From Robert Reich’s blog as published on Truth-out we have the article The White House Needs a Real Jobs Plan.  The article starts with the following remarks:

Today the President met with business leaders on his “jobs and competitiveness council,” who suggested more public-private partnerships to train workers, less government red-tape in obtaining permits, and more jobs in travel and tourism, among other things. The President then toured a manufacturing plant in North Carolina, and made an eloquent speech about the need for more jobs.

Fluff.

Doesn’t the White House get it? The President has to have a bold jobs plan, with specifics. Why not exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for the next year? Why not a new WPA for the long-term unemployed, and a Civilian Conservation Corps for the legions of young jobless Americans? Why not allow people to declare bankruptcy on their primary residences, and thereby reorganize their mortgage debt?

Or a hundred other ways to boost demand.

Fluff won’t get us anywhere. In fact, it creates a policy vacuum that will be filled by Republicans intent on convincing Americans that cutting federal spending and reducing taxes on the rich will create jobs.

Most Americans are smart enough to see through this. But if the Republican snake oil is the only remedy being offered, some people will buy it. And if the President and Democrats on Capitol Hill continue to obsess about reaching an agreement to raise the debt limit, they risk making the snake oil seem like a legitimate cure.

As indicated by the above excerpts from the article, it’s not like there aren’t many voices and many proposals for an alternative to what the Republicans are proposing.  For the President to add his voice to the promotion of the alternatives, he first has to know about the alternatives, and then he has to remember that a politician’s primary job is to educate the public on policy matters.

As I have tried to make it clear to Democratic politicians before, you cannot beat something with nothing.  Rather than merely explain what is wrong with the Republican plan, the Democrats have to come up with an obviously better plan.  If they have an obviously better plan, they don’t even have to talk about the Republican’s plan.  Staying positive was a lesson that Obama taught us all in his campaign for the Presidency.

As for the President and Democrats on Capitol Hill continuing to obsess about reaching an agreement to raise the debt limit, the President should instead think of coming out with a statement harking back to my satirical post Obama Vows To Veto Tax Cut For The Wealthy. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to come up with the appropriate statement of conscience.

The following snippet comes from an interview I first heard on a local public radio station:

TRANSCRIPT:

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, I want to go to a very different issue in the last 30 seconds: the government adding formaldehyde to a list of known carcinogens despite years of lobbying from the chemical industry. This report coming out now, just months after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration warned that a hair-care product, Brazilian Blowout Acai Professional Smoothing Solution, contained unacceptable levels of formaldehyde. The government also saying Friday, styrene, which is used in boats, bathtubs and in disposable foam plastic cups and plates, may cause cancer. One of the chief lobbyists against formaldehyde being put on this list were the Koch brothers. Could I get a quick reply from you?

RALPH NADER: The carcinogen aspects, long known, finally recognized by the Food and Drug Administration, opposed by these right-wing lobbyists, the Koch brothers, who, you know, $37 billion worth of money, they’re going to put a lot of it in the campaign. So this will put more spotlight on the Koch brothers, and deservedly so.

The transcript (and a video clip) come from the article Ralph Nader: Koch Brothers Led Fight to Defend Formaldehyde Despite Carcinogenic Evidence on Truth-out.org.

Some people have told me that I should not look a gift horse in the mouth when I see David H. Koch having a cancer research center at MIT named after him because of the money he gave.  Is their a case of irony deprivation running riot through our nation?  Does supporting cancer prevention research balance the selling and promotion of  cancer causing agents to the public?  Would we be better off had the Koch brothers paid their taxes instead of evading them, made less money promoting and selling cancer products, and allowing the NIH to fund the cancer research instead of the Koch brothers funding the research?

If a firefighter commits arson and then heroically helps put out the fire, should we celebrate the heroism even if we know about the arson?  Might we want to disparage the arsonist firefighter in order to concentrate our celebrating on the firefighters who do not also set fires?

As a student at MIT, I did hear the argument from other students that law enforcement should go easy on MIT grads because of all they will contribute to society.  I don’t buy it. Fortunately, I never heard that argument from any of the faculty (who were already making their contributions to society).  Maybe the faculty should have actively argued against that idea rather than merely refraining from promoting it.

In the article Gridlocking the Lives of the Jobless by E.J. Dionne, Jr., he states the following:

For the moment, Republicans have no interest in moving the nation’s debate toward investments in job creation because they gain twice over from keeping Washington mired in discussions on the deficit. It’s a brute fact that Republicans benefit if the economy stays sluggish. And despite their role in ballooning the deficit during the Bush years, they will always outbid Democrats on spending cuts.

So is there any way out for those looking to Washington? The recent disappointing jobs numbers have at least had the salutary effect of reminding Democrats that they cannot agree to anything that further slows the recovery. “The first principle has to be ‘do no harm,’” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a key House Democratic negotiator in the deficit talks. “There is a danger of making things worse if you adopt very deep cuts in the short term.”

To this article I responded with the following comment:

Yesterday I received an email from Biden saying that he has a plan to take idle government real-estate and stop wasting money on it.  Does that mean that he is going to put this real-estate on the market where there is already a glut of real estate?

Today I hear that the Veep is aiming toward a bipartisan deal to cut $1 trillion in spending.

Meanwhile corporations are withholding $2 trillion of their cash from investing in new plants, equipment, and jobs.  Why? Because there is not enough demand (i.e. spending) in the economy to warrant further investment.

So now both Republicans and Democrats are going to solve the lack of spending in the economy by cutting spending.  I suppose they might also cut taxes to raise tax revenue.

We need a law to make English at least one of the languages spoken in this country.  I mean dictionary English, not political double speak.

For Obama to change the direction of the national conversation on the economy, he first has to know where the new direction is.