Yours truly also predicted this entire economic collapse at least 5 years ago, but no one took me seriously. Prophets are never appreciated or heeded in their own times. However, I am not pleased that I was correct in my original assessment of Mr. Geithner 7 months ago because the entire country has suffered due to his incompetence, Wall Street Bias, and overall cluelessness towards the needs of Main Street and the vast majority of Americans.

Most politicians are quick to blame others (sometimes correctly) for political and economic problems but they never want to admit they were incorrect in any of their decisions or that they helped make those problems. Unfortunately hindsight is 20-20 and no one is clairvoyant except Madame Olga on the West Side of Cleveland. We all make mistakes – yours truly included – and it is better to quickly fess up publicly to those errors in judgment, change course and move on.

Too many politicians think an admission of error is a sign of weakness so they continue to proudly deny, blame others, obfuscate the real facts, and follow various stupid and discredited policies so as to not have to admit they made any mistakes. This applies to most of our elected leaders regardless of their political or economic positions. I wrote back on 3/19/09:

Many in the general public want some genuine honesty from their politicians. Some voters will always punish our leaders for admitting mistakes because they themselves are unwilling to admit their private errors either. However, most people understand all too well our human imperfections. But we expect people to learn from their errors and move in another direction after taking full ownership of their mistakes.

President Obama would not fare poorly in 2010 or 2012 if he promptly admitted numerous errors he has made while in office – while avoiding admitting any more debatable or obvious mistakes made in U.S. history to which he was not a party. He could then promptly change his focus and move on with renewed public support. That would really distinguish him from other politicians and gain him public respect. There has been sufficient time now to fully judge Secretary Geithner. The President can now point to the worsening general economy and public anger over unregulated massive bailouts of Wall Street to justify his decision to part ways with his chief financial adviser.

I can list a number of policy and tactical mistakes the President has made since taking office, and so can most TMV readers. One major issue today is with those who aare key advisors to the President in making public policy with respect to our country’s financial and economic future. There are many independent and highly capable individuals in the U.S. without any direct ties to Wall Street or prior Administrations who could competently lead the U.S. Treasury Department. Secretary Timothy Geithner is not one of them.

The 2010 Midterm elections are less than a year a way because of Constitutionally-fixed federal elections every 2 years. Mr. Geithner is eminently disposable for the good of the country and for President Obama’s political survival. So Mr. President, please admit some of your mistakes (most people will likely forgive you), and throw Secretary Geithner under the bus – or at least ease him out the rear doors to some cushy Wall Street position where he can do no more harm to the nation.

Marc Pascal – the ever ranting sage in Phoenix, AZ who wishes everyone a pleasant weekend.

Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), writing in CNN, says he plans to oppose raising the debt ceiling what the issue comes up for a vote next month. He’s unwilling to raise this ceiling, he writes, unless “Congress adopts a credible process to balance our books and eliminate the red ink” — and he wants to form a “debt commission” to start the process.

A debt commission will force members of Congress to take — or reject — a single gulp of politically difficult medicine to treat the fiscal problems that are ailing our country. Those who choose not to take that medicine would be forced to explain to their constituents why a $12 trillion national debt doesn’t make them queasy.

Unfortunately, members of Congress won’t have to explain anything to their constituents. Partisans and liberals are already taking virtual pens to paper to attack him:

There are, however, some issues to consider. For example, it was none other than Evan Bayh who recently voted to “reform” the estate tax, cutting taxes for the extraordinarily rich, at a cost of $750 billion over the next decade. To pay for it, he recommended … nothing. The costs would simply all be added to the deficit. Given this, I hope he’ll forgive my skepticism about his credibility on the subject of fiscal responsibility.

And just like that, Bayh’s entire suggestion is chucked out the window. Steve Benen goes on with the usual spiel about how its really more the Republicans fault anyway — an increasingly tired excuse, from my perspective, for the lack of fiscal discipline by The Powers That Be.

Now, I’m just an average non-economist, but here’s how I see this: It does not matter who did what in the past.

Long-term deficits drive up interest rates for consumers, raise prices of goods and services, and weaken our country’s financial competitiveness and security.

The bigger our deficits, the fewer resources we have to make critical investments in energy, education, health care and tax relief for small businesses and middle-class families.

The bigger our deficits, the more we must borrow from foreign creditors like China, allowing governments with competing interests to influence our economic and trade policies in ways that run counter to our national interest.

Elementary school tactics like finger-pointing do nothing to forestall these problems, and partisan sniping merely increases the unproductive polarization. Yet people are indulging themselves at every opportunity — no doubt because it makes great red meat to feed the ongoing frenzy.

And, of course, it’s much easier to point and blame than fix problems.

Listen: I don’t care anymore that George W. Bush cooked the Iraq War funding books. I don’t care anymore which party enabled the Fannie Mae cluster and pushed funding for mortgages people couldn’t afford. I don’t care anymore whether there was a “D” or an “R” trailing behind anybody’s name… whether it was last month, or last year, or during my grandfathers’ days.

We’re in the midst of a massive national belt-tightening — a process both necessary and long-overdue. From the citizen who borrowed against tomorrow because s/he “had to have” that wide-screen television, to the lawmaker who “had to bring home the bacon”, we’ve been the very epitome of excess borrowing and consumerism. It’s brought us right to our knees, and we’re going to stay there until our leaders find some fortitude.

Folks are going to have to suck it up and do without a pet project or cause for while — no matter how worthy or near-and-dear it may be.

I’m sorry about that, but this utter failure to control our spending is eventually going to crash all those projects anyway — and if the people currently in charge are unable to get past their own ideological childishness, then I want them out of there, donkey or elephant.

Period.

With high official unemployment and unofficial under-employment and uncounted unemployed rates of 10.2% and 18% respectively, we have to create many new jobs – and fast. Tax cuts only help those individuals, households and businesses that have taxable income. Prior history indicates they will not have the desired multiplier effect on the economy when most will be funneled towards paying down massive private debts or into new savings due to overall low consumer confidence and an economy that is still mired in a protracted jobless weak recovery.

OTHER OPTIONS IN ADDITION TO A NIP

The one sector that can use money the fastest and most effectively is small business. Companies under $10 million in gross annual revenues and with fewer than 100 employees historically account for nearly half of our nation’s economic and job growth. They will continue to be the primary engines for our country’s future growth and global competitiveness. Large corporations and public bureaucracies have proven to be some of the slowest and lest effective entities in using public stimulus money. This nation must concentrate on creating new and expanding existing smaller enterprises to get us out of this deep recession.

SBA guaranteed loans are at a standstill because banks across the nation have tightened their lending standards so as to render the minimal SBA loan program to smaller companies essentially non-existent. This dire situation will not ameliorate until the Federal Government directly channels money for grants and loans to small businesses through local SBA development corporations and its many local assistance offices. It must also get retired executives in SCORE to play a greater role in assessing grant and loan applications, and mentoring the recipient small businesses. This possible nationwide program will be discussed in further detail in another of my future TMV postings.

Proposed tax credits to employers to hire more people is an idea just waiting to be abused and buried in massive and confusing paperwork. Counting jobs created or saved by the original March 2009 Stimulus bill has become a silly effort in fantasy accounting. The same would occur with tax credits which are expensive and circuitous means of accomplishing what targeted direct federal spending can do much faster and more efficiently. We need a simple, fast, transparent, and fiscally honest way of generating new jobs.

