On one of his recent bus tour stops, in a stirring campaign speech (aren’t they all?), President Obama said to an Iowa audience, “The economy is better now than when I took over.”
Gee Prez. I’m not sure about that. You took over in January, 2009 when the rate of inflation was 0.03 percent. Right now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is 3.63 percent and climbing. Unemployment was 7 percent back then. It’s 9.1 percent now. Gas was $1.79 a gallon. I paid double that this morning. Home sales have just hit a new low. Foreclosure inventory is at an all-time high. The value of my home has fallen 25 percent. So, my President. Is the economy better now? Maybe for YOU it’s better.
I have a theory about what happened. Everybody knows that in almost every case, instead of talking off the cuff, President Obama reads from two Teleprompters. That’s OK, as long as his speechwriters don’t mess up. I have a strong feeling that, after that particular speech, there is one more person on the unemployment line. That’s only my opinion. What’s yours?
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Again and again we hear how much President Obama thinks about jobs for unemployed Americans. He tells us that it’s the last thing he thinks about before going to sleep and the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up. If he’s so concerned about jobs for Americans why did he permit the Secret Service to spend a million dollars for a bus manufactured in Canada?
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OK, gang. Let me see, by a show of hands, how many of you are familiar with the Essential Air Services program? Hmm. Only three hands? For the rest of you, the servoce is a federal program that gives $200 million to small airlines that operate out of rural airports. The idea is good if there are enough passengers aboard those flights. However, in many instances, there are few to none. That’s correct. I said NONE. In order for the small airline to receive our money the airplane must actually fly the designated route even if there are no passengers aboard — and they do.
There are several companies in Smalltown, U.S.A., that are doing very nicely ripping us off. Take, for example, the route from Ely, Nevada to Las Vegas. Last year, only 227 passengers flew out of Ely while the airline received $1.8 million in subsidies. The travelers paid $70 to $90 a ticket one way. The taxpayers cost for each ticket: $4,107. Tell us, Mr. Raisman. If Farmer Brown wants to spend a few days tossing the dice in Vegas, why should we pay for his trip?
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After a lifetime of singing about it, we finally learned where the shores of Tripoli are. Now we have to learn the location of the halls of Montezuma.
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All across this nation there are governments of all sizes having difficulty meeting their expenses. In order to straighten out these particular economic troubles there have been a record number of pink slips. In the past 12 months alone, states, counties and cities have slashed 340,000 jobs with a threat of more to come. In most cases, those layoffs hardly made a difference in productivity and efficiency. Those branches obviously didn’t need those employees in the first place. I am StanGershbein@Bellsouth.net thinking “patronage.”
