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Poll: Public Supports Stimulus Provisions
As Congress considers new jobs legislation, a new poll shows a large majority of the public supports the basic provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The latest CNN poll, taken in mid-January, shows four of five Americans (80 percent) favor government spending on roads and bridges, and 83 percent approve of aid to unemployed workers. Seven in 10 support the idea of spending some of the stimulus money on tax cuts, and 62 percent think it’s a good idea to increase spending on mass transit projects. Check out the poll results here.
And there is growing evidence that the stimulus strategy is working. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the administration’s economic stimulus program created nearly 600,000 jobs in the past three months of 2009.
Many of those jobs were created as workers were hired to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure and work on jobs that need to be done, both key elements in the AFL-CIO’s five-point plan to create jobs.
The Obama administration also has adopted another of the AFL-CIO proposals: to create jobs by using some of the remaining bank rescue money to help community and local banks lend to small businesses on Main Street.
Traveling in New Hampshire today to push his campaign for more jobs, President Obama announced a proposal to use $30 billion in funds from the bank bailout program, the Toxic Assets Relief Program (TARP), for small businesses. The proposal would use some remaining TARP money to invest in community banks to encourage them to lend to small businesses.
Workers across the nation understand the need to create jobs and are rallying behind the AFL-CIO plan. Says Christie Brady, a member of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 934 in Kingsport, Tenn. (see video above):
It’s been a very devastating turn of events for a lot of people here in Tennessee [with] plant closings and everyone who has been affected by the closings….We need to get more jobs brought back here for our people.
While the stimulus package seems to be working, it is not enough alone, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. Speaking on “Bill Moyers Journal” recently, Trumka said there is a lot of anger and frustration in the country and the best way to address that anger is a jobs bill.
We lost 8 million jobs, plus we have 2 million that we needed for growth. So, we’re 10 million jobs in the hole. In order to do that, it’s going to take more than a little stimulus package or a little jobs bill.
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The following was posted on the Pittsburgh Socialist Forum (on Facebook):
I’m not from Pittsburgh, nor have I ever been there, but I suspect that it is like so many of urban areas in the Northern US, a place with much in the way of hollowed out, and for most intents and purposes abandoned residential and industrial districts overrun by now declining suburban sprawl which feeds into overactive and overzealous medical institutions and establishments and has built their glittering steel-girded towers where a fraudulent Capitalist middle class and aristocracy carry on the charade of trading paper, more likely in this day and age bytes and megabytes.
So what can a reformed Socialist economy do for an area that has no legitimate base remaining?
I suggest to you that there is much work to be done rebuilding the human environment in preparation for the long or precipitous decline in the fossil fuel age. We must move all communities towards relocalization of basic needs and it is imperative that we, as a nation, set goals such as reducing automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years in order to free the remaining precious fossil fuels for more important applications such as home heating, cooking, and electricity for necessary applications (do we really need so much lighting?).
The keys to this massive energy demand side rebuilding program are the walkable neighborhood (i.e. rebuilding and/or retrofitting all neighborhoods with village centers so that most can get the things they need within walking distance of their homes) and the deliberate, planned, needs directed, cooperative and inter-community control of the production and distribution supply chains for all the peoples needs.
The first part of the solution proposed in the previous paragraph is nothing new. It has been an architectural/urban planning mantra called “new urbanism”. Many speculative developments based on these principles have failed in the last generation. The reason? There are two, the irrationality with the way the profit-motivated economic system allocates resources, and the lack of affordability for most.
We get “mixed use” redevelopments in which the commercial sectors are irrelevant to the needs of the gentrified clientele. They almost always build parking garages so that the bourgeois residents of new urbanist projects can ignore the lack of available necessities in their neighborhood and are still “free to vote in the marketplace”.
We all know that Socialism is Labor employing capital to meet the needs of the people, starting with those most in need. The allocation of resources to evolve to such a eutopia (good place) has to be rationally distributed in a principled manner.
It can be done, but before a plan can be implemented (realized), it needs to be conceived, developed, communicated, and accepted (recognized).
To place the payment burden on governments is not realistic or even optimal. What is needed is the recognition and commitment and dedication of and for the evolution of the private sector to a quasi-public one (working in coordination with Government safety-net, fostering, and facilitating capabilities). The vehicle for the economic/financial transition is an Equity Union. With such an Institution, equity sharing would replace equity speculation, equity trading, and lending.
