I worked the polls in Fairfax, Virginia on election day 2012. I opened the door at 6:00 am, logged voters in, operated the machines, and passed out “I voted” stickers on the way out. At 10:00 pm when our results had been tabulated and machines disassembled, I signed official documents to “certify that this statement of results and write-in certification are a complete record of this election and that all of the information entered here is true and correct.”

I signed it. But it isn’t true. I can certify no such thing.

There was no fraud. I saw none and certainly did none. Indeed, my fellow poll workers were all intelligent, efficient and sincere. The monitors from both sides who watched us appeared concerned about nothing but recording who had voted and the integrity of the process.

But I truly have no idea what happened inside the black box of the electronic voting machines. I don’t know if the machines dropped one of every 100 Obama votes or added it to Romney. I don’t know if the machines periodically stopped recording votes in this relatively Democratic precinct. (Small discrepancies could easily tilt a close election without triggering alarms).

Here’s what I do know.

I know that our touch-screen machines were slow to boot-up and had technical difficulties that made them unavailable when the polls opened at six. I know that the second of our three machines had multiple problems during the day, requiring regular shut downs and re-boots. I know that our optical scanner for paper ballots sometimes rejected ballots for no reason, though a quick kick or vigorous shake would set it working again.

In short, they are machines. They are subject to the same failures and foibles as any machine. They are also subject to hacking, code problems and file corruption.

The ATM at my bank prints out a receipt. The supermarket passes me a receipt after I buy groceries with my credit card. We document plenty of electronic transactions on paper, giving people a chance to examine them for accuracy or file them for later. But not voting?

My friend who worked as an election monitor at the UN and has observed elections in places like Cambodia and South Africa once remarked, “I would never certify electronic touch-screens without a paper-trail as ‘Free and Fair.’”

The solution is easy. The touch-screen could print a receipt, like an ATM. The voter can examine it to ensure that it accurately reflects his or her vote, then drop it in a lock box. We can enjoy the efficiencies and advantages of instant results and real-time electronic calculations … but if anything goes wrong, we have evidence in a lock box. Or we can stick to optical scanners that start with bubbles filled on paper and tabulate results electronically– but keep the paper afterward.

In my precinct on Tuesday I could honestly certify that our touch-screen displayed zero votes when it opened and 815 when it closed, with Obama over Romney by 514 to 294. As for whether that’s “true and correct” — I have no idea and nobody ever will. We’re just trusting the machine.

Sure we need higher-level solutions too. I’d like to see longer voting hours, more days, easier registration and so forth. I’d like to get the money out of politics and end corporate personhood, blah blah blah. But at the very least we need to ensure that a count is a count. Electronics are great. But we need a paper trail.

The private prison industry is on the march. In recent months the industry moved to take over 24 state prisons in southern Florida and buy five prisons in Ohio. Now it’s making moves in Michigan.

But the industry doesn’t always win. Resistance isn’t futile.

The industry wanted to buy five prisons in Ohio but had to settle for one. Community members pushed back and corrections professionals raised doubts about cost savings and program effectiveness. Policy Matters Ohio demonstrated that selling the prison will likely cost more money than it produces. Yes, the state gets $73 million immediately for the sale – but the lease commits the state to pay $4 million annually for 20 years. So depending how cost estimates are done, the sale will end up costing the state anywhere from $8 million to $15 million more than traditional corrections.

Florida shows that the prison industry can’t make an honest case for the product it sells. The move to privatize 24 prisons was slipped into the annual budget bill, and opponents were literally eliminated. The Corrections chief, Edwin Buss, was forced to resign after expressing doubt that a proper “business case” for cost savings could be made. Senator Paula Dockery (R-Lakeland), an outspoken critic of privatization, was stripped of her seat on the Criminal Justice Committee, where such legislation is ordinarily heard. Senator Mike Fasano (R-New Port Richey) was stripped of his chairmanship of the Committee on Criminal Justice Appropriations when he questioned the accelerated process, compressed hearing schedule, and absence of opposing experts.

The legislation institutionalizes secrecy. SB 2036 exempts prisons from the “applicable cost benefit analyses, business case analyses, performance contracting procedures, service comparisons, and impacts on performance standards” used in every other procurement. No such analysis would be done until after the contract has been executed.

SB 2036 turns procurement into a joke. First, buy my car. Then, after you buy it, you can check my car’s condition, compare it to your own car or see if you need a new car at all.

