Normally, I Don't Think that a Politician's Ethnicity Explains Much…

But I think that there are times when they do provide a window into what someone is going to do.

Case in point, all signs indicate that Barack Obama will be singing the praises of a program called "Georgia Works" in his jobs speech on Thursday.

The program is best described as, "sending out jobless Americans on meager unemployment compensation stipends to work for free," which."tries to turn unemployment insurance into a kind of sing-for-your-supper 'workfare" program."

And there is also the fact that the program does not work:

According to data from the Georgia Department of Labor provided to the Huffington Post, just 16.4 percent of workers who participated in this program between 2003 when the program started and 2010 got hired by the company where they were placed, and only 24 percent got jobs at all. Currently, exactly 19 people are enrolled.

Obama’s characterization sounds more like Danish or Swedish active labor market policy, where government subsidizes serious retraining and then subsidizes wages. But the Georgia program, now run by a very right-wing Republican state administration, is a far cry from that.

Georgia’s top weekly benefit is just $330.

With unemployment stubbornly above 9 percent, and above 15 percent if you count discouraged workers and part-timers seeking full-time work, this program doesn’t make a dent in the problem. It doesn’t create jobs. It simply alters who gets available jobs, while putting downward pressure on wages. As Obama’s suggests, Smith gets his foot in the door ahead of Jones, by offering to work for free.

Why would Obama be interested in such weak tea?

First, there is no additional cost to government.

Second, it has a nice corporate, free-market flavor.

Third, it appeals to Republicans. Obama is fearful that Republicans may block the next extension of unemployment insurance, and this Republican-style embellishment might be part of a bipartisan deal.

Basically, it's internship as slavery, which is expanding on the private level, and will now appear to have state sanction.

So, how does Obama's ethnicity factor into this? Well, unlike most Americans of Sub-Saharan extraction, Barack Obama is not descended from slaves, rather, he is descended from slave owners, so he might have a rosier view of slavery as a way of addressing unemployment.