“The United States lost manufacturing jobs faster between 2000 and 2015 than in the depths of the Great Depression; it lost about 6 million, or one-third, of all manufacturing jobs.”
From: “Economists Find That Trump Is—and EIR Has Always Been—Right About Manufacturing”
A Note To Readers
Without re-industrializing the nation, there will be no physical ability to build and rebuild the nation’s decayed or even non-existent infrastructure. The article from which the quote above is from documents that the recent decades loss of manufacturing jobs has come from “foreign competition, not automation.” Of course, the outsourcing of American jobs to cheap labor nations is the dirty little secret that is hidden by the phrase “foreign competition.” To be clear, the article makes the fundamental point that there has been virtually no increase in the productivity of the manufacturing sector for the past two decades, and the delusion that robotics and IT have done so has now been buried. The full report is the last item in this week’s report.
In This Week’s Report
Drought and dryness in the West continues to fade away as the Spring continues to deliver rain and snow. The U.S. Drought Monitor this week provides the graphic representation.
Under the title, “Feel Good Platitudes Do Not Produce More Water,” we have another example of nice sounding plans that will never be implemented. At least it provides a foil to once again introduce something that can and will work– That can be found later in this report under the title, “Here is How We Begin.”
Last week we reported on the disastrous Midwest flooding and how the decades of not completing the 1944 Pick-Sloan project for the Missouri and Mississippi rivers produced the devastating floods of 1993, 2011, and again this year. This week at least some governors of the states of the region are demanding such action. The governors of Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri met with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA, to demand that a flood-control building program of dams, levees, and other structures be launched now.
After a week of water flowing down the rebuilt spillway at Oroville Dam, the DWR has ended the release in order to build up the water behind the dam for release later in the year.
Legislation in the State Assembly to repair the Friant-Kern Canal, which has seen significant loss of water transport capability do to land subsidence, is making its way through the legislative process.
Both houses of Congress have now passed the Colorado River Agreement and the bill now goes to the President. To be stressed is that this agreement is only a temporary “fix” as the river is sure to continue dropping in the years ahead.
Next up is, “Here is How We Begin,” the first item is the Four Laws of Economic Development authored by Lyndon LaRouche. That is followed by the report of the Glass-Steagall banking law being once again introduced into the Congress.
And then, as we see, the reality is that the spirit of JFK’s Apollo Project is once again stirring in the land, with the Trump administration’s announcement last week of the country’s accelerated drive to return to the Moon, on our way to Mars. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine delivered an enthusiastic keynote address to the Colorado Springs Space Symposium on April 9, where he stated: “This time we will go to the Moon to stay. And another thing that is unique is that, when we go to the Moon, we will go with a coalition of international partners.”
Nuclear energy news this week is reported in two items, neither of which come from the U.S.
