Posts Tagged ‘trump economy’

Unemployed Again or a Practical Comparison of the Obama and the Trump Economies

Posted: May 8, 2026 by datechguy in business, personal, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,
1

On November 29th 2008 this blog began with the following post:Unemployed and blogging under my own blog

Well after 3 years blogging at the HiWired blog and nearly 4 years doing tech support at HiWired my circumstances have changed. I along with the entire staff of HiWired (except for Deb who is doing the final tax paperwork) are kaput. I am now blogging here. What does this mean?

Later that day I posted about the closing of HiWired, the tech support company I worked for. You can read about it here. The process by which it died was remarkably similar to the process that was followed when my former employer gradually shrunk and then eliminated their operations in Massachusetts, the biggest difference being that HiWired had been a startup in 2004 and closed outright while our corporate owner simply moved our operations to other warehouses in the south and west joining the great exodus from blue states where it’s more expensive to operate to red states where it is not.

But the bottom line is the same. I am as of today for the 2nd time in the last 20 years unemployed because the business I worked for no longer exists as least where I live.

Now I’m in a slightly better position in one respect in that I have a severance package that can carry me for a couple of months if necessary but in a worse position it that I’m just a few weeks shy of 63 which might make me a tad less desirable to employers.

But here is the thing that really hits me.

At the time of my layoff in 2008 I was not all that worried, as you might have noticed by the tone of the blog post. While I still had teenagers in the house, with a good degree and an excellent work record I was sure it would not be long before I found something.

You might recall the coming of Barack Obama. It produced an insane level of optimism. The media/left was shared a rapturous joy over the country he would create. I didn’t have that same optimism always seeing Obama for the cheap Chicago Machine Pol he was but as I said I thought my credentials & word record would be enough.

Alas I had the dubious pleasure of experiencing the result of the Obama economy first hand because I had to try and find a job within it.

From the time he was sworn in to January of 2010 I had a total of one job interview. Absolutely nobody was interested in me. I supported myself on doing the occasional tech work for people in need but was completely unable to find permanent work in the Obama Economy.

Little did I know that Robert Stacy McCain would change my life beginning on January 15th 2010 when I picked him up at the train station and we covered the final week of the Scott Brown campaign together. Before the week was over I had members of the media filing from my dining room table, my first press credential at the Brown victory party with my press badge in my fedora. On January 28th 2010 he posted his piece: Send DaTechGuy to CPAC Much to the surprise of DaWife the money came in, I was packed for CPAC and my life was changed forever, A Radio show, A NY post op ed, a TV appearance, the magnificent Seven bloggers but I digress…

Alas 6 years later my blog and radio fortunes changed to the point where I ended up taking a 3rd shift warehouse temp job for 45% of what I was making eight years earlier. Within a couple of years I was hired full time and eventually reached a point where was (without adjusting for inflation) making what I was before & again in a job I enjoyed (Inventory control team) making enough that a secure if modest retirement was before me.

Then the bomb dropped in January and I discovered I’d have to go through finding a job all over again.

But this time I would be doing it in a Trump economy rather than an Obama economy so the question on the floor is: What are my prospects for finding work this time around?

Well let’s put it this way. As already noted in the 13 months that proceeded my rendezvous with Stacy McCain and destiny I had a single job interview and no job offers.

As of today I have already had three job interviews and I have a fourth scheduled for Wednesday & a fifth scheduled for Thursday. More importantly unlike the single job interview that I had back in 2009 for a position that paid 75% of what I had been making every job I’ve interviewed for pays at least 5% more than what I was making this morning.

Of course an interview isn’t the same as employment. It took my oldest son took six months to find work which came after a dozen interviews and there is no guarantee that I will be offered any of the positions I interviewed for & have been rejected for one of them already

There is one other wild card in this situation.

At the time of my previous layoff my digital footprint was almost non-existent. My blog posts for HiWired were almost all tech in nature (other than one of a family trip which had the odd effect of making a photo of my wife and kids the #1 result of Yahoo for “World’s Greatest Family for two years) I never joined facebook & if you searched for me on the net you wouldn’t find much.

