When It Comes To WAR (And Defending Its Endless "Justifications") Never Trust A Politician--And That Especially Goes For the President!

All,

When it comes to WAR and its endless nearly always thoroughly fabricated "justifications" NEVER TRUST A POLITICIAN (and yeah, brothers and sisters, that caveat definitely includes the President of the United States!)...As usual, stay tuned and DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE...

Kofi

The New York Times
BREAKING NEWS ALERT
NYTimes.com
 
BREAKING NEWS
Friday, November 21, 2014

In Secret, Obama Extended U.S. Military Role in Afghanistan Combat

President Obama signed a secret order in recent weeks authorizing a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year.

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”
 
But Mr. Obama’s secret order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/us/politics/in-secret-obama-extends-us-role-in-afghan-combat.html?_r=0

POLITICS

In a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
November 21, 2014
New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year.

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”

The decision to change that mission was the result of a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.

The internal discussion took place against the backdrop of this year’s collapse of Iraqi security forces in the face of the advance of the Islamic State as well as the mistrust between the Pentagon and the White House that still lingers since Mr. Obama’s 2009 decision to “surge” 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan. Some of the president’s civilian advisers say that decision was made only because of excessive Pentagon pressure, and some military officials say it was half-baked and made with an eye to domestic politics.

Mr. Obama’s decision, made during a White House meeting in recent weeks with his senior national security advisers, came over the objection of some of his top civilian aides, who argued that American lives should not be put at risk next year in any operations against the Taliban — and that they should have only a narrow counterterrorism mission against Al Qaeda.

But the military pushed back, and generals both at the Pentagon and in Afghanistan urged Mr. Obama to define the mission more broadly to allow American troops to attack the Taliban, the Haqqani network and other militants if intelligence revealed that the extremists were threatening American forces in the country.

The president’s order under certain circumstances would also authorize American airstrikes to support Afghan military operations in the country and ground troops to occasionally accompany Afghan troops on operations against the Taliban.

“There was a school of thought that wanted the mission to be very limited, focused solely on Al Qaeda,” one American official said.

Continue reading the main story
But, the official said, “the military pretty much got what it wanted.”

On Friday evening, a senior administration official insisted that American forces would not carry out regular patrols or conduct offensive missions against the Taliban next year.

“We will no longer target belligerents solely because they are members of the Taliban,” the official said. “To the extent that Taliban members directly threaten the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan or provide direct support to Al Qaeda, however, we will take appropriate measures to keep Americans safe.”

In effect, Mr. Obama’s decision largely extends much of the current American military role for another year. Mr. Obama and his aides were forced to make a decision because the 13-year old mission, Operation Enduring Freedom, is set to end on Dec. 31.

The matter of the military’s role in Afghanistan in 2015 has “been a really, really contentious issue for a long time, even more contentious than troop numbers,” said Vikram Singh, who worked on Afghanistan policy both at the State Department and the Pentagon during the Obama administration and is now at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

American officials said that while the debate over the nature of the American military’s role beginning in 2015 has lasted for years, two issues in particular have shifted the debate in recent months.

The first is the advance of Islamic State forces across northern Iraq and the collapse of the Iraqi Army, which has led to criticism of Mr. Obama for a military pullout of Iraq that left Iraqi troops ill-prepared to protect their soil.

This has intensified criticism of Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, which Republican and even some Democratic lawmakers have said adheres to an overly compressed timeline that would hamper efforts to train and advise Afghan security forces — potentially leaving them vulnerable to attack from Taliban fighters and other extremists in the meantime.

This new arrangement could blunt some of that criticism, although it is also likely to be criticized by some Democratic lawmakers who will say that Mr. Obama allowed the military to dictate the terms of the endgame in Afghanistan.

The second factor is the transfer of power in Afghanistan to President Ashraf Ghani, who has been far more accepting of an expansive American military mission in his country than his predecessor, Hamid Karzai.

According to a senior Afghan official and a former Afghan official who maintains close ties to his former colleagues, in recent weeks both Mr. Ghani and his new national security adviser, Hanif Atmar, have requested that the United States continue to fight Taliban forces in 2015 — as opposed to being strictly limited to operations against Al Qaeda. Mr. Ghani also recently lifted the limits on American airstrikes and joint raids that Mr. Karzai had put in place, the Afghan officials said.

The new Afghan president has already developed a close working relationship with Gen. John F. Campbell, the allied commander in Afghanistan.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
 
“The difference is night and day,” General Campbell said in an email about the distinction between dealing with Mr. Ghani and Mr. Karzai. “President Ghani has reached out and embraced the international community. We have a strategic opportunity we haven’t had previously with President Karzai.”

American military officials saw the easing of the limits on airstrikes imposed by Mr. Karzai as especially significant, even if the restrictions were not always honored. During the summer, Afghan generals occasionally ignored Mr. Karzai’s directive and requested American air support when their forces encountered trouble.

Now it appears such requests will no longer have to be kept secret.

One senior American military officer said that in light of Mr. Obama’s decision, the Air Force expects to use F-16 fighters, B-1B bombers and Predator and Reaper drones to go after the Taliban in 2015.

“Our plans are to maintain an offensive capability in Afghanistan,” he said.

The officer said he expected the Pentagon to issue an order in the next several weeks detailing the military’s role in Afghanistan in 2015 under Operation Resolute Support, which will become the new name for the Afghanistan war.

The Pentagon plans to take the lead role in advising and training Afghan forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan, with Italy also operating in the east, Germany in the north and Turkey in Kabul.

But by the end of next year, half of the 9,800 American troops would leave Afghanistan. The rest would be consolidated in Kabul and Bagram, and then leave by the end of 2016, allowing Mr. Obama to say he ended the Afghan war before leaving office.

America’s NATO allies are expected to keep about 4,000 troops of their own in Afghanistan in 2015. The allies are expected to follow the American lead in consolidating and withdrawing their troops.

The United States could still have military advisers in Kabul after 2016 who would work out of an office of security cooperation at the United States Embassy. But the administration has not said how large that contingent might be and what its exact mission would be.

