Barack Obama’s economic advisor tried to rebut criticisms made over Robert Reich’s remarks almost three weeks ago to Congress over how to structure the stimulus package, but in fact rebuts nothing and defends none of his remarks. Reich accuses Michelle, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh of taking his remarks out of context, but fails entirely to provide context — and can only lamely link to Media Matters to rescue him...
We have two problems here. First, Reich did indeed talk about excluding white males from access by advising Congress to create “criteria” for their exclusion in favor of … well, everyone else. It’s rather absurd to argue otherwise, when Reich explicitly called for action to limit their access to these jobs. Reich takes the rather cowardly way out by not explaining the meaning of his televised remarks to Congress, instead airily referring to “context” when Reich has made clear that he wants government to treat infrastructure spending as a welfare program rather than a construction project. In fact, Reich was the one who specified “white male construction workers” as one group to avoid hiring. What is that, if not
exclusion?The second problem is the actual advice to treat the stimulus as a welfare program. When we build bridges and roads, we need to ensure that we do work of the highest quality. Many of the jobs created in these areas won’t have skill requirements, but many of them will — and we should hire the best people available to ensure the highest quality work. When we travel over these bridges and roads, we want to assume they’re safe and well built. If one of them collapses from substandard work, the families of the dead won’t be comforted to know that politically correct hiring prevailed over skill and experience.
We’re supposed to be working towards a color-blind society. People like Reich are an anchor on progress, dead weight that should be discarded, especially now.
Major OUCH!
