This short editorial was found on the Roosevelt Institute’s website and was written by Henry C.K. Liu. I’m reposting it here in toto—hopefully Henry won’t mind—because it’s a breathtakingly simple—and brilliant—way to help get the country out of this mess. Call it New Deal II, call it Socialism, call it whatever you want, this is a great idea, one worthy of a think tank bearing the Roosevelt name. At a certain point, they ARE going to have to do something like this—there are simply too many unemployed people to tell them all to go fuck themselves when their unemployment checks run out, don’t you reckon? If the Tea party types like Sharron Angle and Alaska’s Jo Miller get their way, WHAT do they expect will become of the people whose UI has ended and who face homelessness and destitution?

Obama and Congress have done plenty—too much if you ask me—to bail out big business, the banks and Wall Street. If Obama doesn’t get his thumb out of his ass and DO SOMETHING BOLD AND MEANINGFUL for the poor in this country, there are going to be riots and violence breaking out all over the place. But it doesn’t have to be that way, as this short essay points out:

The first year of the Obama presidency has been a monumental disappointment. By now, the President’s populist rhetoric of “change we can believe in” rings hollow against the hard data of the sad shape of the economy.

The critical bottleneck to recovery is the continuing loss of jobs. Conventional economic wisdom asserts that employment is the lagging indicator. Unemployment cannot be expected to fall until after the economy recovers. But in an economy that suffers from overcapacity due to low wages, as the world economy does today, economic recovery from excessive debt cannot be achieved without full employment with living wages to produce the needed rise in demand to absorb overcapacity. The government, despite its enormous power to intervene in the economy on the supply side, is stuck in a self-perpetuating vicious cycle of stagnation caused by unemployment that in turn causes stagnation.

Yet all is not lost. The President needs only to reestablish his political leadership with bold and effective action to deliver help directly to deserving workers rather than to failed undeserving financial firms that are allegedly too big to fail. One way to do this is for President Obama to use the coming State of the Union address at the beginning of the second year of his presidency to announce that he will be the first president in US history to abolish unemployment in the US economy. He will be the president who will smash the destructive myth that structural unemployment is needed to hold down inflation even in a deflationary cycle.

This is not an impossible task. The US now has 6.5 million unemployed workers, 4 million of whom joined the unemployment rank during the first year of the Obama presidency. The President can introduce a Full Employment Program starting February 1, 2010 to give a job to every American who wants one, to be funded by a Full Employment Fund constructed out off already-appropriated but yet unspent bailout and stimulus money. These jobs can be socially constructive jobs such as teachers, nurses, caretakers of children and seniors, police, artists, health workers, writers, inventors, etc., with the prime function of increasing demand in the economy.

At the rate of the 2008 national average wage of $42,000, a program to fund 6.5 million jobs will cost $2.7 trillion a year. In the past two years, the government has committed over $20 trillion in various form of bailout and stimulus packages, with very little to show for it in the form of economic recovery. The not-yet-spent portion of this $20 trillion can fund full employment for more than three years at a declining rate. As this money is injected into the economy in the form of living wages, the resultant rise in demand will increase the utilization of the capital assets to reduce overcapacity. A balance between supply and demand will be maintained by full employment to permit the economy to grow again.

The resultant growth in the economy will reduce the spending rate of the Full Employment Program way before the allotted money is depleted. With full employment, the US economy of $14 trillion GDP can grow at a 6% annual rate, producing an additional GDP of $560 billion the first year. The $2.7 trillion Full Employment Fund will be repaid in less than 4 years.

That is a change we can believe in.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Henry C.K. Liu is an independent commentator on culture, economics and politics.

 
I have no idea if this is true or not and I really don’t care in the slightest, aside from the obviously pleasurable schadenfreude that comes with seeing a sanctimonious right-wing tightass feel the heat. Who really gives a shit if Oompa Loompa-orange Republican House leader John Boehner (OH) is having an affair or not (besides, of course, his wife or election opponents?) To me, the bigger story here is that some folks on the Left have (finally) decided to get a little nastier in the lead-up to the crucial mid-term elections. IT’S ABOUT FUCKIN’ TIME!

