Put Jobless Young People to Work Cleaning Up BP’s Mess and Order BP to Pay

robertreich:

[snip]

The President should order BP to establish a $5 billion clean-up fund, and immediately put America’s army of unemployed young people to work saving the Gulf coast. Call it the new Civilian Conservation Corps.

(The old CCC — created by FDR at another time of massive unemployment and environmental stress — gave millions of young Americans jobs and training to reforest lands that had been degraded, provide emergency flood relief in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and build the infrastructure for our national parks.)

He should also send unemployed construction workers to rebuild neglected portions of New Orleans, to aid with disaster relief in Nashville / hard-hit places in tornado alley, and/or help out Habitat for Humanity in their local communities.  I would also love to see Detroit become the new alternate energy capital of the world, producing high-speed trains & electric cars, maybe a windmill or two here and there…  This is the kind of big government we need right now. 

Notes

  1. reparatii-frigidere-frigotehnist reblogged this from robertreich
  2. all-papers reblogged this from robertreich
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  4. simplisticecstasy reblogged this from soupsoup and added:
    The more I read about this, the more I LOVE the idea! Count this Molecular & Cellular Biology major in. =)
  5. robertreich posted this