Posted on 12/29/2009 7:03:45 AM PST by Chi-townChief
'There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America."
With these words at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama electrified a divided country, launching a victorious Senate campaign, and four years later, a triumphant presidential campaign.
He took office amid the worst conditions facing any incoming president since Franklin D. Roosevelt -- a great recession, two wars, financial free-fall. In his first year he staved off depression, rescued the banks and labored to pass some health-care reform.
But the test of whether this is truly a United States of America still awaits. If we are one America, then we must act together to help those hit the hardest by the economic calamities. The economists say the recovery has started, but in urban and rural America, things are getting worse. The industrial Midwest is still reeling, and many of the jobs aren't coming back. California, Florida and Nevada are still staggered by the collapse in housing values -- and now brutal cuts are coming from state and local budgets.
With the banks saved and massive job loss staunched, many economists -- including some in the White House -- now assume the recovery will take its course, and employment is a "lagging indicator." So it's time to focus on deficit reduction and closing down the emergency Federal Reserve programs that gave banks a lifeline. And after the big fight on health care, Congress is looking to pass some kind of financial reform, a token "jobs" program, and get out of town to campaign for re-election.
But take one look at Detroit -- or at Cleveland or South Chicago. Some of Detroit's -- and the Midwest's -- problems are self-generated. But many come from the decadelong decline of manufacturing that culminated in the collapse of the auto industry.
Unemployment among the young is at its highest levels since the government began keeping track after World War II. For low-income black teenagers, according to the New York Times, only 4 in 100 found jobs this fall.
If we are truly one America, we cannot abandon these kids to idleness, crime, drugs and poverty. We cannot abandon industrial cities in despair. We cannot allow millions of Americans to lose their homes while saving the predatory lenders that put many of them in the fix they are in.
This administration and the Congress must step up to this challenge. We need a bold new initiative to rebuild America. Across the country, our basic infrastructure is in dire need of repair and renewal. Leaking sewer systems expose millions to befouled water dangerous to their health. Outmoded or absent mass transit clogs streets, wastes hours in gridlock and exacts a cruel tax on our lives as well as our economy. An outmoded energy system leaves us ever more dependent on foreign oil, while we fail to lead the new green industrial revolution that will generate the growth markets of the future.
President Obama called us to build our economy on a new foundation -- investing in infrastructure, in new energy, in education and training. We now need a policy to fit the vision. Establish a national infrastructure bank, providing guarantees for pension funds, to invest in building the new green infrastructure of the 21st century and put people to work. Invest in children, ensuring that they have the best education available in the world, from pre-K to affordable college, no matter where they are born.
And then target those investments on the areas most in need -- on our cities in despair, our depressed rural areas. Provide direct public service jobs so young people can get the discipline, skills and hope that come from work.
If this is one America, it is not enough to rescue Wall Street and abandon Detroit. It is not acceptable to write off our cities or our rural areas as lost. Surely, if we can plan to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, we can plan to rebuild Detroit and South Chicago.
A United States of America -- now is the time to prove it.
mailto:jjackson@rainbowpush.org
Of the myriad collections of bull-Obama that I’ve smelled, this is the smelliest. Keep it up libs...your malfunctioning single-celled brains are becoming obvious.
Someone get this to John Edwards, quick!
Yet black America has, by and large, done exactly that.
And once elected President by the Takers of society, he proceeded to divide it even more.
You first, Jacko.
You haven’t done any honest work in over 40 years.
“Provide direct public service jobs so young people can get the discipline, skills and hope that come from work.”
Translation—Provide public service paychecks and then just try to get rid of them when they are still incompetent or don’t show up for work. Then they are set for life as they file discrimination suit after discrimination suit. How many public “service” employees really provide any service?
“With these words at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama electrified a divided country”
http://www.johnspeedie.com/healy/crap.wav
JJ-——The carp-faced tick turd....
Hey, Jesse! We wouldn’t need to “rebuild America” if you guys hadn’t torn it apart first! The system of capitalism is self regulating and self repairing. Your guys “fixed” it til it broke!..................
another voice added to a growing Dem chorus....WPA II, on Steroids....it’s coming.....
