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I don't agree with Bob Schieffer all that often but I do agree with most of his points on this one. From CBS News' Face the Nation, Nov. 1, 2009--A Class in Nation-Building 101:
SCHIEFFER: Finally today, as the president tries to develop a new strategy in Afghanistan, I wonder if this is the real lesson that we’ve learned in Afghanistan so far, that nation-building, like charity, probably begins at home, at least the way we seem to be going about it in Afghanistan.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Terrorism poses a threat to America’s national security, but is trying to build a Western-style nation in Afghanistan by funneling money to its leaders really the best way to combat terrorism?
I guess what set me off is that story about how we’ve secretly put the president of Afghanistan’s brother on the CIA payroll. He’s the one who is supposed to be mixed up in the drug trade. The idea was that, by doing that, he’ll help us pave the way to building a democracy there. Now, that’s good work if you can get it. But I don’t see how that is making us safer.
Whatever the size of the military force the president decides on for Afghanistan, I think he needs to be paying more attention to where the money is going for the non-military spending there. Incredibly, no one really seems to know. The judge by what we’ve gotten from it so far, we’d be much better off with some nation-building back home. Our infrastructure is already a mess.
We could start at the Oakland Bay Bridge, where a 5,000 pound part of the top fell off into the traffic below. That would certainly make us safer, for sure.
In Afghanistan, we’re having to relearn what we should have already known, that we can help others but we can’t do it for them. And when we have to pay others to help themselves, I don’t see how that helps anyone but the guy getting paid.
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After having the majority of the unequally balanced panel on the McLaughlin Group trash the stimulus package as not having worked to create jobs and being politicized, Mort Zuckerman throws this gem out there.
Zuckerman: I disagree with the way you're describing this stimulus program. It was maybe perhaps well intentioned, completely badly conceived. It did not focus on unemployment. It does not focus on those kinds of activities that in fact could create jobs.
I'm just going to remind you of one example. When you have Harry Reid, the Majority Leader in the Senate getting a $350 million grant for a UniRail to go from Las Vegas to Disneyland, you know where a lot of this money went. It's almost a farce. And we, unemployment is much worse than those numbers and it's going to be worse and be higher next year at this time than it is this year.
McLaughlin: What do you...
Zuckerman: And the Republicans are going to--34% of all people have had either a family member or close friend unemployed.
McLaughlin: If you were designing this stimulus, how would you have changed what the stimulus is?
Zuckerman: I would have put a heck of a lot more money into infrastructure development and focused on that. A lot of the money that went in for a lot of pet programs for the Democratic Party that had virtually no affect in terms of stimulating the economy and having a multiplier.
Yes, Mort Zuckerman's hatred for Harry Reid seems to have melted his brain to the point that he is complaining about an infrastructure project in one breath and saying we need more in the next. And he was McLaughlin's guest on the "left" side of the room. Zuckerman was crying about this project on one of the MSNBC programs last week as well, but I don't remember him saying we needed more infrastructure projects right after he did it.
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Ed Schultz talks to The President of the United Steelworkers of America, Leo Gerard about the cash for clunkers program, and the need to restore a manufacturing base and invest in infrastructure in the United States. I'm glad to see Ed Schultz having people like Gerard on his show. He's one of the better, plain spoken, honest brokers who stands up for working people I've seen out there representing the union movement and the working class in the United States, which is sorely disregarded or berated by the majority of the chattering class in our media.
Schultz: Just a couple of months ago, labor organized this big bus tour covering some thirty states and the mission of that tour was to basically save the car industry, stimulate sales. The steel workers pushed the program cash for clunkers. This turned out to be the most successful incentive program the government's ever had. For more on that let me bring in Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steel workers. Leo, how good of a sign is this that we're seeing consumers react, I think that's the big thing, consumers are reacting. How encouraged are you by this?
Gerard: Look, I think it's a very positive sign and I'm really excited because as you say, we did thirty four cities in eleven states talking about a need to stimulate demand for the automobile industry, and I think that tour helped to do that. And listening to you and Verge right now, I've got to tell you that you're all on the right track. We need to do more of this. We need to stimulate more demand. We need to stimulate more manufacturing and we ought not to be ashamed of what we're doing.
