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Feeble President, Feeble Plans
Obama’s jobs plan: Go work for free!
On Wednesday, I posted an item titled “How Not to Solve the Jobs Problem.” The case in point is President Barack Obama’s embrace of a state program called Georgia Works, which tries to turn unemployment insurance into a kind of sing-for-your-supper “workfare” program.
(White House/Pete Souza)
Jobless workers in Georgia drawing unemployment compensation are encouraged to go work for private employers—for free—in exchange for some kind of training. They get a small onetime stipend of $240 as an inducement. The premise is that working for free will help them get a foot in the door and maybe get hired (if the employer hires). According to Georgia’s own statistics, however, only about 15 percent do.
This pitifully inadequate program is very likely to be part of Obama’s forthcoming jobs speech.
But let’s drill deeper. Why is the administration embracing such a right-wing and futile program? Obviously, the problem in Georgia is the unemployment rate, of 10.1 percent, not the fact that unemployed workers lack a few weeks’ training for low-wage jobs.
For starters, sources close to the White House say the president and his political advisers are terrified that the Republicans will block an extension of unemployment insurance, except in exchange for draconian cuts in other social programs. They hope that if they extend this feeble olive branch, Republicans might go along. My sources, however, say no such deal with the Republicans has been struck.
Second, Obama has given away so much in budget deals that the cupboard is bare. The unemployment funds—which are so underfunded that 11 states are being forced to cut back on benefits despite double-digit unemployment—are only a small pot of money that can be raided.
But if Republicans are threatening to block extension of unemployment insurance, at a time when 25 million Americans are unemployed or unable to find full-time work, a president with an ounce of political intelligence would be screaming from the housetops, not throwing pitiful bones.
How dare Republicans threaten to refuse to extend unemployment coverage with tens of millions out of work? What kind of callous people are they?
For that matter, how dare Republicans play cute with funds for flood-ravaged Vermont and upstate New York, demanding cuts in other outlays before they approve emergency aid?
How dare Speaker John Boehner, for the first time in the history of the Republic, refuse to honor a request from the president of the United States to address a joint session of Congress? And of course, Obama agreed to change the date.
His slogan might as well be “Kick Me.”
Maybe Obama should have invited members of Congress to listen to him speak at the Lincoln Memorial, as Marian Anderson did in 1939 when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let the African American contralto perform at Constitution Hall. That would have poked a stick in Boehner’s eye and won some points for moxie.
But this president doesn’t do moxie. And his advisers don’t recommend it—because he has weeded out political counselors who advocate tough, principled partisanship in the face of Republican extremist obstruction.
There are also credible reports that, in the next round of budget talks—remember, Obama went along with a deal requiring at least $1.2 trillion more in cuts or no debt extension—Obama will agree to an increase in the Medicare age, as well as an adjustment in the cost formula that is a disguised cut in Social Security over time.
Here again, a president with nerve and principle would be taking Republican demands for cuts in Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security and using them as teaching tools.
Last week, Jonathan Alter, a columnist and author of a very friendly and wishful Obama biography, published a column in Bloomberg Businessweek titled, “You Think Obama has been a Bad President? Prove it.”
Alter cites the usual alibis—Republican blockage, the fact that Obama faced a deeper-than-anticipated economic crisis, and so on. He writes: “And if you were president and a group of extremists was pointing a gun at the head of the American economy, what would you have done?”
Well, Alter also wrote a book on Franklin Roosevelt, so he should know. You don’t keep on preaching sweet reasonableness. You call out the extremists on their sheer craziness and disdain for solving the crisis. And you move public opinion to your side.
What you don’t do is meet the opposition 90 percent of the way, put forth your own programs lacking in credibility, much less validate the other side’s ideology and talking points. Then maybe your party gains seats rather than suffering a record loss.
Which brings me back to Georgia Works. Last year, the Department of Labor put out an advisory notice clarifying what kind of training programs are consistent with federal minimum-wage laws. Guess what? Georgia Works, and a similar sing-for-your-supper program in New Hampshire, violate the Fair Labor Standards Act by encouraging unemployed people to work for free. The Labor Department, however, has taken no further action and has been prudently silent in the face of Obama’s embrace of Georgia Works.
One other depressing detail. The real problem with unemployment insurance is that it fails to provide enough coverage and that state funds are going broke in the face of a prolonged jobs recession.
