The Real State of the Union

Wow! More hope, less change. It sounded like a campaign speech. Where’s the beef?

Tepid at best and mostly more of the same piled higher and deeper. Four years ago he promised to change the very way Washington does business and remake politics itself.

Well, I’ll have to admit that he succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. It’s just that I had something different in mind. Two words: Citizens United.

Last night he said, “Tonight, I want to speak about how we move forward, and lay out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last – an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values.”

I’m all for that, I guess. Yes, we need a massive infrastructure rebuilding program, but the House won’t allow it. Remember the jobs bill? It had a tiny infrastructure component and didn’t pass.

Obama also said, “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs.”

Don’t confuse that with a net gain of jobs; it didn’t even come close to offsetting the number of jobs lost during the same period.

New unemployment claims averaged well over one million per month and during the same period, and the Obama administration issued over three million foreign worker visas, over half of them permanent.

He says we need to revive manufacturing.

Again, he is right that we should be producing our own goods. The problem is that manufacturing companies based in the United States no longer have any special loyalty to the country itself. They are global profiteers who make a fortune from child labor and lax regulation in the third world. They don’t care whether Americans have jobs or not.

Even in those cases of a good corporate citizen willing to accept lower profits, the transition would take years and be an extraordinary capital expense for most. It may be too late to return to a manufacturing economy.

It’s a great idea, but is it doable? Last year in his State of the Nation speech, Obama said we need a “Sputnik moment.”

I got the analogy, but it wasn’t a good one.

October 4, 1957, the American people were taken completely by surprise as Russia launched Sputnik into orbit. I was only nine years old at the time, but I remember the reactions. Stunned humiliation that the “Russkies” would beat us into space, combined with a liberal dose of mass hysteria brought about by the sudden realization of our extreme vulnerability.

Now, I long for a return to the fifties as much as anyone, but it ain’t happening. We are stuck out here in 2012, and there is no way back. Our problems will not be solved by trying to retreat to fantasy land.

We have 2012 problems the likes of which we have never had before, and the solutions of the past are no solution at all. That kind of thinking got us where we are.

We need ten million jobs right now and two million more over each of the next five years. It is so simple. No jobs, no recovery. Slow job growth just gets us deeper in the hole at a slower rate. We need something so big and bold that it becomes known as the “shock and awe” of the war on recession.

But, it isn’t as though the Republicans have any new ideas either. House speaker John Boehner said on Fox News Sunday, “The regulatory nightmare that’s coming out of Washington is serving as a wet blanket over our economy. We need to work to fundamentally change our tax code.”

What regulations?

The biggest corporations simply ignore the few scant regulations placed on them and routinely flaunt even the most basic principles of law abiding. They cheat, they steal, and they lie. Corporations completely control the regulatory process. They lobby for the laws they want and the repeal of those they don’t want, and they always get their way.

No enforcement.

The enforcement officers are former members of the companies they regulate, and they return there when there government work is done.

Slap on the wrist justice.

And, when the rare inquiry occurs, the perpetrators pay a small vigorish on their ill-gotten gains, and keep the rest without ever even admitting guilt.

They don’t pay taxes they get corporate welfare.

Tax payers subsidize the most profitable companies in America. They already have negative tax liability through all of the corporate welfare they receive.

Then, the IRS ignores the top tax cheats and fries a lot of smaller fish instead. What a stench.

So, while Boehner argues for the elite to be above the law while paying no taxes, it doesn’t seem like a job creator or a good way for a country to do business.

I think American companies and wealthy individuals do owe something to America for their success. As Americans, they do have the same responsibilities as the rest of us.

Until they accept that, we are a nation in a state of extreme peril.

George W. Mantor
The Real Estate Professor
Founder, American Foreclosure Resistance Movement
http://www.realtown.com/gwmantor/blog

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi

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