Newt’s a hoot
Newt Gingrich is notorious for being full of ideas. And back when he was House speaker, his top lieutenants, who later unsuccessfully sought to oust him, suggested it would be a good idea if he refrained from expressing most of them or, at least, thought about them before he did.
Buoyed by his front-runner status in the GOP polls, Gingrich is back to his old habits of unfettered expression, much as when, back in 1995, he precipitated a government shutdown because he felt he had been snubbed aboard Air Force One. “It’s petty, but I think it’s human,” he said, seemingly oblivious to the disruption he had caused in other people’s lives.
In a speech to a family forum in Iowa, the presidential contender said the Occupy Wall Street movement shows why the country needs “to reassert something as simple as saying, ‘Go get a job right after you take a bath,’ ” reprising the “dirty hippies” jeers of the ’70s. Leaving aside the gratuitous insult, has this man been living under a rock the last three years?
The unemployment rate for teenagers is close to 25 percent, and for those ages 20 to 24, 15 percent. He seems unaware that college graduates are moving back in with their parents because they either can’t find a job or find one that pays them enough to live independently.
And, moreover, this involuntary career hiatus is hurting the economy because young people are not buying furnishings to set up their first apartments, and that the ripple effect from this decline in “household formation” costs the economy $145,000 for every potential household lost.
Perhaps the former speaker could instruct the youngsters in how to talk Freddie Mac out of $1.6 million for what seems like very little work. “Strategic advice?” Give us a break.
Nor did Social Security escape Gingrich’s attention. He proposed, as George W. Bush did before him, letting younger workers divert part of their Social Security taxes into private investment accounts. Doing this as the market fell nearly 250 points and a major investment fund announced that it might be short $1.2 billion was probably not the best timing.
But Gingrich had a catch. The federal government would guarantee that these personal accounts would always pay out as much as traditional Social Security. If a personal account fell short, Treasury would mail out a check for the difference.
The account holder would keep the profits and taxpayers would cover the losses, like with the bailout of Wall Street. In certain circles, this is known as playing with house money.
In another sortie into the world of ideas, Gingrich called child-labor laws “truly stupid.” Schools in poorer neighborhoods “ought to get rid of the unionized janitors; have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school.” What the now-unemployed janitors – and presumably cafeteria workers, too – would do for work was left unsaid.
Gingrich blamed child-labor laws and the bureaucrats who enforced them for “crippling” children. It’s an interesting usage because the laws were enacted in response to the deaths and disabling injuries suffered by children working in Pennsylvania’s coal mines not far from where Gingrich was born.
Who knows? If he had been born a generation or so earlier, he might have been able to start his coal-mining career at the age of 12.
– Scripps Howard News Service