The Jobless: Robbed with a Fountain Pen

The Men We Trusted to Lead Us

By Robert Scheer
Progressive America Rising via Ttuthout

Sept. 29, 2011 - Now he tells us. On Wednesday Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke referred to the nation's unemployment rate as a "national crisis," an obvious if depressing fact of life to the 25 million Americans who have been unsuccessfully attempting to find full-time employment.

But to finally hear those words from the man George W. Bush and Barack Obama both appointed to lead us out of the great recession is a bracing reminder of how markedly the policies of both those presidents have failed: "We've had close to 10 percent unemployment now for a number of years, and of the people who are unemployed, about 45 percent have been unemployed for six months or more," Bernanke said. "This is unheard of."

But why is Bernanke just now discovering this after having overseen the Fed's purchase of trillions in toxic mortgage-backed securities from the too-big-to-fail banks that sacrificed people's homes in a giant Ponzi scheme? Why did he throw all of that money at the banks without getting anything back in the way of relief for the people the bankers swindled?

The housing meltdown, which has robbed Americans of a considerable portion of their net worth, has led to the continued depressed consumer confidence that is the prime cause of crisis-level unemployment. In another of his too-late-to-matter moments, Bernanke acknowledged that "strong housing policies to help the market recover" would "clearly be very useful," but he failed to suggest any.

Bernanke, along with then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, helped implement the Bush strategy of saving the banks in the hope that their rising tide would lift our little boats. That remained the strategy when President Obama rewarded Geithner for having saved AIG and Citigroup by naming him treasury secretary in the incoming government.

With the Geithner appointment, and the even more disturbing selection of Lawrence Summers to be his top economic adviser, Obama sealed his own fate as president. By turning to those disciples of Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a prime enabler of Wall Street greed, the new president fatally betrayed his promise of hope.

If you still need confirmation of just how decisive a betrayal those appointments were, check out Ron Suskind's new book, Confidence Men, a devastating insider account of the Obama White House that clearly identifies as the source of this president's failure "Rubin's B-Team," Summers and Geithner, "two men whose actions had contributed to the very financial disaster they were hired to solve." Suskind quotes then-Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., one of the few who dared stand up to the Wall Street lobbyists, as telling Obama, "I don't understand how you could do this; you've picked the wrong people!"

Of course the Democrats from the Clinton era don't bear all of the responsibility for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that ended the sensible restraints on greed installed by Franklin Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression. Indeed, the inspiration came from Republicans led by Phil Gramm, the then-senator from Texas who as head of the Banking Committee authored the legislation that Wall Street lobbyists had long pushed unsuccessfully.

The mayhem they wrought and the subsequent big-money rewards to Rubin and Gramm do not seem to have shocked this president or the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. Rubin became chairman of Citigroup and was rewarded with $120 million while he guided the bank to the edge of bankruptcy. Gramm went to a leading position at the Swiss-based UBS, the continually troubled institution now in the midst of its latest scandal, involving fraudulent trading. In addition to a $45 billion direct TARP bailout, Citigroup got $99.5 billion, and Gramm's UBS $77.2 billion from a $1.2 trillion secret Fed loan fund.

Gramm and Rubin were partners in what should be considered the crime of the century, speaking in moral and not legal terms since, as regards the financial world, the bad guys get to write the laws. Thanks to their efforts, which allowed the creation of the "too-big-to-fail banks" and a totally unregulated derivatives market in toxic home mortgage securities, we entered the Great Recession, but neither of its authors has ever been held seriously accountable for the enormous suffering he caused.

On the contrary, Gramm and Rubin's "just free Wall Street to do its thing" ideology still dominates the economic policies of both major political parties. Rubin's acolytes have controlled the Obama administration's economic strategy of saving Wall Street by betraying Main Street, and Gramm, who recently endorsed his former student at Texas A&M, Rick Perry, for president, remains the free-market-mayhem guru for Republicans. On Election Day, whoever wins, we lose.

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Week Two of ‘Street Heat’ in NYC

Protesters March in Manhattan,

Criticizing Wall Street,

Demanding ‘Tax the Rich!’

NEW YORK (Reuters, Sept 24 2011) - Several hundred marchers wound their way through the streets of lower Manhattan on Saturday in the latest of a string of protests over the past week against what demonstrators saw as corporate greed on Wall Street.