And it remains unclear how the continuing chaos in Iraq — and Mr. Obama’s decision to send troops back there — will affect the administration’s plans for an Afghanistan exit.

As the president said in the Rose Garden in May, “I think Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them.”

Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting.

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2010/10/obamas-war-lecture-by-tariq-ali-on.html

FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES

(Orignally posted on October 5, 2010):

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

"Obama's War" : Video Lecture by Tariq Ali on Afghanistan (Parts 1-4)--April 19, 2010

TARIQ ALI

(b. 1943)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2010/04/19/tariq-ali/obamas-war

All,

Please click on the videolink (Parts 1-4) above to view and listen to Tariq Ali's very important lecture from April 2010 on the Afghanistan war and the highly dubious military role of the Obama administration in an obviously "unwinnable" war that even Vice President Joe Biden -- of all people!-- privately defines as a "Vietnam like disaster". After nine years of occupation (which makes it the longest declared war in American history-- [NOTE: The Vietnam war lasted over 10 years in duration but was never formally and officially declared or approved by Congress beforehand as an American war]-- the U.S. still finds itself deeply mired in a massive quagmire of a region that historically has roundly defeated every delusional and stupidly ambitious imperialist invader from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union...Check it out...

Kofi

Tariq Ali’s new book, The Obama Syndrome, will be published by Verso in October.
 
Obama’s War
by Tariq Ali
London Review of Books

During his presidential campaign, President Obama pledged more troops, ground intrusions and drone attacks to end the war in Afghanistan. This is a promise he has kept, but it won’t work. In this lecture Tariq Ali talks about why the war is unwinnable and can only lead to a bloody stalemate.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull prevented Tariq Ali from delivering this lecture at the School of Visual Arts in New York on 19 April as planned; it was instead broadcast from a studio in London.

The other events in this series are also available to watch online. J’accuse: Dreyfus in Our Time: a lecture by Jacqueline Rose; The Author in the Age of the Internet: a panel discussion featuring John Lanchester, Nicholas Spice, Colm Tóibín, Mary-Kay Wilmers and James Wood.

Posted by Kofi Natambu at 2:48 AM
Labels: Afghanistan, American Foreign Policy, President Obama, War on Terrorism

                                         

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2009/12/president-obama-and-the-miltary.html

FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES

(Originally posted on December 1, 2009):

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

President Obama and the Military Quagmire in Afghanistan: The Looming Catastrophe

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/world/asia/01orders.html?_r=1&nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1
 

All,

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this catastrophic decision on the President's part to cave in to the manipulative self serving demands of the Pentagon and his own military advisors and staff can only lead to absolute DISASTER. Afghanistan is nothing but a horrific quagmire that will be a cesspool of failure and defeat for Obama and his administration. More importantly it will be an even greater burden and mindless "sacrifice" for the rest of us. By allowing the venal likes of Dick Cheney and bumbling irresponsible U.S. generals like McChrystal (the main culprit behind the ugly and heinous attempt by the U.S. Army and the Bushwhacker administration to publically cover-up  the tragic "friendly fire" death of Pvt. Pat Tillman) to essentially "direct" the country's ongoing wars despite their own overwhelming failures and thoroughly corrupt and immoral actions, Obama has foolishly allowed himself to be caught in a Vietnam-like trap that-- if he doesn't wake up from the emptyheaded macho posturing at some point --very soon is going to destroy his Presidency. Like in Vietnam NO GOOD CAN POSSIBLY RESULT FROM THIS ACTION. Yeah folks this decision is just that bad. WORSE THAN BAD...

Kofi

Obama Issues Order for More Troops in Afghanistan
By ERIC SCHMITTDecember 1, 2009

New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan as he prepared to address the nation Tuesday night to explain what may be one of the most defining decisions of his presidency.

Mr. Obama conveyed his decision to military leaders late Sunday afternoon during a meeting in the Oval Office and then spent Monday phoning foreign counterparts, including the leaders of Britain, France and Russia.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, declined to say how many additional troops would be deployed, but senior administration officials previously have said that about 30,000 will go in coming months, bringing the total American force to about 100,000.

On top of previous reinforcements already sent this year, the troop buildup will nearly triple the American military presence in Afghanistan that Mr. Obama inherited when he took office and represents a high-stakes gamble by a new commander in chief that he can turn around an eight-year-old war that his own generals fear is getting away from the United States.

The speech he plans to deliver at the United States Military Academy at West Point at 8 p.m. will be the first test of his ability to rally an American public that according to polls has grown sour on the war, as well as his fellow Democrats in Congress who have expressed deep skepticism about a deeper involvement in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gibbs told reporters at the White House that Mr. Obama would discuss in the speech how he intended to pay for the plan — a major concern of his Democratic base — and would make clear that he had a time frame for winding down the American involvement in the war.

“This is not an open-ended commitment,” Mr. Gibbs said.

The administration was sending its special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, to Brussels on Tuesday to begin briefing NATO and European allies about the policy.

He will be joined at NATO headquarters there on Friday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who will brief NATO foreign ministers in his capacity as the senior allied commander.

Before leaving for West Point on Tuesday, Mr. Obama will meet with more than two dozen Congressional leaders at the White House to discuss his plan. Mr. Obama spent much of Monday calling allied leaders.

He spoke for 40 minutes with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who signaled that France was not in a position to commit more troops. There are currently 3,750 French soldiers and 150 police officers in Afghanistan.

“He said France would stay at current troop levels for as long as it takes to stabilize Afghanistan,” said an official briefed on the exchange, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private diplomatic exchange.

Instead of troops, Mr. Sarkozy told Mr. Obama that France was putting its focus on a conference in London sponsored by Germany and Britain to rally support for Afghanistan, officials in Washington and France said.

The French defense minister, Hervé Morin, publicly confirmed the French position on Monday, saying, “There is no question for now of raising numbers.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said Monday that Britain would send 500 additional troops to Afghanistan in early December, raising the number of British troops there to 10,000.

