Good Morning!

We still seem to be stuck in an unemployment ditch that nobody can dig us out of. Generations ago now, the US faced a similar crisis, and the solution was a stroke of genius.

The original Works Progress Administration was created by executive order, but had to wait until April 1935 for funding from Congress. (In a curious twist, Wikipedia notes "the WPA was funded by Congress with passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 on April 8, 1935. The legislation had passed in the House of Representatives by a margin of 329 to 78, but was delayed by the Senate." Sound familiar?)

In any case, the WPA did things like build roads, bridges, public buildings, infrastructure, and a number of other things. More importantly than that, it put people back to work. Not just in menial, service jobs, but doing things that would result in knowledge and skill that would serve the country well in the coming decade of war.





With America wallowing in year 2 of the recession, shouldn't it be time to revisit this idea?

Immediately, many of the projects build by the original WPA are in dire need of repair and upgrading. But more importantly than that, while the original project focused on infrastructure and building for a gasoline-based economy...wouldn't it make sense to focus on the new?

No less than Robert Kennedy Jr. has stated repeatedly that there is enough solar potential in the Southwest Desert to power the entire United States...but there's no infrastructure to get the power to the Coasts where it's needed the most. Sounds like the new WPA should get to work on it.

There's going to need to be vast arrays of solar farms to collect that energy, and there's undoubtedly dozens of locations across this vast country that could support wind turbines...more things for the WPA to do.

School buildings in nearly every community in the US are run-down and falling apart; these can all be updated by a new WPA.

But of course...you can't tell the Republicans these things. It would take money, of course. Money the United States doesn't really have, unless we go further into deficit spending. Or if we do something about this.

But this is what it comes down to. We actually could get out of this recession on a war economy. It would have to become a complete effort, similar to what we did in WWII. There should be a draft, we should build everything we need to win here in the United States, and of course we'd need to stop worrying about things like nation-building or not bombing civilians. (Check out Dresden or Hiroshima for examples.)

At the end of WWII, Japan and Germany were DEFEATED, and their entire society had to be rebuilt from the ground up. Dicking around like we are in Iraq and Afghanistan just won't cut it.

But what do I know? I'm just "Joe Citizen" out here...I obviously don't understand how tax cuts for the wealthy, and politicians sucking the corporate teat with gusto benefit me. I suppose that's why they're paid the big bucks.