The C-SPAN web site describes the speech wiht the following words:

Pres. Obama announced a new plan for improving the nation’s infrastructure and creating jobs during his appearance at the annual Laborfest event in Milwaukee. The initiative would spend $50 billion over the next six years, to repair 150,000 miles of highways and to build a smart air traffic control system, among other transportation-related projects.

You can read the written version of the President’s prepared remarks on the Whitehouse web site.

If anybody can turn things around by the November elections, this is the President who can.  We can help.  Yes we can.

Now, we weren’t supposed to find ourselves replaying the late 1930s. President Obama’s economists promised not to repeat the mistakes of 1937, when F.D.R. pulled back fiscal stimulus too soon. But by making his program too small and too short-lived, Mr. Obama did just that: the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment — and now it’s fading out.

Obama’s mistake was thinking that if the stimulus proved to be too small, he could always ask for more.  Politics being what it is he should have asked for a stimulus that was so big, it had a safety margin in it.  Later, if the whole stimulus package was not needed, he could have stopped the parts that hadn’t been spent yet.

Comparing attitudes of the public now and then, Krugman says:

The story of 1937, of F.D.R.’s disastrous decision to heed those who said that it was time to slash the deficit, is well known. What’s less well known is the extent to which the public drew the wrong conclusions from the recession that followed: far from calling for a resumption of New Deal programs, voters lost faith in fiscal expansion.

I just got into a discussion on a purportedly progressive web site where people were wishing that Obama could be more like FDR. This is not what they had in mind, of course. I guess it really is true that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.

Read the comment posted on truthdig.com by cruxpuppy to see how people pine for a history about FDR that never was.  I tried to straighten him out with a comment that pointed to the Krugman piece.

In a way, this justifies the need to redeploy the money from the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy into more productive stimulus of the economy.

However, it will have the Republicans saying, “See, we told you they all had an evil motive.”

Policies that generate more widely shared prosperity lead to stronger and more sustainable economic growth — and that’s good for everyone. The rich are better off with a smaller percentage of a fast-growing economy than a larger share of an economy that’s barely moving. That’s the Labor Day lesson we learned decades ago; until we remember it again, we’ll be stuck in the Great Recession.

The evil side of redistribution of wealth rears its ugly head.  You see, good redistribution of wealth only goes one way according to Republicans.  It only goes from the poor to the rich.

What about the not so rich members of the Republican Tea Party?  They have hopes of being rich someday, so they don’t want to go back to the days of equitable distribution.  Based on their hope for the future, they are willing to give up their rewards in the present.  Sounds almost religious, doesn’t it?

The plan is not just to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, but it is to replace them with something more effective.  In other words, redeploy the Bush tax cuts to something more effective.  What Democrat would be afraid to support such a plan?

As long as the Democrats allow the Republicans to cast the debate as to whether or not tax cuts for the wealthy stimulate the economy, then the Democrats are on the losing side of the debate.

The real debate is whether or not we can find a better stimulus than the tax cuts to the wealthy.  The Democrats have a plan, but the Republicans do not.

Don’t dismiss retraining because you think all the good jobs are outsourced already.  Even the PBS Nightly Business Report had a feature on how a business wanted to expand but they could not find qualified operators for their new robotics production equipment.  They said that their staff was too small to spare anybody to train a new employee.  What a terrific case for the need for government funded training.

2010/09/05 Update

The Dems find themselves in a bind.  They decry the effect on the long term debt of the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy.  I guess the redeployment of this part of the tax cut can only be able cover the next few years.  Then the stimulus will end and the out lying years we will use the funds to cut the deficit.  The message gets more complicated.

I explained to the complainers how to solve their problems.

You know how to solve your disappointment with Obama?  Put the Republicans back in office.

They will repeal the health reform act as they have promised.  There won’t be any more stimulus packages from Republicans.  We know they prefer bank bailouts.  The TARP was Bush’s answer to the financial crisis.

Tax cuts for the middle class, sure after they give some more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Repairing crumbling bridges and roads? Naw, that would hinder private enterprise.

Research using embryonic stem cells?  No way.  We’d rather throw away those frozen embryos than discover a cure for Parkinson’s disease.

Increase the number of bank examiners and go after fraudulent bank executives?  What a waste of money.  We know how successful Reagan was in preventing the S&L disaster by refusing to let examiners examine the insolvent S&Ls;.  He cut the examiners budgets and refused to pay them decently or give them computers.  Now that’s the way a Republican carries out his executive responsibilities.

If you don’t like the intelligence reports that had doubts about whether Saddam Hussein had WMDs, then form your own defense intelligence agency to tell you what you already know for sure is the real truth.

While we’re at it, let’s get rid of the Arab speaking intelligence officers.  They might be able to understand what the terrorists are saying, but we can’t have gay people in the military.  It ruins unit cohesion.

These are all policies your friendly Republicans have brought to you.  They will be glad to bring them back.

