Something akin to "jobs created or saved"?
I want to address this statement then address the primus of the thread.
Admittedly, even I think the Obama Administration made a mistake by claiming that unemployment would remain under a certain percentage (8%) and that the ARRA would, in fact, "create" X-number of jobs. However, what continues to get lost in all the hyper-partisan politicing is the fact that unemployment hasn't risen beyond where it peaked in March/April of last year (9.6%), State govornments budgets were propped up as a result of federal financing, and public-private partnerships (contract work) did "fill the economic gaps" where private sector jobs were lost.
Clearly, the political waters have been extremely muddied (mostly by the Right), but when you truly take a step back and look at what could have gone terribly wrong versus how the private sector has been propped up and given a chance to evaluate what went wrong and get back on track towards fixing itself, I don't think many people can argue against the effectiveness of the ARRA even if it had marginal impact and fell short of its more loafty goals.
As to the OP, the key words here are "minority contingent" and (here's that word again...) "
fears the loss...". You know, people hated former Pres. Jimmy Carter but he was the last President who tried to warn us that unless we took serious steps to enact sound energy policies where this nation could not only reduce our dependency on foreign oil but eliminate it, we'd be in trouble over time. Well, look at where we are now.
We have a President who, right or wrong/intentionally or unintentionally/insightful or just another politician looking out for his own self-interest, is trying to find ways to put this country on a path towards energy independence. And if in doing so his policies inevitably removes some facets of toxicity and outdated energy programs from the marketplace only to replace them with energy sources that can benefit us to increase both our ability to be self-sufficient while also increasing our GDP and lowering our eneregy cost, then why not give him that chance?
I don't see "big oil" taking a backseat to wind, solar, nuclear power in the near term any more than hydro-electric power was once said to threaten the oil industry's footprint in the marketplace years ago. That same argument (along with the dangers of nuclear waste) was used against proponents of nuclear energy and look what eventually happened? The French, of all nations, now do nuclear energy far better, safer, clearner than we do!! And we harnest the power of the Atom for goodness sakes!!!
If we as Nation continue to let fear dictate "where do we go from here," then we may as well let China, India, Iran, or even a rising Russia be the world leader.
WAKE UP, AMERICA! Stop holding yourselves back out of FEAR!!
:neener
