No money for a new WPA or CCC, but plenty for bombs and prisons

Today, many states are spending more on incarceration than education (see, e.g., here). At the federal level, prison spending has increased one thousand seven hundred percent since the 1980s. And with respect to the military, the United States spends almost as much as every other nation combined, about six hundred fifty thousand million dollars (see interesting charts and graphs here).

Yet, if you bring up the idea of a national jobs program for the long-term unemployed--like a new WPA or a new CCC--you are likely to be scolded, and told, "Oh, we can't afford that!" or "That would be wasteful spending!"

Do you believe them? Do you believe the people who say we can't afford a national jobs program, even though we can afford the largest military-industrial complex in the world and the largest prison-industrial complex in the world?

I don't. I believe it's primarily a matter of choice.

For example, do we want investment on the tail-end of a problem?

Or do we want up-front investment?

I guess we've made our choice, but I sure wish we would have chosen differently.

(Prison cell image is in the public domain, courtesy of Clker.com. WPA poster art courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)

Orson Welles, Faustus, and the WPA

(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

(WPA poster, image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)   

While in the WPA theater program Orson Welles played Faustus, a man who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly success and pleasure.  

A New Deal Quote vs. A Not-So-New-Deal Quote

Two competing political ideologies; one in the spirit of the New Deal and one not:

FDR: "We are going to make a country in which no one is left out."

Mitt Romney: "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what...who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. ...These are people who pay no income tax. ...and so my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."



Which quote is more positive? Which offers a better vision for America?

(FDR quote in "The Roosevelt I Knew," by Frances Perkins. New York: Viking Press, 1946. Romney quote widely reported--and videotaped. See, e.g., "Mitt Romney 47 Percent Comment Chosen As Yale Book Of Quotations' Quote Of The Year." FDR image is in the public domain, courtesy of the Library of Congress and Wikipedia. Mitt Romney image courtesy of Gage Skidmore and Wikipedia, Creative Commons-Share Alike 3.0 license).

Wildfires From Alaska To New Mexico, And Nearly 27 Millions Americans Can't Find Full-Time Work

Right now, "More than two dozen wildland fires are burning from Alaska to New Mexico," and since 2000, 145,000 square miles of America's natural areas have burned to the ground. That's the equivalent of "New York, New England, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland combined...". Indeed, "Eight of the nine worst fire seasons on record in the U.S., as measured in acres burned, have occurred since 2000, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho." 

And the wildfire problem is expected to get worse. One of the (many) problems is that there is a lot of wildfire fuel on the ground (e.g., dead trees and dried-out vegetation). The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, has cut the budget for fire prevention and firefighting. At a time when wildfires are destroying record amounts of land, and are forecast to destroy even more, our Congress--in its supreme foolishness--has reduced our ability to address the problem.

America did not always have to deal with a Congress incapable of action and rational thought. During the New Deal, the WPA & CCC employed millions of jobless Americans to fight fires, build fire towers, and remove wildfire fuels. Furthermore, WPA workers constructed over 6,000 miles of new firebreaks and CCC boys planted 3 billion trees to help reforest areas denuded by fires or excessive logging.

The New Deal connected the dots of unemployment and the needs of our natural areas. Our current Congress, on the other hand, ignores theses issues. House Republicans, for their part, are too busy figuring out ways to cut off food assistance to low-income families and children to be bothered with record-setting wildfires.

Of course, we're told that "we can't afford" to do anything about the country's problems, and that we're "spending too much." Meanwhile, taxes on the wealthy are historically low (even former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett has highlighted this), federal revenue is at a 60-year low (see columns to the far right here), we've lost $3 trillion in revenue since 2001 because of tax evasion, we're losing billions in revenue due to corporate tax avoidance (see here and here), and government spending (as a % of GDP) is about the same as it was during the Reagan years (i.e., it's not out of control or historically horrible, see columns to the far right here).

The fact of the matter is that we have record-setting wildfires at the same time that we have nearly 27 million Americans who can't find full-time work, over 6 million young adults who are "neither in school nor in the workforce", and over 4 million long-term unemployed Americans who are actively discriminated against by employers (some of whom may never work again because of such discrimination).

And our federal government can't figure out what to do.  

(WPA poster images courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Emoticon courtesy of www.freesmileys.org.)

Giving Our Basic Human Needs to Profit-Seeking Corporations

(WPA workers installing water mains in Wicomico County, Maryland, in May of 1940. Image courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.) 

There is currently a steady pressure to privatize our water supplies; to give and trust our basic human need of water to profit-seeking corporations (see, e.g., here). But, considering the private sector's record in other areas of public importance, such as health insurance, air quality, and prisons, should we trust the CEOs of Corporate America with our water supply?

During the New Deal, the federal, state, and local governments of America connected the dots of unemployment and infrastructure needs, employing the jobless to install water mains and water connections all across the country. Much of that water-delivery infrastructure still exists today (as do earlier-built water systems). 

Privatization is not the panacea that many free-market purists claim it to be. In fact, even some Republican politicians know this, and have resisted the Obama administration's hints at privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority. 

When it comes to water, food, health care, and other basic needs, we should not trust the "Captains of Industry," who are primarily concerned with profit, to give us the best outcome. We should create the best outcome ourselves. History is replete with instances of corporations reducing quality to increase profit. Do we want to risk that possibility with our water?     

Independence Day

(WPA posters, images courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

The Greatest Words Ever Spoken By A President

When Roosevelt and the Democrats took power in 1933, they had the "audacity" to embrace the spirit of the general welfare clause of the U.S. Constitution, and they helped non-wealthy Americans in a time of great need. Over the course of the New Deal there would be programs of direct job creation for the unemployed (the WPA), insurance against complete loss of one's bank savings (FDIC), protection against stock market fraud (the SEC), subsistence income guarantees for the elderly (Social Security), employment of young adults in the restoration & development of our forests & parks (the CCC), and much more.

Many (but not all) wealthy Americans despised this. They were accustomed to a federal government that did as they paid wanted it to. To them, non-wealthy Americans were merely economic cannon fodder. Unfortunately, the same mentality can be seen today, in the form of various austerity measures imposed by federal and state politicians who often have wealthy backers, e.g., budget cuts that reduce food assistance to low-income seniors, cuts to unemployment benefits, and the blocking of legislation to create a new CCC-type program for unemployed veterans.

With all this in mind, I submit that the greatest words ever spoken by an American president are in this 1-minute segment, spoken on October 31st, 1936, at Madison Square Garden:



Find the full text of the speech here: http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3307