Oct 18, 2011
President Obama is visiting North Carolina and Virginia this week in an effort to rally support for the remains of his failed jobs act, which couldn’t clear the Democrat controlled congress last week despite all his best efforts. In a tax-payer fast cash funded tour of several states, the president is now touting small parts of his jobs plan, and attempting to sway peoples’ opinions of himself to his favor. The White House insists that the president is not campaigning or stumping in any way; he is merely visiting key areas to explain how specific parts of his jobs plan can help those communities in actual, quantifiable ways.
One of those ways, and the one he spent the most time going on about, is to put new teachers into classrooms, retain current teachers, and rehire teachers whose jobs were lost to layoffs. Putting more teachers into the classrooms, he says, would make a big difference. But how that helps average unemployed workers is unclear. Most of the appearances he made that were advertised ahead of time as “meet and greet” were in reality mere photo ops during which none of the prominent citizens invited to appear were given the opportunity to speak with the president. Many of them were disappointed, as they had questions about Obama’s failed jobs creation efforts.
Obama defended his plan, saying that when the Senate failed to pass it, they had said “no to you.” He was trying to imply that an answer of no to him was the same as an answer of no to the citizens of America. The question looming large on everyone’s minds however was “You’re the president, so why can’t you get congress to pass any of your ideas?” They also seemed doubtful that any of the president’s suggestions would lead to the creation of a single, practical job.
