Quote of the Day -- On Paths Forward

Jobs Bills From This Congress?

Bueller? Bueller?

Senator Roy Blunt?

Here's hoping.

We all know Americans need the jobs. And our infrastructure needs the updating and improving. And the economy needs the boost, all three, sure.

But these people don't want America to do well unless or until one of their own is back in the White House. Until then, screw you, America. You have to wait.

The Republican Party comes before the nation to Republicans, let there be no doubt. There is no better proof than this.

Senator Blunt Said WHAT???

Last evening, the following was typed onto Missouri Senator Roy Blunt's Facebook page:

Missouri is at the center of our nation’s highway, railway, and waterway transportation networks, which makes infrastructure an integral part of our state’s economy. Infrastructure creates jobs, connects people and communities, and enables us to compete globally. I’ll keep working to ensure that investing in our nation’s infrastructure remains a priority this week during ‪#‎InfrastructureWeek‬ and every week. ‪#‎RebuildRenew‬

I have to tell you, I was stunned.

Thrilled but stunned.

For all these years, no Republican member of Congress since at least 2008 has written or sponsored or proposed any infrastructure or jobs/infrastructure bill.

Not one.

Including, of course, Senator Roy Blunt.

So here, after all this time of we Americans needing jobs and our infrastructure needing work and updates and improvements and the economy---God knows--needing the boost, suddenly there's this statement, this recognition that we need some things done to our nation's highways, railways, waterway transportation networks, our bridges, all that?

Knock me down with a feather.

And call me skeptical, at the same time.

Sure, I hope Senator Blunt puts his legislative work where his mouth--or keyboard--is but I just find it difficult to believe he'll finally, finally do the right thing for the American people and for the nation and do just that---write, propose and at least try to get passed a jobs/infrastructure bill.

There can be no better example of a highway that needs updating and improving than Missouri's own stretch of Interstate 70 from Illinois and St. Louis to the East, through the middle of the state and Columbia, all the way to Kansas City and Kansas to the West. It's outdated, it's narrow, heck, it's even downright dangerous to the point of lethal, repeatedly.

However right and good it is for the nation and people, it seems the last thing Senator Blunt or his Republican Party wants to do is have more Americans working and America with a better economy while this person of the other political party is in the White House, nation be damned.

God, I'd love to be wrong.

So here's hoping. Here's hoping our own Missouri Senator Roy Blunt and all his Republican colleagues finally see the light, as it were, and do what's good and right and needed and necessary for the people and the economy and the infrastructure of the country.

I don't think they will but it could happen.

Again, here's hoping.

Screw you, America

What the Republicans did yesterday:

$478B Infrastructure Bill Blocked by Senate GOP

Americans need jobs.

America and Americans need improved, updated infrastructure.

The American economy needs a boost.

You think the Senate Republicans would have any of that?

Oh, hell no.

Republicans don't want you to have better infrastructure, more jobs or any such economic boost.

At least, they don't want you to have any such thing while this president is in the White House or likely, until one of their own is there.

Screw you. It's political party first.  You have to wait, America

No Jobs/Infrastructure Bill But A Traitorous Letter to Iran

We have needed a jobs/infrastructure bill for the nation's roads, highways, bridges, airports, sewers and a lot more for more than 6 years, predating the Obama Administrations. I've written about it here before. CBS news' "60 Minutes" covered the story a few months ago as I also noted. Lately, however, the story is coming closer to home, here to Missouri.

MoDOT: 600 Missouri bridges are in poor to serious condition

Thirty-eight bridges in the greater St. Louis area are just "a step or two from being closed" due to deterioration, according to the Missouri Department of Transportation.

They are among the nearly 600 bridges statewide that officials say are currently rated in poor to serious condition, but aren't funded in the state's five-year plan for improvements.

But during that same five-year timeframe, MoDOT told the state transportation commission Tuesday, the total number of bridges in critical shape statewide could top 1,000. Within a decade, that number could rise to 1,500 bridges.
So, badly as Americans need more and better and better-paying jobs, badly as we need the infrastructure work done on our bridges and highways, etc., and as badly as we need the economic boost, the Congress right now--the Republican Congress, it needs to be said--has been preoccupied trying to further undermine our current president. And their attempt to do it was most especially with a letter to the Iranian leaders against us, to unwind the peace efforts President Obama is trying to gain for the nation and even the world.