The demonstrations, participants said, were meant to criticize a financial system that they believed unfairly benefits corporations and the rich. They said the protests were inspired by demonstrations in Egypt and Spain.

The marchers carried signs spelling out their goals. "Tax the rich," one sign said. "We Want Money for Healthcare not Corporate Welfare," read another.

At least a dozen protesters were arrested during the largely peaceful march that lasted more than three hours and wound its way north from the financial district into the bustling Union Square area.

The demonstrators were mostly college-aged marchers carrying American flags and signs with anti-corporate slogans. Some beat drums, blew horns and chanted slogans as uniformed officers surrounded and videotaped them.

"Occupy Wall Street," they chanted, "all day, all week."

Organizers said their intent was to occupy Wall Street but, with metal barricades and swarms of police officers in front of the New York Stock Exchange, the closest they could get was Liberty Street, about three blocks away.

The first arrest came shortly after noon near the stock exchange. Several blocks away, another protester, who identified himself as Robert Stephens, was arrested after kneeling in the middle of the street outside the Chase Bank building.

"That's the bank that took my mother's home," said Stephens, a law student, before being handcuffed.

An online activist group called Adbusters organized the weeklong event and word spread via social media, yet the throngs of protesters it had hoped for failed to show up.

"I was kind of disappointed with the turnout," said Itamar Lilienthal, 19, a New York University student and marcher.

The protest appeared smaller than a "Day of Rage" a week ago that turned out to be largely peaceful.

Tourists along the march stopped to snap photos, and some acknowledged the demonstrators with waves and peace signs but few joined the protest.

Laurie Hull, who was visiting New York with her husband from Oregon, stopped to watch and said the couple empathized with the marchers after filing for bankruptcy and living without health insurance.

Near Union Square Park, more than two hours into the march, police attempted to corral the demonstrators behind police lines. But surging protesters weaved around the officers and moved onward, prompting shoving matches that ended with more arrests.

(Editing by Lauren Keiper and Cynthia Johnston)

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‘The Slate’ Tactic as Primary Challenge to Obama

Progressives Vow to Challenge

Obama in Democratic Primaries

By SinglePayerAction
Progressive America Rising via Common Dreams

Sept 19, 2011 - Progressive leaders led by Ralph Nader and Cornel West unveiled a proposal today to challenge President Obama in the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries in 2012.

The proposal, which has been endorsed by over 45 distinguished leaders, seeks to have a slate of six candidates run against President Obama, each representing a field in which Obama has never clearly staked a progressive claim or where he has drifted toward the corporatist right.

“Without debates by challengers inside the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries, the liberal/majoritarian agenda will be muted and ignored,” said Ralph Nader.

“The one-man Democratic primaries will be dull, repetitive, and draining of both voter enthusiasm and real bright lines between the two parties that excite voters,” Nader said.

A letter (full text below) is being sent to a list of distinguished elected officials, civic leaders, prominent members of academia and the NGO community who represent the fields of labor, poverty, military and foreign policy, health insurance and care, the environment, financial regulation, consumer protection, and civil, political and human rights/empowerment.

The list of potential candidates also includes progressive democrats who have held national and state office and have fought for progressive reforms.

“We need to put strong democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people” said Cornel West, author and Professor at Princeton University. “His administration has tilted too much toward Wall Street, we need policies that empower Main Street.”

The letter pronounces that without primary challengers, President Obama will never have to seriously articulate and defend his beliefs to his own party. Given the dangers our nation faces, that option is unacceptable.

“It’s time for the White House to get into the trench with organized labor and lend a hand. We know what we need, and we don’t need another campaign speech,” said Chris Townsend Political Action Director, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. “The absence of discussion or debate about the failed strategies of this administration only emboldens the corporate onslaught.”

The letter points to numerous decisions that have drawn criticism from Obama’s own Democratic Party including his decision to bail out Wall Street’s most profitable firms while failing to push for effective prosecution of the criminal behavior that triggered the recession, escalating the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan while simultaneously engaging in a unilateral war in Libya, his decision to extend the Bush era tax cuts, and his acquiescence to Republican extortion during the recent debt ceiling negotiations.

