| | |  Editorials | Opinions | December 2008 
Alexander Wants Jobs for Local Communities, Construction Industry
 Stewart A. Alexander - StewartAlexanderCares.com
| | Stewart A. Alexander | |
Once again Stewart A. Alexander is rejecting the continuous flow of U.S. dollars to bailout banks and corporate America; instead, Stewart Alexander says any public funds should go to local communities to help working people, creating jobs in the building and construction industry. While running as the vice presidential candidate for Socialist Party USA, Alexander charged that the government bailouts amounted to a temporary fix for the struggling U.S. economy.
Last week, President-Elect Barack Obama revealed a stimulus package that could exceed $1 trillion; Mr. Obama said that he would make “the single largest investment in our national infrastructure” since the highway program during the 1950s. Alexander says it is unlikely that Obama’s stimulus proposal will help ease the severe effects of the national recession or will help to stimulate the economy. Alexander notes that in a capitalist economy the public funds will first be use to benefit the interest of big corporations and special interest groups, “creating jobs for working people has a lower priority.”
In February of 2008, Congressional Republicans joined Democrats to back a $168 billion economic stimulus package that provided more than 130 million of Americans a one time payment that was to be used for a spending spree or to help pay bills. However, within weeks the nation realized the program was the first of many capital injections into the U.S. economy which has failed to produce any successful results.
Since the first economic stimulus package, the Bush administration and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. have invested more than $1 trillion in a trial-and-error approach to ease the growing severity of the national recession. Just last week, the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded the U.S. has been in a recession since December of 2007 and both President Bush and President-Elect Obama have said the U.S. economic future will likely worsen.
U.S. House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi is hoping to rally Congress to have a job-creating stimulus program ready for Obama to sign shortly after he takes office on January 20, 2009. Speaker Pelosi has also pledged to help with a stimulus package that will benefit states and local governments.
Within the past two decades the Democrats have contributed equally to the ongoing financial woes of the U.S. economy going back to the early days of the Clinton administration; deregulating Wall Street, backing free trade agreements that exported U.S. jobs to cheap labor markets, and expanding U.S. militarism and imperialism at the expense of the U.S. working class.
In the past year the Democrats have piled another $1.5 trillion of debt on the U.S. taxpayers while making the capitalist elite even wealthier. While corporate America continues to receive bailouts, unemployment lines are growing across America; and during the month of November, the U.S. government announced a net loss of 533,000 jobs nationwide, bringing unemployment to 6.7 percent. Many economic experts believe unemployment levels could reach double digits in 2009.
While running as the vice presidential candidate for Socialist Party USA, Stewart Alexander was firmly opposed to the first $168 billion stimulus program and joined his party in opposing the $700 billion bailout that was approved by Congress.
Alexander says the economic stimulus package that is being proposed by Mr. Obama’s economic team would benefit working people if the funds were directed to local communities. Alexander says the U.S. government should establish a $1 trillion fund to make available low interest loans for home improvements; this would create jobs across America and benefit local communities.
Under Alexander’s plan, homeowners would be able to borrow $5,000 to $50,000 for home improvements. The funds would be administered by city and county governments and would help to energize the building and construction industry.
The Socialist Party USA is also calling for programs which will provide support to, and help empower individuals, families, and working people as a whole take power away from the corporate powers. The SPUSA supports building millions of units of low-density, high quality, and low-cost housing. Alexander and the socialist party support laws that would encourage the creation of worker-owned/run institutions including the automobile industry and massive investments into mass-transit and alternatives to fossil fuels.
To solve many of the basic needs of working people and to reduce the tremendous burden of health care cost that capitalism constantly creates, Alexander says a “federally funded socialized healthcare system will be necessary to eliminate health insurance companies replaced by institutions that are controlled by locally elected community health committees.”
The Socialist Party USA has also called for all banks, financial and insurance institutions to be socially owned and operated by a democratically-controlled national banking authority which should include credit unions, mutual insurance cooperatives, and cooperative state banks. While running for vice president in 2008, Alexander proposed a plan that would include other North Americans countries to form a North American Banking Authority.
For more information search the Web for: Stewart A. Alexander; Socialist Party USA
http://socialistparty-usa.org/statements/nobailout0908.html
http://www.sp-usa.org/
http://StewartAlexanderCares.com |
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