[honestjchsfan]

More Americans are out of work today under the Obama administration than at any time in this country's history, including the Great Depression. (Granted, population has a lot to do with that fact - but unemployment has soared far above what it was at the end of the Bush administration and unemployment was very low for more than six years of his two terms.)

[B]The steel industry is no longer the major consumer of coal that it once was. Most [/B]modern steel mills no longer use coke, so the metallurgical coal market has been declining for years. Much of the steel that is imported from Japan is first shipped to them as scrap metal. Most of it is melted using high voltage vessels, blended with trace elements for different grades, and then shipped back to this country. I spent some time working at a large Indiana steel mill developing software applications and that is the process that they use. Most mills that used coke in this country have been shut down or upgraded because they cannot compete with the modern Japanese and American mills.

Obama is a socialist. The bailout, as you call it, of GM and Chrysler amounted to the federal government pumping billions of dollars of tax dollars into the companies, meddling in their business decisions, and leaving many shareholders (including pensioners) high and dry as they forced GM to give the UAW a large ownership stake in the company. Now, the UAW, a major shareholder of GM, will be negotiating a contract with GM's competitor, Ford - which refused to accept a bailout. GM was given billions of dollars that will never be repaid to the federal government. Give any company a blank [B]government check and it will survive until the government goes broke[/B].

As for oil companies, their record profits amount to pennies on the dollar (around 10 of them typically). Those profit margins pale compare to the ones posted by companies in many other industries, including software. Oil companies generate hundreds of thousands of jobs and American oil companies are dwarfed in size by the Chinese national oil company and as large as they are, they are too small to fix prices the way that Democrats like Obama claim. When a company has more than $100 billion in revenue, a $10 billion profit is not all that great. In other words, a 10 percent return in today's market is pretty good, but you would earn far more in dividends investing in a company like Microsoft or Apple in a typical year.

I know that I am not going to convince you that Obama is doing major long term damage to our economy. If you really want to understand economics, I encourage you to watch some videos of Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell on Youtube. After watching them, read as much as you can or watch some videos featuring Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and decide which economic theories are more compelling.

One last thing, look up charts showing job recovery following the Bush recession (the Obama "recovery") and compare it to every other recovery since the Great Depression. if you have not already compared the jobless recovery under Obama to previous recoveries, I think that you will be shocked. Do the research and then tell me that I am wrong but don't rely on what you hear politicians from either party tell you is happening to our economy.

With all do respect the statements in Bold are false statements, the US goverment is and has been getting a nice return from its investment in GM and Chrysler. Plus many people benifit in having a job at GM or Chrysler or one of their suppliers. I don't think you fully understand Lean Manufacturing, if one of the major production lines at Ford or GM is shut down for one day then the production line for a parts supplier is shut down too or they're not following the principles of Lean Manufacturing. You also speak about modern Steel Mills. Were do you think these Electric Arc Furnaces get there power? The Republicain idea of what is surposed to happen in the US Economy is "The Rich get Richer and the poor get poorer" when that's not happening they are not happy. The longest period of peace-time economic expansion was during the Bill Clinton term as president. Clinton forced the rich and the big companies to annie up and pay like they should. If a big company like Walmart puts fleet after fleet of trucks on the road each day then it is common sense that they should pay a higher tax rate than a small business because they using the infrastructure more. There percentage of use is higher so their tax-rate should be higher. Just as I have said before the economic recovery has been slow because of human nature to be lazy. After I lost my job I started my own Machine shop and my business has grown very fast and I was very thankful for the tax breaks I got from Obama's Stimulus plan. I purchased a new CNC milling Machine this past July and my plan is to move from the Paintsville area and relocate my business soon.