Florida Governor and Job Destroyer Rick Scott, also known by Floridians as "Skeletor," or "the lizard Governor"
Right now, our representatives and senators and president are engaged in talks over the debt ceiling, the national budget, and how to end the pernicious recession that has lingered over a sizeable chunk of this writer’ s adult life. People are out of work, and the economy is in the toilet. Is this the way it’s always going to be?
When Obama was elected in 2008, I, like many liberals, was ecstatic. I thought he would institute a program of public works a la FDR that would get people employed, restart the economy, and end the dire economic situation of our country. I’m not going to say he didn’t try. For example, he provided massive funding for increased train transportation, which would have provided who knows how many jobs (building train tracks, building train cars—there’s an empty passenger train factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin waiting to start production), and decreased our dependency on foreign oil, and on oil period (remember global warming?). Many states, including Wisconsin, where I grew up and where I will be returning to live in a few weeks, and Florida, where I’ve lived for the past five years, have Republican governors who rejected those funds, thus rejecting job creation and advancing job destruction.
Republican governors have also slashed public sector jobs that already existed. Some estimates say public sector jobs cuts in 2011 are nearing 200,000. I’ll repeat: nearly 200,000 public sector jobs lost. In Minnesota, Republican state senators have shut down the state’s government because they refuse to pass a budget that raises taxes on Minnesotan millionaires. All of these Republicans make and propose cuts to public sector jobs, paired with tax cuts for already wealthy-beyond-imagination Americans as a way to provide incentive for so-called “job creators.” Let’s bring Job Creators to Florida! Let’s give incentives for Job Creators to come Create Jobs!
In reality, the holy grail of private sector job growth is stagnating under a stunted economy and broken tax code (broken in that it fails to adequately tax the wealthy). And instead of creating jobs, Governors like Rick Scott of Florida and Scott Walker of Wisconsin are destroying them. They are Job Destroyers. They lay off thousands and public sector employees, make cuts to education, and generally make what is already a bad situation worse. We can’t grow this economy by slashing public sector jobs.
As sole chairwoman of the Robin Hood Party, I say shame on you Job Destroyer Rick Scott, and shame on you too Job Destroyer Scott Walker. My party-within-a-party, the Robin Hood Party, has remained silent for the last three months, but, given the recent deadlock over raising the debt ceiling, and the cutting of even more public sector jobs, I feel the need to speak out, and to remind Americans that the patriotic Robin Hood Party’s platform of raising taxes on wealthy Americans to create public sector jobs, fund public schools, universities, libraries, parks, and arts programs, would not only create jobs, but also create Americans who are happier, better educations, less afraid of economic collapse on a personal and national level, and better equipped to be global citizens in a new millennium. And, we’ d also be able to pay our national debts with our increased tax revenue.
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all points well taken, but i feel like you take your sights of the President a little too quickly. liberal ecstasy was really just a jubilant response to anyone other than W, and of course the defeat of McCain. it was evident all along that Obama was, at best, a Clintonian third wayer, and not at all progressive. barely “liberal” in any meaningful sense. so knowing this – and we’re all deep in that depressing knowledge now – we have to look at his all but certain collapse in the negotiations over the debt ceiling. i hope i’m wrong, but Obama is going to cut “entitlements” (god how i hate that term) to appease congressional Republicans. and i think this is what he *wants.*
it’s hard to believe that the President is such a disaster as a negotiator. put another way: he’s either 1. incompetent or 2. getting what he wants. i fear it’s the latter while i, of course, can’t hope for the former.
I worry about that too. I want to believe that Obama is going to pull out a victory on these issues at the eleventh hour, but I’m beginning to wonder–and I would call myself a true Democrat, I voted for Gore, Kerry, and Obama in the three presidential election in which I was eligible to vote–whether Obama is really working for the working and middle classes. I want to believe that he is. I hope that he is.
yeah, i, too, am a full-on Democrat, at least as far as my voting record. our options have all be a bit too tepid to elicit much excitement when it comes to party allegiance, though.
another case in point: today’s NYT front page tells tale of vast cuts in vocational and technical programs in both high schools and community colleges. this is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing when it comes to education. the story itself has problems. for instance, it’s throws forth an irritating bit of condescension after the jump, and it focuses/frames itself on jobs training for high-tech technical schools rather than, say, plumbers and electricians, workers whose essential jobs can’t be sent abroad when times are tight. BUT, it’s still administration policy to make these silly funding decisions.
ugh.
i think i just broke up with Barack Obama.
I know, I saw the same article and found it thoroughly disheartening. Talk about going in the wrong direction.