The idea of tapping these funds, turning unemployment into more of a welfare program, and leaving it to workers to cover more of their own risk of unemployment is a favorite of the Hamilton Project, a creation of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. The Obama staffer promoting Georgia Works as a dandy idea for Obama to embrace is Jason Furman, Rubin protégé and former director of the Hamilton Project.
So in a deepening crisis, feeble center-right policy ideas from the White House rendezvous with a president temperamentally unwilling to fight for principles—that are themselves increasingly murky.
The result: a Republican Party whose actual views on key issues represent maybe 25 percent of Americans keeps blocking the president, and may well sweep the next election in spite of its extremism.
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114 Comments so far
Show AllFeeble Kuttner.
So he bought that shuck + jive?? Obomber will be so pleased in retirment before 50 in his own Hawian compound!!! Meanwhile the suckers will say oh, poor victim Obummer! >^^<
Feeble is just his first name. The point that this forum apparently deliberately misses at every single opportunity given is the FACT that Obama is just another house nigger, I said HOUSE NIGGER, just as his predecessors Bush, Clinton, et al ad infinitum have been. A servant of the enemy of justice and the inalienable rights of humankind and the planet whose sole purpose is to keep the pretend game going as long as possible (so many of you fools still spout your inanities about "Republicans" and "Democrats" while the world burns and the "nationstate" is nothing more than a barbarian holdover from an earlier age) so that his masters, the corporate criminal owners of the worlds largest corporate entities and temporary masters of the planet, can continue to swill material profit with complete disregard for the needs of humankind and the planet itself.
When are you going to grow up and face the facts of our sordid existence as slaves to a criminal enterprise writ large?
When will you take the fight directly and personally to the enemy instead of merely mouthing words on this less than effective forum that in essence merely suages the consciences of a few hundred thousand souls instead of instilling in those souls the need to fight to the death if need be in order to, at the least, provide a future worth living to their own children?
221,913 dollars buys a lot of necessary tools for the job that requires doing....
Alas, however, as history always has demonstrated, the vast majority would much prefer the life of a living dog rather than the possibly short but certainly sweet existence of an honest individual willing to stand for the truth at any personal cost.
For quite a while after retirement I taught basic literacy, computer literacy and job search skills to unemployed people. It worked for a few lucky and exceptional people. But as time went by I realized I was training people to look for jobs that just did not exist, and were unlikely to exist in the near future. There was not to be an upturn in the economy that included jobs. In addition, these laid off workers, many of whom has worked for 30 or 40 years, were competing with university graduates for very few available jobs, mostly part time and temporary jobs without benefits.
Here is what needs to happen. Create jobs and THEN train people to do them. Otherwise the programs such as the one described in the article are just stopgap workhouse schemes to get cheap labor for local interests. Thinly disguised chain gangs.
There is much that needs to be done with clean energy, infrastructure, human services. So set it up and do it, dammit. No slippery slimy evasive deals that trade off the environment or worker needs for a little bit of nothing.
In Oregon they pump out nearly 5,000 new teachers a year from the University System - most with Masters. But the last few years the total number of new teaching jobs is less than 500.
Many of these new, highly in debt, licensed teachers will NEVER get a job teaching.
Your point is well taken... If you don't create the jobs before or at-least as you are rolling-out job-training progs - Whats The Point! I also know from personal experience that so many of these job training progs & Job Fairs are just in effect Gov't &/or Corporate Public Relations!
I've don't think I've ever got even an interview [let alone a job] from passing out CVs at Corp Sponsored Job Fairs & I've attended quite a few. At some point it occurred to me it basically was a waist of my time. So I would get a list of Corps & Orgs sponsoring a particular Job Fair & any suitable opportunities being offered & just Email in my CV.
If this is the best Obama can do for a jobs initiative after nearly 3 yrs as Pres...
This sounds like putting the horse before the cart. Great idea.
" In the manufacturing sector, for example, the number of those employed has gone down but the number of jobs available has risen to 230,000 today from 98,000 in 2009, the Financial Times reports." “There’s a mismatch between the jobs that are available, at least in our portfolio, and the people that we see out there,” Spiegel told the Financial Times. "In fact, one of the things we've had to do is actually hire recruiters recently because the people aren't available coming over the web or coming in for interviews."
"Economists say the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering."
