As the clock heads toward midnight on the Barack Obama experiment, it’s nice to see that he continues to be the guy we said he was all along. I’m beginning to doubt he was even any good at being a community organizer.
After churning over all the options available to him- using the full-faith and credit of the United States; a one billion dollar campaign war-chest; $37 million in staffing costs at the executive office per year; a trillion dollars in pork barrel spending; QE4EVER!; recommendations from Nobel-prize winning economists (ha!), the top business experts that political contributions can buy (ouch!) and (deep breath) presumably THE 1-800 HELPLINE at the Small Business Administration… and here’s the plan to jumpstart our economy in the second term: Obama wants to create a U.S. Department of Business, with a cabinet-level secretary.
Yep. That’s it.
Secretary Van Jones anyone?
Someone has to coordinate the upward revisions of the already ridiculous jobs, GDP and voter registration numbers. Someone has to wear the presidential knee pads when the economy won't cooperate.
“Isn’t this rich? Saturday Night Live couldn’t have thought of anything better,” writes the Washington Post’s Ed Roger. “When I read this headline [about appointing a Secretary of Business], I had to make sure it wasn’t coming from The Onion.”
No, didn’t come from the Onion but it sure does stink, doesn’t it?
“Speaking to the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday, Obama said a Secretary of Business would serve to consolidate several commerce-related government agencies, a plan he originally proposed in January,” reports the Huffington Post.
Can’t tell if the tears are Onion-related from the cutting humor or just shell shock for the sheer futility of our president’s brain.
Because yeah, the plan DC came up with to create an intelligence Czar at a new Department of Homeland Security to coordinate the safety of transportation workers’ rights to see what a women looks like naked at the airport- that plan has worked out so well.
Or how about the creation of the Department of Education, even as the United States falls farther and farther behind other countries in education, while spending more money than anyone else?
Or how about the time we created the Department of Energy to address our growing dependence on foreign sources of oil?
That‘s worked out sooooo well.
We really needed a whole department to make us MORE dependent on foreign energy. To be fair, as hard as Obama works at making us less energy independent, a whole bureaucracy actually could help Obama achieve more dependency on foreign oil, which seems to be his goal.
Raise your hand if you are a liberal who wants to point out, as our president has, that we currently import less foreign oil than ever before.
That answer just proves how stoopid you both are.
We’re using less oil because our economy is a giant, festering, open wound.
The fact that we import less oil is an indictment of the whole Barack Obama Experience. In a healthy economy we would be using more oil, more coal, more nuclear, more fracking, more of the things that made our country great, not less.
Some former Obama aides get it.
Bill Daley was appointed chief of staff to Obama when Rahm Emanuel left the post. The Daley appointment was considered a kind of olive branch to the business community who somehow got the idea that the record number of regulations aimed at killing jobs and profits was a bad idea.
Daley, in a way, was the first Secretary of Business. And he got right to business by inviting business leaders to share their pain.
“One by one, exasperated executives stood to air their grievances on environmental regulations and stalled free-trade deals,” reported the Washington Post. “And Daley, the former banker tasked with building ties with industry, found himself looking for the right balance between empathy and defending his boss.”
But (ha, ha, ha) he couldn’t find his balance.
“Daley said he did not have many good answers, appearing to throw up his hands in frustration at what he called ‘bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.’”
“’Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,’ he said.”
No, you can’t. But apparently Obama thinks the very least we can do is build a really big government agency to coordinate the indefensible. Or the unbelievable. Or both if you make it a really big bureaucracy.
I bet he could do it with four more years.
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