AUGUST 7, 2013
'Phony scandals' are not phony, but touting economic growth is deceptive
'It's downright frightening to think that 75 percent to 90 percent of all seniors are 'economically insecure'
BOHEMIA, New York – Barak Obama's "ill advised" summer campaign tour is in full swing as he tries to convince Americans that he has successfully turned the economy around. "But a record 46.2 million citizens living in poverty – including an overwhelming number of seniors – will find the president's overly optimistic assessment of living conditions in these United States hard to swallow," according to Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens.
"It appears that Mr. Obama's strategists thought a spate of speeches focused on the economy would take minds off of the spate of scandals that have plagued his second term so far.
Consider the newest and perhaps most overused talking point – 'phony scandals.' The president and his surrogates have been employing that language in hopes of distracting us," Weber said.
But it is a "tactical blunder," he claimed, mainly because the economy is, indeed, uppermost in the minds of all of us these days and "it sucks," as the latest Gross Domestic Product numbers reveal.
The Commerce Department reported on Wednesday that U.S. GDP grew at a none-too-brilliant 1.7 percent rate in the second quarter and that in the first quarter the rate was actually an anemic 1.1 percent, not 1.8 percent as previously reported. The numbers are "truly disappointing," especially when you consider the possibility that, like the first quarter expansion report, the Q2 rate is subject to a downward revision three months from now, Weber pointed out.
"The administration's strategy is a mistake, at best, and a cover up, at worst. After all, there is nothing phony about four Americans dying in the Benghazi bloodbath last fall, nor in the IRS targeting political opponents prior to the presidential elections. But there is indeed something phony about a president who touts his alleged economic accomplishments in the face of an obvious economic muddle."
The newest survey by the Associated Press shows that fully 80 percent of adults in the U.S. have experienced and continue to experience the pains of "joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives." The AP said that it is "a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream."
One of the most telling findings in the AP poll: "While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty [nonwhites still have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90 percent], race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government's poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60."
Weber focused on those statistics because "it is one of the one of the few non-partisan references to the plight of older Americans. It's downright frightening to think that 75 percent to 90 percent of all seniors are 'economically insecure' in an age when more people are living longer."
