America’s Job Training System: Better than You Think (And Smaller Too)’

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New America Foundation– Vice President Joseph R. Biden (Democrat, Delaware)

“In his 2014 State of the Union address, the President charged Vice President Biden to conduct a review of the country’s federal employment and training programs to ensure that they are “job-driven, integrated, and effective.” On July 22nd, the same day the President signed the new Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the Vice President’s office released its findings in two publications: Ready to Work: Job-Driven Training and American Opportunity and What Works in Job Training: A Synthesis of the Evidence. Together, the reports provide a comprehensive look at federal employment and training programs, and will be a valuable resource to anyone wanting to understand the workforce development field and the evidence base that is driving policy and practice.”

You can read the rest of this article at The New America Foundation

There are plenty parts of the Federal budget that I would like to cut back on and reform, like in defense, agriculture subsidies, corporate welfare, red tape. But one area where I would like to see America spend a hell of a lot more money on as well as reforming the system would be in the areas of infrastructure, job training, and education, so we are more competitive with Europe, Brazil, China, and Japan in these areas. Not to spend a lot more money on a bad system, or just to spend a lot more money. But to reform the system and invest whatever it takes in it to make it as effective as possible.

We could literally have a public education system in America not run by the Federal Government and still run by the states and locals primarily where every student is able to go to a good school. Where none of our teachers are underpaid and where none of our schools are underfunded, including in very poor urban and rural areas. Where educators are paid based on how well their students are learning, not by how long they’ve been teaching. Where parents would have the choice to send their student to any public school in the district including a charter school. And where schools are funded based on need, not by where they are located.

We could do this by still having the states and locals be the first financial resource to funding schools. But where the Feds step in to provide the financial resources for schools that are in low-income districts so they have the resources that they need to be successful as well. This would require a huge investment probably in the hundreds of billions of dollars and would sort of look like a Marshall Plan but it would be domestic. And it would need to be paid for by not borrowing the money, but is something that we can afford to do.

As far as job training for low-skilled low-income adults, whether they are working or not: if they are collecting any form of public assistance, I would make job training a requirement for them in order to receive public assistance. Public assistance would become an investment in human capital and investment in the economy. And no longer public charity, but money spent on improving the economic lives of people in need so they have the skills and freedom to be able to support themselves. Instead of staying on public assistance indefinitely with very little if any hope at becoming successful in life.

I would make job training and education universal not just K-12 or through college, but lifelong. And set up job training centers all over the country including in ever low-income urban and rural area in the country including for United States territories and commonwealths. And make it public-private partnership and bring in the non-profits in the private sector and reward them with grants to set up job training centers and offices for low-income low-skilled adults. Where these people would be their clients and their job would be to find them the right school and educational program for that client so the client can get the education they need to get themselves a good job.

Poverty is not something that we have to accept and put up with. You have to know why people are in poverty and them empower them based on that knowledge to work their way out of poverty. And the person them self has to take advantage of those opportunities that they need to get themselves the skills that they need to get out of poverty. And not just live in poverty with a few extra bucks from taxpayers and private donations.

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Allan Gregg: Christopher Hitchens On Bill Clinton

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat 

I’m not a mind-reader obviously, but Chris Hitchens was an admitted Socialist and was his whole life. Even though late in his career he became more of a Neoconservative on foreign policy and national security. He supported the War in Iraq and admitted that 9/11 changed his take on foreign policy and national security. If Hitchens was a Democrat he was from the McGovernite wing of the Democratic Party, the New Left that came into existence in the party in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The McGovernites that are Occupy Wall Street today are Social Democrats who probably had as much influence over the Democratic Party as the Christian Right has over the Republican Party today. And the McGovernites essentially ran the Democratic Party from 1968 or so until Democrats lost their fifth out of six presidential elections in 1988. Bill Clinton is a New Democrat and comes from the New Democratic wing of the Democratic Party that now runs the party today.

New Democrats believe in using government to empower people. Not support them indefinitely without expecting anything from those tax dollars. New Democrats believe in foreign trade, a strong but limited liberal internationalist foreign policy. Infrastructure, education and job training over government dependence. Smart on crime, not soft on crime which means punishing hardcore criminals and not blaming society for their crimes.

Social Democrats believe in the central state and that the job of government is to take care of people. Not empower people to be able to take care of themselves. Welfare to Work was kind of the last straw for Social Democrats in the Democratic Party after trade, the 1994 Crime Bill and deficit reduction. And not expanding the Federal state as it related to the economy and creating a welfare state for the country. And instead moving away from those traditional Democratic policies.

