The White House noted yesterday that if Republicans were really serious about job creation, we’d have local and state governments hiring and infrastructure humming. Since Republicans are serious about creating only jobs with the word “Chief” in the start of the title, that’s not going to happen, of course.
Obama has long championed sending more aid to state and local governments and boosting infrastructure spending. These two areas received billions of dollars from his 2009 stimulus act in hopes of reversing the nation’s freefalling economy. But Congress has resisted funneling more money to assist these sectors.
Since then, they have continued to lag, even as companies have ramped up their hiring. State and local governments have shed nearly 600,000 jobs since the recovery began in mid-2009, though they have recently stabilized. And the unemployment rate for experienced construction workers remains higher at 13.1% for the fourth quarter of 2011 than the national average of 8.3%.
Now is an especially good time to revamp the nation’s infrastructure, which would boost job growth, Obama said. Interest rates are historically low, construction workers are dying to get back on the job, and contractors are competing for projects, coming in on time and under budget.
Seems like a simple prospect to me. Sadly, since we now live in a totalitarian thugocracy where there is no rule of law if the President is re-elected, the House GOP will of course have to respectfully decline actually doing anything like this until we rid the country of all Democrats and usher them into a permanent supermajority which would be completely nothing like Obama’s current crypto-fascist Hunger Games.
Hurry up, Mayans. I’m getting a headache from the waiting.
LittlePig
Is Obama ‘Dangerously Close To Totalitarianism’?
No, you racist morons, unless by “1960’s era moderate Republican” you mean Totalitarianism.
I really can’t follow what they hell they are talking about. It’s ALL dog whistle now, with any connection to a consensus reality long gone.
I know all I hear when I read headlines like that is “CAN’T YOU SEE THE PRESIDENT IS A NIG**bong**”
jl
Disappointing and odd official gummint job numbers today. Not a disaster, since still significant job growth, and not all improvement in unemployment rate due to drop outs from job market.
But a big mismatch from other indicators from earlier this month which strongly suggested more robust growth, and other private job surveys, though when you take into account uncertainty in estimates, they could be consistent.
This is a case where should not place too much emphasis on one estimate, and should check back for revisions.
I note that Zandar links something from the Investor’s Business Daily, which I have come to conclusion is a secret Onion project. Watch out Zandar, don’t get pnk’d, make sure IBD is still considers itself a serous publication.
nevsky42
Hmmph. How do you expect Republicans to blame Obama for not doing anything if they don’t keep him from doing something? The nerve…
Zandar
@jl:
IBD. Cause the Wall Street Journal doesn’t hate Obama enough.
Cargo
the only thing Republican state and local governments are interested in is keeping unemployment high to dislodge the Kenyan from the white house in November. There is no other game plan.
If they fail (and they probably will) the goal will be to defeat Obama’s successor in 2016 by gridlocking and paralyzing government as much as possible, thus “proving” the country is ungovernable. Except by Republicans.
There is no other goal.
pragmatism
st. ronnie raygun relied on public jobz to get out of the economic malaise. but now its teh socialism…..
http://www.businessinsider.com/reagan-recovery-was-all-about-big-government-spending-2012-4
KG
@LittlePig: I read the first paragraph of that link and I had to put my hands out in front of me to keep my head from hitting the desk. I believe the term of art is: FUCKING MENTAL.
Poopyman
@Cargo: “Obama’s successor?” Whozzat? Until another Democrat develops a national profile I’m afraid there’s a really good chance Jeb or Chris could win in a walk. (A good thing in Christy’s case.)
Chris T.
FWIW, the IBD rag exists because the inventor of its sure-fire stock market method (which he abbreviates “CAN-SLIM”) is such a kind generous guy that he doesn’t want to make money with his own sure-fire stock market method. Instead, he totally gives away his own secrets, for just a tiny fee!
This is, of course, why he is also a totally reliable news reporter.
(do I really need a /snark tag?)
Surreal American
@Zandar:
IBD, because the Wall Street Journal has been known to carry Thomas Frank’s column from time to time.
Russ
What’s with the uppity N*##@r?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Zandar:
__
IBD. Cause the legal and ethical standards at Murdoch publications are too strict.
eemom
The CRUMBLING infrastructure. Not only could we be putting people to work — we could ALSO be preventing another tragedy like the bridge collapse in Minnesota a few years ago.
I hate those pigs. I really really hate them. As I once read it poignantly stated by a WWII prison camp survivor, I hate them so much I can’t bear to live with them under the same sky.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Poopyman:
__
Let’s have a quick show of hands: how many people here knew who Obama was in April 2004?
