Yet Another Summit
A symphony of chin music may be silly but meaningless when it comes to effecting "reconciliation" between a Harvard professor and a Cambridge cop, but it's somewhat more frustrating when the President offers it as proof positive of his commitment to employment. But that's what he's doing: He's proposed a "jobs summit" for December.
The problem for the Democrats -- most notably, the President -- is that they don't want to do the things that will stimulate the economy and put people back to work. They're not interested in things like payroll tax cuts, or corporate tax cuts, or income tax cuts. After all, they need the taxpayer money to fund, as best they can, the huge (and hugely unpopular) expansion of government, from health care to cap'n trade, that they've been working toward.
In order for businesses to want to expand, those who do the hiring have to feel confident that a big-taxing, high-regulating, ever-more-intrusive federal government isn't going to make their lives miserable. And right now, that's a confidence no rational person could feel.
And no amount of learned chit-chat from the chin-strockers and deep-thinkers at a summit is going to change that.