The Stimulus Craters, But Hey, it's Politically Correct

In what will go down in history as an example of what not to do during a recession, the stimulus plan put together by the Obama team has had no impact and in fact may have driven us much deeper into the recession bordering on depression.

His tactic of using fear to further his agenda and his bold predictions are coming back to bite him and despite a compliant media apparattus, people are starting to see right through his bluster and platitudes.

Today we have a couple stories that the media tries to white-wash but can't quite seem to gloss over enough. First from the Weekly Standard:

A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.

...The National Organization for Women (NOW), the Feminist Majority, the Institute for Women's Policy Research, and the National Women's Law Center soon joined the battle against the supposedly sexist bailout of men's jobs. At the suggestion of a staffer to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, NOW president Kim Gandy canvassed for a female equivalent of the "testosterone-laden 'shovel-ready' " terminology. ("Apron-ready" was broached but rejected.) Christina Romer, the highly regarded economist President Obama chose to chair his Council of Economic Advisers, would later say of her entrance on the political stage, "The very first email I got . . . was from a women's group saying 'We don't want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.' "

The result as anyone can see is predictable. Construction jobs that would have had an enormous ripple effect were eschewed for more women friendly jobs and have had the effect of stifling job growth. But hey, it was politically expedient so who cares if it doesn't actually help get us out of the economic malaise?

Next we have the Inquirer publishing this piece on the non-effect of the stimulus. Christina Romer--a chief architect of this monstrosity--tries to defend it:

She said she could well imagine many people saying, "OK, we passed the stimulus act [four] months ago; the economy should be better."

Romer is chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisers and coauthor of the stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In an interview from the White House, she said the stimulus had had major impact.

"We were an economy in free fall, and that's no longer the case," she said. "If you think where we were in January, that was really frightening."

Is Romer deluded? It's more frightening now then it was in January but the Obama administration is trying to paint a happy face on a pile of shit and Romer is sucking down the Kool-aid in ever larger amounts and will soon be mainlining it into her veins like Layne Staley did heroin.

But it gets better and sums up New Jersey in one statement:

He read that New Jersey would get $17.5 billion in tax relief and spending. Based on a formula, the White House said the stimulus would foster 100,000 jobs in the state.

He kept up with the news last month as ground was broken on the first part of $652 million in road work that New Jersey will get. That's what got him calling government offices.

He was led to the state's stimulus Web site, nj.gov/recovery. He saw no jobs there. But on a Transportation Department site he found names of firms that had won highway contracts.

When he got the owner of one company on the phone, the owner asked him, "Are you in the union?"

"No," he said.

Donahue figured he couldn't catch a break.

"They said they were only hiring union workers."

So we now see that if you are not union or a woman, you are screwed. The funny thing is that it's only non-union companies who are thriving led by the union-busting Wal-Mart. Payback is not so fast in coming for a trade union near you in spite of the sop paid to them by Obama.

I guess if you are a woman, union and a democrat, you're probably having a good recession. The rest of us are pretty much fucked.

I'm feeling so incredibly hopey and changey today, how about you?