Yesterday Barack Obama spoke to a closed session of firefighters and other officials, dedicating a new fire house in Chesterfield, Virginia.
He said that if his jobs bill can’t be passed in whole, it should in parts, and the primary part should be in putting firefighters “back” to work.
In other speeches, he says putting cops “back” to work, still others “teachers”, still other road-builders, bridge builders, construction workers. See a pattern?
Several untruths are involved in these jobs speeches, least of which is, to date, Obama’s bill has still not been formally introduced by a Democrat sponsor in the House of Representatives. Seems his bill was dead before arrival. Fittingly, the Democrat House aborted it.
Of interest, the general public was blocked from all of Obama’s North Carolina and Virginia stump speeches, as they have been during almost all of Obama’s speeches since he first presented his jobs plan three months ago.
The reason for these closed sessions? Simple, Obama is not talking to the American people on purpose. He never has been, in fact. He is talking to state and county employees, and reminding them that federal taxes is from whence all good things come knowing this message will be broadcast all over the country in state and county media.
Why Obama chose a county that’s in the black, I can’t say. In one interview, a Chesterfield fire official said they had not laid off any firefighters, that every position was three-deep in personnel, but they sure would like to make it four-deep for safety reasons. And they sure would like to bring in some newer generation fire-fighting equipment. You know, the same wish list everyone sends out every year. And I want the Lord to buy me a Mercedes Benz.
Both Virginia and Chesterfield County are operating in the black. They have money in the bank, but haven’t thought it necessary to add those dream items to the fire department’s budget. No Mercedes under the Christmas tree this year, either.
Obama mentioned the thousands of police and firemen (and teachers) nationwide who’ve been laid off that need to be put back to work. None of those folks are paid by the federal government directly either. They are not on any federal payroll. The fed’s middle-man fee is staggering, so you can imagine what he’s really pimping here.
But why, in other parts of the country, were they laid off in the first place?
Answer: To protect the jobs of useless front office bureaucrats in county and state bureaucracies, often people whose only job is to interface with the feds in the first place. Cops and firemen and other first responders should be the last, not the first, people laid off, and all federal aid should be predicated on that stipulation, just as money given to New Orleans to build levees should have some oversight mechanism to insure it actually does build levees.
And Obama, like Clinton’s Cops Programs, will only put people back to work for a year. Who pays after that? The people of Chesterfield County, Virginia. The people of Raleigh, North Carolina. that’s who. So essentially Obama is asking for money today to give counties and cities and states an unfunded liability for coming years, to insure they come back with their begging bowls in out years.
Don’t worry, Virginia law makers know this already.
By the bye, does anyone know how much of a “handling fee” the federal government gets for being the source of creating new jobs and buying new equipment for counties instead of them creating it themselves? About 20%, even more if they have to design a new direct-grant program to get it transferred.
So Obama needs to be called on both the blatant political purpose in these speeches and the embedded lies. If Chesterfield County wanted to increase fire fighters, it could do so by spending the local taxpayers money 10% more efficiently than if they had gotten the money from the state, and 20%-30% more efficiently than if they had gotten it from the feds. In other words, what costs the taxpayers $1m to do with local money, costs the taxpayers up to $1.3m with federal money.
And finally, Obama needs to have publicly pointed out the purposeful exclusivity of his speeches. They are only about government jobs and union jobs, attempting to create the illusion that this is where America is really hurting. (Well actually, in his America, it is.) Harry Reid is telling us that the private sector is in good shape (having lost 3 million jobs, some say up to 10m) while the public sector having lost 400,000, is in desperate shape, so that’s where we need to redouble our efforts in replenishing.
And, of course, the cherry-est of lies, the bridges, schools and roads he says needs to be fixed with this money were supposed to have been fixed with Stimulus 1.
A parting Virginia note:
While experts say Virginia is a key swing state for Obama, he refused to drive that fine Canadian-made $1.1 million bus 50 miles out of the way to visit Louisa County, which was devastated by an earthquake and several after-shocks in late summer. His administration refused to provide any financial support for recovery.
So while Obama came to Virginia to seduce firefighters swimming in black ink, he kissed the rest of Virginia off for 2012.
Yes, this is how a thugocracy treats its enemies, and the Virginia state administration is in enemy hands, as Obama sees it.
So why should Virginians vote for him? Or Tim Kaine?
