Where would unemployment figures be today if the GOP had been in power

My column today in the Sky Hi Daily News

While last week's report showing jobs are still being added to the economy, the number was not as good as predicted. While a weak performance, if averaged with earlier robust job growth, it was hardly the total failure the GOP claimed. The President was more of a victim of rising expectations than that far off the mark. The Romney campaign could barely conceal their glee and used the opportunity to encourage us to vote for anyone but the guy in charge. If we repeal Obama, Mitt Romney's challenge is to convince more voters he is the guy to replace him.

Those GOP economic plans Romney promotes failed us before. Both are a doubling down on George W. Bush policies of unfunded tax cuts to the rich and de-facto deregulation of Wall Street. In short, the policies supported by the GOP of cutting taxes to the “job creators” and turning the financial sector loose to be irresponsible lost us 8.3 million jobs and caused the worst economic crash since the Great Depression. Economists believe that it takes at least eight years to recover from a severe financial crisis and we are half way there, with trend lines still moving up in starts and fits, and the creation of over four million private sector jobs.,

But that is wonky thinking . Facts, figures, statistics and history rarely make for great political rhetoric, so it is more effective strategy to gin up fear by speculation, listing every faintly possible or plausible failure in the future, and to disrespect independent expert messengers who disagree. No wonder business expansion and consumer demand are paralyzed by the fog of uncertainty about the future. The GOP at every opportunity has fueled more angst by promoting a gloom and doom future and asking voters to delay any Congressional action until they control Washington so they can repeal anything smacking of Obama.

Currently, GOP's anti Obamacare scare is that it will cost us trillions and be a job killer, but such projections are not backed up by the Congressional Budget Office. The grossest exaggeration by the GOP is that Obamacare's mandate penalty/tax would “ raise taxes on us all”, but in reality, it would affect only 1 to 2 percent.

Does Mitt Romney offer a plan to boost jobs on Day 1?. Hardly. The fuzzily detailed plans he has proposed take time to trickle down. His goal, to bring down unemployment to 6 percent sometime in the distant future, is in keeping with the CBO projections to happen anyway. Romney's plan: even more tax cuts to the rich paid for by cuts to the poor's safety net and repealing Obamacare with no plans to cover most of the 30 million uninsured or a method to pay for even provisions treasured by the already insured.

Obama's “day one” jobs bill this year, stonewalled by the GOP, would have put over one million laid off teachers, firefighters, building contractors, and highway and road workers to work. If the GOP had been in control of the House in Obama's first two years in office, the stimulus bill would have never been passed, yet it did create nearly 3 million jobs as planned. Had Mitt Romney been president, the auto bailout would not have happened, and even more would have been part of the unemployment statistics. . 8.2 unemployment today would have looked like a desirable goal instead of a disappointment if the GOP had blocked both the stimulus and the auto bailout. The GOP has even thwarted long term solutions proposed by Obama that are similar to the bi-partisan Bowles-Simpson plan that provides a workable long term solution to the debt problem because their party has been hijacked by anti tax zealots.

For more, visit www.mufticforum.com or www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

Mitt Romney's moral fools gold on plans for the poor

My column in the Sky Hi News today
have heard arguments this campaign season that I have not heard since the 1960 debates over President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

One repeated often by conservatives is “it is immoral for government to help the poor because we are making them dependent.” That is a fools gold kind of morality, lots of glittering rationale for those who care about the poor but still want to feel good about themselves while they support policies that hurt them.

Mitt Romney expresses concern for the poor from one side of his mouth: “I am not worried about the poor because they have a safety net” and “I have an absolute moral commitment to help every American help themselves”( by providing them jobs). Out of the other side of his mouth he proposes to poke holes in the safety net and make cuts in other programs that make it much more difficult for the poor to help themselves.

These comments appear to be Romney's response to the Catholic bishops calling it immoral to cut the social safety net in order to pay for the tax benefits to the rich and higher defense spending as the Ryan/House GOP budget proposes, and Romney called “marvelous.” Romney's own particular spin is it is more moral to provide jobs so the poor can “help themselves” than to make them dependent on government assistance.

No one can argue that work is better than welfare for those who are able to work and have the qualifying skills. Clinton-era welfare reforms did much to address this. However, the fix that Romney proposes is a flub. He bases his case on economic theories that have never worked well to create jobs in an economy recovering from a recession, he failed to apply his self-extolled job creating expertise to public policy, and he has a disconnect from realities of the poor's ability to find work.

Romney supports economic theories of trickle down and European-like austerity that have failed to create jobs in the past. Gov. Romney had a dismal job creation record in Massachusetts and when he left office, unemployment was still higher than the national average. Pumping up “job creators” with deregulation and low taxes does not necessarily spring loose investment in manufacturing capacity unless business anticipates more demand.

But Romney's plans are demand killers. Fighting Obama's jobs bill and/or any aid to rehire state and federal employees, such as teachers, firefighters and police, the core of GOP austerity plans, leaves less money in consumer pockets to buy products and services.

When Europe undertook austerity cold turkey, demand dropped and unemployment soared, a pertinent example. The conservative line on the “dependence” issue is, “If we reduce their safety net, more poor will go to work.” Even if jobs are created, will the poor benefit? Reducing access to a good education (Per Romney: “we do not need more (teachers)” and good nutritional brain food needed to learn, we are guaranteed pools of manual laborers who do not have the skills to be hired in today's or tomorrow's tech economy.

The GOP disconnect: Most of these safety net programs are for children that give them tools to escape dependence. Three-quarters of food stamp recipients are families with children. Of the nutrition programs for the poor (8.7 million recipients), 4.3 million are women with children, 2.2 million with infants. National school lunch programs: 30.5 million kids benefit. Children's health programs (CHIP) keep them healthy enough to go to school and Head Start gets them ready to enter first grade. By reducing money to these programs, we guarantee more poor do not have good nutrition needed to learn, or to gain the ability to qualify for jobs Republicans hope to create.

Romney and the GOP are trying to fool well meaning conservatives, but presenting their plans for the poor as a jobs program or a moral plus is a shameful deception.

For more, go to www.mufticforum.com and www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com