Letter: Put People To Work, WPA-Style

We, the United States of America, do not have to have flooding and drought year after year after year with costs running into hundreds of billions of dollars, besides the horrendous loss of lives and valuable property and crops.

The president should initiate a WPA-type of program with the goal of building massive pipelines and canals to move flood waters to strategically located holding areas. These holding areas could have discharge systems to supply water to drought areas. Would this be a massive undertaking? Absolutely. But compare this mammoth project and expense to the alternative: loss of lives, critical farm land, homes, businesses and loss of employment.

I suggest this project could take up to 10 years, create millions of jobs, plus the benefits to manufacturers making the machinery, equipment, piping, etc., as long as we only purchase American products made in the U.S. by U.S. citizens. Many NASA engineers losing their jobs have the expertise in aerial technology with satellite imagery that could layout the holding areas within six months to one year. Naturally, I would demand first preference be given to returning veterans and unemployed U.S. citizen workers to fill required jobs. The U.S. still has stimulus money available in the billions of dollars to kick-start this project. We can move oil and gas thousands of miles; we can also move water. Farmers could buy this stored water at low costs to save their crops, ranchers to save their livestock, and this would help to defray construction costs.

To me, this would appear to be a common-sense solution to solve many ongoing problems. But here again, common sense seems to be lacking in the minds of so many politicians and bureaucrats. In the past year, I’ve sent a similar letter to President Obama and at least 20 U.S. representatives in both parties who have repeatedly claimed to be looking for ways and projects to lower unemployment. I have also e-mailed and directly called their offices in Washington, plus local offices, and have yet to receive a response.

Lee LeAndro
Wellington

1 COMMENT

  1. While unemployment went up in the wake of the stock market crash, it never went as high as 10% for any month during the 12 months following that crash in October 1929. But the unemployment rate in the wake of subsequent government interventions in the economy never fell below 20% for any month over a period of 35 consecutive months.

    In short, though the stock market crash has been conceived of as the “problem” and government intervention as the “solution,” in reality the unemployment rate following the economic problem was less than half of the unemployment rate following the political solution.

    You might have heard that President Obama by executive order rewrote welfare rules so that no one has to work. In other words he usurped the power of Congress that created a work requirement for some of the 80 welfare programs that are being operated by the Federal Government.

    Did you know that private electric energy producers wanted to build the damn but Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to create a government owned facility and so the Tennessee Valley Authority was formed. Many private companies were acquired by the government and others like Commonwealth And Southern were put out of business.

    What you are suggesting is that we return to the policies of the 1930’s which was the beginning of really big government control of the economy. Only progressives want to return to those days of old. What they need to do is take a course in history, economics and stop listening to talking points that are replete with misinformation and revised historical accounts. Thomas Sowell wrote: Many saw in the Great Depression the failure of free market capitalism as an economic system and a reason for seeking a radically different kind of economy — for some Communism, for some Fascism and for some the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration… While unemployment went up in the wake of the stock market crash, it never went as high as 10% for any month during the 12 months following that crash in October 1929. But the unemployment rate in the wake of subsequent government interventions in the economy never fell below 20% for any month over a period of 35 consecutive months.

    The way to return to prosperity is smaller government, lower corporate taxes, less regulation that increased the cost of doing business and causes unnecessary delays. In other words – free market capitalism.

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