By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
It’s still jobs, jobs, lack of jobs that preoccupy us, and rightly. We’ve been told the President has a plan, but whatever it is, it won’t be enough. It can’t be. What he inherited has left him few options, and I’m tired of hearing about how this economic mess is all Obama’s fault. Whatever his failings or talents as a national leader, he didn’t create this horror story, and I don’t believe he takes any joy in it, which is more than can be said for some others working in the halls of Congress. Here are a few charts that make that truth very evident.
The right is remarkably accomplished at projecting its considerable sins onto others, but after a decade as overtly dramatic as the one presided over by George W. Bush, you’d think there would be enough of us out here in the wasteland to stop the Republican noise machine. Somehow that never happens. According to the Republicans — the squeaky wheel, as it were — it’s liberal conspirators like you and me that have brought this nation to its knees with communist ideology, socialist inclinations, unreasonable business regulations and give-aways to the great unwashed. In order to get clarity on the whole of the last decade, then, I think we should reduce it to dollars and cents.
If we took a long look at the ledgers, perhaps we’d get a sense of how many greed-inspired corporate cuts it actually took to bleed our wealth away. That isn’t so straight-forward, of course, since the Dubby’s books were cooked in clever ways like debt not disclosed or held over to be popped into another column farther down the road. Pubs are traditionally very good at this kind of creative bookkeeping while Dems are more often honest to a fault and, ultimately, faulted for their honesty. Obama suffers this syndrome.