THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE ©
AN IRREVERENT VIEW
Time Line:
Date Line: Flemington New Jersey
The most impressive thing FDR did in 1933 was to put 275,000 men to work within 120 days of taking office. The country needed jobs, and he created them out of thin air.
His “Brain Trust” and Cabinet thought the idea hare-brained and impossible. Eleven days later, having heard their views, he told the people involved to get at it at once. Three months later the Civilian Conservation Corps was mobilized, funded, with the first project camp open and running. If nothing else, he proved that he was a leader and that the country would live to fight another day.
The past has a lesson for the administration to heed.
You can tinker with laws and fiddle with the books but what must be done is put people back to work now. Mortgage interest at 4% is great if you can pay interest, amortization, taxes, insurance, and feed and clothe your family. Without a job no one qualifies for the loan no matter what the rate.
Bailouts for industry may have merit, but not if they permit survival by cutting US jobs and keeping overseas work forces intact. The bailouts are useful only if they retain and create work for citizens who pay the taxes that allow us to bail out inefficient managements.
This is not a trumped up “war on terror”. It is a battle for economic survival that needs the kind of procurement, vetting, analysis, and tactical expertise that governs operations like D-Day. In war the deployment of your troops is key to the success of your plans. There has not been a government agency dedicated to providing work for people since WPA was founded 76 years ago.
The country turned its back on labor and publicly funded infrastructure commitments for more than the last quarter-century. Do not think the juxtaposition is inapt. We need large work forces, properly deployed and paid to finish the kind of infrastructure projects needed
Hoover Dam, TVA, and similar projects are examples of what such work did for the country. Without TVA Tennessee and its southern neighbors would lack the power generation needed to become an industrial force. Without Hoover Dam the desert and rattlesnakes would control much of the West. Without Federal projects the Columbia River would not be generating power for California, Washington, Oregon and points east.
TVA was railed against as socialist and communistic in the name of “free markets” and “the right of labor to choose”. The railers were private power monopolies and their cohorts. Hey had given us teapot Dome and high cost power in energy starved regions.
We could control flooding of places like New Orleans, extend the rail system to allow cross country shipping of freight with nominal fuel usage per ton. We do not have to wait for future technology to provide answers to today’s energy usage issues. Solutions are known and available. I am rooting for the administration but I want to see answers to fundamental questions. What are “shovel ready projects” , and ready to whose standards? Whose projects are they and do they have positive follow-on effects? Are they costed properly or full of fat? Who will administer our money and be accountable? Will the project create manufacturing opportunity here or in China? Am I too picky, or just too single-minded?
We wasted $350 billion on failed banks and have zip to show for it. If the second tranche goes the same way as the first it is time to emigrate to Mars. Beam me up Scotty if you have not been laid-off.
Howard Stamer
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