That’s enough for now. I hope that we can discuss and push the agenda forward.
It is a myth that Regional Planning has not occurred in all these areas of interest. Regional Planning of water systems, highway, roads, and other infrastructure has occurred on a very large scale with Federal, State and Local Collusion between the public sector and the Corporate and Development Interests. It was all done within the Capitalist Paradigm of maximizing profits for the private sector and has manifested itself in a most irrational, inequitable, inhumane, and unsustainable suburban sprawl.
Benton MacKaye, in his book written in 1928, “The New Exploration” wrote about the need to direct this existing, impending, and inevitable “metropolitan invasion” of the agrarian/forested lands with a livability in mind that would provide for the inclusion of village centers in all new residential development (i.e. what is commonly known these days as mixed use). Benton may not have explicitly been able to see the now well known existence of the post-peak oil phenomenon, but being greatly schooled in geology/geography, he certainly must have had a sense of the finitude of this resource, and as an ecologist and a humanist he could foresee the terrible and alienating squandering that was about to become the mark of the 20th century.
We need to go back and fundamentally reassess the profession and practice of Regional Planning consistent with the ideals of MacKaye and fundamentally taking head on the coming resource scarcity, particularly as it relates to fossil fuels. We need to rebuild, renovate, and in many cases build into all our neighborhoods the village centers that they so desirably lack. Such would make it possible for almost all to get their needs in life within walking distance of their homes. The result could be to reduce automobile usage (a terribly wasteful opportunity cost for precious fossil fuels) by 80% in the next twenty to forty years. It would create so many jobs in the building and building education trades that we would probably want to ENCOURAGE immigration. It would also greatly improve the quality of our lives.
The change in Regional Planning would be the adoption and acceptance to planned allocation of resources. Such was already occurring for the benefit of the special economic interests. It would require that public sectors work together in a very rational manner with a private sector that would need to redefine its mission as that of quasi-public. It would be the adoption of a resource allocation paradigm based on human needs and sustainability, not on profits.
We need to take a wholistic approach to the professions and applications of Resource Planning and Allocation and all its subsidiary economic functions.
We need to recognize the impending crises that we are only beginning to realize and we need to put our economic system into historical perspective. We need to grab the bull by the horns and consciously and actively evolve from Homo Economicus to Homa Ecologica Cooperativo.
The stimulus does not promote long-term growth. The stimulus is a band-aid measure for temporary improvement in the construction industry. The “stimulus” hasn’t really worked, anyway – see http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/24/news/economy/stimulus_infrastructure_spending/index.htm
Long-term economic recovery will only be realized by restoring manufacturing and breaking the bonds of imbalanced trade slavery we have established with communist China.
CANDRUS IS SO RIGHT IN WHAT HE SAYS AND MORE UNION MEMBERS SHOULD SPEAK OUT HERE AND TAKE THE TIME TO VOICE OUR SELF’S … THIS JOBS BILL NOW IS CLIMATE CONTROL AND THERE TRYING TO CALL IT A JOBS BILL AT 4 TRILLION , LETS GET REAL HERE , THEYN FAILE 2 TIMES , WHY TAKE A CHANCE ON A PRICE TAG LIKE THIS WHEN THEY DONT HAVE ANY TRANSPARENCY ? WHEN WE DO SPEAK OUT THEY CALL US NAZIS AND BAD AMERICANS , I WOULD LIKE TO SSE PELOSI VITED OUT OF OFFFICE , SHE SHOULD READ THE CINSTITUTION AND INSTEAD OF HER MARXISM BOOK OF RULES . SHE SHOULD BE BROUGHT UP ON ETHIC CHANGRES !
What is going to be done for the man who has a mortage is behind in his taxes and only has 2 more unemployment checks left and no more extentions to collect of how will he survive?
