Let me finish with a powerful word: jobs!
I spent a good deal of my life working in the U.S. Senate, then in the White House, then for a legendary Speaker of the House. One thing we concentrated on was jobs!
One of my first jobs was working for a Senator in Utah. I was counting up the public works and economic development projects that were shovel-ready if the government would approve them. Jobs that put people to work doing things that needed doing - not leaf-raking - but getting roads fixed and bridges up to code - getting sewer and water systems in place.
When I worked for Tip O'Neill, the Republican leader complained that a jobs bill the Democrats were pushing was make-work. I called up the chief engineer in his district and got the names and addresses of the bridges below code. The Speaker read that list aloud on the floor of Congress. It upset the Republican leader but it made a point: there's good work out there that needs to be done and this is a good time to get going on it.
"If not now, when?" The president asked that today about the debt ceiling. "If not now, when?"
We could demand the same of our politicians about jobs. That "stimulus" bill they passed two years ago ain't very stimulating, not because it was too big, but because it was a pipsqueak. After you've taken out the tax cuts in it, the amount that actually goes to job creation - real public investment spending - comes to about one percent of the economy. One percent. No wonder the stimulus ran out of juice. It never had much to begin with.
I read Paul Krugman's column in The New York Times today. He makes a great point: the government has fewer people working for it than it did when President Obama came into office. So we've got no real money going into public works, no money going into public service jobs, and you've got your explanation of why we've got a 9.2 percent unemployment rate.
I like the fact that the president is trying to compromise with the Republicans who control the House. But one of the big delusions is always that the truth - the smart policy - is somewhere in the middle between the two sides being argued.
Maybe we have to go back to old-style partisan politics on this. You know, like getting the list together of all the bridges below code in John Boehner's district - or Eric Cantor's - or Kevin McCarthy's. Maybe the smart policy is the smart politics - put a little heat under their butts.
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Chris I am in Boehners district one week out of every six to eight weeks taking care of elderly parents. A Delphi plant was just leveled down the road from my parents house. Previously 4 thousand auto workers...now out of work. My father is in a nursing home in his district. The nurses aides make pathetic wages (Maria Josephs) You and your team could come to Boehners district a do several shows at the Schuster Center in downtown Dayton or Univ of Dayton (Jesuit college) on what the economy is like in the "heart of it all" Ohio. Auto workers out of work etc. Come on..do some shows on jobs in Boehners district....
http://johnboehner.house.gov/
"Bridges that don't meet construction safety code... in Republican-held congressional districts" Himmm. I'll bet if you looked, you'll find a whole bunch of people living under those bridges who have been victimized by Republican economic policies who used to live in their own homes. The problem is, these guys don't care; failing infrastructure is simply collateral damage on the road to their getting their way on economic and social policies. These guys, mostly men, are beyond shame. The country is falling apart around their ears, and the biggest part of the Republican agenda focuses on abortion politics! At some point, even their Wall Street enablers are going to start to panic, because financial catastrophe is likely to engulf them first. Just in case anyone is thinking about it, this is terrorism at its most sublime. Instead of setting off a suicide bomb that might kill or cripple a few hundred, or even a few thousand people, these guys will willingly wreck the entire economy of this nation for their own political advantage, or purely out of spite.
By the way, I couldn't help but notice just before logging onto this website, that Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann each signed a defense of marriage pledge that included a reference to their belief that in 1860, an African-American child was more likely to grow up in an impact, two-parent family, then under Pres. Obama. That presupposes that neither parent was sold down the river first... the fact that Santorum and Bachmann later realized their mistake, and disavowed the antebellum rhetoric doesn't help much, if at all. There's is a Gone with the Wind mentality that is as unseemly as it is grotesque. That shows us what these people are really all about.
Poverty in Boehners district
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159861/poverty-john-boehners-district
Osso describes herself as “an aging hippie, a political activist and a stand-up comedian wannabe, trying her best to do the right thing at the right time.” But among her colleagues she’s earned a reputation as “a longtime people’s advocate,” according to Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks in Columbus.
“She has her finger to the pulse of those in need in the 8th District as much as anyone, and that need is greater now than it has been in decades,” says Hamler-Fugitt.
Indeed in 2009, childhood poverty rose over six points in the Boehner district to reach 19.1 percent, or 29,173 kids. Overall, 14 percent of Boehner’s constituents live below the federal poverty line of $22,400 per year for a family of four. Shared Harvest’s work has more than doubled—it distributed approximately 7 million pounds of food in 2007, and 16 million pounds in 2010.
To respond to increased child hunger, the food bank started a backpack program that provides weekend meals to kids identified by schools as chronically hungry. The warning signs include physical manifestations such as sunken eyes or crusting around the mouth, or behaviors like rushing food lines or hoarding food.
