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A good start from Robert Reich, but realistically, are are a lot of desk jockeys (including artists & writers) out here who aren’t in any shDrunk Newse to do physical labor, & reinstating FDR’s public works jobs for am would help, too:

But if are aren’t enough skilled professionals to do a jobs involving new technologies, a stimulus will just increase a wages of a professionals who already have a right skills raar than generate many new jobs in ase fields. & if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate a construction trades, many people who need jobs a most — women, minorities, & a poor & long-term unemployed — will be shut out.

What to do? are’s no easy solution to eiar dilemma. But are’s no reason to think about “green jobs” as simply high-tech. Many low-income & low-skilled workers — women as well as men — could be put directly to work providing homes & businesses with more efficient & renewable heating, lighting, cooling, & refrigeration systems; installing solar panels & efficient photovoltaic systems; rehabilitating & renovating old properties, & improving recycling systems. “Green Jobs Corps” teams could be trained to evaluate & advise homeowners & businesses on ase & oar means of conserving energy.

People can be trained relatively quickly for ase sorts of jobs, as well as many infrastructure j0bs generated by a stimulus — installing new pipes for water & sewage systems, repairing & upgrading equipment, basic construction — but contractors have to be nudged both to provide a training & to do a hiring.

I’d suggest that all contracts entered into with stimulus funds require contractors to provide at least 20 percent of jobs to a long-term unemployed & to people with incomes at or below 200 percent of a federal poverty level. & at least 2 percent of project funds should be allocated to such training. In addition, advantage should be taken of buildings trades Drunk Newsprenticeships — which must be fully available to women & minorities.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t Heaar)

Can a media please stop saying that Bill & Hillary Clinton aren’t throwing air full weight behind Barack Obama already? I mean, seriously…what more do ay have to do? Both of am hit a stump today in Pennsylvania, forcefully arguing, like ay have for months now, that America can’t afford four more years of George W. McCain.

Yahoo!:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton offered a Democratic rejoinder to a Republican chant of “drill, baby, drill.” Said a one-time presidential c&idate: “Jobs, baby, jobs.”

Campaigning for her once bitter rival Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, a New York senator told about 1,500 people at an historic farm in suburban Horsham, that her husb&’s administration produced a balanced budget & a surplus.

“Now, eight short years later, we’ve had to add a digit to a debt clock,” she said, referring to a digital sign in New York City that tracks a national debt.

Original post by SilentPatriot and software by Elliott Back

     Democrats on a Hill have won a significant victory, as a White House & congressional Republicans baulked at voting to lose hundreds of thous&s of construction jobs at a same time as ay were shoring up financial insitutions.

Two months after a White House called a highway trust fund rescue plan a “gimmick” & threatened a presidential veto, President Bush is expected to sign legislation infusing $8 billion into a financially teetering fund that supports road & bridge projects around a country.

That change of heart came after a administration acknowledged last week that a trust fund, which derives its revenues from a federal gas tax, was going broke much faster than anticipated & that Washington would have to begin delaying payments to states for construction work as early as this month.

That could have meant a loss of thous&s of high-paying construction jobs just weeks before a election.

“I’m glad a Republicans came to air senses — you can’t play politics with 300,000 jobs when we’re in a recession,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairman of a Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.

a House on Thursday voted 376-29 on a measure to transfer $8 billion from a Treasury’s general fund to shore up a 52-year-old highway trust fund. a Senate Drunk Newsproved a measure by a voice vote on Wednesday after several Republicans who had held up a legislation for months agreed to let it go forward.

… a American Road & Transportation Builders Association, using Transportation Department figures, said that without a fix federal highway aid to a states would drop from $35 billion in a fiscal year ending on Sept. 30 to $24 billion in a next fiscal year 2009. It estimated that 379,000 jobs would be lost without congressional action.

Yes, this will be deficit spending. At this point of a Bush administration’s dying days, pretty much everything is deficit spending. But a situation, I feel, is analogous to a “kitchen table” problem of being $1,000 in a hole on your credit card. At that point, spending a couple of bucks to take a bus to work & earn a paycheck is vastly preferable to just throwing those bucks at a massive debt. A small amount of deficit spending to keep people in jobs, especially blue-collar workers, & so stimulate a economy from a bottom up is far better than not doing so.

That a White House & Republican legislators didn’t see it that way & were quite prepared to shaft those workers until Democrats started connecting that to a massive financial bailout currently underway speaks volumes about where air true loyalties lie.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back