A Couple of Things

by Errington C. Thompson, MD

There is so much going on right now that I feel if I write this column on one topic, I’m going to miss something really big and regret it later. So, to avoid regret, I’m going to try to cover several things.

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street is an organic movement which, at its heart, has its roots firmly in the 1960s. Ignore the babbling of the mainstream media because they don’t understand this movement. They want a coherent message. Why?

As I see it, Occupy Wall Street is simply a bunch of Americans who are
fed up with their current situation. They know that Wall Street is at
the heart of many of our problems, so Occupy Wall Street started their
protests there. Sounds reasonable to me. This is a movement which is
organic and powered by the people and not large corporations, like the
tea party. They deserve our support.

The new economic numbers came out on Friday. Our economy added 103,000
new jobs. This is mediocre at best. Because of our growing population,
in order for our unemployment rate to stay steady, we have to add nearly
125,000 new jobs every month.

The Economy

Our economy is 6.6 million jobs below where it was when the recession
started. Add to this number 4.5 million jobs needed to keep the
unemployment rate at a steady state since the beginning of the
recession, and you come up with a number of 11.1 million jobs. That’s
how many jobs our economy needs to create in order to get our
unemployment rate back to where it was before the recession started in
2007. To reach that number, we’d have to add more than 400,000 jobs per
month.

Far worse than the financial deficit is our huge jobs deficit. Our
elected leaders should be acting as if this was a crisis. Yet most of
them are acting as if it’s business as usual. That’s a crime.

Other Distractions

In order to distract you from the fact that you have a lousy job which
is paying you a lousy wage, or you don’t have a job at all, the
mainstream media has been focused on the Michael Jackson trial. Nobody
was a bigger Michael Jackson fan than I was/am (I saw him four times in
concert, and I loved every one of them).

I’m sorry, but I cannot focus on Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s
physician, who is accused of injecting the pop singer with propofol, a
powerful anesthetic. There are too many other things going on in the
world. (I haven’t been following the Amanda Knox trial/acquittal
either.) By the way, did you know that October 7, 2011 is the 10th
anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan? So far we have spent $462
billion in Afghanistan. 1,720 Americans have died there.

Green Technology

Since before he was elected the right wing has desperately been looking
for something they can pin on President Obama. As soon as they heard
the solar company Solyndra went belly up, they knew something was wrong.
Remember, Solyndra received over $500 million of our taxpayer money.

Now, I don’t understand how a company receives $500 million and still
goes out of business. I do know that every investment in new
technologies does not necessarily pay off. If a venture capitalist
invests in 10 businesses, he doesn’t believe that every single business
is going to take off. He knows that some of the businesses that he
invests in will fail, some will do okay, and a few will go public and
make him a ton of money.

The fact that some in the administration did not believe that Solyndra
was a good investment does not indicate wrongdoing or fraud. (And
remember, Solyndra’s application for federal support began in 2005 and
moved forward under the Bush Administration.) I bet there were some in
the administration who thought investing in the auto companies was a
waste of taxpayer funds, but, for now, it looks like it was an
outstanding investment—which, by the way, has been paid back.

Let’s get just a little perspective, we, the American taxpayers, are
giving tax deductions, tax preferences, and tax credits of approximately
$4.5 billion per year to the oil and gas industry. Which is
worse—investing in a new clean-energy company, or giving our hard-earned
money to the most profitable industry on this planet?