Again I’m not a mind-reader, but I believe a lot of the criticism that Chris Hitchens has for President Clinton has to do with President Clinton’s politics. Instead of the man’s personal behavior as President and that Hitchens is still angry over how Clinton transformed the Democratic Party and made it a center-left party again. And no longer a social democratic party that it was pre-Clinton that is common on the Left in Europe.

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Slate Magazine: Jamelle Bouie- John Fund’s Distorted History of the Democratic Party

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat

What right-wingers of today and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal and National Review is one of them, don’t seem to understand is that even though it is true that Congressional Republicans supported the civil rights laws more than Congressional Democrats in the 1960s, the Democrats who were against those laws in Congress especially in the Senate are Republicans today are and would be Republicans today. They would be part of the Tea Party and Religious-Right wing of the Republican Party today and perhaps part of both factions and those two factions overlap.

Lyndon Johnson and to a certain extent Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon rewrote the political map in America. Back in the 1960s the Democratic Party represented the South and Mid-Atlantic and to a certain extent the West. The Republican Party was New England and the broader Northeast, Midwest and parts of the West as well. The civil rights laws completely changed that around that by the 1990s the South was solid Republican because those anti-civil rights Southern Democrats were now Republicans. Republican Trent Lott from Mississippi who was Leader of the Senate at one point use to be a Democrat.

The Northeast because of civil rights by the 1990s or even before that became the solid Democratic North. There are now maybe ten Northeastern Republicans in Congress. Senators Kelly Ayotte and Susan Collins from New Hampshire and Maine respectfully. And a handful of Representatives mostly from small blue-collar towns like in Upstate New York and Pennsylvania like Representative Mike Kelly. And politically and culturally small towns in the Northeast do not look much different from the Bible Belt in the South.

So when John Fund, Anne Coulter and Larry Elder on the right try to suggest that it is the Democratic Party that is racist and that it is Democrats who are racist. Because they voted against the civil rights laws and supported Jim Crow. You should ask them “which era are you talking about?” Because if they are referring to the 1960s, 50s, and even before that they would be right. But the fact is those Democrats who supported Jim Crow and blocked the civil rights laws in the 1950s and 60s today are Republicans and would be Republicans today.

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Associated PressEd Donahue: US Employers Add 209K Jobs, Unemployment Ticks Up to 6.2%

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat

Two-hundred-thousand jobs in a month even if it is not a high as the previous month of two-hundred-eighty-thousand jobs is a very good number. And when you have a slight uptick in unemployment from 6.1% to 6.2% that is a good sign as well because that means more Americans who aren’t currently working are looking for work. Which are the people policymakers in Washington should be targeting. Those are the people the Obama Administration are concern with and why they’ve pushed so many ideas designed to put those people to work. And if they could get any cooperation with the Republican House of Representatives, job growth would be even better right now.

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CBS News: President Jimmy Carter On Hostage Crisis is On Face The Nation

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat

I give President Jimmy Carter a lot of credit for all the time and effort that he put into seeing that the American hostages in Iran were brought home. Which includes the rescue attempt in the spring of 1980 even though that failed. But it should give you an idea how badly he wanted to see those hostages come home. But he was essentially in an impossible situation with the Iranian terrorists holding all of the cards. And with America looking and being somewhat weak militarily and economically at this point. It was going to be very difficult from the start for the Carter Administration to bring those hostages home in a timely matter.

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Associated Press: President Obama Chides House GOP For Pursuing Lawsuit

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat

I agree with the President when he says that House Republicans rather sue the President and try to go back in time and repeal legislation then do their jobs and address the issues of the country. Like fixing the Highway Trust Fund and that is just one example. But addressing the long-term infrastructure deficit in the country would be another one. That in the time they could’ve spent doing real things and making real contributions for their constituents, they’ve spent that time investigating things that are already known or currently already under investigation. Suing the President and going on recess and vacationing.

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CBS Evening News: John Dickerson: President Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise Speech’

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat 

I covered most of this yesterday, but John Dickerson’s comment about President Carter’s speech being ‘tone-death’ was spot on. This speech sounded like a President who was out of ideas and that his administration was also out of ideas. That they tried everything they could think of to fix the economy and that nothing was getting through. But that they also wanted to get reelected and had to do something drastic which was to try to put the blame on the American people for the problems with the economy. And telling them they were spending too much money and blaming the bad economy on materialism.

