Official motto of the White House economic team: Those who can, do. Those who can't, fantasize in the classroom, fail in Washington and then return to the Ivy Tower to train the next generation of egghead economic saboteurs. Life is good for left-wing academics. Everyone else pays dearly.

Instead of basic roads and bridges, infrastructure spending will go to bloated unions overseeing pie-in-the-sky construction projects like the $30 billion-plus high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which California officials fully expect to be funded.

Raising the traditional and early retirement ages will mean extending workers' taxable earning years, fueling economic growth and putting a dent in our unfunded-liabilities crisis by delaying payouts.

Situational unawareness in the private marketplace or on the battlefield will cost you your livelihood or your life. In the Age of Obama, however, such willful ignorance is a job prerequisite. The less you know the better.

The deal looks bad and smells worse.

Instead of putting Americans to work, the Teamsters have been busy yanking members off projects and idling construction projects from California to Indiana to New York in order to shake down employers.

The difference between past and present immigration experience is the existence of a defiant anti-assimilationist lobby that encourages legal and illegal aliens to resist adapting to the American way of life.