The announcement was closely coordinated between the governments in London and Washington, the two largest troop providers in the 43-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan. Mr. Brown spoke to Mr. Obama by video link after his announcement in the House of Commons.

Mr. Obama also called President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, and he met at the White House with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia.

Administration officials said that Mr. Obama in his speech would lower American ambitions for the rate of training Afghan soldiers and the national police, a position that could put him at odds with some senior lawmakers.

They have been pressing to expand and accelerate the training, to speed the day when Afghan forces could assume more security duties and American troops could begin to withdraw.

In his strategic assessment, General McChrystal called for increasing the Afghan Army and the national police force by a combined 400,000 people.

But after originally embracing this approach, administration officials had second thoughts, fearing that pursuing this goal would just churn out thousands of substandard recruits. An administration official said the focus now would be on producing somewhat fewer but better trained troops, as quickly as possible. The shift was reported Monday by The Wall Street Journal.

Under the new plan, newly trained Afghan security forces will work with American or other allied forces at every level. General McChrystal recommended this requirement in his assessment to increase the quality of the Afghan force and “accelerate their ownership of Afghanistan’s security.”

A senior Defense Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a plan that had not been formally announced, said Monday that the first additional troops would be thousands of Marines sent to opium-rich Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold in the south of Afghanistan. The Marines will begin to arrive in the region in January, the official said, and will be followed by a steady flow of tens of thousands..

Most of the additional forces in the south will go to Kandahar Province, the Taliban heartland, where the United States is stretched thin and has very few troops in the province’s largest city, also called Kandahar. The Taliban are currently in control of large parts of the province and are contesting control of the city.

The Defense Department official said that the additional United States troops would be used to try to secure the city and then the region.

“With more forces we should be able to lock down the security in Kandahar and the surrounding areas of Kandahar,” the official said.

The official said that after the president’s speech, which will begin at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday in Afghanistan, General McChrystal would brief his commanders and then embark on a daylong fly-around to visit NATO military installations in the country — Kandahar in the south, Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, Bagram Air Base in the east and Herat in the west.

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, David E. Sanger, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Elisabeth Bumiller and Mark Landler from Washington, Steven Erlanger from Paris, and John F. Burns from London.

Posted by Kofi Natambu at 4:42 AM
Labels: Afghanistan, American military, President Obama, The Pentagon, U.S. Foreign Policy, Vietnam

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2009/12/tragedy-and-stupidity-of-obamas-war.html

FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES

(Originally posted on December 2, 2009):

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Tragedy, Stupidity, and Futility of Obama's Escalation of War in Afghanistan


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/opinion/01herbert.html?em

All,

Herbert is 100% right of course. Too bad this President is not listening as he futilely, vainly, and foolishly tries to placate his many reactionary political enemies. WHAT A COLOSSAL WASTE!

Meanwhile: THE WORSE IS YET TO COME...

Kofi

Photo: http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2009/12/tragedy-and-stupidity-of-obamas-war.html

FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES

(Originally posted on December 2, 2009):

Wednesday, December 2, 2009
 The Tragedy, Stupidity, and Futility of Obama's Escalation of War in Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/opinion/01herbert.html?em

All,

Herbert is 100% right of course. Too bad this President is not listening as he futilely, vainly, and foolishly tries to placate his many reactionary political enemies. WHAT A COLOSSAL WASTE!

Meanwhile: THE WORSE IS YET TO COME...

Kofi

OP-ED COLUMNIST

A Tragic Mistake 
By BOB HERBERT
November 30, 2009
New York Times

“I hate war,” said Dwight Eisenhower, “as only a soldier who has lived it can, as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

He also said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”

I suppose we’ll never learn. President Obama will go on TV Tuesday night to announce that he plans to send tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan to fight in a war that has lasted most of the decade and has long since failed.

After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole.

More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can’t find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken — school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding — yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each.

I keep hearing that Americans are concerned about gargantuan budget deficits. Well, the idea that you can control mounting deficits while engaged in two wars that you refuse to raise taxes to pay for is a patent absurdity. Small children might believe something along those lines. Rational adults should not.

Politicians are seldom honest when they talk publicly about warfare. Lyndon Johnson knew in the spring of 1965, as he made plans for the first big expansion of U.S. forces in Vietnam, that there was no upside to the war.

A recent Bill Moyers program on PBS played audio tapes of Johnson on which he could be heard telling Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, “Not a damn human thinks that 50,000 or 100,000 or 150,000 [American troops] are going to end that war.”

McNamara replies, “That’s right.”

Nothing like those sentiments were conveyed to the public as Johnson and McNamara jacked up the draft and started feeding young American boys and men into the Vietnam meat grinder.

Afghanistan is not Vietnam. There was every reason for American forces to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. But that war was botched and lost by the Bush crowd, and Barack Obama does not have a magic wand now to make it all better.

The word is that Mr. Obama will tell the public Tuesday that he is sending another 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan. And while it is reported that he has some strategy in mind for eventually turning the fight over to the ragtag and less-than-energetic Afghan military, it’s clear that U.S. forces will be engaged for years to come, perhaps many years.

The tougher choice for the president would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario.

Lyndon Johnson is heard on the tapes telling Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, about a comment made by a Texas rancher in the days leading up to the buildup in Vietnam. The rancher had told Johnson that the public would forgive the president “for everything except being weak.”

Russell said: “Well, there’s a lot in that. There’s a whole lot in that.”

We still haven’t learned to recognize real strength, which is why it so often seems that the easier choice for a president is to keep the troops marching off to war.