So besides undermining peace efforts and our president, they're also ignoring work that needs to be done.

Marvelous, no?

Ironically, coincidentally, when I was writing this post last evening, an additional article came online, showing further our state's infrastructure situation and needs:

I-70 Westbound Lane Closed After Crews Find Crack In Bridge Beam

So still we wait.

At this point, I absolutely implore you to email your Missouri representatives in Congress, asking them, telling them, as politely but firmly as possible, to write, propose and pass a good, strong, helpful jobs/infrastructure bill:

Contacting the Congress: A Citizen's Congressional Directory

It's the least they can do.

And it's long, long overdue.

Link:  Mapping America's most dangerous bridges

What We Need From This Congress

Indeed, what we need from this Congress and what we've needed for some years.

Things that need changing, ways to do it

Links to organizations to get active in here:

TAKE ACTION: Index of Organizations

Quote of the day -- on a jobs/infrastructure bill from this Congress

“The middle class of America is collapsing … poverty is up and the rich are doing phenomenally well. What do you do? What you do is say that in America we are going to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. By doing that we're going to create millions of jobs,” 

--Sen. Bernie Sanders said Friday on The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News.



America needs the jobs an infrastructure bill from this Congress would provide.

We need the infrastructure repair and improvements.

The economy needs the boost.

Why isn't this being done?

Why isn't this a "no-brainer"?

Why aren't we raising hell?

Why don't Republicans propose and help pass a jobs bill for Americans?

Here's your answer:

They--our representatives--are bought and paid for by corporations and the wealthy.

They're doing their bidding.

We're an afterthought, if even that.



Links: Robert Reich

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

Facts about our country right now

Another case of "Imagine if..."

Austerity and why we need a jobs bill from Congress

Proof:  Why we need an infrastructure/jobs bill from this Congress and the sooner the better:

Austerity Won't Work if the Roof Is Leaking

This is an excellent article in today's New York Times showing Germany as one very appropriate example of precisely why we so sorely need an infrastructure/jobs bill now and have for some time.  Just a few of the best snippets:

Lately...fears about growing public debt have caused wholesale cuts in American public investment. The Germans, of course, yield to no one in their distaste for indebtedness. But they also understand the distinction between consumption and investment. By borrowing, they’ve made investments whose future benefits will far outweigh repayment costs. There’s nothing foolhardy about that...

The Germans are investing in infrastructure not to provide short-term economic stimulus, but because those investments promise high returns. Yet their undeniable side effect has been to bolster employment substantially in the short run...

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the nation has a backlog of some $3.6 trillion in overdue infrastructure maintenance. No one in Congress seriously proposes that we just abandon our crumbling roads and bridges, and everyone agrees that the repair cost will grow sharply the longer we wait.

The case for accelerated infrastructure investment becomes more compelling with our economy still in the doldrums. That’s because many of the needed workers and machines are now idle. If we wait, we’ll need to bid them away from other tasks. Also because of the sluggish economy, the materials required for the work are now relatively cheap. If we wait, they will become more expensive. And long-term interest rates for the money to pay for the work continue to hover near record lows. They, too, will be higher if we wait...

Now austerity backers urge — preposterously — that infrastructure repairs be postponed until government budgets are in balance. But would they also tell an indebted family to postpone fixing a leaky roof until it paid off all its debts? Not only would the repair grow more costly with the delay, but the water damage would mount in the interim. Families should pay off debts, yes, but not in ways that actually increase their indebtedness in the longer term. The logic is the same for infrastructure.

Sure, the Republicans and Right Wing and all the current President-haters want--and in the case of the Republicans, need--Mr. Obama to fail in his job but that desire or need should clearly pale next to the need for the nation to succeed.  We need our people--at least more of them, if not all--working and our economy to be chugging along.

Besides, this would give Congress something to do.

Jobs and infrastructure both possible for America

If only the Republican Congress would let it happen.

How many more bridges collapse in America until we get a jobs/projects bill from Congress?

First a bridge collapses in Minneapolis, Minnesota last year--a major city of the nation--and now one in Seattle.

How long, how long until our Congress gives us a jobs bill so we can take care of the infrastructure of our nation and, at the same time, create jobs the nation also needs so badly?

How long?

How long until we stop paying attention to trumped-up, imagined "scandals" and start taking care of the business, the true business, of the nation?

How long until we stop being partisan for our political party and start doing what's right for the entire country?