“These are kids ages three to twelve who are at a critical point in their brain development and need adequate nutrition,” says Osso. “We’re only in eleven of the forty-eight school districts in our territory and we now serve about 2,100 children a week. It’s stunning.”
Boehner has many constituents living above the official poverty line who are struggling with hunger as well. In 2010, the number of residents enrolled in the food stamp program (SNAP) in the six counties represented by the Speaker climbed to over 152,000, an increase of over 47,000 people since 2008. Nevertheless, food stamps would be slashed under the House GOP 2012 budget.
“It’s no crime to have childhood poverty and hunger in a district,” says Melissa Boteach, manager of Half in Ten, a national campaign to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years. “But it is a crime not to do anything about it.”
Chris and team
Planned Parenthood Defunded In New Hampshire
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/11/new-hampshire-planned-parenthood_n_894991.html
Live, Freeze and Die
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=selUoq-poTM&feature=related
Welcome to Palestine campaign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vslTf-jStuA
Really something Israel and the I lobby have gotten around restrictions for US Representatives taking trips and gifts from lobbyist. But trips to Israel our somehow exempt.
I agree that the focus should return to jobs.....
Jobs is the one place I think Obama missed an opportunity ... I think he should have done a massive public works project overhauling the electrical grid so that each home could both except and and give to the grid. So if you are having a good solar or wind day you are selling back to somewhere that is not. Unemployed could work on the grid in their locale. It would hire all differenttypes of skill levels. Perhaps the engineers laid off at NASA etc. It would have also set up the frame work for electric cars/trains etc. and incentivised homes and office buildings to go green. Then there could be the building wind farms. It is better than paying unemployment that builds nothing. It is something the federal government would need to do as local utilities would naturally resist it as would the big oil companies. He should also make a bigger point out of the fact that a lot of the recent layoffs were government or public employees. I don't blame Obama for not doing this type of project because it probably was not possible with the Republicans blocking everything he suggests and because he needed to infuse money quickly. But now with the Republicans only contributing to the numbers being laid off by ending the stimulus funds to the states, maybe he could grab the bully pulpit and push it. Also, if the debt ceiling does not get raised I do think that servicemen should be paid and congress should not. In fact they should offer to forgo their salaries.
Was in shock that Obama did not implement a national works program.
Would someone please ask Michele Bachman and her husband to take some modern dance classes! Those steps they're doing are straight out of the fifties.. much like their old fashioned way of thinking about what America is.
Investment in infrastructure is the second-best investment we could make for our nation, the first being, of course, human capital through education, health care, and jobs. But investment in infrastructure is a good second choice, far better than tax expenditures that are poorly targeted, and tend to benefit people who really do not need them. In my lifetime, I was very fortunate to be able to work in the infrastructure area, spending some 12 years of my working career helping to fund mass transportation projects around the country. These are long-term benefits, not only to the communities in which they were located, but elsewhere, providing jobs during their construction and operation, but also attracting capital for investment in land parcels adjacent to subway and commuter rail stations, and other places where commerce thrives on masses of people going to and from work. Unlike the earmarked, porkbarrel expenditures we see so often today, these projects had to be developed and justified through community and areawide planning processes that require local officials and state governments to take long-term views and to prioritize their needs in ways that we cannot seem to do today. Consequently, there was less overt partisanship and things actually got done. I spent 12 years doing that, and had no doubts as to the ultimate worthwhile nature of the work I was doing. Unlike today's politicians, who seem to act as if they were the Tooth Fairy, the projects I was involved in served actual needs. Sometimes politicians disagreed, and sometimes the local people who disagree with public and private planning agencies and how the money ought to be spent. I had the supreme privilege of being able to represent my employer both in court, and in other venues, in which these differences were hashed out, most frequently achieving resolution through compromise and accommodation of mutual needs. Back then, we never forgot who we work for, the American people. Regardless of which presidential administration I served in, three Republican and one Democratic, the people we really answered to where the relevant committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate who oversaw our spending and construction programs. Back then, everyone understood that these were public goods, and that financial support from the federal government was the only way to achieve long-term stability and continuity in their development and maintenance. That philosophy, and the ethos that went along with it, seem to a fallen by the wayside. And what a shame that is!
I can see only one way the President can affect national employment that's by signing or vetoing a Bill. WOW what would they call it? A JOBS BILL. Another name for social spending, government spending these are bad words in today's Washington. Even when its for our own good the republican congress can say infrastructure.
What pull does the president have in the private sector? In a time of greed and corruption in the corporate world. Where the public representatives answer to the lobbyist and their own congressional districts
P.S. I'm unemployed and worried like some many others.