Trump's Attack on the Separation of Income and Wealth in America - A Predictive Dream

I continue to be curious about what Da Donald's big surprise position that he will reveal after the GOP Convention, and it may have come to me in another one of my "predictive" dreams.

We see that his approach so far has been a populist appeal to the masses that have been denied participation in the fruits of our booming economy. (Yes, I did say booming - ask any rich guy.) We know how he has been using immigrants and "bad trade deals" as his "Jews". (This is, of course, a reference to Hitler's scape-goating of Jews as the cause of all of Germany's problems after World War I.) But, as I have said before, he has to make a broader appeal than to just the white-bedsheet crowd, in order to have any chance in the general election.

Give Da Donald his due - he is not dumb - he knows this. He is also not a hide-bound dogmatist. His "evolving" positions seem to make a mockery of the negative connotations associated with terms like "flip-flop" in the last few years.

It occurs to me that he might well steal a page out of Bernie Sanders' playbook.

Bernie is dead nuts right on about the separation of income and wealth being the biggest problem facing our nation today. It is what keeps us from having an Edenic society. And it is what makes our disadvantaged susceptible to the lure of extremists and fanatics of one stripe or another - left wing/right wing, Christian/Islamic, etc.

And don't try to float that one about people being lazy, etc. When the bottom 80% of the people own only 7% of the nation's wealth, something in fundamentally wrong.

When one family owns more wealth than the nation's bottom 42% of families COMBINED, something is fundamentally wrong.

And yet, the GOP has brainwashed enough people into believing that it is every American's duty to go out and buy an assault-type rifle , , , Oops, wrong brainwashing subject. Make that: And yet, the GOP has brainwashed enough people into believing that to attack income inequality is tantamount to high treason.

This extreme separation of wealth has accelerated in this country over the past 35 years. (BTW, 1981 is not some random date that I picked as the start of this phenomenon. And with all due disrespect to the late Great Communicator, the flaw in trickle-down (or Voodoo) economics is the plug at the top of the down spout - rich folks didn't get rich by being altruistic.)

Trump has said in the past that he thought the super-rich like him should pay more in taxes. That position has, of course, been stated more strongly and with much more conviction by Warren Buffett. And, to be sure, Trump hasn't said much like that lately. But once the convention is over, don't be surprised to see him roll out significant proposals about tax rates on capital gains, royalties, and other sources of extremely high incomes. Look for him to propose a significant increase in the top tier income tax rate. And look for him to put some teeth into eliminating off-shore tax shelters.

Yep, I think this is how Da Donald is going to attack the general Election - and it could work!

A Son-of-the-South got the Civil Rights Legislation done in 1964, so maybe a billionaire could get real economic reform done in 2017.

And then I woke up.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN REVEALED AS A DNC STING! FIORINA TO THE RESCUE?

It has been revealed that the whole Donald Trump campaign for the GOP Presidential Nomination is actually a sting by the Democratic National Committee to discredit the Republican Party. The plan is for Trump to reveal the sting when he is supposed to make his acceptance speech at the GOP Convention, and then for him to soundly berate the Party for being such a bunch of greedy, unprincipled pawns of The One Percent. Trump will then stalk out of the hall in much ballyhooed disgust, and the GOP will be, effectively, destroyed.

The germ of the whole idea was initially tossed out by Warren Buffett as a sort of cynical joke in a conversation he had with Trump about a year ago. They were wondering just how far right candidates in the GOP could be pushed, if a ridiculously extreme right winger were to pose a viable threat to take the nomination.

After musing on that joke for a couple of weeks, Mr. Trump approached Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida with a fleshed-out idea for a sting to reveal that limit (or lack thereof) to the American public. Trump added that he thought he might be the only man in America that could pull off such an audacious "dirty trick", given his name recognition and flair for showmanship. At this point, the snowball began to roll, and the result is the farce of a campaign that Trump is running.

Up until this week, the plan was working beyond anyone's wildest dreams, with Trump's blatantly racist and sexist stances being received with a scary fervor by enough knuckle-draggers to cause even the most dedicated DNC members to have second thoughts about revealing and (Horrors!) perhaps even abetting such a sorry underbelly of American society. Most of the candidates have been making such a mad dash to the right of the Good Ship GOP that it is has been taking on water from the starboard to the extent that it is in dire peril of capsizing. I'm sure our enemies are gleefully taking careful notes. Even Trump himself is beginning to be dismayed by the reception his sham of a campaign is receiving.

