Perhaps some of you can help me on this. I wrote ( "Middle Class Bailout: Celebrating Harry Hopkins' 120th Birthday With 4 Million Jobs by August 17th", March 11, 2010 ) that the President should celebrate Harry Hopkins' birthday on August 17th by announcing the hiring of the 4 millionth worker under a new Works Progress Administration, with projects modernized for the new economy. Fixing and building roads, bridges, dams, and rail as did Hopkins. Laying fiberoptic cable to rural areas, retrofitting buildings, helping mobile teams to deliver health care in underserved rural and urban communities, upgrading the electric grid, planting trees on denuded mountains, and on and on and on.
The Gulf Crisis provides an additional, tragic, opportunity to enlist America's might to repair, to cleanse, to detoxify, to restore marine life and coastal human, plant and animal life to a vibrant ecosystem. Several (see, e.g., for Secretary of Labor Robert Reich's article: "Green Jobs Proposal: Put the Young and Unemployed to Work Cleaning BP's Mess, and Send the Bill to BP", June 7, 2010) have proposed to resurrect a Civilian Conservation Corps to do this, sending the full bill to BP. First choice would go to Gulf residents, but youth from around the country, scientists, engineers, out-of-work executives, would all be enlisted to define, properly manage, and execute the rescue.
Harry Hopkins hired 4 million American workers in 4 months into the Works Progress Administration. They built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, 250,000 miles of road and 12 million feet of sewage pipe. Hiring 4 million workers today would cut unemployment by 25-50% depending on which numbers one uses to characterize the extent of today's problem. Most importantly, it would get people out of the "never-going-to-work-again" cycle that most threatens our long-term economic future.
How to pay for it? If, as Reich suggests, BP should pay for its toxic mess, it seems logical that Wall Street should pay for the mess it caused the economy. One way to do this is a "FAT" tax, i.e., a tax on financial transactions. This tax would have the added virtue of raising the cost of the lightning trades done by computer -- that have no societal value whatsoever -- to grab fleeting imbalances between bids and offers. The major Wall Street firms would pay most of the tax. To protect Ma & Pa investor, the FAT tax could be rebated for the first $100,000 of trading in a given year.
On the politics of this, let the Republicans try to filibuster it. Let them, in the presence of the daily-feed of oil spewing from the Gulf, rail against "government" takeovers. Let Michelle Bachmann decry the "education" camps. Let them defend Wall Street again, against the unemployed, and against repairing America's neglected infrastructure.
We should welcome that fight.
This is the President's chance to rally public outrage to get our Gulf treated for its injuries, to help the economy recover and to do America's unfinished business from a decade of deliberate neglect.
I do not understand why the President did not act before. Do you? I would like not to believe that he was fooled by the "strength" of the Tea Party movement (it's a permanent small minority), or Michael Brown's election, or cowed by the inevitable Republican rhetoric.
It is even more puzzling that he does not act now. Why?
What we need is to expand the Navy's "Can Do" SeaBees and put them in charge of managing, as you mentioned, all the things that need doing.
This undertaking would require white and blue collars workers and expansion of America's business and industries. Thus, the consumer economic recovery would increase the flow of taxes that would shrink the deficit. A win-win for every state.
For example, instead of spending billions on planes and ships that will never see combat, lets use those workers and money to build bridge and viaduct components.
This is not the time for conflict resolution or laissez-faire, but it is the time to roll-up the sleeves and steam rolled the opposition.
Granted he is busy trying to deal with the fall out of SB1070 but I did point out that would be a good idea for him to champion.
If the Bush years taught us nothing else, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid & relentless in your sales pitch & tactics. It's not that Bush&R0ve were geniuses & knew something that nobody else knew; Bush&R0ve were just more ruthless (clumsy & careless many political graybeards would say) in doing what politicians & the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans.
Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the party's nomination) & the oldest, most experienced politicians in our nation's history (including the Rove machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep the impeachment of Bush&Cheney off the table & have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches&pitchforks?
Obama&Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.
The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but that they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them in spite of their failure to deliver on any of our alleged shared objectives.
He could not be Truman-he had to be Dewey.
Let's be more careful next time.
I feel like Dr. McCoy in the old Star Trek series: "Jim, DO SOMETHING!, We're all going to die. . . "
Mr. President, DO SOMETHING, please. Even if its wrong. At least try.
Problem is the government can't afford it. Even if it could, every critic of the curretn administration will quickly shout out how its tax payer money and not BP thats paying for the clean up. Even if we bill them later.
Same with the WPA. Enact the FAT tax. Fund the WPA with it.