A truly heroic effort killed the bill. A lawsuit by the Police Benevolent Association enforced the state law requiring that such action be in separate legislation, not buried in general appropriations. Organized labor, faith groups and local leaders rose up in opposition. The privatization failed in a 21-19 Senate vote on Valentine’s Day.

Now Michigan. Michigan is interesting because it holds a bleeding wound. The North Lake Correctional Center in Baldwin was private from the beginning, built by Wackenhut, now known as the GEO Group. The prison opened in 1999, closed in 2005, and had nothing but problems in between.

The North Lake prison was more expensive than 33 out of 37 other Michigan prisons. The state was paying $75.81 per person per day for confinement that cost $64.89 per day in sufficiently secure state facilities – even though the contractor was failing to provide counseling programs or contractually required levels of staff. At the same time, North Lake was three times more violent than Michigan’s other maximum-security prisons. In the first five months of operation North Lake reported 110 critical incidents, including 46 assaults and 12 attempted suicides.

The state didn’t even need the secure space it thought it might – so it did the right thing. It served notice and closed the facility.

GEO sued to keep the prison open or compel the state to continue making lease payments anyway. But GEO lost the lawsuit and the facility sat empty for years. GEO spent $60 million renovating it from 500 juveniles to 1,700 adults and landed some inmates from California for a few months in 2011 – but the contract didn’t last and the facility again sits empty. GEO is paying capital costs and a skeleton crew for no reason.

Michigan’s new privatization proposal bails GEO out. Even though Michigan has been reducing its prison population (from 51,515 in 2006 to 44,113 in 2010) and may not need all of its present secure capacity, the new proposal adds North Lake to the roster.

Moves are also being made to privatize food service and medical care – but this, too doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Michigan has a history of trouble contracting for health care in prisons, and privatizing food service leads to myriad hidden costs. In 2007, the Department of Corrections found that using outside food service staff required adding at least one state corrections officer during operations — even though the time shows up as department costs, not vendor costs.

But resistance isn’t futile. A coalition of working people is coming together to oppose the plans. The Michigan Corrections Organization, acting in alliance with four different labor unions, published a scathing report that itemizes the false promises and real pitfalls of private prison contracting. The report also includes twenty questions that any legislator considering such privatization needs to be able to answer in advance (eg. How are cost comparisons made? Will the prison contractor reimburse the host city for the local police cost of tracking down escapees?)

Mel Grieshaber, Executive Director of MCO: “Privatization is tempting because corporations make all kinds of promises, but they don’t deliver on the cost savings and they don’t run their facilities safely…. Taxpayers should question why the Legislature is rushing to approve a plan that will give more profits to a corporation that already failed here.”

Even as the union report crunched the numbers and questioned the costs and benefits, faith leaders came together to express opposition to the practice of incarcerating people as a means of generating corporate profit. Coalition partners walked the hallways of the statehouse, talking with legislators, distributing copies of the report and making sure people know about the 20 questions. The faith community is circulating a petition, in the spirit of the Methodist church, which has divested its pension funds from private prison companies.

It’s only beginning. We don’t know how it will end. But the facts are on our side … and resistance isn’t futile.

I’m a middle-aged, middle-class PTA dad who participates in Occupy DC because I want a better country for our kids.

On Sunday, the National Park Service brutally tased a peaceful, young Occupy DC demonstrator. This was a prelude to their threatened crackdown of Occupy DC today at noon.

Watch the video here (warning: it’s graphic). And please join me in petitioning the National Park Service to leave Occupy DC alone.

Then pass this to others—because the media will be at Occupy DC today, and the more signers we have, the more they can report that the public’s on our side. Sign here.

Until now, Occupy DC has been protected from eviction because the National Park Service—not the DC police—have jurisdiction over us. The National Park Service said publicly, “We don’t have any issues with these folks” and “The core of their First Amendment activity is that they occupy the site.”

But last week, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa politicized the Park Service—holding hearings where he pressured them to crack down on Occupy DC under the pretext of enforcing camping regulations. The Park Service quickly buckled.

We need to create our own pressure. Click here to tell the National Park Service that First Amendment rights trump camping rules.

Then, pass this to others so we can show the media a public outpouring.