Republicans have demonstrated for well over 20 years that they will say and do anything to get into power and hold onto it. No lie is too big or too small for the GOP. Facts? Don’t talk to me of facts because no one CARES about facts anymore and the Republicans have known this since at least the Reagan-era. (I recall watching the televised Iran Contra hearings and thinking at the time: “These fucks are going to get away with this because the story is too complicated for the general public to care about it.” Sure enough… next came the Savings and Loan crisis where George Bush the first used billions in taxpayer money to bail out friends and his son, Neil. Another story too complicated to rile the public up much, of course).

In this day and age, politics IS skullduggery and that is the way the game’s got to be played. Do two wrongs ever make a right? Probably not, but in modern American politics it’s got less to do with doing unto others as you would have them do unto you and a lot more about doing it TO them before they can do it to you. If one side plays by those rules, then the other side has no choice but to play the same. It’s about time the Left realizes this. Read more at The Daily Kos and Page Six.

One last thing: Note that he doesn’t deny it. No proof of anything, but if I was asked if I cheated on my wife, I’d have a ready answer. Why doesn’t Boehner?

 
Via Wonkette

 
Comrade Redgrave, campaigning as a MP candidate for the Workers Revolutionary Party, February 1974.

 
I can’t believe how little this glaring fact plays in the general awareness of our little adventure in Iraq. As Glenn Greenwald rightfully points out: “It should be noted that on this chart the number of Iraqi deaths is the most conservative count”.
 
What is the real death toll in Iraq? (The Guardian)
 
Via Balloon Juice and Glenn Greenwald’s Twitter feed

(via TDW)

 
The West is in a hell of a mess, facing the worst unemployment crisis in nearly 80 years. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is warning America and Europe that they risk “an explosion of social unrest.” Well, duh! From the Telegraph:

“The labour market is in dire straits. The Great Recession has left behind a waste land of unemployment,” said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF’s chief, at an Oslo jobs summit with the International Labour Federation (ILO).

He said a double-dip recession remains unlikely but stressed that the world has not yet escaped a deeper social crisis. He called it a grave error to think the West was safe again after teetering so close to the abyss last year. “We are not safe,” he said.

A joint IMF-ILO report said 30m jobs had been lost since the crisis, three quarters in richer economies. Global unemployment has reached 210m. “The Great Recession has left gaping wounds. High and long-lasting unemployment represents a risk to the stability of existing democracies,” it said.

The study cited evidence that victims of recession in their early twenties suffer lifetime damage and lose faith in public institutions. A new twist is an apparent decline in the “employment intensity of growth” as rebounding output requires fewer extra workers. As such, it may be hard to re-absorb those laid off even if recovery gathers pace. The world must create 45m jobs a year for the next decade just to tread water.

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist, said the percentage of workers laid off for long stints has been rising with each downturn for decades but the figures have surged this time.

“Long-term unemployment is alarmingly high: in the US, half the unemployed have been out of work for over six months, something we have not seen since the Great Depression,” he said.

 

 
IMF fears ‘social explosion’ from world jobs crisis (Telegraph)

 

 
At Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson has come up with a brilliant question that needs to be posed—often and loudly—to Christine O’Donnell by anyone who gets close enough to her to ask it, preferably on camera. Christine, baby, you say you wouldn’t lie to Hitler’s face, so how are you gonna answer this???

Since O’Donnell is absolutely opposed to lying under any circumstances, someone should ask her how often she masturbates.

Geeeenius! I nominate Howard Stern’s crew for the job!

O’Donnell wouldn’t lie to Nazis (LIttle Green Footballs)

 
Did Glenn Beck really say what I think he said? Dude just wished death on 75% of his own fuckin’ viewers!

Christine O’Donnell’s supporters and staff do not approve of citizen journalists filming the “Citizen Politician”

Is it me or does this confrontation totally remind you of a rat staring contest?