To the editor:

President Obama has not led effectively. Clearly, Bush dealt Obama a terrible economy, but the contrivances of Obama, Obey, Pelosi, and Reid et al. have made our economy far worse. Obama’s administration has increased barriers to employment through delayed international trade agreements and regulatory burdens focused on income redistribution from hard-working, highly productive citizens to those unlucky, uneducated, unwilling or unable to work.  His well-intentioned but misguided efforts to transform our energy economy have failed. His unsustainable deficit spending and unwillingness to curb future spending in our vastly over-promised federal entitlement programs defy logic. 

Bureau of Labor Statistics data from February 2009 and October 2011, show a net loss of 1,662,000 jobs in the U.S., of which 562,000 were federal, state and local government jobs. On Obama’s watch the number of long-term unemployed has more than doubled from 2.9 million to 6.2 million. According to one respected private estimate by ADP Inc., 2,566,000 private, nonfarm jobs were lost..

Even worse, this past July in AARP The Magazine, President Obama made a propaganda claim certainly not reminiscent of Honest Abe. “Well, keep in mind that the economy is growing and has been growing for a year and a half, two years now. We’ve seen enormous job growth — 2 million private-sector jobs created.” At best this is a half-truth which ignores the unemployment statistics for the Obama administration prior to 2010. That’s not “enormous job growth.” It reflects Obama’s badly flawed prioritization of national needs. Obama’s record demonstrates irresponsible leadership, and voters should remove him from office in 2012.