Obama the Job Terminator

Obama the Job Terminator
by Roger Hedgecock
08/12/2011

Through taxation and regulation, the Democrat candidate for President is killing American jobs. The effort is so pronounced, so pervasive and so relentless, that it is time to call it deliberate.

Obama has consistently demanded higher individual income taxes on "millionaires and billionaires," which he consistently defines as anyone making more than $200,000 a year. Calling for "fairness," he has repeated this mantra thousands of times. Apparently he believes it would be fairer if the top 1% of American income tax payers already paying 38% of all federal income tax revenues pay even more, while half of all American adults continue to pay no income tax at all.

Obama has blocked all attempts to lower the American corporate tax rate—now the highest of all industrialized countries. Worse still, Obama has blocked all efforts to stop the double taxation of U.S. companies' foreign sales. American companies pay taxes to countries where sales are made, then face American corporate income taxes if the net profits are brought back home. Trillions of dollars are kept by American companies overseas instead of being invested here because of this stubborn job-killing double taxation.

Consequently, while the TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States) speaks eloquently about the need for jobs, Obama tax policy punishes job creators. While the TOTUS speaks up forcefully for increased American exports to create jobs, the reality of Obama tax policy is having the opposite effect—jobs are fleeing the U.S. While the TOTUS castigates American companies for hoarding cash and not hiring, it is Obama's double taxation policies that are causing the problem.

As with other bad trends (deficit spending, declining student test scores, endless wars) that predated Obama but have accelerated under his regime, things have gotten so much worse for job creators in the U.S. in the last 2.5 years.

Consider manufacturing. After dominating the world in the 20th century as the most productive, most innovative and most technologically advanced economy, America has experienced a sharp and now steeper decline—50,000 American manufacturing companies and 5.5 million jobs have evaporated since 2000, a trend that has accelerated. Manufacturing's share of the Gross Domestic Product has dropped from 28% in 1965 to 10% today. Examples abound.

Try to buy a set of glasses made in the USA today. Glassware is America's oldest industry, but only two companies (Libbey Glass Inc. of Toledo, Ohio, and Anchor Hoking of Lancaster, Ohio) still make glassware in the U.S.

Frederich Air Conditioning was the last U.S. manufacturer of air-conditioning window units. The company closed its San Antonio, Tex., plant recently and moved to Mexico .

Semiconductors are critical to modern devices, civilian and military. The U.S. share of global semiconductor production fell from 17% in 2007 to 14% in 2009. Of the 16 semiconductor manufacturing facilities under construction around the world in 2009, only one was being built in the U.S.

Obama appointed a high-powered group of American CEOs to generate ideas on how to create more jobs in the U.S. The chairman of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, General Electric's CEO Jeff Immelt, recently announced that GE's X-ray device manufacturing division would move to China.

Immelt also recently stated, "Over the past five years, we [GE] have really positioned ourselves as a global company ... the world has never been more independent from the U.S. economy. ... The U.S. economy is still important, but not like it was 5, 10 or 20 years ago." Immelt added that globalization is "profound. It's irrefutable and it's irreversible," adding that the fate of the U.S. economy "is going to be decided in the next three to five years." This is Obama's pick to chair a board devoted to the mission of creating more jobs in the U.S.!

The destruction of American jobs through federal government regulation is also a conscious effort of the Obama regime.

Far from saving money and creating jobs (Pelosi said "400,000 jobs immediately"), ObamaCare has driven up the cost of health care for everyone and driven older, experienced doctors to early retirement.

The National Labor Relations Board is dedicated to unionizing the American workforce to make us even less competitive in the global marketplace. The jihad against Boeing building a new plant (and creating more than 1,000 new jobs) in South Carolina is well-known.

The Department of Homeland Security is devoted to the notion that 11 million or more people breaking into our country and working here illegally is a class worthy of rights and protections (not to mention scholarships). Both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, in times of high unemployment, deported illegals to make jobs available to Americans. Obama sees illegal aliens as undocumented Democrats and reelection voters, no matter how many jobs they take.

The Environmental Protection Agency is competing to do more than any other federal agency to destroy the most jobs and drive up the cost of living for every American.

Proposed regulations governing emissions from coal-fired electrical power plants (which provide some 50% of the nation's electricity) will drive up the cost of electricity, hurting consumers and driving a stake through the heart of any remaining manufacturing plants in the U.S. who are dependent on traditionally cheap and reliable electricity.

In a meeting with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle during the 2008 campaign, Obama outlined his plan to respond to global warming, promising that "under my plan, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket." This is a campaign promise that Obama is committed to keeping.

Following the debt-ceiling fiasco, Obama promised to "pivot" to the priority of job creation. He would do well to remember the old advice given to physicians. First, do no harm.

And We the People would do well to remember another old piece of advice. By their fruits you shall know them. The fruit of Obama's actions is the destruction of job creators and jobs. It is deliberate.