"Shovel-Ready" Stimulus Didn't Actually Involve Shovels

Looks like there was plenty of shoveling on the stimulus bill, but not the kind we had in mind:

No Country for Burly Men
How feminist groups skewed the Obama stimulus plan towards women's jobs.
by Christina Hoff Sommers

A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.

Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period. Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women's groups has made it all but impossible. Consider what just happened with the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Well, we had the famous Angry White Male backlash in 1994. The seeds are being sown...

Comments

[Rick Ballard]

One must hope that all the women who took a flyer on the Kendonesian and are now the sole support of their families (aside from the extended unemployment benefits) have a chance to reflect (after they complete the housework when they get home from their day's labor) upon the wisdom of their decision. There should be a Pottery Barn "you broke it, you bought it" aphorism developed for men to use when the whining becomes unbearable.

[Ignatz]

Good, short primer on the fantasy of Beijing's own shovel ready Potemkinism at NRO today.
Given the similarity of the Chi(nese)com and
Chi(cago)com fiscal responses which aphorism more applies;
Great marxists think alike or,
a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

[Annoying Old Guy]

Yet another way in which the "stimulus" was fundamentally broken from day one. Yet our political class and a plurality of voters don't seem to care. That is certainly stimulating my personal depression.

[DebinNC]

How "greenmail" by unions is stifling construction jobs in CA.

[PeterUK]

Push it too far and the "male backlash" could be Islam.

[matt]

this also harkens back to the issue of production versus consumption, unfortunately. The "male" jobs lost in most cases have been in manufacturing and construction, which generate wealth.

The "female" jobs, in education and health care, to a greater extent consume wealth.

[Neo]

Recovery's Missing Ingredient: New Jobs

[Rick Ballard]

Mr Uk,

I believe that a long period of "honey, pick up another case of beer on the way home, we're getting a bit low" is a more apt male response. At some point the additional drudgery imposed upon women may outweigh the frisson of voting for "Hope & Change" in an empty suit.

[Extraneus]

If you could somehow merge the two ideas -- four wife-slaves per unemployed beer-swilling couch-potato -- the days of Islam are truly numbered.

[PeterUK]

Mr Ballard,
You forget green serfdom,the women will be too busy beating the washing on rocks down by the river to pick up beer.Besides Arugula wine will be compulsory by then.

[PeterUK]

Will this not have a disproportionate affect on the black working class? Surely Obama,Soul Brother Socialist wouldn't dump on his supporters?

[peter]

More on the rumors of Barry Soetoro's application for a Fulbright at LUN

[PeterUK]

From the link by Peter.

"Released today, the transcript indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California. The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship."

So Obama is either a cheat or he is a foreign national.

[Double underline 'crazy', if you please.]

Well, this is certainly going to raise the demand to see his long form birth certificate. Please don't tell me 'birfers' aren't crazy; I was getting used to the state of mind.

[hit and run]

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/occidental.asp>Fake.

Snopes has it from Apr 1. Anything about that date seem relevant?

[Rick Ballard]

"So Obama is either a cheat or he is a foreign national."

Not necessarily. Barry Dunham Soetero Davis? Hussein Obama? must have formally renounced his citizenship in order to obtain an Indonesian passport (per Indonesian law) but the renunciation would not be definitive unless he had made a formal declaration as an adult to US consular officials. Our little Malcolm Kunta X Kinte has been a construct - a simulacrum since Day 1.

He's definitely a cheat, a liar and a thief but there is still a greater than 50% probability that he is a US citizen. One who was willing to renounce his citizenship as an adult for pecuniary advantage, so a little lower than pond scum, but a citizen nonetheless. Probably.

[OK, triple underline.]

Yeah, Texas Darlin calls it an April Fool's Joke. Shoulda known Obama wasn't in England.
========================================

[The Pakis know, and so do the Indonesians.]

