Off the Editor’s Desk – 1-8-2014

While I was watching the national news the other evening a report came along that President Obama was returning to Washington D. C. after a two week Christmas Vacation in Hawaii. He left the first lady there so she could spend more time visiting with friends. How much fuel did those two burn up so they could visit Hawaii?

Now their vacation time is not what caught my attention, what did was that the first thing on his plate was to get the unemployment benefits extended. I have talked about the loss of manufacturing jobs in this state and the nation before. As a nation we have watched our jobs travel out of the country. Look at what you buy and see where it’s made. Made in some place other than the United States.

According to Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. the state of Wisconsin has lost 150,000 manufacturing jobs over the past decade.

Nerenz stated back in November of 2011, “those jobs are not coming back, no matter how long we extend unemployment benefits pretending they are.” He went on to conclude that, “450,000 people who still work in Manufacturing in Wisconsin are damm good at it, but they are now outnumbered by people who work for the government. A significant number of the later are tasked with taxing, regulating, and generally harassing the former.”

Now if 150,000 jobs were lost in this state, just how many have been lost in this nation? The new national (un)affordable health care act (Obama Care) will add many thousands of new IRS agents just to do what Nerenz had predicted back in 2011 and that will be harassing the working class.

And here is the cake that I heard on the street some time ago. “With more that half the population receiving some sort of government check, why are we spending so much money on education, when half the people will be living off the government?”

I can say that I do not agree with that statement, but the thought is out there.

Thanks for reading.

— Carlton