Posted by Kofi Natambu at 5:47 AM
Labels: Afghanistan, Bob Herbert, Diplomacy vs. Warfare, Hubris, Imperialism, President Obama, U.S. Foreign Policy

Four Important New Books By Leading Public Intellectuals and Activists Cornel West, Naomi Klein, Bob Herbert, and Noam Chomsky On The Urgent Necessity Of A Mass Movement For Genuine Political and Economic Democracy

Black Prophetic Fire
by Cornel West (Author), Christa Buschendorf (Author)
Hardcover
ON SALE: October 7, 2014

Hardcover: 248 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (October 7, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807003522
ISBN-13: 978-0807003527

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CORNEL WEST

(b. 1953)

INTRODUCTION: Why We Need to Talk About Black Prophetic Fire
by Cornel West
 
Are we witnessing the death of Black prophetic fire in our time? Are we experiencing the demise of the Black prophetic tradition in present-day  America? Do the great prophetic figures and social movements no longer resonate in the depth of our souls? Have we forgotten how beautiful it is to be on fire for justice? These are some of the questions I wrestle with in this book.

Since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., it is clear that something has died in Black America. The last great efforts for Black collective triumph were inspired by the massive rebellions in response to Dr. King’s murder. Yet these gallant actions were met with increasing repression and clever strategies of co-optation by the powers that be. The fundamental shift from a we-consciousness to an I-consciousness reflected not only a growing sense of Black collective defeat but also a Black embrace of the seductive myth of individualism in American culture. Black people once put a premium on serving the community, lifting others, and finding joy in empowering others. Today, most Black people have succumbed to individualistic projects in pursuit of wealth, health, and status. Black people once had a strong prophetic tradition of lifting every voice. Today, most Black people engage in the petty practice of chasing dollars. American society is ruled by big money, and American culture is a way of life obsessed with money. This is true for capitalist societies and cultures around the world. The Black prophetic tradition—along with the prophetic traditions of other groups—is a strong counter-force to these tendencies of our times. Integrity cannot be reduced to cupidity, decency cannot be reduced to chicanery, and justice cannot be reduced to market price. The fundamental motivation for this book is to resurrect Black prophetic fire in our day—especially among the younger generation. I want to reinvigorate the Black prophetic tradition and to keep alive the memory of Black prophetic figures and movements. I consider the Black prophetic tradition one of the greatest treasures in the modern world. It has been the leaven in the American democratic loaf. Without the Black prophetic tradition, much of the best of America would be lost and some of the best of the modern world would be forgotten.

All the great figures in this book courageously raised their voices in order to bear witness to people’s suffering. These Black prophetic figures are connected to collective efforts to overcome injustice and make the world a better place for everyone. Even as distinct individuals, they are driven by a we-consciousness that is concerned with the needs of others. More importantly, they are willing to renounce petty pleasures and accept awesome burdens. Tremendous sacrifice and painful loneliness sit at the center of who they are and what they do. Yet we are deeply indebted to who they were and what they did.

Unfortunately, their mainstream reception is shaped according to the cultural icon of the self-made man or the individual charismatic leader. This is especially true for the male figures. This is not to say that they did not fulfill the function of leaders and speakers of their organizations. But I want to point out that any conception of the charismatic leader severed from social movements is false. I consider leaders and movements to be inseparable. There is no Frederick Douglass without the Abolitionist movement. There is no W. E. B. Du Bois without the Pan-Africanist, international workers’, and Black freedom movements. There is no Martin Luther King Jr. without the anti-imperialist, workers’, and civil rights movements. There is no Ella Baker without the anti-US-apartheid and Puerto Rican independence movements. There is no Malcolm X without the Black Nationalist and human rights movements. And there is no Ida B. Wells without the anti-US-terrorist and Black women’s movements.

There is a gender difference in regard to men’s and women’s roles assigned in social movements. This shapes their reception in history books and in popular culture. Male figures are prominent on the basis of their highly visible positions. They often are chosen to represent the movement, usually due to their charismatic qualities. Yet despite the charisma of many women leaders, it is difficult for them to be chosen to represent the movement. They are often confined to untiring efforts in organizing the movement. As a consequence, even when women give speeches, even when they contribute to the political thinking of movements, their words are not taken as seriously as they ought to be. One of the aims of our dialogues about the Black prophetic tradition is to bear witness to the fiery prophetic spirit of Ida B. Wells by presenting examples of her fearless speech and action, and to bear witness to the deep democratic sensibilities of Ella Baker, who understood better than any of the others the fundamental role of movements in bringing about fundamental social change.

This book becomes even more important in the age of Obama, precisely because the presence of a Black president in the White House complicates our understanding of the Black prophetic tradition. If high status in American society and white points of reference are the measure of the Black freedom movement, then this moment in Black history is the ultimate success. But if the suffering of Black people—especially Black poor and working people—is the ultimate measure of the Black freedom movement, then this moment in Black history is catastrophic—sadly continuous with the past. With the Black middle class losing nearly 60 percent of its wealth, the Black working class devastated with stagnating wages and increasing prices, and the Black poor ravaged by massive unemployment, decrepit schools, indecent housing, and hyperincarceration in the new Jim Crow, the age of Obama looks bleak through the lens of the Black prophetic tradition. This prophetic viewpoint is not a personal attack on a Black president; rather it is a wholesale indictment of the system led by a complicitous Black president.

The Black prophetic tradition highlights the crucial role of social movements in the United States and abroad. The Occupy Wall Street movement was a global response to the thirty-year class war from above, which pushed the middle class into the ranks of the working class and poor, and even further exacerbated the sufferings of working-class and poor people. The 2008 financial crisis, primarily caused by the systemic greed of unregulated Wall Street oligarchs and their bailout by the Wall Street–dominated US government, revealed the degree to which American society is ruled by big money. And the fact that not one Wall Street bank executive—despite massive criminality on Wall Street—has gone to jail, while any poor and, especially, Black person caught with crack goes straight to prison, shows just how unjust our justice system is. The realities of the power of big banks and corporations are hidden and concealed by a corporate media that specializes in generating weapons of mass distraction. This systemic concealment also holds for the military-industrial complex, be it the Pentagon or the CIA. Rarely are the death-dealing activities of both institutions made public to the American citizenry. And courageous whistle-blowers—such as Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, John Kiriakou, and Edward Snowden—who reveal to the public the corrupt activities of the US government are severely punished. Even the recent discussions about drones dropping bombs on innocent civilians remain confined to American citizens. The thousands of non-American civilian victims—including hundreds of children—receive little or no attention in the corporate media. The Black prophetic tradition claims that the life of a precious baby in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, Gaza, Tel Aviv, Lagos, Bogotá, or anywhere else has the same value as a precious baby in the USA.

