Beyond unemployment insurance in the face of structural job loss: Who ever said it would be easy?
May 6, 2009
by Robert A. Letcher, PhD*“The long memory is the most radical idea in America.”
Utah Phillips, as recalled by Amy Goodman
I was reminded of Utah Phillips’ observation as I sat down to write this essay on how we approach public policy for dealing with unemployment during a time of mass unemployment. I intended to start off the essay by recalling the title of a book I read in around 1990. But, when I went to Amazon.com to look for the book, I found it wasn’t listed. I figured that it had gone out of print.
Fortunately, my memory – or at least a radical part of it, as I can barely remember my own name when I wake up in the morning – had something of a radical idea: the book I had in mind was And the Wolf Finally Came, by Thomas P. Hoerr (circa 1990). It’s a book about several decades of ups and downs of steel making in Pittsburgh. The author recounts how Pittsburghers had grown accustomed to those ups and downs, and how as one source told the author, “the wolf finally came”; that is, those troublesome ups and downs got replaced by much more troublesome down, period. Read more
Republicans Giving Civic Lessons?!!!??
February 14, 2009
by Robert A. Letcher, PhD
Like most WE! readers, I rarely have anything good to say about Republicans. But I have to give them credit for the civics lessons they’ve taught us over the years, amidst the flat-earth ideology, self-righteous hypocrisy, and obstreperous obstructionism. After all, it was the Republicans who taught us that the Constitution’s requirement for impeaching a President – “high crimes and misdemeanors” – extended to getting a blow-job in the Oval Office when a Democratic President occupies it, while not extending to blowing-off the Legislature with signing statements when the President is a Republican ([idiot] who thinks it’s OK because he has his fingers crossed). And what have Democrats contributed to this civics lesson? How about Bill Clinton’s fine point: “what the meaning of is is”? Read more
Is ‘Shovel-Ready’ Ready Enough?
February 7, 2009
by David Boyd
David Boyd The recent frenzy surrounding the formulation of an economic stimulus package has injected a new phrase into the American lexicon — “shovel-ready.” The phrase’s current popularity traces back to statements by then-Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the presidential campaign, capped off by Obama’s pledge, a month after his election, to launch his economic stimulus plan with a bevy of “shovel-ready” projects.
But assuming Congress soon passes the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, can all its infrastructure projects be truly “shovel-ready” — 100 percent completed plans, requisite environmental review and permitting processes in hand, plus the real estate acquired and prepared for construction? Probably not.
But we’re not without knowledge or capacity — if we use it — to fast-track the projects we need to bolster the economy and start putting people back to work quickly. Indeed, we’ve done it — and quite well — in a number of high-profile recent cases. Read more
Infrastructure? Sure, but Why?
February 2, 2009
by Robert A. Letcher, PhD
As support for infrastructure improvement grows among Americans of most stripes, it appears that “getting those shovels ready” is the surest way for a public officials at every level to curry favor with their constituents, in the face of what has been termed “an economic downturn” – you’ll get those sometime, you know, as if they were snowstorms coming east off the plains.
But, if all of those infrastructure projects are shovel ready now, it makes sense to me to wonder how many of those shovel ready projects were ready for shovels last year, or two years ago — or even earlier than that. And when I say “ready”, I mean urgently ready, as the Interstate-35 bridge in Minneapolis proved to be.
This leads me to a practical question: how in the world could we have not addressed the infrastructure problem earlier — say… before the I-35 bridge collapsed; before those fly ash ponds ran “amuck” in Tennessee and Louisiana; before the roofs of hundred year-old inner-city schools started leaking so badly; before so many students were left to learn from outdated textbooks, outdated classrooms and outdated techniques, and outdated computers (or none at all)? Read more
A $50 Billion Nuke Power Bomb is Dropping Toward Obama’s Stimulus Package
February 2, 2009
by Harvey Wasserman
The desperate, dangerous nuclear power industry has dropped a $50 billion stealth bomb meant to irradiate the Obama Stimulus Package.
It comes in the form of a mega-loan guarantee package that would build new reactors Wall Street wouldn’t finance even when it had cash. It will take a healthy dose of citizen action to stop it, so start calling your Senators now.
The vaguely worded bailout-in-advance provision was snuck through the Senate Appropriations Committee in the deep night of January 27. It would provide $50 billion in loan guarantees for “eligible technologies” that would technically include renewable sources and electric transmission. But the handout is clearly directed at nukes and “clean coal.”
