Chill out, for the moment
Hm, it's not uncommon on the continent either.
You are provided with gear and you are dispatched to mop up a park sidewalks for few hours per day, it's a basically safetynet stop meassure, so people don't fall to the bottom, they have to wake up each day, walking and fresh air is healthy etc.
So, in your view PhD types, which there will be minimum in such programme anyway, are going to be hurt by few hours of such community service? That's perhaps more usefull occupation, than just gaze on msm BS telly or mopping up dust of pictures taken with Blair-nazi visiting their long gone facility in the happier times.
Obviously a "luxury" version of this solution is the mercantilist/dirigist approach China has been doing during the depression with their stimulus package. Which gets people into REAL work on infrustructure, railways, nuke plants, .. FDR style. That's what the U.S. did not choose to do this time, instead bailed out fraudster fatcat syndicates, attempted dezombify crappy auto industries, and proping up imperial grand illusions via QE2-3-4-xy.
Now, the bozos like Trump/Bloomberg will run in 2012 on the promise lets erect the trade tariff barrier, for which it's too late anyway (the U.S. industry is hollowed out), plus there will be "libertins" like the Paul family, progressives like Nader-Kucinich-Gravel-McKinney, and obviously some centrist-blue dog Dem village idiot like Hitlery-Biden is going to run too. Basically, it could be 4party contest.
Hm, good chances for some quality clusterfuck.