HOW WOULD NIP WORK

Many unemployed and underemployed people can only develop new skills in different industries by working on the job or by going back to school. Most of them also still need to support families and pay normal living expenses at the same time. The only way we can accomplish this nationwide workforce retraining for the future is through a National Internship Program (NIP) funded directly by the Federal Government. Here’s how it would work.

A public-private national Internet jobs bank would be created for individuals to connect with internships in public entities and private companies locally and across the country. A simple nationwide job form would be used plus all applicants would also be able to attach their resumes. All individuals who sign up for the NIP would have to appear in person to a state employment assistance office to verify their right to work in the U.S. No intern could be judged upon their credit history, age, sex, race, or other impermissible factors. However, current school status and dependent children would have to be factors with respect to their available hours. Criminal backgrounds would only be factors with respect to limiting those interns to certain fields.

On the same Internet NIP clearinghouse, governmental entities and private companies would list all their open internship positions with reasonable prerequisites. They could also scan all submitted applications and resumes of individuals to fill their Internship openings. Every intern would still have to compete for all open positions through personal interviews and their public applications. However the temporary internships would turn more upon their overall backgrounds, personal presentations, and future potential. Internships could be terminated at will by any employer but because all direct financial considerations would be eliminated, employers would tend to avoid terminations based upon economic factors.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP

Since there are only 1.4 million people in the Federal civilian workforce, most of the new internship positions would be created at the State, city or local level, or in private industry. The hiring public and private entities would determine what the NIP would pay their interns, ranging from $9 to $14 per hour. The hourly rate would depend upon the required skills, education, and experience for the opening, the particular talents and attributes of the intern, and finally the cost of living and unemployment compensation rate in their states and communities. Employers could also request up to $2,500 from the NIP to assist any intern to relocate to a new city in order to best match individual potential with appropriate internship opportunities. Interns could also be supplied with public transit passes to get to and from employment.

The NIP would provide cost-free workers to all public and private employers who decided they needed the extra help or those that determined they will need additional personnel in the future but currently cannot afford to train them. An intern would work for at least 30 days but not more than 2 years at any location. Interns would work from 20 to 40 hours a week, the work schedule being flexible with the intern’s school and family commitments. Any intern could be hired permanently on a full-time basis at any time by any employer with whom they were placed.

Some interns could work 2 part-time positions, and be assigned to several different public entities and private companies over a 2-year period. Interns would make important networking connections by working instead of receiving unemployment checks and food stamps. Their direct job experiences would greatly enhance their chances of obtaining future meaningful employment after the economy fully recovers. Some other interns might work part-time and start a small business simultaneously that would become their principle livelihood after the nation fully exits this deep recession. Paid interns would have all their student loan payments deferred without incurring interest charges until they were permanently hired.

TOTAL PUBLIC COST

If one million interns were paid between $9 and $14 per hour working full time, the total cost to the Federal Budget would run around $30 billion annually. If 10 million interns were employed under this proposed NIP, the total cost over 2 years would run around $600 billion. Compared to the 2009 Stimulus Bill, the Wall Street Banking Bailouts, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Proposed Healthcare Reforms, this would be a modest federal expenditure to directly help 10 million people and their families. Furthermore it would directly create new economic activity across the country much faster than any other job or economic stimulus proposals.

Private companies would not be able obtain interns in excess of 10% of their total workforce. Enterprises under $1 million in annual gross revenues could get up to 4 Interns at public expense, possibly with some minimum total payroll being required. All interns would not be able to work at any company or for any of its affiliates if they were employed there anytime during the prior 2 years, nor could they be assigned to most start-up ventures. The principle paperwork for managing this program would be that a supervisor or human resource director at each public and private entity would have to verify the hours worked by each Intern to authorize the weekly payments by NIP.

QUICK, MEASURABLE AND PERMANENT NATIONWIDE BENEFITS

This proposed National Internship Program would be the most effective, efficient, and sensible approach to comprehensively address the serious systemic workforce problems facing this nation. As designed, the private sector would play a major role in determining where many of the interns would be assigned.

The simplicity, efficiency, directness, transparency, and nationwide public-private benefits of a NIP might result in prompt Congressional approval, particularly with the 2010 Midterm elections less than a year away. It could become the largest publicly-funded program that would rapidly reduce unemployment by directly assisting the private sector. It would also precede and compliment many other needed long-term stimulus and infrastructure projects.

Marc Pascal

This is how health-care reform controls costs. It is, at its base, a grand bargain: The coverage expansion gets liberals to agree to, and even advocate for, cost controls they would never otherwise consider. A 6 percent growth target? A super-MedPAC — now called the Independent Medicare Advisory Board — that reforms Medicare to save money and whose recommendations are fast-tracked and protected from the filibuster? Hundreds of pages of changes to payment rates and experiments in value-based purchasing and coordinated care efforts? This stuff is very, very real, and it goes into effect very quickly. You may think it’s impossible for Congress to cut costs in Medicare and the government will just go bankrupt, but even you’d have to admit that this is what it would look like if the government was cutting costs in Medicare.

If this piece of the bill was passed on its own, it would be the most important cost control bill ever considered by the United States Congress. But you could never have passed it on its own. You needed the coverage to make the grand bargain work. Republicans like to call this bill a trillion-dollar experiment to expand the health-care system, and in some ways, it is. But it’s also a multitrillion-dollar experiment to cut costs in the health-care system, and it deserves credit for that, and support from fiscal conservatives. It’s easy to talk about cutting costs, but this is the chance for people to actually do it.

Warren began at George Washington at 17. At 19, she married mathematician Jim Warren, who worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and finished her degree at the University of Houston. They divorced in 1978. Her second husband, Bruce Mann, is Harvard’s Carl F. Schipper Professor of Law and author of 2002’s “Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence” (Harvard University Press, 358 pages, $29.95).

Warren said she doesn’t know her credit score — “I assume it’s good” — and maintains zero Visa and MasterCard balances.

“Credit cards are like snakes: Handle ‘em long enough and one will bite you,” she said. “You have to remember what are incomes to banks are outgoes to families.”

Obama, with whom she attended a campaign event during the presidential race, read her work before proposing the consumer agency, according to Warren. [...]

In her role overseeing the TARP, Warren has been critical of the administration, accusing the Treasury Department of undervaluing the stock warrants that were supposed to compensate taxpayers when banks repay their bailouts. A lack of transparency about how TARP functions “erodes the very confidence” it was to restore, her committee said in a report.

Named in May as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, Warren teaches three days a week at Harvard, flying to Washington and New York for meetings, sometimes stopping just long enough to charge her laptop.

Sample critic:

“It is positively Orwellian that, through this legislation, Democrats will empower an unelected bureaucrat to tell their fellow citizens whether or not they can fly on an airplane, take a vacation or purchase a home,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican on Warren’s TARP panel, said Oct. 22.

Orwellian to limit borrowing when excessive, under-capitalized, over-extended lending is what brought capitalism to near total collapse? I don’t think so! On top of her Harvard salary and income from nine books (two authored with her daughter) her TARP job paid $114,733.04 through Sept. 30. She’s worth every penny!

SOME NEW NON-DISCRIMINATION PROVISIONS

Some of the least controversial measures in both bills concern new limitations on discrimination by private health insurers towards those individuals with “pre-existing” conditions. Both bills require insurance companies to cover everyone no matter how sick, and in some cases they also prohibit discrimination based upon age, race and sex. The whole brouhaha over abortion coverage versus Viagra/Cialis coverage exposes some political and social inconsistencies. If readers determine that the proposals permit some other forms of discrimination, I would appreciate being informed of those situations as well.