HI LINDA , I WOULD THINK THE UNIONS SHOULD HAVE SPECIAL HARD SHIP FUNDS FOR MEMBERS IN EACH STATE CHAPTERS AND IF NOT THIS IS SOMETHING THE LEADERSHIP SHOULD ASAP FOR THE FUTURE , FOR THERE WILL BE IN 2 YEARS A BIG PROBLEM AGAIN WITH THE ECONOMY AS TO WHAT OBAMA IS DOING WITH THIS 4 TRILLION CLIMATE BILL , HES CALL JOBS BILL AND IS ONLY 100 BILLION GOING TO WHERE IS THE REST OF THE MONEY GOING ? JUST THINK 2 TRILLION WOULD OF GIVEN $500,000 TO EACH TAX PAYER IN AMERICA , NOW WOULD YOU THINK , THAT WOULD HAVE JUMP START THE ECONOMY SO QUICKLY , AND OTHER OPTIONS LIKE THEY DID IN FRANCE AND GERMANY , THEY SET UP GOVERNMENT BANKS TO HELP LOANS TO PEOPLE ON HOMES TO GET AWAY FROM ALL THE MIDDLE PEOPLE AND LESS THEN 2 YEARS THEY WERE BACK ON TOP , THATS NOT THE WAY CHICAGO TACTICAL POLITICS WORK AND CONGRESS AND THE SENATE , WE HAVE TO BE HONEST WE OUR BE GOEVERNED BY CRIMINALS AND WE MUST SHINE THE LIGHT AS BRIGHT AS THE DAY AND MAYBE THE UNION LEADERSHIP WILL SEE IT TOO AND GET ON THE SAME PAGE AND PLAVCE AS ITS MEMBERS .. WHAT HAPPEND TO THE GUY THAT STOLE 2 BILLIONS AND MEMBERS HAD TO PAY FOR IT ? MAYBE WE SHOULD HAVE THE LEADERSHIP AT THE AFL-CIO TAKE OUT INSURANCE SO WHEN THEY GO WITH THE WRONG POLITICAL PARTY AND WE OUR ALL OUT OF WORK WEE CAN HIT THEM UP FOR OUR YEARS PAY UNTIL THEY GET WORK FOR US , ITS BEEN THIS WAY FOR YEARS , THEY CAN BLAME THE REPLUBLICANS AND BUSH , JUST LIKE OBAMA , BUT OBAMA KNEW WHAT HE WAS GETTING INTO WHEN HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT AND HAD ALL THE ANSERS , NOW HES SAYING HE CANT MAKE IT WORK AND ITS BECAUSE OF BUSH , OBAMA NEEDS TO GET A LIFE ! BUSH IN 2000 HAD TAKEN OVER A BAD ECONOMY CREATED BY CLINTON AND THEN THE CRASH OF THE STOCK MARKET AND THEN 9/11 .. THE UNION LEADERSHIP FORGETS THIS AND NOW HOLDER WITH THE TRIALS IN N Y CITY OR WHO KNOWS WHERE AND THE XMAS BOMBER AND NOW ALERTS IN THE NEXT 3 TO 6 MONTHS OF IN HOME TERRORIST ATTACKS ! WE MUST ASK OUR SELFS WHATS WRONG WITH AFL-CIO LEADERSHIP !
Short term and long term economic recovery can be besst realized by rebuilding all our communities to be equitable and sustainable in the face of existing and impending (fossil fuel) resource constraint.
The sustainable and long term growth in the building trades and building trades education could be geometric.
Restoring “manufacturing” should be done within an artisan worker owned and managed framework.
obama , congress and the senate must be honest with americans and the union membership . for the economy will be the same untill the end of the year going into to 2011 and that is facts no matter what is told to us , the the job stimulus was a real dud and did not do a thing , illegals and 125,000 each month of foreign born workers with work permits into the usa, got jobs , 10,000 obamas hacks a month got jobs with the government for 12 months and big par raises , thats more taxes and who knows what that would cost a year , we have been decieved by this administration , beware americans !
WHATS WRONG WITH AMERICA THAT HAS BEEN BRING THIS GREAT NATION DOWN IN MANY WAYS . IS SIMPLE TO SEE WITH A OPEN MIND , THEY ARE ILL MINDED PEOPLE WHO GET INTO POLITICS TO CHANGE THE GOOD OF THE WHOLE OF AMERICA FOR THERE OWN IDEOLOGYS AND IN TURN BECOME BIGOTS , DISCRIMINATORS AND FULL OF OBLOGUY WHICH LEEDS TO UNDERCUTTING THE LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USA AND ALL THE STATES ,
WE MUST BE GOVERNED BY A CONSTITUTION AND NOT BY MEN OF SELF INTREST AND PUT INTO SLAVERY TO THERE WILLS AND POLICYS