Food stamp king, jobs footman

Since January 2009, a net of 194,000 new jobs have been created. During that same time, 14.7 million have been added to the food stamp rolls.

The Recession was over in June 2009—before the stimulus kicked in—in 2013 he says recovery has begun

If Obama hadn't tried to take over 1/6 of the economy throwing all plans for development, invention and expansion into a free fall, the recession he continues to blame on Bush could have been solved quickly. (Technically, it was over in June 2009, so everything he did after that caused the economy to remain sluggish.)

Did Romney and Bain Capital create jobs?

Many,  many thousands at Staples, Sports Authority, Gartner Group, Steel Dynamics, and save others by creating turn arounds.  Now let’s compare those tens of thousands of jobs created with how many Barack Obama’s administration has created by frivolously throwing tax dollars at campaign contributors and union buddies.

“There are two ways to look at job creation. The first is to look at jobs created and lost in Bain Capital’s companies at the time Romney left Bain Capital at the beginning of 1999. The second is to look at jobs created and lost in those same companies today. This gives Romney and Bain Capital credit for having invested in those companies when they were young. It is inappropriate to include companies that Bain Capital invested in after Romney left because he did not have any impact on those investments.” . . .

“Among Bain Capital’s investments under Romney, the large job creators are clearly Staples and Sports Authority. Both of these were small, young companies when Bain Capital invested in them. Bain invested in Staples when it had only one store, so there were likely fewer than 200 employees at the time. Bain appears to have invested in the Sports Authority when it had fewer than ten stores. Unfortunately, there are no public data to say how many people were employed at that time. At the end of 1998, Staples had more than 42,000 employees, Sports Authority had almost 14,000, Gartner Group had almost 3,000, and Steel Dynamics had over 500. So at the beginning of 1999, when Romney left Bain Capital, these four companies alone employed almost 60,000 total employees. While some of the job growth at Sports Authority came from acquisitions, there is no doubt that these four companies created tens of thousands of jobs over the period.

Fast forward to today. By the end of 2011, Staples had about 89,000 employees. Sports Authority is now a private company. The last time it reported employee numbers, in 2006, it had 14,300 employees. In addition, Gartner Group had over 4,400 and Steel Dynamics had over 6,000 employees. Using the most recently available data, these four companies alone employed almost 125,000 total employees.

Bain Capital also successfully turned around several existing businesses during Romney’s tenure. For example, Bain Capital bought Wesley Jessen Vision Care for $6 million in 1994. It had been a division of Schering Plough and was not profitable. Bain Capital and a new CEO turned it around and sold it to Ciba Geigy for over $300 million in 2001. When it was sold, it appears to have had 2,600 employees. Today, the company is part of Ciba Vision.

Overall, then, the companies Bain Capital funded under Romney have created tens of thousands of jobs using any measure.”
http://www.american.com/archive/2012/january/how-many-jobs-did-romney-create-at-bain

How to stimulate the economy--NOT

"In January 2008, the United States economy employed 138.1 million people and the unemployment rate stood at 4.9%. But the powers in Washington thought deficit spending could boost a slowing economy, so Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) passed and President George Bush signed a $168 billion economic stimulus bill made up of temporary tax cuts and increased mortgage grantees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

By January 2009 that economic stimulus worked so well that the U.S. economy had lost 3.5 million jobs and the unemployment rate stood at 7.6%. Again the powers in Washington thought deficit spending was the answer, so Speaker Nancy Pelosi and newly minted President Barack Obama dialed up $787 billion in temporary tax cuts and permanent spending increases. Ten months later, the U.S. economy has now shed another 3.59 million jobs and the unemployment rate stand at 10%."

And since none of that worked, they'll make a third stab at it. They're rejoicing that job loss fell--and yes, that's better than the alternative, but the unemployment rate fell from 10.2 to 10 percent in part because 98,000 workers left the labor force. The bigger problem is no job creation. What employers, when faced with the uncertainty and higher taxes that the health "reform" is promising ("tax" used 183 times) wants to call back workers or expand? The only places in the USA not hard hit are the suburbs of Washington--Virginia, Maryland, etc.--where workers are needed to fill the posts required to distribute your tax money and buy bottled water for congressional staffers. In Ohio most of the "recovery" money has gone to Democrat districts. So we'll just get more of the same ineffective, high cost nonsense.

[The Foundry and Morning Bell, Dec. 4, 2009]