Maxine Waters wants a trillion dollars - YouTube

You mean like this that I posted last month? It's not that the libs aren't listening, because some have been saying the same thing for over a month now (and notice the the conservatives aren't exactly pushing for any jobs plans either)...neither party in power cares about us. Period. Isn't a partisan thing at all.

I like the idea in this article - get everyone earning a living instead of collecting unemployment checks, fix our decaying infrastructure at the same time without having to go through politically-driven, special interest project approvals, and put money back into our own economy. If you agree, write your representatives and tell them to advocate for this plan.

http://www.truth-out.org/put-15-million ... 1311271379
Put 15 Million Back to Work Fixing $2.2 Trillion in Infrastructure: the Works Progress Administration
Saturday 23 July 2011
by: Barbara G. Ellis Ph.D.

An immensely successful, sensible and practical solution is being signaled by increasingly thunderous shout-outs from prominent people: pundits Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Rich Lowry, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, filmmaker Michael Moore and two new web sites[1] - not to mention millions of voters with long memories and the friends and families of the nation's 15,000,000 unemployed.

Their solution? Resurrect the phenomenally successful Works Progress Administration (WPA) of 1935-1943. It put food on the table, kept a roof overhead and put spending money in the pockets of nearly nine million jobless. They built everything from roads, bridges, dams and utility systems to schools and hospitals. They staffed libraries and taught more than a million adults and 90,000 draftees how to read.[2]

Also see: "The President's Jobs Plan (Not)"

Why not a WPA-II? We do have that civilian army of 15,000,000 unemployed, which could tackle the $2.2 trillion dollars of vital work needed by 2014 on our ramshackle infrastructure system.

Because President Obama could scarcely ignore the eye-popping 10.2 percent unemployment rate back in 2009, he did what every nervous, overwhelmed leader does to either stall a politically dangerous action or look blameless if that action goes awry: he appointed a blue-ribbon group to study the problem. Worse for Obama's overly optimistic re-election plans are his rote, fatuous statements that only private industry and small businesses - given grants or a few tax incentives - can solve America's unemployment crisis.

Fortunately for Obama and law-enforcement legions, nobody has begun to organize the army of unemployed into overthrowing an unresponsive government, as was beginning to happen when Roosevelt became president in 1932. Nor have the unemployed turned ugly individually, perhaps because they're told to be perpetual optimists, or because of learned helplessness about "fighting the system."

The latest report from the nation's premier engineering experts, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), estimated that such Congressional disinterest has caused damaging consequences so extensive that $2.2 trillion will be required by 2014 just to meet current demands. Obama and most of Congress have ignored the report, even though ASCE furnishes much of the structural engineering expertise for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Worse, Congress is actually mulling a long-term, 31 percent cut to infrastructure appropriations. The terrible irony is that billions could be available to cover that $2.2 trillion for infrastructure without depending on the political whims of a president or Congress.

For years, billions have been lavished on foreign economic aid - principally infrastructure - especially in this last decade. From 2001 to 2009, taxpayer monies have been spent on economic aid to 161 countries, including Uganda (over $2 billion); Somalia (over $7.3 million); and, incredibly, Russia (nearly $6.7 billion). What Roosevelt wouldn't have done for a fraction of such largesse for the WPA.

Roosevelt and his people recognized that a half-dozen privately built projects would consume the $1.4 billion appropriation wrested from Congress for 1935 alone.[13] Private contractors also meant intensive lobbying pressures, time-consuming bid analyses, perhaps bribes and graft - and cost overruns so immense that Congressional bean counters would throttle the WPA in its cradle. And so, WPA projects were designed and supervised by the US Army Corps of Engineers. They taught construction skills to those raw recruits, mostly by on-the-job training. WPA-ers would work 120 hours per month for wages that were more than federal relief checks, but far less than union scale wages or a locale's prevailing pay.

Now, let's imagine that the president and Congress decide to resurrect the WPA - especially considering the 2012 election. That they quickly inaugurate WPA-II and split it into two divisions: deployed military and able-bodied civilians. That they follow most of the blueprint below for operations: see article for details