A.J. DiCintio
For Ohio's voters
By A.J. DiCintio
Displaying the same urgency of last time around, Barack Obama is asking Ohio's voters for their support so that he can continue to move "forward" regarding his promises.
With respect to those promises, candidate Obama traveled across virtually every square foot of the Buckeye State in '08, making two very big ones, both concerning jobs:
First, he promised to renegotiate NAFTA, arguing he would return high quality manufacturing jobs to the state by making "the rules of the road. . . fair to everybody."
Second, he promised to create seven million new, "good-paying" jobs nationally, five million of them through an energy policy that vigorously subsidizes wind and solar industries.
Now, over the past four years, Ohioans have accumulated plenty of knowledge not just about the actual number of new jobs Obama has created in your state and the rest of the nation but the quality of those jobs in pay and benefits.
You have acquired substantial information about how many good jobs continue to be lost.
You have learned a lot about the shamelessly manipulated unemployment rate released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which, each month, is compelled to delete huge numbers of unemployed workers from the size of the workforce.
You have become acquainted with the hard facts of underemployment, a scourge that, according to BLS data, produces an unemployment/underemployment rate of 15% but which would climb to 20% if the unemployed were honestly counted.
Finally, with respect to jobs, you are as aware of the fact that in 2011 Ohio had the 11th highest mortgage foreclosure rate in the nation (Politico, 2/9/12) and the 9th highest percentage of mortgages underwater (Dayton Daily News 3/9/12) as, regarding energy, you are of the current price of gasoline.
Since that body of knowledge makes it unnecessary to present you a long list of economic statistics to be placed beside Obama's promises, I'll get right to the specifics of those promises, providing a link for each source.
Then, you can decide for yourselves whether he has honestly and bravely kept them or has devoted himself to the decrepit political agenda in which a politician says one thing to get elected and then forgets about it to pursue an extremist ideology whose "rules" direct him to pay off his voting base as part of a mission to enormously expand the size, reach, power, cost, and indebtedness of government.
Here, then, is Barack Obama in Ohio, 2008, the same Obama who now ridicules Mitt Romney's ideas for leveling the economic playing field with China as "just not credible."
February 13,2008, Submitted by Jeff to the Ohio Daily, "an Ohio progressive blog."
http://www.ohiodailyblog.com/content/obama-mailer-slams-clinton-nafta
Jeff reports that the first mailer he received was from the Obama campaign, declaring that "Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA" and asserting that when Obama says he will fix broken trade deals "we can believe him."
February 24, 2008, Aswini Anburajan, NBC/NJ.
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2008/02/24/4432500-obama-continues-nafta-criticism?lite
"LORAINE, OHIO . . . workers . . . questioned Obama on whether NAFTA could be repealed, and he said that it could not though he wants to renegotiate parts of it to include better labor and environmental protections. He said that [regarding] trade, he believed in it deeply but that 'the rules of the road have to be fair to everybody.'"
February 25, 2008, CNN Politics.
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-02-25/politics/clinton.obama_1_nafta-obama-camp-hillary-clinton?_s=PM:POLITICS
[The article quotes Obama as follows]
"One million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio. And yet. . . Sen. Clinton said it was good for America. Well, I don't think NAFTA has been good for America. . .and I never have."
March 1, 2008, Beth Fouhy, HuffingtonPost.com.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/01/nafta-seen-differently-in_n_89346.html
"Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton roundly condemned NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, as they campaigned across Ohio."
March 4, 2008, Michael Luo, NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/politics/04nafta.html?_r=0.
"In the debate in Cleveland, [Barack Obama] agreed with Mrs. Clinton that he would leave Nafta unless it was negotiated in terms more favorable to American workers."
October 10, 2008,Washington Post transcript of Obama's campaign speech in Chillicothe, Ohio.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101001479.html
"If I am President, I will . . . create five million new, green jobs over the next decade. . .jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. . . I'll also put two million more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, schools, and bridges. . ."
Though a million miles from complete, that list captures the essence of promises Obama made hundreds of times.
However, before you use it to assess his honesty and performance in making your decision regarding his plea for your vote this November, you should also consider the following truths:
For decades and continuing through his presidency, Barack Obama's writings, speeches, and actions have made it clear he deeply believes in the kind of social, political, and economic structure characteristic of Western Europe's bureaucratically bloated, trust-the-political-elites "social democracies."
In truth, however, the elites who guided those nations created their apparent successes on the foolish, dangerous hope they could forever make mountains of promises, enact them into mountains of laws, and pay for them with mountains of debt.
The result now that reality has begun to bite?
Except for cautious, common sense Germany, Western Europe's biggest economies find themselves in a debt-induced, job and growth killing death spiral that explains the dream-smothering unemployment afflicting young people at the rate of 22% in France and Great Britain, 34% in Italy, and 53% in Spain.
However distressing those numbers, Western Europe's most frightening problem, even in depression-gripped Spain and Greece, isn't economic pain; for history shows that when the ghost of economic collapse haunts a culture, the unspeakably ominous specter of social disintegration inevitably lurks close by.
That's why self-made man , proud leather-aproned printer who never went to college, multi-talented genius, and great patriot Ben Franklin truly revealed his love for his country when he bequeathed to it advice that warns, "He that lives upon hope shall die fasting."
With all the pertinent facts now placed next to the list of the president's promises, you are fully prepared to decide whether for yourselves, your children, and your grandchildren, you want to risk four more years of change Obama style.
