.

Good!

Now if the pay czar would deny the umpteen billions in bailout-ee bonuses, we could have twohundredupmteen billions for the plan, and only a couple hundred bailout-babies would be unemployed; if they actually quit.

Seems good to me!

On the face of it.. I would rather see more of the road improvement money go towards long term job creation or fiber optic internet to every home in the US. Something with a much longer return on investment.

Where is the vast investment in developing a new green energy technology sector that was a centerpiece of Obama’s campaign? Roads are good, so are jobs that build an energy economy of the future while employing people besides out-of-work construction guys.

There shouldn’t need to be a tradeoff. We should have roads *and* the internet.

So true.. including conversion to a green grid and the power generating sources to feed them… and high speed rail.

Create jobs while reducing the need for wars/occupations for oil ta boot.

Sounds good but is this enough stimulus to get the economy going? If so how much? If not how much more do we need?

Proposal leaves you speechless, huh?

How lucky for Obama to suddenly discover $200,000,000,000 laying around that he can spend on lowering the unemployment that he has belatedly realized will cost him a second term.

How very lucky indeed.

heh.. I learned to do that when a new post on the FP says “comments off”. It’s a glitch easily fixed with one dot…)

What are we the people up too now? About 1/10,000th of the bankster printed bailouts?

[smacks head]

I thought you’d been doing that so as to say “Period.”

It had the added benefit of being the first to make a fine point in a thread…)

I like it better than zed.

How clever….sorta like the “Zed,” only shorter.

They need to do something about education, we have record enrollment and record cuts in Georgia.

1. Direct jobs spending
2. Social security/disability one-time $750
3. Direct aid to states (“rewarding bad behavior”)
4. Extend unemployment and COBRA

Needs to be twice $200 billion, maybe thrice.

There is no common sense left in the U.S. My late-lamented rightie friend was quick to point out the all the infrastructure in the U.S. was built when the county was a lot less prosperous than it is now. Q of priorities, which today are to enrich the rich.
Added on edit: He was rich, but not rich enough to benefit from the current political environment. A lesson to us all.

• “weatherize homes”: That’s essentially “cash for caulkers,” offering encouragements in the form of cash to homeowners to do energy efficiency improvements.

Will the poor get helped the poorest people do tend to live in the most energy unefficient homes and well my Mom gots a good home but many people do not know how to use a caulk gun and don’t have the cash to hire somebody.
Or is this welfare for the middle class only?

Is this big enough or well targeted enough to effect the economy at all?

Yeah, I’m lookin at where are the mid management and admin jobs from $30K to $50k?

Manual labor work at $15 for me don’t cut it . . . . due to the manual part of it. Likely, the same for millions of boomers 45-50+ who want office jobs based on past admin/mgmt skills and experiences.

Construction office work is highly detailed, and narrowly niched, hard to train for in a fast track mode.

• “and provide other assistance for small businesses as well as the unemployed”: I’m assuming that “assistance for small business” includes increasing lending to small businesses, which one report last week figured at about $20 billion; and “as well as the unemployed” includes more social safety net spending, perhaps to fix the UI bill that already passed to make sure that some who will see their benefits run out don’t reach that point.

Loans don’t matter if consumers are not buying all it does is delay bankruptcy.

It’s just instane that State Aid isn’t in this. Hasn’t Larry read the data that it’s state and local job loss that’s been feeding a lot of the recent job loss numbers?

John

Energy Costs have decimated job opportunities and Liberty in America, for decades. Few have the testicles to point this out!! The decades long wasting of .75 cents of every American dollar spent on gasoline, has had it’s eviscerating and deleterious effect. No employee would be allowed to be unproductive for 45 minutes of an hour @ $10.00 per/hr job! The employee would be fired. Why is the wasting of .75 cents of every American dollar spent on the potential energy entitled…. gasoline acceptable? Seems Life’s regressive energy costs have had the simlar effect on liberty as the institution of slavery?

Corporates continued Sodomization of America?

Anything about employing young people 18-35 unemployed men raise the crime rate.

Philia: That’s the brute who raped my country, Thrace!
Pseudolus: He raped Thrace?
Philia: And then he came and did it again! And then again!
Pseudolus: He raped Thrace thrice!

Funny thing happened on the way to the forum

The decades long wasting of .75 cents of every American dollar spent on gasoline, has had it’s eviscerating and deleterious effect.

Link this sounds interesting sad but interesting.

BTW, thanks to David for yet another great read, and for keeping us all locked into fast breaking news. Ditto to Jon Walker and any one else I might have missed including Mz. Emptywheel and Hamsher’s . . . thanks for all you folks do.

FDL has become a primary daily source for breaking info (always in detail) for me once I prowl the more MSM and MSM based bloggies . . . FDL out guns, outspeeds and out details them all!!!!

I won’t mention any blog names, but more than a few have fallen by MY wayside in the past year or more in favor of FDL.

