NYT: In Wis., Bush Offers Hopeful Assessment of Economy

[DeepModem Mom]

In Wisconsin, Bush Offers a Hopeful Assessment of the Economy
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: March 31, 2004


...."Wisconsin is helping lead the growth of this nation," (Bush) said, noting that the state's unemployment rate had fallen substantially over the past year, to 5 percent from 5.8 percent. "Farms, factories and offices are shipping high-quality goods all across America, and all throughout the world."

Mr. Bush did not mention some of the state's grimmer statistics. Nonfarm employment in Wisconsin has fallen by 42,000 jobs, to 2.79 million, since he took office, and the state has lost 84,000 manufacturing jobs....

***

"This is called a period of transition," Mr. Bush said. "That's an economist's word for things aren't going too well for you. And I understand that. I understand people are worried about the job they have."

Saying the nation had to "deal with the economy the way it is," Mr. Bush made a thinly veiled attack on Mr. Kerry, asserting that "some in our nation's capital" want to increase federal spending and raise taxes. "Tax and spend is the enemy of job creation," Mr. Bush said. Similarly, he suggested that Mr. Kerry would put the nation on a course toward trade protectionism.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/national/31BUSH.html

[rfranklin]

1. Ya gotta admire them for having balls...

borrowing and spending the country into the poorhouse while creating negative job growth and still able to claim they should be given another chance. It's truly amazing. What's more amazing is that the populace doesn't ride this bozo out of town on a rail.

[saigon68]

2. The populace (err Sheep) are getting ready for a summer of sports

Grilling out , fishing, baseball, football training camp and auto racing. To a lot of them this AWOL CHIMPANZEE is the nice rancher from Texas who is fighting a bunch of Rag heads successfully. Now back to the grill.

[progressiverealist]

7. yeah, fer sure... gimme another brat dat softball game ain't for an hour

other things to do.

[snippy]

3. Democrats need to repeat Bush's lies in some ads.

In 2001 Bush told us that his tax cuts would create 575,000 new jobs.

In 2002 Bush told us that his tax cuts would create 2,500,000 new jobs.

In 2003 Bush told us that his tax cuts would create 2,000,000 new jobs.

In 1993 the republican party told us that passing president Clinton's tax bill would destroy the economy and put millions out of work.

{Then show the video of Bush saying this}

"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."

Can your family afford to be fooled again?

[Chitown_Dem]

4. "Tax and spend is the enemy of job creation..."

Really? Huh. Interesting.

According to an article in the AJC, your tax cuts, Mr. Bush...

...boost joblessness, encourage outsourcing
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0304/29equal.html

"...What exactly did the Bush tax acts do to create this problem? They granted an enormous tax cut to big business in the form of "bonus depreciation." Under bonus depreciation, the more corporations spend on equipment, the less tax they have to pay on the same economic income. And that's exactly what they've been doing. Business spending on equipment has skyrocketed, corporate tax collections have plummeted and no one's being hired.

Unfortunately, economists' ignorance of basic tax law is not limited to the bonus depreciation rules. Recently, the chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, Gregory Mankiw, opined that the movement of American jobs to other countries was a good thing. Indeed, back in Econ 101 we learn that free trade and the law of comparative advantage support Mankiw's views.

But here again, our chief economist appears to be ignorant of basic U.S. tax law. When a U.S. corporation manufactures in the United States, its income is subject to U.S. tax at a nominal rate of 35 percent. If the same corporation moves those jobs to some other country, it can normally structure the deal to reduce its U.S. taxes to zero. That's right, zero."

(more at link)

So, in other words, Bush policies are already the enemy of job creation (which anyone who's been unemployed in the past couple of years knows all too well), once again demonstrating that all this administration has for its campaign platform are fearmongering and a whole lot of hot air to blow around.

Bush strategy: when you don't have any substantive positive achievements to point to, make a completely unsupported claim about your opponent's future behavior.

[kysrsoze]

5. Wisconsinites aren't that stupid, Mr. Bush.

Or is it Wisconsinians? Anyway, overall people in Wisconsin seem to have a deep-set wisdom which prevents them from buying that kind of shit. Nice try, George.

[Cocoa]

8. Sally Baron, for instance

the elderly woman who coined "whistle-ass" was a Cheesehead, which is the preferred term. :-)

[Chitown_Dem]

9. Statements like this (from the article)...

"This is called a period of transition," Mr. Bush said. "That's an economist's word for things aren't going too well for you. And I understand that. I understand people are worried about the job they have."

...are incredibly condescending and just oozing with insincerity.

[WillParkinson]

10. Of course he understands it...

He's worried about his (ill-gotten) job, too!

[progressiverealist]

6. people here where I live (Western Wisconsin) eat this shit up.

Wisconsin is a nice place to live, but go outside of Madison and Milwaukee and we've got more than our fair share of "NASCAR dads" and other flavors of redneck. They like a good ass-kicking in Iraq, delivered straight to their La-Z-Boy via CNN or Fox.