I Feel Kinda Bad...

Someone today (who is an Obama supporter) was happily telling me the following... You know how Caterpillar is laying off 22,000 people? Well, they did all that, then if (sorry the "since" was a typo) the stimulus bull (sorry slip of he keyboard) - ahem - stimulus bill passed, they're going to turn right around and hire them all back right away.

I hadn't heard any of it, but it sounded very odd. Even if I was an Obama supporter, I'd be trying to find out when they were gonna kick out the CEO. After all, it's expensive to lay people off. Especially in large numbers. It's not a trivial thing - there are all kinds of issues and problems and, let me reiterate, it costs money. If the stimulus bill was going to solve all their problems, why didn't they just wait to see if it went through or not??? Why go to all the trouble?

*sigh*

Yeah, I feel kinda bad because it's really hard when you strongly believe someone is going to do this miraculous job and then it turns out that... well, maybe not... to believe that this money grab will work wonders before it even gets off the ground... only to find that... oh not quite.

D'oh! Caterpillar CEO Contradicts President on Whether Stimulus Will Allow Him to Re-Hire Laid Off Workers

President Obama today repeated the claim we asked about yesterday at the press briefing that Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar, Inc., "said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off."

So there's the quote and here's the response:

Asked if the stimulus package would be able to stop the 22,000 layoffs or not, Owens said, "I think realistically no. The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again"

I have to wonder though how Obama thought he'd be able to get away with saying that.  Who told him this was true?  After all, it's a bit difficult to hide 22,000 people without jobs. 

It shows that Obama is not given critical thinking or he would have asked the same questions I did.  I have never run a large company and yet just the claim that "the bill" would immediately solve one company's problems to the extent that they are immediately back in fine business form - just sounds completely bogus.  Shouldn't it sound bogus to the President too?

If he was told by an aide that this was the case and he went along with it because it "sounded" so good on tv... what else is he willing to go along with?  If he made it up or just heard what he wanted to hear, that doesn't make things better - it makes them infinitely worse.

Ho-hum... back to my 1930's movies.  I have a hard time tolerating this crap.

Posted by: Teresa in Politics at 09:00 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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