The magic bullet
The president is working non-stop to put Americans back to work and end our financial crisis by taking another vacation later his month to Martha’s Vineyard. So we know where we stand in the order of priorities with this administration.
So how would I end this fiscal mess? Easy. I’d open up our oil fields to exploration and drilling. And, oh, yeah, I’d take the common sense approach and help finish the Trans-Canada pipeline from Canada’s oil sands to Houston. Those two easy measures would put thousands, if not millions of Americans to work, the Left would finally get their grubby paws on those oil company “windfall profits” by way of the economy – who would have to hire all of those people and build a support network to those isolated oil fields?
Yep, it’d be the magic bullet to put Americans back to work and rebuild our infrastructure. The president could do it himself by presidential proclamation and deal with Congress when they come back from vacation…you know, show some leadership for once. He could also rein in the job-killing decisions that EPA is famous for. Was Jimmy Carter just blowing smoke when he announced the formation of the Energy Department with these words;
I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the redtape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.
We will protect our environment. But when this Nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.
Yeah we haven’t built a refinery or an oil pipeline since he said those words in July 1979 in his famous Malaise Speech. So if there are indeed any leaders left in Washington, this is the quickest way to get us out of this mess and it’s fairly easy and it won’t cost the tax payers a dime, no tax increases, no entitlement cuts…just simple economics.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Economy
Jonn, the only, “laser like focus on jobs” he has is his own past 1/20/13, and frankly, I’m not convinced he even wants the job beyond that.
Look at it this way–he gets voted out in 2012, he follows in the footsteps of Carter and Clinton, he can then travel the globe on the government’s dime with SS protection for at least 10 years, do the rubber chicken circuit, open a library, write his memoirs, and cart shitload of cash to the bank all the while. The only speeches he delivers will be to adoring crowds and all the while he can snipe at his successor for not having immediately fixed what he fucked up so badly.
Pretty sweet deal, if you ask me. Meanwhile, we eat peas.
Much less catstrophic than creating a “new” oil boom would be to legalize Pot. That would put hundreds of farmers to work, allow for the retooling of cigarett companies and employ thousands in some of the hardest hit ecconomic areas (like right here in the Carolinas.) But, what do I know?
Jonn, I agree that it will open up jobs almost immediately, also, start on building refineries to up capacity that will come from implementing your ideas. Now, the problem is, where to get those workers from? Are the masses willing to move out from the cities where they are at currently to places like rural Texas, the Dakotas etc.. not likely, they will stay in the cities and continue to suck the public teat until it is dry. Oh sure, there will be some of us who are hard working Americans that will do any job we have to to feed our families, but, there are a whole lot more who won’t and will stay holed up in the inner cities and suck the country dry. Hate to sound so cynical but those are my feelings. Working on the pipelines, oil rigs, building refineries etc is hard work. I would also add to your list that only US citizens and valid legal residents can be used to do there jobs.
It’s been indicated on several cable business shows that there are literally billions of dollars sitting in off-shore corporate accounts that are sheltered by corporations because of the hostile business climate here in the US. A simple revision of tax policy aimed at creating jobs would flood the Federal treasury with these billions and the subsequent income taxes gathered from newly employed Americans. But that’s not something this president and his constituents are willing to consider, since it doesn’t mesh with their class warfare agenda. So the money sits off-shore, drawing interest and doing nothing but acting as reserves for companies that are waiting for a more friendly climate in which to invest their capital.
Gotta love the inherit contradiction between the two paragraphs of the Carter quote:
“I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the redtape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.
We will protect our environment. But when this Nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.”
He’ll cut through the red tape, but protect the environment. But, the red tape is precisely environmentally related. In effect Jimmah said: We’ll regulate AND we won’t regulate, except of course, where we WILL regulate.
No wonder nothing came of this.
One of the biggest problems that would immediately occur with any attempt to revive heavy industry would be with the EPA and the environmentalists. Until that runaway is reined in, it will continue to be law-suite, decision, appeal, law-suite, decision, appeal. It never ends. I live in a place where they stand on our necks on everything: drilling, mining, hunting, building, wolves, bears… you name it.
Bumper Stickers from local radio station:
I miss Reagan.
Hungry? Out of Work? Eat Your Hope & Change!
Yes we can…Bankrupt America
I would recommend Boortz’s basic suggestions:
1. Tax amnesty
2. No death tax, no capital gains tax
3. No corporate tax (they just pass the cost to us consumers).
4. Flat income and consumption taxes – everyone above poverty level pays.
From me:
1. Deregulate banks
2. Get rid of Credit Scores/Ratings reports as the basis for lending.
Don’t forget all those Democratic jobs which will be created in union organizing all those other new jobs.
fab–hardly–lots of those states mentioned are heavily Republican and also “right to work” states.