“Robust debate on the crucial issues facing our nation, including global environmental devastation, should characterize all races for national public office and the Democratic presidential primaries are no exception,” said Brent Blackwelder, President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth. “The public needs to hear whether a second term Obama will be like the first term Obama, or perhaps more like the 2008 presidential candidate Obama or something else altogether.”

The list of prominent leaders receiving the letter is being kept private as a courtesy.

Here’s the full letter and a partial list of endorsees:

Dear Colleague,

We write to you in light of recent deteriorating events in Washington, D.C. Misguided negotiations by the Obama Administration over increasing the debt ceiling willingly put our nation’s vital social services on the chopping block while Bush-era tax cuts remain untouched. Clearly the situation has reached crisis proportions. In response, an innovative plan has been developed to reintroduce a progressive agenda back into the political discussion during the 2012 election season.

Consider for a moment two very different scenarios for the 2012 Democratic presidential primaries.

The First scenario, President Obama advances without contest to a unanimous nomination. There is no recognizable Democratic challenger, no meaningful debate on key progressive issues or past broken promises, just a seamless, self-contained operation on its way to raising one billion dollars in campaign funds.

This scenario is what most observers expect. Mr. Obama will face neither opposition nor debate. He will have no need to clarify or defend his own polices or address the promises, kept and unkept, of his 2008 campaign. The president will not have to explain to his supporters why he directly escalated the war in Afghanistan and broadened America’s covert war in Pakistan, why he chose to engage in a military intervention in Libya, or why he has maintained the Bush Administration’s national security apparatus that allows for the suspension and abuse of constitutionally protected civil liberties--dismissing Congress all the way.

In an uncontested Democratic primary, President Obama will never have to justify his decision to bail out Wall Street’s most profitable firms while failing to push for effective prosecution of the criminal behavior that triggered the recession, or his failure to push for real financial reform. He will not have to defend his decision to extend the Bush era tax cuts nor justify his acquiescence to Republican extortion during the debt ceiling negotiations. He will not have to answer questions on how his Administration completely failed to protect homeowner’s losing their homes to predatory banks, or even mention the word “poverty,” as he failed to do in his most recent State of the Union Address, even as more and more Americas sink into financial despair.

He will never be challenged to fulfill his pledge to actively pursue a Labor-supported card check, or his promise to increase the federal minimum wage or why he took single payer off the table after he said he believes in it. The American labor movement, facing an unprecedented onslaught by the Right will not have the opportunity to voice its concerns and rally around a supportive candidate.

The president will not be pressed to answer how he spent four years in office without addressing the ongoing destabilization of our climate or advocating a coherent and ecologically sound energy policy including defending his position on nuclear power and so called clean coal. Nor will he discuss regulatory agency deficiencies in enforcing corporate law and order in an era marked by a corporate crime wave having devastating economic consequences on workers and taxpayers and their savings and pensions. There will be no opportunity for the Hispanic and other relevant communities to speak out on immigration reform even as the Republicans continue to use it as a weapon of political demagoguery.

Add your own concerns, disappointments, and frustrated hopes to this list of what will surely be left off the table during an express-lane primary. The valid disagreements within the Democratic Party, let alone the goals of progressives, will be completely overlooked. The media will gleefully cover the media circus that is sure to be the Republican primaries, magnifying every minor gaffe and carefully cataloging every iteration and argument of the radical right. The cameras will cover the Democratic side only for orchestrated events, the whiff of scandal, and to offer commentary on how the campaign is positioning itself for the general election.

The summation of this process will be a tediously scripted National Convention, deprived of robust exchange and well-wrought policy. And here the danger is clear: not only will progressive principles past and present be betrayed but large sections of voters will feel bored with and alienated from the democratic candidate. This would not serve the president’s campaign, our goals, or the nation’s needs.

Thankfully, there is another option. This second scenario would allow for robust and exciting discussion and debate during the primary season while posing little risk to the president other than to encourage him take more progressive stands. It would also accomplish the critical task of energizing the Progressive base to turn out on Election Day.

