Van Jones, President Obama's disgraced green jobs czar, is back with a radical progressive plan to rescue America ... from his old boss.
The problem, posits Jones, is that his fellow community organizer in the White House hasn't spent enough, regulated enough or taxed enough to achieve their perverse version of the "American Dream." What the country needs to "get the economy back on track," according to Jones and his league of leftists, is more government-created make-work. Oh, and a hefty side of Big Labor pork.
Jones recently teamed up with George Soros-funded retread MoveOn.org, Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union to launch a "Rebuild the Dream" movement. Borrowing a yellowed page from has-been GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Jones and Company this week released their own "contract" to solve the "jobs crisis." The top two agenda items in this not-so-new contract echo Obama's longstanding calls for: 1) multibillion-dollar "investments" in America's infrastructure (see my column last week on the White House's renewed push for a government-supported infrastructure bank) and 2) "21st-century energy jobs" (which Obama claims he is creating this week by forcing tightened fuel efficiency standards down automakers' throats).
The supposedly visionary document is a carbon copy of standard Democratic talking points. It's the same old, same old with a dash of Jones' swagger on top for flavor.
Jones' Contract for the American Dream laments: "Our workers are sitting idle, while the work of rebuilding America goes undone." Obama issued the same lament last September: "It doesn't do anybody any good when so many hardworking Americans have been idled for months, even years, at a time when there is so much of America that needs rebuilding."
But the AFL-CIO and SEIU bigwigs to whom both Jones and Obama are beholden stubbornly oppose putting a vast population of hardworking, nonunion Americans back to work. Keep in mind: Through anti-competitive "project labor agreements" enforced by White House executive order, private contractors bidding on public infrastructure projects are required to hand over exclusive bargaining control; to pay inflated, above-market wages and benefits; and to fork over dues money and pension funding to corrupt, cash-starved labor organizations. These PLAs undermine a fair bidding process on projects that locked-out, nonunion laborers are funding with their own tax dollars. And they benefit the privileged few at the expense of the vast majority: In the construction industry, 85 percent of the workforce is nonunion by choice.
And remember this: While Jones and his union pals talk a lofty game about protecting American workers and creating American jobs, they march in lockstep with the open-borders lobby and promoters of another blanket illegal alien amnesty. The SEIU, one of Jones' most powerful Contract for the American Dream co-sponsors, continues to push for the DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout, opposes enforcement of employer sanctions and brazenly recruits illegal alien workers/voters to its ranks.
As for the green jobs racket, gobs of Obama money has already been spent on them — and unemployment has continued to hover near double digits. Jones' pipe dream jobs would be better dubbed "brown jobs" to reflect the color of the sewer down which untold millions have been flushed in the name of environmental stimulus salvation. There's also a distinctly blue tint to these supposedly eco-friendly green jobs. Blue, that is, for partisan Democratic agendas and allies. Federal green jobs funds have subsidized, among others, the SEIU's nationalized health care activists in Maryland, the UAW Labor Employment and Training Corporation, the Blue Green Alliance (a union conglomerate), the 1199 SEIU Family of Funds and a United Steelworkers front group, the Institute for Career Development.
The Contract for the American Dream is a contract for continued wealth redistribution from taxpayers to Democratic special interests from a failed prophet of green jobs boondogglery. Sound familiar? Van Jones may have left Washington, but his spirit, alas, is alive and well in his mentor's nightmare policies.
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