Most annual and lifetime dollar limits would also be prohibited. But I do not know of all the other consumer protections and anti-discrimination provisions in both bills, many of them long overdue and quite laudable. They have been ignored by much of the senselessly disingenuous, false, vitriolic, angry, partisan and ideological debates we have conducted for most of this year. However, all provisions with respect to setting premiums will determine many important matters, particularly the public cost of providing subsidies to those who cannot afford health insurance.

The private health insurance industry has not vociferously opposed healthcare reform as they did in the past. Even with these new requirements of non-discrimination, every U.S. citizen and legal resident will be required by law to purchase private health insurance through their employers or directly with public subsidies based upon income. This mandatory requirement is fully constitutional but wholly unrelated to the states requiring drivers to carry automobile liability insurance. This will provide tens of millions of new policyholders to insurance companies paying whatever new premiums they are still essentially free to set.

Both bills will provide that public subsidies will pay for part or all of private health insurance premiums for individuals and families that cannot afford the rates that the private companies will determine themselves. Without a national standard for minimal health insurance coverage at a specified monthly cost, this might well become a financial boon for insurance companies at the public’s expense.

AUTO INSURANCE DISCRIMINATION MAY COME TO HEALTH INSURANCE

First, let’s turn to automobile insurance and how that is legally priced across the country with minor state deviations. The premiums for individual drivers are not just based upon a person’s driving history, but also upon several other factors. Most private auto insurance companies factor in a person’s credit history, their residential zip code, and sometimes income levels and unlucky involvement in accidents caused by other drivers. There are discounts for those who own their own homes (regardless of whether their mortgages are upside down or not) and renters do not receive such preferences.

Effectively automobile insurance rates are inversely related to a person’s income. The poor and unlucky among us generally pay far more for the same coverage as do wealthier and luckier individuals. To make such auto coverage affordable, the poor and unlucky opt for far less comprehensive coverage and much higher deductibles – all unaffordable in real life situations when an accident does occur.

While there are few published studies clearly linking how a person who has had a foreclosure is also a greater risk for causing an auto accident, insurance companies constantly discriminate on that basis and charge more for the same policy as a person’s credit rating decreases. Zip codes sometimes reflect overall income levels and crime statistics, so those living in poorer areas also pay more for the same auto policy coverage than those residing in more favorably-viewed zip codes, even though the factual linkage to poor drivers or auto theft is generally missing.

If a person is involved in any auto accident, even if he or she is completely not at fault, insurance companies in many states assess an “unlucky” surcharge. That connection is about as relevant as claiming a person who likes to eat bananas will more likely slip on a peal and injure himself than one who prefers apples. We may really need a national class-action lawsuit by consumers against auto insurance companies to rectify these massive coverage distortions.

POTENTIAL OVERCHARGING FOR POLICIES COVERED BY PUBLIC SUBSIDIES

Will future private health insurance premiums reflect discrimination against covered individuals based upon their credit ratings, zip codes and other unlucky factors? These are not clearly prohibited in current health reform legislation. If they are not prohibited, one can rest assured that insurance companies will use these differences to price policies accordingly. Since many poor people cannot afford health insurance already on the basis of current premiums, after healthcare reform is enacted, will those premiums be raised on such factors and will the public subsidies also be unnecessarily increased to cover such insurance discrimination?

Let’s compare two families, both with 2 working adults and 2 grade-school age children. The individuals are all about the same ages and both have 2 comparable cars, one is paid and the other is still being financed.

Family A has great credit as there have never been any job losses. They live in a wealthy zip code, and they have no history of any DUI convictions or at-fault auto accidents. There is one pre-existing condition in their background, a child with a congenital condition requiring more annual care than most other children but no frequent hospitalizations – only expensive treatments and medications. All the members of Family A are considered obese but that is irrelevant since they are covered under a Cadillac health policy sponsored by the most generous of their two employers. This type of coverage is highly favored by our tax code, essentially providing Family A with an indirect public subsidy for their relative good fortune in life so far.

Family B has lousy credit due to one spouse’s job loss last year and non-employment to date, resulting in the foreclosure of their home mortgage, and many other unpaid bills. A few months ago, while taking one child to see the doctor, they were hit by an uninsured driver and everyone required medical treatment that was paid by their auto insurance policy’s uninsured motorist coverage. A few months earlier, a neighbor’s dog bit the other child and fortunately the neighbor’s homeowner’s policy covered the medical and hospital bills. Family B has no pre-existing conditions and is in much better overall health than Family A. They have recently moved to a rental unit in a poorer zip code as a result of the foreclosure. The remaining spouse who continues to work does not get any healthcare coverage through employment. They also have not had any DUI convictions or at-fault auto accidents during the past five years.

Under a future healthcare reform, Family B shops around for health insurance but the cheapest they can find costs more than the Cadillac plan for Family A, even with far less coverage and higher deductibles and co-pays. The insurance companies all rated them higher risks than Family A because of their credit history, current residence, low household income, and those two unlucky occurrences. Family B’s auto and home-owners policies also increased their premiums as a result of their unlucky accidents, bad credit and new zip code residence. Fortunately, their needlessly high health insurance premiums for Family B will be fully covered by subsidies from the federal government.

The public financial subsidy for Family B would have been much lower, and the overall cost to the Federal budget for many more Family B’s would consequently be much lower, if health insurance companies were prohibited from discriminating against these poorer families across the country on the bases described above.

I strongly favor the public helping those who cannot afford health insurance. Every U.S. citizen and legal resident should have adequate health coverage – and illegal aliens and foreigners should be able to buy into coverage without subsidies. However, I am against insurance companies raping public coffers because they are not sufficiently regulated to prevent them from engaging in such surreptitious alternative forms of discrimination.

Whereas the annual out-of-pocket healthcare costs between Family A and Family B might be the same, or Family B might even be lower, the premiums collected may be artificially higher for Family B solely to increase insurance company profits – particularly since the public subsidies are based upon the ability to pay and not on the reasonableness of the underlying premiums.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s bad enough that our current national healthcare system is principally a bloated disease mismanagement operation that essentially caters to wealthy hypochondriacs. We really need an integrated healthcare system that fosters healthier lifestyles for all people and eliminates many unnecessary treatments, tests, paperwork and fraudulent excessive billings to our public Medicare system and private insurance companies. More than likely, we will have to reform our reforms a few more times in the future before we get our nation’s out-of-control healthcare system under some semblance of rationality or sanity.

I hope my concerns are unfounded but most of what I have read does not discuss or dispute these warnings on premium calculations. Left unchecked, they could easily gut all alleged healthcare savings under any final reform bill. Without some strict controls over how health insurance companies set premiums, the public will shell out far more money in subsidies to cover excessive private insurance premiums. This will further limit our society’s future flexibility to spend public money where we deem appropriate. Enriching private health insurance companies at public expense is probably not the wisest form of national economic or job stimulus.

Posted 11/19/09 by Marc Pascal who happily rants in Phoenix, AZ. Please note that I will discuss new job stimulus proposals in one of my future posts as I promised at the end of my last TMV posting.

I think I’ll watch Glee tonight and wait for Fox or the right wing blogs to review the plan. Then I’ll assume that the actual facts are the opposite.

