There was a very sadly missed opportunity not long ago. It was a brief flash of insight from Administration PR man Jay Carney. Don’t worry, it didn’t last and has not been repeated but somewhere deep in the mind of this poor confused fellow he discovered a simple fact and, intentionally or not, exposed it to a gaping press. “Well, the White House doesn’t create jobs. The government together — White House, Congress — creates policies that allow for greater job creation.” What possessed Mr. Carney to publicly rubbish the fundamental Creation Myth on which sits the whole contraption of Obamaism? There must have been a demonic home-invasion in his little skull, invisible to video or audio but perhaps if we slow it way down and turn it way up we will see the ghost of Milton Friedman dashing in his one eye, speaking his piece and then fleeing through the other. Either that or Jay stumbled on a bit of good sense accidentally, which happens, but then quickly throttled it in its infancy, which also happens.

Most demoralizing is not that Carney’s Clue was still-born but that no one seemed to notice its abrupt life and death. The White House does not create jobs? What the hell are we doing here, then? Neither in the press nor in the Congress did anyone react thus. How could they? As Governor Romney is married to his Promethean Romneycare and the President is married to so, so many concubines; likewise is anyone who could take Carney’s lead and run with it married to this witless idiom from the New Deal days that the government is the creator of wealth.

Hold on there, numbnut. We are talking about JOBS! As non-President Biden said, a three letter word, not Wealth, however many letters that has. Likewise there is perpetual discrimination, as the threadbare Carney demonstrates, between the debts, the deficits, the spending, the taxing, the growth, the shrink, the currency, the benefits, the policies, the price, supply and demand; indeed between anything we want to discuss and that which we do not. It is as if each of these blocks in our puzzle were roving beasts with agenda of their own rather than malfunctioning organs in one great lumbering, puking, choking Goliath. This also is purely opportunistic as when an issue is waived off for irrelevance another is corralled in for support. Such is the source of so much pointless wrestling over trivium. This isn’t a Jobs Bill, this is a Spending Bill! This is not a Spending Bill, it is a Growth Bill. Or a Tax Bill or an Energy Bill or a Deficit Bill or what have you.  It should be plain that in these days of the wheezing greenback, anything that deals with money is dependent on and hostile to all the other bits as your body is 90-some percent water but without the other stuff present and working tolerably well, you are no more than a puddle.

Of all these elements though Wealth Creation and Job Creation are near synonyms. When Smith considered The Wealth of Nations it was the mysterious differences between the despotic and despoiled France and the tumultuous but prosperous Britannia that concerned him. In Leeds a man could walk in, toil mercilessly and then take a cabbage back to his family. In Tours, not so much. Dickens took the same two-eyed approach in Tale of Two Cities, wondering why a few miles of rolling sea seemed to make such stark differences. In the Americas similar questions were being addressed and the answer, somewhat oblique, was Liberty.

That term also is subject to the imperatives of the moment but it has proven pretty durable. You will, however, search mostly in vain to find it mentioned either by the President and his legions or even among the anarchist hellhounds at Boehner’s call. For the few that do speak the ancient tongue there is despite and revilation among general calls for Revolution. Now, I am as revolting as the next fellow, maybe moreso, but we need some clarity, whether you are recruiting or shooting, as to what and whom you are revolting Against and just as crucially, what you are agitating For. The Revolution on offer today from the noisy, noisome Occupiers of this or that (in Atlanta, it is Woodruff Park) is mostly incoherent but where there is a discernible aroma it smells of blood.

