Understanding Government

Tonya Grisby, a 39 year-old grandmother who lives in Chicago’s predominantly black and mostly poor Austin neighborhood, worked at a warehouse until December 2009. But the person Grisby carpooled with to work got laid off and, without a ride, Grisby was soon laid off as well.

Grisby had few prospects for employment until last May when she was hired by Chicago’s Westside Health Authority thanks to Put Illinois to Work – a government subsidized job program. Uncle Sam paid for Grisby to work a 40 hour-a-week front-desk job that paid $10 an hour. (more…)

One of the few government direct job creation programs will soon come to an end. In mid-January, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, will stop funding “Put Illinois to Work” — a temporary jobs program first paid for by the stimulus bill and now paid for by Illinois, reports the Chicago Tribune’s Monique Garcia. Since federal money stopped in September, Quinn has put $122 million toward a program where the state pays businesses to hire employees for entry-level positions that usually pay around $10 an hour. Quinn says that come January, he will focus on new legislation to give business the incentive to hire instead of piggybacking on an expired federal program.

Christine Radogno, the GOP leader in the Illinois Senate, has led the criticisms of Put Illinois to Work. (more…)

Made in Germany

Government and industry need to team up to rebuild America’s machine-tool industry.  According to Justin Lahart in the Wall Street Journal, there is strong demand for expertly-machined parts here in America.  Backlogs and delays in obtaining special parts mean American manufacturers fall behind in orders and can’t compete as well globally.  We can and should fix this. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal’s Phil Izzo reports on a couple of disquieting recession-related statistics: First, a quarter of the 8.4 million jobs lost in the recession are never, ever coming back — these jobs have been permanently outsourced, automated or simply disappeared. Second, the U.S. labor market is expected to add only 133,000 jobs a month — that barely covers 100,000 monthly new entrants into the labor force. Which means the unemployment rate is projected to decrease to 9.4 percent by December — only .3 percent better then what it is now.

Faced with such sweeping and complex macroeconomic questions there is only one responsible thing for a political journalist to do: see if we can blame Barack Obama. Well, Obama can only address unemployment as much as the Senate wants him to. And the jobs bill unveiled by Harry Reid yesterday is a modest measure built around a payroll tax holiday for employers as well as other hiring incentives. Perhaps Obama should use his bully pulpit to argue for more direct job creation. But it seems that neither the president nor Senate has the appetite to do with the labor market what the Federal Reserve did with Wall Street: radical government intervention.

A day after Attorney General Eric Holder revealed his plan to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal court, the Chicago Tribune reported another change in the “war on terror” – the White House’s initiative to move some Guantanamo Bay terrorist detainees to a rural Illinois prison. The Justice Dept. and the Dept. of Defense would ship an unknown number of the more than 200 detainees still at the Cuban naval base to Thomson, Illinois, a village of 600 people, 90 miles west of Chicago. And Justice would convert the Thomson Correctional Center, which currently holds 200 minimum-security inmates, to a federal maximum-security prison.

Illinois Democrats were quick to champion the proposal as an economic stimulus for their state. Dick Durbin, the no. 2 Democrat in the U.S. Senate, and Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn have declared that the prison could create more than 3,000 local jobs. A White House economic report largely echoed Durbin’s assertions. Illinois Republicans, meanwhile, went ballistic. Rep. Mark Kirk, who is running for the U.S. Senate, declared that Illinois would become “ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization.”

That al Qaeda could wreak havoc on rural Illinois is likely absurd. But that is not to say moving detainees to Thomson is a silver bullet for the local economy – or for national counterterrorism policy. “The relevant question is not where prisoners are held, but how,” says Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented Guantanamo detainees. “Will we reform our detention policies to comport with universal rights and the rule of law?” (more…)