It's obvious that the country needs to look at different and expanded education and training, especially in tech fields, manufacturing, health and data, etc. Today's liberal arts grads don't hardly stand a chance.... Only place for many of them to go is to blogs and websites, trying to use some of the valuable education they have received. High schools need to have more diverse programs, gearing more students not destined for college into other fields. It seems words like "manufacturing" are no longer popular for those looking for jobs, or potential fields to enter. "Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things."
Thank you.
Seconded.
Add me to the list.
Me too.
Me too!
You can say that again for ME TOO!
Obama is not merely gutless ---- but was always a smooth-talking, OKey Dokie, complicit political pawn of the global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE that has fully taken over our former country by hiding behind the facade of its 'bought and owned' TWO-Party modernized version of the 'Vichy' sham of government that the Nazi Empire employed in France c. 1940.
Just change it from a one party 'Vichy" to a supposed TWO-Party 'Vichy' ---- and most of the rubes are fooled all the time..
Goebbels must be turning over in his grave and shouting, "Mein Fuhrer, I have failed you. If I had only recommended a two-party 'Vichy' like the current America you would still be ruling the world!"
Best,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy
over
violent
empire
New America Peoples' Party 2012 --- our last chance "Against Empire" [Michael Parenti]
Right on the nose, VP. Incredibly annoying that so many Obamabots/Dem Party loyalists don't see this glaringly obvious truth. His actions are blatantly obvious for all to see, but they keep ignoring them and listening instead to his silver tongue, which never matches up with what he does.
Just as thry called the murdering warmonger CIA head Geo Bush the 1st 'weak'.
True. He's strong for the wrong side. But I can't blame people for buying into the hope that he's a good guy at heart and will soon see the light. Already he is being forced to act more like he's on the progressive side of things in hopes of not losing the constituency who voted him in.
I think everyone on the progressive side of things who is getting on his case should continue getting on his case. I agree that he "couldn't care less about the common man," but it does seem like he can be forced to act more like he does.
Paranoid: I think it's just maneuvering. Apart from the idea that the elections are mostly spectacle to convince the popoulace that they still mean something, whomever wins (thanks to the secrecy of the codes used to tally the electronic vote count) will surely have the blessing of society's "owners." That Obama is making minor moves to seem interested in at last hearing from citizens (a majority favor a number of policies not being pursued by our "lawmakers") is just part of the necessary choreography.
Sincerity doesn't just show up. And the ruse about being bitten by the pack of Repubican attack dogs doesn't cut mustard when we take a look at those appointments willfully made by Obama. Nope. It's an insider's club all the way, with rare exceptions seen here and there.
Even when life is getting worse for more and more people; and even when weather/climate events are escalating; and even when the nation's cupboard is bare, war spending goes on like a drunk on a gambling spree... with no evidence of a will in place to alter The Program.
It's hard to say which will happen first: a disgruntled, righteously-angered citizenry stand up in arms, or sit down and refuse to work another day... or nature sending such shock and awe, as to bring The Machine to a complete stop.
Times of uncertainty can bring out the best of inventiveness, were the will in place to make use of the daring incentives some are positioned to present. Instead, the old industrial powers act like bulwarks, refusing to let anything new pass down the would-be highways of life. Old, established, life-threatening protocols and priorities are in charge; and until the paradigm is upended, it will only lead to death and depraved indifference to the quality of life too many people are forced to negotiate.
Excellent analysis. Would there was some way for Kuttner to read and understand this. Is he willfully blind, protecting his conscience for having supported Obama thus far, or drugged from immersion in the ruling elite's version of "reality"?
SR, you're right as usual. BO knows that even if the progressive left (I mean the efffing retards) have no place to go. Instead of just articles like these Kuttner needs to be asking people to either vote for the Greens or join a new left wing party. It's way past time to break the insider club.
Feeble President, feeble plans and feeble article.
Yep!!
One of the cruel ironies for 'progressives' is that the official corporate media 2012 post-election post-mortem has already been written to 'explain' the election results.
Should Obama lose to whichever Republican maniac emerges from the scrum, the Washington punditocracy will dutifully intone that he was "too far to the left" for the great Amerikan heartlands.
Should Obama scrape by because the Republican candidate is too palpably deranged to unseat him, the punditocracy will intone that Obama won because he shucked his liberalism and moved ever rightward to embrace the wise Amerikan public.
The goalposts are forever moving rightward -- and can no longer even be seen from the coliseum.
"Obama fully embraces the policies of the conservative elites. He couldn't care less about the common man."
