Build big stuff out of little stuff.
Not as catchy (or as fun for Republicans) as "drill, baby drill" or 'let's buy and sell financial derivatives ,' but look for the national conversation to depart from the PR bromides that the mass media demands of presidential campaigns into the reality-based world of substance.
Wisconsin's Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) had been laying the intellectual groundwork for years for labor-intensive, publicly financed capital projects, and the recognition and proliferation of patriotic manufacturers—"'original equipment manufacturers'" (OEMs) – that produce and sell automobiles, electrical appliances, and mining, transportation, and farm equipment."
COWS is a 501(c)(3) based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, famous for the “Wisconsin Idea,” working for "competitive market economy of shared prosperity, environmental sustainability, and capable democratic government."
And it has been a voice in the wilderness during the Bush years no matter how many MacArthur Foundation geniuses write at the place.
On the eve of Obama's victory, word of Obama's Thoughtful Stand on Infrastructure Investment is leaking out and COWS is likely to become a player because of its shared philosophy now getting a hearing.
The New America Foundation's Sherle Schwenninger and industrialist and philanthropist Bernard Schwartz were out way ahead of the pack in calling for massive government commitment to infrastructure investment, writes Steve Clemons.
The fact is we can build our way of this mess to the benefit of the American people, our infrastructure, the environment, the world's financial system, and the radical transformation of our energy system.
This would be done though implementing policies that are politically popular, hence the Republicans' desperate, too-little-too-late and too-incoherent campaign yelling communist, socialist and other such nonsense.
As for COWs and like-minded prescriptions: Jobs, living wages, health insurance, maybe these guys are aliens like the GOP wants us to believe.
- via mal contends
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