Occupy DC in McPherson Square (15th and K Streets NW) is fighting the good fight in our nation’s capital — protesting the Koch brothers, both political parties, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman (last night) for being part of a broken political system that is hurting our democracy. What happens today is key to our survival. Please stand with us in solidarity. ]]> http://blog.ourfuture.org/20120130/Occupy_DC_Arrested_Take_Action_Video/feed 0 http://blog.ourfuture.org/20111025/The_Dream_that_Drives_the_Occupations?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=The_Dream_that_Drives_the_Occupations http://blog.ourfuture.org/20111025/The_Dream_that_Drives_the_Occupations#comments Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:24:06 +0000 Eric Lotke http://blog.ourfuture.org/?p=69764

I’ve been spending evenings and weekends recently with the Occupy protestors in DC. I can’t stay full time because, unlike many protestors, I have two children and a full-time job. But I clearly share their interests and I’m glad they’re making the ruckus.

Our economy is broken. Hard work doesn’t pay, and the rewards of work are unequally shared.
Our democracy is broken. The government doesn’t listen to the people, captive to giant corporations and small numbers of large donors.

What should we do about it? One complaint issued against the protestors is the lack of a plan. This complaint is unfair: we know what they want, even without the policy details. Regulate Wall Street, rebuild the infrastructure, spend war money at home, tax the top end, create jobs, etc.

Well, I don’t speak for the Occupiers. I’m just a body in the crowd. But I’m happy to report on a newly published book that should help anybody who wants more of a plan.

See Innovation created the book, Dream of a Nation. It collects ideas by leading thinkers and presents them in graphically interesting, full color essays complete with anecdotes, statistics and everything else a movement needs to put ideas to work. Subjects range from the economy and education to democracy and war. There are recommendations for both policymakers and individuals.

I contributed a chapter on the economy, Make it in America, about the importance of manufacturing. Please permit me to quote myself:

No matter what happens with top-end services, a country still needs things. Whether it is cars, computers or refrigerators, if we don’t make them here, then someone else gets our money. Yes, we ran a $144 billion surplus in services in 2008. But we ran an $840 billion deficit in goods in the same year. Between 1999 and 2009 America imported $6.8 trillion more goods than we exported.

This is not natural economic evolution. The changes were the result of policy choices that can be made differently….

We don’t need more policy papers! Universities, think tanks and even the halls of Congress are filled with ideas. We know how to do this. See Innovation kindly pulled it together into a collection that Publishers Weekly calls “a must read for anyone that wants to be a part of the solution.”

If you don’t believe them, read it yourself.

All that’s missing is political will. Maybe the Occupiers will help push us to start.

On Labor Day, President Obama rediscovered his roots. He traveled to the LaborFest rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and proposed $50 billion in infrastructure spending to “create jobs” and “make our economy hum over the long haul.” Everything was on target — from the substance to the politics. The only thing off was the size.

Start with the substance. Obama recognized that our country is falling apart, and proposed some sensible fixes.

It’s a six-year plan and tied to the surface transportation bill scheduled for reauthorization — but front-loaded to create jobs sooner rather than later. It continues the work of the 2009 Recovery Act, with less emphasis on “shovel-ready” than on long-term growth. It also offers some creative new funding proposals:

Obama also noticed that it’s an election year. In this relatively safe space and with a base that feels forgotten, he drew the contrast with the Republicans.

It’s nice to see the fight. It’s nice to see the contrast message. It’s nice to see Obama do something that his base wants and may be willing to fight for — rather than bending over backwards to appease people who won’t vote for him anyway.

Yes, I would have liked to have seen this fight six months ago. Or even eighteen. Yes, I would have liked to see the ideological contrast stated clearly over time.

And most importantly, I’d like to see it bigger. The American Society of Civil Engineers says $2.2 trillion is needed over five years to put our infrastructure back into satisfactory condition — and that’s only satisfactory. It doesn’t include that new high speed rail. As I’ve said in the past, the proposals are off by orders of magnitude.

None of this is going to pass anyway. The Republicans won’t give Democrats a victory just before the election. At this point it’s purely political, a chance to draw a contrast and point in a new direction. Obama might as well spell out the whole vision and give us something to aim for.

Roads don’t build themselves. Schools don’t fix their own roofs and high-speed trains don’t lay their own tracks. We need our public sector to step in. That’s what it’s for.

Obama can use his great gifts of oratory to explain what’s needed and how long it will take. He can talk truthfully about the deficit, and close it with proposals like top end taxation, financial transaction taxes, and ending a range of subsidies from oil companies to agriculture

Monday’s speech was a step in the right direction. It’s definitely too little. We’ll see if it’s too late.

Yesterday evening I attended an event sponsored by my U.S. Representative, Jim Moran (D-VA). I accepted an invitation I received from his email list to a community forum called “Principles & Priorities: How would you balance the budget?”

