US election aftermath [B]

Tue, Nov 20, 2012

Editor: In last week’s article, I published some emails between the GOP and myself to show those in SVG that I am not afraid to tell politicians exactly how I feel when I consider them to be doing crap. I wonder why the opponents of Romney never took an in depth look at his politics in Massachusetts. No real Republican could get elected in that state; he had to be wishy-washy – a RINO – Republican in name only.{{more}} I was not fooled. There are those in SVG who say that I have something personal against Eustace; they could now tell what it is that I have personal against Romney. I judged him to be a man without real conviction – politically, a gutless wonder.

Last week’s article also drew a comment from one Randy Aberdeen, believed to the living in the US. Mr Aberdeen posted this on Searchlight’s website: Frank – get your opinions straight! The owner of the N.Y. Daily News newspaper – Mort Zuccerman [Zuckerman] is not by any stretch of your imagination a member of the Democratic Party. He is a Conservative/Independent Zuccerman [Zuckerman] can be seen on the John Mc Laughlin show 11.00 am -Sundays-on CBS TV in N.Y. As for your prediction? Hogwash!

Opinions Straight

I am trying to figure out how to get my “opinions straight,” but let us check some of Mr Aberdeen’s facts. Here is what an American Internet publication, writing on the same issue of N.Y. Daily New endorsement, had to say: The paper’s endorsement came as a surprise: the News has a staunchly Democratic editorial viewpoint. The Daily News is also owned by one of the country’s most respected and influential Democrats, Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate mogul.

As for Mr Aberdeen’s “fact” that Zuccerman [Zuckerman] is a “Conservative/Independent, I checked a well used source of information on the net, that source states: While Zuckerman has always randomly switched back and forth between the parties, since the late 1970s, he has donated more than $68,000 to American political candidates with $42,700 going to Democratic politicians and $24,000 to independent interests. Zuckerman … cast his vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, was critical of President Obama on several fronts. So how are Mr Aberdeen’s facts compared to “opinion straight”?

Recovery

Mr Aberdeen’s comments are useful, as they give the opportunity to address statements made in the editorials of two of our newspapers and one of our esteemed opinion shapers. “…it is enough on which to declare that Obama has set the US economy further on the path to recovery”, wrote one. In another we read “In a country which is deeply divided politically [like SVG?], his shared vision continued to bring hope in troubling times, a sense of balance recovery.” And the opinion shaper wrote “They all wanted Obama to be one-term President so that they could benefit from the recovery which is now taking place,” Is the last suggesting that those taking over would have continued Obama’s economic policies? And I wonder if some of these editorialists, “intransigence of the Republican leadership and its determination to block every progressive move”, believe in opposition parties?

Could you find out how many pieces of legislation were supported by Mr Obama when he became a US Senator from Illinois and Bush, the Republican, was President? Senator of “no” or maybe he was just blocking “unprogressive moves”. Makes me think the NNDP is doing fine, supporting seventy-five percent of the ULP legislation, but do we have a recovery? On the other hand, as referenced in my email, check out what the US voter did in 1992 mid-term elections then repeat the idiotic “intransigence of ….”

Premature Recovery

So we hear all this talk of recovery without proof, so I will supply some: How do you recover from a recovery? Just how bust the nation’s “recovery” has been is painfully documented in the latest news, just two months before the election. The Census Bureau validated what middle-class Americans know all too well from their week to week, month to month struggle to make ends meet. The typical family is back to where it was in 1995. The analysis of annual data collected by the bureau indicates that median income in 2011 had fallen to $50,054, the fourth straight year of decline in well-being, and that’s adjusted for inflation.

At the same time, we were clobbered by the Census numbers, the latest unemployment report landed with a dull thud: the advance figure for unemployment claims for the week ending September 8 was 382,000, up from the previous week’s revised figure of 367,000. The four-week moving average was 375,000, up 3,250 from the prior week’s average of 371,750.

These are marginal negative movements, but they underline that the recovery touted by the administration has been the weakest in modern history. Nobody is entitled to blow a trumpet because the unemployment rate for August can be headlined at 8.1 per cent, down two digits from July’s 8.3 per cent. That’s a drop brought about, not by more jobs, but because 360,000 people left the workforce. It muffles the fact that 5 million people have now been out of work for 27 weeks or more. That’s roughly 40 per cent of the unemployed. Another 2.6 million people were marginally attached to the labour force, and over eight million people have given up looking for a job, so they are not counted because they had not searched for work in the prior month. [Mort Zuckerman, September, 19, 2012]

We can now declare that the tepid and timid responses of the wealthy developed nations have failed to heal the global economy. The uncoordinated lurches from stimulus to austerity…the recovery that they prematurely declared was false and fleeting…the economic debacle threatens to have debilitating and on-going consequences… [Ralph E. Gonsalves, Prime Minister, SVG, UN 24 09 11].

On my prediction? An assignment: John Fitz-Gerald Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, if their policy worked then Obama’s will not and did someone declared a new recession in Europe? My email on Thomas Sowell warning to Republicans and more next week.

This is really fun.

Frank E. da Silva