The Stimulus Package is explicitly meant to create jobs within the next two years. But according to sources at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, no new reactors could be licensed for construction within that time. Nor could any new coal plants. And thus the funds in this rider are to “remain available until committed.” That means their “stimulus” might not go into effect for many years. Read more
Joe the Plumber: A Republican misrepresentation of the US working class—and an alternative to him
January 27, 2009
by Robert A. Letcher, PhD
Well, after almost 2 years, the presidential election of 2008 is over. All that remains is to cheer the old president out of the White House, freshen up the place, inaugurate the new president — and exorcise Joe the Plumber from our collective consciousness. As you’ll recall, Joe is the guy who misrepresented himself as a plumber to our next President (Joe had no plumber’s license). Joe also misrepresented himself as a legitimate prospective buyer of the company where he worked (Joe had not sufficient financial resources to buy the small company). And, so, Joe misrepresented the basis for his interest in Obama’s tax proposal (Joe had not the $250 thousand-plus income that would have activated the immediately personal interest he conveyed himself as having in Obama’s tax policy).
Clearly, Joe as-is could have had some other accepted-as-legitimate reason for questioning Obama – for example, as a representative of a plumbers-oriented lobbying group or of a small-business policy think-tank, as a libertarian-leaning partisan, as a curious economics student, or simply as a responsible citizen carrying no brief. Instead, Joe chose to misrepresent himself as a plumber whom Obama’s tax proposal might dissuade from purchasing a small business. Read more
GM, Ford, and Chrysler chose to reject government support for developing fuel efficient automobiles
January 1, 2009
by Robert A. Letcher, Ph.D.
Ten year-old “system analysis” of how GM, Ford, and Chrysler chose to reject government support for developing fuel efficient automobiles in favor of doing what they had historically organized to do: cut costs
[Author’s note: “PNGV” refers to the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, a Clinton-Gore era effort to help the three US-identified automobile companies develop vehicles capable of 80 mpg. After years of going trough the motions, and with the approach of the 2000 election and the increasing likelihood that the election would replace Clinton-Gore with a Texas oil man, all three companies ceased development efforts that they had ostensibly been aiming at breakthrough technologies, and shifted their attention over to internal cost cutting and cost recovery, The body of this essay is the exact text of an analysis that I wrote and sent circa 2000 to each of the three companies’ PNGV program directors, to critique their continuing effort to shift their focus back to how the companies had traditionally organized themselves. I have left the original wording unchanged despite a few impertinent points, in order to emphasize how unreceptive auto company executives have remained to change.]
For people inside the PNGV program, cutting internal costs is what they have always done, what their organizations are organized for, what their rewards are based on. Actually going beyond cost cutting will just as likely require working through organizational resistances. A lot of people would have to step beyond their accustomed roles, and many of them would likely find that unsettling. Read more
Considering the Government’s Possible Bail-Out of the Automotive Sector: A Broad View
November 19, 2008
by Robert A. Letcher, PhD
Regarding the prospect of the government bailing out the automotive sector, it seems to me that there are – generally speaking – two types of argument: argument that proceeds from the total certainty that only brazen commitment to self interest or idolatrous commitment to ideology could support; and argument that proceeds with eyes wide open to the complicated facts of the automotive sector and the even more complicated history behind those facts – and the uncertainty that wide open eyes inevitably bring.
I find myself in the latter category. Let me illustrate. My grandfather was a bricklayer who lost his hand when he slipped on a wet plank at a construction site and his hand fell into the open gear drive of a cement mixer. More recently, about a year ago, after PBS had aired one of its multi-part World War II stories and commented about the changeover at Willow run plant from making cars to making bombers, I argued in a letter that the UAW printed in its Solidarity magazine (Nov.-Dec. 2007, page 4) that the automotive sector had to be included in discussions of national security, because the companies and the union are not only auto makers just-in-time, but are also bomber makers just-in-case – and that the war may have had a different outcome had that changeover not been possible. Read more
Getting ready to be ready on Day One: Working on the division problem, NOW
October 18, 2008
by Robert A. Letcher, PhD
When the “ready on Day One” debate broke out among Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama, they all (defensively: the conventional approach) boasted their experience and strutted their accomplishments. But, somehow, they never got around to debating what they actually had to be ready for, on Day One. Nor did they ever get around to debating proper criteria according to which readiness for that should be assessed. They also didn’t get around to debating specifically what they could or should or would undertake beginning That Very Day to make themselves readier for Day One. Beyond lost opportunities to use the debates to sort out their positions on “readiness”, they also wasted a terrific opportunity to begin to dialog with the public, to help them learn the practical particulars of “being ready” as an issue.
