Heckuva Job, Barack!!! Obama Admin Helps Corporate America Outsource Jobs While Domestic Job Market Tanks

President Accountability loves data and stats. Nothing makes him happier than tracking numbers, data and stats and then using that information to fire teachers, fire principals and close schools.

Well, right now the data for the Barack Obama administration isn't looking too good:

With the American economic recovery hanging in the balance, private employers added 71,000 jobs in July, up from a downwardly revised 31,000 in June but below the consensus forecast of 90,000. The unemployment rate stayed steady at 9.5 percent.

Over all, the nation lost 131,000 jobs last month, but those losses came as 143,000 Census Bureau workers left their temporary posts, the Labor Department said. June’s number was revised dramatically downward to a total loss of 221,000 jobs. The agency originally reported that the nation lost 125,000 jobs in June.

Figures released last week confirmed that the United States economy slowed in the spring, and the Department of Labor’s monthly statistical snapshot of hiring pointed toward a stall in hiring this summer, as employers failed to add jobs at the rate they were earlier this year.

With some economists predicting a “double dip” back into recession and the political stakes for the Obama administration rising as the weeks tick closer to the midterm elections, Friday’s unemployment report renewed pressure on lawmakers to consider the next steps they might take to bolster the economy. Recent indicators focusing on consumer confidence, retail sales and housing appear to put the economy in a holding pattern.

Earlier this week, a crucial index of manufacturing showed that activity had slipped slightly in July, chain stores reported anemic increases in sales and unemployment claims rose above the level usual for this stage of a recovery. On the more positive side, auto sales increased 5.1 percent in July compared with a year earlier, although from a very low base.

For now, companies appear nervous about expanding their payrolls. “Businesses just don’t want to hire,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics. “Workers are too costly and it’s very easy to substitute technology for labor.”

He added that with corporate earnings rising partly on the back of cost-cutting, employers are reluctant to give up profits. “So while corporate earnings were spectacular,” Mr. Sinai said, “the job market just stinks.”

Corporate profits are spectacular, but the job market stinks.

That's great!

Maybe Barack Obama should be doing something to hire Americans here at home, yes?

Except that he's not.

His administration is actually helping corporations outsource jobs abroad.

I'm not kidding.

Here's David Sirota on that:

In recent months, President Obama reversed his campaign promises on trade issues - first by dropping his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA and then by pushing to pass NAFTA-style trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Now, with the unemployment crisis persisting, the key jobs question is once again front a center in American politics. Specifically: How do we create jobs here at home and build our most valuable 21st century industries?

The first and foremost answer is that our government should stop doing stuff like the program described in this stunning new report from Information Week:

U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs...

The outsourcing program (is) sure to draw the most fire from critics. While Obama acknowledged that occupations such as garment making don't add much value to the U.S. economy, he argued relentlessly during his presidential run that lawmakers needed to do more to keep hi-tech jobs in IT, biological sciences, and green energy in the country.

Now look, I'm all for a robust foreign aid budget - we don't do nearly enough to help the developing world. However, using foreign aid money to specifically help private corporations "take advantage of low labor costs" in the developing world - that's not "aid," that's rank taxpayer subsidization of for-profit exploitation.

Right now, Even if we do not reform our atrocious trade policies that incentivize the ongoing wage-cutting race to the bottom, the least we should be doing is investing every single available dollar we have in job training and job creation here at home. Doing the opposite - actually using public dollars to intensify that wage-cutting race to the bottom - is grotesque.

Indeed it is grotesque, but not a surprise from a president who only listens to a couple of cronies when it comes time to get advice for policy and then sticks with both the cronies and the advice even when they and it are wrong.

So Larry Summers and Timmeh Geithner have the president's ear and nobody else with contrary ideas gets to offer them.

So here we are, almost two years after the 2008 election, and job losses are starting to accelerate again even as corporate profits are "spectacular."

What exactly has changed from the Bush administration economic policies to the Obama administration's policies?

Leaving aside the idiots like Palin and Bachmann who call Obama a socialist, this administration seems very comfortable making sure the corporations are doing "spectacular," while working people are struggling.

And don't get me started about how Obama cut food stamps so he could save his RttT/Fire Teachers program..

Obama Admin Takes Money From Food Stamp Program To Hand To KIPP, TFA, NTP And Other Ed Deform Organizations

The evil that is the Obama administration continues to wreak havoc across America.

The administration pushed legislation to cut $11.9 billion from food stamps to cut the federal deficit as well as offset new spending for Medicaid aid to the states and a teacher jobs bill.

A typical family of three receiving food stamps will have their benefits cut by $47 a month - over $500 a year, beginning in 2014.

Considering that the administration itself now says unemployment will remain between 9%-10% to 2013, cutting food stamp benefits from families struggling to make ends meet is unconscionable.

Even now, fully two years after the economic mess started, unemployment is starting to rise again and the July 2010 jobs report is supposed to show a loss of 70,000 jobs.

So it's not as if many unemployed or underemployed people don't need the money for food.

But what is worse is WHY they cut the food stamp benefits.

According to Representative David Obey, they did it to avoid cuts to either their i3 or Race to the Top programs.

In fact, Obama threatened to veto ANY bill that added money for teaching jobs but took it from either RttT or i3.

Both programs spur "innovation" in education by focusing on firing teachers, closing schools, adding tests to every grade in every subject, and creating more data-tracking and collation systems that allow teachers to be paid and hired/fired according to student test scores.