From what I have heard so far (via progressive lawmakers like Tom Harkin and Chuck Schumer on Olbermann and Maddow earlier tonight) is that it’s really strong. It has a public option (opt-out, but that’s a lot better than opt-in or a trigger), and the price tag is $849 billion. Here’s more initial coverage from CNN:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled a sweeping health care bill Wednesday that would expand health insurance coverage to 30 million more Americans at an estimated cost of $849 billion over 10 years.Reid and other Senate Democrats cited an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for the coverage and cost figures.

In addition, they said at a news conference, the budget office estimated that the proposal would reduce the federal deficit by $127 billion over the next 10 years and by more than $600 billion in the following decade.

The CBO figures were preliminary, the Senate Democratic leadership said in a media briefing. The CBO was expected to provide its final analysis later Wednesday or on Thursday, according to the briefing.

And the Stupak Amendment is gone! Apparently, Harry Reid has kept some restrictive language in the bill to keep anti-choice Democrats aboard, but it’s more along the lines of the language that was already in the House and Senate committee versions:

The original committee versions of the House and Senate bills already included limits on federal funding for abortion services but they did not go far enough to satisfy anti-abortion-rights Democrats like Stupak and Nelson.

Finding a middle ground will be a challenge, said Nelson. “The problem is, any kind of compromise leaves it somewhat short to one or both parties,” he said.An existing law, known as the Hyde amendment, already prohibits federal money from paying for abortions except in cases or rape or incest or when the woman’s life is endangered. Anti-abortion-rights lawmakers, however, argued that the House bill and the measures approved by two Senate committees would have circumvented that law.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who supports abortion rights, said Reid’s new provisions would preserve the Hyde amendment while enabling people to buy insurance plans with abortion coverage on the exchange.

“We’re basically going to keep current law, which is what we ought to do,” Kerry said after the Democratic caucus meeting.

I will have more coverage and reaction on the bill as it comes in.

Last year, the voters gave him the largest popular vote margin won by a presidential candidate in 20 years. They gave Democrats their largest Senate majority since 1976 and their largest House majority since 1992.

Obama didn’t just offer bromides about hope and change. He made quite specific pledges. You’d think that the newly empowered Democrats would want to deliver quickly.

But what do real Americans see? On health care, they read about this or that Democratic senator prepared to bring action to a screeching halt out of displeasure with some aspect of the proposal. They first hear that a bill will pass by Thanksgiving, and then learn it might not get a final vote until after the New Year.

Is it any wonder that Congress has miserable approval ratings? Is it surprising that independents, who want their government to solve a few problems, are becoming impatient with the current majority?

Democrats in the Senate — the House is not the problem — need to have a long chat with themselves and decide whether they want to engage in an act of collective suicide.

But it’s also time to start paying attention to how Republicans, with Machiavellian brilliance, have hit upon what might be called the Beltway-at-Rush-Hour Strategy, aimed at snarling legislative traffic to a standstill so Democrats have no hope of reaching the next exit.

We know what happens when drivers just sit there when they’re supposed to be moving. They get grumpy, irascible and start turning on each other, which is exactly what Democrats are doing now.

Republicans know one other thing: Practically nobody is noticing their delay-to-kill strategy. Who wants to discuss legislative procedure when there’s so much fun and profit in psychoanalyzing Sarah Palin?

Yet there was a small break in the Curtain of Obstruction this week when Republican senators unashamedly ate every word they had spoken when George W. Bush was in power about the horrors of filibustering nominees for federal judgeships.

On Tuesday, a majority of Republicans tried to block a vote on the appointment of David F. Hamilton, a rather moderate jurist, to a federal appeals court.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama explained the GOP’s about-face by saying: “I think the rules have changed.”

That was actually a helpful comment, because the Republicans have changed the rules on Senate action up and down the line. Hamilton’s case is just the one instance that finally got a little play.

Thankfully, this filibuster failed because some Republicans were embarrassed by it. But Republican delaying tactics have made Obama far too wary about judicial nominations for fear of controversy. He is well behind his predecessor in filling vacancies, a shameful capitulation to obstruction. There’s also the fact that the nomination of Christopher Schroeder as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, which helps to vet judges, is snarled — guess where? — in the Senate.

Republicans are using the filibuster to stall action even on bills that most of them support. Remember: The rule is to keep Democrats from ever reaching the exit.

As of last Monday, the Senate majority had filed 58 cloture motions requiring 32 recorded votes. One of the more outrageous cases involved an extension in unemployment benefits, a no-brainer in light of the dismal economy. The bill ultimately cleared the Senate earlier this month by 98-0 — yes, that is a zero.

The vote came only after the Republicans launched three filibusters against the bill and also tried to lard it with unrelated amendments, delaying passage by nearly a month. And you wonder why it’s so hard to pass health care?

Defenders of the Senate always say the Founders envisioned it as a deliberative body that would cool the passions of the House. But Sessions unintentionally blew the whistle on how what’s happening now has nothing to do with the Founders’ design.

The rules have changed. The extra-constitutional filibuster is being used by the minority, with extraordinary success, to make the majority look foolish, ineffectual and incompetent. By using Republican obstructionism as a vehicle for forcing through their own narrow agendas, supposedly moderate Democratic senators will only make themselves complicit in this humiliation.

This column is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV in full. (c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group

The media will continue to speculate about the outcome of President Barack Obama’s visit to China. However, small gestures matter. The Times of London observes that Obama carrying his own umbrella while alighting from the Air Force One “may be just the right stick for China”.

“Perhaps that simple umbrella moment really mattered. It showed China’s people that the arrogant America of their perceptions can also show humility, and that their own leaders risk becoming just as haughty as the world’s lone superpower.

“President Obama did not come to China carrying a big stick, but he did carry his own umbrella. It was a gesture that impressed ordinary Chinese accustomed to seeing aides shielding their own leaders from the rain. Just what kind of impression Mr Obama made on China’s rulers was harder to gauge…” More here…

Meanwhile India seems to have been irked by Obama’s visit to China. “Angered by US President Barack Obama’s attempt to envisage a role for China in South Asia, India on Wednesday made it clear that it objects any move to give a wider footprint to China in the region,” reports an Indian news channel.

“The Ministry of External Affairs said that it had objections to Obama giving China a greater role in South Asian affairs, adding a third country’s role cannot be envisaged in the bilateral relationships between countries of the region.” More here…

Has Obama agreed that Beijing would monitor Indo-Pak ties? asks The Times of India. More here…

The statement by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, issued on Tuesday in Beijing, supports the “improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan.”

It says “the two sides are ready to strengthen communication, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace, stability and development in that region.” More here…

According to the BBC: “Before Wednesday’s meeting with the Chinese prime minister, Mr Obama said the Washington-Beijing relationship was now about more than trade and economics.” Read here…

He came. He saw. His charisma was controlled.

That in a nutshell seems to be the emerging verdict on President Barack Obama’s trip to China: China kept the famous Obama charisma in check in a visit that won’t be seen as a turning point. AFP paints a portrait of a visit that was more zzzz than pizazz:

Something got lost in transit in US President Barack Obama’s visit to China — the charismatic rhetoric and dominance of mass communication that took him from nowhere to the White House.

Obama built his political persona with soaring speeches on a grand stage and by reaching out to a vast grassroots network on the Internet.

But in China, Obama’s hosts successfully stifled those prodigious public talents, keeping his message from the people with media censorship and smothering it in staid diplo-speak.

On previous foreign trips in his taxing first year in office, the president sent inspiring words winging to millions of satellite dishes in the Muslim world and sparked Obama mania in Europe.

