Damn the Constitution, Obama’s Got Stuff to Do

Jesse Jackson Jr.: Damn the Constitution, Obama’s Got Stuff to Do
Why doesn’t Obama just hire everybody?
by John Hayward 10/13/2011

Nicholas Ballasy of the Daily Caller had a remarkable interview with Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. of Illinois yesterday, in which the Democrat congressman called for President Obama to ignore the Constitution, compared Obama’s opponents to the Confederacy, and suggested the federal government should immediately hire all of America’s unemployed for $40,000 per year.

To watch Jesse Jackson Jr. click here.

Now, before you accuse Ballasy of swinging at low-hanging fruit by putting a camera in front of Jesse Jackson, Jr., bear in mind this guy is a duly elected member of the United States Congress. He’s also not far outside the Democrat Party mainstream in expressing his deep reservations about that accursed Constitution, and all the messy representative democracy that keeps getting in the way of our great leader.

As Ballasy mentions at the beginning of his interview with Jackson, Obama himself just told his “jobs council” to find ways to act without congressional authorization and shove as much of his failed “jobs bill” down America’s throat as it can. ABC News provides the details:

“We’re not going to wait for Congress. So my instruction to… all the advisers who are sitting around the table is, scour this report, identify all those areas in which we can act administratively without additional congressional authorization, and just get it done,” the president said at a meeting of his Jobs and Competitiveness Council in Pittsburgh.

If Congress does not pass the bill in full, the president reiterated his plan to adopt a piecemeal approach to pass the American Jobs Act. ”If they don’t pass the whole package, we’re going to break it up into different parts,” he said.

The president’s council, made up of 27 top U.S executives, has put forward five “targeted proposals that can meaningfully accelerate job creation while beginning to rebuild America’s competitiveness.”

“These days, things don’t move as quickly through Congress as we would like. But there are certain ideas that are contained in this jobs council report that historically have received bipartisan support. And the election is 14 months away, or 13 months away. We can’t wait until another election before we start acting on some of those ideas,” Obama said.

Elections are such a hassle for hard-working benevolent dictators! By the way, although ABC doesn’t mention it, Obama’s “jobs council” politburo is packed with – you guessed it! – top Obama campaign contributors. The Daily Californian has the roll call:

At least 10 of the 27 members on the council donated $4,600, the maximum legal amount for individuals, to Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Laura Tyson, professor of global management in the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, was one of the 10 who donated $4,600 to the Obama campaign in 2008 and has donated $17,150 overall to Democratic candidates and committees since 1999, according to the Federal Election Commission​Tyson has held influential government positions since the early 1990s, serving as former President Bill Clinton​’s national economic adviser from 1995 to 1996 and as a member of the National Security Council and Domestic Policy Council during his administration.

The donations from the council have called into question the objectivity of the body, which “was created to provide non-partisan advice to the President on . . . ways to create jobs, opportunity, and prosperity for the American people,” according to the White House website.

Did you donate $4,600 to Obama’s 2008 campaign? No? Then shut up and do as you’re told, and stop whining to your Congressman.

Jackson is crudely expressing a very common thought among Democrats: every problem in American can be explained by insufficient government power. The solution lies in removing obstacles to the power of the all-wise, all-knowing elite. Congress and the Constitution are such obstacles.

As for suggesting Obama wipe out unemployment by hiring everyone to work for the government, well, Jackson is really behind the curve there. I made my own “Zero Percent Unemployment – NOW!” proposal back in July 2009:

There are about 15 million people unemployed in the United States at the moment, and the number is rising. Barack Obama​ is personally responsible for every single one of them. Why? Because he could hire them all.

The wasteful, pork-encrusted “stimulus” bill rammed through Congress by the Democrats cost taxpayers $787 billion. That works out to about $52k per unemployed person. Instead of pouring all that money into the pockets of their political allies, the Democrats could have hired every single unemployed person for two years, at $26k per year, tax free.

[…] What would Obama do with those fifteen million new employees? Well, they’ve all got skills, right? Most of them are capable of working, and I would venture to say that many of them desperately want to work. Surely a man who can conjure the biggest, most complex medical insurance “corporation” on Earth out of thin air could find something to do with fifteen million new pairs of hands. Maybe they could write their own job descriptions, and suggest fun, productive ways to put their talents to use on behalf of America. I bet we could find “green jobs” for all of them.

I was thinking of offering $26,000 per year for two years to the unemployed, while Jackson demands $40,000 per year, on average. He said some would get more than $40k, and some less, although he didn’t specify whether it would be Obama himself, or a council of top Obama donors, making that decision.

Jackson talked about his little brainstorm as a one-time $600 billion “stimulus,” which would lead to some unhappy moments when that year-long make-work $40k government job ran out… right in the middle of Obama’s re-election campaign, if the Jackson plan was implemented immediately. You don’t suppose Obama might propose another such “stimulus” to buy those people’s votes, do you? Gosh, you’d have to be a greedy, heartless fat cat to propose taking away forty thousand dollar paychecks from fifteen million deserving people.

What effect do you suppose handing out $40k per year to do nothing of importance would have on private-sector employment, especially among those who make less than $40k per year?

Jesse Jackson Jr​., like the rest of his Party, has absolutely no idea how private industry works. He’s just displaying a concentrated form of the pure ignorance that illuminates all of their policies. I put it this way back in 2009, when regretfully concluding that my “Zero Percent Unemployment – NOW!” proposal had a few holes in it:

Listening to Democrats explain their wonderful plans for universal access to free everything, you realize they have a profound misconception about the economy, which fuels many of their other delusions: they think running a business is easy. Being a doctor is easy. Working in a bank, a mortgage company, or an investment brokerage is a piece of cake. All of the people who do these things will continue to do them, with equal dedication… even if their taxes are raised, or their industries are nationalized.

Anyone who runs a real business knows how completely wrongheaded this is. Business ownership is hard. It takes entrepreneurial risk, the ability to find and exploit opportunities, discipline, and sacrifice. The owners and managers of every business, from small family operations to huge conglomerates, must make tough decisions about paying expenses, making investments, pleasing shareholders, and coping with unexpected setbacks. Sometimes these decisions are agonizing. Every business owner reading this could tell a story about sitting up late at night, staring at vendor invoices, payroll ledgers, and accounts receivable with watery eyes, trying to make them fit together and produce balanced books somehow. Even the wealthiest of them could tell you harrowing tales of lean times, when personal assets had to be put at risk, or life savings had to be tapped as investment capital. Even hearing these stories would not prepare you for the reality of owning a business of your own, if you’ve never tried it. You must experience it for yourself to appreciate it.

Very few Democrat politicians have ever run a business. Barack Obama certainly hasn’t. I doubt he would agree with the sentiments expressed in the previous paragraph. In his heart, like every socialist, he sees business owners as nothing but rich people driving around in fancy cars… and since the federal government is richer than any of them, it will be the best business owner ever.

I’d enjoy asking every Democrat politician what they think of Jesse Jackson Junior’s plan for wiping out unemployment. I’ll bet virtually none of them could coherently explain whatever objections they professed to have.
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To read another article by John Hayward, click here.