The Unemployed and Job Retraining

Rare agreement: Obama, Romney, Ryan all endorse retraining for jobless—but are they right?, By Amy Goldstein, October 10, 2012, ProPublica.org: “In February 2008, six days before he would win the Wisconsin presidential primary, Barack Obama traveled to a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wis., for a major economic address. Janesville is a community of 63,000 on a bend in the Rock River near the Illinois line, three-fourths of the way up Interstate 90 from Chicago to Madison. On the sides of downtown buildings, pastel murals by area artists show scenes from the city’s past, hinting at its muscular civic spirit and outsized role in U.S. industry. ‘History. Vision. Sweat.’ is lettered across one mural’s bottom edge. The small city has been catapulted into public view as the hometown of this year’s Republican vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan. But long before, it was the home of Parker Pen. And for nearly a century, the soul of the local economy had been the Janesville Assembly Plant, where GM had started out making tractors and, in 1923, begun to build cars. The oldest operating automotive facility in the United States, it was even four years ago a storied site for a campaign speech…”