But in China, it has been tougher to reach out to ordinary citizens. His best attempt, a town hall meeting streamed on the White House website, suffered from what was largely a nationwide media blackout.

And Obama’s talks on Tuesday with President Hu Jintao were followed by a dull public appearance, with both leaders reading out statements to the media stuffed with diplomatic code words.

The US president shuffled his papers on the lectern, scratched an eyebrow and looked across at Hu, as his host read out a long speech. The arid diplomatic translations made the occasion seem even more sterile.

And then there was the context for this meeting that by most accounts did not contain major dramatic developments: the U.S. seems on the financial descent while China is on the financial ascent. The Christian Science Monitor:

President Obama stood side by side with China’s President Hu Jintao Tuesday, but they weren’t seeing eye to eye on economics any more than on Afghanistan or Tibet.

Both the US and Chinese economies felt the squeeze of recession. Yet neither of the world’s most powerful economies seems to have changed their ways.

The US is still running a huge trade deficit and borrowing lots of money from China.

China is still racing to expand its high-tech manufacturing exports, and as part of its strategy is fixing its currency at what many economists believe is an artificially low level. A cheap yuan can help to make Chinese products more attractive on world markets.

One sign of the times: America’s industrial capacity – the nation’s ability to produce goods – has been falling for 10 straight months, says Charles McMillion, chief economist at MBG Information Services in Washington. China isn’t the only reason for the trend. But he notes that from 1948 to 2001, American industrial capacity never had a single month of decline – even though factory output would slump during recessions. That string was broken in 2002, the year after China won membership in the World Trade Organization.

Now, as China makes more of what Americans buy, Mr. McMillion says there’s a real chance that US businesses will continue to close factories – cutting US jobs even as the economy recovers.

The numbers he cites were reported by the Federal Reserve Tuesday, even as Mr. Obama was wrapping up his first presidential visit in Beijing.

The Wall Street Journal says the “awkward” meeting produced some results but much unfinished business:

President Barack Obama was set to leave China on Wednesday after an awkward summit with some achievements but a long list of unfinished business — a result that suggests challenges ahead for the U.S. as it struggles to come to terms with Asia’s increasingly assertive superpower.

The president secured a far-ranging framework for cooperation Tuesday with Beijing. But that deal was announced as frictions between the two nations appeared to increase over human rights and economic policy.

President Obama and Chinese leader Hu Jintao issued their ambitious statement on cooperation in a clumsy fashion — at a media “availability” where they took no questions, didn’t address each other and exhibited body language that seemed to say they had been frustrated by the entire exercise.

But the Washington Post saw some progress — on climate change:

Buried in the text of Tuesday’s joint declaration between President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao was a hopeful clause on climate talks: The Obama administration is likely to offer emission-reduction targets at next month’s climate summit, as long as the Chinese offer a proposal of their own.

U.S. reluctance to set a short-term emissions goal has been a sticking point in the United Nations-sponsored talks for nearly a year. Almost all industrialized nations, and many developing countries, have announced plans to curb their greenhouse-gas output by 2020. Neither the United States nor China — which is not obligated to do so under the U.N. framework, even though it ranks as the world’s biggest emitter — has done so, thereby hampering the prospects of an agreement.

A senior Obama administration official said that any U.S. target would still be contingent on congressional action. The House-passed climate bill includes a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 compared with 2005 levels; the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee backed a 20 percent cut, but key senators have vowed to make that less ambitious.

Just this weekend the Obama administration endorsed a Danish proposal to settle for a political accord on global warming in Copenhagen next month, while deferring to 2010 the codification of a legally binding international treaty. According to the joint declaration, “an agreed outcome at Copenhagen should . . . include emission reduction targets of developed countries and nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries.”

The cartoon by Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE, is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Responding to an ABC News investigation into stimulus data being reported for non-existent Congressional districts, the Recovery Board’s Communications Director, Ed Pound, is quoted as saying:

We report what the recipients submit to us …

Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes.

First reaction: If you’re too too lazy to confirm in which Congressional district you reside, perhaps you shouldn’t be receiving stimulus money at all. Second reaction: Did Mr. Pound conduct this interview cold, without running his own due diligence beforehand? If he had prepped before talking, he might have emphasized points such as these, instead:

The overhwelming majority of the published data cites the correct Congressional district.

In the relatively rare cases where errors are made, the Board is working diligently to correct those in a timely manner.

The Board takes steps to verify the accuracy of the immense amounts of data submitted to it and is mindful of the need for continuous improvements to its fact-checking process.

The Board appreciates the fact-checking efforts of the media and others; such scrutiny can only help improve the larger process. It’s one of the reasons why we publish this data: to allow for scrutiny and fact-checking.

Having done my fair share of interviews over the years — and having prepped dozens of people for interviews of their own — I suspect these suggested points didn’t get aired because one of several possible mistakes were made:

1. Mr. Pound did not conduct due diligence prior to the interview.

2. Mr. Pound did conduct due diligence, but found that the Board was, in fact, not as buttoned-down as it should have been in its fact-checking process — and so (rather than fall on the sword and promise improvements) he reached for empathy via fallible humanity, which is convenient but rarely effective.

3. Mr. Pound did conduct due diligence; he did verify the accuracy of points similar to those outlined above; and he did make those very points during the interview — but then, under pressure from a smart reporter, who refused to accept Mr. Pound’s answers and kept asking the same question over and over (”How could this happen?”) — Mr. Pound grew frustrated, reacted with emotion, and gave the reporter a much more interesting quote.

I’m guessing most readers of the ABC story will assume the first or second of those mistakes were made. And even if they’re wrong, Mr. Pound will be hard pressed to convince them otherwise.

Thus concludes yet another lesson on the importance of prepping before you talk, staying on message, taking responsibility for mistakes when they’re made — and never (ever) letting your emotions cloud your better judgement, especially when a reporter is on the line or sitting in front of you. (Again, I speak from experience, including the experience of having once made that third mistake.)

———–

UPDATE: Per the last half of this Amanda Carpenter post, it appears Mr. Pound and others in the Administration are starting to get their messaging train back on track.

Once upon a time, banking was a pretty boring business. Banks took deposits, made loans, and people paid them back. Profits were modest but predictable.

And then the industry was deregulated, and all bets were off. No longer did banks make their profits from reasonably priced loans to people who were able to pay. Instead, pre-approved credit card offers flooded the mailbox of every man, woman, and child. Opening a checking account became free, while bounced check fees skyrocketed.

For most banks the real profits now come from late fees, balloon payments, default interest rates, and a host of other tricks and traps. In other words, making a profit has become an exercise in misdirection and misinformation. Sneaky has become the norm. [...] The marketplace for financial services hasn’t been free — or fair — for a long time.

There is also some noise that a new protection agency could stifle innovation. But is an over-the-limit fee really an innovation, or just a cheap trick designed to fool customers into believing a product costs one price when the majority of customers actually pay far more?

Tyagi is the daughter of Elizabeth Warren. Together she and her mother have authored two books and several articles, one of which popularized the idea of a Consumer Financial Protection Association. It was included in the Harvard Review’s Breakthrough Ideas for 2009.

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a federal report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children — more than one in five across the United States — were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million youngsters the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

The report — from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — is here (.pdf).

In anticipation of new health reform legislation that would curb their oligarchy, drug makers have raised their prices about 9% this past year while the Consumer Price Index has fallen by 1.3% during the same period.

The widely acclaimed deal the industry struck with the White House and Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus to shave $80 billion in prices over the next 10 years looks as if someone got snookered. It wasn’t Big Pharma.