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James Miller Center: President Jimmy Carter Crisis of Confidence Speech – July 15, 1979

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat

Just to start out and to give you an idea of where I’m coming from. This is one of the most depressing speeches in American history. Especially coming from the President of the United States and coming from someone with the intellect of a Jimmy Carter. Not saying it was one of the worst speeches, or it was even a bad speech. Because he did make some good points about how the country was doing at this time in the summer of 1979 one of the worst summer’s the country has ever gone through economically and perhaps in general.

But the problem with the country or even lack of confidence had nothing to do with the people itself. But the actual economy with the runaway inflation and interest rates, the energy crisis that made us look like a third world country in a country with all the natural resources that we have. This crisis had nothing to do with materialism, or people being selfish, but what it was about the fact that a lot of Americans were unemployed, or seeing their business’s fail and finding themselves on public assistance for the first time in their lives.

What President Carter was doing instead of focusing on the true economic challenges that the country was going through instead was trying to put the blame on the American people and suggesting that they were selfish and materialistic. Which obviously didn’t play well which is what we see from the polling data after the speech where President Carter’s poll numbers went down even further. So this speech was ineffective and if anything cost the President political power.

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Senate Democrats: Senator John Tester: ‘Taking Care of Veterans is a Cost of Going to War’

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat 

Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator John Tester with the lines of the veterans affairs debate. Senator Bernie Sanders, “that if you can afford to send your soldiers to war, you can afford to take care of them when they come back”. And the one from Senator Tester “taking care of veterans is a cost of going to war”. Something that House Republicans or at least the Tea Party Caucus has either forgotten or simply doesn’t understand. That it apparently it was easy for them to run up the national credit card during the Iraq War. But guess what that bill has come due and its time to pay and they don’t seem to want to pay the bills.

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Constitution Daily: Lyle Denniston: The Constitution Outside the Courts: The U.S. Sentencing Commission

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Erik Schneider

Source:The New Democrat 

Making punishment fit the crime should be an obvious statement if it isn’t, but if you look at our criminal justice system that of course is not always the case. We have thousands if not more people doing five years or more for simple drug possession and in many times that is their first offense. Look at the War on Drugs where we have thousands of people doing long sentences again for drug possession, or selling small amounts of marijuana and other illegal narcotics. Doing long sentences for selling things that people want to buy, have and use.

And anyone still wondering why we have two-million or more people in prison in America? I sure as hell am not and by the way we have the largest prison population in the developed world. And we are supposed to be this beacon of freedom and great free society this liberal democracy that everyone else wants to be. It is hard to make the case that we are those great things when we have so many people in prison that do not represent major if any threats to society and are doing time in many cases for what they did to themselves. Or providing services that others wanted from them.

I’m not a fan of illegal narcotics including marijuana even though I do support marijuana legalization. I’m not a fan of gambling or prostitution. But just because I don’t like these activities doesn’t mean I want to arrest people who choose to engage in them. There are better more cost-effective ways to dealing with activities that come with high risks including tobacco, junk food and soft drinks than arresting people and locking them up for engaging in those activities. It is called regulation to make sure non-adults aren’t involved in them and making sure that adults who are involved in them know what they are getting into.

And I’m referring to gambling and prostitution mostly. But with lets dangerous products that people choose to use like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, soft drinks and junk food instead of expanding the War on Drugs which is what some nanny statists on the progressive Left want to do. Again regulate them so people know exactly what they are consuming and tax them for it so Americans who choose to live healthy don’t get stuck with the health care bills of people who choose not to live healthy.

But that is just one way to cut the prison population and create that free society and liberal democracy that a lot of Americans on the Left and Right do want. Another way would be to say “prison and jail are not always the answers and they aren’t always the first answers either”. When we are talking about low-level offenses and instead look at halfway houses, community housing, community service, probational release where offenders aren’t free or in incarcerated, but living in a halfway house type environment as they are also working so they can pay their rent outside of the home. And getting treated for why they are there in the first place.

We put in policies like this and we’ll have all the jail and prison space needed for real hardcore criminals that need to be in prison. Violent offenders and organize criminals, but also white-collar criminals who represent a serious threat to the economy and Americans economic wellbeing. Instead of having so many overcrowded prisons in America full of not only people that we have to have in prison, but with offenders who do not need to be there.

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