© A.J. DiCintio
October 21, 2012
Displaying the same urgency of last time around, Barack Obama is asking Ohio's voters for their support so that he can continue to move "forward" regarding his promises.
With respect to those promises, candidate Obama traveled across virtually every square foot of the Buckeye State in '08, making two very big ones, both concerning jobs:
First, he promised to renegotiate NAFTA, arguing he would return high quality manufacturing jobs to the state by making "the rules of the road. . . fair to everybody."
Second, he promised to create seven million new, "good-paying" jobs nationally, five million of them through an energy policy that vigorously subsidizes wind and solar industries.
Now, over the past four years, Ohioans have accumulated plenty of knowledge not just about the actual number of new jobs Obama has created in your state and the rest of the nation but the quality of those jobs in pay and benefits.
You have acquired substantial information about how many good jobs continue to be lost.
You have learned a lot about the shamelessly manipulated unemployment rate released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which, each month, is compelled to delete huge numbers of unemployed workers from the size of the workforce.
You have become acquainted with the hard facts of underemployment, a scourge that, according to BLS data, produces an unemployment/underemployment rate of 15% but which would climb to 20% if the unemployed were honestly counted.
Finally, with respect to jobs, you are as aware of the fact that in 2011 Ohio had the 11th highest mortgage foreclosure rate in the nation (Politico, 2/9/12) and the 9th highest percentage of mortgages underwater (Dayton Daily News 3/9/12) as, regarding energy, you are of the current price of gasoline.
Since that body of knowledge makes it unnecessary to present you a long list of economic statistics to be placed beside Obama's promises, I'll get right to the specifics of those promises, providing a link for each source.
Then, you can decide for yourselves whether he has honestly and bravely kept them or has devoted himself to the decrepit political agenda in which a politician says one thing to get elected and then forgets about it to pursue an extremist ideology whose "rules" direct him to pay off his voting base as part of a mission to enormously expand the size, reach, power, cost, and indebtedness of government.
Here, then, is Barack Obama in Ohio, 2008, the same Obama who now ridicules Mitt Romney's ideas for leveling the economic playing field with China as "just not credible."
February 13,2008, Submitted by Jeff to the Ohio Daily, "an Ohio progressive blog."
http://www.ohiodailyblog.com/content/obama-mailer-slams-clinton-nafta
Jeff reports that the first mailer he received was from the Obama campaign, declaring that "Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA" and asserting that when Obama says he will fix broken trade deals "we can believe him."
February 24, 2008, Aswini Anburajan, NBC/NJ.
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2008/02/24/4432500-obama-continues-nafta-criticism?lite
"LORAINE, OHIO . . . workers . . . questioned Obama on whether NAFTA could be repealed, and he said that it could not though he wants to renegotiate parts of it to include better labor and environmental protections. He said that [regarding] trade, he believed in it deeply but that 'the rules of the road have to be fair to everybody.'"
February 25, 2008, CNN Politics.
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-02-25/politics/clinton.obama_1_nafta-obama-camp-hillary-clinton?_s=PM:POLITICS
[The article quotes Obama as follows]
"One million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio. And yet. . . Sen. Clinton said it was good for America. Well, I don't think NAFTA has been good for America. . .and I never have."
March 1, 2008, Beth Fouhy, HuffingtonPost.com.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/01/nafta-seen-differently-in_n_89346.html
"Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton roundly condemned NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, as they campaigned across Ohio."
March 4, 2008, Michael Luo, NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/politics/04nafta.html?_r=0.
"In the debate in Cleveland, [Barack Obama] agreed with Mrs. Clinton that he would leave Nafta unless it was negotiated in terms more favorable to American workers."
October 10, 2008,Washington Post transcript of Obama's campaign speech in Chillicothe, Ohio.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101001479.html
"If I am President, I will . . . create five million new, green jobs over the next decade. . .jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. . . I'll also put two million more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, schools, and bridges. . ."
Though a million miles from complete, that list captures the essence of promises Obama made hundreds of times.
However, before you use it to assess his honesty and performance in making your decision regarding his plea for your vote this November, you should also consider the following truths:
For decades and continuing through his presidency, Barack Obama's writings, speeches, and actions have made it clear he deeply believes in the kind of social, political, and economic structure characteristic of Western Europe's bureaucratically bloated, trust-the-political-elites "social democracies."
In truth, however, the elites who guided those nations created their apparent successes on the foolish, dangerous hope they could forever make mountains of promises, enact them into mountains of laws, and pay for them with mountains of debt.
The result now that reality has begun to bite?
Except for cautious, common sense Germany, Western Europe's biggest economies find themselves in a debt-induced, job and growth killing death spiral that explains the dream-smothering unemployment afflicting young people at the rate of 22% in France and Great Britain, 34% in Italy, and 53% in Spain.
However distressing those numbers, Western Europe's most frightening problem, even in depression-gripped Spain and Greece, isn't economic pain; for history shows that when the ghost of economic collapse haunts a culture, the unspeakably ominous specter of social disintegration inevitably lurks close by.
That's why self-made man , proud leather-aproned printer who never went to college, multi-talented genius, and great patriot Ben Franklin truly revealed his love for his country when he bequeathed to it advice that warns, "He that lives upon hope shall die fasting."
With all the pertinent facts now placed next to the list of the president's promises, you are fully prepared to decide whether for yourselves, your children, and your grandchildren, you want to risk four more years of change Obama style.
© A.J. DiCintio
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
