Untrue State of the Union

Date: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 3:25 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

February 01, 2006 No. 1406

I'm sure all of you watched Bush's State of the Union address, but just in
case you missed it you can read the transcript or watch the video by
clicking the CNN link:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/01/31/sotu.transcript/

State of the Union addresses are more about spin doctoring than reality, so
instead of wasting time reading Bush's drivel, read Paul Craig Roberts'
excellent op-ed by clicking this link:

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/060131_deception.htm
Bushs Untrue State of the Union
By Paul Craig Roberts

I did a few word searches through Bush's transcript to get an idea what his
priorities are. These stats below are a few the keywords and how many times
Bush used them.

KEYWORD Number of Times Used

terrorists 20
economy 15
jobs 6
trade 2 (not including one reference to drug trade)
workers 2
immigration 2

Let's analyze what little Bush had to say about our jobs and economy.

ECONOMY AND JOBS

Our economy is healthy and vigorous and growing faster
than other major industrialized nations. In the last
two-and-a-half years, America has created 4.6 million
new jobs -- more than Japan and the European Union
combined.

According to Bush our economy is growing rapidly and creating jobs faster
than any other industrialized country. Apparently Bush doesn't consider
China and India as major industrialized nations so perhaps nobody has told
him how many of our factories have moved there. If Bush is somehow correct,
and if this trend of massive job creation continues, I will have to change
the name of this newsletter to "Job Creation Newsletter"!

If any of you get the time, perhaps you should send Bush these pictures so
he can get an idea how industries in the USA compare with the rest of the
world:

Factories in China
http://www.downtheroad.org/Asia/images/China1/DSC00034.JPG

Microsoft in India:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Microsoft_hyd.jpg

Rust Belt in the USA
http://www.internationaltradeconsultant.com/images/Abandoned_building2.jpg

Factories Closed in the USA
http://www.markheayn.com/bus6_FactoryClosed.jpg

GLOBALISM

The American economy is pre-eminent -- but we cannot afford
to be complacent. In a dynamic world economy, we are seeing
new competitors like China and India.

This creates uncertainty, which makes it easier to feed
people's fears. And so we are seeing some old temptations
return.

Protectionists want to escape competition, pretending that
we can keep our high standard of living while walling off
our economy. Others say that the government needs to take
a larger role in directing the economy, centralizing more
power in Washington and increasing taxes.

Bush said that those who question the virtue of globalist free trade
policies are fearmongers who are succombing to the protectionist tempations
of the past. Bush thinks we should stay the course on free trade and will
continue to give tax cuts to companies that offshore our jobs to countries
like China and India.

FREE TRADE

Keeping America competitive requires us to open more
markets for all that Americans make and grow. One out
of every five factory jobs in America is related to
global trade, and we want people everywhere to buy
American. With open markets and a level playing field,
no one can out-produce or out-compete the American worker.

Bush made his intention very clear that he will continue to promote free
trade agreements with the rest of the world. This is probably a prelude to
a renewed push for the disastrous Free Trade Agreement of the Americas
(FTAA).

Jay Leno couldn't have made a statement this funny! Bush said that he wants
people everywhere in the world to buy American products. His patriotic
sentiment cannot hide the fact that even Americans can't buy "Made in the
USA". Most people in the rest of the world probably have never seen things
made in the USA unless they were unlucky enough to be one of our targets
for cruise missles or smart bombs. Obviously Bush and Cheney haven't gone
shopping at Walmart lately because then they would know that the only thing
made in the USA is hot air.

IMMIGRATION

We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the
economy -- even though this economy could not function
without them. All these are forms of economic retreat,
and they lead in the same direction -- toward a stagnant
and second-rate economy.

Bush came out with his usual schtick that without immigrants our economy
would collapse. Nevermind the fact that we have record immigration levels
while at the same time our economy is sinking faster than a lead-filled
balloon.

I'll bet Bush got this silly idea after watching the movie called "A Day
Without a Mexican" about a day when California dropped of the map of the
world when all the Mexican day laborers disappeared. The premise of the
movie is sort of cool, especially if California really did disappear! Here
in Arizona we keep waiting for the "big one" to occur so we can have beach
front property, but until that movie came out we always thought it would be
an earthquake that caused oblivion in California.

GUEST WORKERS

And we must have a rational, humane guest worker program that
rejects amnesty, allows temporary jobs for people who seek
them legally, and reduces smuggling and crime at the border.

In predictable fashion Bush came out in support of a massive guest worker
program. Fortunately he didn't mention a specific proposal so he may intend
on letting the guest worker idea suffer a quiet death like he did on his
Social Security reform. The good news is that Bush has claimed for years
that he will devise a guest worker proposal but so far the Whitehouse has
never done more than talk about it. The bad news is that this may be a
coded message to Congress to quickly approve a guest worker bill so he can
sign it this year.

EDUCATION

We need to encourage children to take more math and science,
and make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete
with other nations. We have made a good start in the early
grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising
standards and lifting test scores across our country.

Bush is always anxious for a chance to blame our education system for our
lack of competitiveness. Bush doesn't see the contradiction he poses since
if our economy is doing as good as he claims, then how could we be so
uncompetitive? Oh well, with Bush it's always a mistake to think too much
or to assume that there is any logic to his arguments. Anyway, to fix this
imaginary education gap he will train thousands of new high school science
teachers. Hopefully he will allow unemployed scientists and engineers to
get these new teaching jobs. Plonk!

SCIENCE AND RESEARCH

First: I propose to double the federal commitment to the most
critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over
the next 10 years.

Second: I propose to make permanent the research and development
tax credit, to encourage bolder private-sector investment in
technology.

One thing all recent presidents have in common is that they always promise
to spend more money on basic scientific research. They talk a good game but
after the speech the funding for research never appears. If Bush could get
funding for research there will be more jobs for unemployed scientists, and
that's a good thing, unless of course we have another guest worker program
like H-1B to import cheap Russian scientists to do all the work.
Considering the fact that our country is bankrupt it's not clear how Bush
intends to pay for all of this new research - perhaps he can apply to the
Chinese for a loan or outsource it to India!

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