I’m no dummy and I was expecting political theater, but I thought at least the theater would be staged by Representative Moran, a centrist Democrat who generally votes the party line, though he sometimes surprises and delights like his 2002 vote against the Iraq war resolution.

How wrong I was. Representative Moran didn’t even show up until it was halfway over to deliver his prepared remarks.

The meeting was called to order and, it turns out, convened by the Concord Coalition, the right-wing group dedicated to deficit-cutting and fiscal responsibility. We received a fiscal briefing complete with powerpoint pie-charts that showed how the “entitlements crisis” is eating our budget. Then we were broken into small groups to discuss lists of proposed solutions.

“It’s like Congress,” the moderator informed us. “You can’t have everything and you need to make choices.” Each choice came with an estimated price-tag. $3 billion savings over ten years by eliminating the one dollar bill; $5 billion over ten years in funding cuts for the arts and humanities; $53 billion in new spending for high speed rail. Which would you choose?

I’m not challenging the math. The choices weren’t unreasonable, and the moderator readily admitted that every idea was not on the list. Most impressive, the list included defense cuts and revenue increases.

Still the right-wing tilt was unmistakable. In a courteous, professorial, apparently neutral way, we were shown how social security is unaffordable, and asked whether we prefer to raise the retirement age or convert Medicare into a voucher program.

Even the revenue options were conservatives in disguise. Should we eliminate the home mortgage deduction or tax the employer contribution to health care benefits? Not to be seen were estate taxes, a financial transaction tax, or progressive taxation other than ending George Bush’s “temporary” tax cuts.

Military cuts included canceling a few billion dollars’ worth of new weapon systems. Our hundreds of overseas bases and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq went unmentioned.

My point here is not to criticize the range or the particulars of the options — some of them were quite appealing (increasing the payroll cap for Social Security contributions, $457 billion over ten years) — but the exaggerated breadth of the debt crisis. Social Security has its own funding stream and its own fiscal logic. Medicare and Medicaid are symptoms of our health care problems and require health care solutions, not offsets in AMTRAK subsidies. The big three entitlement programs require separate attention and do not belong in our urgent negotiations over the debt ceiling.

Here’s the problem. This forum was convened by Representative Moran. He gave Concord his mailing list, and lent his name and his prestige to this occasion. Visiting with the Concord staffers afterwards, I learned that they have presented such events with 25 other U.S. Representatives so far. “Always by invitation,” he pointed out.

I can imagine it. Concord offers to host and staff a forum on the budget. Representatives can engage their constituents, discuss the budget, and posture on fiscal responsibility all at the same time. I understand the appeal.

But our elected officials shouldn’t take the bait. This was a con. The Concord Coalition spent two hours kindly and gently indoctrinating us in a right-wing world-view. Concord is an honest advocacy group and entitled to advocacy towards its ends. But our elected officials should not dress it up in government clothes and present it to constituents as a town hall forum. It’s a service to neither their constituencies nor the spirit of the town hall for which it’s named.

I vote no.

Enough with blaming public employees for all of America’s problems. Last week public employees in Oregon marched on the state Capitol with a billion dollars worth of recommendations for government efficiencies and revenue enhancements. On Monday in Lansing, Michigan, public employees presented their own report, New Solutions for Michigan, with concrete suggestions on how state leaders can to reduce Michigan’s budget deficit and improve services at the same time.

Like any other job, the people doing the work know how it’s done and how to do it better. Members of SEIU Local 517 in Michigan started by sharing their own ideas for increasing efficiency, cutting costs and improving the quality of services. Soon they were joined by state employees united in UAW, AFSCME and MSEA, along with A Better Michigan Future, a coalition of 48 nonprofit organizations. Together they represented a broad range of agencies and interests, and over 30,000 state employees.

First, the workers called attention to excessive management. New Solutions for Michigan reveals that the state workforce averages fewer than six non-supervisory staff for every manager and/or supervisor (5.9:1) – well above other states’ norms.

The Michigan workforce is twice as top heavy as Texas, which won bipartisan support for legislation that set a minimum ratio of 11:1. Last year Iowa enacted legislation to increase the number of staff per manager from 14:1 in 2010 to 20:1 in 2016. Oregon, which is not as top-heavy as Michigan, is considering action on SEIU’s recommended target of 11:1.

Increasing the ratio in Michigan by just one staff per manager would yield a savings of $75 million annually in wages alone. Moving Michigan toward an 11:1 target in the long term could save hundreds of millions in annual spending without jeopardizing essential services.

