Imaginary Politics

Obama and his administration make a lot of claims that simply cannot be supported by concrete evidence. No President in our history has made so many “imaginary” claims to defend his policies and actions.

To defend the Recovery Act or the 862 billion dollar stimulus, Obama continually makes the claim that without the stimulus the economy would have gone into a depression. Well, the objective of the stimulus was to create jobs and to keep the unemployment rate under 8%. However, the unemployment rate has been hovering around 10% and that number does not include the millions of workers that have quit looking for jobs. For the first time in decades our workforce has been shrinking instead of expanding to keep up with population growth. In actuality, our unemployment rate is above 15% and what’s worse; most people are working temporary jobs for a lot less money. To prove his case, Obama, and his administration have created an imaginary statistic called “saved jobs”. They claim they may not have created many new jobs, but they have saved millions of jobs – a statistic never kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thus, if a town or community received 100,000 dollars in stimulus aid, the Obama administration can claim they saved every single teacher, administrator, policeman, fireman, and any other local government job. Thus, 100,000 dollars means they saved 100 or more jobs. That is 1,000 dollars per job saved. This is a bogus claim. A saved job is not a statistic; it is a mirage or a figment of the White House’s imagination. Besides, Obama routinely blames Wall Street for the recession, but claims it was the stimulus and not the bank bailout that saved us from a depression. This is a contradictory claim and makes absolutely no sense.

Obama has defended the 60 billion dollars in a taxpayer bailout to the auto companies by claiming it saved the industry. First of all, this policy was started under Bush, but Obama gives him no credit. Secondly, Obama is counting his chickens before they are hatched. The bailouts failed to prevent both GM and Chrysler from going into bankruptcy. Both companies shed failing units and cut over 300,000 jobs. Both companies have recently made a small profit, but much of that may have been artificially created through the “cash for clunkers” program. The companies have started to rehire workers; GM has added 55,000 jobs this year. The success of GM may rely solely on its overpriced (41,000 dollars) electric car – the Volt. Is this enough to say the auto bailouts were successful? Or is this another figment of the Obama imagination? Time will tell.

Obama was quick to paint the Arizona immigration law as a violation of the civil rights act proclaiming it promotes racial profiling. If this were true, and not a figment of the Obama imagination, then why didn’t the Department of Justice lawsuit against Arizona make these claims? Instead, the lawsuit claimed the Arizona law was unconstitutional because it violated the supremacy clause.

Obama claims the new healthcare reform legislation will reduce the cost of healthcare. After the passing of ObamaCare dozens of Fortune 500 companies have set aside billions to pay for a lost prescription subsidy for retirees. And what’s worse, corporate analysis of the legislation is that it will make healthcare insurance much more expensive for both the individual and company. Still Obama is in denial making claims that health insurance will be more affordable without any concrete evidence other than his speechwriter’s imagination that he simply reads off a teleprompter.

Obama and the Democrats assault on greedy Wall Street firms led to financial reform. They solely blamed these private companies for causing the financial meltdown. What is his evidence? His imagination! Obama has not once blamed irresponsible individuals that purchased homes they could not afford, or government entities: the Federal Reserve, the Securities Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac that were also culpable in the financial collapse. After all, it takes more than a few rogue banks to take down the economy.

Obama uses his imagination to place blame and to explain his failed policy instead of using facts and actual data. It is freighting that our economic and security policies are being implemented based on Obama’s progressive imagination and not facts.