Obama the Job-Slayer

"What is best in life, Obama?"

"Crush your political enemies! See them driven before you and hear the lamentations of the merchants!"

Well, our current economic pickle has all three things covered. The landscape is littered with the carcasses of those who dared oppose The Anointed One. General Stanley McChrystal was driven before him just yesterday, and today he hears the lamentations.

Today's Washington Post carries this article: Business leaders say Obama's economic policies stifle growth.

Ivan G. Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, said that Democrats in Washington are pursuing tax increases, policy changes and regulatory actions that together threaten to dampen economic growth and "harm our ability . . . to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S."

This blog strongly suspects that this sentiment among former supporters of Obama has been widely held, just not widely acknowledged. The reality is that our economy has been suffering from the policies of a Democrat-controlled Congress ever since January of 2007. It was just about that time that our recession began in earnest. While correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, in this case it certainly appears to.

In the past, businesses always managed to have enough profit to set aside for emergencies. I'm speaking specifically of the olden days before the explosive growth in government brought on by LBJ's Great Society and its' war on poverty. Until that time, Washington was not much of a consideration for business as its' intrusion into the marketplace was small, especially when compared to today. Sure, a few companies went after big defense contracts, but that was about as far as anyone cared about DC.

In the years since, we've seen an explosion of new and increasingly intrusive policies and programs that have taken an ever larger bite of corporate profits to the point that the market can no longer bear it. All the costs associated with regulatory compliance have been passed along to the consumer that can be passed.

Think EPA.

While no one wants dirty air or water, this one department now has so much power that it's actively preventing an effective response to the Gulf oil spill. That's just one example. Multiply this many times and you wind up with a government that no longer cares for the economic health of the nation.

Add to that Obama's disdain for any company that dares to show a profit and there's no wonder we're stuck in a Jimmy Carter-esque malaise. Record unemployment numbers followed by one "unexpected" downturn after another for eighteen months and even the most fervent supporters of this administration will start to admit the truth.

This administration is the most anti-business administration we've ever seen. And we're paying for it in lost jobs, lost houses and lost dreams.