The industry’s rapid price increases on brand names protected by patents are fairly chronicled and explained in an article in today’s New York Times.

What the article fails to mention is that an amendment to the senate committee’s bill was defeated that would have allowed Medicare to purchase drugs for low-income seniors at the same price that Medicaid pays for the drugs. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it would result in a loss of $106 billion over 10 years to drug makers. That tells you who has the upper hand in this process. It isn’t the consumer. The House bill hopes to cut drug prices by $140 billion over the next decade.

The thrust of the price increases is to protect profits required for research and development of new drugs, the Times story quotes industry spokespersons. One of them, Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the industry association — the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America — argued medicines create health savings.

“Medicines often reduce unnecessary hospitalization, help avoid costly medical procedures and increase productivity through better prevention and management of chronic diseases,” he said.

Artificially inflating prices is nothing new for Big Pharma. Reports The Times:

A Harvard health economist, Joseph P. Newhouse, said he found a similar pattern of unusual price increases after Congress added drug benefits to Medicare a few years ago, giving tens of millions of older Americans federally subsidized drug insurance. Just as the program was taking effect in 2006, the drug industry raised prices by the widest margin in a half-dozen years.

Don’t you love our free market sources at work? It’s more civilized than the Mexican drug lords. After all, we consumers are mere peons.

Some feel that those who did not support the invasion and occupation of Iraq do not support the troops. It is my conviction that supporting the troops is more than just supporting a war.

There are millions of Americans who do not support this or that war, but certainly respect, honor, love, and, yes, support the troops—not just through bumper stickers or yellow ribbons, but through concrete acts of charity, volunteerism and support for legislation beneficial to our troops and veterans.

Some may still disagree, which is fine. However, what I find totally unacceptable is how some politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, who claim to support the troops, use the troops, or legislation benefitting the troops, as a political football to achieve their political objectives or to make a political statement.

The most recent example is the obstruction by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma of urgently needed legislation intended to help wounded veterans and their families.

The legislation that “consolidates more than a dozen improvements in veterans’ health care — most notably a new assistance program for family members who wind up providing lifelong home nursing to severely disabled veterans” and which also “expands benefits for women veterans who suffered sexual trauma on duty, extends veterans’ care in rural areas, tightens quality control at V.A. hospitals, and ensures that catastrophically disabled veterans will not be charged for emergency services in community hospitals,” is now stalled on the floor of the Senate thanks to Senator Coburn.

According to the New York Times:

The omnibus legislation drew unanimous committee approval. But Senator Coburn objected to quick floor passage, demanding that the five-year, $3.7 billion cost be offset with immediate budget cuts. The senator’s argument rings hollow in the face of veterans’ suffering and the world of deficit budgeting brought on by his party’s tax cuts and zealous war investments.

Now he is demanding balanced books for wounded vets? Sheer embarrassment should drive the senator into retreat as he trifles with veterans’ needs and burnishes his petty role as Dr. No.

Some may say that the end justifies the means, that such “procedural tactics” to balance the budget, to neuter “misguided spending” are justified.

However, when our troops are used as the “means,” I strongly disagree.

Some will say that such deplorable tactics have been used by Democrats, too. Probably so. However, that doesn’t make it right and, yes, those Democrats are shameless, too.

Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd batted spiritedly during his recent India visit and delivered a googly to bypass ticklish issues and move on to substantive bilateral economic and strategic issues that would help strengthen ties between India and Australia.

Rudd squarely faced the contentious issues of racial violence against Indian students in Australia, as also the continuing ban on the supply of uranium because India has not signed the non-proliferation treaty.

“Kevin Rudd says he takes responsibility for law and order but can’t guarantee there will be no more attacks against Indian students studying in Australia,” reports ABC. “Despite the controversy, India and Australia’s relationship appears to be on firm ground as Rudd makes his first prime ministerial visit to the Indian capital.

While Manmohan Singh said the two countries have decided to “upgrade our relations to the level of a strategic partnership”, Kevin Rudd announced Australian Federal Government will be sending at least an extra 14 Australian diplomats to India “representing the largest single expansion of Australia’s diplomatic and consular representation in India ever.”

More here…

Australia has long ignored its economic and strategic relationship with India and Mr Rudd’s visit should be focused on that, says Rory Medcalf, a security expert at Australia’s Lowy Institute. “Canberra has neglected the subcontinent but the feeling has been mutual…India has tended to see Australia through a couple of very outdated lenses. It has seen Australia as eventually an appendage of the United States or it has seen Australia as some sort of afterthought in Asia.

“I think for a long time India has just simply not understood and has not appreciated how much Australia has to offer.”

But, Mr Medcalf says, Australia has one big drawcard for India. “Uranium exports to India for civil purposes from Australia really would be a magic bullet to change the relationship, especially symbolically. India would finally think Australia was serious about a strategic partnership.

“If Rudd can’t deliver on uranium, and I’m fairly sure he can’t, at least a set of substitute gestures has to be found in the short-term… I think he has to find something that signals that we recognise that India matters.

“I think India is on the radar… I think several senior ministers in the Government have essentially said so. And I think there is a public opinion element of this. In the past 18 months we’ve seen this rocky relationship with China developing over issues essentially to do with different values and security interests.

“We haven’t had that challenge with India. I don’t think we’re going to have anywhere near that sort of a problem with India in the decades to come.

“So I think Australia is beginning to look more to India as a key player in the constellation of powers in Asia – that we will need as a security partner, an economic partner and indeed as part of the social fabric of Australian society in the future.”

More here…

In the wake of attacks on Indian students, several Australian ministers have visited India to assure the government and Indian parents that the safety of the Indian students is a top concern of the Australian government.

In September, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, as also Prof Pal Ahluwalia (pro-Vice Chancellor of University of South Australia) visited India. (Please click here to read my earlier post…)

While Prime Minister Rudd was concluding his secret visit to Afghanistan for Remembrance Day before arriving in Delhi, his wife Therese Rein visited India’s largest slum in Mumbai, home to more than 1 million people (wonderfully captured in Oscar Award-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire). Read about her visit here…

Prime Minister Rudd delighted the audience at the India business lunch (where I was also invited), by his reference to cricket. “India shares many passions with Australia, one of them being our collective celebration of cricket. We share a passion for the game.

” But in my case, there has never been a correlation between passion on the one hand and ability on the other. You will be surprised to learn however that I have played against India before.

“At least as a member of the Australian embassy team in Peking against the Indian embassy team. My highest score was 11 not out.

“We Australians always feared the Indian quicks and we feared that the reason India regularly beat us at the Temple of Heaven Ground was out belief that on the eve of each of the games, Indian MEA would fly in its best talent from Delhi.

“At least that’s my excuse for failure on the field – 11 not out….

“Of course there is more to life than cricket. Another of our shared passions is exploring new opportunities for business collaboration.

“Looking out to this diverse audience – business leaders, senior officials and commentators from all corners of the private and public sectors – I am struck by the extent of common Australian and Indian commercial interests.

“I am also reminded of the central role business will play in elevating our countries’ bilateral partnership….That’s why I’m delighted that our Trade and Commerce Ministers have agreed to establish a CEO forum to bring together the business elites of our two countries to discuss opportunities and impediments to greater economic cooperation.

“And I look forward to reading their recommendations in 2010 on what governments can do. After all, enhancing commercial cooperation between our two countries is a central pillar of the Australia-India strategic partnership and an opportunity to bring our countries closer together.