__
On the other hand, if Mark Warner is picked to give the DNC keynote address again, then we’re all doomed, because his 2008 speech was a snoozer and the keynote address has been the national debut of the last 2 Democratic Presidents.
rikyrah
if our infrastructure was in good shape, the GOP’S actions wouldn’t amount to TREASON, IMO. we’re playing Russian Roulette with millions of lives on a daily basis.
INFRASTRUCTURE is what we need to fix.
it would put people back to work.
it should be easy..
unless your goal is to kill the economy…which is why it’s ECONOMIC TREASON
xyzxyzxyz
Last night I watched a show describing construction of the Grand Coulee Dam which is part of the PBS documentary series entitled “American Experience”. FDR was quite fond of the project since it addressed national infrastructure needs and put people to work. Republicans stood in the way, accused him of being a socialist, the private power companies lobbied to have the project killed, and even the supremes attempted to throw a wrench into the works. Turns out all criticism of the project stopped when the power from the dam was used to build aircraft and refine plutonium, both of which contributed significantly to a victory in WWII. You can watch it on line (link below), and you will laugh out loud (or maybe cry) at the similarities between today and then.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/coulee/player/
(I couldn’t get the link tool to work….sorry)
pragmatism
@xyzxyzxyz: they should have been stoked. the grand coulee dam has been rough on salmon and other fishes’ breeding grounds. plus it flooded the traditional native american fishing grounds. it punched hippies, brownish people and the krauts/japanese/guidos. also, too WAR bitches. how is that not a win for them?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@efgoldman:
__
Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten about that. You are right. So maybe we aren’t doomed after all. Still not a Mark Warner fan, though.
__
This started me thinking: assuming that Obama is re-elected this year and finishes out his 2nd term in good graces with the public (e.g. approval rating >= 50 percent), but Biden doesn’t run as his successor, when would be the last time this happened? When did we last have a popular 2-term President leave office and have as a political successor someone who was not the VP? In the post-Civil War era I don’t think this has ever happened; it would be new territory for us.
Brachiator
This unfortunately turned out to be little more than a temporary fix in some states. California, reeling under years of crap budgets, used stimulus money to preserve public sector jobs, a worthy goal, but one that did nothing to increase jobs. Using this money as a cushion, state and local governments refused to look at any problems in their budgets, hoping that there would be a magical pony around the rainbow.
Now that this is not working out, California is shedding jobs and cutting programs, and doing so stupidly. But longstanding problems are being uncovered, such as using state redevelopment funds not for actual redevelopment, but for pet projects and general maintenance.
It’s all fine to talk about throwing money at the states, but when they talk about “teachers and police and firefighters,” but use it for other purposes, including shoring up leaky budgets, then you are just kicking the can down the road, not solving anything.
The Obama Administration keeps talking about infrastructure, which is only part of the picture. The GOP are a bunch of dopes, but I wish that the Democrats would be more creative and stop applying Depression Era solutions to 21st century problems.
Construction requires fewer people than in the past, and barely dents employment woes of many women. Infrastructure needs may not be tightly related to overall employment issues in a particular state. And if states don’t want stimulus cash, how can you force it on them?
Sometimes people like to invoke FDR, but he tried a number of options that did not succeed, and had a longer period to try to get things working. Obama has a shorter window, and crazy ass GOP opposition to deal with. Still, he needs to come up with something more than appeals to rebuild infrastructure.
As an aside, much of the small business stimulus, approved by both sides, has done little to spur the private sector. You can also make a case that keeping interest rates low has helped stifle capital investment (although credit card rates are still insanely high).
Comrade Dread
Sweet fucking Buddha on a unicycle, that IBD article was 1,000 gallons of stupid poured into a thimble.
I swear to God, I think they’re plan is to become so batshit crazy that no sane person would want to try to take on the job of governing the nation and dealing with their shit, so they will win elections for lack of a willing opponent.
Davis X. Machina
@Poopyman: Don’t worry. Some guy or woman most of us never heard from will come out of nowhere, wow the 2012 convention, yadda, yadda….
Davis X. Machina
@Comrade Dread:
Too late.
cat48
I think the Highway Bill was extended for 90 days before the House left for break. Teabaggers refuse to fund it fully b/c it costs too much, so I don’t know if that will receive more $$ soon or not.
Also, Cantor has decided that the Import/Export Bank must go b/c he said it’s just like Fannie & Freddie?? If it hadn’t been for the Import/Export Bank, we probably would have zero growth. That’s one thing that Obama has been successful using so probably why Cantor wants that gone.
Comradde PhysioProffe
I actually read the entire IBD piece, and it was worth it. Because on page 2: ALINSKY!
catclub
@Davis X. Machina: Sheldon Whitehouse — nominative determinism for the win.
Davis X. Machina
@catclub: Nomen est omen.
