DISQUS

Rob Mule · 1 year ago

Thanks to the staffer who nixed the wood panel background...I felt like Obama was speaking from a H&R Block office.
Good effort here with the lamp, framed photo, plant and flag but stiil a bit more distance between the principal's key and back lighting and the background would be better. Ruffle the drapes a bit for some shadowy texture and while a widow view is terrific find a window where the light level is lower outside than it is inside so one can see the view.
The President-elect, as always, was terrific.

Bush Bites · 1 year ago

Yeah, that paneling was awful.

Looked like Ward Cleaver's home office.

paulbot5 · 1 year ago

Does it count of they are all government jobs? As Peter Schiff says, we need a recession to correct the economy, there's no government strong enough to fix the economy

starrpower · 1 year ago

As the Director of Affordable Housing for Los Angeles County, the Obama team's Urban policy paper is hitting some of the right points. I have written and will continue to urge that infrastructure/jobs include the development of affordable housing as well. Roads, parks, libraries are wonderful and needed in all communities, but without affordable housing who will utilize them? I have also written that it appears that once again, poliy gurus are from the East Coast. I have been in housing for over thirty years and we here in the west are always trying to implement programs that work east of the Mississippi but can't or won't work here. Yes we need more Section 8 vouchers and more Shelter+Care vouchers but we don't have the apartments to put people in to use the vouchers. LA is the homeless capital of the US, sorry to say, over 80,000 people on any given night may be in the streets. We need the full array of housing opportunities: long term shelters to get families of the streets while they stabilize and apply for housing; regular afforeable apartments, special needs housing and permanent supportive housing depending on the need. I doubt they will come asking but it isn't rocket science. So, I love to hear his words, at least someone is talking to me again, but I'll wait to see what happens.

vkobaya · 1 year ago

It goes beyond housing though. Those people also need money to spend for food, clothing and other needs even if housing is provided. Bare rooms are not much to sleep in without beds, sheets, blankets and pillows. Nor are floors that wonderful for sitting without chairs, sofas, couches, etc. And even if Food Stamps provide food (inadequate quantities that were more appropriate back in 1970 when I worked for Food Stamps), that food is hardly any good without kitchens too cook the food in, utensils to cook the food and then serve. Nor should those people be forced to eat with their hands. Yeah, yeah, nice luxuries that people really don't need if you keep them out of the cold health damaging, killing winters. And, what of their time between eating and sleeping. Jobs certainly are needed, and welfare where they are incapable of working either due to mental illness or to lack of job skills. Also job training. But also need recreation, like the hated midnight basketball programs, etc. People deserve to be treated like human beings.

Conservatives don’t think that is th job of government. I’d argue back that enriching the already wealthy, powerful, and elite is also not the job of government. They’d argue back that it was the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, Fords, Kennedys, etc. who made America great. Bullshit! It was the forgotten working people who made this nation great. Those rich and powerful were the robber barons who stole the wealth of this country and kept it from achieving vastly greater heights.

Older_Wiser · 1 year ago

Another Food Stamp eligibility specialist! I did that in '74-75, during the Arab oil embargo...it was considered the Siberia of Social Services around here. My first hand look at the inequities of Federal govt. programs where laid off engineers with hidden assets and driving Corvettes could get food stamps while the elderly who had $10 too much in income for a single person could get zilch. I remember going over and over the figures for poor retirees who were getting $250/mo in SS at that time just so they could be eligible for $20 in food stamps..

Older_Wiser · 1 year ago

That is just a start. Officially, there are already 4 million + collecting unemployment benefits. How many unemployed are not? We can save $120 billion plus a year by getting out of Iraq and diverting a lot of military spending (the Pentagon just got over $650 billion for operations).

I want to see contractors stopped from excess profiteering also. Do not permit paramilitary contractors like Blackwater to train or operate in the US; other countries will have to take their own measures. More mass transportation, upgrading of Amtrak and expansion of railroads, more light rails in metropolitan areas to exurbs, more electric buses. Less reliance on autos. A vehicle will last much longer if not subjected to long trips into the city and its congestion, and will curb pollution until we are able to cut the combustion engine totally out of the picture. We need to stop wasting and start conserving--everything. It may not be "fun" but it's the only thing that will save us.

There's a hell of a lot to do. And let's have some more details. Stop allowing white collar criminals to manipulate the stock market, real estate and the money supply and paying them billions to do it. Put the emphasis back on production and real services for a change. Give small businesses a break on capital gains so they can survive, such as local farmers and merchants. There is always some risk in business, but we cannot allow huge corporations to get all the breaks while local businesses suffer. Do we really need so many gimcracks from China? Imagine if we could get a lot of what we need locally, instead of wasting so much on transportation both nationally and internationally. Why should we buy something from a country halfway around the world when we can produce it in our own backyard and curtail waste? Teach other countries what they need to know to prosper there, not exploit their people and resources which is what "free trade" is doing now.