The Black prophetic tradition accents the fightback of poor and working people, be it in the United States against big money, be it in the Middle East against Arab autocratic rule or Israeli occupation, be it against African authoritarian governments abetted by US forces or Chinese money, be it in Latin America against oligarchic regimes in collaboration with big banks and corporations, or be it in Europe against austerity measures that benefit big creditors and punish everyday people. In short, the Black prophetic tradition is local in content and international in character.

The deep hope shot through this dialogue is that Black prophetic fire never dies, that the Black prophetic tradition forever flourishes, and that a new wave of young brothers and sisters of all colors see and feel that it is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice and that there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others—especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!

Editorial Reviews

“Lively, heated, fighting words...”

—Kirkus Reviews

“[West’s] mini-lectures, which frequently run uninterrupted for pages at a time, and Buschendorf’s instructive set-ups for them...convey a wealth of information.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A fascinating exploration of the black prophetic genius and fire of Douglass, Du Bois, King, Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells, this book reminds us what true leadership, sacrifice, and courageous, inspirational truth-telling looks like and why it is so urgently needed in the quest for justice today.”
—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

About the Author
Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. A current professor at Union Theological Seminary, he has also taught at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. The recipient of more than twenty honorary degrees, he has written many important books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters. He appears frequently on Real Time with Bill Maher, The Colbert Report, Democracy Now, CNN, C-SPAN, and other national and international media. He lives in New York City.

Christa Buschendorf is a professor and the chair of American Studies at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. She has published on the transatlantic history of ideas and on African American literature.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate Hardcover – September 16, 2014
by Naomi Klein (Author)

Hardcover: 576 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 16, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1451697384
ISBN-13: 978-1451697384

NAOMI KLEIN

(b. 1970)

                                                                            
The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.

In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.

In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.

Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.

Can we pull off these changes in time? Nothing is certain. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.

Editorial Reviews

“This may be the first truly honest book ever written about climate change.” (Bryan Walsh Time)

"This is the best book about climate change in a very long time—in large part because it's about much more. It sets the most important crisis in human history in the context of our other ongoing traumas, reminding us just how much the powers-that-be depend on the power of coal, gas and oil. And that in turn should give us hope, because it means the fight for a just world is the same as the fight for a livable one." (Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and co-founder of 350.org)

“This Changes Everything is the work book for . . . [a] new, more assertive, more powerful environmental movement.” (Mark Bittman)

"Naomi Klein applies her fine, fierce, and meticulous mind to the greatest, most urgent questions of our times. . . . I count her among the most inspirational political thinkers in the world today." (Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things and Capitalism: A Ghost Story)

“Naomi Klein is a genius. She has done for politics what Jared Diamond did for the study of human history. She skillfully blends politics, economics and history and distills out simple and powerful truths with universal applicability.” (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

“[A]robust new polemic. . . . Drawing on an impressive volume of research, Ms. Klein savages the idea that we will be saved by new technologies or by an incremental shift away from fossil fuels: Both approaches, she argues, are forms of denial. . . . Ms. Klein is aware of the intractability of the problems she describes, but she manages optimism nonetheless.” (Nathaniel Rich The New York Times)

“If global warming is a worldwide wake-up call, we’re all pretty heavy sleepers. . . . We haven't made significant progress, Klein argues, because we've been expecting solutions from the very same institutions that created the problem in the first place. . . . Klein's sharp analysis makes a compelling case that a mass awakening is part of the answer.” (Chris Bentley The Chicago Tribune)

“Gripping and dramatic. . . . [Klein] writes of a decisive battle for the fate of the earth in which we either take back control of the planet from the  capitalists who are destroying it or watch it all burn.” (Roy Scranton Rolling Stone)

“Naomi Klein’s latest book may be the manifesto that the climate movement — and the planet — needs right now. . . . For those with whom her message does resonate — and they are likely to be legion — her book could help catalyze the kind of mass movement she argues the world needs now.” (Mason Inman San Francisco Chronicle)

“Powerfully and uncompromisingly written, the impassioned polemic we have come to expect from Klein, mixing first-hand accounts of events around the world and withering political analysis. . . . Her stirring vision is nothing less than a political, economic, social, cultural and moral make-over of the human world.” (Mike Hulme New Scientist)

“A powerful, profound, and compelling book.” (Matthew Rothschild The Progressive)

“Klein is one of the left’s most influential figures and a prominent climate champion. . . . [She] is a gifted writer and there is little doubt about the problem she identifies.” (Pilita Clark The Financial Times)

“Whatever side you take, Klein deserves credit for not sugarcoating the problem. She writes that limiting global warming won't be quick, easy or without disruptions, yet holds out hope that the end result will be better for people, the environment and even the economy. . . . This Changes Everything may motivate more people to think and act on climate change, and that’s good.” (Associated Press)

“Journalist Klein is a resolute investigator into the dark side of unchecked capitalism. . . . This comprehensive, sure-to-be controversial inquiry, one of the most thorough, eloquent, and enlightening books yet on this urgent and overwhelming subject—alongside works by Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Diane Ackerman—provides the evidence and the reasoning we need to help us shift to a ‘worldview based on regeneration and renewal rather than domination and depletion.’” (Booklist (starred review))

"[Klein's] journalism won't slow down the fossil fuel companies, but it surely holds out hope for activists looking to avert a disaster. . . . A sharp analysis that is bound to be widely discussed." (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, and author of the New York Times and #1 international bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her first book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, was also an international bestseller. Klein is a contributing editor for Harper’s and reporter for Rolling Stone and writes a syndicated column for The Nation and the Guardian. She lives in Toronto.

