 months. "Extending benefits also will boost personal spending and create jobs throughout the economy."

Rebuild America’s schools, roads and energy systems. America still has at least $2.2 trillion in unmet infrastructure needs.

Increase aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services. State and local governments and school districts have a $178 billion budget shortfall this year alone—while the recession creates greater need for their services.

Put people to work doing work that needs to be done. If the private sector can't or won't provide the needed jobs, the government should step up to the plate, putting people who need jobs together with work that needs to be done. These should never be replacements for existing public jobs. They must pay competitive wages and should target distressed communities.

----- While the above "calling on" sounds well and good - it's the same liberal/left hype I have heard for decades. Decades I tell you.

The AFLCIO outlived its purpose long ago; now just another international fatcat political organization claiming "Our political system is awash with dirty money, corporate money and foreign money," while they spend millions on their preferred candidates. Laughably, many union members are government employees. Whatever happened to the ULLICO scandal where labor leaders were profiting on insider trading? There was some sort of money laundry scandal involving AFLCIO/Teamsters and a guy named Carey. Doesn't anyone watch the Sopranos to understand how labor groups function?

"... putting people who need jobs together with work that needs to be done." Sounds simple and easy doesn't it. These same old talking points are temporary band-aids - benefits and busy work - and have been in play for decades.

To "create programs" or extend current programs, minimally keeps folk afloat for a short while, but these "programs" are nonproductive, solve nothing, create debt. Over the last few decades trillions have been poured into hundreds of "departments" of education, health, housing, social programs, transportation ... and wasted (stolen) at every level of bureaucratic disbursement.

Question is - who is the tax base that will generate the revenue or "step up to the plate" to pay for extended benefits, job creation, for the eternal building of schools that require metal detectors, to pay Bubba for filling potholes when he's not in rehab?

Do we just print more money as we have done for the last few decades? Or, as some say, use the war chest for the extending, building, creating. Really? I know, I know, it sounds so feasible and reasonable and good. Make roads, not war. Make Bubba spread tar, not war.

And how many do we put out of work when cutting defense spending? A war chest covers not just guns and bullets - but textiles, agriculture, hi-tech, R&D, aviation, shipping, automotive, science, education, finance, manpower. Defense spending, like it or not, supports and employs millions. Are there enough potholes and middle schools to employ everyone?

Does the liberal/left know how the economy works? In simple terms: You make a product/service which creates a market. The product/market will pay for salaries and goods that in turn generate other salaries and goods. These dollars create wealth which brings a higher living standard for everyone who produces.

Folks who do not produce are burdens to someone else. When you have more burdens than producers - you collapse. Which slice of the production/burden/collapse pie chart are we eating?

People and nations who do not produce go bankrupt. You cannot allocate funds if you are not producing funds. Tax the "rich"? The rich only tolerate a certain level of taxation before they take their money and run. A good many have done so. If you think the economy is bad now, just wait until more of the wealth has moved to tax friendlier places. Will you pay enough taxes to cover your government created temp job?

The U.S. has the highest combined statutory corporate income tax rate among OECD countries. Current theme is a nation will not attract new and expanded business and its attendant job creation if its corporate income tax is significantly higher than it is in comparable nations.

While you've been busy begging to fill potholes at a competitive wage and eating on foodstamps, the liberal/left has been creating government ownership through the welfare state and the corrupt bureaucracy that comes with it.

Think the liberal/left worked to your benefit? Then why did the markets that produce disappear from the US. The "left" has campaigned for years that protectionism is bad, we're all the same yet diverse, we are the world, workers unite, it's a global village - what they didn't tell you is you're one of many village idiots and you live like one.

Much of the US population is on the receiving end of the current tax-revenue stream. Estimates are 56% of Americans, but I have read figures as high as 80% when including other segments of society dependent on government support (disability, prisons, government funded institutions, rebates, refunds, free lunch and breakfast, etc.).

Feel-good incompetent "empty-eyed" politicians have endorsed a new breed of American rich who build estates anywhere in the world and feel at home, and a new breed of lower classes who prefer to gripe, an organized gripe of course, and wait for the government promised rescue.

Fact is, if you're getting a handout from government in any way, shape, or form - then you can't bitch when government bails out Wall Street. You have signed on to the unspoken deal between pothole fillers and pinstripe killers.