But wait! There is even more.  This time it will be the Republican Tea Party.  If you thought the old Republicans were extreme, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

He shows that the so called experts who predicted dire consequences from a too large stimulus package were completely wrong.  The actual experts who predicted dire consequences from too small a stimulus were right.

If repeating the same action and expecting different results is called insanity, what we would we call it when the Republicans want to do the opposite action, but expect the same results?

Do we think the behavior of the economy is completely unaffected by government action, and just because one set of experts were right the last time, then they won’t be right the next time?  Apparently the Republicans don’t think the economy is unaffected by government action or they wouldn’t be so adamant in their obstruction.

Do progressives believe that because Obama was only able to get a small stimulus package through that we ought to now turn control back to the Republicans who wanted no stimulus?

I am having a real problem making sense out of either side that seems to blame Obama as the cause of our problems and not the potential solution.

Hans G. Despain is a professor in the Department of Economics at Nichols College in Dudley.

While I have found that Hans Despain is one of the few local people who are writing knowledgably about the economy, I am also a little curious about the tone of his article.

For anyone trying to figure out whether or not to vote in more Democrats or more Republicans in the fall, this article seems to leave that as an unaddressed issue.  What references he does give to the political struggle leave one wondering just what he does think.

In particular, with his mention of Scott Brown’s election as a catalyst for financial reform, I wonder what Prof. Despain was thinking.  Does he really believe that after struggling to pass health care reform over the obstructionist tactics of the Republicans, that Obama would not have tackled financial reform had it not been for Scott Brown?

Does he think giving more power to the likes of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner would end up with better financial regulation?

Having started reading the book ‘The best way to rob a bank is to own one’ I think that Professor Despain isn’t giving enough credit for our troubles to the out and out fraud committed by many of the ‘risk’ takers on Wall Street.

They didn’t just take risks, they cooked the books, they intimidated internal and outside auditors, and they used political influence and bribes to remove any regulators that were getting too close.

It’s not that President Obama and the Democrats don’t deserve any criticism. However, for one so knowledgeable as Hans Despain to leave the impression that the solution might include voting in more Republicans (who actually favor deregulation and little enforcement) is more than I can comprehend.

It bears repeating what Vice President Joe Biden said in quoting former Boston Mayor Kevin White, “Don’t compare me to the almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”

The Congressional Muslim Staff Association hosted a panel discussion on the image of Muslims in the U.S. Participants discussed the controversy surrounding the Islamic Center near Ground Zero in New York City, among other topics. Speakers included James Zogby, who heads the Arab American Institute.

Panel members besides James Zogby were Salam El-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and Dr. Azizah Y. al-Hibri, Esq. of KARAMAH – Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights,

If enough people could only listen to this broadcast and get control of their emotions, then the world would truly be a better place and the Al-Qaeda terrorists will have been defeated, for the moment.

One of the comments by James Zogby reminded me of a famous quote from Mark Twain,

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

If people could just let go for a moment of what they think they know for sure, then they might be able to learn something that really is so.

I leave it up to you to see where the following snippet fits into the overall article:

The instructors at Benning insisted that competent commanders never commit large numbers of troops to battle without having established secure LOCs. They then winced when they displayed a relief map of Afghanistan and neighboring countries, showing the deployment of U.S. forces.

I don’t believe for a minute that it would have been productive for President Obama to have said these things tonight.  However, it is very productive for us to consider what Ray McGovern has to say.

Note, I only say consider, because as of yet, I have no independent information as to whether or not McGovern is on the right track.  What he says is quite plausible, but there are a lot of plausible stories and only a few are correct.

You also might be able to hear what the President did say if the link to the C-SPAN video of the speech continues to be valid.

As applied to the current administration, he says:

But Obama and his party are also in a hole because the president has chosen not to engage the nation in an extended dialogue about what holds all his achievements together, or why his attitude toward government makes more sense than the scattershot conservative attacks on everything Washington might do to improve the nation’s lot.

Later on in the article, Dionne said:

Obama’s mistake is captured by that disdainful reference to ‘politicking.’ In a democracy, separating governing from ‘politicking’ is impossible. ‘Politicking’ is nothing less than the ongoing effort to persuade free citizens of the merits of a set of ideas, policies and decisions. Voters feel better about politicians who put what they are doing in a compelling context. Citizens can endure setbacks as long as they believe the overall direction of the government’s approach is right.

This is a great post.  This is the point I have been trying to make all over the place.  E.J. Dione has a better platform for saying this than I do with my measly blog that only has 16,000 readers.

President Obama seemed to understand this so well during the campaign.  I am somewhat disappointed that he didn’t continue after the campaign.

Democrats think that once they explain something that the world will “note and long remember”.  The Republicans on the other hand seem to know that they have to keep pounding the message relentlessly.

Maybe the Democrats fallaciously think the truth does not have to be repeated.  It has to be repeated at least as often as the lies arrayed against it.