But then along comes Carly Fiorina, who is not buying any of Trump's malarkey. With her evisceration of his vile little persona in Thursday night's debate, she showed that there is, at least, a modicum of decency left in the party. And, with her command of the substance of the issues, she appears to present a refreshing contrast to the rest of the candidates. She's a little right for my preference, but, depending on who the Dems put up, she seems to be someone I could vote for.

So, what will Trump and the DNC do? Will they reveal the farce now, or will they play it to the originally planned end? 

Unfortunately, I woke up before that dilemma was resolved. Oh, of course. I guess I failed to mention that the source of this revelation was a dream. You who know me as an elite troubleshooter and enigmatist already know that my solution to a knotty problem often comes in the form of a dream, after my subconscious has untangled the knot. And so it was in this case. It was a dream. But - - - my dreams never lie!

Race Relations in my Youth

In a dialogue generated by the meme about Donald Trump's Grandfather being arrested in connection with a KKK rally, my daughter asked if my Dad had been a Klansman. My Dad was not, but my Grand-Daddy Jenkins was. He told me that at the time, it was more of a vigilante movement in the still somewhat lawless West Texas, mainly concerned with keeping young ruffians in check. By the time I was around, he strongly disavowed what it later had become.

But in my youth, we were all, somewhat, products of our age, largely unevolved socially, as far as racial relations were concerned, but mostly without malice.

Hamlin, the town where I was born and lived until I was nine, had a sizable black ghetto in the northeast quadrant of town. It had the reputation of being a sanctuary for the criminal element from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. It was largely autonomous and under the influence of an enterprising lady known as "Stabbin' Annie", who ran a saloon of sorts. My family was a bit disturbed one day when I told them I had delivered flyers all over that neighborhood as a Cub Scout, and I got the full safety lecture. Actually, I had found the residences to be pretty well maintained and not too dis-similar to our part of town. And I had been received quite warmly by the folks there. Except for that, pretty much our only contact with the black community was with Aleck, the shoeshine man in Mr. Moore's Barber Shop. My dad and he loved to talk baseball, as well as other sports. Bear in mind that Branch Rickey brought in Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, when I was four years old.

A couple of incidents that I recall being told of sort of told the tale of the Hamlin of that day's black experience. One obliquely involved my Dad. He was waiting at the hospital to pick up my sister Gwen from work one night (At the age of 17, she was an LVN and Dr. Perrin's office nurse.), when Dr. Elmer Hawkins came out and asked him if he had "anything to pull an ice pick out of a N----- with". (The patient had made the mistake of going after Annie.} So, my Dad loaned him his vise-grips. (Annie was exonerated, based on a self defense plea.) The second was a tale involving Mr. Foster, who was, as City Marshall, the absolute stereotype of a potbellied worthless southern lawman. The story went that a young black lady came up to Mr. Foster at his "post" (hanging out at the southwest corner of S. Central and S. 2nd) and told him that she had been raped. He looked at her and replied, "I didn't know a N----- woman could be raped."

We moved to Olney in the fall of 1952, shortly before I turned ten. There were only six black families in town, all living in a small cluster on the northeast side. That spring my dad and several others, under the guidance of the folks from Mineral Wells, organized a baseball Little League, and we built our park just east of the black families' homes.. Since they didn't have enough boys for their own league, obviously, we integrated them into our league.

In the spring of 1954, I saw my first in-person MLB game, an exhibition game between the Giants and Indians, who played in Spudder Park in Wichita Falls as part of their trip back East after Spring Training in Arizona. The big attraction was Willie Mays, who was just returning from his stint in the Army. We were not disappointed. Not only was that game a preview of that year's World Series, but Willy made a catch in deep center field that was pretty much a preview of his iconic catch of the Vic Wertz fly ball to center in the deepest part of the Polo Grounds in the first game of that World Series.

Sports were in the vanguard of integration when I was young. We idolized star players without regard to race. Boxing, beginning with Jack Johnson, the Galveston Giant, winning the Wold Championship in 1908 and track and field, featuring Jesse Owens dominating the 1936 Hitler Olympics - both individual sports - led the way. Baseball was the first team sport to integrate for good at the major professional level, and it was followed quickly by basketball and football (The NFL had a smattering of black players in its formative years, and the Cleveland Rams were forced by the City of Los Angeles to integrate when they moved there in 1946, as part of their stadium lease. But those two black players were not allowed to actually compete, only making token appearances.).