________________
True for ya, VP.
I'm not really a George Lakoff fan, but his "Strict Father model" comes to mind when I think of Obama vis-à-vis ordinary unprivileged citizens.
Obama, for all of his being marketed as a warm 'n wonderful family man with a ready, blazing smile, is obviously a humanoid ectotherm.
He reverts to a supercilious, condescending Stern Father tone when addressing a general audience, and especially when confronted with criticism.
He's by no means the only Elected Misrepresentative who lapses into this offensive rhetorical posture when playing defense; in fact, in recent years quite a few egregiously autocratic politicians have undermined the Democratic Party's mythical reputation for the common touch.
Such diverse Dems as Max Baucus, David Obey, and Barney Frank have also waspishly lectured, or sarcastically blustered at, lowly constituents who were insufficiently obsequious and enthusiastic towards them, or had the audacity to challenge them.
Obama takes the same tone-- that of a harassed and crabby technocrat, a manager or executive who expects effusive deference from inferiors; when it isn't forthcoming, he impatiently and superciliously sets forth his position as if addressing sullen, balky, disaffected, and generally unreasonable children.
My sense is that Obama looks at "the common man", if at all, through the wrong end of his executive binoculars; he sees them as indistinct, minute shapes, like ants or bacteria-- far away, very tiny, and inconsequential.
He looks through his myopic binoculars where only the lens on the right side seems to function!
There was a time, early in O'Bummer's presidency, that I was slightly afraid that he would be assassinated.
Now I am mildly concerned that he won't.
So I guess that everyone here is in agreement that "Georgia Works" is a load of crap. It's a consensus.
When I voted for Obama, the gutless wonder, I'd hope we were electing another FDR and a New Deal 2.0.
A beached whale has more fight in it than our spineless leader.
If you don't fight for something, you fight for nothing. In fact, nothing would be an improvement rather than giving Bonehead 98% of what he demands.
F*ck You Obama, I'm voting GREEN in 2012.
I did not leave the Democratic party, it left me. This is not the party of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the Great Society, and it is NOT the change I voted for.
The dems are the party of the Raw Deal now.
When you keep voting for the "lesser evil," you help keep it going until it gets worse, worser, and then the worst ever.
Amazing isn't it? A democratic president in the Oval Office and we're watching Social Security and Medicare marching up the steps to the guillotine. Big O can't (or won't) even defend the most basic elements of the democratic legacy F this weakling president and this irretrievably corrupt dem party.
Obama is the most pitiful excuse for a Leader I have ever seen. I will not vote for him but he doesn't care. He is set for life after his service to the feudalist corporatocracy. May he rot in Hell.
I also heap abundant disdain on all the liberals such as Thom Hartmann and his 4 dimensional chess crap. Bill Press count yourself in as one who should be shunned. Any other media pundits who still love Obummer can GTH.
We all know what needs to be done. Tax the rich, Kill Free Trade(which isn't free) and bring back the New Deal/Great Society Programs. They worked and that is what scares the elite and their two Parties.
It's telling how Hartmann pushes the '12 dimensional chess' while describing Obama but can't see past his one dimensional 'Republicans are to blame for everything - obama would if he could - obama is a good and decent man' bullshit.
Hartmann is obviously On The Take. If he wasn't he'd join the XL Pipeline protesters who are protesting blocks from his house.
Get Active my ass!
Thom Hartman has too much to lose - his shows, his connections to the lowly Dems, his book following and more. So he's continue to shill for Oblahblah and the Dims. He continues to waste time bashing the Repigs while inviting them on his radio show. It fills time on his show, that's all. They end up monopolizing the conversation and heaven knows why anybody would want to hear the same talking points of the Repigs on Thom's show. They already repeat them ad nauseum on 95% of the MSM. Thom's a highly intelligent and decent person. He needs to focus on the issues more and rally the people. I'm afraid hell will freeze over before we can change the Dim party in DC from the inside.
Bill Press makes Thom look like Abbie Hoffman.
Bill is the worst, most unctuous party-line bootlicker I've heard since Rush.
No joke. He even talks over/turns down/cuts off the occasional actual liberal who manages to get through.
Just like Rush.
The worst.
1. Obomba is the one who accepted the 1 year of Unemployment Extensions for 2 years of Tax Cuts.
2. The Georgia model is Obama's Corporate wet dream - people work for basically Endentured Servitude wages that the goverment picks up giving the Corporations Free Labor(probably coupled with tax breaks for the corp.
