Our Back Pages: 10/10/2017

This article was passed along by one of our subscribers and relates back to our article: The Unemployed Should Be On To Houston: A New Diaspora?

In Houston, we have a problem. It’s a crisis that will impede the reconstruction of our nation’s fourth-largest city. The problem isn’t capital, though. It’s labor.

Here’s what federal lawmakers need to understand: If Congress gave the Gulf Coast every dollar it needs to rebuild tomorrow, the construction industry simply would not find enough workers to keep up with demand.

Even before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, 69 percent of Texas contractors had trouble filling jobs. Now, it’s estimated that 200,000 Houston homes will require work or complete reconstruction. Who will build these houses? What about the commercial infrastructure and public schools, highways and bridges that also sustained so much damage?

I guess I still wonder why along with monetary and material support for hurricane, why we can’t organize labor from areas with job shortages and get them to disaster areas like this that desperately needs labor help. Whoops…organize and labor in the same sentence probably scares the president. But check out the rest of the article: We won’t be rebuilding Houston any time soon

And then there’s this, also from the Washington Post, and it moves my take on Senator Dianne Feinstein’s announcement to run for a fifth term just a little bit farther down the road: Is it time for the Democratic Party’s old guard to step aside?

Senator Dianne Feinstein has announced that she’ll be running in 2018 for a fifth term, and since she’ll be 85 next year, that would mean if she wins she’d serve until the age of 91, putting her in a select club. Only four senators in history have served past the age of 90.

Meanwhile, the top Democratic leadership in the House is getting a bit long in the tooth as well: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is 77, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is 78, and Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn is 77. Last week Rep. Linda Sánchez, herself a member of the leadership team, said: “I do think it’s time to pass a torch to a new generation of leaders, and I want to be a part of that transition.”

So do the Democrats have an age problem at the top that needs fixing?

Makes me feel better…I am not the only one who feels this way: Senator Dianne Feinstein To Run For Fifth Term…Please no!

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