“This is an opportunity we just can’t pass up.”

It remains to be seen how China, a close business partner of Australia, reacts to this cosying up between India and Australia.

THE DISMAL NUMBERS

The past decade was remarkable for its miserable job growth and generally stagnant wages, even though the total U.S. population increased by over 20 million. Total 2009 workforce numbers for the private-sector economy and for all levels of government service are almost the same as they were in 1999. We can’t afford to have another stagnant decade that could be worse than the last. We are starting this new decade with high unemployment, mounting personal and business bankruptcies, massive residential and commercial real estate turmoil with steadily growing foreclosures, our public finances at the Federal and State levels completely unbalanced, and strong global competition from nations with far fewer domestic problems.

We have a steadily rising official unemployment rate of 10.2% and the unofficial under-employment and unemployment rate is at least 18%. We have more than 25 million people out of work, working reduced hours, part-time, as temporary independent contractors, or they have involuntarily gone back to school or are now staying at home taking care of kids and endlessly cruising job boards. This period of large unemployment resembles the 1930’s in sheer numbers but the origins are rather different. It has hit those over 45 particularly hard even though they have many skills and job experience. Simultaneously it has decimated the job prospects of many between 18 and 30 who might have college educations but limited prior job experience.

If arguably the March 2009 Stimulus Package has saved or created about 1.5 million jobs, at best it might save or create around 3 million more by the time it runs out of authorized funds at the end of 2011. Taking those numbers positively, they are still woefully inadequate in light of the need, and viewed suspiciously, they are almost irrelevant.

Much of the Stimulus money went to the States to cover massive budget shortfalls, so that is where we likely can find the “saved” jobs calculations. Another large chunk of Stimulus money went for income preservation in extending middle-class tax cuts, unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicaid coverage. Infrastructure spending is just coming on line and will continue through 2011 but we can endlessly debate “shovel-ready” projects and our long-term infrastructure needs that have yet to be fully addressed.

This country needs to create at least 100,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. Economists in government, academia and the private sector anticipate we will be shedding more jobs for the next year or two. Massive government programs won’t solve this huge dilemma but several targeted public-private partnerships might hold more promise.

HISTORY OF THE CCC

There is a growing chorus calling for large-scale direct Federal programs for job creation, such as bringing back the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC). Unfortunately they won’t work as they did back in the 1930’s because our entire economy has changed drastically since then. However, a small, targeted forestry and land management internship program could be a worthwhile part of a much larger effort that works directly with the private sector to create more jobs for the future.

PBS stations recently broadcast a very informative documentary about the original CCC. This was a national effort to employ millions of men in every state, principally working in public parks, forests, federal protected areas, wetlands, and other rural areas planting trees, building paths, dams, and accommodations in National Parks, and performing other related conservation and environmental activities. The pay was very low (about $25 a week per person) and the living conditions were minimalist as they were housed in Military-style barracks and tents. The U.S. was so desperately poor in the 1930’s that millions of young men flocked to this program. It was disbanded in 1942 at the start of World War II.

The PBS documentary showed battalions of universally thinner men than today working happily outdoors with shovels, pitchforks, wheelbarrows, and some modest mechanized construction equipment. They built thousands of small bridges, dams, new hiking trains, camp shelters, and new tourist lodges with stone, wood and other natural materials in our Nation’s parks and forests. The work was labor intensive and those who worked for the CCC had very limited educations or job skills. The CCC also provided literacy classes and basic job training during the evenings.

The men of the CCC were generally single, young and childless – and did I mention much thinner? If they had children, they were cared for by a stay-at-home spouse while they were shipped to far-off camps on a vast national network of inexpensive passenger trains that no longer exists. CCC men sent most of their earnings back to parents so they could survive before the days of unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicare.

The men of the CCC were being prepared for the private sector jobs available at that time. They had to develop physically and mentally to do work in heavy manufacturing, construction and warehousing. The CCC was also a perfect training ground for the Military that eventually swallowed up most of them in 1942 for the War Effort. When they returned from the War, the 1950’s and 60‘s offered plenty of manufacturing, construction and warehousing jobs, plus the GI Bill to go to college to qualify for emerging jobs in the sciences and technology, and for new management positions.

CHANGED AMERICA

Why won’t a huge CCC work today? We can all acknowledge that our national parks and federal forests, plus many other state-owned and local city parks have been neglected for many years. We need to make some serious financial commitments to them but they won’t need millions of people digging with shovels to fix them. The most labor-intensive activity is the hand-planting of tree seedlings – which is not even the largest priority in our national park system today. In addition, our Federal and State Governments are much larger today so it takes much longer to get things organized with expansive bureaucracies.

Over the past 2 decades, our economy shifted the majority of our manufacturing facilities and labor-intensive work overseas to low-wage and low-cost countries, or to the dustbin of history through mechanization, computerization, and the use of robots. We will not need millions of young men to liberate half the world in a massive Military endeavor. Our country is financially strapped to maintain even its current military size, foreign bases, and large combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of today’s job openings are in healthcare, renewable energy, basic accounting, computer network administration, public education, and other positions that deal with people and are located in offices.

It is rather unlikely we can get a large number of unemployed people to move to the wilderness or to live in camps outside our cities – unless things get far worse in our economy. We would likely have to house them in local motels at 2 to a room rather than building portable military-style camps. Much of the physical work performed during the 1930’s has long since been mechanized. Heavy physical labor and daily exercise might be good for many obese Americans but realistically speaking, there are few manufacturing or construction jobs left or in the future with the private sector. Many of today’s younger unemployed have families and they are often the sole parent or provider – so what are we going to do with their children?

TARGETED INTERNSHIPS IN FORESTRY AND LAND MANAGEMENT

A new Targeted Internship Program (TIP) could help from 1 to 2 million people develop new skills in forestry, land management, energy conservation, urban parks, and general environmental planning. However the program should be designed for the total number of private sector and government jobs that will be needed in these areas over the next decade.

The Federal Government, contracting through several regional private-sector management and job placement companies, would directly finance the employment of between 1 and 2 million people who enjoy working outdoors, who are interested in various land management issues, and who want to use the program as a low-paid internship. Many interns might not be assigned to work outdoors in National Parks but rather they would be placed in various Federal and State bureaucracies or with private sector companies for 1 or 2 years until the could be permanently employed outside the program.

If the interns are paid the same as Army Privates (around $17,000 a year) the total program would likely run about $40 to $80 billion over a 2 to 4 year period. It would take about 6 months to ramp up this multi-faceted program provided the private sector were given the principal task of actually allocating interns to governmental entities and private sector employers.

OTHER IDEAS FOR JOB CREATION

Unfortunately this TIP in forestry and land management would help less than 10% of the total unemployed in the U.S. so we must promptly pursue other job-creation ideas to fully address our larger national needs. Our efforts should focus on small business creation and its expansion as this sector has been, is, and will be the bedrock of the U.S. free enterprise system.

This post is not designed to denigrate all types of direct governmental job creation, or public sector employment. But most governmental spending, and the type that has the largest multiplier effect on the entire economy, is through contracts with private sector companies that actually perform the assigned tasks and build the needed infrastructure.

Many of those longer-term infrastructure projects are certainly worth supporting. However they are separate from the urgent need to restart our nation’s stagnant private sector economy, overall consumer confidence, and promptly reduce systemic unemployment in the U.S. Unfortunately, our dysfunctional financial and banking sector will not be of much help to the rest of the economy for many years to come.