Entertainment was another area that was integrating early on. While many of the roles when I was young were of the "Stepin Fetchit" variety, more serious entertainers were beginning to emerge. Part of that impetus was provided by Ed Sullivan, whose Sunday evening variety show was liberally sprinkled with black artists. The TV series Amos 'n' Andy was another vehicle for looking at black life. While it only ran from 1951 to 1953, it was in syndication for the next 18 years. Admittedly, it relied heavily on stereotypes, but it did serve to give white folks a point of empathy with blacks. Musicians like Harry Belafonte, Nat "King" Cole, and Louis Armstrong were well received by all audiences.

In the summer of 1956, we moved to Gainseville, but we moved on over to Whitesboro in the spring of 1957. Honestly, I don't remember anything about any black people in Gainseville, partly because we were at the lake most anytime we had a free minute. 

Whitesboro was just that - white. One of the service station operators told my Dad, "There ain't a damned C--- in town. They're not allowed to let the sun set on them in this town." This was not a terribly uncommon phenomenon in that area in those days. The Texas Almanac of the day prominently featured a photograph of the sign across Greenville's main drag referencing the region's dirt and demographics, "The Blackest Land and the Whitest People".

In high school in Whitesboro, the Principal, Charles M. Estes (whose summoning notes ended cryptically with the dreaded C ME) made one statement to prepare us for our entry into the real world, "Integration is coming, so you might as well get used to it." To the best of my memory, that was the only thing that was ever said about that subject. (Mr. Estes, who also taught physics and trigonometry (although we couldn't get enough people to sign up for a trig class when I was there) was one of the best educators I have ever been around. Mrs. Ruth Wylie, my English and Speech teacher, was another. Her classes also contained a healthy dose of philosophy, ethics, counselling, and discussions on a wide range of topics.)

Two events at WHS stand out in my memory, as far as race relations are concerned. In my sophomore year, all of the basketball players took a field trip down to North Texas State University to see the Mean Green play Oscar Robertson and the University of Cincinnati in a Missouri Valley Conference game. (Grinnin' Jim Mudd had a great game and got the Green into overtime, but then the Big O totally took over the game.) Then sometime in my Junior or Senior year, the Midwestern University Choir from Wichita Falls gave a concert in our gymnasium. They featured a black bass that was very, very good. What is striking in my memory is that I do not recall the race of either Oscar Robertson or the MU bass even being mentioned.

I should also point out the influence of North Texas State University (now the University of Texas at North Texas) in our area. NTSU was where many of our graduates went to college. That school integrated in stages between 1955 and 1956, peacefully and without major incident. So the community already had kids going to an integrated college by the time I moved there. http://www.unt.edu/northtexan/archives/s04/history.htm

So, even in this all-white community, race was a non-issue, and we were totally amazed and not a little embarrassed at the strife going on in the Deep South. Having said that, our vocabulary still included the "N" word, although to us, it was not a pejorative, it was just a word, like Japanese, Chinese, German, Jew, Mexican, or Arab. (We did have rarely used pejoratives - the "C", "Z", "Ch", "K", "K", "S", and "RH" words, respectively.)

Probably our worst fault was being patronizing and condescending. It was like respect was something we could bestow as we saw fit, not something that everyone was inherently due. Illustrative of that was the group of us from the Baptist Student Union at East Texas State College/University that periodically visited the First Baptist Church of Commerce's Mission in that city's black ghetto. We also visited the nursing homes, and jails in the area.

Volume Ducking - A Way Of Thinking

My wife and I were recently trying to participate in a conference with my daughter and some other folks at her house through Skype. My four-year-old granddaughter was getting bored, and so my daughter turned on the TV for her. From that point, they could not hear us talk, which was frustrating and a bit of a mystery, and we struggled with that through the rest of the conference.

Afterwards, I researched the problem and learned that this was due to Skype being a "half-duplex" audio mode, which basically means that it will transmit sound only in one direction at a time. The direction of transmission is governed by the relative volumes at the two ends - whoever is making the most noise gets transmitted, while the other party is not heard. This mode is called "volume ducking" - the lower volume gets "ducked", or shut off.

