On Thursday, 9/8/11, President Obama addressed the nation concerning the need for jobs. He outlined plans in which both the public and the private sector can engage to provide meaningful work for people who are unemployed. We await the details of the plans for public engagement. We also await the engagement by the private sector to place full employment before corporate profits.

For those of us who are not in a position to create jobs, how might we engage? Especially, how might we engage as faith communities? There is a great answer to this question: Faith Advocates for Jobs. NETWORK is a partner with both national and local groups in getting parish or church communities involved in supporting the unemployed and their families both spiritually and materially. Check out the toolkit, and encourage your worship home to join the Congregational Commitment Pledge.

Earlier this week, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) hosted an event titled “Developing America’s Workforce: Learning from 40 years of policy and practice to inform the next generation”. Kudos to CLASP for bringing together a dynamic panel of speakers — crossing political spectrums and administrations — to bluntly discuss obstacles that stand in the way of common-sense workforce development policy.

Former Secretary of Labor in the Carter Administration, Ray Marshall, demanded policymakers cut through the weeds and focus on the real issues. According to Marshall, when designed right, workforce development can benefit government, citizens and enterprises.  America is lacking closely coordinated economic and workforce policies, however, and without those coordinated policy pieces America will never be prepared for the next turn in the economy.

Robert Jones, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training in the Reagan and George H. W Bush Administrations, called for universal, lifelong access to job training and an easily accessible database for  understanding labor market demand in a desired field — or lack thereof.   He also told the audience in no uncertain terms that investing in America’s workforce is fundamentally economic — and not social -l- policy.

Kitty Higgins, Deputy Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, said never before has she seen workers demonized in this manner. With all the attacks on unions, teachers and benefits, workers have suddenly become the “cause” of the problem. Higgins suggests that all workforce development begin with demonstration projects to show politicians and the American public a program’s effectiveness.

William Brock, Secretary of Labor in the Reagan Administration, unequivocally stated that America is now paying the price for what we did not do in education decades ago. To advance America’s workforce, according to Brock, we must connect the education system to the needs of the labor market.

Steven Gunderson, a Republican Congressman from Wisconsin from 1980-1996, pointed out that Congress is terrific at responding to crisis situations but horrible at responding to long-term goals. Further citing the effect of the election cycle on policymaking, Gunderson cites the shrinking middle class as another cause of a lack of workforce development policy. According to Gunderson, the diminishing middle class means there is no longer a constituency to invest in.

I can only hope that advocates and policymakers in future decades will not sit in the same room, having the same conversations about stagnant unemployment rates, speculating how policymakers should have responded to the needs of the labor markets. If every Congressperson could have listened to the decades of collective experience from people who’ve developed workforce policies, we might have a chance to get Americans back to work. It is unfortunate though — to say the least — that the exact policies we need to get Americans back to work are the policies and programs politicians are looking to slash and burn.

“Ordinary people” need to be involved in order to clean up the mess at the Pentagon. Experts who are now retired from their careers in the Pentagon are trying to get that message out.

Franklin (Chuck) Spinney, Pierre Sprey, and Thomas Christie have been advocates for military reform, both inside and outside the Pentagon, for many years. I heard them speak recently at an event to introduce the new book “The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Throught It” where they talked about their reasons for contributing to this book.

These guys are passionate about the “grotesque diversion of scarce resoures to a bloated defense budget that is leading the United State into ruin” and also the “damage to America’s defenses and to the integrity of its politics.” (The Pentagon Labyrinth, p. 2)

They know the odds of reforming the system are long, but they are still committed to trying to change the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC), and they are looking for our help.

Here’s how they described the situation:

After the Cold War ended in the 1990s, the MICC and some think tanks created a “political economy” that depends on continuing small wars to justify the money flow that allows the defense corporations to survive. The corporations engaged in “political engineering” — contracting out weapons development in as many states as possible. They contribute money to the members of Congress in those states to gain allies who will make sure that the federal government spends money to produce weapons in their states, so that the weapons contractors will create jobs and stay profitable enough to continue to contribute money to their political campaigns to keep them in a position to keep the cycle going.

I’d heard about this before, but hadn’t considered all the consequences. Making parts of military aircraft, ships, tanks and guns in as many states as possible not only increases the costs (no one keeps track of how much) but also produces weapons of shabby quality when all the disparate parts are brought together. This endangers our troops, when the weapons turn out to be unusable in combat, which has happened many times.

The fact that the Pentagon turns over responsibility for development, production, testing and quality control to the contractors who make the weapons further aggravates the problem. Contractors have incentives to make the weapons more technically complex and thus more costly and potentially more unusable. Generals in the Pentagon also contribute to this problem by adding requirements and features to their pet projects.

Concerned citizens need to understand the causes and consequences of the huge military budget. We need to ask the questions “What is the threat?” and “What weapons do we need?” and “What happens to our society when so many resources go to the military at the expense of other societal needs?”

Read the book.
You can get it from Amazon or
you can find the articles online at www.cdi.org/smrp.

Start asking questions and demand acceptable answers.

We owe it to Chuck, Pierre, Tom
and all the others like them
who are trying to do what it takes
to really make us secure.