While Americans Can't Find Jobs, Obama's At Work Raising Campaign Cash
Where are the jobs? That's the first question we should be asking in what's now the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression — or, more precisely, the longest nonrecovery since the 1930s.
"More than 23 million Americans are either unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work," reported the Bureau of Labor Statistics in July.
Here's the second question: Why hasn't President Obama met with his Jobs Council for six months? That is precisely the question that was asked by a reporter at the White House press briefing on July 18.
Reporter: "On the Jobs Council, obviously they've reported to haven't met formally or publicly for six months. Why exactly is that?"
After White House Press Secretary Jay Carney answered with a nonanswer, the reporter tried again: "So there's no reason they haven't met publicly?" Carney: "No, there's no specific reason except that the president's obviously got a lot on his plate."
And that's no lie. There'll be broiled chicken and green beans on Mr. Obama's plate at a fundraiser in Florida, followed by a plate of chicken and broccoli in Iowa, and then a plate of chicken and mashed potatoes in Ohio, etc., etc., etc.
In all, Obama has stacked up a record of 120 fundraisers in six months. And not all of it was the same old banquet chicken. The price of admission earlier this month to the lavish fundraiser at the oceanfront compound in Connecticut of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was $35,800 per person, $71,600 a couple.
Getting a lot on his plate that day, Obama attended a $500 per person Connecticut fundraiser at the Marriott in Stamford just two hours before his motorcade pulled up at his second fundraiser of the evening at the Weinstein mansion.
Weinstein's "presidential menu," created and cooked by two-time James Beard Award-winning chef Michael Nischan and his team, opened with an heirloom tomato salad over pickled cucumbers "from the chef's garden," followed by an entree of locally engineered and raised heirloom chicken (chicken again, but politically correct birds this time), served with potato tarts and shaved sweet carrots and local bok choy, with skillet seared with misco and agave. For dessert, local honey and local berries over pan-fried angel food cake.
With 120 fundraisers in 170 days, not counting golf, who has time to meet with the Jobs Council? Why put unemployment on the front burner when heirloom chickens are in the oven?
A report from JPMorgan examined the prior private-sector experience of 432 Cabinet members in presidential administrations since 1900, including secretaries of commerce, Treasury, state, interior, agriculture, transportation, housing and urban development, labor and energy (and excluding Navy, postmaster general, defense, homeland security, veterans affairs and health, education and welfare).
At least half the Cabinet members in the following administrations had prior private-sector experience: Eisenhower 57%, Reagan 56%, George W. Bush 55%, Nixon 53%, Wilson 52%, George H. Bush 51%, Franklin Roosevelt 50%, Truman 50%.
Prior private-sector experience ranged from 49% to 40% in the following administrations: Harding 49%, Coolidge 48%, Johnson 47%, Ford 42%, Hoover 42%, Taft 40%. And the presidents with the lowest percentages of Cabinet members with prior private-sector experience: Clinton 39%, Teddy Roosevelt 38%, Carter 32%, Kennedy 30%, Obama 8%.
Unfortunately, even these "private-sector experience" numbers overstate the case. The CEO of Solyndra would be included as "private sector" if Obama would have bumped him up to the Cabinet as secretary of energy.
Perhaps it's the record-breaking lack of Cabinet-level "private-sector experience" at the Obama White House that explains the failures in job creation and the apparent lack of appreciation in this administration about the role of profit, investment, economic freedom, risk-taking and entrepreneurship.
It's not unlike putting a group of people in charge of a zoo who know next to nothing about animals.
• Reiland is associate professor of economics and the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise at Robert Morris University. |