Imagine: A slate of six candidates announces its decision to run in the Democratic primaries. Each of the candidates is recognizable, articulate, and a person of acknowledged achievement. These contenders would each represent a field in which Obama has never clearly staked a progressive claim or where he has drifted toward the corporatist right. These fields would include: labor, poverty, military and foreign policy, health insurance and care, the environment, financial regulation, civil and political rights/empowerment, and consumer protection.

Without primary challengers, President Obama will never have to seriously articulate and defend his beliefs to his own party. Given the dangers our nation faces, that option is unacceptable. The slate is the best method for challenging the president for a number of reasons:

The slate can indicate that its intention is not to defeat the president (a credible assertion given their number of voting columns) but to rigorously debate his policy stands.

The slate will collectively give voice to the fundamental principles and agendas that represent the soul of the Democratic Party, which has increasingly been deeply tarnished by corporate influence.

The slate will force Mr. Obama to pay attention to many more issues affecting many more Americans. He will be compelled to develop powerful, organic, and fresh language as opposed to stale poll-driven “themes.”

The slate will exercise a pull on Obama toward his liberal/progressive base (in the face of the countervailing pressure from “centrists” and corporatists) and leave that base with a feeling of positive empowerment.

The slate will excite the Democratic Party faithful and essential small-scale donors, who (despite the assertions of cable punditry) are essentially liberal and progressive.

A slate that is serious, experienced, and well-versed in policy will display a sobering contrast with the alarmingly weak, hysterical, and untested field taking shape on the right.

The slate will command more media attention for the Democratic primaries and the positive progressive discussions within the party as opposed to what will certainly be an increasingly extremist display on the right.

The slate makes it more difficult for party professionals to induce challengers to drop out of the race and more difficult for Mr. Obama to refuse or sidestep debates in early primaries.

The slate, if announced, will receive free legal advice and adequate contributions for all prudent expenses in moving about the country. The paperwork is far simpler than what confronts ballot-access-blocked third party and independent candidates. For the slate will be composed of registered Democrats campaigning inside the Party Primaries.

This opportunity to revive and restore the progressive infrastructure of the Democratic Party must not be missed. A slate of Democratic candidates challenging the president’s substance and record is an historic opportunity. Certainly, President Obama will not be pleased to face a list of primary challengers, but the comfort of the incumbent is far less important than the vitality and strength of his party’s Progressive ideas and ideals. President Obama should emerge from the primary a stronger candidate as a result.

This letter is sent to several dozen accomplished persons known to identify with the Democratic Party voting line for a variety of reasons. We ask that you join us in becoming an official endorsee of the slate proposal. All endorsements are made as individuals and organizational or institutional affiliations are for identification purposes only. Your endorsement will be a vital signal of support and will help in compiling the strongest slate of candidates possible when we send out the letter to the candidate list, yet to be finalized.

Second, can you suggest accomplished people to contact who may be interested in joining the slate as a candidate in one of the following fields: labor, poverty, military and foreign policy,health insurance and care, the environment, financial regulation, civil and political rights/empowerment, and consumer protection. This can be yourself if you feel it would be appropriate.

Endorsements will be accepted on a rolling basis. All submissions of endorsement or additional questions and comments for the can be directed to Colin O’Neil at colinoneil@gmail.com or 703-599-3474. We appreciate your speedy reply.

Thank you.

James Abourezk Former U.S. Senator, South Dakota

Gar Alperovitz, Professor University of Maryland, Co-Founder Democracy Collaborative

Norman Birnbaum Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University Law Center

Dr. Brent Blackwelder President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth

Ellen H. Brown Lawyer and Author of Web of Debt

Edgar Stuart Cahn Professor of Law, University of the District of Columbia Co-founder Legal Services for the Poor

Pat Choate 1996 Reform Party Vice President Candidate

Charles Cray Director of the Center for Corporate Policy

Peter Coyote Actor, Author and Director

Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director, Organic Consumers Association

Charles Derber, Professor, Boston College

Ronnie Dugger Founder, Alliance for Democracy

John Fullerton President, Capital Institute

Rebecca and James Goodman, Northwood Farm

Randy Hayes Director, Foundation Earth Rainforest Action Network Founder

Chris Hedges Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist of the New York Times and Author

Hazel Henderson, Author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy President, Ethical Markets Media, LLC.

