Cars. That’s what Obama wanted to talk about this week in his address to the nation. He needed to take credit for something new as a little preview of what we can expect to hear him say in his final State of the Union address that takes place tonight.
After reminding his audience of the auto industry’s calamitous time during the recession, when plants closed and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, Obama told of gambling with taxpayer dollars.
“I refused to turn my back on so many of the workers that I’d met,” Obama said. “Instead, I placed my bet on American workers. I placed my bet on American manufacturing.”
It was President Bush who started placing bets via TARP. Obama merely continued to throw our chips at the problem–$79.68 billion-worth of chips in the form of loans to General Motors, Chrysler, GM’s Ally Financial, and other related entities.
Obama then said the auto industry had to play by the new rules the always-vague “we” laid out for it if it expected a bailout. He rebuked the critics for calling it a “road to socialism,” saying he would “make that bet again any day of the week.”
Of course he would. The situation improved. Gas prices began to fall, the economy began to recover (but not for everyone), and people who could afford it decided to buy new vehicles again. Besides, he likes playing with billions of other people’s dollars.
Now, as Obama touted, U.S. automakers have hired 640,000 workers since their lowest levels of the recession. Headlines of auto sales hitting all-time highs float around the internets. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are raising some of their wages once again, and the Detroit-area’s unemployment rate is half of what it was before “our plan went into effect.”
But before we get too ecstatic over the bang-up job that “we” have done with Great Commander Obama at the helm, saving the industry that comprises around 3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, there are a few points that need to be made.
First, being an autoworker–though not a poor line of work–isn’t as lucrative and worth boasting about as it used to be. While wages are starting to go up again for American autoworkers, the average wage for nonsupervisor and production autoworkers isn’t keeping pace with the rising wages of the rest of the nation. Their wages and benefits, which used to be the blue-collared toast of the American economy, are less impressive now.
As for the Detroit-area unemployment rate, sure, it’s half of what it was before “we” cut it. Does this mean “we” are responsible for the size of its labor force dropping 14 percent? When the unemployment rate was at its peak in June of 2009, metropolitan Detroit’s labor force was 887,840. In October of 2015, that number was down to 759,303. That’s an astounding 128,000 fewer working-age people just…poof…gone in a little over six years.
The city of Detroit itself has had people fleeing in droves since “our” plans went into effect. In 2009, the population of Detroit was over 900,000. Now it’s less than 700,000–the lowest population the city has seen since at least 1920. Detroit’s suburban population has made some modest gains over the years, but not by much.
Fewer people means fewer employed, even if the unemployment rate is showing marked improvement. It doesn’t look like Detroit will ever recover from the damage “we” have done. Many of the jobs that were in Detroit and the Midwest have headed to the–gasp, racist–Southern states.
Don’t tell Mister Climate Savior, but those stupendous all-time best auto sales the industry is enjoying? Most of the sales growth has been in toxic, wasteful trucks and SUVs, the eradicators of all life on earth. The top three best-selling vehicles of last month were pickups. Sales on smaller, more efficient cars are down. And last month, sales did not meet the expectations of industry analysts. Perhaps the rapid sales re-growth is beginning to slow.
However, gas is cheaper these days, so people are finally buying the vehicles they’ve been wanting to buy. Even though fuel efficiency standards are being force-improved through tighter government mandates, trucks and SUVs are more in demand than those dinky bubble-cars owners plug into their outlets at home. Practically nobody cares about lowering emissions. They want to drive big vehicles and haul their rugrats and other assorted possessions around town.
Also, don’t tell Mister Believes in America that Americans are buying more imports than domestic cars and trucks. The Big 3 automakers combined have a smaller market share than foreign-owned companies do. After the three American models of pickups, the vehicles on the top ten U.S. best-sellers list are all manufactured by foreign companies. And don’t forget that one of the terms by which Chrysler could take bailout money was that it allowed itself to be purchased by the Italian auto company Fiat. So Chrysler can’t be truly considered an American company anymore.
In addition, GM and Chrysler still owe taxpayers $9.3 billion in bailout money, which we’ll never get back.
