Quakes, Hurricanes, Jobs, Fed Role

25 August 2011 |permalink | email article

Mineral,Va., with a tiny population of 450, acquired sudden fame on Tuesday as an earthquake’s epicenter which rattled a large section of the Northeast. The town is in the Congressional district of Rep. Eric Cantor, the House majority leader who was on a fact-finding mission in Israel. Not far from the epicenter is a nuclear power plant, North Anna, which was shut down and ranks as the nation’s No. 7 nuclear plant at risk of an earthquake causing core damage. Eleven other plants in six states declared unusual events after the shock.

Coincident with the Mineral quake is another potential disaster in the making—Hurricane Irene, now a category 4, which should make landfall in eastern North Carolina on Saturday and which could be in line with the North Carolina coast, and could threaten nearly every state along the East Coast. Cantor is a front and center political player on two fronts at a time when President Obama will soon announce his new jobs program to turn the country around,

The president is already making the case for extention of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits. As Jared Bernstein, the former chief economist for Vice President Biden, wrote in The New Republic, the only games in town are fiscal or monetary stimulus—both of which Republicans in Congress will block. Bernstein contends that the stimulus should be in the form of targeted jobs measures despite a disbelief that government can help on the jobs front.

Obama, he contends, has plenty of options but he must fight for them—notably rolling out a campaign for a national infrastructure program to include repairing and retrofitting bridges, highways, crumbling nuclear plants and new technologies which could put millions back to work.

Perry

In his explosive book, Fed Up, the Texas governor and major GOP presidential candidate, seems to be walking away from his suggestion that the U.S. should consider repealing the 16th Amendment which allows Congress an income tax. Asked about Perry’s proposal his spokesman criticized the 16th Amendment but added the U.S. “can’t undue” the situation “overnight.” Perry is already retreating from descriptions of Social Security as a “failure” and an “illegal Ponzi scheme.”

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