Another WPA: Matthews suggests we work on … railroads

You lefties crack me up. And you make fun of us for talking about the Reagan era. You guys can’t get the “New Deal” out of your system. You get it that the natives are restless because of high unemployment and you think you can calm those “Bible thumping, gun toting, PBR swilling, sister kissing, gapped tooth righties” by putting them to work fixing you lunch or something.

The only similarity between 1933 and 2010 is there’s a Democrat at the helm of double digit unemployment, and, as the White House said yesterday, we can expect that kind of unemployment for years to come. The reasons are similar too. Government is sucking up all the capital and refusing to release the free market from overbearing mandates, all in the name of … jobs?

This morning Washington Post columnist called on the President to start another WPA. Spoken like a man who hasn’t dug a ditch in a while.

If we expect U.S. manufacturers to rehire all — or even most — of their laid-off workers, we’ll be badly disappointed.

That’s why the nation needs a public jobs program in addition to a policy of helping small businesses grow again. The infrastructure investments Obama proposed will go part of the way toward meeting that goal, but specific programs of public employment, such as those created by Franklin Roosevelt and that notorious radical Richard Nixon (who signed into law the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, or CETA) are needed as well.

Remember too, the work force of 1933 is much different than today. I hardly think a laid off bank teller, insurance clerk, or investment advisor will be well suited for WPA work, but that’s just me.

Then there’s Chris Matthews who noticed we are not enough like Europe. (OK, we are when it comes to unemployment now, but I digress).They have big fast trains that carry his children to and fro across the landscape while they “study abroad”. Let’s put you laid off insurance folk to work building, trains?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWCJwd__3KQ

So you see, instead of let them eat cake, it’s let them lay ties.

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Jim Vicevich

Jim is a veteran broadcaster and conservative/libertarian blogger with more than 25 years experience in TV and radio. Jim's was the long-term host of The Jim Vicevich Show on WTIC 1080 in Hartford from 2004 through 2019. Prior to radio, Jim worked as a business and financial reporter for NBC30 - the NBC owned TV station in Hartford - and as business editor at WFSB-TV in Hartford for 14 years while earning six Emmy nominations and three Telly Awards.

8 Comments

  1. zedgar on December 9, 2009 at 12:27 pm

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    Matthews says the Chunnel only takes a couple of minutes.  Huh? The trip from London to Paris takes almost 3 hours (the underwater part is about 20 minutes). Non-restricted tickets cost $300 – $450 one way with some economy tickets available for about $110. It’s cheaper to fly – e.g., you can get an EasyJet flight for about $60 one way. Trains are neat but are not the path to economic salvation.



  2. sammy22 on December 9, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    Try taking your car on EasyJet!



    • Dimsdale on December 10, 2009 at 7:44 am

      Try renting.



  3. porschepete on December 9, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    Hay Matthews isn't Amtrack government supported?Like our furture

    healthcare.I worry.



  4. donh on December 9, 2009 at 4:40 pm

    We already have a WPA program . The  non essential personnel working in local, state, and federal jobs  comprise an eternal  WPA program. Too many able bodied adults are engaged in government sustained activites that fail to produce any product or service  of value to society. Their work assembles no product nor provides any service that can be sold at the end of the day  to recover the money payed to them in salary. They can only be paid by siezing somebody else's prosperity . You can only have so many parasites living off of a  host body without killing the host. The only solution to our problem is to purge government of wasteful employment. Take the $200,000 salaried bureocrat in the department of silly walks, hired out of political patronage,  put them on a ditch digging line for reduced pay of $28,000, balance the budget , cut the costs imposed on profit making activities that  add value to society, and problem is solved.



  5. sammy22 on December 10, 2009 at 4:53 am

    Hey donh, you should make it easier to purge the government of wasteful employment by providing some list of positions/people who should be removed.



    • Dimsdale on December 10, 2009 at 7:43 am

      The Departments of Energy and Education would be a good start.  The IRS could be slimmed d0wn with a flat tax.  That is the easy stuff.  A hard look at some of the NIH funded projects (and now, the so called "peer review" committees) would be apropos.



  6. Erik Blazynski on December 10, 2009 at 5:02 am

    well this is not a horrible idea, if you are going to waste the money anyway you might as well waste it on infrastructure, which you are going to have to spend some day anyway. I support infrastructure development in this country vs. nation building in Iraq.



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