David McElroy

Ever since the dying days of the lame duck Bush administration, federal officials and their friends at the Fed have been chanting incantations from the Book of Lord Keynes in a frantic effort to “stimulate” the U.S. economy. Like voodoo priests convinced of their power, these Keynesians aren’t going to let actual results get in the way of their faith in voodoo.

The U.S. government announced this morning that job growth in the country was the worst last month that it’s been since 1945. There were zero net jobs created in the country. The situation is bad and getting worse. Once again, we see that the voodoo economics of Keynes doesn’t work. It never has worked even once, but its practitioners won’t be dissuaded from their faith.

I can almost write the response from people such as Paul Krugman. I haven’t seen a statement from him yet, but it’ll probably be something along the lines of this: “The government hasn’t yet spent enough money to stimulate the economy. It’s not that we’re doing the wrong things. It’s that the Obama administration is kowtowing to Republicans by failing to spend enough. If we would just spend more money — on digging ditches or gearing up to fight off an alien invasion, for instance — there would be no more problem.”

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If you’re planning to open a nudie strip club, what’s the best place to get your investment cash? If you thought of finding investors or borrowing from a bank, you’re not blessed with the business genius of Washington, D.C., con artist Cornell Jones — who’s known as a “reformed gangster.”

In a lawsuit filed by the District of Columbia, it’s alleged that Jones and a non-profit organization he controlled bamboozled the city into giving $330,000 to open a job training center for people with AIDS. I’m not sure what kind of jobs the Stadium Club trains people for, but it’s safe to say it’s like no other job training center around.

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If you wonder why many business people are walking away from business today, look no further than the case in which a trucking company has been told it must employ alcoholics to drive its trucks, but the company is also responsible if one of them gets drunk and has an accident.

This is the Catch-22 that the federal government has thrust upon Old Dominion Freight Line. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says Old Dominion violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it removed a trucker from a driving position after management found out he had a drinking problem, so the EEOC has sued the company. Why would anyone stay in the trucking business with that sort of liability?

You might remember the story I had not long ago about Ronnie Bryant, the coal mine operator who announced at a public environmental meeting that he was backing out of plans to open a coal mine. In the comments underneath that story, there were multiple other people who said they had either gotten out of business for similar reasons or who were in the process of getting out. Business people are tired of being handed impossible regulations and contradictory rules. They’re tired of being treated like borderline criminals or suspect at best.

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