2017 Mar 17^th

Michael Barone, a “senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner and a resident Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute” presents the case for Trump’s policy’s working even if they won’t work and never will work. How is that possible? Barone says it all depends on perception. The idea Barone advances is that if you believe there will be financial advantages to Trump’s promised programs you act as if those programs will happen.  

The fact that Trump is a congenital liar puts several question marks after everything he says. We had millions of illegal aliens voting and that’s why he lost the popular vote. We had thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey when the towers fell; thousands of illegal voters were bussed into New Hampshire and that’s why he lost New Hampshire. His Electoral College majority was the largest ever, his inaugural crowds were larger than Obama’s, the rain stopped and the sun came out and shown on his inauguration. Astute businesspersons will believe what he now proposes? Sure they will.

In his fourth paragraph, Barone presents his readers with an outright lie. He claims that, “… with the Obama stimulus program the bulk of new jobs came in the public sector…” Here are the data from previous administrations;

Term	Public Sector Jobs Added (000s)
Carter	1,304
Reagan 1	-24
Reagan 2	1,438
GHW Bush	1,127
Clinton 1	692
Clinton 2	1,242
GW Bush 1	900
GW Bush 2	844
Obama 1	-708
Obama 2	2051
140 months into 2nd term, 246 pace

Term	Private Sector Jobs Added (000s)
Carter	9,041
Reagan 1	5,360
Reagan 2	9,357
GHW Bush	1,510
Clinton 1	10,884
Clinton 2	10,082
GW Bush 1	-811
GW Bush 2	415
Obama 1	1,921
Obama 2	8,3851
140 months into 2nd term: 10,062 pace.

It is obvious that when Obama took over from Bush the economy was a mess; he turned it right side up. Now comes Trump who says he wants to remove regulations he thinks suppress a full economic push.

We know that the economy is growing even if it is not growing as fast as some would like. The Federal Reserve recognizes that interest rates must increase, even if just a bit. Unemployment is under five percent, there are ads in our local paper for good paying jobs, and they have been there since well before Trump won the election. Much if not all of this surge in economic activity was begun long before Trump was in the picture. Indeed most economists are reluctant to credit—or blame—the president for the nation’s economy during his tenure; there are just too many other variables, most of which a president cannot control.