The second round of Race to the Top winners will be announced later this month or early in September. Yesterday the administration announced the winners of the i3 contest - and of course it was all the ed deform cronies of the administration:

The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday that 49 districts, schools, and nonprofitsRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader beat out more than 1,600 other applicants in the competition for $650 million in grants from the Investing in Innovation, or i3, fund.

Four groups—the KIPP Foundation, Ohio State University, the Success for All Foundation, and Teach For America—won what are known as “scale up” awards worth up to $50 million each.

Fifteen groups won “validation” awards of up to $30 million, and 30 won “development” grants of up to $5 million.

The winners will focus their work in 250 different project locations spanning 42 states plus the District of Columbia, and 37 percent say they intend to serve rural school districts.

...

The i3 competition sought to reward districts, consortia of schools, and nonprofit organizations that proposed the most-innovative proposals focused on improving teacher effectiveness, low-performing schools, standards and assessments, and data systems. The $650 million pot of money is a relatively small piece of some $100 billion in education aid funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed by Congress last year.

Not sure how firing teachers and closing schools actually adds jobs or stimulates the economy, but it certainly does stimulate the egos of Obama and Duncan, who fancy themselves as "innovators" of education bringing more "change" to education in four years than others have done in decades.

Too bad the change is bad, the reforms are either unproven or disproven (as here in NYC), and the money that they're using for the "innovation" was saved from budget cuts BY CUTTING FOOD STAMPS FROM POOR PEOPLE.

Where is the outrage over this?

Hell, where are the edublogs on this?

Has Edweek even noted where the money came from?

How about the charter shills at Gotham Schools?

Is it too difficult to point out that the Obama administration is funding its education "innovation" on the backs of poor people?

UPDATE: Fred Klonsky is all over this, pointing out Duncan and Obama are the culprits behind the "food for teachers" bill.

God knows, the country might not survive a little less "education innovation" money.

House To Return From Recess For Jobs Bill/Food Stamp Cuts

Gotta make sure those food stamp benefits get cut!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling the House back from its summer recess next week in hopes of quickly approving a $26.1 billion fiscal aid package for states and local governments now poised to clear the Senate Thursday.

The decision follows calls from labor allies and Education Secretary Arne Duncan that swift action is needed to put the rest the threat of thousands of teacher layoffs before the school year. And after conferring with her leadership, the ever modern California Democrat used a twitter account to spread the word.

...

Cash-strapped governors are promised $16.1 billion to help meet Medicaid payments next year, and $10 billion would go to state and local school boards to preserve teacher jobs.

“It is a great vote for American children, It showed a lot of courage,” Duncan told POLITICO. “There were a lot of people of who given this up for dead. It shows you have to keep fighting and yes, I hope the House returns to get it done.”

How is it a great vote for American children when the Medicaid/jobs bill offset comes from $11.9 billion in food stamp benefit cuts?

The benefit cuts will about $47 a month for a family of three beginning in April 2014 or $516 over the first 12 months

So we're going to keep teachers in the classrooms but steal food from poor people?

How are those American children Duncan claims to care about so much going to do well in school WHEN THEY"RE FUCKING HUNGRY???

Duncan is evil scumbag.

Not enough bad stuff can happen to the man.

Same goes for Obama, the man who suggested the food stamp benefit cuts so he could save cuts to his signature Race to the Top/Fire Teachers and Close Schools program.

Maybe if Duncan's and Obama's kids had to go hungry to pass this bill, they wouldn't be so eager to cut food stamps to offset the Medicaid/jobs bill.

Senate Cuts $11.9 Billion From Food Stamps Program To Save Teacher Jobs

People eat too much in this country anyway - especially debt-ridden, deadbeat poor people receiving "government hand-outs" like food stamps:

After months of trying, the Senate on Wednesday voted to end debate on legislation providing states with billions of dollars in emergency Medicaid funding through the first half of 2011.

The vote lends a pre-recess legislative victory to Democratic leaders, who have struggled for months to pass the measure under threat from the nation's governors that a failure to do so would lead to layoffs and cuts to safety-net programs nationwide.

The tally was 61 to 38, with Maine GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe joining every Democrat in favor of the bill.

The two moderate Republicans were drawn to support the measure after Democratic leaders scaled back the measure from $24 billion to $16.1 billion and provided offsets for the entire cost of the legislation, which includes $10 billion for education programs to prevent teacher layoffs.

For liberals, the offsets came at a price: Almost $12 billion of the $26.1 billion tab is covered by cutting food stamp benefits to low-income Americans beginning in 2014.

Wednesday's cloture vote sets the stage for a final passage of the bill no later than Thursday afternoon — depending on how long GOP leaders want to delay.

The House won't be back in session until after school starts, so NO teacher jobs will be saved in the 2010-2011 school year.

But FEWER people will receive food stamps and those that receive them will have their benefits CUT.

President Obama pushed for the $11.9 billion dollar food stamp benefit cut rather than have $500 million cut from his $4.3 billion dollar Race to the Top/Fire Teacher and Close Schools program.

Now that's some change we can believe in, huh?

Offset a teacher jobs bill that won't actually save any teacher jobs with almost $12 billion in food stamp cuts so that you can save $500 million that goes for firing teachers and closing schools.

No wonder President Obama is pulling out all the stops to keep corporate whore Dems like Michael Bennet in the Senate.

Real progressives would call Obama out on his corporate whore shit.