David McElroy

The good news for unemployed people is that Barack Obama is about to do his best imitation of Bill “I Feel Your Pain” Clinton and start concentrating on giving them jobs. How? Well, that’s not so clear. They’re making it up as they go along. The bad news is that the mainstream economists who the administration listens to are just as confused as they are about how to “create jobs.”

The Obama administration said Wednesday that the president will make a speech shortly after Labor Day outlining what he’s planning to do about creating jobs. It would probably help if he would call someone at the Mises Institute for a few minutes to get an explanation about why government can only destroy jobs, not create them. Since that’s not going to happen, let’s take a look at the beliefs of the sort of neo-Keynesians who he will be listening to in formulating his plan.

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If Barack Obama wants to know something related to a government agency, he simply has one of his many assistants call and ask the question. There would be an immediate answer, because it’s the president who’s asking. For a real taxpayer asking, well, not so much.

In the best piece of simple, basic reporting I’ve seen this year, Politico covered the aftermath of Obama’s answer to a farmer’s question in Illinois Wednesday. The farmer had heard rumors about some new regulations related to dust, noise and water runoff, and he was afraid the rumored regulations were going to hurt his business, so he asked Obama about them.

Obama advised the farmer to contact the U.S. Department of Agriculture directly and ask about the rumored regulations. He was quite insistent on this point — that the farmer should be able to get an answer to his question. During part of the answer, there was some soft laughter in the room at Obama’s naiveté. So the Politico reporter got the question from the farmer and called the USDA.

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If you needed evidence that Michele Bachmann is just another opportunistic demagogue — and not a very bright one at that — you need look no further than her promise to bring gasoline prices down to $2 a gallon.

There are two ways for the price of gasoline to fall that far right now. One would be if the economy plummeted further and demand fell dramatically. The other is if the government artificially imposed price controls. Let’s be very clear about this. A president cannot control gasoline prices — unless that president is going to use coercion.

Bachmann claims she will achieve her populist miracle by opening up new areas to drilling. I think that’s a good idea, but the amount of oil that can be taken from those areas is a drop in the bucket compared to world demand and U.S. demand. It’s not enough to shave prices at all, much less as much as she’s claiming.

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