And Doc, please tell me you weren’t serious. Hundreds of pot farmers? Seriously? Shit, half the population of Mendocino County in northern California are pot farmers, and they’re still fucking dirt poor and unemployed up there.
OTOH, I’ve been in “oil boom” and coal towns like Farmington, NM (where I went to HS), Gillette, WY, and Salt Lake City. You want to talk about money to burn?
You forgot the part about severely restricting the ability of “environmentalists” to sue to block every common sense proposal under the sun.
Sparky:
Yes I am serious. Your argument is a non-starter. First of all, marijuana has not been legalized anywhere in the U.S. It has been decriminalized in certain markets. This means that it is leagal to posess up to a certain amount or that you can posess up to a certain amount with a valid prescription. There are still criminal penalties in some places (even in California.) Moreover, there is a limited market even for medical Marijuana.
Legalizing (or at least changing the law so that it is functional as written) would allow for mass marketing and growing.
BTW, census data shows that Medicino County California is at about 17% below the poverty line. So, I’m not sure what you are getting at there.
Further, decriminalization would allow law enforcement to stop wasting money going after what amounts to a weed.
Doc A.
Gotta ask you, Doc; why would you think pot smokers have more money then the oil companies?
All I know is that if Doc’s idea takes hold, I’m buying a shit load of stock in Frito Lay and Little Debbie.
#14 Haahaahaa! I like that!
Doc, I favor yer idea. And Claymore’s too.
Still, I’m sitting my 75 acres of Marcellus Shale (with mineral rights) so I’m all Drill Baby Drill!!!
#4 Claymore,
How many of those corporations are run by Obama’s financial supporters? Rhetorical question.
Someone has got to pay for the pipeline. You think the oil/gas companies will? NO way. Look at T’ Boone Pickens – the rich oil man. He wanted Congress to give him money to pay for infrastructure to support Natural Gas distribution. F-that. Its his company, let him pay for it. Oh, but that will not happen. So no new jobs for people because no one wants to use their money. Its been this way since the beginning of money.
Jonn:
It’s not a matter of having more money. Leagalization would create wholly new sources (or better put, untapped) of revenue distributed into areas that are struggling. Here in the southeast, the decline of cigarettes has hurt local farmers and production communities. One of the things that this area can grow well is Pot. So why not? It would allow us to tax a product that is already sold illegally, reopen manufacturing that is anemic (to put it mildly) and allow farmers to grow a product.
Further, the enviornmental impact of the pipeline is problematic. I am all for oil and coal, but deep water drilling and long expanses of pipeline concern me for various reasons.
HM…
Legalization takes that forbidden fruit mentality away and certainly, we would gain something from it by taxing it.
But what are employers to do with those that end up with an overzealous smoking habit? How do you prove they are not fit to employ? An alcoholic gets away scott free when it comes to performing in a job because nobody is testing the BAC level upon employment…but pot is a reason for not hiring someone…how do you reconcile that?
An alcoholic gets away scott free when it comes to performing in a job because nobody is testing the BAC level upon employment…
So what was that thing I was blowing into when I got hired and at least a few times a year since, along with pissing into the cup? Oh yeah–a breathalyzer. Something I read somewhere in my employee handbook about, “fitness for duty” and shit like that.
Why not just drop most of the taxes on cigarettes to just a few pennies per pack/carton? Nicotine is already legal, and its time to stop making criminals of everyone involved in the industry.
As for legalizing pot: sure, so long as the first offense for any crime committed under the influence (including negligent homicide and shoplifting to ease the munchies) is punished by hanging by the neck until dead, in a public square, attended by children and parents.
Tobbacco, as far as I know, is the only product on the market in this country that will kill you and possibly those around you if it is used exactly as it is inteded to be used. The health risks posed to others are serious enough the limit is use and to justify the steep taxes. That said, Marijuna does not have the same health risks and thus should not be taxed the same way. Further, outlawing it has not lessened its use, merely pushed it underground and created a multi-layer criminal class in much the same way alocohol prohibition did nearly a century ago.
Daveo, your last paragraph makes no sense. Why would crimes committed under the influence of marijuana be any more heinous than those committed under the influence of other drugs like alcohol or percocet? Marijuana was not outlawed due to its risks, but rather as an excuse to deport Mexicans in the Southwest during the Great Depression. (You learn a lot on the History Channel while trying to overcome insomnia.)
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