Big Red Car here. Tonight the President will address us and provide us with his view of the state of our Union.
Lately, he seems unable to get a grasp on reality, so I thought I might give him a couple of talking points that he can work into his speech.
We have a spending addiction
Mr President, we— you, the Congress, the “takers”, both parties — have a spending problem and you seem to be unable to fathom that or to embrace the realities of what that means as it relates to the economy or jobs.
It is “intervention time” at the White House. Your friends need to get together and conduct an intervention. Might not be a bad idea to get a tattoo on your inner wrist that says — “We have a SPENDING problem.”
The solution for an addict is NOT to give them more of their addictive substance — in this case spending.
No, Mr President, you cannot have an unlimited credit card.
You ARE a spending addict. Even a Big Red Car can see this.
The economy is foundering
The economy is not only not growing, it is shrinking. The recovery dynamic? NON-EXISTENT
Look at some objective data and get back focused on the real problem — “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The solution to the economy is very simple — growth. Growth as measured by jobs.
Folks with jobs are not consuming tax dollars, they are delivering revenue in the form of income taxes to the Treasury.
This is all simply about jobs, jobs, jobs.
More jobs, more taxpayers. More taxpayers, more revenue. More revenue, less borrowing. Less borrowing, lower deficits. Lower deficits, more energy.
Rinse, repeat.
Unemployment is horrific
Unemployment — the underlying metric driving the economy — is horrific.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves. Absent government trickery deleting “discouraged” workers from the national workforce, U-3 unemployment is really about 12%.
If you are going to provide 99 weeks of unemployment payments, then you cannot magically pretend that someone is no longer “unemployed” when they get to 52 weeks. You cannot take that person off both the unemployment rolls and the work force when you know damn well he is continuing to receive benefits. Does not make any sense.
U-7 unemployment — the real deal because it adds back these missing folks — is really about 22%. Wow.
Mr President, we have a problem here. Your current focus on amnesty for some 12MM+ illegal immigrants will only exacerbate the problem.
Tiny suggestion: fully fund the SBA loan guaranty program which runs out of its allocation of loan guaranties at the end of Q1 each fiscal year. This is a diverse source of real jobs from existing employers. Work it. Small business is the jobs provider in the United States.
National energy policy
We desperately need a coherent national energy policy.
Why? Because the price of energy is a cynical tax on the entire economy which stifles the vigor of the economy.
Consider, as an example, only the retail price of gasoline.
If we considered the following initiatives, energy prices would likely trend downward:
1. Open all Federal lands onshore and offshore to expedited prospecting.
2. Encourage nuclear power as an alternative to the worst performing power plants in the US — jobs up, foreign dependence down, pollution down.
3. Approve the Keystone Pipeline — jobs up, foreign dependence down.
4. Hire a new Secretary of Energy whose avowed objective is NOT to increase gas prices.
Small things, to be sure.
You are not leading us in the right direction.
If jobs and the economy are the right focus, then gun control and immigration are not the right short term focus.
We all recognize how difficult it is to multi-task. And we are truly sympathetic to the issues of our times, but we have to get this jobs and economy business taken care of.
In addition, the notion that the debt ceiling is an irrelevant annoyance is silly. The credit card limit, when you are a spending addict, is a critical element of concern.
We should never have a President with an unlimited credit card.
Not to be picky, but you have now failed to present a budget in a timely manner for a few years. You can’t continue to ignore the reality of needing a well thought out budget. Please send over a budget and work with the Congress to nudge it toward balance.
We have a national epidemic of lying
We were promised the most transparent administration in history and what we have gotten is either gross incompetence or wholesale lying.
Take as an example the Benghazi matter — four dead Americans including an Ambassador.
1. Here we sit having just discovered that you, Mr President, went to bed and did not rise until the next morning when you flew to Las Vegas for a campaign fundraising function.
2, The Secretary of State was apparently in the dark.
3. The head of the CIA was distracted with bimbo problems.
4. The Secretary of Defense could not sort out the situation on the ground and thus simply froze.
5. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was singing “Christmas in Kilarney” and did not render assistance.
And, what did you do?
You offered up on a platter UN Ambassador Susan Rice — who not being in charge of embassies (State), intelligence (CIA) or reaction forces (Defense, military), wove us a cock and bull story of gargantuan proportions — it was a bunch of vexed movie critics who [apparently owning mortars, RPGs and crew served automatic weapons] panned a movie that had been on the web for over 6 months.
Pardon the American public’s skepticism. My kids, when they were teenagers, would not have even tried to sell that nonsense.
Stop the lying. It is bad enough that you slept through the mythical 3 AM phone call but to compound it by telling those lies was and is preposterous.
I know you will give us a great speech tonight, Mr President, but if you could give it just a dash of reality amongst all the rhetoric, it would be appreciated.
And, The Boss will “eat his peas” before you and the Teleprompter come on tonight. Thanks for listening to a Big Red Car.
But, hey, what the Hell do I know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car and I can’t vote anyway.
