Agence France Presse, like most U.S. newspapers and other M$M media outlets, quotes the unemployment rate at 9.6% instead of the 16.5% reported by, at least, some alternative media sources, and the higher 22% reported by shadowstats.com.

A jobs program from Obama and his administration? Really?

I thought the infrastructure improvement programs were supposed to have already been put into place -- oh, that's right -- Obama didn't ask for enough money and as I recall, Larry Summers, his economic adviser, et.al., stand strong against implementing any jobs programs.

And, this new "jobs" program is supposed to start when?

"On Saturday, Obama vowed to expand a prosperous middle class and help his compatriots achieve the American Dream." -- from the article

Dream? I am skeptical of any legislation, or anything else, that uses the word dream. Illusions and delusions are NOT our friends. Dreaming the reality away is NO longer possible.

Gandhi once said, "Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares."

Isn't that where we're at?

This is just so much more Crap.

$50B over 6 years is $6.33B per year - relative pennies to the MIC and Perpetual War - let alone the $10T to Wall Street. This is not 'Huge'- It is teeny, tiny, totally miniscule, and inadequate, let alone misdirected.

We, as a Culture, don't need to fly more - Global Warming, remember - we need to Fly a lot Less or not at all.

More Highways??? - we need to drive Less - Global warming, remember - we need to Drive Less or not at all.

As for thenew Amtrack cars, we need to fix the Tracks & Bridges first, otherwise the new cars are surperfluous fluff running on a horrendously inadequate infrastructure of crumbling Bridges and rusted Track on rotting Timbers - 19th Century technology in 2010 - Laughable.

The money for this debacle will be from "Offsets?" What will be offset? Oh, yeah - Food Stamps, Social Security, Medicare - in fact, ANY program that assists the great number of unemployed, underemployed, poor, old, sick, and starving !

This politically motivated and pathetically misplaced expenditure on exactly what we must curb is yet another disasterous failure of our Elite Political class.

How about the 'Green Jobs' Mr. Obama? How about the Offsets come from all the #Zillions in direct Subsidies to the Fossil Fuel Industry, Nuclear Industry, and Wall Street Criminals? What are you THinking - or Not?

A Pox on both your Houses.

Nothing bold, nothing urgent.

It's Labor Day and another opportunity for a political speech before the fall elections. This one has no traction as it is a wish list with no prospect (according to the article) of even being passed before November. It is a poor plan that lacks imagination: more roads to keep us dependent on fossil fuels, airport upgrades to support airline companies and some vague plan to invest in rail and transit that if this legislation would get passed in 2011, the benefits wouldn't be seen for quite a while.

Too little, too late. Brace yourself, Obama apologists, for two years of total irrelevancy following the ass-kicking the white nationalist/cheap labor party is about to administer.

Two thoughts.

I have to wonder if the return visit to Cleveland will include another ass-kissing from Kucinich and I wonder how they will "offset the spending in other areas."

Education? Unemployment benefits? Medicaid? Maybe they will cut back on the military spending (humor).

Whatever they do, I'm sure they will act proud!

In my neighborhood, the Obama money translated into the stinging smell of asphalt, and sound of beeping and roaring machines ruining the whole summer. The fundamentalist church parking lots are filled with homeless campers too; because instead of plans for employment, the government gives kickbacks to these organizations for “taking care of the homeless problem”. The sounds of drinking, fighting and police dogs are competing with the machines.
In it’s haste to spend all the Obama money from last year the corrupt city council planed on putting a bus line (straight out to Wal-Mart!) in a residential neighborhood right next to the only stream and bike path. The residents put the kabosh on that one!
I’m waiting for Obama to get all the money back that was stolen by the banksters and military contractors. (Ha ha)
There is an old New York expression for something that is never gonna happen:

“Labor Day!”

How about some new product development money for transit innovations? How about some new product development money for cheaper backyard photovoltaics and electricity storage? Afraid it will put the oil companies out of business, are you?

How about some new product development money for climate change effect inhibition tools IF it's environmentally friendly? Did you know that white paint will stay on the average mall's parking lot for many years, and that it will reflect a bit of heat back into space, cutting the mall's air conditioning costs? Did you know that if parking lot electric plugs were plentiful, electric vehicles would be more plentiful, and if your restaurant had one they might eat at your restaurant while recharging?

Firing Geithner, Summers and the rest of his economic team and replacing it with Galbraith, Stiglitz, Baker, Krugman and Hahnel—THAT would be huge.

An 800 billion green infrastructure jobs bill, funded by taxes on the top 10 percent of incomes, the banks, the other corporations, and the Fed would be huge.

But as the other bloggers here have accurately stated, this is for show. More rhetoric devoid of any policy shift to benefit the nation. But hey, the corporate donors are still on board for the next two elections, as long as the mob of actual citizens can be deceived and appeased.

We need to recruit Bernie Sanders or Russ Feingold or Rocky Anderson, or Matt Damon, or Martin Sheen, or Katrina vanden Heuvel, or SOMEONE, to run against Obama in the 2012 primary.

$50 billion is what the criminal banksters and oil crooks spend on drinks at lunch. As usual, those who don't have bribe money for Barry and the reactionary Congress get screwed.