3. The author acts as if all this happened in a vacuum - but the Democrats could have taken care of this back in Dec when they controlled all 3 branches of gov at levels not seem in 50+ years - did the obummer use his clout and threaten to withhold reelection monies if the dems didn't get in line like he did to the dems who didn't like the Corporate written Health Insurance scam? NO.
4. Obomba named the inventor of Outsourcing and one of the biggest tax cheats in the country to head his Economic Team - is all this really a surprise?
5. Obomba is obviously a Manchurian Candidate for the repubs as he pushes neo-con policies at Every Turn - depressing Voter Turnout - something democrats need to win the Presidency.
MT DON: All too true, and your list could be extended far longer... starting with those darlings from from the Wall Street-bankster club, put in charge of things like bailing out the banks... while citizens were left to sink, or lose their homes, in spite of the fact that many were victims of falsely written/deed recorded mortgage practices.
I think our President is using Charlie Brown as a role model. That means the republicans get to play the role of Lucy!
Apt point. Don't misunderestimate his ability to be fooled again.
I think more like the Democraps are playing the Lucy role, and their supporters are playing Charlie Brown.
When will these ideas about Obama's powerlessness in the face of the Tea Party Republicans be finally dismissed? As Visiting Professor says below, "Calling Obama feeble plays into the myth that he means well" -- or in other words, buys into the Good Cop/Bad Cop psychodrama that keeps the electorate bewildered and hooked by the so-called "two-party system."
Leftists, progressives, liberals -- whatever we call those with a social conscience these days -- have no choice but to face the facts: Obama does not mean well, not for you or I or the majority of the world's people. On the contrary, Obama, to use an old but still useful phrase, represents the "Class Enemy." He is, as Cornel West said, "Wall Street's black mascot" -- lawn jockey for an elite gangster class of Criminal Parasites... One might further add that in shielding the Bush Administration from prosecution for war crimes, Obama is also a War Criminal...
Obama feeble? No not feeble, but a silver tongued, liar and a cheat. The only way BO is feeble is he has been a feeble coward in selling out America while he has acquienced to the Amrican corportocracy. Obama uses specious and excessively subtle rhetoric to mislead. BO loves the Republicans as it gives him an alibi that the other side will not cooperate with him and he continues to con the liberals like Schultz and Maddow that he is just a good guy that cannot get his agenda passed and it is all the obstructionist Republicans fault! His 2012 mantra should be: YES WE CON!
Me and all my friends are very very disappointed in Obama. But...change is always possible.
If you believe for even one nanosecond that Obama will change his ways, there are a pair of bridges in Port Huron I'd like to sell you.
I have another bridge in Alaska to sell you in case you do not like the ones in Port Huron.
I've got some ocean front property to sell you at Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri.
I think Obama's Audacity of Hope was a supreme case of misrepresentation and false advertising. Obama is a confirmed incrementalist who tailors his words, programs and policies according to the current Washington status quo, however corrupt and dysfunctional. What he certainly is not is a visionary, a leader, or a fighter for the interests of the public.
" “And if you were president and a group of extremists was pointing a gun at the head of the American economy, what would you have done?”"
Very first thing I would have done was put in place a moratorium on foreclosures. Followed that with strict regulations and oversight concerning hedge funds and derivatves. I would have addressed financial reform and oversight first, foremost, strongly and resolutely. Then I would have gone after convictions for fraud and negligence in the financial sector. I would have set examples of what happens when you try to game the system. I would have appointed financial advisors and a cabinet that had no past ties to Goldman Sachs and other powerful players like GE. And I would have followed up with an end to corporate tax dodges and subsidies, and a tax hike on the top two percent.
I would not have wasted my first year forcing an insurance mandate down the throats of already stressed American workers, in an effort to protect the insurance industry.
I would have ended our foreign wars. Closed GITMO, and concerned myself with the domestic problems of this nation not that of protecting global corporatists.
After that if cuts needed to be made, then financial and military aid to Israel would have been one of the first and deepest.
Well said, gardenernorcal. Unfortunately, no politician will say the same.
Holy cow!! I'd vote for you. Only problem is, if you became a possible candidate that had any chance of winning the election, you would quite likely have an unfortunate airplane accident, your car might explode or members of your family might be threatened.