Yes, We Need a Jobs Program, But One
That Doesn’t Tinker Around the Edges

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin’ On

Our regional daily newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to its credit, came out with an editorial today, Aug. 22, 2011, urging President Obama to push for a substantial jobs program over Republican opposition.

“Action on jobs: Obama must push hard to get people back to work” is the headline, and a key point stresses “Mr. Obama now needs to offer proposals equal to the size of the problem. That means bold strokes, not half-measures. If his Republican antagonists in Congress are determined to stand in the way of getting Americans back to work, the president must say so publicly — and then go over their heads to enlist the nation in his effort.”

Terrific, a good framing of the question. Unfortunately, however, once you get into the substance of the piece, it turns into a muddle. The Post-Gazette offers up a hodgepodge of proposals that tinker around the edges of the problem-more tax cuts and credits for jobs created, more unemployment benefits, and oddly, more trade deals, even though these deals mostly result in net job losses.

Here’s the heart of the matter. In a down economy, jobs are created by increasing demand, by more customers with bigger orders coming to a firm’s doors. The problem is that consumer demand has taken a nose dive when the credit bubble burst. People don’t have money to spend. They’re cutting back on everything, and trying to unload their debt. This means business-to-business orders shrink as well. Companies may be cash-rich and have high profits, but with no increase in orders or customers at their door, they aren’t likely to hire people to do nothing just to get a tax credit.

This is where government has to become the key customer. It has to make huge productive purchases for local work and local materials to build productive infrastructure-county-owned green energy plants, new and improved schools, modernized locks and dams, Medicare for all, investment in young students and veterans like we did with the GI Bill, investment in research in new industries, and so on.

Most important, to work well, it can’t be nickel-and-dimed to death. It has to be on the scale of the expenditures for World War 2. That’s when the ‘multiplier effect’ can kick in, and related growth in manufacturing can take off in turn. And it has to be paid for by going to where the most appropriate money is, imposing a financial transaction tax on unproductive and destabilizing speculation by Wall Street.

The best the P-G does on this matter is to support Obama’s proposal for an ‘Infrastructure Bank,’ but urges him to find a way to bypass a GOP roadblock in Congress.

But even that is too passive. It says, in effect, here’s a small pot of money. If you want to repair some roads, come and get some.

What we really need is something like the New Deal’s Tennessee Valley Authority and Works Progress Administration, but on steroids, a TVA-WPA-CCC 2.0. We need to pass John Conyer’s HR 870 Full employment Bill. We need the Dept. of Energy and the Dept. of Labor to go to every county in the country with a fully funded proposal to build new green energy wind farms and solar power arrays as public energy utilities, hiring local workers at union scale, with no obstacles to a union election. And that’s just for starters.

Yes, we need a serious jobs program. But it’s time for everyone who utters that phrase to get serious themselves. Why? Because it’s going to take a massive upsurge in class struggle to get it by removing those standing in the way.

[Carl Davidson is a Steelworker Associate and a retired computer technician living in Beaver County.  His ‘Keep On Keepin’ On’ column appears in Beaver County Blue, website of the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America.]

Progressive Cynicism and Misplaced White Anger:
The Far Right’s Two Magic Weapons for 2012

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin’ On

If you want a Republican sweep in the 2012 election, follow this simple formula: Keep blaming the White House alone as the main cause of every problem the country faces, and ignore the Tea Party as overblown has-beens.

That’s not advice from me. That’s from Richard Viguerie, who some might remember as the think-tanker  and skilled pollster of the 1970’s New Right that helped usher in Reagan and the era of neoliberal hegemony we’ve suffered under ever since. That’s what he hopes the center and left will do over the next year.

