Bush hypocritically loads up on earmarks.

post from Think Progress on 28 June 2007 12:00:00 PM. © Think Progress

President Bush has repeatedly attacked Congress for its earmarks and pork barrel projects. Yet a new House Appropriations Committee report accompanying legislation funding the Department of the Interior “shows that Bush requested 93 of the 321 earmarks in the bill. A panel report for the financial services and general government spending bill showed that Bush [...]

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CHRIS VAN HOLLEN HAS SOME FIREWORKS PLANNED FOR A
GAGGLE OF ESPECIALLY BAD REPUBLICANS

post from DownWithTyranny! on 28 June 2007 11:57:00 AM. © DownWithTyranny!

Today the DCCC announced they will be targeting 14 Republican districts with radio ads, viral Internet videos and informational phone banking in a 5 day period centered on the 4th of July holiday. "Next week, Republicans are going home to talk up their support for our nation?s troops and veterans. But, their constituents deserve to know that the Republican record on veterans is all talk and no action," said Chairman Chris Van Hollen. "America?s troops and veterans deserve more than patriotic speeches this Independence Day."

The congressmen targeted are all looking vulnerable and shaky in their re-election hopes. In other words, the DCCC isn't going after congressmen with horrible records in deeply red low-information districts where it isn't likely to do any good. They're targeting Republican incumbents with bad records in toss-up and blue-leaning districts. Radio spots will run in districts misrepresented by:
Sam Graves (MO)
Shelley Moore Capito (WV)
Robin Hayes (NC)
Joe Knollenberg (MI)
Jon Porter (NV)
Jim Walsh (NY)
Don Young (AK)

And web videos, e-mail campaigns and phone banking will be deployed targeting:
Thelma Drake (VA)
Mark Kirk (IL)
Randy Kuhl (NY)
Heather Wilson (NM)
Marilyn Musgrave (CO)
Phil English (PA)
Mike Ferguson (NJ)

The DCCC is as likely to help a war-supporting, reactionary, corrupt hack-- like John Barrow, Gene Taylor, Jim Marshall, etc-- as they are to support a fighting progressive. So, if you want to make sure your donations go to Democrats who embody progressive values and ideals never donate to the DCCC or DSCC. Always donate directly to candidates of your choice or through organizations you trust to do the research. I hope Blue America, the Act Blue pages operated by this blog, is one of those organizations. We very much agree with the DCCC's choice of CO-04 and NY-29, districts where Angie Paccione and Eric Massa will make excellent representatives.

Right now, our #1 priority is making sure true progressives like Donna Edwards (MD-04), Jamie Eldridge (MA-05), John Laesch (IL-14) and Victoria Wulsin (OH-02) are the Democratic candidates in their respective districts instead of corporate insider politicians who will represent interests at odds with those of workers and consumers.

There are two birthdays we're celebrating at DWT today. One is for a candidate we admire and respect: Donna Edwards and one is for ActBlue, the wonderful organization that has helped Democrats collect over $24,000,000 in three years. You can wish them a collective Happy Birthday with us by donating to Donna's campaign.

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Guilt By Association

post from Ezra Klein on 28 June 2007 11:56:00 AM. © Ezra Klein

Man, these political Magic cards are perfect for every occasion. Answering critics as to the content of his increasingly embattled, and hilarious, book, Jonah Goldberg writes, "Brad Plummer [sic] is having predictable good fun with it. Of course, he[...]

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Michael Moore’s “Sicko”
Available Online

post from Kmareka.com on 28 June 2007 11:49:00 AM. © Kmareka.com

I just watched “Sicko,” which is available here at Atlanticfreepress.com. Michael Moore provided the following statement with regard to how he views “sharing” his film: MICHAEL MOORE: Well, I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’thave a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it withpeople. As long they’re not doing it [...]

