The Progressive Jobs Plan: Let's Start a Tea Party

Tucked away at 1825 K Street in Washington, DC is a group that hopes that lobbying for “jobs” will be a good way to revitalize the American economy.

Yes. About a half mile from the White House is housed Campaign for American Change, an organization that progressive founder Roger Hickey believes is the “emergence of a progressive tea party.”

“After three decades of conservative dominance in American politics,” says their website, “we Americans are threatened with economic disintegration, environmental devastation and international isolation….But out of the ashes of this era of conservative failure comes an historic opportunity for progressives to salvage the American Ideal and shape this young century.”

No word yet on whether they will let racists join. But hey, it’s progressives. Al Sharpton has probably already filled out his application.  

But it’s a very grassrootsy, tea-partyish organization.

My goodness: The board includes Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of that tribute to middle-America, The Nation. Nothing says grassroots with this administration like the marriage of K Street with the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

You know? The bitter clingers who cling to their arugula, goat cheese and pinot noir.

And what grassroots, spontaneous organization isn’t complete without the cameo appearance by Jon Sweeney, former president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009?

Or how about that working-class hero Robert Johnson, of Impact Artists Management, formerly a managing director for Soros Fund Management?

Also on the board is Warren Beatty. Yep, that guy.

And you thought that they weren’t going to have a jobs plan. Ha, ha, ha.

Here’s their plan:

-A revived manufacturing sector leading the new green industrial revolution.

-Workers empowered to organize so that the blessings of future prosperity are widely shared.

-Sustained public investment in areas vital to our future.

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-A new engine for economic growth to replace the bubble-bust economy of the past decades.

OK, sure. It looks like they have already instituted their jobs plan. Like two-and-a-half years ago.

But wait. There’s more. They held townhalls on the debt, the deficit, jobs, horned-beaked owls, global salmon change and they also hosted a discussion group on Tolstoy’s Master and Man.

The jobs should come rolling in any time now. They just need to try more crap that doesn’t work. What progressives lose in economics, they try to make up in volume.         

But truthfully, maybe they should include a little more bubble in their jobs plan and a lot less bust. Makes ordinary Americans kind of wistful for those three decades of conservative dominance.  

When conservatives were dominant Americans owned their homes, the stock market went up, retirement plans expanded, new jobs came from Main Street, not Washington. We bombed Islamic fascists, not the other way around.    

I liked the idea back then- and oh, it seems so long ago- that our economy was so strong that teachers didn’t go on strike and that pension plans were generous. I liked the idea that we had peace. And when we couldn’t have peace abroad, we generally had it at home.

And we’ve replaced it with what?

Warren Beatty and some “tea-party” progressives at 1825 K Street, NW.

Yeah. That’ll work.

So, let’s help our friends at Campaign for American Change by sending them suggestions for more economic stuff that doesn’t work. What we lose in economics, we can try to make up in volume, volume, volume.

http://www.ourfuture.org/contact

John Ransom | Create Your Badge

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