It comes down to one simple problem, JOBS

[MadHound]

Housing market is continuing to tank, consumer spending is down, durable goods orders are down, the economy in general sucks. The reason is simple, this country needs jobs. Unemployed people, or people in fear of becoming unemployed, simply aren't going to spend money.

Expecting the private sector to create jobs out of the goodness of their hearts is wishing for the proverbial pony. Unless there is demand, real sustained demand, companies aren't going to create jobs. Of course without jobs, demand is weak. What a fine vicious circle, eh?

Which brings us to Obama and the Democrats. What is needed in this country is a WPA style jobs program. Vast, far reaching, and yes, expensive. But, what such a program would do is twofold. First, such a jobs program would repair and update our infrastructure, a project that has been suffering from benign neglect since the last major government jobs program under FDR.

Second, and more important, such a jobs program would stimulate demand in this country. People with a job and money will spend money, creating demand. This demand, in turn, would stimulate the private sector to create jobs, and thus go a long way to pulling us out of this recession, depression, whatever.

Furthermore, there would be an immense benefit to the Democrats. If people see that Obama and the Dems are actually doing something for the public at large, addressing the economic problem in a bold manner, they will reward them with their votes.

So, for once, the Dems in Congress and Obama in the WH need to do something they have yet to do up to this point, fight. They have to press home a jobs program now, no matter the bluster, no matter the filibuster, no matter the spewing hate, they have got to go to the mat for this one, fighting for what is right, what is needed in this country. And they have to do so now. Otherwise this economy is going to continue to tank, and with the economy, the fortunes of the Democratic party.

It's their choice, do the right thing and be the heroes, or continue to be meek little mice and suffer the backlash.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. I thought they were going to a WPA style job program.

Why all the foot dragging?

[pitohui]

2. infrastructure yes, more housing no

i would strongly support a wpa style program to improve our infra structure

at this time of century, unless we god forbid have another katrina or the like, we have TOO MUCH housing stock and building even more homes/strip malls to stand empty is destroying the environment to benefit no one but a few rich GOP voting developers and to decrease what remaining value might exist in the existing homes

i like putting people to work improving the infra structure and as with fdr don't forget that recording the folklore, music, video etc is also part of the process -- we need to put laborers to work, but we also need to put thinkers to work, everybody needs to be part of the process of rebuilding our society

we just can't make an america by dealing poker to each other, sorry, harrahs...

the man who used to do the "golden fleece" awards was a man of pure evil, when i think of all the pure science projects, harming no one and maybe we would have learned something, that have been crushed because of this one man's hateful legacy...

yes, i am saying this -- a wpa that even includes the biologists, let's find these rare microbes, let's record these rare bird species! let's fund all the science that has gone unfunded because every penny has gone to defense related type science

let's fund opera, let's fund little theatre, let's fund hell let's fund identifying rare species of beetles...the weirder the better...the non weird stuff can get $ from the real estate agents and the DOD...but we live in a world of 7 billion, let's start realizing that this world has a lot of weird nooks and crannies of treasure worthy of preserving

1,000 years from now, no one will care who won the vietnam war or even know what it was, but they will be tickled by a cobble stone street from days gone by, a movie of our whacky ways, or a rare bird that to us was common...if you travel a lot, what tickles you? worrying about some bygone war or a ghost story?

let's preserve the ghost stories!