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On Branding

post from Ezra Klein on 28 June 2007 11:47:00 AM. © Ezra Klein

Criticisms of her book aside, I like Anne-Marie Slaughter, and thought her very impressive at a talk she gave on Tuesday, but in comments, Sam raises a fair objection to her continued ascension: But if you're looking to project a...[...]

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Jobs Program

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 28 June 2007 11:45:00 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

A bit ago I wrote a diary on the idea of a national jobs program, generally. TarheelDem wrote a good set of challenges to that in comments which I would like to reply to. The basic tenet of my idea is that the government should provide "last chance" employment, that is, guarantee that some productive work is available to those willing to make a day's pay.
Tarheel:

Jobs Programs (11.00 / 2)
The US has a jobs program that is acceptable to conservatives and Republicans; it's called the US military. Welfare for engineers and welfare manufacturing jobs.

ok, you go on, but I must say here two things, taking this seriously since you open with it (i.e. frame with it)... one, that is not guaranteed labor and is no different from other jobs working directly for government, not a jobs program, just a lot of jobs and two, you have to give up your constitutional rights to join the military and so this is not the sort of job I'm talking about, though it does show that government can handle huge numbers of working people.

Now that that's out of the way, let's look at your proposal.
What exactly is a job? It is at least two things--a source of income and a workplace that permits some sort of production, service, or destruction (which can be a service) to take place. Now, income here is actually the goods and services produced and not the money value of the goods and services produced. Prosperity depends on what is produced, not on how many little pieces of green paper or ounces of gold or bit-flips of a computer.

my premise rests on the idea that the government, and people in general, can produce productive work. There are many productive social services going unperformed. For example, there are a great many parks in California built by the CCC (a Californian version of an FDR alphabet soup work program), still heavilly used but falling to direpair as not only are new paths and facilities built, at all, but neither are those built maintained. They survive because they do not require great deals of maintaiance, often being made of local stone. Our cities are filthy and untended... many place in the nation need environmental restoration, from Hetch Hetchy to urban wetlands. I also think even more productive services requiring advanced skills also go unperformed.

One problem in the US economy (global economy, too) is not that there are no jobs. It is the high cost of creating workplaces. There are a few jobs that are easy to create a workplace for. For example, one can sit on a street corner, sell pencils, and provide the service of assuaging liberal guilt. It doesn't pay well, not even minimum wage (despite John Stossel's opinions), but it is a job and all you have to do is get about a dozen pencils. Low investment.

Isn't this a problem the government would be more than capable enough to address? Much of the work I envision providing the guarantee... that is, a job at a drop of a hat, is either out door or at a pre-existing private or public facility. Futher, if we consider the difficult cases, e.g. employing handicapped persons, sometimes the problem with traditional employment involves the fact that the person needs a job at home (and also a job that is easier to hunt for), and I think the government can take on the task of providing such work, work customized to take advantage of whatever a partially abled (we all are in some sense) person has to offer.

A second problem in the US economy is that there is significant work that is not being done. Lots of it. And there is significant work that is being done with too few resources; think of that when you get old enough to have to go to a nursing home.

well yeah, and this is part of what this is a solution for, why my idea has really nothing to do with make-work, not that you said it did but it's worth emphasizing. Even customized jobs for the partially abled, not charity by any stretch. There are many productive things which can be done, they don't have to yield profit directly if they improve the infrastructure of the US the benefits will follow from the increased value of that infrastructure. Similarly, such a service could be a value getting people into private industry, as the government could afford to give people chances to prove themselves, people of all abilities.

I have seen several of the federal "jobs programs" operating during the last forty years. Invariably they come down to one idea: short-term training to enable a person to get an existing job.

If the government has to provide jobs, it will take on the task of training with a different attitude. People will be trained in a practical way, government officials will have in mind the kind of productive work they have had to construct, and will not be able to merely call something training that is itself a dead end... because if they do they will be stuck with that worker. While there will be no drive to get people off the system, people themselves will probably want the more lucrative private sector jobs and not be happy with wasteful training that now they can be forced into.

