Let try to ‘splain to y’all whut be goin’down heah.

Yesterday I told you about the latest White House ploy to save face in the days leading up to the election.  What was going to happen is this … budget sequestration (cuts) is set to take effect on January 2, 2013.  This means that the defense department has a lot less money to spend as of that date (something that will thrill Democrats) and, as they say, Obamanomics rolls downhill.  Defense contractors will have a lot less money, and they’re going to be laying off people.  Lots of people.  Over 100,000 people.  In other words, there were going to be a lot of layoffs, particularly related to national defense, around the time of the election.  The problem?  These people are going to learn that they’re going to be jobless in 2013 just days before the election.  That would be because of a federal law .. .the WARN Act, that requires these defense contractors, and other federal contractors, give 60 days’ notice of any large scale layoffs.  Sixty days before 2013 happens to fall right around the beginning of November; Election Day is November 6^th. 

This is bad.  Bad for Obama.  Just days before the people go to the polls to vote the news headlines will trumpet massive worker layoffs due to budget cuts.  Uh oh … sounds like a PR disaster waiting to happen … not to mention the disaster it will be for the countless Americans who will be victims of these cuts.  Clearly Obama needs to do something to save any votes that may be lost!  And here’s where Obama has the advantage.  The law means nothing to him.  He’s president!  He won!  He can do what he damned well pleases!  After all, he was ready to rule from day one, remember?  And didn’t Obama show us that the law means nothing to him when he set bankruptcy law aside for his little General Motors stunt?  And then he set the law aside again to keep his precious leaches on welfare from actually having to work!  So what’s the problem with setting the WARN Act aside?  Well … no problem, actually.  Obama’s Labor Department just decides to send a letter to these contractors.  The letter strongly suggests – suggests to government contractors who depend on their relationship with the government for their livelihood that they really might want to consider not issuing those layoff notices – virtual pink slips – until AFTER the election.  Pretty clever, huh?  Obama tells these contractors that they don’t have to abide by federal law, in order to save face before the election.

That’s out boy Barry!

(Ohhhhhhhhhhh!   Was that raaaaaaaaacist?)

But then it gets worse …

In a seemingly routine and mundane meeting of the House Armed Services Committee, a senior budget official in the Obama administration decided that he was going to make the issue of these layoffs into a political punching match.  The acting director of the Office of Management and Budget is a man by the name of Jeffrey Zients.  When asked in the committee meeting if the administration had any plans to stave off the looming budget cuts/layoffs, Jeffrey Zients blamed the Republicans and their “refusal to have the top two percent pay their fair share.”  He said it, not once, but twice!

“What is holding us up right now is the Republican refusal to have the top two percent [of earners] pay their fair share,” Zients said in response to a question from Rep. Randy Forbes (R., Va.).

“The root cause problem here is the Republican refusal to ask the top two percent to pay their fair share,” he reiterated, much to the surprise of several committee members who slammed Zients for turning a practical hearing aimed at preventing catastrophic defense cuts into a partisan blame game.

What a blithering and spectacular ignoranus.  As the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, you would hope that Jeffrey Zients would have some knowledge on the amount of taxes paid by which income brackets.  As a matter of fact, wouldn’t it have been nice if someone on that committee had asked Zients just three questions?

1. What percentage of total income do the top2% earn?
2. What percentage of total income taxes do the top 2% pay?
3. If you don’t know the answers to those questions, then on what do you base your statement under oath that the top 2% aren’t, as you say, paying their fair share?

Now don’t we all know that Zients would not be able to answer those questions?  To me the bigger question is why that question wasn’t asked in the first place!  Zeints was simply trying to impress his bosses in the Executive Department. Maybe managing to get a campaign speech into the middle of his testimony will get him a nice promotion!