Mittens' Moment Missed

Dear Dr. Bones,

Another dismal month By Boston Herald Editorial Staff | Saturday, September 8, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Editorials The celebration confetti hadn’t even been swept from the floor of the Democratic National Convention when the latest jobs numbers were released — and they aren’t pretty. So President Barack Obama can talk all he wants — as he did Thursday night — about “moving forward,” but the dismal 8.1 percent unemployment rate dipped slightly only because more than half a million Americans had stopped even looking for work. And that is the saddest news of all. If those who had stopped looking for work and those working part time when they would rather work full time were factored in, the real unemployment number would be 14.7 percent. Oh sure, the administration pointed to the 96,000 private sector jobs added to the economy last month. But it takes 150,000 new jobs just to keep pace with population growth, and it would take more than 350,000 new jobs each month for the next three years to bring the unemployment down to a respectable 6 percent. Yes, that’s how deep the hole is. And you know the first rule of holes? When you’re in one stop digging. But Obama gave every indication Thursday night he’s not finished trying to “manage” the economy. “I’m asking you to rally around a set of goals for your country,” he said, “goals in manufacturing, energy, education, national security and the deficit; a real achievable plan that will lead to new jobs, more opportunity, and rebuild this economy on a stronger foundation.” Goals? Or a Soviet-style five-year plan with more giveaways to corporate cronies who promise to create renewable energy and end up, well, blowing hot air. Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement issued yesterday, “As the administration stresses every month, the monthly employment and unemployment figures can be volatile, and employment estimates can be subject to substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.” It was, of course, the 43rd straight month of unemployment over 8 percent. There’s no happy face he can put on that.

Q. What went wrong? How come the Fearless Funders of Freedumb, are no good at job-creatin any more? Four years almost to a day since the Crawford Crash, an our Hoovervillains STILL have not got anythin like a proper bubble off the ground? Can Freelord Midas have lost his touch? A. That is not quite fairembalanced, ma’am. I gather you are not anywhere near being a Fearless Funder yourself, you sound like a "small people," a standard poor who does not pay much attention to NYSE an NASDAQ are up to. ’Up’ bein a not appropriate word, as it happens -- S&P 1437, D-J 13.3K, NASDAQ 3136. (Main Street registers 70.2, 21.2 Celsius) The truth of the matter, Paddy and Eye thinks, is that the Fearless Fundin’ Class has switched over to mini- an microbubbles, as it were, bubbles to which only Classmates are admitted. RSVP bubbles, if you will. Your big-tent, more-the-merrier kind of jobcreationist bubble has probably gone the way of the dodoe. Of the nickle seegar. Of the Moderate Republicanine. Bubbles there will be--bubbles there MUST be, late Baincapitalism bein what it can’t help bein--but BIG BUBBLES are out. Perhaps you should think, ma’am, of dinosaurs rather than of dodoes. Or no, maybe not: the Dinosaur Myth is usually told to self-glorify certain "small people" of the zoological world alleged by the fiend Darwin to be the ancestors of Wunnerful US. The prospects of you, or Eye, or even Paddy McTammany hiself, being better off with smaller bubbles are not bright at all. (( Allow me to whisper "American D*cl*ne" here inside double parens where the WhightGuard ThoughtCops may not notice. Wink, wink; nod, nod. Nuff said. Verb. sap. )) Naturally the _Fishwrap_’s frathouse babes (plus a few Jay School fruits of the male persuasion) are worse than useless on so grown-up a subject. To be sure, the anonymous kiddies only bark what they have been funded to bark, it would be absurd to blame them for inventin Astroturfonomics.. Have a hard time inventin their way out of the average paper bag, most of your Herald angels would. Blameless though the brat pack are personally, nevertheless, their Funders’ drivel is drivel indeed. Exactly the opposite of the true situation, and probably at least a few of the Fearless Funders are smart enough to omit the preliminary stage where they talk themselves into believin their own Class self-servicin. For of course there is no unemployment problem here in the Heimatland G*ttes, what we have is rather a sort of Jobs Plague: far too many volks with no discernible economic reason for existin. Ideally the Classmates would trade in twenty or thirty or fifty million of us for future draft picks, but that plan does not appear to work anywhere but on Planet Kiddiegames. Around here, at any rate, the Lesser Breeds Without would mostly like to export their own slackers rather than import Uncle Sam’s. (The Jobs Plague used to be called ’overpopulation’. That was back before summer was discovered to be a left-wing hoax.) Though Astroturfonomics cannot CURE the Jobs Plague, it can mitigate the symptoms to some extent, especially such symptoms as afflict Classmates rather than no-count trailer-trash. The only symptoms that matter, really. Mittius Coriolanus Pompo, who is, so to speak, Class President _ex officio_, is not, Eye fears, particularly good at symptom mitigation. Whightist noise about twelve million MORE excess jobs four or five years from now makes no sense at all if considered as directly addresin the Jobs Plague. But of course His Excellency has never been a jobcreator an does not mean to start now; the symptom H. E. is really targetin with baloney like that is popular opinion amongst the small people, who certainly do not want to hear that in effect we are the Jobs Plague and the Job Plague is us. Coriolanus Pompo, bein a double-barrel H*rv*rd, must realize that his Classmates an America’s Otherparty an Himself cannot cover up the true correlation of farces forever, but H. E. is plainly in no hurry to open the Jobs Plague can of worms before it is absolutely necessary to do so. The trouble, plainly, is that almost all of that no-count economic trailer-trash is technically entitled to vote, and we may not rush to vote for whichever crew of hack pols is first to be frank about our trailer-trashiness. "You are something there are millions of," sang the bard, and now somebooby must revise that to "You are something there are FAR TOO MANY millions of. You are Structural Unemployment. You are, in fact, Overpopulation." Coriolanus Pompo does not want to be the first to pipe that cheerful strain, and who can blame H. E.? Actually, Eye and Paddy can blame His Excellency, and we do. As follows: Assume the contrary, namely that Coriolanus Pompo is prepared to be brave for once an do what whighteousness demands. In that case, H. E. would deserve to be eulogized as a former whight-winger (W. L. Yancey) eulogized President J. F. Davis of the Palæocon States of America: "¡The man and the hour have met!" ¿What, after all, does this present, the Hour of American Decline, call for, if not for a Master of Seamus, a Stepmaster of Rafalca, above all, a Baincapper Extraordinaire? An hereditary freelord an Classmate who sincerely LIKES firin volks an is moreover willin to say so. ¡This is not an ideoproduct that grows on trees! Back in the real world, it could not be plainer that H. E. proposes to funk it, assumin H. E. makes it to the top of the greasy pole. The chances of America’s Otherparty comin up with any other Man so suited as M. Coriolanus Pompo is to meet this critical Hour in the career of our holy Homeland™ are negligible. Why, one might as reasonably expect a Donkey to do it! Nothin can reasonably be expected of the Smirk of Janesville, who safely confines his grim surgeon _shtyk_ to the out years. To the FAR out years. To the FAR out years of completely unpassable ‘budgets’ for the next FY. ¡Phoniness, thy name is P. X. Ryan! .