Editorials

Obama’s Front Office Solution

When large corporations have financial woes, they assign their front office to  look into it. It’s always been that way.

What this select task force almost always learn is that the Front Office is the source of the problem. Of course, they will never report that little piece of evidence back to the chairman, so in the end it’s usually agreed to suggest some front office trimmings, and then reduce payroll at the front lines. Yes, reduce the company’s ability to produce whatever product it produces, just to balance the books, temporarily.

When I was in the corporate world I always asked why the very people who had caused the financial woes of the company were always the ones tasked to fix it.

That’s why company’s like W R Grace Co had grown to such prominence; independent advice.

Even if the Obama Jobs Act were really a good plan, which it isn’t, the first thing that should leap out at even the casual observer is:

Why should the people who caused this mess now be relied upon to execute this plan in a way to get us out of it?

We already gave them $1.5 trillion, which they spent with corrupt incompetence (Solyndra– Follow this story as it will become a stimulus-borne Operation Fast and Furious as facts roll out.) and with out-and-out lies, i.e., shovel ready jobs.

Without a detailed ledger sheet of where all the money went in the 2009 Stimulus, since much of the new spending in Obama’s new proposal is the same shovel-ready infrastructure, people have a right to insist on knowing how this money is to be spent, line item by line item.

They should insist that a cost-conscious third party be put in charge.

Of course, none of this will happen.

You will hear much said about the flaws in the plan itself. First, Obama is saying time is of the essence yet he dilly-dallied for two weeks before bringing the idea to the public. (Vacation.) Secondly, as before, he presented only a concept, only this time with a name, American Jobs Act. He threw some numbers on it, $465B, and added broad objectives, but unless some member of his Party backs that up with an actual bill (of some length) to Congress within the next 72 hours we will all know, once again, there never was any intention by the President or his staff to see a bill actually become law this century.

From the Government, by the Government, for the Government

Finally, the heart of his proposal is this:

That the Government will borrow another $465 billion dollars (with no mention of offsetting budget cuts elsewhere to pay for) then take 30% of that money and hire out-of-work men and women, train them, and put them to work restoring and generally fixing up government properties (schools and such), and hire back government employees who had lost their jobs (e.g, teachers)…I wasn’t aware there were any, let alone many. All other contracts will be made using union labor.

About the other 70%, you must always remember the house man gets his cut. If I take a contract to paint a bridge, it will cost me about 14% in admin overhead to get that building painted. It costs the federal government about 70%. That means if actual costs to paint a bridge (paint, scaffolds, labor) is $100,000, I’ll bid $124,000 ($10K for me). If the government does it, they have to write $333,000 in checks to slop that $100,000 worth of paint on the steel.

See how it works?

The Obama Jobs bill is still a government rake off.

They never get it.

 

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