This is America? We have bridges collapsing now? And this is acceptable?

We need more thought and thinkers like this, instead:

Links:

A bridge falling into the water and a vision for the future gone missing

Radioman's Kansas City: Every Single Senate Republican Voted ...

Another Bridge Falls — Fixing Infrastructure Fixes Jobs And Deficits

Collapse: Does Washington Bridge Expose the Crumbling of a Nation

Truth. Truth to power

Truth in so many ways--the recent past, the present and our future.

Unemployment statistics in America and why we need a jobs bill from Congress

Youth Unemployment in the United States

The unemployment rate for those between the ages of 16-24 was 16.2% in April, more than double the national unemployment rate.

The unemployment rate for those between the ages of 16-19 was 24.2% in April.

More than 13 percent of borrowers have defaulted on their student loans, and another 26 percent are delinquent.

More than half of Americans ages 25–34 have saved less than $10,000 for retirement.

According to the White House Council on Community Solutions, the fiscal cost of the 6.7 million Americans ages 16–24 who are neither working nor attending school is $1.6 trillion over their lifetimes.

Congress has cut $1 billion from youth jobs programs over the past decade.

According to the Center for American Progress, nearly 1 million young Americans who have experienced long-term unemployment will lose a staggering $20 billion in earnings over the next decade.

Research shows that workers who are unemployed as young adults earn lower wages for many years following their period of unemployment due to forgone work experience and missed opportunities to develop skills.

Today the unemployment rate among teens is 24.2 percent, higher than it ever was prior to the Great Recession of 2007–2009.

The trends in unemployment indicate that young job seekers have suffered disproportionately in the recession compared to adult workers.

Over the past several decades, employment and labor-force participation among Americans ages 16–24 have declined, while the unemployment rate for this group has risen.

The biggest drop in labor-force participation has been for teenagers, who saw their numbers decline from a high of nearly 60 percent in 1978 to an all-time low of 33.5 percent in 2012.

Since the 1980s the employment-to-population ratio for teenagers and young adults has declined, with the steepest drops occurring in the past decade.

During that time employment among teenagers has dropped the most, falling from 50 percent in 1978 to just 25.8 percent today.

Employment among young adults peaked at 72.9 percent in 2000, falling to 60.8 percent today.

By contrast, employment among Americans of prime working age currently stands at 75.9 percent, about the same as it was in the mid-1980s.

While the overall unemployment rate for teenagers is 25.1 percent, the unemployment rate for black teens is 43.1 percent. And fully half of black males ages 16–19 are looking for work but unable to find a job.

Today Americans under the age of 40 have accumulated less wealth than their parents did at that age more than 25 years ago.

Source: Center for American Progress   So how about it, Congress?  Senators? Representatives? Could we have a jobs bill?   Please?

An open invitation to Senator Blunt

With this being the US Senate's annual Summer break for 5 weeks, this seems like the perfect time to extend an invitation to our own Senator Roy Blunt to come up to Kansas City to see constituents and hear what may be on our minds, politically, governmentally and otherwise.

Since Senator Blunt doesn't open up his "Listening Posts" to Kansas Citians--as I've pointed out here before a few times, at least--this seems like the perfect time for him to make the 2-1/2 hour drive or one hour flight up here from Sprinfield so he can have conversations with us.

If nothing else, we'd love to show him what parts of Interstate 70 that need attention he might help us with, let alone our other infrastructure, in case he and his political party and the rest of the Senate show decide to actually make movement on any true jobs program.

Here's hoping.

The Road to More Jobs (guest post)

From a New York Times op/ed piece today:

"How different would conditions be today economically and politically if unemployment were 7 percent instead of its current 8.2 percent? For one thing, some two million unemployed workers would have jobs, and the rate of economic growth would be comfortably above 2 percent, instead of below that pace. This scenario could have been possible if federal aid to states had been bolstered, saving hundreds of thousands of public-sector jobs.

Mr. Obama can make a convincing case that his policies — especially the stimulus and auto industry rescue — helped cushioned the effects of the recession he inherited, which pushed the jobless rate from an already elevated 7.8 percent in January 2009 to 10 percent by October 2009. It has come down, more or less, steadily since then. But it is still higher than when he took office — a point that Mitt Romney and Congressional Republicans have seized upon as evidence of failed policies.