As such, the candidates missed a major opportunity to respond seriously to the admonition voiced by Sam Nunn, from whose stature I have sought to derive “oomph” for my recent series of essays. For readers who haven’t already memorized Nunn’s admonition, here’s part of what he said in a joint appearance with former Secretary of Defense William Cohen appearance on Charlie Rose (2/13/2008):
“…We’re talking about how we can cooperate in the world and how we can get people together across party lines and across all sorts of lines. There is a real opportunity in the campaign for the kind of dialog that can lay the foundation for whomever is the next President to really be able to successfully govern. […] If we don’t discuss some of these fundamental issues in enough depth to get some understanding out there among the American public, it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to govern, no matter how popular, no matter how much charisma, no matter the vote margin their vote is; unless they have some platform that really leads people to be able to say, “Yeah, that’s the direction we ought to go in as a nation; that’s the kind of nation we want to be.” And those are the fundamental problems we’ve got to deal with, including perhaps some sacrifice in the short run in order to have a better future for our children and grandchildren.” [emphasis added; transcribed from broadcast by RAL]
Not only did they lose the opportunity to discuss this matter “in enough depth” to develop their own understanding of “readiness”. They didn’t have dialog “in enough depth to get some understanding out there among the American public”. If this non-attention continues, “it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to govern”, as Nunn said, [my emphasis added] … Obama included – and that’s important to me, because he’s my candidate to be the country’s next President, and because the country needs its next President to govern successfully.
That brings me [back] to the “division problem”. That’s the problem that the next President must be ready for on Day One. It’s the problem that complicates all other problems, and confounds efforts to remedy them. Of necessity, Presidents rely on advisors, whose judgment and capacity for being informed they have learned to trust. If the White House phone were to ring at 3 AM on a military matter, only a cowboy President would act without first consulting the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who on the next President’s Day One would presumably be holdovers from the current President’s Last Day. And if the phone call described another Katrina about to hit, or the “Big One” earthquake having hit, it’s difficult to imagine any President not doing a better job than W and his “good job” Brownie.
But only a President – and in my view, only a President Obama – could be ready on Day One to answer Sam Nunn’s challenge: “[to] get people together across party lines and across all sorts of lines”. Indeed, I very much doubt that either of the other two then-candidates could ever be ready for answering this call: Senator Clinton, due primarily to residual animosities around her husband’s policies and philandering, but also to her “do what it takes” approach to campaigning; and Senator McClain due to a combination of his own and the current President’s out-of-touchness.
Obama’s readiness for Day One derives from his well- and oft-demonstrated capacity to inspire an ever widening circle of everyday people to dare to hope for less division, to risk envisioning a much more “together” America (to reintroduce a term from my younger days).
But we would all make a horrible mistake if we were to cast Obama as some sort of savior for our division problem. He’ll have to learn how to help us help him, and we’ll have to learn how to help him do that. Two-way learning isn’t a strong suit of most American institutions, perhaps because it entails mutually respectful dialog, entered into for the purpose of mutual exploration.
No! I’m not pollyannish enough to suggest that Obama even might lead us – with appropriate apologies – to completely end division as we know it. But I do think he will be able to help us learn our collective way beyond suffficient division to allow him and his advisors to work with a newly “un-divided” public enough to make his Presidency the success that so many of us yearn for and te Country so desperately needs.
A challenge this big won’t be easy to meet. Learning can never be reduced to following instructions. It can never come about through one-way conversations. Learning means asking questions, even challenging conventions and commonly accepted “truths”. It necessarily entails risk-taking. All things that conventional politics loathes.
But, we all need to change over to a learning oriented way of doing politics. And that is something that Obama and the rest of us could start doing now to make ourselves more ready for Day One.
This past weekend, I got an indication of how difficult meeting this challenge would be. I attended an Obama “Unity Party”. I did so in hope of persuading Obama’s local organizer to put at least some of the group’s effort toward working on the division issue. The organizer first claimed to agree that overcoming divisions was important, but then he went on to cite efforts to register the many new voters whom Obama had excited into getting involved. This sounded like more conventional politics to me: important, but not getting at the “division thing”. I just don’t see how we can hope to help Obama become a successful President just by telling other people the arguments that had persuaded us – perhaps adding only volume.
Obama needs to help us learn how to listen appreciatively. For example, people doing voter registration can learn how to listen between the relatively mechanical steps of registering a new voter. Is there anything in particular that Obama would like his volunteer’s to listen for? If an Obama volunteer were to notice a pattern among responses, would there be way to feed the information to someone closer to Obama who might actually be able to bring it to Obama’s attention? Should volunteers cast themselves as sources of substantive information, or as empaths? Is there a way to organize the experience of thousands of volunteers in ways that they could help each other?
There just has to be something Obama can call on us to do other than join the infantry and follow orders. And I’m going to keep writing until I find it.
Co-Operating in New Ventures—Instead of Fighting over Old Football Rivalries
October 6, 2008
by Robert A. Letcher, Ph.D.
In a previous column, I mentioned my amazement over how reflective writing often makes me. A road trip this past weekend reminded me that writing isn’t the only way I get myself reflective; and I needed a reminding, because health problems, high gas prices and low income have driven me to drastically reduce the frequency, length, and duration of such trips. Read more
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Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
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How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