Now I’m a very public Catholic conservative with definite opinions over 1000 videos on Youtube and a long twitter history. While some have decided to scrub their internet history for job searches I have decided, despite living in a very blue state not to do so. I am who I am and will not pretend otherwise. I trust my reputation at work and even in the blogosphere for honesty & straight shooting to, with God’s help carry the day.

So tomorrow I spend the day with my youngest, Sunday I spend time with DaWife on Mother’s day and starting Monday my focus becomes finding a new job to employ me till retirement at 70.

Despite the gas price spike I find myself confident both in the Trump economy and my prospects within it. We will see if that confidence and my natural optimism is rewarded or if as before it will be crushed until fate throws a curve.

If nothing else it will be an excellent practical measure of the Obama way vs the Trump way.

Wish me luck.

(Note if you want to wish me more than luck feel free to either hit DaTipJar and/or subscribe to my youtube channel as I’m only 12 subscribers away from being able to monetize it.

Five Christmas Season Thoughts Under the Fedora: The Standard of How Great the US is, Human Progress Two Measures, Too accustomed to Trump’s Success or A Psi-op? $2.63 That’s five water/sewer bills and Temps, Finally Yes Minister in Minnesota

Posted: December 28, 2025 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, economy, under the fedora
Tags: , , , , , , ,

For all the horrible things our friends on the left say about America being racist, sexist unequal etc etc etc let me make one important point.

This horrible America of which you speak is so great that given the choice between going back to their own countries at no cost to themselves with $3000 in their pockets (An amount higher than the average yearly income in 54 countries) or staying in the US and risking arrest and deportation the majority choose the former.

On twitter today saw a post about how difficult it was to program back in the punch card era compared to today when you can literally ask a AI to create code for you. The fellow marveled at the progress in just 50 years and he’s right about that but let me tell you want progress really is:

Being able to feed a family of four a hot meal with meat for less than an hour wages? THAT’s human progress that king and princes could only dream of.

It’s very easy to forget that Donald Trump has been back in office for less than a year. This is because of his insane work ethic and the breakneck speed that things have been

The amount of things he has managed to get done in these first 11 months is so vast that any other president in history would have considered it a grand set of accomplishments for a full term and quite a few presidents would have been lucky to accomplish as much over two terms. Any person with a even a slight grasp of US history could see this.

Yet lately my X feed has been bombarded by posts aren’t happening fast enough in the Trump administration from cracking down on fraud to arrests, particularly arrests. The post seem unrelenting

I’m thinking this is one of two things or possibly both.

It could be that people just have gotten so used to Trump getting things done fast they can’t grasp the idea that getting things done in Washington is the exception not the rule. It’s sort of how Patriots fans were spoiled by Tom Brady basically making a trip to the Super bowl every other year and acting like something was wrong when we didn’t

It could also be a PSI-op to anger Trump supporters to trick them into staying home in 2026 and try to drive his numbers down.

Frankly if it was my job to try to foment dissent within MAGA that’s how I’d try do it.

One must always remember that most pols aren’t saints. There are some who will do the right thing out of principle (although they might disagree on what the “right thing” is) but in the end most will only do the right thing if the incentive is greater than doing the wrong thing or nothing at all.

That’s reality

When I went to mass yesterday I passed by the cheapest gas station in town which is conveniently located next to my church.

Gas was $2.63 a gallon. That’s a full 16 cents less per gallon than it was two months ago.

Over the course of a year that’s enough saving for me and DaWife to pay 5 water bills or allow us to go out to eat 5 times.

If that’s not enough Friday when I went to work there were no temps in the building.

That it itself is not unusual for the day after Christmas, but what WAS unusual is that Friday was the first day this month when there were no temps in the building.

Last year the temps were gone by December 3rd and at no time during the Biden presidency where they here for more than a week.

The Trump boom is coming in fact it might be already here.

One of the things about importing people from a different culture who don’t want to become Americans is importing a different value system.

A great illustration of this was shown nearly 50 years ago on the TV show “Yes Minister” in an episode called: “The Moral Dimension”

A great explanation of how this works comes from this excellent post on X

Key Quote:

The weird thing about this to me was that whenever I turned down such an offering, it was treated as a grave insult. I was the one in the wrong, and not the fraudster trying to bribe me. They considered it rude that I was in their country and refused to accept how things got done. After all, why did I not want to help my tribe by helping their tribe?

