corrente

To deal with the anguish this President has told us more than once he endures at the thought of even a single American who wants to work not being able to find a job, i.e., to advance his bold vision of an America where there is full employment, the President proposed, last night, a program of grants for community colleges to help them develop programs aimed at retraining workers who don't have the skills to get the new jobs that will be replacing their old ones.

One of Atrios' commentators, P. Clodius, had this mordant observation about that: "Whole new career opportunity for people who can teach Hindi."

But let us try and take this President's words seriously, on their face. Let us not be mindlessly partisan. After all, it was one of President Clinton's major themes way back in '92 that the nature of employment had changed; that globilization meant workers would find themselves changing jobs and skill sets twice, and even three times in the course of their working lives. And under President Clinton's aegis, we saw an unprecedented expansion of a variety of programs aimed at expanding educational opportunities across the board to give Americans access to the tools to navigate the implications of globilization. (BTW, I'm not suggesting that Clinton's response to the entire package of issues a globilized economy presents was entirely adequate.)

To show that he means business, President Bush flew today to Ohio, where he acknowledged "there are still troubled times," and spoke at Owens Community College to highlight his "$250 million proposal" for new job-training grants channeled through community colleges. That's a whole lot of money. Isn't it?

Okay, it's not as much as the $200 billion plus earmarked for a missile defense system, which, not having ever successfully shown it can actually hit an incoming missile, will not be subjected to further testing before being deployed. But, what the hell, don't you feel safer already just knowing that we're working on it? And it's probably cheaper than confiscating every set of box cutters that exist anywhere in the world.

Okay, okay, it's not as much as the $l.5 billion the President wants for his promotion of marriage initiative. And yes, one could argue that making sure that jobs are available to the chronically underemployed men who are so often the unmarried fathers whom the marriage initiative seeks to help might be a more efficient way to go about it, but doubtless the Olasky-trained Bush would counter by questioning what's been keeping them from finding a job all along; it's not as if external circumstances could ever explain this persistant pattern of laziness unemployability and indifference to the charms of family life, in contrast to the lure of living large as a "young buck," the term President Reagan once used to describe young bla male misusers of food stamps.

Okay, okay, okay, extending unemployment benefits to workers who've been out of work for over six months would seem to be an indispensable corollary of the President's dreams for an America where everyone marries well, and everyone has a job; unemployment benefits aren't a lot, but they do limit the devastating effects lack of income can have on family life, and not having a job for a long time can have on the employability of even workers with long, active work histories. But acknowledging that point, aren't we left with a vision of an American President willing to see thousands of hard-working Americans disappear into the ranks of those we call "discouraged workers," where they will not show up on unemployment statistics, while with perfect piety he proposes a program claiming to be the answer to the problems of precisely those same workers?

Frankly, I hesitate to go there, not out of either affection for or trust in this President, but, as mentioned below, because that kind of attack is exactly what Bush/Rove & Co want to provoke.

Karl Rove understands that its the really big lies that are the hardest to counter. (See any standard text on the history of 20th century propoganda).

Somtimes, though, even a Rove can over reach, and the Center For American Progress, bless them, has caught the White House's resident political genuis and his pResident right in the act (scroll down to "Job Training Proposal".

In the last three years, Bush has proposed almost $1 billion in cuts to job training and vocational education – meaning the President's "new" proposal really is simply a push to restore a fraction of his own massive cuts.

All the gory details are available here.

I'm left wondering if this President is even aware of this massive contradiction, which some might even be tempted to call a lie.