The reason for doing this is to prevent feedback from occurring, due to the sound of Party A's transmission feeding back through Party B's speakers. Until Microsoft took over Skype, there was an option to disable volume ducking, which was useful when both parties were using headphones, which themselves prevent the feedback. But Microsoft eliminated that option for Windows and Android platforms. Strangely, they kept it for Mac and iOS platforms, at least for now. It's like the're punishing their own customers.

You might note that the same mode is generally used for cellphones in Speaker Mode. So, if someone is on the road or in another noisy environment and using Speaker Mode, the other party needs to speak loudly, in order to overcome the background noise. Also, on Skype, you can get some improvement by having the party in the noisy environment turn off the automatic volume adjustment. That, at least prevents the ambient noise from being amplified.

It might also be helpful to remember your push-to-talk radio protocols, where only one person talked at a time and indicated that he was finished transmitting and was ready to listen by saying "Over".

I've also learned that people doing remote interviews on TV usually use Skype, but they have an arrangement where they use two channels - one dedicated to each Party's transmissions - so they can babble on simultaneously, although the lag in transmission time is also a hindrance to that, thankfully.

As an engineer, I took some ribbing from my colleagues for my penchant for looking for patterns and making analogies between seemingly dis-similar systems. I suppose it was sort of my way of giving homage to the search for the Unification Theory. But it was also a very useful tool for making extensions of logic. And, in truth, the ribbing was pretty limited, because I made a lot of  folks a lot of money that way. And I think I see some significant analogies between this volume ducking problem and the way people's communication has evolved, in general.

Perhaps my memory of the "Good Old Days" is a bit idealized, but I seem to remember being taught that common courtesy demanded that you listened to other persons speak, then you spoke while they listened, and so forth; so, push-to-talk radio wasn't that much different from the way we normally conversed. Even the early Presidential Debates were conducted in this manner. Also, journalists in that era held to a code of unbiased integrity and tried to give us an unslanted window into the world.

Then the MTV era of fast cuts and reduced attention span gradually took hold and we started relying more on 10-second sound bites as our preferred source of information. Then Rupert Murdoch set up Fox News as an overt right-wing political tool, eliminating unbiased integrity entirely. Then gradually, other mainstream media news turned more and more to semi-literate beautiful talking heads, taking their cues from their producers' desperate struggles for ratings. Well, nothing sells like controversy, so now we see these shows set up specifically designed to give us screaming matches, with moderators skillfully adept at bringing out the worst in their guests. And the guests are the shrillest voices they can find, because they know our brains have become half-duplex processors - we only hear the loudest voice!

Volume ducking. Our modern world's way of thinking.

HYPOTHERMIA IN THE SUMMER - WHO WOULD THINK ABOUT IT?

I'm suffering from mild hypothermia at the moment. I dozed off on the balcony (north facing) this afternoon, wearing only shorts and a short sleeved shirt. Slept a couple of hours. In the meantime, it got breezy and cooler. Viola!

Did you know that you can die from hypothermia in 60 degree weather with no clothing or shelter?

I have a bit of a history. Worst case was in July of 1979. I was still living in Lubbock, TX although my 1-year commitment to help with the start-up of Texas Instruments' adventure with high-tech manufacturing in CEO/Prez J. Fred Bucy's hometown had expired. Transfers were frozen. So I spent the plant-maintenance-shutdown period back in Dallas. I drove back out west on the last weekend, taking Doug, who was 15 at the time, with me for a visit. I don't remember for sure, but I think the girls stayed in Dallas. I do remember that I got popped on the face that morning when I was taking down a yellow-jacket nest in the back yard.

This was during the 1979 fuel crisis, and since the 302 in my Maverick Grabber din't get very good mileage, I decided not to run the A/C on the trip, despite the broiling temps. We actually had a very good trip. I decided to show Doug Ft. Belknap (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qbf02) where public schools from Olney and other area cities had grade-level outings every year. Then we drove up to Olney (http://olneytexas.com), where my family lived from 1952 until 1956, and we visited with Fred Rowe, our old neighbor. Fred ran the Perkin-Timberlake Department Store, and he had four kids that I had been friends with, most notably Cecil, who was one year younger that I. Then we ran into Cecil's brother Calvin when we stopped at a convenience store. Fortunately, Fred had told him about our being headed there, because neither of us would have recognized the other. I had grown up from being a 75 pound runty 13-year-old, and Calvin had developed from a rail-thin 7-year-old to a bearded bear of a man at about 5'10'.