Blood, we do not eschew as Americans and all this faux fainting at the sight or mention of it is an alloy of image management and wishful thinking. Do not denounce the scruffy Marxists who howl on streetcorners for your throat, just prepare yourself for their coming, it won’t take much. But recognize and perhaps mention that if JOBS are wanted, Blood will not provide them. Indeed, only Liberty will. Jesse Jackson the Junior is not calling for heads but he is making a rather French appeal when this sitting member of Congress (D, and quite Ill.) declares that the Congress (including the Democratic Senate, apparently) is in a literal State of Rebellion. The mic-man drops the ball here, not inquiring, against what or whom is the Congress in Rebellion? It seems to be nothing more than the Will of Barack Obama. But here Jesse Jr. sees another chance to get Obama on the cover of TIME as a President from history, Lincoln this time. The stove-pipe hat and beard can be Photoshopped in. It is not the Constitution that the rebels oppose though, in his view. We know because he encourages the President to declare a State of Emergency, something with no Constitutional foundation that comes rather from the history of Argentina. This when not a shot has been fired or a single extra-legal action been recorded except on Jackson’s side. More alarmingly, he states specifically that “extra-Constitutional” action is called for AND THAT THE PRESIDENT IS ALREADY ENGAGED IN IT!

If it weren’t for Jackson’s pedigree as chocolate-blooded gentry he would deserve a good reporting for this slander against the President. Didn’t Jackson and all the other elected whoozits swear an oath to protect the Constitution from ALL enemies, foreign and domestic? He is declaring the President a Constitutional Enemy and himself likewise. Has the boy gone off his meds? Oh, not a bit of it. Cancelling elections and ignoring the Constitution is perfectly mainstream thought in the Democratic Party. The Governor of North Carolina made a public call for support of cancelled elections with the usual justification of the King over an uncooperative Parliament. These gabbing-types, you see, are far too beholden to the whims and superstitions of the Mob. Once relieved of that primitive duty to appear before them every few years, they will do the right thing. In this case as in all others, the Right Thing is increased taxation and accelerated borrowing to support increased spending that will support increased Job Creation.

Does that work? You tell me. We might have a good example or two in living memory, depending on your memory’s life expectancy. But whatever you or I as individuals think, there are elected genii who are making those decisions today. Otherwise baffling actions by Democrats and others are well-explained by Rep Keith Ellison. In his view, regulations do not destroy employment nor hamper growth. No no. Regulation or indeed any sort of governmental imposition is BENEFICIAL to Job Creation as the new line inspector implies an increase in compliance officers! And those are well-paid jobs indeed. To be a compliance officer in any enterprise great or small is to take the very existence of that business into your hands every day. One slip that may not even be a slip but just an inviting target will put said business out of business if that is what the all-powerful and all-benevolent regulator wants, and perhaps even if he does not so want. And if you cannot find the extra revenue to hire a compliance specialist? Well then the responsibility falls on the proprietor and what the hell? Those fatcats have time and loot to burn anyhow.

Do not spit and curse Ellison, however (peace be upon him). He is far from alone and in any case, engages not in rough lies but rather smooth truth. Yes, of course, the government creates jobs. The government is in actuality the biggest employer in any nation you can name. Here in the Land of the Free we crossed the halfway point long ago and have not looked back. Britain was lauded and disdained as a Nation of Merchants. It is not anymore. Likewise we former forgers of steel and trade are, and apparently aspire to be, a Nation of Regulators. But each Regulator destroys just a bit of that which they were hired to regulate whatever benefit they might confer as the Regulator himself becomes more aggressive to justify his department. The result? Devastation. The stopgap measure is to now employ Regulators to regulate the Regulators. Hey! TWO jobs created! And yes, these will add to the spurious statistics but you will notice that all this addition at the most feverish pitch can only maintain a status quo that everyone agrees cannot continue. So, contrary to Mr. Carney and many another, the government can indeed create Jobs. What it cannot create is Wealth. That comes only from Free Exchange; Trade, Commerce, Business, Merchantry, Traffic, Truck. Which can thrive only under conditions of Liberty though it lives even in prisons and even in prison-nations. We are presented with two competing and mutually destructive Creation Myths. One cannot die, because it is true. One cannot survive, because it is false. Which is which awaits the judgement of Events and each individual American. Compromisers are delaying and increasing the cost of the inevitable. They and we are living on fudge.

Unless…. Wait, I see it now!

The solution is simplicity itself…. Get government into business!

Have we tried that?

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