From yesterday's NYTimes:  "Three days before Christmas, President Obama gathered his economic team in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room to review themes for his State of the Union address......he was looking for bold ways to bring down unemployment. The ideas presented to him, though, seemed familiar and uninspired. “ 'You know, guys,' he said, according to someone in the room, ' I’ve told you before, I want you to come to me with ideas that excite me.'  Nothing he was hearing excited him."

He needs to be excited!

With tens of millions (and counting) of people out of work, some for more than a year or more, futilely looking for work in an unemployment atmosphere where there are not enough jobs for all those that need and want employment, maybe a little less self-gratifying excitement and more FDR New Deal actual work programs coming from this administration are in order.

Dave Johnson at Our Future has some exciting ideas for the president including:

"1) Infrastructure: There are millions of jobs that need doing and millions of people who need jobs. The deficits caused by the Reagan tax cuts led to deferring maintenance of our infrastructure. Now, after 30 years of neglect, the Reagan Revolution is home to roost and the infrastructure is literally crumbling. But we need to go beyond maintenance and begin to modernize the infrastructure to make us economically competitive again, with modern airports and ports, high-speed rail, "smart" electrical grid, fiber internet, electric-vehicle charging stations, and so much more.

"2) Public works projects: Jobs! Along with funding infrastructure modernization we need direct government hiring of the unemployed. People can be put to work doing things that make life better for all of us: fixing up our parks, cleaning up our cities, helping teachers and thousands of other things. Mostly we need those jobs.

"3) Cash For Caulkers: If we paid to retrofit buildings and homes to be energy efficient there would be a tremendous payback to the economy. We should employ people to install double-paned windows, seal cracks, stop drafts under doors, etc. in every home, commercial and government building in the country."

And Tom Englehardt at TomDispatch writes: 

"In New York City, my hometown, as in so many cities across the country, a hard-pressed local government and a desperate transit authority are cutting back on services while hiking prices for a deteriorating subway and bus system.  For night workers and those out in the lonely, dark early morning hours, some bus lines are simply being eliminated.  Meanwhile, in one small settlement of 14,000 people in embattled Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, a single marine platoon is spending on average $400,000 a month on “reconstruction projects.” The Marines have, according to a BBC reporter who visited, “put up street lights, cleaned irrigation channels, handed out radios, paved the bazaar, built bridges, and are currently building a new school.”  Do I feel safer? 

"In the U.S., policemen and firemen are being laid off, and the budgets of police and fire departments cut back or, in a few small places, eliminated.  In Afghanistan, the U.S., having already invested $20 billion in building up the Afghan police and military, is now planning to spend $11.6 billion more this year alone, $12.8 billion in 2012, and more than $6 billion a year thereafter.  According to Washington's latest scheme, the Afghan security forces will be increased to 378,000 men in a poverty-stricken land, which means committing U.S. tax dollars to the project into the distant future.  Do you feel safer?

"In the United States, teachers are being laid off, class-sizes are on the rise, and tuition at public colleges is soaring.  In Afghanistan, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) claims to have built or refurbished 524 schools and to be completing another 130 of them.  Do you feel safer now?

"In the U.S., basic infrastructure has been fraying, bridges collapsing, natural gas pipelines exploding, and projects like a commuter-rail tunnel connecting New Jersey to New York City are being canceled or put off.  In Afghanistan and Pakistan, giant American-funded building projects are revving up (for which locals are being hired), especially a giant embassy/citadel in Kabul at the cost of $511 million (with nearly $200 million more going to the expansion of consular establishments elsewhere in that country).  Meanwhile in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, another monster U.S. citadel-cum-regional-command-center is being built for nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars.  Do you feel safer yet?"

How about leaving Afghanistan and spending those gazillions of borrowed and taxpayers' dollars in this country creating jobs that are desperately needed and that will improve this crumbling, deteriorating country (and prevent those continuing unnecessary deaths and injuries to American troops and Afghan men, women and children).

Excited yet?