Being a little refreshed, Westward-ho through the heat with the A/C off. No relief until dark, and only a little then. We got to Lubbock about 10:30, as I recall. We climbed up to my apartment, flipped the t.v. and A/C on and flopped in the living room floor. I was clad about like today, except I may have shed my shirt.

I woke up about 3:00 am, shivering and needing to go to the bathroom. So, I went and sat down on the toilet, and, very shortly - I passed out cold! I fell off the pot, giving my right forehead the mother of all rug burns on the indoor/outdoor carpet. When I started coming to, I was totally paralyzed and blind as a bat. I finally got to where I could move my left hand a little and started tapping on the wall. As I gained strength, the taps got strong enough to rouse Doug, who came to check on me. He totally freaked out and responded in true Doug fashion - he called his Mom in Dallas! "Dad's dying! What do I do?" By the time he came back to check on me, I could mumble a little, and then I gradually started getting my facilities back. Doug got me a blanket and wrapped me up. I think I made some coffee and started pouring it down. Wow! Scary stuff!

A couple of years later, I had the anaphalactic shock to the bee stings, which I think most of you are aware of. I can tell you that the symptoms were exactly the same, except with the bee stings, the reaction lasted a little longer and led on to systemic hives during the night.

Moral of the story: Be aware of the dangers and symptoms of hypothermia, even - perhaps especially - in the summer.

Biblical Inerrancy and the Test of Love

In reading an article by Barbara Brown Taylor, author of The Bible and the Seeds of Imagination, I came to the realization that she was touching on some points that have been troubling me for a long time.

Rev.Taylor is a professor of World Religions at Piedmont College, a small Congregational Church school in Georgia. She is an ordained minister and a member of the progressive Christian community.

I guess that description strikes some as oxymoronic, especially since the Republican party has had so much success in radicalizing and co-opting religion in order to augment the 1% of the population actually standing to benefit from their core values into a viable political force. But, in spite of that Taliban-like malice, there actually do exist caring, compassionate, intelligent – progressive – Christians still holding to the teachings of Christ.

 “Remember this book (the Bible) was written by human beings with agendas,” Rev. Taylor tells her New Testament students. Like her, I’ve questioned the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy every since the Civil Rights Movement brought out the worst behavior among Bible thumping hate groups, all backing up their bigotry by quoting very carefully selected snippets of Scripture. I still see a lot of that today, with different targets.

There were a lot of books considered for Canonization in the early Catholic version of the New Testament. The Old Testament had already undergone an evolutionary process among various Jewish sects, and it was also revised by the early Catholics.

There was always debate about a group of books known as the Apocrypha, as to whether they should be canonized. They ended up being put into a sort of Supplemental Reading status by being included in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments in the late 4^th Century Bibles. And of course, of the books that made it into the New Testament, Revelations was the most divisive, followed by Philemon, Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 3 John and Jude.

We are familiar with the Anglican split with Catholicism over the issue of serial annulments for Henry VIII as he made his treacherous, murderous way from wife to wife to . . . This, of course, eventually led to the King James Version of the Bible of 1611 (James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy.), which was reedited in 1769, and upon which all of our subsequent Protestant versions, at least in the English speaking world, are based. Less familiar are the attendant and subsequent statements of creed in the Council of Trent (the Catholic Church demonizing the Protestant Reformation); the 10 Articles of 1536 and the Bishop’s – later the King’s -  Book of 1537 (legitimizing Henry VIII and declaring the opinions of Anabaptists and Pelagians to be heretical); The 6 Articles of 1540 (repealed by Edward VI after Henry’s death); the 42 Articles of 1552 (never enforced due to the coronation of Mary I, a Catholic); the 39 Articles of 1563 (the 42 were revived following Mary’s death, but only 39 passed Convocation, and Elizabeth took out one to avoid offending Catholics, until she was ex-communicated, at which time she reinserted it – navigating a middle road between Catholicism and Puritanism), and the Westminster Confession of Faith, which knocked in and out of use for decades, depending on who was on the throne, until 1690, when it was finally adopted for good (declaring the Pope to be the “Antichrist” and eliminating the Apocrypha from the Bible).

