The W.P.A.

Today’s Morning Call featured an Allentown man who is trying to save Works Progress Administration projects in the area.  Two of the projects pictured--a stairway and an amphitheater--look good seventy years after they were built.  Across America we are still using literally thousands of W.P.A. projects.  The Wild Creek Reservoir, a half mile from my house, is one of them.

 What a concept--the government hired the unemployed to build things.  Today we’d call it “infrastructure,” but those men (almost all were men) made a lasting contribution to this country, did useful work, and received a weekly paycheck to spend.

A mantra of the Republicans is that government can’t create jobs.  Really?  Two weeks ago I stopped by the Political Science Department at East Stroudsburg University to see if they were hiring for the spring.  The department chair told me to forget it--almost every adjunct was laid off and nobody was hiring.  Elementary and high school teachers are being laid off.  Today I read the Post Office is proposing the elimination of 125,000 jobs.  We are trying the Republican idea of austerity, just like we did under Herbert Hoover.  The results are the same.

I don’t know what the President will be proposing in his jobs speech, but if it is something the House of Representatives must pass, he may as well cancel the speech.   

It was said of the Czars of Russia that they forgot nothing, and they learned nothing.  That’s a good description of the Republican members of Congress.