During this blog’s hiatus, I was unable to comment on many issues of the time. Fortunately, he said with tongue far, far in cheek, nothing ever gets done so what was current then is current now.
One subject of rather massive source of frustration, as I outlined in my first post back, is the Obama administration’s rather reluctant, hesitant, and inept focus on jobs. When Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in on March 4, 1933, he said, “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” Despite being confronted by the most analogous employment situation that we’ve had since FDR’s day, the president had no similar clarity of vision. It apparently didn’t occur to Obama or his advisers that not only was this the right thing to do, it was the politically intelligent move. Rather than try to do something immediately tangible for the people who elected him, and thereby securing his mandate, he chose to continue the bailout of the banks and put his political chips on health care reform an initiative that, even had the process managed more assertively, wasn’t scheduled to kick in fully until 2014. As political selling points go, this is a bit like the old labor song “You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.” I’m sure we’re all looking forward to a great 2014, but cripes, how about 2010?

One aspect of the stimulus (the one attempt at job creation until now) that has been greatly difficult to understand is the lack of urgency with which projects have been rolled out. While we dither about these things, others are moving faster. It was simply stunning to read that the Chinese have 42 high-speed rail lines either opening or planned to open by 2012. We don’t have one going now–the Acela putt-putts along–and might get an Orlando-Tampa line going by 2014. This is the country that built the transcontinental railroad.

One thing that you hear constantly is there just wasn’t enough stuff ready to go for the government to really make a splash with stimulus-funded works projects. All that reflects is a lack of vision. On November 15, 1933, Harry Hopkins of the Civil Works Administration announced that he would put four million Americans to work by December 15. He didn’t quite pull it off–he only got 2.6 million on the rolls by mid-December–but he had his four million by mid-January. That particular initiative built mostly roads, followed by schools, post offices, airports, and playgrounds (among other things, including employing 50,000 teachers). The highways built to combat the Great Depression should be echoed in the high-speed train lines built to combat the Great Recession, but forget it–we can’t move as fast as we did less than 80 years ago… Or as fast as the Chinese do today.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 3:47 am and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.