Of course, being paid for training creates demand in the economy that in principle should cause new jobs to be created. It hasn't worked that way.

In my opinion that seems to be because training now is often a matter of hiring connected private training companies with whatever funds are available without any real need to connect the result to reality.

There have been jobs created, but not for the folks who participated in the program. And any who did succeed would have even if the program did not exist. And oh, yes, Nixon's privatized jobs program, called CETA--just an invitation to corruption.

Failures in other programs don't really reflect on my idea in this way... I am not talking about giving them money without results... the result have to be: people in productive employment, and subsequently, for the training side of this equation, which is necessary if only to train people to do the jobs we believe them capable of, the results are still driven by the need to actually have people spend productive days using their skills.

Another Nixon-era program was a test of the idea of a "guaranteed annual income", the so-called negative income tax that limited to wage-earners has become the earned income tax credit. What they found about those who were not employed (and this is in the 1970s) was that the divorce rate went up. Women were able to be financially independent and decided not to put up with a jerk. I said it was the 1970s.

That does not seem to be a criticism, I'll take it as an example of the kind of positive one sees when one empowers people and they take it upon themselves to free themselves from repression and oppression.

Buckminster Fuller proposed that the government pay people to do research.

You have to love that nut, eh? I think research jobs are in fact a part of the program... already. They are part of in the way you said the military was... except you don't have to give up your civil rights, usually, generally, (debatable). You do, however, have to accept salaries lesser to what you find in private industry using the same skills, albeit not as productively.

Provide access to the education, provide the work spaces, and let people do what they wanted to do.

I consider this a different idea, but it is related. I do think the government should provide commercial spaces to enable those that lack only a commercial kitchen or professional shop, both resources that can be shared by various types of time sharing within a community.

He argued that the benefits of the breakthroughs from 1% of the population would create prosperity for the other 99% because production of goods and services would go up dramatically as a result of doing more with less.

There is truth to this, except I don't think it takes human nature into account... it's possible 100% could be "productive" creating science that was, really, art. I love art, but I'm not saying to give people jobs as artists.

So what exactly are we talking about when we say "jobs programs". Payments to the unemployed? Creation of workplaces for the unemployed? (Even prison industries do that.) Providing jobs that need to be done in exchange for income?

All of those, which seem to me a part of the latter. Provide jobs for income. Design the system for creating jobs to focus on definitions of "infrastructure" and to set up a basis for jobs which are always available and available to all skill levels, e.g. cleaning up a city block, to jobs that are project oriented and require a full set of vertical roles, like restoring Hetch Hetchy. As you have pointed out, the government also has many jobs it already provides, and indeed, the way they manage such work, analyzing peoples skills with standardized tests, etc, shows the sort of fairness and design the government would use.

Though sometimes such systems are laughable in their design, they are also intentional and thouroughly defined, allowing us to improve those systems and broaden the value of the program.

I would have a part of the jobs department work to really help the job hunting process and put skilled individuals in touch with industrial needs, but not subsidize salary in such cases. The government might subsidize some costs, e.g. training for skills needed, maybe even costs such as moving costs.

How much income? Allowing the idlers among us to idle productively?

This depends on the job, but obviously the minimum wage (which should be higher) would be paid, at least. The idea, of course, is to be able to survive. I think a bigger question is how many hours a week one might be assumed to have to work for the wage to be "living wage"... 30-35.

Last chance employment?

Yes, but let's think of that as "guaranteed" employment, because I don't mean to have the government decide what cases are "last chance" vs. "tough luck". As one employed with skills in relative demand, to me... such a department would present a last chance fallback.

During the dot-com bust there were 500,000 IT professionals unemployed at one point. Does this last chance employment apply to them or is is just for the chronically and permanently unemployed?

