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Announcer: The David Pakman Show at www.DavidPakman.com.
David Pakman: Welcome to The David Pakman Show. It is Labor Day, and not a surprise,
Louis, Republicans are cheering bad jobs numbers, Republicans desperate to do anything they
can to make the Obama administration and Democrats look bad even at the expense of the country.
Can you think of anything less patriotic than opting for bad economic numbers when the other
party has the guy in the White House, to then use it for political gain in an election for
you? Unbelievably unpatriotic, is it not?
Louis Motamedi: Unbelievable, David.
David: You don't really think so. I feel like you don't think... you think this is just
kind of eh, it's politics, whatever. But this is... this is the exact thing that we should...
Louis: I think it's just that I'm desensitized to it.
David: Well, we... fine. If Louis is desensitized to it, fine. He doesn't have to participate
in this analysis if he doesn't want to. But we need to be specifically pointing out the
fact that Republicans want the economy to do well when they can take credit for it.
And if good jobs numbers are going to make President Obama look good, then they don't
want those good job numbers, even though it's people in their districts, it's parents, it's
children, it's students in their districts that need these jobs.
But they are taking as much liberty as I can recall taking with bad job numbers to kind
of casually show that they would be doing things very, very differently. Listen, you've
got control of the House, you have presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann running around
saying they could fix the jobs problem in 90 days. Well, isn't it a little bit rude
to keep that information to yourselves? Why not, Michele Bachmann, fix it, then? Fix it
now. You don't have to be president to fix it. Do the patriotic thing, do the right thing
and fix the job situation, if it's just so easy for you to do.
Louis: I guess the key to winning an election is just to hold onto that information and
hope that the people will elect you so that you can fix it.
David: Well, Herman Cain has all the plans, but he's not going to tell us what any of
them are until he's elected, because until you're the president, you can't even speak
about what you would do as president.
Louis: Right.
David: Michele Bachmann apparently opting for something similar.
Louis: In a way, I respect what Herman Cain is doing, because at least he's not saying
he has these specific plans that he can't talk anything about.
David: [Laughs] Right.
Louis: He says, you know, OK, I'll make these decisions when I'm elected.
David: Yeah.
Louis: I'll surround myself with good people and make these decisions, whereas Bachmann
is saying oh yeah, I know exactly what to do, I'm not going to talk about it, though;
I'm not going to outline any specific details or any plans. You just have to trust me.
David: Yeah, but in what... on what other job would that be acceptable?
Natan Pakman: I mean, how do you determine whether to vote for him if you don't know
what he stands for, because after you vote for him he's going to determine what he believes
in?
David: Yeah, couldn't all the candidates just say I'm going to be the best at picking the
right people to advise me, and then we'll just vote on who we believe would pick the
best people? I mean, come on.
Louis: I know. His plan could be to turn the White House into a pizza parlor.
Natan: In some sense, he is being honest, though, because most people in this country
select the president, or any candidate, based on personality factors that have nothing to
do with their beliefs anyway, so in some sense, you know...
Louis: Or their looks.
David: Yeah, he's saying if you like me, if you find my way of speaking and my delivery
compelling and you think I'm a nice guy, vote for me, and then I'll pick people that will
figure out what to do. And maybe it is honest in a way, I don't know. It certainly doesn't
inspire confidence.
Louis: Right.
David: And because it is Labor Day, we should look at some fascinating labor numbers, many
of which are kind of scary: 25.3 million Americans are the true size of the unemployment crisis.
And I know Louis already has questions; he thought the numbers were a little different.
You have to include, when we look at the unemployment crisis, people who are out of work, people
who are working but are working part-time because they can't get a full-time job, people
who want to work but have simply given up searching because they are so frustrated by
not being able to find a job. A lot of those don't count in unemployment numbers. We need
to consider them when we look at the unemployed.
There's also 6.9 million jobs fewer today than in December of 2007. And 25 is the number
of times since January of 2009 that monthly job growth failed to keep up with basic population
growth. This is often missed when we look at new jobs numbers because of the population
growth in the United States: about 150,000 new jobs per month are needed just to have
an even unemployment rate, OK? And we've not kept up with that 25 times since January of
2009. All of the headlines saying job growth has stalled, job growth has not stalled, we're
not even really keeping up with population growth, OK?
At the same time, when we actually look at the number of jobs the American economy needs
to add each month to fill the 11.3 million-job deficit by the middle of 2016, OK, is 280,000
new jobs per month. That's the target. That's where we need to be. Where we actually are,
35,000 average jobs in the last three months. So there's a long way to go here, ladies and
gentlemen.
And I am actually confused why when Barack Obama, the president, proposed giving his
jobs speech on Wednesday night, John Boehner said no, you can't do that in front of a joint
session of Congress on Wednesday night, because it conflicts with our Republican debate that
we're going to do. Obama's press secretary, Carney, said it was just a coincidence. And
Obama caved and he postponed his big jobs speech until the next day.
I actually think this was a mistake for Republicans. It may seem like Republicans have won something.
They held their date, and this is all... I mean, ladies and gentlemen, people are unemployed
out there. Let's stop playing games about when Obama gives his speech.
But if we get past that for a second, shouldn't John Boehner have allowed Obama's jobs speech
to happen on Wednesday, have the debate Thursday, and then all of the candidates can come together
and pick apart Obama on that speech? Wouldn't that have been a better strategy?
Louis: Not that they need any specific speech or anything to bash Obama on.
David: No, they could certainly...
Louis: They can just stand there and say Barack Obama has failed, and millions of idiots will
just nod their head in agreement.
David: No question about it, but wouldn't it be nice to at least have the fresh speech
in the back of people's minds the next day and you can criticize that?
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