On Wednesday, President Obama went on a pork-barrel tour at a community college in Virginia touting "the jobs of the future."
But as usual Obama has the equation wrong.
I'm thinking that given the latest unemployment & employment numbers, maybe he should just stick to creating…oh…I don't know…maybe the jobs of today?
You see, last year "Congress set aside about $2 billion in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act to help community colleges train students and workers over the next four years," according the CSMonitor.
And now Obama is doing a whistle-stop tour to use that money in a bid to get re-elected over the next 17 months.
Everyone else is just worried about their shrinking house values and not having jobs. But Obama's biggest concern is using $2XXL to keep himself in the White House.
"President Obama rolled up his sleeves Wednesday morning at a hybrid-car repair lab where students can earn gold-star credentials from the National Association of Manufacturing (NAM)," writes the Monitor. The lab's private sponsor, in this case, it should surprise no one to learn, is Obama's favorite public-private corporation, General Motors.
Ok, so maybe GM is a little more public than it is private. One needn't let reality get in the way of a big picture Big O vision.
"The new partnership between private-sector manufacturers, community colleges, and NAM aims to provide 500,000 community college students over the next five years with industry-recognized credentials."
Sounds impressive, but, um, what about giving college student actual jobs to go with their "gold-star" credentials? A job is very helpful in paying off federally subsidized student loans.
Maybe someone should tell the administration that it's not the supply of employees that that's a problem; it's the supply of jobs that's running kind of short.
Did any of Obama's economic advisors pass the portion of the test that included word problems?
I went online to find exactly how many jobs were available for hybrid auto repair techs in the Northern Virginia area.
I searched Indeed.com, Monster.com and Craigslist.
I found exactly one job mentioning experience with hybrids near Northern Virginia, the region where Obama's dog and pony show took place. The job was in Baltimore, about 42 miles from Arlington, VA.
"There are people across America with talents just waiting to be tapped, sparks waiting to be lit," Obama said. "Our job is to light them."
I guess we now know Obama's real problem.
He doesn't even know what his own job is. He's waiting to light sparks and tap something. Maybe he should just try being president for awhile.
How could we expect him to recognize what our jobs should look like, when he can't recognize his own?
"This program highlights the economic multiplier effect of the auto industry," says Greg Martin a spokesman for GM, the great Obama enabler. These are the geniuses calling for a $1 a gallon tax hike on gas so that we start paying for the jobs of the future right now.
I have a sneaking suspicion that these jobs are unionized.
No doubt America's felt quite deeply the auto industry's "multiplier effect," as Martin calls it. But by my multiplication, the country is still in negative territory.
We loaned the auto industry $50 billion in addition to whatever financial accommodations were made with creditors and shareholders in the bankruptcies.
Today, GM trades in the market at about $29 billion. We could have started two brand new GMs- without the unions- for that kind of money.
So hey, what's another few billion to train "workers of the future"? It's just government money training workers for Government Motors.
It's not a lack of public-private partnerships that have created the awful jobs environment. It's not that our kids are graduating without the basic skills to get jobs in manufacturing, although that's a problem too.
People aren't waiting for a spark.
They're waiting for a job.
Oh, you silly, silly people.
You meant a job?
Like, today?