Our country has overcome many challenges. From war to economic depression and recession, we’ve always come back strong, leaner and more nimble.
In recent history, after stock market crashes like Black Monday in 1987 or the catastrophe of 9-11, we worked through subsequent recessions with characteristic vigor and a “Let’s Roll” get back to work attitude.
Regarding the recovery from The Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, however, only the Jimmy Carter years following the recession of 1973-1975 came close to producing the kind of the suffering we now experience. During that painful time, higher gas prices, rising interest rates and persistent high unemployment were the reasons behind why the period was dubbed a “Malaise”.
The Malaise is back. Only now it’s a malaise on steroids, an Obamalaise.
You know we are in trouble when politicians and pundits claim that we cannot cut government spending, because doing so will “push us into recession”. Considering that government spending as a percentage of GDP has been jacked up to around 40% that is cause for concern.
Also cause for concern is that nobody in Washington really seems engaged in creating jobs. During the campaign Obama talked plenty about jobs and strengthening the economy. Now he seems to have lost interest in that. Apparently the green economy is not as, well, green as we hoped.
What exactly is powering the current recovery anyway? Did Obama really save us from economic disaster with his bail-out and stimulus as he claims?
Obama did not save us. He saved a relatively small number of Wall Street tycoons and executives, paid off their bad business debt with our money while millions of workers lost their jobs and their homes. If that’s “saving us”, then next time we’ll do better to avoid such help.
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This recovery is stalling out precisely because of all the help we are getting. Let us review some of the wonderful assistance we are all getting from Washington. They are helping us by:
Giving us over 17 trillion in debt, a millstone hanging about our neck with more added every day.
Underestimating unemployment numbers, forgetting about those who drop off the reports after long-term unemployment.
Massively increasing federal regulations making it ever more costly and difficult to do any business at all.
Providing for exploding numbers of entitlement recipients, such as food stamps, creating a cycle of dependence and reducing the incentive to work for tens of millions.
Undercutting the American worker by pushing to have millions of illegal immigrants receive amnesty.
Demoralizing the work force—the entire population even—as folks struggle to understand why our government spends so much time and money spying on us, the people they are charged with protecting.
Continuing with a costly and unpopular policy of never ending shadow-war overseas.
Being corrupt.
I know a lot of people are jaded and say all politicians are corrupt, and this one is no worse than that one and so forth. That may be true to a certain extent, however we must reject that argument on principle--we’re not talking about monopoly money here. It’s real, and has a real effect on real human beings.
This toxic mix listed above is what causes an Obamalaise, and for a prime example and warning of what can happen as a result, look at Detroit Michigan.
Kwame Kilpatrick, the former democratic mayor of Detroit, was recently convicted of dozens of felonies including fraud, racketeering, perjury and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison, one of the lengthiest sentences ever for an elected official.
Once the world’s premier model of industrial manufacturing, Detroit has now been reduced in many parts to an urban wilderness, thanks largely to politicians such as Kilpatrick and his lengthy collaborations.
Detroit is ground zero, it’s where the Obamalaise first descended after drifting out of Chicago.
If we don’t want our entire country to go the way of Detroit and morph into a bankrupt wasteland, it’s time to end these lengthy collaborations. It’s time to tighten our belt and shake off this bloated paralysis called Obamalaise before it’s too late.
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