From the Toronto Star: “President Barack Obama’s Labour Secretary, Hilda Solis, wanted to show her support for American auto workers by swapping her standard gov ernment-issued limo for a crossover Chevrolet Equinox.
There’s just one problem: The Equinox is built in Ontario.” I guess they don’t teach ge ography in the White House.
Talking after the disas trous August jobs report, a financial guru got right to the point. “Labor is getting the short end of the stick here,” said Bill Gross, co-head of Pimco, the giant investment firm.
Indeed it is, making for a bleak landscape on this Labor Day weekend. A time that should be devoted to honoring working people is instead dominated by mounting evidence that the greatest jobs machine the world has ever known is broken.
As a consequence, the American dreams of millions of workers and their families are being shattered.
America has faced worse before, but the difference this time is that our government, under the guise of liberal compassion, wealth redistribution and environmental justice, is pursuing job-killing policies. President Obama’s anti-capitalist fervor is taking a devastating toll that could take a generation to repair.
The centralization of power in Washington has produced a skewed economy. Underserved and unaffordable perks are lavished on the well-connected few, especially government unions, while opportunities for most workers are snuffed out. If the best social program is a job — and it is — then the Obama administration is guilty of malpractice.
Friday’s report was bad news, from top to bottom, with the Labor Department finding that not a single new net job was created in the 50 states.
It is no consolation that the unemployment rate remained at 9.1 percent. The tragedy is that about 25 million people are without work or are stuck in part-time jobs.
In light of those numbers, imagine you have ideas for creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. Imagine also you are president of the United States. Do you wait another minute to reveal those plans?
Of course you don’t, and therein lies the truth about Obama’s long-planned speech on Thursday. It’s not a jobs plan; it’s a political photo-op.
He will get his joint session of Congress as a backdrop, and he will use it for a campaign commercial. Voice rising, he’ll sing the greatness of the American worker and blast Republicans for not bowing to his demands.
Proposing grand spending schemes, he’ll paint himself as a bold leader trying to “do something.”
Oh, please, give it a rest. The problem is that he has done too much already.
To be really bold, he should undo much of what he did.
He should say he is holding off on implementing ObamaCare and stopping the slew of financial restrictions in Dodd-Frank. He could order the National Labor Relations Board to get its boot off companies so they can hire and tell regulators to stop suing the pants off banks and other businesses. He could stop his attacks on success and wealth.
To my surprise, the president actually did something sensible Friday, telling zealots at the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw changes to smog rules, which could have cost $90 billion a year and killed thousands of jobs.
It’s a good start, but only a start. Americans need work, not more red tape. And they definitely don’t need another speech aimed at saving one man’s job.
Mike was dumb to play mum
The first rule of politics holds that the “coverup is worse than the crime.” Yet the news that Mayor Bloomberg concealed the domestic-violence arrest of a former deputy mayor and gave false information about his resignation proves that smart people can act awfully stupid.
Because he publicly lied about why Stephen Goldsmith resigned last month, Bloomberg made himself the focus of the sordid incident. It is another self-inflicted wound in his dismal third term.
His skulking from public view since The Post broke the story Thursday adds to the conviction that City Hall has fallen and can’t get up. It is rare for any mayor to shrink from facing controversy, but odd behavior is routine with the increasing idiosyncrasy of Bloomberg.
The longer he is in office, the less he abides by ordinary obligation. His growing sense of entitlement is striking. Say hello, Cathie Black.
The Goldsmith affair breaks new ground. When he quit last month after 14 months on the job, the mayor insisted Goldsmith left to “pursue private-sector opportunities in infrastructure finance.”
In truth, Goldsmith had been arrested after an alleged brawl with his wife in their Washington, DC, home. A police report says he grabbed her, pushed her and said, “I should have put a bullet through you years ago.”
He spent 36 hours in police detention and, five days later, resigned, although no charges were filed.
Apologists for the mayor argue he concealed the arrest, including from the police commissioner, to spare Goldsmith further embarrassment. Yet that doesn’t square with the whispering campaign from City Hall aides that Goldsmith was fired because of poor performance during the snow cleanup last December.
If that’s compassion, it’s an odd kind. Goldsmith is now damaged goods professionally and personally.
But the only innocent victims are taxpayers. Once again, they are treated like mushrooms — kept in the dark and covered in b.s. So it goes in Year 10 of Bloomberg’s New York.
Times is so Wiki-washy
At The New York Times, the left hand doesn’t know what the far-left hand is doing.
Back in January, executive editor Bill Keller argued that the paper had “appropriate distance” from the head creep at WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, despite publishing his stolen military secrets. “We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator,” Keller wrote.
Fast forward to last week, when Times reporters wrote about a new WikiLeaks dispute. This time, they saw their paper’s role differently: “The Times and The Guardian — along with Der Spiegel, El PaÃs and Le Monde — were part of a consortium of media partners that had access to all 251,287 leaked US cables.”
OK, partners it is. Partners with the devil, to be exact.
Guess who UN blames this time
The winner of the “hobgoblin of little minds” award goes to the United Nations. Faced with a mountain of facts in Israel’s favor, a panel investigating the deaths of nine activists on a provocative Turkish flotilla bound for Gaza still found a way to blame Israel. Such is the consistency of anti-Semitism.
The report said Israel’s blockade of the terrorist-controlled Gaza is legal and Israeli commandos who boarded a ship last year that was trying to break the blockade faced “violent resistance” from passengers. Nonetheless, the panel accused Israel of using “excessive and unreasonable” force and said it should apologize and pay off the families of the dead.
Let’s get this straight: The flotilla was carrying banned goods to Israel’s sworn enemy. Israel’s soldiers were attacked, several were seriously injured, and they responded with lethal and legal force. And Israel should apologize?
Nuts!