No more pork calling

OK, I've had it up to here (hand extended over head.) No more calling, "Pork!" No more simple-minded characterizations of what various economic recovery proposals will and won't do. No more false distinctions between “jobs” and “work.” If it pays a salary, it’s work. We are way past that now; way, way over the cliff. We're at the point where the balloon above the coyote says, "Uh Oh!" And we all know that's just seconds before a long plunge toward a barely visible point of dirt below. Unlike Wiley, of course, we will not be OK in the next frame, dusting ourselves off and looking for new boxes marked "Acme Economic Disaster Preventer."
It's time to admit A. No one knows exactly what to do or exactly how bad it is or will become. B. Almost any spending has the potential to create jobs in the short run and that's we need: Jobs. C. Delay means disaster. D. There are no good solutions, so anyone who sits back, throws stones and says no, eventually be able to say, "I told you so." We need jobs and guts and patriotism. We need leaders with enough gumption to serve one term and get fileted by the other side for the effort.
No matter what caused it: "It was the derivatives; it was the housing market; it was greed; it was de-regulation," we need jobs. And while all the criticisms of how we got here probably hold some truth, we will have decades to unravel that. But we have days, seriously, days, to begin to dig out of this hole. We have an economy based on consumerism. Jobs, preferably jobs that pay a living wage, but jobs are what we need. People who have jobs buy things. And for there to be things for people to buy, there have to be people working to make things. And, because so many people have lost their jobs, 4 million in a year, we need to help them before we work on all the other stuff so they can afford to stay in their homes, buy food, buy clothes, be consumers. In essence, we need to help those who have most recently lost jobs because they are yet to lose their entire life's provision. We need to help them so we can avoid the enormous costs of rebuilding lives from the ground up. It just costs us less collectively, in money and in pain.
I'm weary of the GOP party line about spending. Why are "Democratic Party Wish List" spending items not stimulative? Building solar batteries is one often cited. What could be a better kind of spending? It would create jobs up and down the educational line. We need some brainiacs to invent and perfect their design. We need even brainier folks to take those ideas and designs and turn them into plans and working models and others, with technical skills to translate the models into actual products. We need people to make all the little parts and put all those together into the finished product. We need people to make the equipment to make the parts and we need people to clean up the shop. All of those people will be making money. They will need to order parts from other people who will then have jobs. See how it works? Jobs are jobs, even government jobs, which actually are a little better because they pay a little better, so they bring about recovery faster.
Take the argument about Pell Grants, if I had a day or two, I could get you precise figures on this one, but we don't have the time to get these precise figures. Austin College is a big employer in a small city. Its payroll "rolls over" in the economy to produce a dollar benefit to other businesses much greater than the size of that payroll. Professors, clerks, janitors, professional staff members, adjuncts, all must buy food, and gasoline and clothes, etc., etc. Some go out to eat; some have pets. All this means dollars helping keep grocery stores, department stores, pet stores, restuarants, etc., in business. Those businesses in turn will be able to keep their doors open and employ people who buy food and clothes and television services. This keeps other people in business and it keeps sales tax dollars flowing to keep city and state services going.
This year, Austin College experienced a shortage of new students and failed to retain as many upperclassmen as it had hoped. Why? I don't know for sure, but part of that has to be that Pell grants top out at a figure much lower than AC's tuition and student loan aid has all but dried up. This year, AC has frozen hiring, cut some jobs and lowered or cut raises. If there's not some serious relief in the form of more Pell Grant money and unfrozen credit, what will get cut next? And how many other Sherman and Grayson County jobs will that affect. Just as the roll over of jobs created at AC is a plus, so the roll back when they lose jobs is a minus.
Ditto the argument about the "socialism" involved in giving income tax money to "those people who don't make enough to pay taxes." I'm betting that those 4 million people who have lost their jobs and the other millions who have either given up, taken low paying jobs, or work part time because of the economy, aren't going to make enough to pay taxes. I'm also betting that any money given to them will be used to buy things, and yes, to pay mortgages and bills. So some of it might not be as stimulative as say a grant to create a solar panel construction business, but it certainly helps.
The upshot of all this is we should not care whether the plan contains pet projects, or "madeup work," what we should care about is that it creates jobs, and by the way, it must create a lot of government jobs, an ahem, bureaucracy, to make sure that we know where every dime goes, and wherever that is, it is used properly. Otherwise it could evaporate as the $350 billion bailout during president #43, the Freddie Mac and Fannin Mae funds, the Iraq war money, the Iraq reconstruction funding has.
What we need are leaders with the intestinal fortitude to take a leap of faith to avoid falling off the cliff.

For the first time, Pride

Pride. I'm beginning to understand what it means to be truly proud of my nation. Michelle Obama drew the wrath of million when she said — at the time when historic numbers of voters turned out to send the momentum of the presidential election in her husband Barack's direction — for the first time in her life she was really proud of her country.

I defended her at the time because, I thought I understood, that it's hard when you live in a nation that is really two nations, that people of her background have fewer opportunities. I empathized with the notion that too few people exercise their rights and responsibilities to fully realize the vigorous ideal and in peril of Lincoln's warning, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

But there's more to the realization of a full measure of pride in my country. To perfect our union we must work consistently toward the notion that all human beings are created equal. This is larger and grander than the simple fact that today a man of African American descent takes the oath of office. Barack Obama is, after all, exactly as much white Kansan as he is black African. His life past birth place and genetics has gathered knowledge and sensitivities of cultures distant and exotic from most of ours.

Since Nov. 4, I've noticed that I can take a deeper patriotic and human breath. Suddenly I can dare to believe that my children and grandchildren can inherit a world community that has evolved spiritually. In the past few years we've heard over and over that this might be the first generation of Americans that won't hand a better world to their children. Mostly that is meant in the material sense. And that might be the case. But, for the first time in decades I believe that we will be able to pass to them a better world: One in which we believe we share a destiny with other lands; one in which we believe all of our fates are intertwined; one in which we believe that democracy will not continue to exist without each of us working to perfect our union.

What Michelle was expressing, as I understand it now, is that up until this moment, every hope of African Americans had an asterisk by it. Either ascendancy to an office or activity or recognition happened because they were black or didn't happen because they were black. African Americans have lived in a kind of suspension: Their responsibility was to chip away at barriers of thought and spirit: Next time, be patient, work hard, work harder. Today Obama raises his hand, and the asterisk is gone.

I am so proud of this nation. Not because we have conquered racism or partisanship in any sense. (We have yet to elect a woman or a non-Christian.) I'm proud because people of every color, age, creed, party identity, gender, gender identity, religion and philosophy came together under Barack Obama's banner. We each worked hard, then harder. We each invested according to what we had to make this moment possible: Talent and time, money, even begrudging respect. In the end it had less to do with race and party than it did to intelligence, ideas and inspiration.

I am so proud of this nation because what is taking place at this moment in Washington, D.C.: A peaceful transfer of power, the nature of which proves that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream was aspiration not fantasy.