Like a Metal Fan

by Molly Ivors

Continuing to fill in for the ailing Thers, I break a few WhiskeyFire rules and post (almost) without snark or profanity, because I am so pumped.

When progressives and conservatives look back at the scope of the last 125 years or so, they must see very different landscapes. In the age of the robber barons, I see grievous inequality where they see entrepreneurship. I see a rising interest in sharing the wealth of society where they see the dangerous Bolshevism of the progressive era. I see good government where they see that whacked-out cripple with the gay wife who did so much to relieve so many. I see what Krugman has called The Great Compression where they see the dangers of the union movement and Leave it to Beaver.

It's, umm, different.

Income inequality is rising in America. The poor remain mired in dead-end jobs, without health care. So do many of the middle class. People who worked hard and did everything right, worked much harder than their parents or grandparents, in fact, are still slipping behind. We do okay, but two incomes with doctorates barely buys what one income with a BA did in my childhood. Meanwhile, the unspeakable, obscene wealth of hedge-fund managers and real estate magnates and people who don't actually, you know, DO anything, continues to grow. Am I bitter about this? Absolutely. Am I jealous? Well, let's just say that if wealth were tied to how many people one actually helps in a day, the good one might do the world, I might be able to buy a butt-ugly penthouse that hangs over my neighbor's property, too. * But, you know, I wouldn't. We have enough, and more than many. Would that others could be happy with the same.

I'm human enough to feel guilty that my stability isn't shared by others, and to think about ways in which prosperity might be more broadly spread.

One of my dream ideas of late has been a WPA-style program designed to develop green technologies in every community in America. It's bold, and would take a lot of work and resources, but it looks like Al Gore is developing contacts which might make such a thing possible. Imagine the number of jobs which could be created when we begin assessing the most appropriate means of clean energy generation for each county or municipality and calculating and then producing the tools needed to achieve that goal. Manufacturing would be reborn in America, and new jobs would be created: wind-farm and micro-hydro maintenance positions, electrical retrofitters, geothermal engineers, and plumbers installing  heat pumps to lower the amount of energy required to heat or cool buildings.

In addition, a reformed WPA could start to take a crack at repairing the woeful state of the American infrastructure--not just the highway and bridge system but rebuilding the rail system for practical passenger transport. We had a lovely conversation at The Crack Den the other day about the relative economy of rail for both cargo and passenger service; if nothing else, it would start to wean us from our petroleum dependency and create new markets.

That's why I was so cheered to read this editorial in the NYTimes today.

The New Deal public works programs are mainly remembered for giving jobs to victims of the Great Depression, but as Robert D. Leighninger Jr. argues in his recent book “Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal,” they also transformed the American landscape and greatly improved the nation.

The story of the 1930s public works programs is timely again, because much of America is falling apart. The deadly collapse of a Minnesota highway bridge in August shined a light on the poor state of the nation’s bridges, many thousands of which are “structurally deficient” by federal standards. Georgia’s failure to build enough reservoirs has contributed to a water crisis that could cripple metropolitan Atlanta. We should be thinking today about replicating some of the successes of the Depression-era programs.

The P.W.A., the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps were primarily undertaken to put people to work at a time when the unemployment rate approached 25 percent, and to restart a woeful economy. Forward-looking officials like Harry Hopkins, the relief administrator, and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins argued, however, that public works should be directed to socially useful programs.
..........

Some projects were high-profile — notably the great hydroelectric dams and the presidential retreat at Camp David — but many more focused on the unglamorous mechanics of modern living, like water mains, pump stations, and sewage treatment plants. The W.P.A. alone built 78,000 bridges and viaducts and improved 46,000 more. It constructed 572,000 miles of rural roads and 67,000 miles of urban streets. It also built or improved 39,000 schools, 2,500 hospitals and 12,800 playgrounds.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, Roosevelt’s favorite, sent hundreds of thousands of young people into the countryside. They landscaped, and made accessible, sites like the battlefields at Gettysburg and Appomattox, and cleared the way for Virginia’s Skyline Drive. Most of their time was spent on tree planting, flood control, soil erosion efforts and fire prevention.

We have needs in this country: for a shared purpose, for jobs, for involving young people in civic life, for infrastructure reconstruction, for new construction which will enable us to move into a sustainable future. Why should we NOT do this? Tell me strapped state and local economies wouldn't beg for new schools, new hospitals, new streets. Don't give me Broderific cries for unity which amount to rubber-stamping acts of a megalomaniacal freak with a scorched-earth agenda. We need a project. Jeebus freaking christ, people. Open your eyes. And it goes without saying, but a Republican won't do this.

It's ambitious and bold, I know. We've been told so often that we have no money for anything except war that we believe it. But that's not true. We're no worse off now that we were in 1932 (but, you know, not that much better). Roll up your sleeves; we've got work to do.

* As it transpires, Valhalla (yes, that's what it's really called) is a green building. But green doesn't have to be ugly or rude, you know.

Comments

[SamFromUtah]

No argument from me. I'd love to see that kind of thing happen again. It gives me hope to think about a new round of New Deal-type programs, and the American public may be coming around to realizing it's a good idea, what with the unsafe bridges and poor social safety net and all.

Even building sewers is a far better source of national pride than blowing the crap out of other countries.

[coozledad]

Among those projects there ought to be some effort to repair the economic damage done to small towns by freaking Wal-Mart and the flight of manufacturing jobs overseas. I live near a beautiful old town that's essentially vacant, and its few surviving businesses have had to move out onto a hideous suburban strip close to the big box stores. If our buildings are in fact, part of what determines our national character, then we're toast.

[Vertalio]

It may be easier to sell such ideas once the dollar falls off the tabletop and nations begin buying oil in Euros and Reals.
Let's assume the Regressives intend to lose this election cycle, leaving Dems holding the bag of boggy wars, housing slumps, devalued dollars, crushing interest on war loans, demoralized and decimated government bureaus, and diminished world standing.
Thanks, guys.
One thing they also leave: an untrammeled executive, able to move the great leaky raft of government as it will.
All we need is a brilliant and wise and compassionate POTUS.

Um...like...um...

[Poicephalus]

Get better Thers!
Love to Molly I.!!!!!
C

[Molly Ivors]

Among those projects there ought to be some effort to repair the economic damage done to small towns by freaking Wal-Mart and the flight of manufacturing jobs overseas.

coozledad,
A town near here is having a major crisis, because WalMart wants to come in (it would be the second in the area, and we have a Sam's Club to boot), but their selected location is a public park within which is located one of the dozen or so carousels donated by a paternalist industrialist in days gone by. In order to keep WalMart, the city fathers have to figure out a way to move the carousel, or just destroy it altogether.

Somehow, that seems symbolic.

But power generation, with apologies to Enron, works best when it's a local business. We've seen these huge interlocking grids go dark, and it's not pretty. The reason power has had to travel is because it's so polluting, but that obviously wouldn't be a consideration here. A small, clean power source every ten miles would be far more efficient (in terms of lost kwh) and create more jobs than a coal plant powering hundreds of miles.

[coozledad]

I've been thinking about this, and it occurs to me the city I was talking about(Danville,VA), as well as numerous small 19th century manufacturing centers in the northeast were river-powered, and switched from mechanical power to local electric pretty handily in the late 19th to early twentieth century. These small hydroelectric plants could easily be revitalized to reduce power costs to local businesses.

At least your rivers are still flowing.
Ours, not so much.