Similar machinations were at play throughout the canonization processes in the Fourth Century and before.

Rev. Taylor points out a number of inconsistencies in the finished product, including a comment that “ . . .  I don’t recognize the Jesus in the Book of Revelation.”

The conservative Biblical Inerrancy believers hold that the end product of all this politically influenced skirmishing is the perfect, divinely inspired Word of God.

So, as I often do, I approach this question with the only perspective that matters, “What does Jesus think?”  I do pray for an answer to that question a lot. Not just about this issue, but about everything that comes up in life. And He always gives me the same answer. The one that is stated and restated throughout the New Testament:

Galatians 5:14
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

So simple. So pure. The Golden Rule that we all learned as children.

I believe that Jesus gave us that command, because he knew it would be useless to codify human behavior for all time to come. He kept it simple. Love. That’s what He did. And it’s what He commands us to do. Love is what makes us Christian, and it is what makes us Christ-like.

So, what about Biblical Inerrancy and all the other minutiae of our liturgies and other doctrines? Put them to the Test of Love. Do they make us more Christlike? Pray about it.

Wage Structure and Welfare Reform

People complain about the welfare system making it more profitable for some people to be on welfare than to work. And I definitely agree that that is wrong. But what is the problem here? Is it the welfare system, or the wage structure, or both? If a person wants to work, shouldn't they be able to earn enough money doing so to make going on welfare a less viable option? And if they don't want to work, should we just give them a free handout?

As a manufacturing supervisor and manager in the semiconductor industry, I frequently had good, productive, long-term employees, especially working mothers, faced with a situation where they could no longer afford to work, as they could just quit and draw more money on welfare than we were paying them. Many worked that way for years, because of pride, job satisfaction, or just being away from a bad situation at home. But I lost a number of them, usually with a lot of tears involved - theirs and mine. Usually, the immediate cause was the loss of a free child care arrangement with a relative. The resultant turnover led to extremely high training costs and lost productivity. These were, generally, demanding, highly skilled positions, with long training regimens, and with new-hire success rates in the 50% range. Even in that environment, the wages we paid our first-level employees were a joke. Most of our employees up to and including middle management, were constantly having to struggle with their personal finances. It was kind of a pleasure to have the big bosses come around, just to see some nice suits.

The problem with trickle-down economics is that there always seems to be an intractable plug in the downspout. If a rising tide is supposed to lift all boats, why does it only seem to lift the bigger yachts? It's because the mooring lines on the smaller boats are tied to points way beneath the surface with little bitty short ropes. As the tide rises, so does the cost of living, and many of the smaller boats get totally swamped! Even a lot of the medium sized craft take on a lot of water.

The acceleration in the separation of wealth since the beginning of the Reagan administration is astounding, primarily due to the reduced taxes on capital gains and the stagnation of the minimum wage. A lot of figures get tossed around, but perhaps the most graphic is the comparison of the combined wealth of the country's richest family - Sam Walton's six heirs - (not individually the six richest people in America, but in the conversation) with that of the poorest 42% (129,000,000). As of 2010, that family had more money than those poorest 129 million people combined! And one has to speculate about what percentage of Walmart employees are among those 129 million.

So, it would seem that some (oh, those despised words) redistribution of wealth is badly needed in this country. It has to start with a reform of the wage structure, but a switch back to a less regressive tax structure wouldn't hurt, either.

As far as the welfare system is concerned, why should it be a pure dole? Why don't we get some bang for those bucks we pay out on welfare? Why not require recipients to perform community service? Speaking of child-care, why not staff low-cost child-care centers with welfare recipients? That would enable more mothers to work and stay off welfare. Let others do first-level maintenance, cleaning, etc. for public facilities, roads, and other infrastructure items. The sort of dirty work that nobody seems to want to do. In the process, they would be developing job skills. And this would be a perfect recruiting pool for permanent public works positions. And if they don't fulfill their community service requirements, they get their dole cut. Why should we just be throwing free money to people to stay home and do nothing?

This line of requiring bang for the buck could be extended to unemployment benefits, as well. There should be an initial period with no community service to allow for getting a job hunt rolling, then community service should kick in, with the weekly hours escalating with time. Credit might be given for serious job interviews, to be certified by the interviewer, and for training courses. 

Get people off their duffs and involved in their communities. Give them something to do and to be proud of. Provide people a raison d'être.