The New Infrastructure

Lee, I listen to Rush and Hannity for the comic relief. However, they are both demonizing FDR and trying to do the same to Obama’s infrastructure strategy. Jobs are jobs man. I know road work might be manual labor but it has to pay better than Walmart. I believe that the US is full of people that are looking for a manual labor job and not a desk job. As a young man I hated the idea of working behind a desk but now I like blogging during work hours on the GDAB.

Lee,Be careful.While I understand the mindset of persons who are not enamored of performing “manual labor,” nevertheless, someone has to do it.While modernizing our infrastucture will take great thinkers with revolutionary ideas, the physical work of repairing and building the new power grid, the “high end rail and technology and science and stuff like that” will not be actually accomplished by people with a disdain for getting their hands dirty.Someone has to turn a shovel or a wrench. Someone has to rake asphalt or trowel concrete. Someone has to pull wire and splice cable.Someone has to weld the steel.Someone has to saw wood and hammer nails.Most people I know who work with their hands fully understand the value of what they do. When they are treated patronizingly, they respond poorly. They might even buy into the “he’s an elitist” crap.So, be careful.You almost sounded condescending there.

Hot tar perfume is the sweetest smell if it means the bridge I’m driving on doesn’t colapse underneath me, or the road I’m driving on doesn’t wash away after a flood.

Lee’s having trouble with commenting, so he asked me to post this for him:————Sorry – I included the Hedberg joke as a way of indicating that I’m well aware it’s harder work than what I do on a day to day basis. I’m glad for and respect the people that do it… But I also think manual labor is needed but not sufficient for the big challenges we face – and I’m glad we have someone as Almost-President who is up to those challenges…—————Fuck TypeWad.

Perhaps there will be a resurgence of young people heading for the trades.

Sounds a whole lot like the people who shit on the New Deal. Way to be for progress again, dude!

Lee,I know you’re far too smart to not recognize the need for skilled labor. I was just jabbing a little.I share your worry that there may not be enough tradespeople out there to accomplish the goal, but then I look at the unemployment numbers.I can’t help but think that many of those whose jobs evaporated under Bush are already skilled, or, with some training, can learn to help rebuild America.When things get tough, Americans have demonstrated the capacity to rise to the challenge. FDR’s administration pulled it off.So can Obama’s.

WE must make more of an effort in this nation to become energy independent. Not enough credit is being given to the high gas prices this past year and it’s serious damage on our economy and society. That one factor alone has caused serious stress in both individuals and businesses. A record number of homes and jobs have been lost as a direct result. And, while we are doing the happy dance around the lower prices at the pumps OPEC is announcing cuts to manipulate the prices upward again. We must get on with becoming energy independent.We can’t take another year like this past. There is a wonderful new book out about the energy crisis and what it would take for America to become energy independent. It covers every aspect of oil, what it’s uses are besides gasoline, our reserves, our depletion of it. Every type of alternative energy is covered and it’s potential to replace oil. He even has proposed legislative agenda’s that would be necessary to implement these changes along with time frames. This book is profoundly informative and our country needs to become more informed and move forward with becoming energy independent. Green technology would not only provide clean cheap energy it would create millions of badly needed new jobs. The Book is called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence NOW by Jeff Wilson. Our politicians all need to read this book.www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com

We are a resiliant people. Just in need of real leadership. Whatever the challenges, mental, physical, cultural, we can do it. I’ll sling tar if I need to; I might have to, after all. I’m one of the lucky ones still working in my profession, where a lot of talented people in my town want to work but can’t. Who knows how long that will last. Whatever it takes to recover from this, we might all have to make changes and learn new things, depending on what comes our way. I just feel relief that there is now widespread acknowledgement of how corrupt things have gotten at the top.

Interesting thoughts. Please permit some rambling for background: I was a manual laborer from the time I was 13 until I got into college at the age of 21 – actually I was paid to do those jobs starting at 13, before that it was “chores” (which didn’t stop because I was also working). I worked in tobacco fields, on hog farms and took any other odd-jobs on farms I could get after school and during the summer. I started working construction during the summers when I turned 16 and in a plastic manufacturing plant during the school year. I also drove a school bus my junior and senior years. I enlisted in the Navy where I was an electronics technician and base police officer before getting a scholarship.

Here’s the so what: I wasn’t alone in taking any job I could get because we were all poor. We had no sense of entitlement. I never want to work that hard again, but will if I have to. Too many people have had so much handed to them for their entire lives that they won’t take crappy jobs.

Understand that Lee was not being abusive of people who do that kind of work, and I concur that those jobs aren’t the whole solution. But I do believe that more people really working for what they have won’t be a bad thing. I think thins will have to get even worse though before many people will accept that work.

Brut-I realize that Lee wasn’t being abusive to people who perform manual labor. I was just giving him some good natured shit.At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, I also believe there are a number of young (say, under 30) people out there who somehow DO feel entitled, and that working at a job that occasionally requires breaking a sweat or going home dirty is beneath them. What they are missing is that this “indignity” of manual labor might actually pay better than a coveted cubicle job.Here in Alaska, any construction projects that are funded with public monies (state or federal) require that the contractor pay their employees prevailing wage (they call it the “Little Davis-Bacon Act” here). Prevailing wage is defined as on a par with that paid by union shops for the same work (and the workers can thank American Unions for making that happen).For instance, an asphalt raker (a backbreaking, dirty job, but it requires some skill) on a highway paving job is paid a base rate of $32.84 an hour. When health & welfare benefits are added (they would go on the worker’s check in a non-union shop), it equates to $48.24/hr. Not a bad rate of pay for honest work… and any overtime is time and 1/2.Under the Federal Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 (which the Republicans have busted their ass to get rid of) the same applies nationwide for federally funded projects. Of course, in any “right to work” state, the prevailing wage is probably set artificially low, so making sure that decent wages are paid as part of any program like a new WPA would have to be visited.Reference:http://labor.state.ak.us/lss/forms/pamp600-090108.pdfFuck TypeWad.

Brut-I realize that Lee wasn’t being abusive to people who perform manual labor. I was just giving him some good natured shit.At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, I also believe there are a number of young (say, under 30) people out there who somehow DO feel entitled, and that working at a job that occasionally requires breaking a sweat or going home dirty is beneath them. What they are missing is that this “indignity” of manual labor might actually pay better than a coveted cubicle job.Here in Alaska, any construction projects that are funded with public monies (state or federal) require that the contractor pay their employees prevailing wage (they call it the “Little Davis-Bacon Act” here). Prevailing wage is defined as on a par with that paid by union shops for the same work (and the workers can thank American Unions for making that happen).For instance, an asphalt raker (a backbreaking, dirty job, but it requires some skill) on a highway paving job is paid a base rate of $32.84 an hour. When health & welfare benefits are added (they would go on the worker’s check in a non-union shop), it equates to $48.24/hr. Not a bad rate of pay for honest work… and any overtime is time and 1/2.Under the Federal Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 (which the Republicans have busted their ass to get rid of) the same applies nationwide for federally funded projects. Of course, in any “right to work” state, the prevailing wage is probably set artificially low, so making sure that decent wages are paid as part of any program like a new WPA would have to be visited.Reference:http://labor.state.ak.us/lss/forms/pamp600-090108.pdfFUCK TYPEWAD!!!!