UNDER OBAMA, PLANTS CLOSE, UNEMPLOYMENT RISES, AND CONSUMER CONFIDENCE IS SHAKEN
by Sharon Rondeau
(May 15, 2012) — A new ad has been released by the Obama regime aimed at convincing voters that Mitt Romney was responsible for eliminating 750 jobs in the steel-making industry IN 2001.
Romney became CEO of Bain Capital, a “private investment company,” and later founded a spinoff venture, Bain & Company. Bain Capital had bought GST Steel in 1993 which went bankrupt and closed in 2001.
One of the people who lost his job when GST closed likened Bain & Company, GST’s “majority owner,” to a “vampire” which was allegedly “sucking money out of the company like there was no tomorrow.” Those interviewed for the ad named Romney specifically as having “taken all the money” and failed to “take care of” the workers at GST.
About one month before his untimely death in 1965, civil rights activist Malcolm X had stated, “It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism need some blood to suck….It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has fewer victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It is only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”
Are vultures and vampires similar?
On May 9, 2012, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new regulations which will stop the production of “the last two remaining manganese ferroalloy manufacturers” in the United States.
After Obama had promised in 2008 to make electricity rates “skyrocket” by forcing them to retrofit their operations to new regulations, last June, five coal-fired power plants were closed in West Virginia due to a new EPA regulation limiting greenhouse gas emissions. As of December 2011, as many as 32 more power plants were threatened with closure because of new EPA regulations, including in southwestern Virginia, where the congressman from the area had concluded that “the EPA has declared war on coal.” Evidence has surfaced recently that the EPA’s “general philosophy” is to not only declare war on, but also “crucify” providers of oil and gas.
A federal prisoner in Texas recently gleaned 41% of the Democrat primary vote over Obama in West Virginia.
The EPA promotes “environmental products and services” and “environmental justice.” Obama also said in February that he “would prefer a gradual adjustment” to high gasoline prices. Obama awarded venture capitalists with employment in his Energy Department and attended a fundraiser with one while he decries Romney’s involvement with them.
And then there was Solyndra.
Less than three months after Obama took office, it was estimated that 2,000,000 jobs had been lost just in 2009, with a total of 5,100,000 jobs estimated to have been eliminated since the beginning of 2008 under President Bush. As of July 2009, 64 banks had failed in that year alone.
Obama had said that more regulation over and control of banks would be “good for the economy.” But was the legislation he signed constitutional?
Is his “presidency?”
Prior to Obama’s occupation of the White House, mortgage handlers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed under government “conservatorship” as the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis deepened. During the 1990s, mortgage restrictions were lifted so that those whose income would normally not have qualified them were given home loans. As a result, home foreclosures in 2009 numbered in the millions, declining in 2010 because of a moratorium on repossessions which stalled the process. Some reports indicated that 2011 saw a relatively small number of foreclosed properties as compared to the previous four years.
In early 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported that personal bankruptcy filings had increased in 2009 over 2008 by one-third, “largely driven by foreclosures and job losses.”
According to Kiplinger, there will be a modest growth in the GDP following four years of recession, “but it will remain a tough market for job-seekers.” One source reports that more than 4,000,000 jobs have been shed by America’s economy since Obama took office, the most under any head of state since 1940. The unemployment rate stayed the same from March 2012 to April 2012. A non-governmental source suggests that the current unemployment rate is 11.1%. If people working part-time were to be included in the unemployment rate, it is estimated to be 14.5%. One financial specialist states that including “discouraged workers” places the unemployment rate at 22% or higher.
Is it any wonder that consumer confidence is unsteady?
Regarding the auto industry, Romney said he had advocated a “managed bankruptcy” rather than a bailout from the federal government funded by taxpayers. Obama says in a new campaign ad that it was “the right thing to do.” But was it constitutional?
Despite Americans’ bankruptcies, pricey bailouts, foreclosures, plant closings, and job losses, Obama and his family have maintained a lavish lifestyle on the taxpayers’ dime, having been accused of spending more than $10,000,000 on vacations alone over the last three years. When their elder daughter went to Mexico in March, a country to which Americans had been warned not to travel, 25 Secret Service agents accompanied her and her friend. Why would the parents have allowed their daughter to go there? And why should the taxpayers have paid for it?
But then again, has Obama even been thinking clearly over the last four years?
Then there is the apparent trouble with members of Obama’s Secret Service, the GSA, State Department, Justice Department – over a matter of “constitutional rights” which it has just denied a defendant wrongly accused and incarcerated – and federal appointees, including a U.S. Supreme Court justice and dishonest cabinet members.
So who is the real vampire?