Smaller private enterprises are far more capable of quickly responding to public stimulus money than are large corporations and governmental bureaucracies. Jobs will be created as the private sector expands but only if we creatively and forcefully target small business expansion. These other proposals will be addressed in my next TMV post.

Marc Pascal

From the outraged comments of the abortion rights movement, you’d think that Rep. Bart Stupak’s amendment to the House version of the health care bill would all but overturn Roe v. Wade.

No, it wouldn’t. The Michigan Democrat’s measure — passed 240-194, with 64 Democrats voting “yes” — would prohibit abortion coverage in the public health care option and bar any federal subsidies for plans that included abortion purchased on the new insurance exchanges.

Stupak argues that the federal government has stayed out of the business of financing abortion since passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976 and that none of the policies available on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program cover elective abortion. The structures that reform would create, he says, should carry the same restrictions, which do not apply in cases involving rape and incest or when a mother’s life is in danger.

Abortion rights supporters counter that, at the very least, individuals who pay part of the cost of their policies should be allowed to choose abortion coverage.

Whatever else is true, Stupak’s amendment is unlikely to have a significant effect on the availability of abortion, since most abortions are not paid for through health insurance. The Guttmacher Institute, for example, reported that only 13 percent of abortions in 2001 were directly billed by providers to insurance companies — although the institute cautioned that this figure did not include “women who obtain reimbursement from their insurance company themselves.”

The odd thing is that everyone in this fight insists that the only goal is to maintain the status quo on abortion. But defining the status quo has been a legislative and negotiating nightmare.

Democratic leaders once thought they had found the middle ground with an amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps of California. She proposed segregating the money paid in for health insurance. Abortion coverage could be purchased with the premiums paid by individuals, but not with government money.

Abortion opponents argued that this separation of funds was artificial, and that all money paid to the government plan was, by definition, public. So Rep. Brad Ellsworth, a right-to-life Democrat from Indiana, suggested an alternative that became known as “Capps on steroids.” It substantially strengthened the barriers between public and private funds, particularly in the public plan.

But a key group of Democrats who supported the rest of the House bill (roughly 10 by the best count I have been able to get) was still not satisfied, partly because the Roman Catholic bishops were not satisfied. These Democrats turned out to be essential on a bill that ultimately passed by five votes.

Last Friday night, Stupak put forward a final compromise to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that would have prohibited abortion coverage in the public plan but would have allowed an annual vote on the abortion ban for the private plans. Pro-choice Democrats rejected this, and the stronger version of Stupak’s proposal then passed.

What happens now? Democratic supporters of abortion rights need to accept that their House majority depends on a large cadre of anti-abortion colleagues. They can denounce that reality, or they can learn to live with it.

There is also a challenge for abortion’s foes, above all the Catholic bishops who have a long history of supporting universal coverage but devoted most of their recent energy to the abortion battle. How much muscle will the bishops now put behind the broader effort to pass health care reform? Their credibility as advocates for social justice hangs in the balance.

And if the Senate forces a change in the Stupak language, one obvious approach would involve a ban on abortion in the public plan — if such an option survives — and the application of Ellsworth’s rules to the private policies sold in the insurance exchange. The alternative would be Stupak’s original compromise offer to Pelosi. There are not many other options.

The truth is that even with the Stupak restrictions, health care reform would leave millions of Americans far better off than they are now — including millions of women. This skirmish over abortion cannot be allowed to destroy the opportunity to extend coverage to 35 million Americans.

Killing health care reform would be bad for choice, and very bad for the right to life.

This column is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV in full. (c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

The Globe’s finding is based on the federal government’s just-released accounts of stimulus spending at the end of October. It lists the nearly $4 billion in stimulus awards made to an array of Massachusetts government agencies, universities, hospitals, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations, and notes how many jobs each created or saved.

But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

Lest you think Massachusetts is some errant point off the edge of the bell curve, stop by this article by Ed Morrissey with a full list of “liberal media” links to another ten states where these wild eyed exaggerations have failed to hold water under even mild scrutiny. The other late additions are Colorado and Washington state. Here’s just one example of your tax dollars (in the trillions) at work:

Two child-development centers — one in Colorado Springs and the other in Saguache County — reported they had created or saved more than 292 jobs combined. However, the money — totaling about $650,000, or $2,226 a job — was used to give employees cost- of-living raises. Only three new jobs were created.

Boy, it’s sure a good thing we rushed that bill through. Otherwise, who knows how those people would have gotten a raise?

In his excellent post honoring our veterans, Jazz Shaw mentioned that “The debt we owe to our returning heroes runs much deeper than a free pass to Disneyland.”

While we have come a long way in how we treat our veterans and in improving the benefits and services our veterans receive, especially under the leadership of Gen. Eric Shinseki, we still have a long way to go.

In particular, as mentioned by Shaw, the number of homeless veterans is shocking and shameful.

Today’s New York Times brings home this disgraceful situation:

About one-third of all adult homeless men are veterans, and an average night finds an estimated 131,000 of them from five decades bedding down on streets and in charity sanctuaries. About 3 in 100 of them are back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem of homelessness for Vietnam veterans is, shamefully, well known. But the men and women in this growing cohort took just 18 months to find rock bottom, compared with the five years-plus of the previous generation’s veterans.

According to the Times, “General Shinseki has promised to galvanize the Department of Veterans Affairs to lead a national drive to end veteran homelessness in the next five years” and has pledged $3.2 billion towards housing, education, job and medical programs to help our troubled veterans, also “more beds for transition programs, including those intended to help the 40,000 veterans released each year from prisons.”

However, our government—no matter how well-intentioned—can not do it all. Our veterans need, deserve, the help of every American.

The Times mentions, “We believe [Shinseki] has the mettle to pull this off. He will need a lot of help from the White House, Congress and communities across the country. The general-turned-secretary is appealing to thousands of worthy organizations already in the field to double their efforts to help.”

Shaw mentioned two such organizations: Thank a Vet program and Project Valor – IT.

My hometown newspaper, this morning, described another such organization: “Soldiers’ Angels.”

Soldiers’ Angels was started by Patti Patton-Bader, a grandniece of Gen. George S. Patton, shortly after her son deployed to Iraq in 2003.

Today, Soldiers’ Angels is a $25 million-a-year non-profit organization with more than 280,000 volunteers and “does everything from [providing] winter jackets to homeless veterans to [raising] money for voice-activated laptops for wounded service members.”

But Soldiers’ Angels does much more than providing winter jackets to homeless veterans:

As deployments stretched ever longer and soldiers were called for multiple tours of duty, the group’s attention turned to the impact on the families left behind, and Soldiers’ Angels began organizing mass baby showers for expectant mothers whose husbands were deployed abroad. Lately, as more soldiers return home, the group is helping service members transition to civilian life. Soldiers’ Angels now helps wounded veterans with traumatic brain injury get access to cutting-edge hyperbaric oxygen treatment and use music therapy to regain lost memories…Soldiers’ Angels is opening a new healing center and warehouse in San Antonio, next to Brooke Army Medical Center, that will employ service members transitioning from active service to civilian life and help them find veteran mentors.

Thank you Patti Patton-Bader, thank you Soldiers’ Angels, and most of all, thank you American veterans.

As the Times says, “Our veterans shouldn’t be forced to battle on their own just to survive at home.” Help a veteran in any way you can; go to http://www.soldiersangels.org/; or find an organization near you that you know will help our veterans.

Image: Courtesy Soldiers’ Angels