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First Lady Michelle Obama said the other day that America is in a "huge recovery" because of what her husband has done, and what I'd advise is that she get a pair of binoculars and look out a White House window.
She just might observe more of the desperately poor wandering around than she's seen before, and that would not be by accident.
A Washington Post story reports that family homelessness in Washington, D.C., is up by 18 percent since last year. The recession ended in late 2009. The recovery, mugged by a pork-ridden stimulus and a malicious gang of other misconceived policies, is limping along more weakly than any recovery since World War II. The result is suffering in almost every direction you look.
Those hurt the most are often those who had the least to begin with. Some 46.2 million Americans are now below the poverty line. And, it might be noted by Democrats claiming a Republican war on women, the poverty rate among them is a very scary 16.3 percent.
The middle class has also taken a crippling hit -- a median income drop from $54,983 when President Barack Obama took office to $50,964 this year. As others have written, the median has decreased more during the Obama recovery than it did during the recession the president has blamed on his predecessor.
Welfare has meanwhile been going up, with expenditure increases of something like $193 billion a year under Obama. The crying need is for something that would make the welfare less necessary: jobs. Some 14.7 percent of Americans are looking for jobs but can't find them or have settled for part-time jobs when they want full-time employment. The $831 billion stimulus was supposed to help fix this, but the tons of money produced maybe an ounce of temporary relief while contributing to employment-impeding debt.
The stimulus came up in the vice presidential debate when Republican candidate Paul Ryan pointed to "$90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors and special interest groups." An Associated Press fact checker concurred that $528 million went to the Solyndra solar-panel firm that was "politically connected" and went bankrupt. The reporter went on to say, however, that there was also energy stimulus help for such things as making homes "more energy efficient" and to "public entities constructing high-speed rail lines."
Excuse me, but more recipients of grants and loans than just Solyndra had political connections and went under, and inspectors said the program to weatherize homes was poorly executed in many instances, even to the point of endangering lives. High-speed rail is pork to states and has nothing to do with stimulating the economy in the here and now. According to an article in the New Yorker magazine, these projects were pushed by Obama because he was "looking for something bold and iconic -- his version of the Hoover Dam."
Looking ahead to solutions, the Obama administration is counting on what it has sometimes called a tax on millionaires, which turns out to be a raised tax on incomes of $250,000 and more for married couples. That could be a teacher and a cop in high-pay places like New York City, writes Michael Tanner of Cato Institute. The tax would produce about two-thirds less revenue than what's needed to meet Obama's planned spending hikes next year, he writes, and, according to a study by a major accounting firm, could cost more than 700,000 jobs with its hit on small business owners.
I like the first lady, and I don't blame her for applauding her husband, but for a less partial view, check in with someone like Mortimer Zuckerman, a media owner and real estate whiz of the kind who produces jobs. He was for Obama in 2008, thinks he has done more populist pandering than leading as president, and rates the recovery as something we have to recover from.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
•10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
•10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
•08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
•08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
•08/01/12: Combatting free speech
•07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
•07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
•07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
•07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
•07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
•07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
•07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
•06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
•06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
•06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
•06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
•06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
•06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
•06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
•06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
•05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
•05/23/12: Student loans fail students
•05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
•05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
•05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
•05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
•05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
•04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
•04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
•04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
•04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
•04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
•04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
•04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
•04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
•03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
•03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
•03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
•03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
•03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
•03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
•03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
•03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
•02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
•02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
•02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
•02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
•02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
•02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
•02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
•01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
•01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
•01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
•01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
•01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
•01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
•01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
•01/04/12: How America smothers itself
•12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
•12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
•12/21/11: A tale of two men
•12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
•12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
•12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
•12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
•12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
•11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
•11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
•11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
•11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
•11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
•11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
•11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
•11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
•10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
•10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
•10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
•10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
•09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
•09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
•09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
•09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
•09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
•09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
•09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
•09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
•08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
•08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
•08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
•08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
•08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
•08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
•08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
•08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
•08/03/11: The people who may save America
•07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
•07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
•07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
•07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
•07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
•07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
•07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
•07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
