-Bob Herbert of Demos argues for major investment in infrastructure to help put Americans back to work. He cites some striking statistics on joblessness and the state of our infrastructure: 14 million Americans are officially unemployed and nearly half of them have been out of work for more than 6 months; 75% of American schools have structural deficiencies, 15% of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient, and another 12% are functionally obsolete. It will cost an estimated $3-$4 trillion over the next decade to make the necessary repairs.

This is money we are going to have to spend if we wish to enjoy the amenities of industrialized living, like roads, bridges, running water, and treated sewage. So, why not take advantage of record low interest rates to tackle the twin crises of unemployment and decaying infrastructure? 

-The Republicans go medieval on the NLRB. “Rarely has a federal agency been attacked with as much vitriol as the National Labor Relations Board now faces,” reports Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times. Conservative newsletters assail the board as a bunch of “socialist goons.” Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachamann has even sworn to abolish the NLRB if elected.

It makes sense that the GOP is targeting the NLRB right now. The NLRB is one of the remaining outlets for the Obama administration to make pro-labor policy with a divided congress. For example, as Greenhouse reported yesterday, the NLRB released a decision on Tuesday that will make it easier for nursing home workers to unionize. The nursing home decision was one of three pro-union decisions handed down ahead of the departure of chairwoman Wilma B. Liebman, whose term is up. 

-Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post on what Steve Jobs and Apple could do for the working class–namely, invest some of the company’s $76 billion pile of unspent cash to build state-of-the-art factories in the United States, instead of offshoring those jobs. This kind of foward thinking by American manufacturers would not be without precedent. Henry Ford was an arch capitalist, but he knew that his business couldn’t thrive without a healthy middle class of car buyers, so he cooperated with Franklin Roosevelt on the New Deal. Ford’s logic applies to iPads as well as Model Ts.

-International student strikers rallied in Harrisburg, PA on Monday to protest the guest worker program that brought them to the U.S. under the guise of a “cultural exchange” and set them up in low-paid jobs for a Hershey subcontractor. Three hundred student workers walked off the job two weeks ago. Thirty student workers were scheduled to travel to New York for a rally outside the Hershey store in Times Square, Wednesday.

[Photo credit: Washington Department of Transportation, Creative Commons.]