“Rebuild America”
Was it ever destroyed?
There otta be a law that says Jesse cannot waste any more paper and ink.
He is a total fraud.
Note to Jesse:
The decline of manufacturing in the Midwest has 2 main reasons:
INIONS
ENVIRONAZIS
Actions by both of these groups forced manufacturing overseas.
Many Democrat states also taxed those companies to death.
You reap what you sow, Jesse.
Take another look at your own complicity in all of the above actions. How many times did you blackmail companies with boycotts if they didn’t hire more incompetant employees who just cost money and were only allowed to stand against the wall and kill time?
Surely, no company in it’s right mind would have let them pick up a single tool or perform any task above changing toilet paper in the john.
Use a mirror once in awhile, Jesse.
YOU are part of the problem—you always have been and you will never be part of the solution.
The only atribute that Jesse didn’t laud to his buddy NObama was being able to leap tall buildings at a single bound.
Wonder where Jesse thinks NObama hides the cape???
Note #2 to Jesse:
Those “lenders” were not being predatory. They were blackmailed.
The CRA legislation passed in 1977 by Jimmah Carter, and put on steroids by Clinton, Reno, and Cisneros, and fully supported by YOU, Dodd, Rangle, Sharpton, et al, sowed the seeds of the meltdown of the banks and the whosale foreclosure of properties.
That legislation demanded that banks lend money to persons who didn’t qualify to buy a T-shirt on payments.
That legislation let “applicants” use Welfare money and Food Stamps as INCOME.
Known as NINJA loans—No INCOME No Jobs or Assets—homes were sold to people who never repaired anything in their lives and never knew how to care for a lawn. They didn’t understand interest nor property taxes nor home owners insurance. They never were exposed to any of these parts of home ownership.
They never could afford the properties in the first place, but Janet Reno threatened to sue every bank that didn’t loan out money to these “applicants”.
It was a system totally designed to fail. But it would take enough time to fail that Jimmah Carter would not be in the spotlight.
As Usual, Liberal ideas have no substance. They never see beyond their noses, and are all puffed up with themselves over “their good intentions for ‘the poor’” than the actual reality of how someone who wouldn’t work and was unemployable could possibly afford a house.
There is no ‘SECTION 8” in mortgage loans, but the CRA became just that by default.
Taking people out of Section 8 housing, where the government (TAXPAYERS WHO WORK) pay 80% of the rent and telling these welfare Kings & Queens that they DESERVE to own a house of their own was beyond stupid in the first degree.
It took years, but the chickens in this mess did come home to roost.
Jesse- you and your equally stupid blackmailers, liars, and incompetant friends are at the base of the meltdown on Wall Street. Afirmative action hiring is just as obnoxious.
By having to cover bad loans and try to stay afloat for their investors, banks came up with outrageous schemes to make money elsewhere. I don’t agree with the ideas they had, but I understand trying to keep afloat when you are being threatened at every turn with being sued for discrimination.
Loans were given to people who could fog a mirror and sign their names.
It was a comedy of errors from it’s inception.
YOU-Jimmah Carter-Reno-Clinton-Cisneros- and many others deserve every bit of the blame.
MAN UP and take the blame, Jesse!!!
INIONS
ooops UNIONS
Infrastructure Projects: A handful of selected construction firms get the contracts. When the money runs out (and it will) everybody’s back in the unemployment line.
The economy will NEVER improve as long as congress keeps glomming every last buck the American citizen has.
“If we are one America, then we must act together to help those hit the hardest by the economic calamities. The economists say the recovery has started, but in urban and rural America, things are getting worse.”
Jesse Jackson is incurably negative about everything as long as there is race involved. He feeds those who will listen to him this negativity day after day after day. They need to ignore him - I certainly do.
“If we are one America, then we must act together to help those hit the hardest by the economic calamities. The economists say the recovery has started, but in urban and rural America, things are getting worse.”
Jesse Jackson is incurably negative about everything as long as there is race involved. He feeds those who will listen to him this negativity day after day after day. They need to ignore him - I certainly do.
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