Jean Houston Psychologist, Anthropologist and Author of The Possible Human and The Possible Society

Nicholas Johnson Former Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission Former Administrator, Federal Maritime Commission

Alan F. Kay Author of Spot the Spin and Locating Consensus for Democracy

Harry Kelber The Labor Educator

Andrew Kimbrell Executive Director, Center for Food Safety & International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA)

Jonathan Kozol Educator, Author of Savage Inequalities

Lewis Lapham Former Editor, Harper’s Magazine

Leland Lehrman, Partner, Fund Balance

Rabbi Michael Lerner Editor, Tikkun Magazine Chair, Network of Spiritual Progressives

Dr. Richard Lippin, MD Physician Forecaster, Board Certified in Preventive Medicine and Advocate for both Individual and Institutional Prevention

Robert D. Manning Founder and CEO, Responsible Debt Relief Institute Author of Credit Card Nation

Dr. Samuel Metz, MD Mad As Hell Doctors, founding member Physicians for a National Health Plan, member of Portland chapter

Carol Miller, Community Activist, New Mexico

E. Ethelbert Miller, Board Chair Institute for Policy Studies

Ralph Nader Citizen Advocate

Michael Parenti Author

John Passacantando Former Executive Director, Greenpeace USA

Erich Pica President of Friends of the Earth

Vijay Prashad Author and Professor, Trinity College

Nomi Prins Author and former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Marcus Raskin Author of The Common Good and former White House Advisor

Andy Shallal “Democracy’s Restauranteur” and Owner of Bus Boys& Poets

Michelle Shocked Musician

Chris Townsend Political Action Director, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)

Gore Vidal Author and Political Activist

Rabbi Arthur Waskow Chair, The Shalom Center

Harvey Wasserman Author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth

Cornel West Professor and Author of Race Matters

Quentin D. Young MD National Coordinator, Physicians for a National Health Program Join the discussion:

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Far Right Exposing Its Own Class Hatreds

Shameless Opposition to the Jobs Bill Reveals

The GOP's Deep Hatred of the Working Class

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want to have your class consciousness raised a few notches, all you have to do over the next few weeks is listen to the Republicans in Congress offer up their shameless commentary rejecting President's Obama's jobs bill.

This week's doozy came from Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, who was outraged that capitalists were being restricted from discriminating in hiring the unemployed, in favor of only hiring people who already had jobs elsewhere. I kid you not. Here's the quote:

"We're adding in this bill a new protected class called 'unemployed,'" Gohmert declared in the House Sept. 13, 2011. "I think this will help trial lawyers who are not having enough work. We heard from our friends across the aisle, 14 million people out of work -- that's 14 million new clients."

One hardly knows were to begin. 

First, the Jobs Bill does no such thing as creating a 'new protected class.' It only curbs a wrongly discriminatory practice.

Second, so what if it did? Americans who uphold the Constitution, the 14th Amendment' equal protection clause, and the expansion of democracy and the franchise generally, will see the creation of 'protected classes' as hard-won progressive steps forward from the times of the Divine Right of Kings.

Third, if Gohmert had any first-hand knowledge of the unemployed, he'd know they usually can't afford lawyers, especially when the courts are stacked against them.

Fourth, to create even more confusion, Gohmert raced to the House clerk to submit his own 'Jobs Bill' before Obama's, but with a similar name. Its content was a hastily scribbled two-page screed consisting of nothing but cuts in corporate taxes.

What's really going on here is becoming clearer every day. The GOP cares about one thing: destroying Obama's presidency regardless of the cost. They don't even care if its hurts capitalism's own interests briefly, not to mention damaging the well being of everyone else.  Luckily, Obama is finally calling them out in public-although far too politely for my taste.

The irony will likely emerge if and when they ever do take Obama down. I'd bet good money that a good number of the GOP bigwigs would then turn on a dime and support many of the same measures they're now opposing.

But most of them, especially the far right, would still likely press on with their real aim, a full-throated neoliberal reactionary thrust that repeals the Great Society's Medicaid and Medicare, the New Deal's Social Security and Wagner Act, and every progressive measure in between.  Their idea of making the U.S labor market 'competitive' and U.S. business 'confident' is to make the whole country more like Texas, with its record volume of minimum wage work and poverty, and then Texas more like Mexico-the race to the bottom. They're not happy with 12% unionization; they want zero percent, where all of us are defenseless and completely under the thumbs of our 'betters'.

