This is one of the best things I've read in a long time. I really hope Kamala and Tim win and the right people have read it, remember it and put your thoughts into action. It worked before and we need it now as much or maybe more than we needed it then.
Another possibility for WPA 2.0 Train people to run (and repair) heavy equipment. Many kids (especially boys) love playing with and learning about heavy equipment such as backhoes, excavators, bulldozers, cranes and a wide variety of construction equipment. Channeling that interest to good paying jobs would be an excellent way to lift up kids who don't want to go to college. (Two of my 3 sons went this route and are doing well.)
Providing easier (and less expensive) access to training on these machines would be very beneficial to lower income people who may have limited access (for a number of reasons) to on-the-job training, technical schools or union training programs. These jobs will never be outsourced overseas and are very much needed. Many local county and state Public Works departments have older or surplus equipment and facilities which could be used, along with retired employees as teachers.
Beautiful, poignant article. I grew up in a very small, impoverished town in Minnesota. It was built around mining but by the time I was born, the mines had mostly closed and nothing replaced it. Fathers worked away from the community, only home on weekends or even less frequently. Homes were shoddy, yards unkempt. The schools were underfunded. But, the sense of community was tight. There was lots of pride in our school athletes and solidarity in the struggle. And as you’ve said, even though many, nearly all families, had members that served in the military, no one believed that the government had anything to offer them. To accept assistance from “ The government” is to admit defeat. It’s a terrible trick of the GOP to keep people poor by playing on their pride. These people continually vote against they’re own interests in the name of personal pride and so they can look down their noses at people who do except something for their own tax dollars. This is the task of the Democratic Party, in my mind. It’s to convince low wage workers, urban and rural, that They can and should benefit from the wealth of the Country they contribute to, both through their labor and through their blood in War.
Very well said, thanks! And thanks for the compliment. I don’t expect anything to change in terms of her policy positions, but maybe we will now have a foot in the door with her in office. The state of American politics doesn’t let politicians offer a view into their intent. If they veer away from the centrist, status quo message, they get hammered, so they just avoid it. (I know, Trump, but he doesn’t count because he isn’t policy-driven, he’s grievance driven, so it truly doesn’t matter what he says to his followers). Thanks again!
Here’s another WPA 2.0 idea for workers that like to work with their hands. It’s a job position that is in demand in over a dozen states for something that needs to be done to solve a big problem. Capping orphan oil and gas wells. I read in the Fall 2024 issue of Sierra (the official magazine of the Sierra Club, published quarterly) that the EPA estimates there are 2.2 million orphan oil and gas wells in the United States and that’s believed to be an undercount based on best available records. In 2023, a little over 6,000 were capped. As suburban development creeps ever outward, new developments are built in formally rural areas, or even in Southern California where in portions of certain counties to find abandoned and producing wells tucked in residential neighborhoods and behind strip malls and schools is not uncommon, these abandoned orphan wells are popping up everywhere.
The wells typically will still have their rusty steel casing which can be unclogged and snaked out (even with depths of 1,000 to 2,000 ft deep). Then filled and capped with concrete from ready-mix trucks.
I am a rural American and I agree. The Conservation Corps or Urban Corps follows the same methodology as WPA only it is for 18-23 year olds. If similar programs could be put into place for everyone it it work.
I came from a small Wisconsin town. I loved your perspectives on what needs to be done to help those people feeling left out and hopeless. I am 76-years old and recall many civic buildings, state park buildings and trails, a city swimming pool and perhaps a court house and library being built by the W.P.A and C.C.C. Programs of FDR. I worked for the Bonneville Power Administration a Federal Power Marketing agency that was created to sell and distribute power from the Federal dams on the Columbia and Snake River’s. I am retired now, but my career was a direct off-shoot of FDR’s New Deal programs.
Thank you for this. It's great to have this kind of real world experience added to the thread of this story! That's exactly the kind of stuff we need today. I remember when I first researched this story reading about these specific kinds of projects all over the country. I don't remember swimming pools, though! That's fantastic.
I wouldn't bet on red state governors accepting those funds. Giving red staters access to higher internet speeds might expose them to more information and interfere with the right wing spasms of their right-wing talk radio hosts.