It does. I think the program should compete with the day-at-a-time labor of petty crime. Run like a union labor shop, you should be able to get a days labor by showing up, though if you do that you might properly expect to do the most menial labor which is doable on a no-notice basis.

Who exactly collects the list of things that need to be done and converts them into assignments of productive work?
I'll do it if I'm the only one creative and intelligent enough to solve this part of the problem. It does not sound difficult to me. As you said there is a lot of work going undone in this nation. To tell the truth, I think set to this mission the government would find there are many many people qualified to solve this. I'm sure the voters would be able to tell the difference between successful methods from insane ones.

I know that is a how, but it is a how it operates, not a how do we get there.
I appreciate the way the challenges were set, it was not the kind of "how" I meant to dissuade... you asked questions rather than assumed the questions meant nothing, that I hadn't thought of them, or that they were insoluable prima facie.

And what exactly constitutes "employment" under this plan? Is doing art employment?
The program would not provide employment as an artist except as part of projects (e.g. building a stone fountain for a park).

Research in the humanities?
It could. Since we have begun to consider how government work, current government work, is in a way automatically related to this idea... the government already provides work in the humanities.
You are not guaranteed work in your preferred skillset, in my vision, though if your skills are known to be of value, of course it's in everyone's interest to put them to use.

Meditation?
Paid to meditate? One of the phrases we get to define as part of this project is "productive work" with respect to guaranteed employment.

Doing yoga?
If it's productive... do you mean teaching yoga in an elderly housing complex?

(Some of these are considered significant employment in other cultures and times.)
How would you suggest we go about deciding which jobs? I'm open to cultural predilection to various degrees --- it couldn't be avoided anyway. If you want to teach meditation in schools and find unemployed meditation teachers... hire 'em.

Doing empirical research into the flipping of a single coin?
Can that be productive? It's possible, because one type of job would be to let more government scientists and workers hire assistant to do many of the undone work of the government.
I imagine there would be a competition for such workers, and therefore a competition to invent productive work and argue for its sanctification as part of the national jobs program.

Suppose someone has an idea for how to employment their talents. But they lack the startup capital to create a going business. Are they excluded from this jobs program because they are essentially creating their own job?
I see government VC funding as a totally different idea, but one also worth discussing. I don't think it works out, I hate to tell you, having worked with VC people many times, it hardly works out even with them. Frankly, it's a terrible thought... but I'm open to hearing how that could be made to work becaue I do not think there is any reason for government not to enable people to be productive, it IS the pursuit of happiness our government is supposed to support, as by it's solemn (but happy) mission.

How far down the road of subsidizing private jobs do we go? We are pretty far down that road right now, truth be told.
Part of the motivation for my idea is to END this along with the faux-training programs. Subsidizing private jobs is due to giving up on creating actual jobs... it's another half solution which becomes a subsidy for private business, not people, so much... and it creates an unnatural triangular employment arrangement.

Like so many things, the principle makes sense, but the details are critical.
I agree fully... I just think it's solvable. And over all the years I've brought this up... you just helped more than possibly anyone else ever in hammering down toward those details.
Thanks!
PS: I'm on vacation, but rest assured, if not right away, I will read all comments closely. Cheers.

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Leahy: WH Not Above the Law

post from TPMmuckraker on 28 June 2007 11:44:12 AM. © TPMmuckraker

Here's the full statement from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "This is a further shift by the Bush Administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence...

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Leahy: WH Not Above the Law

Here's the full statement from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "This is a further shift by the Bush Administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence...

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Sac Bee: Feds Contact Six Former Doolittle Aides

From the Sacramento Bee: Federal prosecutors have recently contacted as many as a half dozen former aides to Rep. John Doolittle, seeking information from them in their investigation of the Roseville...

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Does High Social Spending Reduce National Incomes

Stephen Gordon crunches the numbers, makes a graph, and concludes that there's just about no relationship at all. Government, it turns out, has relatively little effect on growth. It's the type of government and the type of taxes that matter....[...]

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