Jobs and the Economy
Thank you Louisiana for the Rajin' Cajun, Jim Carville. If you've got any more like him down there, please send them! We can sure use 'em! It looks like Carville and CNN stole your boxing ring format.
The top thing on my mind these days is Iraq. Are we going to attack? Or is it when are we going to attack? And why now? We all know the wag the dog scenario. It's no secret Republicans are in big trouble as the elections come closer. I don't want to think former governor Bush would create a war for partisan politics, but his top man Karl Rove did admit that is their best issue.
You can see some articles about Iraq here on this site under "Activism." Inspect Iraq, Don't Attack is one.
This article is under jobs and the economy, because that's a growing concern for Americans. Clintonomics were kind to America and especially Louisiana. Louisiana unemployment was over 8.5% before the Clinton policies took effect. That ugly number fell and kept getting better all through the Clinton years. Unemployment was down under 5%. Then Bush took over, and things have not been so good for Louisiana.
The Bush economy tanked nationwide, in part because of the 9/11 terror attacks. In Louisiana, unemployment hit 6.7% just in time for Christmas 2001. Then it went down, but unemployment is heading back up again. Unemployment just counts people collecting benefits, not the total number of people who lost their jobs.
Louisiana lost thousands of jobs just this year. Employment fell from over 1 million 9 hundred 10 thousand to less than 1 million 8 hundred 93 thousand just from January to May. That's well over 17 thousand Louisiana jobs gone. 4 thousand 3 hundred and 75 Louisiana jobs lost every month. 17 thousand 5 hundred Louisianans out of work just since the end of January.
This is all according to Bush's own Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Then there's the deficit. It's exploding again. Bush's Treasury Department announced that it expects to borrow $76 billion in marketable debt during the July - September 2002 quarter. That's just a low estimate, but would shatter the $300 Billion mark for an entire year.
The previous all time high defict was $290 Billion by Bush's father in 1992-93. That matters because it's money we have to pay back - with interest.
You can't blame all this on 9/11. The economy began to slow down even before, and Bush's tax cuts - mainly for the wealthy - put us into debt the second he signed it into law. Yes, unemployment went up after the attacks, but then it fell again last winter. Since then, it's been going back up.
All this proved Bush's economic policies are failing as badly on Bourbon St. as they are on Wall St. We all know things are bad there, and we know why.
Huge tax cuts today mean huge tax hikes down the road. It's like putting everything on credit cards. Plastic comes back to haunt you. Bush's tax cuts were almost entirely for people and big companies who didn't need them. Did this contribute to the "bubble" on Wall St.? Hard to say.
We do know that Enron crashed and burned before 9/11 because they weren't producing anything. They weren't drilling for oil or putting people in Louisiana or anywhere else to work. Enron was using insider deals with the Bush people, playing games, creating fake shortages, and ripping off their consumers and employees alike.
When asked about Enron and its former CEO Ken Lay, Former Governor Bush tried to sell us on "Ken who?" Turns out Bush knows Lay well, even if he tries to say "I did not have financial relations with that man, Ken Lay." The fact is, Bush and "Kenny Boy" Lay go back to the 1st Bush White House. Lay slept in the Lincoln bedroom, and contributed $millions to Bush Jr. and Sr. over the years.
The most troubling thing for me is the links between Sec. of the Army White and Enron. He admitted under oath that he was calling his friends at Enron almost everyday, and he may have steered contracts to Enron which left some army bases out of luck when Enron went bust. This may have undermined out national security as early as the summer of 2000.
I don't know that any of this adds up to a scandal or not. I think we as Americans have the right to know if the Secretary of our Army was working for us or working for Enron. Considering the former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman Hebert says Bush fired him because Ken Lay told him to, this is looking like an Enrongate to me.
Bush and the people around him have to start telling the truth, and taking some responsibility. We have to see some leadership from this crew before we get another double-dip recession and lose more jobs.
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