Mike Lamb
Ouch…the stupid…it burns! I’m going to need a skin graft…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@efgoldman:
__
I think we are in agreement that Biden probably won’t run in 2016. And 1952 is
obviouslyIMHO not a precedent for the hypothetical I posed since Truman was distinctly unpopular by 1952, indeed so much so that we’ve been having a bull market in historical revisionism re: Truman for the last 40 years as his stock with historians keeps going up compared with how he was popularly perceived upon leaving office. If Obama leaves office with approval ratings at Truman 1952 levels then we’ve got big problems.Roger Moore
@Zandar:
And because they wanted an even more annoying thing to share the initials IBD.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@efgoldman:
__
Nobody. There really wasn’t anybody else who could have been Eisenhower back in 1952 either, except for Ike himself. Makes me wonder what would have happened if Sen. Taft had gotten the nomination instead.
Brachiator
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Had Taft won, his presidency might have been like a combination of Ron Paul and Barry Goldwater, lots of non-interventionism and libertarian leaning conservatism. But Taft died in 1953, so his vice president would have carried on, whoever that might have been.
The other side of the question is whether Adlai Stevenson could have beaten Taft. And Taft’s running mate, John Sparkman later opposed Brown v Board of Education. You can imagine all kinds of interesting, or horrifying, alternate histories from this.
samara morgan
I’m pretty sure we are winning.
look how pissy Allahpundit is getting.
Pander-monium: Obama’s got a fever and the only prescription is more “war on women” crapola
POSTED AT 5:01 PM ON APRIL 6, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
mclaren
Unfortunately, we do live in a totalitarian thugocracy in which there is no rule of law — and it doesn’t matter whether Obama is re-elected or not.
Both political parties are now fully complicit in tearing up the constitution and wiping their asses with it. Under the drunk-driving C student and his torturer sidekick, we threw out the eighth amendment of the constitution prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment and we got torture, torture, and more torture. They also abandoned the first amendment, “kettling” demonstrators and even pre-emptively arresting people who planned to demonstrate non-violently at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Dubya and his totalitarian thugs authorized the worldwide murder of innocent women and children with secret unaccountable assassination teams (under Dick Cheney’s command) and they launched an illegal immoral war of aggression (which the Nuremberg Tribunal identified as “the greatest of all war crimes, and one which in itself contains all others”) based on lies. They abandoned due process and kidnapped American citizens and held those citizens without trial. They set up military tribunal show trials so grotesquely rigged and unfair that Bush’s own military head prosecutor resigned in protest. They committed war crimes and accepted bribes and pissed on the fifth amendment, which requires due process of law, and the sixth amendment, which requires a jury trial, and the fourteenth amendment, which requires a U.S. citizen’s civil rights to be protected.
Then Obama came in, and what did he do? He continued the grotesquely rigged kangaroo-court military commission tribunals. Obama signed off on torturing prisoners at the second secret prison at Bagram Airbase (according to the Red Cross, 2010) and Obama signed off on the torture of Bradley Manning. Obama launched savage witch hunts against whistleblowers who identified corruption and war crimes by the U.S. military, a more sustain attack on whistleblowers who identified crimes committed by the U.S. government than the last 4 presidents put together. Obama ordered the murder of a U.S. citizen who had never even been accused of a crime. Obama signed off on the kidnapping of American citizens without charges (the NDAA) and hurling them into a dungeon forver, with no access to a lawyer or even the right to know what they were charged with. Obama signed off on an extension of Bush’s tax cuts, Obama refused to indict even one (1) of the corporate criminals on Wall Street who stole trillions of dollars of Americans’ life savings.
So you tell me: which political party is sending us down the road to a totalitarian thugocracy?
Both political parties. Obama will continue America’s descent into lawlessness and secret prisons, secret trials, thugs in black masks kidnapping and beating and murdering American citizens in the dead of night without charges and without a trial…and if elected, Mitt Romney will continue the exact same lawless abandonment of the basic principles of law that have served as the foundation of Western civilization for 900 years, since the Magna Carta. Torture. Arrest without charges. Indefinite detention. Torture. Secret trials in which the defendant never gets to hear the evidence against him and in which the “evidence” is obtained by torturing the defendant. It’s all just another name for barbarism, medieval Grand Inquisition witch hunt shit.
And both political parties are eagerly complicit in America’s new Grand Inquisition.
So, yes, asshole, we really do live in a totalitarian thugocracy…and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. History shows that when societies descend into barbarism, the descent is rapid and shockingly extreme. The path from “suspicious activity reporting” to kristallnacht is stunning short. And from there to the killing fields, the gulags, the torture factories, is just a hop, skip and a jump away.