Black leaders worried about Obama’s “green” initiatives

Project 21, a black leadership network, has called on President Obama to quit trying to curry favor with “the global warming crowd” and begin promoting policies that create actual jobs rather than destroy them:

“Instead of currying the favor of the global warming crowd, the President should focus on getting people back to work. Green regulations based on junk science kill jobs and minimize productivity. Profits are now lost to accommodating new laws and regulations instead of hiring new employees and furthering innovation,” said Project 21′s Ak’Bar Shabazz, who owns several entertainment and telecommunications businesses.

Ironically, Obama is in the Triangle today promoting just the kind of green regulations and junk science that Project 21 correctly points out are putting thousands of people in the unemployment lines.

Project 21 seems to agree with Rush Limbaugh that Obama is a “faculty lounge president,” who is awash in theories and ignorant of the real world:

“President Obama and his administration tend to ignore the ramifications of academic theories in real world application. It seems President Obama wants green energy to be his New Deal, but — if left unchecked — government subsidies to green energy companies will drive our nation into bankruptcy,” said Project 21 member and Chicago-based talk radio host Charles Butler. “The Spanish now recognize their push for a green economy was the catalyst to their fiscal turmoil.”

Butler needs to understand the mind of someone like Obama. Facts don’t mean anything. The previous disastrous experiences of other countries don’t mean anything. Leftists always believe that their theories will work if you just keep trying. They never learn from experience.

A Ready-Made Ad For 2012

Over at sister blog The Locker Room, David Bass points out an argument from Gov. Perdue about the doctor/patient relationship that I predict will come back to haunt her during the election cycle.

The Obama visit to Cree in context

As you read the coverage of President Obama’s visit to Cree in Durham, there’s some key context you need to keep in mind, context that has been missing from any of the advance coverage in the local media:

President Obama on Monday was scheduled to give a pep talk for American manufacturing at a factory in Durham, N.C., where Cree Inc. makes LED light bulbs. Cree embodies Obama-era capitalism: profiting from government grants, political connections, revolving-door lobbyists and regulations that force people to buy your product.

Read the whole story for more evidence of the cozy and unhealthy relationship Cree has with Obama.

Hey, N&O, you need to read Carolina Journal

There was this line in a Saturday story in The News & Observer:

The state has been laying off workers since the recession hit.

I guess the editors and reporters had quizzical looks on their faces when they saw Don Carrington’s story at Carolina Journal Online this morning:

Public sector employment levels in North Carolina have been stable since the start of the recession in December 2007. It would take a loss of 63,000 government jobs to match the nearly 9 percent net loss that has occurred in the private sector during that time.

It’s hard sometimes for journalists to be immune from government propaganda. It’s even harder when journalists are part of it.

All that whining, signifying nothing

The way Gov. Bev Perdue, legislative Democrats and the public-sector unions have been whining and gnashing their teeth, you’d think jobs for government drones had fallen off a cliff. However, as Don Carrington’s investigations have found (and as Donna linked below), public-sector employees have skated through this recession virtually untouched.

Perdue vetoed a budget passed by both houses of the General Assembly, saying “It would cause a horrible mess. Government would shut down.” This is pure poppycock, balderdash and shameless demagoguery, and Perdue knows it. But that’s all Democrats have, on the state level and nationally, because they haven’t got the guts or the good sense to understand that we can’t keep spending to satisfy unions and entitlement groups.

The difference between Perdue’s budget and the Republican budget she vetoed is about 3,000 jobs. That doesn’t seem to be too much of a hit for the teachers’ and state workers’ unions to take, considering that the private sector, as Don points out, has lost more than 300,000 jobs already. Where are the protests and marches for them?

Public-sector workers need to suck it up and do their part, and Perdue needs to quit her demagoguery and let them.

Government Jobs Untouched By the Great Recession

Carolina Journal’s Don Carrington separates fact from fiction on government jobs and private sector jobs in our state. Here’s a sample:

Gov. Bev Perdue and her Democratic allies have claimed that the budget passed by the General Assembly would decimate public employment in North Carolina. And yet during the current recession, government agencies have been spared the massive job losses that have afflicted private companies.

Public sector employment levels in North Carolina have been stable since the start of the recession in December 2007. It would take a loss of 63,000 government jobs to match the nearly 9 percent net loss that has occurred in the private sector during that time.

About That Recovery We’re Hearing So Much About

From the Triangle Business Journal comes more harsh economic reality. This time it’s about the retail sector and jobs — or lack thereof. Perhaps someone will mention this to the president during his visit today.

A new analysis of federal data show that Raleigh had 55,000 retail trade jobs in April of 2011 – 3,900 less than it posted three years ago.

Sadly, Raleigh is not alone. Welcome to the Obama recovery.

It’s Re-Election Time

Gov. Perdue spent days attacking the bi-partisan state budget before issuing her veto yesterday. Unless she’s lured the handful of Democrats back to her side, the last few days have been more about campaigning for re-election by throwing red meat to her left-of-center base than about the budget itself.

Meantime, President Obama will be in the Triangle today, no doubt one of many, many, many, many visits he’s likely to make in an effort to win North Carolina in his re-election campaign. While here today, the president will stop by Cree in Durham and visit with his “Council on Jobs and Competitiveness,” which is led by GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, the super-rich, tax subsidy and incentive loving Obama supporter. The CJC will be holding a “listening” tour today. Immelt’s role with the Obama administration has drawn the eye of the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney in this very interesting piece.