| I''ve said before, I'm probably like a helluva lot of others who would prefer the tax cuts in the stim, since, as Krugman argues, it was about half the size it should have been (but is what was politically possible), have been applied instead to infrastructure spending on roads, bridges, new recreational amenities on public lands, new energy infrastructure for the green economy, and so on, because infrastructure spending is more jobs-creation intensive than tax cuts, even tax cuts for people like me who'll spend it.
But I also knew I'd be damned glad to get that money and damned quick to spend it.
And so I did yesterday evening.
I'm not sure which purchase wouldn't have been made without that double sawbuck, so either it went to a needed haircut and a generous tip to the stylist or two bottles of wine, an Italian pinot grigio (in deference to the interlinked world economy, as well as my own preference these days) and a domestic cab, from a "Sweet Virginia" vineyard). Think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
(Okay, it's California that Jagger thanks for "her wine," but that was 37 years ago.)
Ah, let's be honest. Without the extra $20, there's no way I'd have passed up the wine for the haircut, so, there ya go.
Back to the stimulus and our economy, right here in West Virginia, in the lower eastern panhandle this time.
On Tuesday, American Woodmark announced the closure of one of its three plants (the oldest one) in Moorefield, Hardy County, and its plant in Berryville, Virginia, east of Winchester just off of I-81.
Word is that about 255 workers were laid off at the closed Moorefield plant (too old to benefit fully from high-tech upgrades, apparently). Word also is that some of those suddenly jobless workers will be absorbed into the two newer plants. How many? I don't know.
Let me also say that American Woodmark is one of the biggest and best employers in that part of the state. A blue-collar employee there starts out, I've heard, at around $13 an hour.
So here's where I go off on a guilt-ridden, bleeding-heart jag about how that $20 morally belongs to unemployed workers more than it belongs to employed me, right?
Wrong. I'm too unapologetically selfish and hedonistic for that. Yeah, I'm a "my brothers' keeper" ethic Democrat, but I'm also one of those loves-a-good time Bill Clinton Dems, too.
As close I'll get to using my extra stim dough for working-class solidarity this weekend is, somewhere into the second bottle, joining in with Keith and Mick in a heartfelt tribute to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
But there's something else I'm going to do, too: remember that Shelley Moore Capito played House GOP politics and voted against the good time I'm having today and, more important, voted against those jobless Salts of The Earth in Hardy, Pendleton, Hampshire and Grant counties.
Look at this map from Workforce West Virginia. Look at the county-by-county unemployment figures--from February--in her district:
http://www.wvbep.org/bep/lmi/d...
Not pretty is it? Those high numbers in Hardy, Grant, Hampshire & (relatively speaking) Pendleton are likely to continue to climb in the months ahead. And those are counties (three Democratic, one staunchly Republican) that vote overwhelmingly for Capito.
We've talked about Shelley's year so far here on West Virginia Blue this week, and we've talked about the Blue Dogs, and we also have a thread about a state Democratic fundraiser in Charleston next Thursday.
I can't afford that fundraiser just now. I sent a check recently to the DCCC, and, frankly, I'm debating whether or not the money wouldn't have been better spent as a donation to MoveOn.org. Especially since the DCCC has tried to warn progressive groups off of running ads "against" moderate Democrats.
(Never mind that those ads aren't really "against" Blue Dogs; they're for Obama's budget, and they pressure the conservaDems to support it. But that's another story for another day. Oh, just an aside, there really isn't a debate just now in this country between Democrats and conservative Republicans. The only meaningful debate is between liberal Democrats and center-right moderate Democrats. Yet another indication of the degree to which circumstances and President Obama's success have shifted the debate in this country to the center-left. But that, too, is another story for another day, though it's one I addressed in this diary):
http://www.wvablue.com/showDia...
Back to Capito. I don't think we'll beat her in 2010. But we sure as hell can soften her up if we start now to tell people what her inside-the-Beltway, radically party line, John Boehner/Eric Cantor gamesmanship is doing to them.
But, for that, we need a registered PAC or 527, and that takes money and manpower we don't now have at our disposal.
Or do we need that?
I thought, especially in such critical times as these, that's what we have a...state Democratic Party for?
Nick? Derek? Are you listening? I know your hearts are in the right places and that you are great Democrats, but what are you going to do? Not in the fall of 2010...now?
Here's my challenge to the Democratic Party officials and officeholders of the 2nd Congressional District (and elsewhere, too): find ways to start getting the word out in your local news media about our current economic reality and the year Shelley has had so far...and...demand that the state Democratic Party help you, and help you substantially.
I know that many of you who are Democratic officeholders in those counties in the past were constrained by the fact that you have pressing needs and it would have been unwise to go nuclear on Capito, or even to do more than tepidly oppose her (if at all) during fall election cycles.
But George Bush and Dick Cheney are no longer in the White House. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are.
And Congress? The Boehner/Cantor/Mitch McConnell claque don't rule that roost.
Great Democrats--our own Bob Byrd, Jay Rockefeller, Nick Rahall and Alan Mollohan--do.
There is no longer anything politically to fear but...fear itself.
Me? I think it's time for some...stones.
PS
A useful definition:
claque? ?/klæk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [klak] Show IPA
-noun 1. a group of persons hired to applaud an act or performer.
2. a group of sycophants.
http://www.wvablue.com/showDia...
http://www.wvablue.com/showDia...
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