Obama Touts Corporate Lobbyist Wish List Items as "Jobs" Program

corporate states of AmericaWho all is sick to death of politicians claiming some policy will create jobs when in fact it will destroy them? Such is the outrage from Obama's reaction to the pathetic jobs report.

Obama touted the South Korean Free Trade Agreement as an answer to the jobs crisis. KORUS is projected to lose 159,000 U.S. jobs over 7 years. For Columbia, a loss of 55,000 jobs is projected.

What was the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results? The South Korean Trade Agreement is based on the same failed model as NAFTA. The South Korean Trade Agreement is projected to increase the trade deficit in auto and parts alone by $700 million. Why would one bail out the auto industry only to enable unfair imports of Korean autos?

Panama is a tax haven with over 400,000 corporations located there to avoid paying taxes. If that trade deal goes through what meager U.S. tax haven laws we have now will be challenged. How's that for balancing the budget deficit?

Even Ben Bernanke has shown how currency manipulation is going on unabated and as a result these emerging economies, such as South Korea, are unfairly increasing their exports.

Ever wonder why Democrats are fighting so hard for trade adjustment assistance, or funds, re-training for those displaced by trade agreements? Because they know Americans will lose their jobs from these trade deals. It's a token payout to those who lose their jobs due to bad trade, outsourcing.

Even worse, the South Korean Trade Agreement is going to be a boom for unregulated financial derivatives. It literally allows a foreign corporation to challenge U.S. law as a violation of a trade pact.

What about Obama's other demands?

Investing in highway and rail will create construction jobs, no doubt about it. But how well did a payroll tax holiday work already? Last December Congress lowered the social security payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2% for 2011, but for the employee, not the employer! That does nothing to reduce the cost of hiring for businesses. Even worse, such a tax holiday drains social security, which we see is under attack under the cover of deficit reductions. Why bother to push for a really small tax holiday, which clearly in the big scheme of hiring costs is a drop in the bucket when it's clear businesses are risk adverse?

Patent reform is yet another multinaitonal corporate agenda item and actually hurts inventors and will stifle start-ups and risk takers. In a switch called first to file versus first to invent, basically a lone wolf inventor can easily get ripped off. A large multinational only has to file a patent, it doesn't matter is they stole it from some poor schmuck in the process.

A non-disclosure agreement may prevent knowledge of the invention from being cited as prior art against an application of the original inventor, but it does not prevent the venture capitalist’s consultant from copying the invention and filing a patent application. It is wise for the original inventor to at least file a provisional patent application before talking to a venture capitalist, but here too, the capitalists may ask a lot of questions. If the consultant to the capitalist files a patent application, the consultant may win a first-to-file contest if the inventor did not file a provisional application or the consultant may file on a blocking patent application if the inventor answers too many questions. The small company would be forced to prove that the consultant’s patent application was derived from the venture capitalists who received their knowledge of the invention from the original inventor at that meeting. Since the Patent Office has only limited powers of discovery, the patent would likely issue to the copyist. The small company that needed the venture capital financing in the first place may be either driven out of business or forced to find other financing to sue the copyist in U.S. District Court, discover evidence of derivation and invalidate the copyist’s patent.

There is another aspect the IEEE, other groups representing actual inventors are not amplifying in their attempts to stop the destruction of U.S. patent law. That is money and costs of intellectual property. The above inventor is at the venture capitalist's office in the first place because they are broke and need funding. Patents are expensive so imagine if someone rips you off and it's now your burden to prove that happened, plus you're broke and have no funding. Why would the Obama administration be pushing to screw the pooch on patents, one of the strong suits of America? Who else but corporate lobbyists. Who cares if it kills the entrepreneur engine that made America great right?

Bottom line is now that the jobs crisis can no longer be denied, instead of getting real solutions to the economy, we get corporate and special interests wish lists. Politicians these days even have the gall to lie, straight faced, to the American people on what these agenda items do.

It's insult to injury, but regardless, don't expect jobs to appear anytime soon. Not with this politically corrupt train wreck.

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Comments

Nailed it

The varieties of job destruction amplified by an outright attack on our most creative: you covered the waterfront on this one. There is simply no integrity left in the process of governance. It is all a gravy train for "neo-finance" - making money by manipulating the system without ever lifting a hand or taking an idea to product then to market.

GOP just as bad, two peas of a pod

Just to note that the GOP is just as bad, telling bold faced lies to the American people forever on what creates jobs in this country. Right, if tax cuts for the rich and corporations favorite loopholes helped when we have a massive labor shortage (not that corporations do not claim there is a labor shortage, which they are right now! What BS!)

I'm so sick of these bold faced lies on what policies do what.

I mean the link to Bernanke, as much as everyone blasts the Fed, at least he's pointing to currency manipulation being a major problem, which is truth.

Bernanke the worst offender of them all

Yes Bernanke points to currency manipulation abroad, then continues on with being the world's largest currency manipulator himself.

But worse than that, he is the greatest distorter of global markets ever, as he exports our inflation all across the globe.

And Bernanke had the biggest role of all in outsourcing and job destruction. If not for him, and Greenspan before him, the pain of shipping away 46,000 factories would have been felt as soon as it got started. But Americans didn't feel this pain, because they were able to replace lost wages with credit. Why work 8 hours a day on an assembly line when you can just use your house as an ATM?

Bernanke blew the bubble that provided the illusion that we were getting richer, even as we were in fact getting poorer. It is no accident we just so happened to have a huge housing bubble at the same time our production was being offshored. Providing this credit narcotic to the masses was Bernanke's special job as member of the council of ruling global elite.

His job was to keep the masses happy in bubble-land while production got offshored under their nose. Keep it so the time they figured out what was going on it would be all over.

Ben Bernanke is a criminal of the highest order, and no soft soaping of that private banking cabal, that criminal cartel dedicated to funneling the world's resources into the pockets of the elites will work any more.

Not buying it. For the good of the world that criminal banking cabal needs to be disbanded. Because sooner or later the people are going to rise up and tear it down with their bare hands.

housing bubble to cover offshore outsourcing

No doubt the housing bubble gave a faux pas "recovery" after they started offshore outsourcing jobs, labor arbitraging Americans like mad in 2001 start...but Bush administration pushed for that as well as Greenspan (who if one listens to any of this talks is really into the destruction of the U.S. middle class and has literally prompted agendas to repress wages repeatedly!)

Regardless, right now, Bernanke is the least of your worries. Sorry, there is a popular mantra to hate the Fed but in the current scheme of things it's our government that is truly screwing us at the moment.

Congress, not all of them but almost all

"In the current scheme of things it's our government that is truly screwing us at the moment."

Congress is supposed to be comprised of our "representatives" and sworn to support the Constitution! (US Const., Art. 6)

Bush didn't set interest rates

Yes Bush pushed for it, but Bush wasn't setting the interest rates, Greenspan/Bernanke were. Nor did Bush institute fractional reserve lending.

Through several administrations the one constant in this whole mess has been the Federal Reserve. A private banking cartel disguised as a government agency, doing everything in it's power to transfer a nation's wealth into the pockets of it's friends.

And nothing Bush said or did gets it off the hook for that.

do u even know what fractional lending is?

It's been around for a very long time and except for some conspiracy theorists isn't too controversial, when the capital requirements and regulation are used in conjunction, which, financial deregulation removed (another Congressional act)

Try derivatives and evaluations of them if you want to get into some CT. Seriously, it doesn't help to focus on where the problems are when people are getting their panties all in a bunch over something that is pretty stable.