IT’S JOINT SESSION DAY

It’s eight o’clock in the morning on the day of  THE BIG JOBS SPEECH.  My neck is stuck way out.  I am going to predict what The Man is going and not going to say.  When I went to school, anything above 65% was passing.  Let’s see how I do on this one.

According to the advanced billing the raison d’être of the speech is to promote the creation of jobs.  But the speech itself will be about the support and expansion of government, both federal and state.  Obama will call for $300,000,000,000 (300 B) with much of it slated for infrastructure.  Infrastructure is in the government domain.  We heard this plan two years and a few billion dollars ago.  It didn’t work then and it won’t now.  Or as Yogi Berra might say – It didn’t work the first time and you can’t stop it from not working again.

”The definition of an Obama is someone who keeps repeating the same mistake over and over, each time expecting a different result.”      Al Einstein, from Brooklyn

Perhaps the President thinks it will work this time because the shovels have had more time to get ready.  Franklin Roosevelt’s shovels were ready.  He tried the infrastructure approach with his Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camps.  The result — unemployment stood at 15.3% at the end of 1936, four years after he was elected.  It was still 14.6% at the end of his second term, a full eight years in office.

Obama will urge Congress to establish an Infrastructure Bank, a sort of Fannie Mae for bridges and tunnels.

Another passel of dollars out of the 300B will be earmarked for distribution to states to prop up their finances, presumably to all 57 of them.  Favor will be given to those states in the poorest financial conditions because they need it most.  True, they need it most, but some would say they deserve it least.  Their circumstances are the consequence of their own governance.  Bailouts enable the perpetuation of faulty governance by one at the expense of the others.

“Stimulus”?  Obama will not use the word.  It is in the process of being replaced.  Give me a Mulligan on this one.  One or two off-hand references don’t count.

The President will not fail to stoke the fires of class resentment at some point in his talk.

Although medium and small business is the cradle of jobs, no more than lip service will be given to ease the obstacles that lay in the way their growth.

There’s more, but there’s also a deadline.  Let’s see how I do with the predictions given thus far.