Barbra Streisand should really stick to singing–because her latest op-ed for The Huffington Post is straight out of Crazy World.
Her editorial, called “Have You Heard the Good News?” is a puff piece touting all the jobs that Barack Obama “created” over the last five and a half years.
Unfortunately, she gets just about every single fact wrong.
Streisand writes: “In the wake of the financial crisis, President Obama took the helm of a sinking economic ship and help to right it. The unemployment rate is now once again at pre-recession levels — the lowest in seven years (5.5%).”
Streisand, of course, leaves out some critical facts.
Like, for example, that there is the largest percentage of Americans not working in history. Just 62.7% of Americans have jobs–a truly shocking number for a nation that prides itself on hard work and entrepreneurship. The unemployment rate is 5.5% not because more people are back to work–but because so many people have given up hope and stopped looking for jobs, and aren’t even considered “unemployed” anymore.
She continues with her “good news”:
“President Obama’s Administration, with only opposition from the Republicans, has steadily helped put more than 11 million Americans back to work in the private sector.”
Except 11 million jobs simply isn’t enough–and, historically, that’s not nearly as good of a number as Barbra wants you to believe.
Ronald Reagan–who also inherited a broken economy–created 18 million jobs by this point in his presidency. Including, famously, 1.1 million jobs in just one month in 1983. And keep in mind that the population of the United States was substantially smaller back then.
Compare that to the anemic 127,000 jobs Barack Obama created last month–which isn’t even enough to keep pace with population growth, let alone grow the economy.
Barbra Streisand has a long history as a partisan mouthpiece for the Left, but this piece takes the cake. Americans certainly aren’t better off in the age of Obama–and Barbra’s either lying or living in a bubble. Or maybe both.
Babs, if you’re listening: stick to singing. Journalism just isn’t for you.