As a primary news source. . . *G*

Seminal and now NewsDesk and also Work are all there on the cutting edge . . . heady shit when you look at the history of blogging, how fast and far FDL has gone and come . . . *G*

I have been writing for the last few months that 2010 would have ups and downs in the economy. It is an election year. Obama and his economic team weren’t going to try another and better structured stimulus. So basically we were going to see stimulus only it was going to be called something else, like this son of TARP program. We will probably see more than one of these to get incumbents through the election, and then things will really head south in 2011.

Why 2011 I’m thinking 2010? just curious as to your reasoning.

Every single item David has listed above seems targeted at 18-35, much of it targeted at easily trained unskilled labor. That should take care of that.

Crime is not MY concern, not at my age 56, I’m not criminally inclined nor are my peers even 10 years younger.

Jobs, now . . . that’s my concern. At minimum $30K or more, with HCR coverage that don’t suck at the wages such that there’s no reason to work . . . it’s all gotta go hand in hand, jobs and HCR.

We’ll see, it’s coming to a head . . . . all of it.

I SO miss Zero Mostel.

Depends on how the econ stim is crafted, and WHY it is crafted . . . don’t it. *G*

Not to speak for Hugh, but my experience and reasoning sees Congressmembers up for election “buying” votes from their constitutents in one manner or another.

R’s give red meat in the form of tax breaks and hot-button social issues (guns, gays, god) and D’s do it with spending programs and social issues too.

You get marginally different results depending on who’s in power, and what’ they’ve “spent” to buy the vote.

Ahh but is this enough to really effect the economy will it lower unemployment a few percent? I’m thinking unemployment will really jump after Christmas as if Christmas sales are not good and retailers go out of business.
To save the election Obama needs less than 8% unemployment or more come election day.

Things could collapse in 2010 but as I tried to point out in my comment the politicians will try to bail out the economy until after the election. The original stimulus package will have been shot by that point. The bubbles in stocks and commodities will have burst and the fundamentals: jobs, debt, and foreclosures will be unmasked. There are certainly things we could do about all these things but you have to add in our elites’ complete inability to deal with any policy question seriously and effectively.

I liken it to juggling half a dozen balls. It can be done for a while but then things start to fall apart. I think they will be pushing it to hold it together to the election.

I liken it to juggling half a dozen balls. It can be done for a while but then things start to fall apart. I think they will be pushing it to hold it together to the election.

I’m sure Bush thought he could hold things together until after the election but yes I agree they will try and last till 2011.

Also banks can collapse for any reason at any time. That could effect the economy.

I prefer the plate spinning metaphor. Juggling balls has a regularity not in evidence in the real world, as I finally figured out in my real life. Keeping the plates from crashing to the floor is much more apt, as it is much more random, and destructive when you fail.

David, thanks for this diary but as you seem to indicate at the end of it, the devil is in the details. Look for Obama to promise something big and effective (the $200 billion to stimulate jobs) and spend less on that and divert the money to something else. That is basically what he did with Tarp to begin with which was originally slated by Congress to be used only for mortgage relief. Instead, W’s Paulson and Obama’s Geithner transferred that money to huge banks and Wall St. in a bailout.

So I think lots of this $200 billion will end up elsewhere: for “deficit reduction” (a Republican idea and mantra); perhaps even for the war in Afghanistan.

With Obama, you have to look behind the big press release/speech and see what really happens. He lies.

Thing is, about loans to small business-there’s a major assumption involved, that small business will just start hiring people as soon as they get some cash. No. they’ll pay their bills first. Does anybody ouside of the white house really think there will be any money left after they pay enough bills to keep the building they’re in a couple more months, and keep the lights on, and pay their back taxes? Not me. Hate to be a pessimist, but this part looks like a bank bailout of a different stripe. It will increase bank assets and increase small business liabilities, without providing any real relief for the jobs situation. These people are really tone deaf and they expect us to be dumb enough to go along with it. I really hope I’m wrong. EDIT–weatherization has been done before in the 70′s along with the CETA program (wish they’d revive it, it worked fine but got a bad rep for local corruption)==provides jobs for poor people, unemployed people, and weatherizes poor people’s homes–at least it did then. Income qualified, as in the most needy get both the jobs and the weatherization. Pretty good program…if you like calking windows. But it’s a paycheck.

The banks making the loans get caught holding the bag when these companies go out of business or does the government?

Once again, another half-ass response to our economic crisis.

um, $15 an hour is $30K. And presumably a major ramp-up in the home energy efficiency industry would require some office management/administrative positions. My guess would be the answer from anyone officially offering these ideas, however, would be the help for small biz.

This better work and quick

I think the Repugs would go for “Free Twitter for everyone”. Dey luvs dem their “twitter”.

Seriously though, I think that every household should get a quarterly 50% off coupon book valued about $500 to be used for any American manufactured products or services. They expire in 3 months. So people would have to use them quickly to stimulate the economy. They could go to restaurants, movies, plays, music shows in bars, buy US produced beer, or use them to reduce their cost on a new US-made fridge, supermarket food, clothing, homewares, anything that meets a primary manufacturing level that produced jobs in the US of A. Stores could sticker qualifying products.