But Obama will be gracing his presence among the industry people he saved at the Detroit Auto Show next week so he can “see this progress firsthand.” He may even take a tour through the city while he’s there to see the progress in the local neighborhoods.
I kid. He’s not going to visit the ghettos that the wheels of progress built.
Barack said he believes that “every American should be proud of what our most iconic industry has done,” you guys.
Sure. Yeah. Why not. Proud o’ ya, U.S. auto industry that’s moved a ton of jobs to Mexico and will likely move more jobs there in the months and years ahead. Have a $9.3 billion trans fat-free cookie on us.
The President decided to tack on a few more of his statistics that should make us proud Americans. Personally, I think he did it just to tick me off because it meant more fact-checking for me.
Our businesses are now on a 70-month streak of job creation, with more than 14 million new jobs in all.
Okay, I’ve been over this more times than I care to remember. Workforce participation rate.
We’ve revamped our schools and the way we pay for college.
Revamped our schools? As in Common Cored them? That kind of revamp? The majority doesn’t want it. Get rid of it. Because democracy.
And the way “we” pay for college takes a rather socialistic road through government now. If we give the progs what they want, “we” won’t even have to pay for college.
We’ve made historic investments in clean energy and put ourselves on a path to a low-carbon future.
Give it a rest, man. Did carbon sell you some bunk weed once? Did carbon touch you in a bad place? Carbon is the key to all life in the universe. Carbon just wants to be everyone’s friend. Embrace the carbon. Don’t hate it.
We’ve brought more than 17 million Americans into our health care system, seen health care prices grow at the lowest rate in fifty years, and covered more than 90 percent of our people for the very first time.
Oh, lordy, enough about the 17 million and the 90 percent and the crap about health care prices growing at a lower rate. They’re still growing!
And just last night, The Hill published an article with the headline, “Obamacare costs set to spike for thousands.” It’s explained in the article that 43,000 Americans will have to pay for their health care plans in full instead of getting their Obamacare assistance subsidies because they didn’t file a tax return for 2014. The average premium would have been $101 a month after the subsidy, but instead it comes out to $364 a month. That’s over $3,000 more those people have to pay out of pocket for the year because Obamacare sucks. So many confusing, asinine rules that Americans have to deal with now. Thanks, Obama.
And millions didn’t get to keep the doctor nor the insurance plans they wanted, which you, Mister President, said over and over they could keep. There are still more people uninsured than who supposedly became insured since Obamacare was implemented, which should make everyone wonder about the true purpose of radically, intrinsically transforming the colossal health care industry.
The people are sick. They’re sick of Obamacare. It gots ta go.
We’ve even cut our deficits by nearly 75 percent in the process.
Yes, the deficit is down, but it’s projected to rise, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The economy isn’t necessarily stable these days, either. Plus, the national debt is close to $19-with twelve-zeros-after-it and will not be going down. The federal government is the money-sucking behemoth that never shrinks. It just keeps growing. Cutting the deficit from 1-1/2 trillion to half a trillion a year is still not saving money. It’s still spending more money than we have, and we’re saddling that money we owe onto future generations to pay it back. And the deficit will go back up again well after Obama’s conveniently out of the Oval Office, so he gets away without any blame.
The point is America can do anything.
Yes, it can. It is. It will. It voted for Obama, after all. Twice. You can take that as a compliment, but make no mistake that I intended it as an insult.
Even in times of great challenge and change, our future is entirely up to us.
Well, mostly. When the government’s not getting in our way.
Our way. Our. We. And he wonders why people say such things like “road to socialism.”
That’s been on my mind while I’m writing my final State of the Union Address.
A future without Obama as President of the United States is what so many of us are thinking about and why we count the months. Soon it’ll be the days, then the seconds…
And on Tuesday, I’m going to talk about the choices we have to make to set this country firmly on an even better, brighter course for decades to come.
To set this country on a better, brighter course, Obama’s going to talk tonight about undoing everything he’s done for the last seven years and tell the nation that this was one big practical joke.
All right, maybe not.
It’s going to take a mighty long time to clean up this 19 trillion dollar pileup “we” built.
