EDITORIAL

A majority of the American people voted for Barack Obama as President of the United States because they thought he could bring about change.

Now, only a few months later, voters may be starting to realize that some change is not all it's cracked up to be. As we have seen, important cabinet posts are being largely filled by the old guard of the Bill Clinton years.

The same global economists who claimed that exports and imports are the answer to economic growth are still making policy. But this has cost the American workers millions of jobs and a quickly-vanishing middle class.

It doesn't seem to matter which party, Republican or Democrat, has the majority in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. They all march in lockstep, creating and maintaining laws that have strangled manufacturing in this country.

Manufacturers found that they could produce their wares much cheaper in foreign countries. If Congress had done its job—protecting the American worker by increasing the tariffs on goods brought into this country—companies would not have had the benefit of both cheaper production costs and little or no overhead in flooding the country with cheap products.

During his campaign, President Obama claimed he would rectify this imbalance. However, his choices for those who are now making policy are mostly all devotees of globalization and cheap imports.

There was a time when the expression "closed shop" meant that all the workers were in a union and non-union people could not work there. Today, "closed shop" means just that: the shop is closed, gone, kaput—no longer in business. The product is being made in China, India, Bangladesh or some other foreign country.

Should the U.S. be responsible for creating a middle class in Third World countries? Will our grandchildren eventually apply for work in Mumbai or Hong Kong?

President Obama claims that "you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement." He made this statement recently while signing executive orders that, he said, would "level the playing field" for unions versus management.

Mostly, you cannot have a strong middle class without the solid foundation provided by manufacturing jobs. The new president has been pushing for the creation of jobs, but, in large part, they are make-work jobs.

There was a time when the unions protected workers and the jobs they held. Where was their power when manufacturing was being shipped out of this country with lightning speed? Did their demands help to expedite the flight?

By their votes, the supporters of President Obama bought into his promise of change. They didn't expect him to turn lead into gold or make circles out of squares.

But they didn't expect a recycling of political hacks, either.