http://www.truth-out.org/rebooting-american-dream-chapter-one-bring-my-job-home65127About a year after President Barack Obama took office, on the first anniversary of his major economic recovery legislation, his administration was struggling to get the word out that the legislation was, in fact, quite a success story. I found myself invited to the White House as part of a small group of well-known authors and bloggers to meet with a top administration economist as part of this promotion effort.
It was an odd problem they were facing, given that this president was masterful during the 2008 election campaign in communicating his ideas and his vision to the American public. So what happened? Why didn’t America know that the $787 billion legislation represented one of the largest middle-class tax cuts in American history, that it had demonstrably created or preserved between 1.5 million and 3 million jobs, and that it had, in all probability, prevented the severe recession Obama inherited from George W. Bush from turning into a second Republican Great Depression, at least in the short term?
Part of the problem was that the Democrats hadn’t much mentioned or marketed the legislation leading up to the one year anniversary, nor had they given it a catchy name—a “New Deal” or “Contract with America” sort of thing—leaving it instead as a “stimulus bill” (officially called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009).
A second problem was that a lot of the Republicans in Congress—the Disloyal Opposition—were blatantly lying to the American public about the bill’s impact, saying it had created absolutely no jobs. Adding insult to injury, they were simultaneously attending ribbon-cutting and check-giving ceremonies in their own districts, celebrating its successes—even though they all voted against it.
Most of the corporate media didn’t bother to even mention the irony or hypocrisy of this.
(more)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