In brief, prepare for more wars and greater austerity.

If you think I'm exaggerating, over the next months observe how the national GOP is trying to rig the 2012 elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan and a few other big states. Our Electoral College system is bad enough, but they are going to 'reform' it to make it worse by attaching electoral votes to congressional districts, rather than statewide popular majorities. This would mean Obama could win the popular vote statewide, but the majority of electoral votes would still go to the GOP. Add that to their new 'depress the vote' requirements involving picture IDs, which are aimed at the poor and the elderly, and you'll see their fear and hatred of the working class.

We've always had government with undue advantages for the rich. But just watch them in this round as they go all out to make it even more so. We have to call it out for what it really is, and put their schemes where the sun doesn't shine.

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Jobs Programs: The Right and Wrong Turns

The Hot Potato Too Many Beltway Wonks Avoid:

The Need to Tie Job Creation to Industrial Policy

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want to be a good policy advocate for jobs these days, two starting points will help you a lot. One is to take off your national blinders and see the economy globally. The second is to grasp how the need for revenues to finance the creation of new jobs can best be filled by increasing taxes on unproductive wealth.

A good example of the problem is Robert's Samuelson's 'Job Creation 101' op-ed column in the Sept 12 Washington Post. If we simply follow his lesson plan, we would end up creating new jobs in the third world--and doing so mainly at the expense of the wrong people at home.

Samuelson begins his argument wisely enough by stressing how increasing demand for goods and services creates jobs, and government has to have a hand in it. But then he goes astray:

"If government taxed, borrowed or regulated less, that money would stay with households and businesses, which would spend it on something else and, thereby, create other jobs. Politics determines how much private income we devote to public services.

"To this observation, there's one glaring exception. In a slump, government can create jobs by borrowing when the private economy isn't spending."

On the first point, tweaking taxes so both people and businesses have more cash to spend glosses over the matter of where and how the money is spent. Using extra income to pay down your Visa Card doesn't help job creation much. And if you spend it at Wal-Mart or other big box stores, you'll create some demand to hire more workers in China or Malaysia, but not much here.

On the second point, it's not always wise to create jobs simply by borrowing. It certainly adds to the revenues of the banks and bondholders.  But it's much smarter to go after unproductive pools of capital with progressive taxation. The proposal for a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculators is an excellent example.

The rule-of-thumb is to tax activities you want to discourage, such as unproductive gambling in derivatives, while subsidizing efforts you want to encourage, such as new green manufacturing startups. It's called 'industrial policy,' and it's why some countries that have one, like China and Germany, are weathering the economic storms better than others.

If Obama's new jobs program is going to be thwarted by a hostile Congress anyway, those politicians who are serious about creating jobs would do well to fight for the best options-direct government programs that fund increasing local demand for local labor and raw materials.  If we had every county in the country funded to build a wind farm or solar array as a public power utility, it would be a good start. So would the building of the new and massive 'Smart Grid' power lines for clean and green energy.

 
When finance capital's opposition in Congress rears its head to crush something that makes perfect sense to everyone else, then we'll learn exactly who is part of the problem and who is part of the solution. If we get political clarity here in a massive way, we'll be in a much better position to assemble the popular power required to get what we really need.

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AFL-CIO to Obama: This Is What a Real Jobs Plan Looks Like

By Mike Hall

AFL-CIO Blog via Progressive America Rising

The nation’s ailing economy needs a prescription powerful enough to heal the jobs crisis and America’s working families need an independent political voice that’s not beholden to parties or politicians, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

At a Labor Day press conference this afternoon, Trumka unveiled a six-point “America Wants to Work” jobs and economy initiative “that is serious and reflects the scale of the crisis we face.”  The plan includes:

    Rebuilding the nation’s transportation and energy infrastructure;
     Reviving U.S. manufacturing and ending the exportation of U.S. jobs;
     --  Putting people to work in local communities;
    Helping states and local governments to prevent layoffs and cuts to public services;
    Extending unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and helping homeowners keep their homes; and
    Reforming Wall Street so it helps Main Street create jobs.

Here’s  detailed look:

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