The President of France said he's going to put eight billion, eight billion with a "b" into their cash for clunkers program, on the condition that all that money would have to be spent on cars produced in France. For us in the steel workers union, we don't assemble cars, but it's our tires, our steel, our aluminum, our glass, our plastic that goes into those cars, so once those cars start moving off the show room, our steel mills will start to work.
Our tire plants will start to work and people will start going back to work. And this shows that President Obama, if he could get more support from Republicans, his program is leading us in the right direction, and if we had more Republicans standing up for America rather than playing petty politics and doing stupid stuff with birthers and everything, we could stimulate this economy. We need an infrastructure bank, just like that.
Schultz: No question about it. Mr. Gerard, do you really think there will be a manufacturing ripple effect, that we might see some jobs created in manufacturing because we're starting to see some cars move off the lot in this country?
Gerard: Absolutely Ed. The fact of the matter is that those cars have to have, and I agree with Verge about buying domestically, those cars will have domestic steel in them, those cars will have domestic parts in them, but let me go one step further. I think we need to do the same thing with the investment banks for infrastructure. If we can do the same thing on domestic infrastructure and start to build our water treatment plants, start to rebuild all of our kind of sewers and pipelines.
Today driving into work I heard about the city of Pittsburg was shut down because the sewer lines busted. So we need that kind of stuff and to go along with the cash for clunkers, we ought to cash for clunkers for infrastructure and that will get people back to work. And I can tell you that our steel mills are going to start, our paper mills are going to start, our rubber plants are going to start and that's going to put people back to work. They'll get some money. They'll go buy something, and I think we ought to push the cash for clunkers and we ought to put more money in. In fact, I've got a good idea, let's take the thirty three billion dollars they gave in bonuses for the clowns that created the economic mess, and let's put that thirty three billion into a cash for clunkers program.
Schultz: Well, I think what we need to point out Leo is the fact that we have thrown billions of dollars at Wall Street. This is a morsal of what we saw to go Wall Street. To the American workers and the consumers that responded this ought to be a wake up call to every person who really supported Barack Obama through it all that he's got the right mix.
I have been really enjoying this stuff, I can't lie. Watching conservative wingnut talk-show hosts attack other Republicans has been a joy. It's not only Limbaugh fighting with the GOP and then watching them come a crawling back to beg forgiveness either. They usually focus on the evil liberals and dirty f*&king hippies who hate America (people like you and me), so after I listened to this segment back in March, I knew we had won more than an election.
The infrastructure of talk radio (and FOX News) that was built to try and make America a one-party (conservative) system is now cannibalizing itself and Rush Limbaugh is the Zombie King. Mark Levin was offended by Frum's criticisms of Limbaugh in this article:
On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.
Levin took offense at what he considered personal attacks against the Zombie King; he wouldn't even link up Frum's columns, but did read some of it to his audience while Frum tried to debate the merits of his case. Frum's central point was that Limbaugh is taking the GOP in the wrong direction -- something that's become obvious to everyone except the Zombies like Levin.
Every slimy thing Karl Rove did before and after Bush is unraveling, no matter how much Villagers like Gloria Borger elevate Rove to godlike status:
Rachel Maddow reports on our country's crumbling infrastructure. She talks to Congressman Pete DeFazio about the compromises that were given in the bill which ended up getting zero support by Republicans anyway and the need for more infrastructure spending in that bill.
Rachel reports on the crumbling state of America's infrastructure which is in dire need of repair and the Obama administration's plans to use infrastructure projects as a way to stimulate the economy. A.B. Stoddard weighs in on whether the Republicans will actually block the projects or not. If they listen to Karl Rove they will. Stoddard feels that if they keep the projects free of earmarks and pork they'll get them though. It is pretty astounding to see these Republicans finally finding religion on spending when they've had no qualms about a bottomless pit called Iraq for the entire Bush Presidency.
CAF's Research Director Eric Lotke discusses the "Investment Deficit" report.
On November 18th, the Campaign for America's Future, a progressive think-tank, launched a report that called for a massive investment to create jobs and restore America's neglected infrastructure. Now, President-Elect Obama has promised to deliver exactly that.