Masters of Mankind: Essays and Lectures, 1969-2013
Paperback – September 30, 2014

by Noam Chomsky (Author), Marcus Raskin (Introduction)

Paperback: 162 pages
Publisher: Haymarket Books (September 30, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 160846363X
ISBN-13: 978-1608463633

NOAM CHOMSKY

(b. 1928)

In this collection of essays from 1969 to 2013, many in book form for the first time, Noam Chomsky examines the nature of state power, from the ideologies driving the Cold War to the War on Terror, and reintroduces the moral and legal questions that all too often go unheeded. With unrelenting logic, he holds the arguments of empire up to critical examination and shatters the myths of those who protect the power and privilege of the few against the interests and needs of the many. An introduction by Marcus Raskin contextualizes Chomsky's place among some of the most influential thinkers of modern history.

Editorial Reviews

"There is no living political writer who has more radically changed how more people think in more parts of the world about political issues."
—Glenn Greenwald

"Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet."
—New York Times Book Review

"Considering that Chomsky’s relevance has only grown with time, and that his positions prove less radical and more prescient as years pass, the timing of his new book release, The Masters of Mankind, a retrospective of lectures and essays stretching from 1969 to 2013, is perfect... There is more than enough profound, powerful material in this collection to impress any readers unfamiliar with Chomsky’s intellectual agility."
—The Daily Beast

Praise for Hopes and Prospects:

"A revelation. . . . This is a book woven through with hope and awe at all the people who slip beyond imperial control and establish real democracy . . . a treasure-trove."
—The Independent

About the Author

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT. His work is widely credited with having revolutionized the field of modern linguistics. He is the author of numerous best-selling political works, which have been translated into scores of countries worldwide. His most recent books include the New York Times bestseller Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, Power Systems, Occupy, and Hopes and Prospects.

Marcus Raskin, co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies and professor of public policy at George Washington University, is a social critic, activist, and philosopher.

Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America Hardcover – October 7, 2014
by Bob Herbert (Author)

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (October 7, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 038552823X
ISBN-13: 978-0385528238

Editorial Reviews

"Herbert illuminates in this masterwork of reporting."

—O Magazine

“Herbert ardently defends those being left behind in this current ‘winner-take-all’ economy. As he travels across the U.S. interviewing the jobless and wounded, as well as noted educators, economists, activists and political leaders ... what emerges from his chronicle is a devastating portrait.... Herbert ends by urging bold new leadership against an ‘intolerable status quo’ and pointing to encouraging examples of citizen groups rising up across the country.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"In vivid anecdotes and moving portraits, Herbert humanizes the many problems he uncovers, and he clearly believes that Americans can, and will, band together to set the nation on a new course."

—Kirkus Reviews

“Asked by a World War II veteran, ‘What happened to us?’, Bob Herbert does what he has done all through his remarkable career as a journalist: he sets out to find the answers from the ground up. Searching out the stories and experiences of everyday Americans, and digging deep into facts and figures from ‘the high noon of capitalism’ to the widening gulf of our present vast inequalities, he takes us to the heart and core of our troubles while holding firmly to the conviction of his lifetime: that the truth shall set us free. Here is America as revealed by a great reporter whose empathy with everyday people inspires trust on their part, honesty on his, and discovery for all who make the journey with him.”

—Bill Moyers

“In a series of haunting portraits, Losing Our Way is an unforgettable reminder of the struggles facing America’s middle class today. Herbert has given us a sweeping picture of what has gone wrong in America—how we have underinvested in infrastructure, let corporate policies dominate the education debate, and fought needless wars that resulted in a tragic waste of life. A brilliant and devastating portrayal that explains how our priorities and policies have gone awry, Losing Our Way will make you angry and determined to put our country back on course"
—Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics and author of Globalization and Its Discontents and The Price of Inequality

“Losing Our Way is a compelling account of the problems facing our country told in a riveting fashion through the eyes of people dealing with the consequences. I couldn’t put it down. It should be a mandatory read for every member of Congress and anyone who aspires to be president.”

—Ed Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania, 2003-2011

“Bob Herbert has written a terrific and important book about America. It is an incisive examination of our nation’s tragic unwillingness to address the overwhelming problems we face. We can’t go forward unless we face reality. Herbert has the courage to do that.”

—U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

About the Author

 
BOB HERBERT, an opinion columnist for The New York Times from 1993 to 2011, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, a public policy think tank in New York City.

BOB HERBERT

(b. 1945)

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2011/10/bob-herbert-on-confronting-job-crisis.html

FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES

(Originally posted on October 30, 2011):

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Bob Herbert On Confronting the Unemployment Crisis in the U.S.
http://www.policyshop.net/home/2011/8/30/put-america-back-to-work.html

Put America Back To Work
by Bob Herbert
The Policy Shop
Demos
The biggest domestic policy failure has been the refusal of top officials in the White House and in Congress to recognize the severity of the employment crisis that has settled like a plague over American workers.

There is no longer any excuse for believing that the Great Recession and its aftermath was a more or less typical economic downturn to be followed by a robust recovery. That’s a pipedream. What we are experiencing is an economic disaster, the worst reversal to hit the U.S. since the 1930s. The human suffering is profound. Some 14 million Americans are officially counted as unemployed. Nearly half have been out of work for six months or more, and many have been jobless for a year or two or longer.

Poverty is once again on the march, moving like Patton’s Third Army through communities that had never had more than a tenuous hold on the American dream. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, the minimum wage or just above, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle class standard of living.

Starved of tax revenues, the federal budget is submerged in a vast ocean of red ink. One of the tragic results is that social services are under furious attack at the same time that the need for such services has grown enormously. If dramatic steps are not soon taken to put millions of jobless Americans back to work, the quality of life for much, if not most, of the population will be irreparably damaged. The American dream itself is at risk.

Politicians have given little more than lip service to this terrible turn of events. If there was but one message that I would try to get through to the nation’s leadership, it is that we cannot begin to get the United States back on track until we begin to put our people back to work.

