More jobs by the boards

In what’s become a familiar refrain, experts were “surprised” to find the economy lost 85,000 jobs in December instead of reversing the nearly two year trend of job losses.

Yet there’s one industry which has been crying out to help but gets the cold shoulder from the Obama Administration. While it may not be politically or environmentally correct, we still need oil and natural gas but the federal government doesn’t seem to want to play ball with their industry. Instead, they place more obstacles in the way.

When an industry directly or indirectly supports over 9 million jobs it seems to me they should have a better place at the economic table. But instead those in charge now are spending our stimulus money on “green” jobs that are little more than a political payoff to their union buddies (at the expense of some of their union brethren in the energy industry.) Needless to say, I would rather have an increase in jobs financed by the private sector than one where the funding is either confiscated from all of us or created out of thin air.

It’s pretty much beyond argument that the “stimulus” has failed to achieve its desired result of keeping unemployment below 8 percent. Since there is no logical manner of truly determining what constitutes a “saved” job the only yardstick we have to measure success is the government employment statistic which continues to show jobs being lost. The only reason the unemployment rate remained at 10% was the people dropping off at the other end who have become totally discouraged and stopped actively looking for work.

Yet here’s an industry which would love to spend its own money to create jobs, but needs government to get out of the way and open up land for exploration. Unfortunately, those who value endangered species over endangered livelihoods hold sway in the government right now and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is having so much fun being an obstacle he won’t go back to Colorado and run for their suddenly vacating governor’s chair.

With this sort of attitude from Washington, don’t be surprised if double-digit unemployment isn’t here to stay.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

One thought on “More jobs by the boards”

  1. I believe that double-digit unemployment is here to stay, unless the “powers that be” open up the potential of this once great country, once again.
    The “usual” Retail/Service industry is going to lose out to the internet. I know for a fact that my 20-something daughter does most of her shopping online.
    Once the “grocery” industry figures out a way to eliminate the middle man(the corner store), I too will be unemployed.

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