Actually, it was the Republicans’ relentless opposition to constructive policies that has kept unemployment high, from their resistance to the 2009 stimulus to their blockage of Mr. Obama’s proposed $450 billion jobs bill in late 2011. Federal aid to states was a mainstay of both of those efforts. As the stimulus ended and further aid was delayed and denied, the effect on state budgets — and on jobs — has been catastrophic.

A recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the loss of public-sector jobs, largely because of state budget cuts, has been the biggest hit to job growth over the past three years.

The direct jobs lost — 627,000 since June 2009 — understates the drag because population growth alone suggests that the public sector should have added nearly 500,000 jobs over that time simply to restore government employment to its norm of the last 20 years. In all, the public sector is coming up short by 1.1 million jobs, including positions for teachers, social workers, public health officials and other professions that would have been filled by many of today’s unemployed college graduates.

Worse, the public-sector gap of 1.1 million jobs has translated into some 750,000 lost jobs in the private sector, the result of contractors losing government business and less spending by laid-off government workers. In addition, another 400,000 or so jobs have been lost because of cutbacks in state aid to the poor and unemployed, which reduce consumer spending.

The effects from an ailing public sector are profound because state and local spending on employees, contractors and beneficiaries reverberates swiftly through the economy. When that spending is depressed, the entire economy suffers.

The bottom line of the institute’s report is that if it weren’t for state and local budget austerity, the economy would have 2.3 million more jobs today, and the unemployment rate would be around 7 percent, not 8 percent. The lesson is that the best and easiest way to reverse job losses would be for Congress to provide fiscal aid to states. Thwarting such aid, as Republicans have done, is a way to keep unemployment elevated and their hopes to win the White House alive. Jobless Americans, struggling businesses and hard-pressed communities are hostages in the fray."

Link to original post: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/opinion/the-road-to-more-jobs.html?_r=1&smid=fb-share

Kansas legislators big issues--wasting time and money

I found this difficult to believe. Well, sort of, anyway. This is sad. Even pitiful. It seems the Kansas State Legislature has been taking up really big, heavy, concerning issues lately. Here's the latest: Sorry, Toto – Kansas won’t get a state dog this year Instead of dealing with things like their messed-up taxes in Kansas or jobs and creating jobs, Kansas legislators keep taking up divisive social issues like abortion--and then things like this. Wow. And the thing is, this isn't the first time they've brought this up over in Topeka, either. And apparently, it won't be the last. Link: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/13/3486237/sorry-toto-kansas-wont-get-a-state.html

The President is right

Yesterday, President Obama went on an attack of the Republicans, what with it being campaign season now and all, saying no matter what he says, the Republicans are against it: "If I said fish live in the sea, they'd say no," Obama said. He also proposed a jobs bill. Now, the Republicans have been saying that this President isn't doing anything for jobs. So what did their first reaction to this all amount to? You guessed it--the Republicans are agin' it: MILWAUKEE – A combative President Barack Obama rolled out a long-term jobs program Monday that would exceed $50 billion to rebuild roads, railways and runways, and coupled it with a blunt campaign-season assault on Republicans for causing Americans' hard economic times. GOP leaders instantly assailed Obama's proposal as an ineffective one that would simply raise already excessive federal spending. More: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the plan "should be met with justifiable skepticism." He said it would raise taxes while Americans are "still looking for the 'shovel-ready' jobs they were promised more than a year ago" in the $814 billion economic stimulus measure. So Mitch McConnell seems to be saying "Since you didn't deliver on the increase in jobs a year ago, we aren't going to help you create jobs in America now", or some such. Then listen to this beauty from Rep John Boehner: The House Republican leader, John Boehner of Ohio, added "We don't need more government 'stimulus' spending. We need to end Washington Democrats' out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes, and create jobs by eliminating the job-killing uncertainty that is hampering our small businesses." Right. Let me get this straight. We're supposed to create jobs by just cutting spending. Uh-huh. Right. And how, exactly, is that going to work, Rep Boehner? The fact is, later this week: An administration official said Obama will propose on Wednesday in Cleveland that businesses be allowed to write off all their new investments in plant and equipment through 2011. You watch--when this gets announced, the Republicans will be against it. I don't know how, since it's a TAX BREAK FOR BUSINESSES TO INVEST IN R & D but they'll be against it somehow. Either that or they'll just belittle it as "too late". Regardless, they'll be negative toward it. Americans need to wake up to the fact that the "Party of 'no'" is not helping. Or doing anything. Link to original post: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100906/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_economy