Let me repeat: in these cultures, FRAUD IS NOT EVEN A CONCEPT. There is only what helps your tribe.

They people have no concept that stealing is wrong, unless you’re stealing from them. The stealing doesn’t shock these folks, what shocks them is that we weren’t already doing it on the scale that they are.

Until that changes things won’t change.

Five Quick Thoughts Under the Fedora Trump Completely Unafraid, Unexpectedly again, Anti Catholics Upset, A Minority View and A Big Baseball Surprise

Posted: May 4, 2025 by datechguy in baseball, dynasty baseball, economy, fun, under the fedora
Tags: , , ,

It’s amazing watching Donald Trump constantly owning the MSM during hostile interviews.

What a difference when you don’t need them for exposure.

During the Biden years it was constant that various figures kept coming in lower than “expert” expectations, and then were revised down months later.

We’re only 3 months into Trump and already we’ve had two months of Trump beating “expert” expectations.

And no I’m not sick of winning.

The funniest thing about the Trump as Pope thing isn’t JD. Vance’s excellent response to Bill Kristol.

The funniest thing about the Trump as Pope thing is the people acting the most insulted are those who hate the church the most.

Not any outrage over Washington state passing a law to violate the seal of confession but a Trump as Pope image, vapors!

I might be in the minority here but I think this season of Doctor Who has been surprisingly good.

There hasn’t been a lot of preaching or woke just stories and when Davies team decides they want to tell a good story they are certainly capable of doing so.

Let’s hope this continues.

Finally I haven’t written much about my 1973 baseball league but with 57 games to go I find myself two games up leading my division thanks to a 7-3 run by me and a 1-9 run by the team that was ahead of me.

In the 5 years of our league no team has ever repeated as a division winner although a few have managed to make the playoffs in multiple years in a row. This difficulty is by design is VERY unusual for a team to repeat in this league

Mind you every other division winner has a better record than me as do 2 wild card teams so if I hold on I don’t know if I’ll get anywhere but still, not bad at all!

Why I’m Voting for Donald Trump

Posted: November 3, 2020 by chrisharper in elections
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

The economy under Donald Trump has been a marvel. Despite the pandemic, my wallet is fuller than ever before. That’s why I’m among a significant majority of Americans who think I’m better off than I was four years ago.

My wife and I just refinanced our house at the lowest rate we’ve ever had in 40 years of home owning and lowered our monthly costs by $400 a month on a shorter term.

My retirement account has improved dramatically over the past four years, making it possible for us to live well.

After many years of reporting about the Middle East, I am far more hopeful than ever. The defeat of the Islamic State has made the region far safer. The disengagement from the Iran nuclear deal has hobbled that country and its plans for the region. The peace agreements between Arab states and Israel are the most encouraging signs since the Camp David accords 40 years ago.

Early on, the president tried to engage China, but he realized that the Beijing government represents the most severe threat to the United States and the world. As a result, he has used the bully pulpit and executive orders to awaken people to the issues.

After nearly 50 years as a journalist and a journalism educator, I realize that my craft has fallen on bad times. The media have become sellers of falsehoods rather than beacons of truth. I applaud the president for calling out those in the media who are more interested in dividing us than uniting us.

President Trump would surely have won in a landslide had the pandemic not intervened. As a senior citizen, I was worried about how COVID-19 might affect my wife and me. Fortunately, the disease has not seriously affected most of the people we know.

As COVID-19 has become the centerpiece of the Democrat and media attack against the president, I thought they might have some better solutions. I was stunned at the recent onslaught of campaign ads by the Democrats that focused on masks, Obamacare, and shutdowns. If that’s the best that Joe Biden and his team can come up with, I’m glad they didn’t run health policy over the last year.

Although I didn’t vote for President Obama and Vice President Biden, I hoped that a black president might usher in better race relations. In fact, the opposite happened. As Obama and Biden fanned the flames of racial unrest in places like Ferguson, Missouri, I realized that things were going to get worse before they got better. As a result, I blame Obama and Biden for the division in the country.

Finally, I am grateful that President Trump has been able to return the U.S. Supreme Court to a better balance than I’ve seen in my lifetime.

I have never felt better about the righteousness of my vote.

Older Entries