Second, New Solutions for Michigan proposes that contract costs be examined along with state employee salaries and benefits. Using data newly available on the Michigan Transparency website, the report demonstrates that contract payments amount to 26 cents for every $1 of state spending, compared to 10 cents for state worker compensation. Michigan spends two-and-a-half times more on contractors than its own workforce, and has committed billions of dollars in long-term contracts with out-of-state firms.

State agencies routinely spend millions for contract services – on everything from computer programming to motor vehicle maintenance – to the tune of $1.1 billion annually (without counting community health or colleges). Workers estimate that a 10 percent cut in contract costs –by seeking savings from vendors or paring down contracted services – would save Michigan $110 million annually.

The report highlights two types of contracts, transportation and information technology, where contract vendors provide services that state employees can often provide at lower cost. Lead technicians in the Michigan Department of Transportation work side by side with contractors doing the same work – but the fully loaded cost of the state worker, with salary and benefits, is $54 per hour, whereas contractors range from $86 to $122 per hour.

David Baker, a member of AFSCME who works in a secure residential treatment facility for youth, is especially outraged at the contracting. He says contractors charge higher fees every year, and now they’re getting tax breaks too. When we’re cutting schools, police and other services, he asks “why are contractors not being asked to share in the sacrifice?”

The final recommendation pulls it all together – inviting collaboration with agency personnel at every level to search for new ideas. Gina Nelson, a caseworker with 34 years of experience with the Michigan Department of Human Services and a member of UAW, summed it up nicely. “For every idea like these,” she said, report in hand, “workers across our state have hundreds more.”

Governor Snyder said he wants to work together to fix Michigan’s problems. The workers are ready, willing and able. The new report is a strong step in the right direction. Let’s hope they can continue together.

——-
This article originally appeared at SEIU.

As the debate heats up over Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I took a step out on my own. I got a divorce. I am no longer a wholly owned subsidiary of Wells Fargo Bank.

First Wells Fargo acquired the bank I’d been banking in. Then Wells Fargo acquired my mortgage. The roof over my head and the little savings accounts where my kids manage their newspaper money were just parts of Wells Fargo’s diversified portfolio. So we left.

I opened a new account at a community bank near me. It has exactly the same tools for online banking, check cards and so forth that I’ve come to expect, and better interest rates on every product from checking to CDs to my kids’ little savings accounts. I’m even better off with ATMs. I feared I’d be limited, but my community bank solves the problem by picking up the fees for me to use any ATM at any bank anywhere in the world.

The staff was friendlier, too. Many of them previously worked for banks like Citi and Wells Fargo, and they appreciated the cultural change even more than I did. They stayed open a little late to accommodate my work schedule, and we finished up by telephone and email.

I learned a bunch in the process, too. I learned that the Huffington Post was way ahead of me. They recommended that people make this move last year, and they even created a site to help find your local bank and tell your story.

Last year my bank was one of the four that held half of the nation’s mortgages, two-thirds of its credit cards and controlled about 40 percent of the nation’s deposits. My bank was one of the six that had assets valued at 64 percent of America’s GDP . That’s too big. I took no pride in it, and got nothing out of it. As Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says, a bank that’s too big to fail is “too big to exist”. We need to control these banks and restore the New Deal Glass-Steagall reforms that created a division between investment brokers and traditional banks. We also need Elizabeth Warren at the CFPB.

I can’t do much about any of that – but I still control my own money. Wells Fargo no longer does. One small blow against Big Brother Inc.

Yesterday I attended a conference on the Renaissance of American Manufacturing in Washington DC. It included a variety of organizations with interests in trade, from the US Business and Industry Council to the International Association of Machinists and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. It was another step in our turn towards renewing the American economy, and everyone agreed on two main points: (1) President Obama’s goal of doubling exports is important, but (2) it can’t be achieved without a robust industrial policy.

Start with the problem. The United States has lost half of its manufacturing jobs since 1980, and manufacturing as a share of GDP fell by 43 percent. Roughly $600 billion leaves our country every year to buy things made somewhere else, a deficit in goods that dwarfs our $100 billion surplus in services. America needs to borrow money or sell off assets to cover the difference. The result is unsustainable.

As Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) put it at the conference, “If we can’t make it in America, we can’t make it in America.”

How did this happen? How did we dig a hole this deep? The answer has many layers but several themes emerged.