Kiwi Jackson · 1 year ago

Green and infrastructure jobs to the tune of 2.5 million in the next 1/2 of BO's term sound mighty good to someone who was laid off last month, namely my son. Let's see if it happens (sorry for despondent tone- son & his wife need to now move in with us,,,,,,,)

Older_Wiser · 1 year ago

Don't feel bad, many are doing that these days as jobs and homes are lost. The extended family is back! And that could be a really good thing--less of the growing self-absorption we've seen and more benefit for the group as a whole while not denying the individuality of each person. For those who haven't heard the term, it's called "cooperation." Some people have always lived that way and thrived.

Bush Bites · 1 year ago

And people will learn to save again.

We'll have a whole new generation of citizens like those from the depression, who always put money away.

lynchie · 1 year ago

Restoring the core values of family dependency can't hurt. We have become greedy, self serving and without compassion. I would welcome my two kids into my house in a heart beat. I think the next 4 or 5 years will be tough but we will come out the other side, less greedy, less dependent on shopping and obtaining more things and have some appreciation for our neighbors and fellow man.

Indigo · 1 year ago

Sounds good.

Kiwi Jackson · 1 year ago

The NEXT half?? God, I wish he was already in office I guess.

Dieuberfrau · 1 year ago

Now, Mr. President, take office now! That poser Bush can go back to Texas. Cheney can go back to the depths of Hell where he came from.

anarchy · 1 year ago

note to the wingnuts: witness true "leadership" in action.

I wouldn't wish his many tasks on my worst enemy but
thank the fucking Lord for Mr Obama and best of luck
to him and his coming administration - and to ALL of
us as well.

we're all going to have to roll up our sleeves and begin
to clean up the incredible mess made by Baby George.

Older_Wiser · 1 year ago

There's a hell of a piece by Robert Reich about the difference between bailing out Citigroup and bailing out GM over at talkingpointsmemo.com

Scroll down...I hope he winds up in Obama's administration. He knows where the value of money comes from--working people, not paper and money manipulators.

bob_h · 1 year ago

Bush was allowed to piss away $600 billion in Iraq (and we are still not done), but there will be a great hue and cry about fiscal responsibility if Obama proposes to spend even half that on stimulating the economy.

vkobaya · 1 year ago

I hope those 2.5 million jobs are the jobs that he intends to create directly and that by the model of economic multiplication by a factor of 5, the total jobs created will be something on the order of 12.5 million jobs. I have no idea what the official figures for unemployment are. I ignore tham as they are meaningless, simply faked figures that only count those immediately unemployed, not the long term unemployed, those too discouraged to seek work any longer, homeless, Blacks, Hispanics, women, other minorities as well as the underemployed. That figure is generally taken to several times the official figures, but nobody officially acknowledges it. However, clearly if we really are to repair the American economy, and get it sizzling again, we need to employ all the unemployed, not simply those easiest and at the front of the line.

lynchie · 1 year ago

we have had 8 straight years being governed by a President who has never had an original idea. His concept of a perfect day is to wake up, take a crap and have Condi wipe his ass.
Aiming high is such a refreshing change.

vkobaya · 1 year ago

and have Condi wipe his ass. Aiming high is such a refreshing change.

Sheeze! Now, as much as I despise Condi, why would you wish that on her.

Viceroy · 1 year ago

How about some intelligence and less playground analysis?

lynchie · 1 year ago

meaning what?

lynchie · 1 year ago

go back and lick tom delay's balls.

Vance · 1 year ago

It wasn't My Pet Goat.

It was The Pet Goat.

Tran@Dallas · 1 year ago

Building roads is like building Ethernet backbones. We need contents, not infrastructure. What are contents: Making steel, textile, cars, heavy equipments, computers. Remember those things, maybe not ? We don't need to build roads to distribute goods made in China or Mexico.
Develop alternative energy sources - why not use what we have ? What if the gas price go down to 1.50/gallon (it is now 1.50/gallon!)
School Education ? No child left behind ? Thank you. I'll take care of my own.

paulbe · 1 year ago

Where will the money come from. More bonds sold to foreign Governments?

Diane · 1 year ago

And when the government job ends, where will the people go to work next? Before anyone decides that FDR's New Deal worked, they should study a little bit of the history of it. He never really lowered unemployment with the government programs he created. After being in office nearly 9 years, the country was still in the "Great Depression". Unless the citizens of this country are willing to educate themselves about the past, we are doomed to repeat it.

Viceroy · 1 year ago

By 2011, Obama will be the most unpopular president in history. Elected to bring "change," he instead is filling his administration with the worse Clinton political hacks available. The primary reason he received the Democratic nominations was because even the Democrats are sick to death of the Clintons. Obama clearly is unprepared for the responsiblities of leadership (not having any experience in that direction whatsoever), so he will be left will the "sage" advise of his tired Clinton appointees. Then when he fails to solve the economic crisis, we will have a foreign policy challenge, to which he will be too weak and ignorant to respond to effectively. By 2011, people will be asking why the liked him in the first place, and will come to realize that Bill Clinton was right all the time" "He's just a speech
(and not all that good of one).