My column today. Here’s an email from a veteran of weatherization (and the military):

Rich: …Reading this today caused me to have a “flashback” to the winter of 1977. (Jimmy Carter) was in office and had similar make-work jobs programs going. I was taking a semester break from West Point where the Engineering Department determined that I should be rolled back to the next graduating class. With four feet of snow on the ground at the Jersey Shore, due to the beginning of global warming, the civil engineering company that I was working for as a survey crew chief asked me to take a few weeks off.
Being an enterprising young man of 21 with a monthly payment due for my ‘76 Camaro, I found a “job program” in Long Branch, NJ that needed “insulation installers.” So, for the next four weeks I drove a white van around the slums of Long Branch with three dope smoking ex-cons (I was the only one with a driver’s license and without a record) blowing asbestos-based insulation into the attics of former Jersey Shore, 7-8 bedroom, beach-front mansions that were now housing up to three welfare families. We were being paid minimum wage to complete two houses a day. Each house actually took about two hours to complete, so on our down time, I parked at and walked the boardwalk while my crew got high.
I am sure the Obama Insulation Plan is going much the same way. I am waiting to hear how the states have subcontracted the work to ACORN who will manage the program with 85% overhead, 10% profit and 5% labor…