In repugican vernacular, returning to the "old ways" is "taking our
country back;" but back to what? If the subject is the economy, it is
back to the shrub-era…
Any American with an higher-than-snail intellect
understands that the defining characteristic of being a wingnut is
seeking to preserve things just the way they think they are, and above all else,
emphasize the safety and stability of maintaining the status quo to
establish a sense of continuity. Some American conservatives certainly
fit into that category, but there is another kind of conservative, call
them extremists and reactionaries, that not only oppose change and
maintaining the status quo, they demand to return to “the way things
were.” In repugican and teabagger vernacular, returning to the “old
ways” is “taking our country back;” but back to what? If the subject is
the economy, it is back to the shrub-era economic policies that are wildly
popular with wingnut mainstream media, but still not austere and
severe enough for the Koch brothers.
Getting back to corporatists’ vision of America was
the so-called message repugicans pounded into epically stupid voters’
heads throughout the midterm election; return to the old ways and put us
back in charge of the economy. It really must be a confusing time to be
a wingnut voter, because if they truly wanted to maintain the
status quo as the cabal that hates change, they would not have turned
out at the polls and voted for repugicans. In fact, only a fool would
want to abandon the current economic progress and return to the old ways
after shrub-repugicans tanked the economy, because yet another economic
report revealed that under President Obama’s Administration, America
has experienced the longest stretch of consistent job creation since
World War II.
In the uber-wingnut Wall Street Journal, a
report boasted, yes boasted, that since non-farm payrolls grew to a
seasonally adjusted 214,000 last month according to the Labor
Department, it marked the “best such job creation streak since 1995,
and marked the 49th straight month of positive job growth; the best
stretch on record back to 1939.” The Rupert Murdoch newspaper noted that the unemployment rate fell to 5.8% last month and was the lowest level since 2008.
One might be inclined to believe that if “traditional wingnuts”
seriously wanted to maintain the status quo, for continuity of results
and stability, they would have voted en masse to preserve the streak of
positive economic growth and private sector hiring and rejected repugicans with extreme prejudice because they promised to “return to
the old ways” if they control Congress. However, no-one with even
minimal cognitive abilities would expect a repugican voter to support
the current positive economic growth because it is happening as a result
of an African American man sitting in the Oval Office; that and bible,
guns, and something about maintaining Ayran purity.
According to the WSJ unemployment report, all economists, and businesses large and small,
the one and only missing ingredient needed for truly robust economic
gains is wage growth. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers
barely kept up with the mild pace of inflation. Consumer prices rose
1.7% in September from a year earlier, but that is going to change for
the worse when the effects of the climate change-driven drought on food
costs are realized and they skyrocket out of reach for many Americans.
There is more good news that is driving wingnuts to eschew their typical “maintain the status quo”
philosophy and return to the old ways. Most economists acknowledge that a
continued decline in the short-term unemployment rate, those Americans
who have been out of work six months or less, will finally prompt
meaningful growth in wages. That’s because demand for people recently
out of work better represents the labor market facing employers. The
short-term jobless rate
held steady in October at 4% according to the report, and it is a
percentage point below its average since 1948. The long-term rate held
steady as well at 1.9%, and it has many employers in the living-wage
fields, including manufacturing and engineering, bemoaning that they are
facing a shortage of workers. As a result of the worker shortage, wages
in those fields are set to rise. While foreign manufacturers are
experiencing dwindling demand due to harsh austerity repugicans want to
impose, American manufacturing is experiencing robust growth. While
European factories are cutting production and laying off workers,
American “factories are revving up production”
and increasing hiring according to a private organization that monitors
the American manufacturing sector; something repugicans want to change
instead of maintaining the status quo.
According to the Institute for Supply Management
(ISM), its main gauge of the factory sector climbed to 59.0 in October
from 56.6 in September. That economic growth is based on American
manufacturers continued reporting an impressive accelerated rate of new
orders that drove production to its highest level since 2004 revealing
the economy is growing at an impressive rate; under President Obama.
According to man overseeing ISM’s manufacturing gauge, Bradley Holcombe,
“American manufacturing is firing on all cylinders;” something repugicans do not want to maintain because as extremist wingnuts,
they want to take our country back and the inherently stupid voting
public agrees that it is a good idea to “return to the old ways.”
It is getting difficult to understand what drives wingnuts, and repugican voters, to want to abandon their typical
adherence to maintaining the status quo when there has been nothing but
good economic reports over the past two years. What is truly confusing,
is why repugican voters in four red states, on the one hand, voted to
raise the minimum wage and then elected repugicans who openly refuse to
even consider a wage hike. The repugicans in Congress certainly understand
the President’s economic policies not only lifted the nation out of the
worst recession since the Great Depression, he has kept the economy
growing at a respectable clip and produced the longest job creation
streak since 1939.
It is true the voting public will never hear about
the President’s economic successes, and although it is down to corporate
main-stream media, it is also the President’s failure to address the
nation. Yes, he doles out good news regularly during his Weekly
Presidential address, but he may as well be talking to the
pigeon-brigade roosting on the White House roof. However, it is likely
that even if he did issue regularly televised speeches touting the
nation’s economic progress, record job creation, and calling for
Congress to raise wages, the bible, gun, and white pride crowd, or
extremist wingnuts, would still reject the status quo; regardless
how much they benefit.
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