Last week, many Americans watched President Obama stand in front of of his teleprompters and Congress and sell—no,demand—a still unwritten bill dubbed the American Jobs Act. While the President certainly gives an entertaining teleprompted speech, his demands were reminiscent of a third-world barter between a goat herder and a villager: In exchange for two goats (temporary tax cuts), you can give your daughter and her dowry (nearly another half a trillion dollars) to the goat herder so he can give them both to his union boss friends.
The very next day, Obama hit the campaign trail to demand that the House pass the unwritten bill even as employers and Wall Street shrugged at the unwritten plan.
“You still need to have the business need to hire,” said Jeffery Braverman, owner of Nutsonline, an e-commerce company in Cranford, N.J., that sells nuts and dried fruit. While a $4,000 credit could offset the cost of the company’s lowest-cost health insurance plan, he said, it would not spur him to hire someone. “Business demand is what drives hiring,” he said.Then, a most peculiar thing happened. The White House spammed reporters’ e-mail boxes (something that wassupposedly stopped in 2009) and began issuing union press releases of unions backing the unwritten “jobs bill.” For the moment, try to ignore the fact that the White House press releases are touting Obama campaign donors’ acceptance of the unwritten jobs bill. [That is another, though related, issue.]
For the White House press office to become the ministry of propaganda for the likes of AFL-CIO, AFSCME, NEA, SEIU, Steelworkers, Teamsters, UAW and UFCW—almost all of whom have their wagons hitched to Obama’s re-election wagon and will gain more dues from Obama’s plan to spend more money—is something that is both entirely new, as well as disturbing.
What is even more disturbing is the lack of questioning from the media. Of course, this silence could be explained by the fact that much of the media is represented by the Communications Workers of America. The CWA, for its part, did send out it’s own press release.
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