by: Erik P Sorensen

OpEdNews.COM  

Let us set aside the notion that infrastructure is crumbling in our inner cities and $500 million would buttress flagging state and municipal budgets. And that the use of those dollars for infrastructure improvement could provide directly for tens of thousands of jobs in construction and engineering; people who are already trained and cannot find meaningful work.

Let us also set aside the fact that Bush’s proposed budget under funds his own existing education scheme by $8 billion and the additional $500 million is not going to assist fully funding the “I know a child left behind” act.

Let us also set aside the duplicity of adding money to the Pell Grant program after his administration had cut the budget for this program.

The problem is in theory. Bush’s model for governance, if it doesn’t come directly from Halliburton, could also be derivative of the film Cool Hand Luke. Remember the “make-work” day? “No, move that hole over there!” the bossman said.

US Military bombers dumped tons of munitions on Iraqi infrastructure targets; setting back decades of advanced engineering of electricity provision, telecommunications, structures and plumbing. Don’t worry, Halliburton and Bechtel to the rescue (for billions of dollars granted by no-bid contracts).

Now jobs are suffering the same fate. Bush’s tax cutting Ponzi scheme imploded the US economy. His insider trading buddies at Enron et. al. caused a collapse of confidence in the market further fomented by the toothless SEC buddy system employed by the administration. And his tax schemes have induced employers to shift operations to China, Malaysia, Vietnam and India. This strategy has set the jobless rate in America skyrocketing.

The well documented figure is 2.3 million jobs lost during the Bush administration; however that significantly undercounts the true impact. Millions of Americans have grown so disenchanted with their employment prospects that they have stopped looking and accepted their lot in life as “unemployable”. An additional countless millions have plummeted from the heights of the .com economy into the bottomless pit of the Wal-Mart economy and have accepted less than fulfilling jobs in the service sector.

The jobs being created by the Wal-Mart economy are low-wage, low-skill jobs that provide marginal benefits and subvert unions. It seems excessive to pay $500 million for a job training program to prepare workers to ask “paper or plastic”.

In the wake of this assault on American employment, the Bush administration now is attempting to ride to the rescue with a $500 million retraining program. Like Halliburton rumbling through the rubble of the devastated Iraq, this “retraining” program should be viewed as the callus, calculated act it is.