State Budget Cuts = Job Cuts

More than half our states are being forced to slash their budgets in light of tax losses with the recession:

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711

Needless to say such budget cuts will mean the loss of jobs in nearly every area from medicine and teaching to repairing our crumbling infrastructures (bridges, roads, etc.). I see far too few people drawing this connection and much is being done behind closed doors. Illinois will presumably grab the opportunity to fill one of its failing prisons with Gitmo types. Much needed jobs will be created by this effort. We shall have to see who wins out -- the job seekers or our Republican terror artists? I wonder whether they will ever be willing to draw the dots together to see where where our national problems lie -- along with the best possible solutions.

Personally I favor more, not less, employment by our government agencies -- a contemporary version of the WPA (Works Project Administration) which put many to work during the Roosevelt years. It sits there as a model from our last Depression:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

As a social/political/legal philosopher recently retired, I constantly
despair over the cheap sloganeering that replaces facts and connecting essential dots to see the whole picture.

There are a few sane voices around, but they are all too often drowned out by the sloganeers (e.g. "Cut your taxes!") How many really see that cutting taxes (particularly of the super rich and the greedy corporations) is the equivalent of cutting our own economic throats!

Help!
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]