First, America is losing a global trade war. It’s not just that China cheats (though it does) or that it manipulates its currency (it does that too). It’s that America’s stance in trade is all wrong. America champions open markets and free trade, even as other countries seek their own advantage and play to win. We act as if more trade is always better, even as we lose on every deal (Thea Lee of the AFL-CIO: “NAFTA then CAFTA, and we get the shaft-a”). We act as if consumer spending will drive our recovery, even as more consumer spending simply means more goods imported from afar and more American money leaving the American economy. We can’t do that forever.

Second, the interests of American multi-national corporations have diverged from the interests of America. Once upon a time, what was good for General Motors was good for America. Not anymore. Nowadays, American companies that relocate to China can (a) accept Chinese subsidies for the move, (b) avoid paying US taxes on overseas operations, (c) take advantage of lower Chinese costs for labor, environmental protection and worker safety, and (d) sell the products back to Americans at American prices for American dollars. It’s a win for the corporation, the shareholders and CEO. But it’s a loss for America, the American people and the American worker. Until we recognize this divergence and the power of these large corporations over US policy, we will continue on a fatal trajectory. (Ralph Gomory, formerly of IBM, now the Sloan Foundation: “There are none so blind as those who do not want to see”).

Third, manufacturing is key to our revival. We can’t design things here and manufacture them someplace else. Innovation follows manufacturing. That’s why other countries lure away American factories for batteries (in the 1980s), semiconductors (in the 1990s) and solar cells (in the 2000s). Soon enough the next generation is invented overseas and Americans have to give their money to someone else. (Clyde Prestowitz, principal trade negotiator to Asia under Ronald Reagan: “We gave Japan computer chip technology, then they took it to the next level and sold it back to us.”).

But still something was missing. Everyone agreed with Obama that increasing exports is a good idea. “But doubling gross exports is silly,” exclaimed Leo Hindery, managing partner of Intermedia Partners and project director at the New America Foundation. “Net exports matter more.” After all, America doubled our exports in the 1990s — but we nearly tripled our imports at the same time. Making more money is good, of course — but we also need to stop the bleeding.

That led to the most important conclusion. “We need an industrial policy,” said Rep. Paterson (D-NJ). “Our problems are large but our solutions are small,” said former Senator Don Riegle (D-MI). People craved leadership and vision. Doubling exports is a worthy goal, but it will require coordination among many parts.

The individual elements were itemized, of course. Some were modest and straightforward. Change the incentives in the tax code. Enforce trade rules when other countries violate the terms. Rebuild our infrastructure, increase our investments in R&D, and race to lead the revolution in clean energy production. Other recommendations were more profound. Declare a national emergency and take emergency trade measures allowed under section 12 of GATT. Add a value added tax or across-the-board tariffs to increase the price of imports. Negotiate different trade agreements in the future, or exit the WTO altogether since mercantilist countries use the rules against us but violate them themselves. Several speakers proposed a Secretary of Manufacturing or US Development Board, with Vice President as Chair and myriad agencies represented, tasked with looking globally at our needs and coordinating our response.

We can pick which of those to do first, or do several together. And we should certainly work to double our exports. But if we don’t craft an industrial policy or link the pieces with a strategic vision, it’s likely to fall apart all over again. As Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan closed her presentation, we can “come to the table and feast … or be an item on the menu as our economic competitors forge ahead.”

I vote for the feast.

The August unemployment data are out. The unemployment rate was “about unchanged” at 9.6 percent,” says the BLS press release. Teenagers “showed little change” at 26.3 percent, as did African Americans (16.3 percent) and Hispanics (12.0 percent). You can feel the boredom in the release. No change, no news, nothing to report.

But the data are screaming! Unemployment this high is terrible. An unsustainable national disaster. And behind every unemployed person is another person who is underemployed or has given up trying. A Gallup survey released September 2 shows 18.6 percent of American workers “are either unemployed or working part time but wanting full-time work.” Yes, that’s the same Gallup that showed an unprecedented ten point Republican lead heading into the midterm elections.

What are the Democrats supposed to do about it? It’s crazy that they don’t know. Six in ten voters support “a plan to invest in new industries and rebuild the country over the next five years.” But the Democrats aren’t even trying. They are cowering in the corner.

So I’ll say it all again. Rebuild the old infrastructure. Start new national networks of broadband and high speed rail. Put people to work laying rail and building wind turbines, with parts made in America. Finance it with top end taxation, financial transaction taxes and a national infrastructure bank. End the tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.

We aren’t doing any of that. The White House’s latest plan is tax cuts for business, a trick straight out of the Republican playbook.

But if people want Republicans, they can just vote for them. In fact, they might.