Barack Obama has decided to call a jobs summit to calm fears of rising unemployment that his stimulus package has failed to curtail. Although President Obama continues to claim that the stimulus has “created or saved” hundreds of thousands of jobs, 10.2% unemployment smacks down that argument every time.
From Fox News:
Next month’s summit will be the 12th Obama has hosted or attended since assuming the presidency, not counting a July “beer summit” aimed to tamp down a racially tinged dispute between Harvard Professor Henry Gates and Cambridge, Mass., Police Sgt. James Crowley, who arrested Gates in his home after reports of a break-in.
At the White House, Obama held a fiscal responsibility summit in February, a health care summit in March and an Afghan-Pakistan summit in May. He has also attended G20 and G-8 meetings abroad as well as attended Russia, Mexico, NATO and Americas summits.
Lee Cary over at AmericanThinker.com sums up President Obama’s summit before it even takes place:
It would have been heresy to publically make the following statement six months ago: Obama is intent on eroding the U.S. economy so that he can more easily transform it into a version of European socialism.
The idea of a “summit” is typical of a community organizer mentality. Convene the stakeholders, let them vent about the problem, give a shout-out to those already engaged in efforts to address the problem, get at least one member of the “establishment” that caused the trauma to attend and be contrite, define a vague action plan, stress the need for the whole community to get actively involve, break into small groups to discuss the issues, put people’s thoughts on flip chart paper, have the break-out groups’ scribes report back to the larger group, be sure everyone signs their names and contact information on a clipboard, and then schedule a few interviews with the local media to exaggerate the outcomes of the event.
As the Summit ends in December, the room will be all a-buzz with optimism and bonhomie. Then nothing will change. It’s about feeling good, not doing good.
At Obama’s Summit, we can expect some announcement like an extension of unemployment benefits, or a commitment from an administration-friendly company to hire x-hundred more employees in an inner city, or the formation of a special blue ribbon commission of Beltway luminaries and captains of industry tasked to come up with additional solutions to make “The Turn in Ten” – how the decline in jobs will turn around in 2010 to a growth in jobs. More new government jobs.
December Job Summit 2009