Economy, A Record Of Failure?
Techniguy 09-03-04

The country is in crisis. People are loosing their jobs to outsourcing, poverty is spreading all over the country, the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. People can hardly afford to pay for gas for their SUVs and the lines at the soup kitchens are getting longer than the lines of people waiting to see Michael Moore’s movie; Fahrenheit 911. The country and the economy hasn’t looked this bad since the Great Depression of 1929. Two million jobs have been lost under George W. Bush and unemployment is getting worse. Bush can’t run on his record because it’s a record of failure, and it goes on and on and on to this day by Kerry and Edwards. What planet are these two living on? What country are they talking about, France or Russia? They’re sure not talking about the America you and I live in.

Three years ago, one million jobs were lost in a single day when planes piloted by Islamic terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another million job losses resulted from the recession that followed the internet driven economic bubble burst in 1999-2000. The Stock Market went into decline and the economy was showing a negative growth rate. In November of 2001, President Bush’s economic plan was passed by Congress and put into practice. No economic plan can bring changes over night but by signing liberal spending bills into law which increased the deficit, the president was able to funnel money into the economy and the market place to keep things afloat. His tax cuts benefited everyone, but the savings were a big asset to business both large and small. Some businesses were too fragile to keep going and failed during the recession. For others, the tax cuts allowed them to keep going, and with other incentives, were able to rebuild and increase their income to where they could eventually begin to expand and hire more employees. As a result, the economy has experienced one of the strongest recoveries in history and more people are working today than at any other time in our history.

New job figures were released today by the Labor Department which showed unemployment has dropped again, now down to 5.4%, lower than the “good times“ unemployment rate of the Clinton Administration in the nineties. Last month, 144,000 new jobs were added and the figures for the two previous months were revised upward by 50,000 jobs. That puts us now at 1.7 million new jobs created since the blow to our economy that costs so many jobs. We are now only .3 million, or 300,000 jobs short of fully replacing the jobs lost in 2000 to 2002. To put it another way, if the next two months are as good as this last month, all 2 million jobs lost will have been replaced by election day and then it will be all positive job growth after that for the Bush first term. Job growth should get even better in Bush’s second term where we won’t have a recession to deal with and hopefully no more terrorist attacks that do damage to our economy as the 2001 attack did.

Some jobs were lost to technical progress and will never be replaced. Workers in those fields will have to retrain for more modern jobs. When electricity became popular in homes, the makers of oil and gas lanterns took job losses to the light bulb. When cars were invented, blacksmiths and livery stable workers were out of a job. When the computer was invented, it took it’s name from rooms full of mathematicians with paper and pencil and slide rules who were known as “computers”, they joined the unemployed. When car makers automated their assembly lines with computerized robots, auto workers found themselves out of a job. This is progress as the world changes and automates. The light bulb created jobs for electricians. The automobile created jobs for mechanics and factory workers. Assembly line automation created jobs for electromechanical engineers and technicians. And we all know about the huge industry of jobs created by the computer. People with out of date skills have to find new skills and in today’s world, technology is progressing faster than ever and jobs become obsolete over night. Bush’s second term plan includes government assistance for job retraining and placement to help those who have lost jobs to progress.

The job President Bush has been doing, and the positive message delivered at the Convention is getting out to the people now and they are beginning to see the huge differences between what Kerry is offering and what the Bush team is offering for the next four years. The new Time poll of “likely voters” just out today shows Bush with an eleven point lead over Kerry with 52% for Bush to 41% for Kerry. Bush’s approval rating has gained another point to 52%, and 52% believe the War in Iraq was justified and Bush has done the right thing there.  Other polls have this number as high as 54%.  The majority of the country is beginning to see the wisdom, insight, and good judgment of the Bush Administration. Inside Madison Square Garden this week we saw the “heart and soul” of the Republican Party. Outside in the streets of Manhattan we saw the “heart and soul” of the Democrat Party. This sort of display is turning Democrats away from their Party.

A new Kerry tv ad shows a lady lawyer who claims to be a Republican supporting John Kerry. She says she fears loosing her clients if Bush is reelected. I certainly hope so. She seems to be a John Edwards trial lawyer who makes her money with frivolous law suits against our medical system. This is one of the things Bush wants to eliminate from our medical costs. I suggested the same thing about a year ago in my article at http://www.techniguy.com/politics/medical.html. This ad will probably be an asset to Bush, not Kerry.

Kerry and Edwards think the Bush progress represents “failure” and are still sticking to it. The polls show that fewer and fewer Americans agree with them. They attack Bush for the economic problems caused by the recession and 911 attacks and when told 1.7 million out of the 2 million lost jobs have been replaced in the past 12 months, their answer is “Yeah, but there is still a net 300,000 jobs lost“. A few months ago it was “yeah but there is still a net million jobs lost”. No matter how many jobs are created it’s never enough and the glass is always half empty instead of half full. The fact is, it’s not enough for George W. Bush either but he’s doing everything possible a president can do to encourage commerce to create new jobs but it has to be done by Businesses, not the president. You don’t create new jobs simply by telling the American people in a campaign speech that you’re going to create jobs, but not saying how, it takes real aggressive action on the government’s part to bring about growth in the private sector and the only tool they have to use is tax incentives.  What's Kerry's plan, to hire millions on the government payroll at taxpayers expense?  That organization is already overstaffed. 

Kerry criticizes the president for his tax cuts saying that he’s only giving favors to his “rich friends” but Kerry is richer than Bush and has many more "rich friends" he is beholding to. In fact, if Bush’s “rich friends” were only pocketing the tax money they save and making themselves richer, we wouldn’t be seeing the economic growth and job growth that we have been seeing. Those “rich” employers are putting the savings back into their businesses to create new jobs, the tax cuts are working and anyone with half a brain should be able to see that. It seems that the two Johns don’t share half a brain between the two of them. What can you expect from someone who’s only answer to every challenge is “I was a Vietnam War Hero!”. What have you done for us lately, Mr. Kerry?  We’re getting real tired of hearing Vietnam is the answer to everything.

This is why it would be so disastrous to our economy to have these two elected to the Whitehouse, it’s bad enough that they’re in the Senate. Kerry’s plan is to not only repeal tax cuts to the businesses that have been creating the jobs and kill their ability to continue to do so, but also to raise their taxes. He would kill any growth in the Stock Market by repealing the tax incentives given to investors making stock investments no longer attractive to investors. Without the stock investments, publicly owned businesses can no longer grow or sustain themselves and would begin to crumble. You can’t create new jobs by raising taxes on business. Under Kerry, jobs would be lost, businesses would collapse, and the country would fall not only into recession, but into deep depression worse than the depression of 1929.

Kerry says he wants to give additional tax cuts to middle and low income workers. Low income workers aren’t paying any taxes now and by Kerry’s politics, they would actually be getting refunds from tax money they never paid at the taxpayer's expense. So without saying so, Kerry’s plan here is to shift the entire tax burden to business owners and investors. Add that to his liberal spending plans including two billion in government health care, and companies will have to lay off employees just so they can afford to pay their taxes. Fewer employees means less production. Less production means less income to be taxed. Less income to be taxed means less tax revenue to the government in spite of the tax increases. The result of Kerry’s economic plan is government goes deeper into debt, massive job losses, massive business closures, increased poverty, negative economic growth, recession, depression. By the time his first term is up, no one will be able to afford gas for their cars to drive to the polls to vote against him. Bring in Kerry’s communist friends to run the country, by then there will be nothing left to stop him.