Jobs and the economy (Part 1)

Barack Obama announced before his Asia trip that he would convene a jobs summit at the White House next month.

The media treated this in its customary, dutiful fashion, largely cooing about "how presidential he is!"

Serious question, though, people. Actually, two serious questions.

First, why are we almost a year into this administration, with unemployment worsening throughout, and only now the president's focus is on jobs?

And second, how seriously can we take this? I mean, Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress have spent the last 10 months in rabid pursuit of anti-jobs legislation such as Card Check, Health Care and Cap & Trade.

Perhaps the better question is whether anyone honestly believes that liberals know how to create jobs.

And save it on the stimulus nonsense, OK? For one thing, if the stimulus was about job creation, as Democrats have claimed for nine months, why has only 14 percent of the $787 billion been spent? I mean, libs are all about looking good politically, and double-digit unemployment is about seven shades of ugly.

Those jobs saved/created that Obama keeps talking about?

Besides serving as a multi-billion-dollar goody bag for liberal causes, the stimulus bill only provided struggling states with cash for extended unemployment benefits and to save teaching and other government jobs.

Temporarily. At least a dozen of those states that slurped up that stimulus already have figured out they're in deep financial trouble as they begin attempting to craft their 2010 budgets.

And by deep financial trouble, we're talking 10- and 11-figure shortfalls.

One of two things will have to happen. There will be massive layoffs among teachers and state workers. Or the fed will have to provide another injection of billions of dollars.

Tax dollars, of course.

I suspect a good amount will come from the unspent 86 percent of the stimulus money, because several Democrats floated the "Second Stimulus" idea a couple of weeks ago, and the tremors of immediate anger from the population at large registered on the Richter Scale.

That $787 billion won't last forever, though. And that, boys and girls, is precisely what's wrong when the government's idea of job creation equates to more government.

Somebody's got to pay for it.

And in this case and in this environment, with more people out of work week after week after week and the government's source of revenue steadily diminishing, it's simply an unsustainable course.

What's ahead, in the likely event this administration continues to ignore pro-growth policies, is even worse unemployment, much higher debt and a monstrous tax burden on every American who's lucky enough to still have a job.