An Aug, 10, 2011 syndicated column by Viguerie reminds us that presidential elections don’t require a majority of popular votes, but only a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

“The Aug. 8 Gallup tracking poll shows that Obama is at 50 percent or better approval rating in only 16 states, the majority of which are normally considered Democratic bastions. Those 16 states represent 203 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win the presidency.” Then he adds: “Key states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida that contributed to Obama’s 365-to-173 blowout of the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008, are in play at this time. It gets better. The states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, which are now in play, were three of the top states where the tea party wave swept new constitutional conservative members into Congress.”

Viguerie goes on to discuss the role of the Tea Party insurgency in Michigan and California among angry white voters. He adds an astute point: if the GOP puts up a ‘moderate’ like Romney, Obama wins narrowly. But if it plays its ‘wild cards’ like Bachmann and Perry, the far right’s  activist base is energized-and at a time when Obama’s strategy is dissing his own left-progressive base for the wimpy and ever-narrowing ‘center.’

In short, keep the left inactive, the progressives and the center divided, and the Tea Party energizer bunnies get their 270 electoral votes.

It’s not a bad projection for the prospects of a neoliberal alliance with proto-fascists, with the latter in the driver’s seat. The alternative view is that the majority of serious Wall St finance capital is circling the wagons around Obama. They’re not interested in the wilder instabilities that would be fueled by Bachmann or Perry White House.

Maybe so. Serious money matters in American politics. But the far right has some serious money too, and they can combine it with an army of insurgents.

Therein lays our problem. At the moment, we have no candidate for peace and prosperity at the top of the ticket. But we need candidates of that sort at any level if we are to unite and mobilize a left-progressive base in 2012. We have the negative motivator of a possible Tea Party win, but only if we take them seriously. But we need more than that. We need candidates that will fight positively for what working-class people need, not what Wall Street needs. The People’s Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is a good starting point. We’ll have some candidates who will back it, but we’ll need them placed in the states with clout in electoral votes. We don’t have enough at the moment.

Don’t expect much help from the Blue Dog and upper crust Democrats. No matter how you slice it, it’s going to be a tough fight. So organize your co-workers and neighbors independently, and prepare for some fierce battles.

Lies, Blue Smoke and Mirrors: The Neoliberal-Tea Party Jobs Plan at Work

By Carl Davidson

File this under the ‘Why is Anyone Surprised Dept?’ 

This morning’s Pittsburgh news media lets us know that more and more Pennsylvanians are unemployed. Particularly,  it’s in ‘Unemployment rate up in Pennsylvania’ in the Pittsburgh Business Times by Paul J. Gough.

What’s interesting is how it gets spelled out:

“Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate rose slightly in June as the Commonwealth followed an upward trend of national jobless data that has been rising since the spring.

“The state’s unemployment rate was 7.6 percent in June compared to 7.4 percent in May, according to data released Thursday afternoon by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry. That translated into a net of 2,600 jobs lost to a total 6.3 million people employed in Pennsylvania. Specific data for Pittsburgh won’t be released for several weeks, but unemployment increased in Pittsburgh to 7 percent in May, the most recent month where data is available.

“Much of the decreases were due to 7,800 jobs cut in education, health and social services. Also losing jobs were financial (2,000 jobs), leisure and hospitality (1,400 jobs), and professional/business services (1,700 jobs).”

What this means is that our GOP governor’s plan is working as designed. He and others of his ilk are determined to slash government spending on social services and the work force that provides them.  Now if we combine this with taking money from low-income and middle-income workers, and give it to the superrich as tax cuts, we can help the ‘recovery’ of the wealthy by reducing consumer demand from the rest of us.

Now put these two planks together, and you have the GOP-Blue Dog-Tea Party plan for employment, and as we can see, it’s working rather well.

Of course the numbers are going in the opposite direction from what they’ve been claiming will happen. Maybe we just need even more layoffs and even less spendable income at the bottom, and then we’ll really see things take off!

Now Obama’s problem is buying into this. But if he’s going to sell it beyond the business press, it’s going to need a sales team with a lot of lies, blue smoke and mirrors.