In launching their report, CAF authors Eric Lotke, Alex Carter, Brian Dockstader, Schuyler Beckwith and Molly Swartz wrote:
America is falling apart. Falling apart, and falling behind.
Previous generations of Americans built interstate highways and transcontinental railroads. Now we sit in traffic.
Americans from an earlier era pioneered universal primary education and chartered great universities on public land. They enacted the G.I. bill to give the greatest generation the access to college that helped build our modern middle class. Nowadays American students toil in overcrowded classrooms with leaky roofs, while the cost of college soars out of reach.
America grew up investing in its land and its people. Historically, we directed roughly 8 percent of our gross domestic product to long-range investments, and the investment paid off. Now we are down below 4 percent. Our post World War II infrastructure is starting to decay, and we aren’t replacing it. We are lamenting the loss of jobs rather than hiring people to renew and rebuild.
Other countries are racing past. China spends 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure investment and opens a new subway system every year.
...As this report is released, America’s economy is in a deep downturn, which is now spreading across the globe. A major recovery program is essential to lift this economy from what is likely to be the worst recession since the Great Depression. Direct public investment—in new energy and conservation, in modernizing our infrastructure, in education and training, and research and development—should be the centerpiece of any recovery plan. That is not only necessary to lift the economy in the short run; it is a vital down payment on the sustained public investment that we need to sustain a competitive and decent society in a global economy.
Today, Obama announced what will doubtless be one of his centerpiece domestic policies for his first term, along with healthcare reform.
I have already directed my economic team to come up with an Economic Recovery Plan that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011 — a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office. We’ll be working out the details in the weeks ahead, but it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.
These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis; these are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long. And they represent an early down payment on the type of reform my administration will bring to Washington — a government that spends wisely, focuses on what works, and puts the public interest ahead of the same special interests that have come to dominate our politics.
On domestic issues, at least, Obama seems prepared to listen to - and act upon - the ideas of his progressive base. A big commitment to a minumum baseline of infrastructure spending seems far more reasonable and rational than the same idea being applied to military spending. And given the economic situation right now, it would seem impossible to do both without the kind of massive deficit spending Obama has already said he won't enter into. That's something that gives me hope that Obama's foreign and national security policies won't end up quite as hawkish as the seem to be tending right now.
Democrats on the Hill have won a significant victory, as the White House and congressional Republicans baulked at voting to lose hundreds of thousands of construction jobs at the same time as they were shoring up financial insitutions.
Two months after the White House called a highway trust fund rescue plan a "gimmick" and threatened a presidential veto, President Bush is expected to sign legislation infusing $8 billion into the financially teetering fund that supports road and bridge projects around the country.
That change of heart came after the administration acknowledged last week that the trust fund, which derives its revenues from the federal gas tax, was going broke much faster than anticipated and that Washington would have to begin delaying payments to states for construction work as early as this month.
That could have meant the loss of thousands of high-paying construction jobs just weeks before the election.
"I'm glad the Republicans came to their senses — you can't play politics with 300,000 jobs when we're in a recession," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The House on Thursday voted 376-29 on the measure to transfer $8 billion from the Treasury's general fund to shore up the 52-year-old highway trust fund. The Senate approved the measure by a voice vote on Wednesday after several Republicans who had held up the legislation for months agreed to let it go forward.
... The American Road and Transportation Builders Association, using Transportation Department figures, said that without the fix federal highway aid to the states would drop from $35 billion in the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30 to $24 billion in the next fiscal year 2009. It estimated that 379,000 jobs would be lost without congressional action.
Yes, this will be deficit spending. At this point of the Bush administration's dying days, pretty much everything is deficit spending. But the situation, I feel, is analogous to the "kitchen table" problem of being $1,000 in the hole on your credit card. At that point, spending a couple of bucks to take the bus to work and earn a paycheck is vastly preferable to just throwing those bucks at the massive debt. A small amount of deficit spending to keep people in jobs, especially blue-collar workers, and so stimulate the economy from the bottom up is far better than not doing so.
That the White House and Republican legislators didn't see it that way and were quite prepared to shaft those workers until Democrats started connecting that to the massive financial bailout currently underway speaks volumes about where their true loyalties lie.
