So, how does a revenue-starved/deficit-drained government pay for a massive public service jobs program while expanding an unnecessary war in Afghanistan, continuing an occupation of Iraq, coddling corporations with revenue draining regulatory breaks and bankrolling big banks whose collusion with Wall Street rip-off shysters sparked the economic meltdown?
Taking steps that are sure to inflame the super-rich and tea-baggers duped by the wealthy into thinking they share mutual interests with the economic elite who view them with disdain.
A good first-step toward funding public service jobs would be removing the "Off Limits" sign from military spending, now a trillion dollar chunk of the federal budget"a chunk long documented as a money-pit of wasteful practices. See Dave Lindorff's analysis of military spending as a share of the US budge in <href=http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff4132010.html> Counterpunch magazine</a>.
One cost in the Afghan war is the $2-billion-dollar-plus expenditure paid to private contractors for them to truck war supplies for US fighting forces (ammo, food, fuel, medicine, etc.) from a port in Pakistan to US military bases in remote areas of desolate Afghanistan.
This private contractor supply scheme now servicing 70 percent of US military forces inside Afghanistan, coupled with the Afghan war misadventure itself, produces mind-boggling wasteful costs like spending $400 to get a single gallon of gasoline into one Marine battle tank.
Further, this outsourcing of life sustaining supplies for American soldiers in Afghanistan creates serious problems for the war effort directly and indirectly) according to a June 2010 report from the congressional Subcommittee on National Security. This supply scheme, "fuels warlordism, extortion, and corruption and it may be a significant source of funding for the insurgents," stated that report.
Slashing waste embedded in this supply scheme formally known as the Host Nation Trucking (HNT) contract could provide tens of millions to fund public service jobs for Americans in America plus it would "Support Our Troops' by stopping cash and materials flowing straight into the hands of the Taliban the enemy targeted by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Another source of funding for public service jobs is plugging corporate tax breaks and revising American jobs crushing Free Trade arrangements hailing from the Clinton presidency. Conservatives bashing Obama on America's record unemployment rate conveniently ignore the reality that policies initiated under President Reagan crippled US jobs by facilitating "outsourcing' to foreign countries.
Before befuddled tea-baggers and their wealthy corporate and FOX-News puppeteers raise the bogyman of bad interference by Big Government consider the following: the unemployment rate in communist China and in capitalist Germany is lower than in the US due to respective policies/procedures those two governments devised specifically to sustain employment for workers in those countries.
President Obama, in his weekly address delivered right before Labor Day promised to fight to pass a law "that will provide tax breaks for folks who create jobs in America." This proposal sounds good but represents a small stride where giant steps are needed.
Americans need paychecks not phony platitudes from well-heeled politicians and wealthy corporate leaders lecturing the unemployed about virtues of stoically accepting their descent into poverty.
1 | 2