Charles, Brilliant, simply brilliant. And WPA 2.0 wouldn’t be that hard of a sell pre-election. Keep it simple Kamala as Charles has suggested. No need to kill the message by too much woke speak. But, and this is a very big but, it can only happen with a Democratic Party controlled two houses of Congress. And Charles got a big part correct - keep it away from private company government contractors. I was one once. A piggy at the trough. They only look at government to see dollar signs. The end product and beneficiaries are secondary to them and sadly, secondary to government contracting officers that only want a favorable job performance review for bringing a project in on time and under budget.
Two side notes if I may:
#1. My grandfather was a plumber pre Great Depression. The WPA put him to work. He, working for the WPA, installed the plumbing in the junior high school I attended decades later. That helped pay the mortgage and put food on the table for my mother as a young girl and teenager. There’s a huge deficit of skilled construction labor right now and has been for twenty plus years. I know. I worked in a construction related profession for an entire career. Unskilled labor construction is not a pretty sight. WPA 2.0 could fix that.
#2. I love long multi state road trips. Out west here, a multi state road trip is long by definition and, sorry to say because of the environmental harm done and to the financial benefit of the oil industry, also a right of middle class massage. But over the decades, I’ve seen rural America, small towns in the middle of nowhere, but not far from the beaten path of the interstate and state and federal highway system, decline to near death status. The old people stay and sadly see the younger people leave. They don’t want it that way and it doesn’t have to be that way. WPA 2.0 could fix that.
Great addendum to the article. Thanks so much for sharing all of this. The plumber story is a great reminder how thoroughly we’ve forgotten that bit of history. We may not be in the same type of economic crisis as the Great Depression, but it IS an economic crisis, just of a different sort.
This is one of the best things I've read in a long time. I really hope Kamala and Tim win and the right people have read it, remember it and put your thoughts into action. It worked before and we need it now as much or maybe more than we needed it then.
Thank you for those kind words. I’d love to think they’ll read it, but I don’t quite know how to get it into their inbox! :-)
Another possibility for WPA 2.0 Train people to run (and repair) heavy equipment. Many kids (especially boys) love playing with and learning about heavy equipment such as backhoes, excavators, bulldozers, cranes and a wide variety of construction equipment. Channeling that interest to good paying jobs would be an excellent way to lift up kids who don't want to go to college. (Two of my 3 sons went this route and are doing well.)
Providing easier (and less expensive) access to training on these machines would be very beneficial to lower income people who may have limited access (for a number of reasons) to on-the-job training, technical schools or union training programs. These jobs will never be outsourced overseas and are very much needed. Many local county and state Public Works departments have older or surplus equipment and facilities which could be used, along with retired employees as teachers.
Great idea! It would be great to develop a list of them and send them along to Kamala after she wins.
Beautiful, poignant article. I grew up in a very small, impoverished town in Minnesota. It was built around mining but by the time I was born, the mines had mostly closed and nothing replaced it. Fathers worked away from the community, only home on weekends or even less frequently. Homes were shoddy, yards unkempt. The schools were underfunded. But, the sense of community was tight. There was lots of pride in our school athletes and solidarity in the struggle. And as you’ve said, even though many, nearly all families, had members that served in the military, no one believed that the government had anything to offer them. To accept assistance from “ The government” is to admit defeat. It’s a terrible trick of the GOP to keep people poor by playing on their pride. These people continually vote against they’re own interests in the name of personal pride and so they can look down their noses at people who do except something for their own tax dollars. This is the task of the Democratic Party, in my mind. It’s to convince low wage workers, urban and rural, that They can and should benefit from the wealth of the Country they contribute to, both through their labor and through their blood in War.
Very well said, thanks! And thanks for the compliment. I don’t expect anything to change in terms of her policy positions, but maybe we will now have a foot in the door with her in office. The state of American politics doesn’t let politicians offer a view into their intent. If they veer away from the centrist, status quo message, they get hammered, so they just avoid it. (I know, Trump, but he doesn’t count because he isn’t policy-driven, he’s grievance driven, so it truly doesn’t matter what he says to his followers). Thanks again!