And there is so much work to be done. Start with the crying need to rebuild the nation’s aging, deteriorating infrastructure – its bridges and highways, airports and air traffic control systems, its sewer and wastewater treatment facilities, the electrical grid, inland waterways, public transportation systems, levees and floodwalls and ports and dams, and on and on. Lawrence Summers, until recently President Obama’s top economic adviser, has pointed out that 75 percent of America’s public schools have structural deficiencies. Twelve percent of the nation’s bridges have been rated structurally deficient and another 15 percent are functionally obsolete.

Three to four trillion dollars worth of improvements will be needed over the next decade just to bring the infrastructure into a reasonable state of repair. Meanwhile, we’ve got legions of unemployed construction workers, manufacturing workers, engineers and others who are ready and eager to step into the breach, to take on jobs ranging from infrastructure maintenance and repair to infrastructure design and new construction. It shouldn’t require a genius to put together those two gigantic pieces of America’s economic puzzle – infrastructure and unemployment.

Yes, it would be expensive. But the money spent would be an investment designed to bring about a stronger, more stable economic environment. Putting people to work bolsters the economy and the newly-employed workers begin paying taxes again. Improving the infrastructure would make American industry much more competitive overall, and would spawn new industries. Creation of a national infrastructure bank that would use government funds to leverage additional investments from the private sector to finance projects of national importance would lead to extraordinary longterm benefits.

But even rebuilding the infrastructure is not enough. The employment crisis facing the U.S. is enormous and is taking a particularly harsh toll on the less well-educated members of the society. We need to take our cue from Franklin Roosevelt who understood during the Depression that nothing short of a federal jobs program was essential. The two-pronged goal was to alleviate the suffering of the unemployed and, as the workers began spending their wages, improve the economy.

Roosevelt put millions of Americans to work, including artists, writers, photographers and musicians. It was an unprecedented undertaking, and it worked.

We need a public jobs program in America now. A number of approaches have been offered, including a particularly thoughtful and comprehensive proposal prepared for Demos by Philip Harvey, a professor of law and economics at Rutgers University. The idea is simple: “Create jobs for the unemployed directly and immediately in public employment programs that produce useful goods and services for the public’s benefit.”

As Harvey’s report explains:

“When jobs program participants spend their wages, and program administrators purchase materials and supplies for program projects, the benefits delivered in the first instance to unemployed workers trickle up to the private sector, inducing private sector job creation that supplements the immediate employment effect of the job creation program itself.”

A crucial aspect of the program is that it would begin to fill the demand gap that is hampering the economic recovery. With so many millions of people out of work, the demand for goods and services is diminished. Consumers are tapped out. Private businesses are not hiring workers because the demand is not there for the additional goods and services they would be producing.

Direct job creation would put people to work quickly, without having to wait many long months, or possibly years, for the economy to fully recover. The money from their paychecks would be pumped immediately into the economy.

Like infrastructure spending, a carefully crafted direct jobs plan would be an investment that would be repaid many times over, just as investments in Hoover Dam, rural electrification, the Works Progress Administration and the G.I. Bill delivered enormous longterm benefits to the society.

F.D.R., in his first inaugural address, told a worried nation that “our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” It was a task, he insisted, that should be treated “as we would treat the emergency of a war.”

The question today, in one of our darkest economic hours, is whether we’re smart enough to heed that essential lesson of history.

This post is part of Demos' "America Can Work Better" Week

http://www.demos.org/bob-herbert

Bob Herbert joined Demos after an 18-year career at the The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist, writing about politics, urban affairs and social trends in a twice-weekly column.

From January 1991 to May 1993, Mr. Herbert was a national correspondent for NBC and reported regularly on The Today Show and NBC Nightly News.

A founding panelist of Sunday Edition, a weekly discussion program on WCBS-TV, Mr. Herbert was also the host of Hotline, a weekly hour-long issues program on WNYC-TV, both beginning in 1990.

Previously, Mr. Herbert worked at The Daily News beginning in 1976. His positions at The Daily News included general assignment reporter, national correspondent, consumer affairs editor, city hall bureau chief and city editor. In 1985, he became a columnist and a member of the Editorial Board. His column continued to appear in The Daily News until February 1993.

His career began in 1970 as a reporter, then night city editor in 1973, of The Star-Ledger in Newark, NJ.

Born in Brooklyn, Mr. Herbert earned a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from the State University of New York (Empire State College). He has taught journalism at Brooklyn College and the Columbia University School of Journalism.

He has won numerous awards, including the Meyer Berger Award for coverage of New York City, the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for distinguished newspaper writing, the David Nyhan Prize from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University for excellence in political reporting, and the Ridenhour Courage Prize for the “fearless articulation of unpopular truths.”

Mr. Herbert is the author of “Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream,” (Times Books, 2005) and is currently at work on a new book, “Wounded Colossus.”

Mr. Herbert is married and lives in Manhattan.
Image Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times

RECENT COMMENTARY

Unfair and Unwise
August 4, 2011
Answer This: Bob Herbert
June 28, 2011
Losing Our Way
March 25, 2011
Separate and Unequal
March 21, 2011
A Price Too High?
March 18, 2011

PUBLICATIONS

America's Middle Class and The Jobs Crisis
August 3, 2011

Posted by Kofi Natambu at 7:47 PM 

Labels: Bob Herbert, Corporate capitalism, Demos Fellow, Ideology and Politics, National Unemployment Figures, Wall Street

Bob Herbert On Confronting the Unemployment Crisis in the U.S.

http://www.policyshop.net/home/2011/8/30/put-america-back-to-work.html


Put America Back To Work
by Bob Herbert
The Policy Shop
Demos

The biggest domestic policy failure has been the refusal of top officials in the White House and in Congress to recognize the severity of the employment crisis that has settled like a plague over American workers.

There is no longer any excuse for believing that the Great Recession and its aftermath was a more or less typical economic downturn to be followed by a robust recovery. That’s a pipedream. What we are experiencing is an economic disaster, the worst reversal to hit the U.S. since the 1930s. The human suffering is profound. Some 14 million Americans are officially counted as unemployed. Nearly half have been out of work for six months or more, and many have been jobless for a year or two or longer.