One would like to have a good laugh at the "socialist" Obama (an ugly neoliberal-neocon fusion artist, if he's anything other than a slave of Wall St), but he's too utterly pathetic and ineffectual - perhaps as a deliberate part of his role - in saving his countrymen from the deliberate crashing of their entire economic system by the banksters that he surrounds himself with.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates the USA requires about $2,000 billion (2Trillion) in infrastructure spending. This is spending that has to be done eventually anyway to restore the country to good repair, and it alone could justify the kind of government spending that is necessary to revive and reinvigorate a broad and healthy middle class and with restored employment, the economy.

A President who was interested in honestly serving his people (and perhaps even rescuing his fast-evaporating political fortunes) would see this as an enormous opportunity for a bold initiative on behalf of his country and his Presidency.

And then there's Obama the Pathetic. Who may well prove to be far greater menace to his country and the world in a single term than Bush the Lesser was over two terms.

A September 2010 commitment of $500 billion to a new Works Progress Administration (WPA) would be on the modest side, but an appropriately bold response, given the true magnitude of the need for work and the need for infrastructure maintenance all across the USA. There is no argument against deficit spending to create jobs in a situation of mass unemployment that is not contrary to everything that economists learned in the XXth century (Keynes, anyone?) and at the same time viciously self-serving and contrary to the public interest.

For the Bonehead-in-Chief to offer a paltry $50 billion program at a time when one in five US residents is unemployed is not even a cruel joke. It is an insult to every hardworking citizen of the USA and a clear indication of Obama's profound contempt for the broad masses of the working people of his country. I hope that he will be deposed forthwith and held accountable for his crimes against humanity, his disservice to the country, and the violation of his oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the USA.

Bush sent $2 trillion to a place that the Federal Reserve Bank cannot divulge to the American taxpayers. We have rebuilt the infrastructure of our failed banks so well that they awarded themselves with billions of our dollars for screwing up the worlds economies. There is still $600 trillion dollars worth of derivatives and commercial paper floating around to insure a future of failure and bailouts for the banksters and their Wall Street pimps that will fall on the taxpayers.These criminal banks and brokers create nothing of value to our GDP and only suck ours' and other nations economies dry.We are feudal slaves once again thanks to our own greed and the greater greed of banksters and brokers of our debt.

'US President Barack Obama unveiled plans Monday to spend at least 50 billion dollars to expand and renew US roads, railways and airports'

so the shermans can roll more easily when the revolution comes..................

Billions of dollars have disappeared during these war of empire, trillions have been spent , lives lost.

50 billion, really, thats the best we can do.
Thats all the money that the fascist pimps would give Obama to play with.

They dont want America energy independent, or working. They need us poor, they need recruits for there army of empire. Its their global plan.

We cant unleash American know how and working power unless we spend a trillion dollars here at home developing solar and wind power manufacturing, which could put 10s of millions of Americans to work as we get off fossil fuels, become a real energy efficient country.Usher in a new age of invention, technical expertise and prosperity. That would ruin the elites plans of empire,war and global domination.They have trillions for that, dont they.

There is no real President of the United States, there are however the 100 Senators that represent the real power of the world,

And none of our elected officials are American Patriots, they are bought and sold every day to the highest bidder , globally.

Its been that way since 1913, when we gave the right to control and print our money to the Federal Reserve, the thirteen richest banks in the world, more than half of them not American owned.

What more do you need to know, Obama and the Dems are socialists, and all Republicans neocon fascists are bank robbing, country busting, greedy war mongering torture freaks of empire.

And to find a real American Patriot with any real power in the midst of these vultures of Washington as they close in and complete the consumption of whats left of American will be a miracle.

I have little faith in a God of my beliefs , or the radical American right evangelical Gods, that such a miracle is on its way.

If anything, it is the radical right wing of religious hypocrisy that will usher in the final rights of passage as America takes its last breath of freedoms and slides into the world that glen beck calls darkness.

He was right, we need to ask God for help, help in allowing the constitution to be the law of the land, and not the greedy fake right wing Christian capitalists of money , war, and empire.For it is them , and the religious stazi freaks that will destroy America,

nowadays economy engineers are against money circulation
once absorb from the market, bulk of the money is kept for further speculation through creative accounting

since obama hand picked his economic crew , everything goes according to plan - its bonanza time

edweg

Obama proposes things the USA doesn't need--more roads, bigger airports and highspeed rail. Please note the very narrow spectrum of businesses that would benefit if such a bill were passed, most of whom are already bloated with contracts generated by the previous stimulus bill. One area where the USA really requires massive amounts of capital input is in ALL alternative forms of electrical generation in order to retire those plants using fossil fuels. Several Trillion spread over ten years would be minimum, AND the bill ought to require ALL components be manufactured in the USA.

Such a proposal would inject R&D monies into wave, tidal, solar, and wind power generation while getting trials started for very promising projects that are currently starved for capital. AND the spectrum of businesses the monies would be distributed to is very wide.

But, this is a sensible proposal that benefits a rather new set of interests and the public at large, which is why it won't be made.