At the time that the American Jobs Act was announced, it was clear that it would only have value as a rhetorical measure, to delineate between one side trying to put people back to work and the other side protecting millionaires. That does seem to be working in a broad sense. The White House even put it in infographic form. Of course, that doesn’t do much for the long-term unemployed.

The House GOP leadership has written a memo to their caucus picking and choosing what they would be willing to support in the American Jobs Act. The numbers come out to support for 1/44th of the overall price tag, about 2% of the total bill.

As you may know, the AJA is comprised of about 57% tax cuts and 43% spending initiatives. So in the main, House Republican leaders tossed out the spending and embraced a few of the tax cuts. They also rejected the tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for the bill.

James Carville thinks the White House should panic, something that usually doesn’t inspire confidence in leadership. I actually like some of his specific steps – indicting the banks is a good idea way past its time, and defending the Democratic Party platform sounds like a plan. Overall, a Carville agenda sounds like an improvement on the current agenda.

It may be too late for all this, however.

There’s the issue of trade. Now this starts unexceptionally. Romney supports the existing trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia (on this point, the President agrees). And he wants to finish off the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Obama also supports. He also wants to pursue a “Reagan Economic Zone,” which I assume is important because it has the word “Reagan” in it. But then he starts in on China.

Let’s briefly look at the numbers. A $300 billion scheme would amount to around 2% of total GDP, and that’s being charitable by saying that this would all be used up in one year. That would have an impact, but half of this would be supply-side solutions that haven’t inspired much confidence during the recession. The question of whether temporary tax cuts are spent is a good one to ask. Especially on the employer side; if minimum wage increases have no effect on jobs, then surely tax subsidies to make hiring cheaper wouldn’t either.

In a speech in Detroit tailored to the union audience, President Obama paid respect to the need for a strong American labor movement as a lever to move families into the middle class. He also previewed his jobs address coming on Thursday to a joint session of Congress, highlighting steps like “rebuilding roads and bridges,” which could put 1 million unemployed construction workers back on the job.

There’s at least a plausible case to be made with this announcement that the Administration is focused on jobs, and considering the weak employment figures, it’s high time. But we shouldn’t throw all regulatory reviews out in the exchange.

That’s also true of the unexpected DC earthquake last week. The picture of the overturned lawn chair is funny and all, but because the region doesn’t get a lot of earthquakes, some of the infrastructure was unprepared. And while disaster has hopefully been avoided, this should raise caution, especially with respect to one nuclear plant in Virginia, North Anna Nuclear Generating Station.

The hurricane which became tropical storm Irene ended up doing more damage with its precipitation than it did with its winds. In parts of the East Coast, August was already the rainiest month on record prior to the storm. So the waterways were swelled and more prone to flooding. Apparently Vermont got some of the worst of it, with much of the state flooded. And the storm knocked out power to millions of residents as well. The death toll is at least at 24, and that could rise.

It is now believed that a meltdown in at least one of the reactors started before the tsunami that followed Japan’s March 11 earthquake. In other words, as I reported previously, the earthquake damaged the containment vessel or, more likely, the cooling system before the massive wave knocked out the backup generators and, thus, power to the cooling system. So, the loss of power did not lead to at least some of the meltdown—earthquake damage did.