It might slow the foreign deficit, increase US jobs, and get money circulating through the economy rather than into stagnant accounts of executives.

Just copy what Germany did my goodness -

1) They paid the underemployed enough to give them full time paychecks
* By doing that most employers did not layoff people

2) They Nationalized its trouble banks and allowed other companies that couldn’t find investment to go under as they were in bad shape anyway. They propped up Opel in hopes that troubled GM would unload it. When they gave Opel money they specifically said “This is NOT to keep GM-USA afloat”

3) They buy most of there fuel (natural and gasoline) from Russia, who they are extending and expanding TRADE with.

4) They ran their “Cash For Clunkers” program for almost a year total when ours ran for maybe 90 days or so.

Of course they depend heavily on exports to the USA (BWM’s, Benz’s, VW’s etc) so while the richest among us are able to buy still, those with “dreams” of owning a 3 series or C-Klasse found themselves OUT OF A JOB, so they affected car sales…

But I bet you even when subsides stop for workers and unemployment goes up, their economy will largely handle it. I should also mention our “influence” has them leaning “Right” on some issues like underfunding higher education

This country is a junk pile, work in progress.

Go watch a program done in NYC on Flander’s page, search Weatherizing Homes it should come up.

I’d love to have city-wide WiFi, hell Greyhound is offering it on most buses now, many airlines don’t have that yet!

Finland has promised to expand its high speed system and improve speed to 1MB

A legal RIGHT to have HIGH SPEED INTERENT, Finland? Digital Divide? HELL NO.

But I think Prof. Lacewell made the oh so important point when discussing what happens here compared to other countries.

IT and call center jobs moved overseas is killing America.
They should start by placing a tarrif on any company who moves jobs overseas. Also make the companies pay most of the unemployment tax also.
Trickle down economics does not work. Giving rich people tax cuts to hire more people doesn’t work. It makes them richer. If they are rich, they can afford to hire more people without tax cuts and Corporate welfare. If you want the economy to start rolling keep work in this country. Trickle up! This gives people expendable income to spend. When people spend, businesses get busier and will hire more people who in turn will spend their expendable income. You need to trickle upwards for the economy to be robust.

When I joined I.T. in 1992, 95%+ of engineers where I worked were U.S. citizens and permanent residences. Today, 50%+ of engineers where I work are H-1-B (mostly from Indian) and another 35+% are contractors of Indian outsourcing companies. So basically more than 85%+. Out of the engineers that I knew from the old days, let say 10, 4 of them are currently unemployed. Another 3 have left the engineering profession altogether even though they graduated from some of America’s finest universities (Berkeley, Stanford, MIT). This is the state of America today. The H1B program is a national disgrace. It has completely destroyed the American middle class and ruin countless lives. It’s all about cheap labor and corporate greed. Not only that, the U.S. is giving away its competitiveness in high technology. By employing the H1B people, American companies are training their competitors which will lead to their demise. Not only that, the H1B program is a way for U.S.’s competitors to gain access to high technologies (I am sure China loves the H1B program because it enables them to send spies into American companies to steal technologies — read the recent articles on the San Jose Mercury News about Chinese high tech spying). The H1B program also discourages a new generation of American students from pursuing a STEM career because they know that there won’t be a future for them.

I completely agree, while they focused on blaming brown people for taking non-Union jobs and black people for using “affirmative action” to get that well-paying job ahead of somebody else. Under the radar, H1B allows companies that rely heavily on technology and the internet to under-cut high paying jobs and hire anybody willing to work for less money.

Outsourcing call center jobs is also a source of respectable income lost to people that barely have a complete command of English.

I’m convinced this country has to hit rock bottom for there to be enough anger to anything to enact real “Change”. I also think its a mis-calculation by Dems and Repubs to think that if Obama fails they’ll be put back in power (Republicans), I assure you they won’t and I think a 3rd party will blossom.

oops I always type that backwards – BMW

No Tarp money to any company’s who off shored jobs in the last 2 years. They are part of the reason we are in this mess in addition to H1B program is a national disgrace.

I love that suggestion! Make sure you relate your ideas to Congress too. Thanks!

Here’s one: How about passing the “FAIRNESS and TRANSPARENCY in CONTRACTING ACT”; H.R.2568 for some verifiability that Federal monies are actually making it into the hands of genuine Small Businesses. Not some Fortune 500 company masquerading as one. This is a huge problem, in addition to all the others mentioned here. Write to Congress about this now!

It’d help if the states would spend the stimulus money that he gave them, instead of using it to make their own budget deficits not look so horrific.

We’ll allow them to have it only if they bring the jobs back!

If you have yet to see the SMITH-TRG, U.S. Jobs Creation Plan presentation, you should. To view, go to http://www.smith-trg.com/createjobs.html
fyi, this Jobs presentation was submitted to the White House and the Small Business Administration before the Jobs Summit was announced.