Here’s another WPA 2.0 idea for workers that like to work with their hands. It’s a job position that is in demand in over a dozen states for something that needs to be done to solve a big problem. Capping orphan oil and gas wells. I read in the Fall 2024 issue of Sierra (the official magazine of the Sierra Club, published quarterly) that the EPA estimates there are 2.2 million orphan oil and gas wells in the United States and that’s believed to be an undercount based on best available records. In 2023, a little over 6,000 were capped. As suburban development creeps ever outward, new developments are built in formally rural areas, or even in Southern California where in portions of certain counties to find abandoned and producing wells tucked in residential neighborhoods and behind strip malls and schools is not uncommon, these abandoned orphan wells are popping up everywhere.
The wells typically will still have their rusty steel casing which can be unclogged and snaked out (even with depths of 1,000 to 2,000 ft deep). Then filled and capped with concrete from ready-mix trucks.
Wow. Great idea. That kind of stuff is exactly what its original design was intended for.
Now if we could just get Kamala to check in with us!
I am a rural American and I agree. The Conservation Corps or Urban Corps follows the same methodology as WPA only it is for 18-23 year olds. If similar programs could be put into place for everyone it it work.
Thanks! Are those offshoots of Clinton’s Americorps program from years back?
California has had a Conservation Corps for many decades (1976) for 18-23 year olds. There are other Urban Corps in various states.
I came from a small Wisconsin town. I loved your perspectives on what needs to be done to help those people feeling left out and hopeless. I am 76-years old and recall many civic buildings, state park buildings and trails, a city swimming pool and perhaps a court house and library being built by the W.P.A and C.C.C. Programs of FDR. I worked for the Bonneville Power Administration a Federal Power Marketing agency that was created to sell and distribute power from the Federal dams on the Columbia and Snake River’s. I am retired now, but my career was a direct off-shoot of FDR’s New Deal programs.
Thank you for this. It's great to have this kind of real world experience added to the thread of this story! That's exactly the kind of stuff we need today. I remember when I first researched this story reading about these specific kinds of projects all over the country. I don't remember swimming pools, though! That's fantastic.
Civilian Conservation Corps. Employed 3million men over 8 years, phased out at stRt of WW2
There is a retraining and employment program for miners in W VA.
Great post
Thanks, great examples.
Super article and a great idea!!!
Thank you!
Another reason is that the Biden infrastructure bill will upgrade their cell service from 3G to 5🧐😜
I wouldn't bet on red state governors accepting those funds. Giving red staters access to higher internet speeds might expose them to more information and interfere with the right wing spasms of their right-wing talk radio hosts.
Unfortunately 🤷
Bravo! This is an excellent idea!
Thank you!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Been thinking this since the 80s when I drive through the deserted towns in central & eastern Virginia. They are legion.
Been waiting for someone to say this strong and loud.
💙🇺🇸💙🇺🇸💙🇺🇸💙🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
Charles, Brilliant, simply brilliant. And WPA 2.0 wouldn’t be that hard of a sell pre-election. Keep it simple Kamala as Charles has suggested. No need to kill the message by too much woke speak. But, and this is a very big but, it can only happen with a Democratic Party controlled two houses of Congress. And Charles got a big part correct - keep it away from private company government contractors. I was one once. A piggy at the trough. They only look at government to see dollar signs. The end product and beneficiaries are secondary to them and sadly, secondary to government contracting officers that only want a favorable job performance review for bringing a project in on time and under budget.
Two side notes if I may:
#1. My grandfather was a plumber pre Great Depression. The WPA put him to work. He, working for the WPA, installed the plumbing in the junior high school I attended decades later. That helped pay the mortgage and put food on the table for my mother as a young girl and teenager. There’s a huge deficit of skilled construction labor right now and has been for twenty plus years. I know. I worked in a construction related profession for an entire career. Unskilled labor construction is not a pretty sight. WPA 2.0 could fix that.
#2. I love long multi state road trips. Out west here, a multi state road trip is long by definition and, sorry to say because of the environmental harm done and to the financial benefit of the oil industry, also a right of middle class massage. But over the decades, I’ve seen rural America, small towns in the middle of nowhere, but not far from the beaten path of the interstate and state and federal highway system, decline to near death status. The old people stay and sadly see the younger people leave. They don’t want it that way and it doesn’t have to be that way. WPA 2.0 could fix that.
Great addendum to the article. Thanks so much for sharing all of this. The plumber story is a great reminder how thoroughly we’ve forgotten that bit of history. We may not be in the same type of economic crisis as the Great Depression, but it IS an economic crisis, just of a different sort.
Thanks again.
Right, too long.
Learn to spit in a pail.