The following is the headline, byline and the first four paragraphs of the story that was at the top, right of page A 1 in today’s WaPo.
EMR has inserted in brackets [ ] comments in the text and following the quoted material added comments on the “massive” plan to create jobs. We hope these notes make it clear why these ideas, though well intended, are ‘stimulating disaster’ (or perhaps compounding disaster) on the way to Collapse. Since the political leadership of the Commonwealth was an early supporter of the president-elect, one can expect Virginia to be a recipient of some of this job creation stimulus.
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Obama Offers First Look at Massive Plan To Create Jobs
Project Would Be the Largest Since the Interstate System
[In retrospect the negative impact the Interstate System on human settlement patterns inside the Clear Edges and outside the Clear Edges is crystal clear. It is also just as clear that a different design for an InterRegional Roadway System – for example one with key elements of the system laid out in 1924 would have had far more beneficial impacts and far fewer negative impacts and it would have created far more jobs.]
By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 7, 2008; A01
On the heels of more grim unemployment news, President-elect Barack Obama yesterday offered the first glimpse of what would be the largest public works program since President Dwight D.
Eisenhower created the federal interstate system in the 1950s.
[Dwight did not “create” the Interstate System.]
Obama said the massive government spending program he proposes to lift the country out of economic recession will include a renewed effort to make public buildings energy-efficient, rebuild the nation’s highways, renovate aging schools and install computers in classrooms, extend high-speed Internet to underserved areas and modernize hospitals by giving them access to electronic medical records.
[See notes below on each element that is listed.]
“We need to act with the urgency this moment demands to save or create at least 2 ½ million jobs so that the nearly 2 million Americans who’ve lost them know that they have a future,” Obama said in his weekly address, broadcast on the radio and the Internet.
[See note revised from “Thanksgiving Perspective” below concerning the jobs that are really needed.]
Obama offered few details and no cost estimate for the investment in public infrastructure. But it is intended to be part of a broader effort to stimulate economic activity that will also include tax cuts for middle-class Americans and direct aid to state governments to forestall layoffs as programs shrink.
[The devil – and the path to disaster and Collapse – is in the details.]
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Consider each of the listed elements:
“Make public buildings energy-efficient”
There is nothing ‘wrong’ with trying to make public buildings more energy-efficient. However, what really needs to be made more energy-efficient and less energy-consumptive is the settlement pattern. It is the arrangement of buildings and spaces that is the primary driver of dysfunction and waste, not just of energy but of time and all other resources.
The downside of a focus on public building efficiency is that Agencies have a disastrous record trying to make anything related to buildings and settlement patterns “efficient” due to the pervasive dysfunction in governance structure – Public Housing, Urban Renewal, Zoning and Subdivision Controls, Ag subsidies, roadway, waterway and airport subsides come to mind.
Collectively, Agencies at the federal state and municipal level have created The Mobility and Access Crisis, The Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis and The Helter Skelter Crisis.
“Rebuild the nation’s highways”
Putting more resources into a system to support near exclusive reliance on Large, Private Vehicles (Autonomobiles) for Mobility and Access is an invitation to less Mobility and less Access. See THE PROBLEM WITH CARS
“Renovate aging schools”
Fine idea, most of the investment in schools over the past 30 years has been to support children of those who have been induced to (or had not choice but to) buy the Wrong Size House in the Wrong Location.
The problem with investing in the schools that really need renovation is that the Clusters and Neighborhoods where the children live need ‘renovation’ even more than the schools. Can you say “rebuild the Urban fabric inside the Clear Edges to create Balanced Communities?”
“Install computers in classrooms”
Great idea. But from the advertisements on MainStream Media is appears that the NBA is already doing this.
Perhaps before computers are installed there needs to be a comprehensive strategy to address the results of over technological saturation that is driving Mass OverConsumption. See “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future” by Mark Bauerlein.
Dumping more technology on students may be no better than dumping more asphalt on the landscape or putting every efficient lighting in dysfunctionally scattered buildings.
“Extend high-speed Internet to underserved areas”
Whoa! Here we go again. Unless there is an intelligent nation-state-wide Wright Plan, this program will be subsidizing those who have made bad location decisions with little benefit to any but those who are at the broadband subsidy trough.
“Modernize hospitals by giving them access to electronic medical records.”
This is a real whiz-bang idea. It is the system of delivering medical services that needs Transformation. Electronic medical records are not even a sty on the gnat eye.
The bigger Picture
There is nothing here about bailing out Autonomobile Enterprises or the Shelter Enterprises. That seems strange given the magnitude of the “problem.” EMR will deal with the pitfalls with the current ideas in these areas in due course.
As we noted in Thanksgiving Perspectives what is really needed are sustainable ways to use the US of A’s greatest surplus resource.
That resource is citizens who are not very bright and not very motivated. They:
• Slept through the important parts of high school
• Want to be entertained rather that create their own active, healthful recreation
• Almost all have made location and consumption decisions that they thought were in their best interest, but cumulatively these actions contribute to the growing economic, social and physical dysfunction
Because they happen to be born in US of A they believe “someone” owes them a comfortable life of consumption and entertainment.
They are not willing to work at the jobs that are attractive to those who are bright, resourceful but were unfortunate enough to have been born in some other nation-state.
There is plenty of challenge and opportunity for the bright and the motivated, it is the vast majority of the Running As Hard As They Cans and most of the Losing Grounds in the bottom 90 percent of the Ziggurat that need reorientation and something productive to do.
Telling a large percentage of the population they are fat, under-educated and slothful is not a way to get elected or reelected. “Leading” the citizens out of their self-created wilderness of sloth, indulgence and dysfunctional ways may not be p
ossible with dwindling resources. But this short laundry list of ideas to generate is a not starter.
Note: This post (and “Thanksgiving Perspectives:) was not edited by Jim Bacon so it may not be as clear as it might otherwise be.
EMR