American Elephants

Hillary’s Big Economic Plan Is an Embarrassing Display of Leftist Ignorance by The Elephant's Child

Why would anyone getting ready to go to bed start pounding their head on the wall? (Simile.) Someone mentioned Hillary’s big economic speech on Thursday in Warren, Michigan, and I thought I ought to watch it so I would know something about her economic plans. I didn’t expect much, but I was still taken aback.

It was a powerful-sounding speech, promising to solve everyone’s problems and the problems that had never occurred to them. Jobs, lots of them, how? — Infrastructure! Why is it always infrastructure? If you remember, Obama was going to create all sorts of jobs in Infrastructure — “crumbling roads and bridges” — all sorts of promises of what they were going to do, and eventually Obama admitted that there didn’t seem to actually be any “shovel-ready jobs.”

The interstate highways are federal business. State and county roads are the state’s and county’s business. You can’t just pick a piece of land and start to build something. First, all sorts of jurisdictions have to agree to the project. Then there are the environmental impact statements, and the plans need be drawn up, soil testing, legal challenges, eminent domain. I probably have the order wrong and have left out many steps, but that’s the general idea. All that stuff can take years, and usually does. The people who do those tasks are already on staff. There will be no new jobs until construction starts, and construction jobs only last  until the project is done, which may be 10 or 20 years down the road. Construction jobs are temporary. That’s why Obama said there weren’t any “shovel-ready jobs.” We went through all this before, but Hillary wasn’t paying attention, or else she doesn’t care because it sounds good.

She promised a lot of clean energy jobs too, and lots more clean energy. Installation is done by skilled workers from the company that manufactures the turbines or solar panels, and there aren’t many jobs there. She babbled on about Germany and China, but those countries are already getting out of the “clean energy” business. I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she doesn’t know any better and is not just pandering to the rubes. Obama tried the clean energy jobs bit too, and we got Solyndra and Ivanpah.

She’s dragged out every tired old cliché that worked for the Left in past elections — “trickle-down economics” is the pander for an opposition who promises tax-cuts, which is how you get an economy recovering. Leftists just don’t get it. They cannot conceive of a world where they are not increasing their control and forcing people to do what they want. That is how you build a brave new world. (I think someone used that phrase before.) Increasing the minimum wage makes the economy grow. what? She promises a manufacturing renaissance, economic revitalization, free college for the middle class, free trade school, With her $10,745,378 income last year, she has a lot in common with you, and knows just how to make life better for you hard-working Americans — a job with dignity and equal pay, not everybody needs to go to college, the trades are fine too, broadband for everyone, infrastructure bans, a cleaner power grid. $25 billion government seed money, $10 billion to make things in America, lots of tax credits, deductions for child care, blah, blah, “better together.”

It was painful. If you want an economy to recover, you have to reduce taxes so people can save and invest and create. Raising taxes, and Hillary’s economic plan would demand huge tax increases on an already damaged economy — just prolonging the decline for another 4  years.


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I know sometimes it’s hard to listen to such craven greed and brazen stupidity (remember, stupidity always involves a choice!), but it helps if you inoculate yourself. I do it by hanging out with used car salesman and lawyers (I’ve always said that if Bill Clinton hadn’t gone into politics, he’d have been the greatest car salesman southwest Arkansas had ever seen).

What I find especially amusing is almost every one of Hillary’s has two notable things about them: First, they all seem to be paid for by raising taxes on “the rich” (wealth gained by “speaking fees”* and running a “charitable” organization would, of course, be tax exempt!). How much gas do you think is left in THAT tank? Hillary and the Democrats, regardless of all their talk about “the future” and “change” always seem to believe that the way things are is the way things are going to stay (unless THEY change them!). That there’s money to pay for one thing means that since there’s money, it can pay for everything. Try that rationalization with your monthly bills and see how far you get. Yes, according to Democrat financial logic, you can afford a new Rolls-Royce if your take home pay is $5000 a month, because there’s still money in your account after paying your water bill. It’s the same principle at work with government spending, it just takes a little longer for them to come repossess the Rolls.

The second notable thing is that “please be by friend” quality in each of these giveaway offers. And not the “we’re friends, let me buy you something” way, more the “I’m giving you this (whether you like it or not) so that you’ll be my friend” way. Hillary (and the Democrats in general) is finding herself in the trap where when the only friends you have are the ones you pay for, you have to keep paying them. And like any job (being friends with Hillary HAS to be work), eventually they want more.

*Speaking fees – yeah, right. Listen to five speeches from anyone and you can get a sense of what all of their speeches are like. Hillary can’t give a speech that’s worth a quarter of a million. She can’t give a speech that’s worth the price of a candy bar. Those people were buying access and favors. Period.


Comment by Lon Mead

Hillary aired a commercial here in Pennsylvania explaining how she is going to fix the economy. Her “fix” is to “make corporations pay their fair share of taxes.”

She is telling us that increasing taxes on corporations is going to fix the economy!!! Who wrote this nonsense?

The Democrats’ solution to EVERYTHING is raising taxes. When will voters figure this out?


Comment by Joe

If you listen/watch to her whole economic speech, it is really quite a positive speech for those who know no economics, and simply want to know “who cares about me?” The hard Left media defeated Romney (who really is a generous and caring person) by emphasizing how rich he was, how many people he had fired, the elevator for his car in his California beach home, and putting the dog in a cage on top of the car. That’s how it is done. Hillary is going to fix the country by doing exactly what Obama has done (which didn’t work) and making the rich and big corporations pay for it. See, she cares!


Comment by The Elephant's Child

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