Yeah, Rick, deep down I'll bet he was born in Hawaii. But I also think he claimed foreign student status at Occidental, and I'll bet he visited Pakistan in 1981 on an Indonesian passport. Lying and cheating thrill him.

[Barbara]

April Fool's Joke?

The story may be false as Snopes says, but their rebuttal isn't all that convincing. The fact is that without the records - all of them - we just don't know who this man really is.

[PeterUK]

"He's definitely a cheat, a liar and a thief but there is still a greater than 50% probability that he is a US citizen."

Is 50% good enough to be US president.It wouldn't get him into the Mafia.

[PeterUK]

This is no great problem,all Obama has to do is release his records.Why won't he?

[Extraneus]

I bet he's worried that Fox News will start asking about this.

[Extraneus]

A recession dividend?

Tens of thousands of Chinese fight the police in Shishou

[Those are tea parties, silly.]

80,000 riots a year in China?

[matt]

here's my theory. When he was living in Indonesia, his stepfather got him an Indonesian passport. Legally, I believe he can also claim Kenyan citizenship as a dual citizen if we have that agreement with Kenya.

Where it would be embarrassing would be if he used either of those passports to establish his credentials as a foreign national. Gaming the system even further would not look good on an affirmative action baby.Not that I would be surprised. Someone should ask him the question sometime. "Mr. President, do you hold passports from any other country?"

[cathyf]

I'm curious about the whole "foreign student" thingy... The reason why colleges love foreign students today is that they pay full freight, while American students are entitled to all sorts of financial aid programs and discounts. Now there might be an advantage where you don't have the grades or test scores to get in (colleges have separate admissions criteria for foreign students) but Obama went to a pretty exclusive prep school, and it's hard to imagine that he would not have been able to get into Occidental (or Columbia, for that matter) under their regular programs. It's not like they are particularly hard to get into.

[clarice]

Besides, it says he got a Fulbright, doesn't it? I don't recall he did.

I expect what he doesn't want us to see on his birth certificate is father unknown and on his college transcripts--his grades.

[PeterUK]

Whatever the reason,Obama has spent nearly a million dollars covering up his records. The question mark grows with every cent.Either it is very embarrassing or it is politically damaging to Obama.
Whatever it is,it isn't a million dollars of nothing.

[clarice]

It's a million dollars of other people's money.

[Captain Hate]

I think Clarice has it correct. His life has been a fantasy construct and no hard evidence can be allowed to demolish that.

[Pofarmer]

Where it would be embarrassing would be if he used either of those passports to establish his credentials as a foreign national.

Hence, the passport hinkiness during the primaries.

[PeterUK]

Captain,
I've been saying for ages,that Barrack Hussein Obama is a construct in the mould of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. He realised that being black could pay off politically than exploiting his white roots. That is why in his own words, he "pushed his white girlfriend away". He has used the Barrack Hussein Obama persona to achieve the highest office in the land, but will not reveal information that would be required for the most mundane of official transactions.
I don't know the requirements in the US ,but here a birth certificate would be a prerequisite for a passport.

[cathyf]

Obama makes reference in one of his books to his original, battered birth certificate which was issued in 1961. The point of all of the speculation about adoption, etc., is that a later document can make reference to an earlier document, but there is no reason that an earlier document would make reference to a later one. There is no reason that his 1961 paper would be stamped, "name changed when adopted in 1967" or some such thing. So he very well may have used whichever document was convenient over many years.

And even now there is a whole chain-of-documents thingy. I got my first passport when I was 15. My parents brought my baptismal certificate and signed an affidavit. I then used the passport to get my drivers license at 16. Drivers license to get a marriage license. Marriage certificate to change the name on my passport. Passport with both names to change the name on my drivers license. Obama is 1.5 years older than me -- while current ID procedures are different (my kids both got soc sec numbers within a few weeks of birth, whereas I got mine when I got my first bank account at 6 years old) back in our day people didn't necessarily have the same sort of official paper trail.

[PeterUK]

cathyf,
But there is no trail of any kind for Obama.