Poverty is once again on the march, moving like Patton’s Third Army through communities that had never had more than a tenuous hold on the American dream. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, the minimum wage or just above, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle class standard of living.

Starved of tax revenues, the federal budget is submerged in a vast ocean of red ink. One of the tragic results is that social services are under furious attack at the same time that the need for such services has grown enormously. If dramatic steps are not soon taken to put millions of jobless Americans back to work, the quality of life for much, if not most, of the population will be irreparably damaged. The American dream itself is at risk.

Politicians have given little more than lip service to this terrible turn of events. If there was but one message that I would try to get through to the nation’s leadership, it is that we cannot begin to get the United States back on track until we begin to put our people back to work.

And there is so much work to be done. Start with the crying need to rebuild the nation’s aging, deteriorating infrastructure – its bridges and highways, airports and air traffic control systems, its sewer and wastewater treatment facilities, the electrical grid, inland waterways, public transportation systems, levees and floodwalls and ports and dams, and on and on. Lawrence Summers, until recently President Obama’s top economic adviser, has pointed out that 75 percent of America’s public schools have structural deficiencies. Twelve percent of the nation’s bridges have been rated structurally deficient and another 15 percent are functionally obsolete.

Three to four trillion dollars worth of improvements will be needed over the next decade just to bring the infrastructure into a reasonable state of repair. Meanwhile, we’ve got legions of unemployed construction workers, manufacturing workers, engineers and others who are ready and eager to step into the breach, to take on jobs ranging from infrastructure maintenance and repair to infrastructure design and new construction. It shouldn’t require a genius to put together those two gigantic pieces of America’s economic puzzle – infrastructure and unemployment.

Yes, it would be expensive. But the money spent would be an investment designed to bring about a stronger, more stable economic environment. Putting people to work bolsters the economy and the newly-employed workers begin paying taxes again. Improving the infrastructure would make American industry much more competitive overall, and would spawn new industries. Creation of a national infrastructure bank that would use government funds to leverage additional investments from the private sector to finance projects of national importance would lead to extraordinary longterm benefits.

But even rebuilding the infrastructure is not enough. The employment crisis facing the U.S. is enormous and is taking a particularly harsh toll on the less well-educated members of the society. We need to take our cue from Franklin Roosevelt who understood during the Depression that nothing short of a federal jobs program was essential. The two-pronged goal was to alleviate the suffering of the unemployed and, as the workers began spending their wages, improve the economy.

Roosevelt put millions of Americans to work, including artists, writers, photographers and musicians. It was an unprecedented undertaking, and it worked.

We need a public jobs program in America now. A number of approaches have been offered, including a particularly thoughtful and comprehensive proposal prepared for Demos by Philip Harvey, a professor of law and economics at Rutgers University. The idea is simple: “Create jobs for the unemployed directly and immediately in public employment programs that produce useful goods and services for the public’s benefit.”

As Harvey’s report explains:

“When jobs program participants spend their wages, and program administrators purchase materials and supplies for program projects, the benefits delivered in the first instance to unemployed workers trickle up to the private sector, inducing private sector job creation that supplements the immediate employment effect of the job creation program itself.”

A crucial aspect of the program is that it would begin to fill the demand gap that is hampering the economic recovery. With so many millions of people out of work, the demand for goods and services is diminished. Consumers are tapped out. Private businesses are not hiring workers because the demand is not there for the additional goods and services they would be producing.

Direct job creation would put people to work quickly, without having to wait many long months, or possibly years, for the economy to fully recover. The money from their paychecks would be pumped immediately into the economy.

Like infrastructure spending, a carefully crafted direct jobs plan would be an investment that would be repaid many times over, just as investments in Hoover Dam, rural electrification, the Works Progress Administration and the G.I. Bill delivered enormous longterm benefits to the society.

F.D.R., in his first inaugural address, told a worried nation that “our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” It was a task, he insisted, that should be treated “as we would treat the emergency of a war.”

The question today, in one of our darkest economic hours, is whether we’re smart enough to heed that essential lesson of history.


This post is part of Demos' "America Can Work Better" Week


http://www.demos.org/bob-herbert

Bob Herbert

Distinguished Senior Fellow

Bob Herbert joined Demos after an 18-year career at the The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist, writing about politics, urban affairs and social trends in a twice-weekly column.

From January 1991 to May 1993, Mr. Herbert was a national correspondent for NBC and reported regularly on The Today Show and NBC Nightly News.

A founding panelist of Sunday Edition, a weekly discussion program on WCBS-TV, Mr. Herbert was also the host of Hotline, a weekly hour-long issues program on WNYC-TV, both beginning in 1990.

Previously, Mr. Herbert worked at The Daily News beginning in 1976. His positions at The Daily News included general assignment reporter, national correspondent, consumer affairs editor, city hall bureau chief and city editor. In 1985, he became a columnist and a member of the Editorial Board. His column continued to appear in The Daily News until February 1993.

His career began in 1970 as a reporter, then night city editor in 1973, of The Star-Ledger in Newark, NJ.

Born in Brooklyn, Mr. Herbert earned a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from the State University of New York (Empire State College). He has taught journalism at Brooklyn College and the Columbia University School of Journalism.

He has won numerous awards, including the Meyer Berger Award for coverage of New York City, the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for distinguished newspaper writing, the David Nyhan Prize from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University for excellence in political reporting, and the Ridenhour Courage Prize for the “fearless articulation of unpopular truths.”

Mr. Herbert is the author of “Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream,” (Times Books, 2005) and is currently at work on a new book, “Wounded Colossus.”

Mr. Herbert is married and lives in Manhattan.
Image Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times

RECENT COMMENTARY

Unfair and Unwise
August 4, 2011
Answer This: Bob Herbert
June 28, 2011
Losing Our Way
March 25, 2011
Separate and Unequal
March 21, 2011
A Price Too High?
March 18, 2011


PUBLICATIONS

America's Middle Class & The Jobs Crisis
August 3, 2011