“The President hopes that members of Congress of both parties, having returned from their August recess, will come back imbued with the spirit of bipartisan compromise, and imbued with the urgency required to address the needs of our economy and the needs of our workforce.”

That means we're screwed again.

"...sent a letter pleading..."

finally, the epitaph of organized American liberalism: "we plead, we're dead."

Exactly, Rick. It is pathetic. Another plaintive plea from "progressives" to the man who has been methodically screwing them over ever since entering office. No matter what he does, these same groups will urge us all to vote for him next year.

The word "progressive" has no place in this article. Real progressives long ago turned their backs on Obama and the whole corrupted system for which he merely shills. He has no plans. He fronts for plans -- plans made in very dark places by slobbering ghouls and money junkies.

Ah, pathetic stupid.... Great to see intelligent comments here!

Possible scenarios that will play out:

1) Obama/Dems will propose a weak plan (like their weak stimulus) and it will pass to please the base.

2) Obama/Dems will propose a weak plan that will be "rejected" by those repug bad guys.

3) Obama/Dems will propose a weak plan that will be watered down by those repug bad guys.

Recently, on one of his campaign stops, Obama said (I wish I could find the quote) his strategy is to offer congress a plan, let the repugs shoot it down and use that as presenting a clear choice between him and the repugs.

CD: Why is comments section is not letting me break up paragraphs?

Obama to Progressives: "I'll say a lot of good sounding stuff then do nothing."

I'm off to another day of work, poisoning and blowing up everything I see on behalf of my company...

then, after work, in the hour or two left before sundown, I'll have to forage for anything not yet poisoned or blown up to bring home for the family to eat...

I'm having a harder and harder time finding unpoisoned, unblownup things...

tomorrow, of course, another full day of poisoning and blowing up things, and my paycheck, thank God...

one can still buy unpoisoned food, apparently, but the cost is going up and up...

might have to hire on as a mercenary, and make some real dough...

I wouldn't vote for Obama if he presented the best plan in the world for increasing employment. The fix would already be in and everybody who is not blind ought to be able to see it. Stop voting for Democrats, period. I am not afraid of a Bachmann/Perry presidency any more than the present corporate administration. These GOP lunatics might be just what we need to mobilize millions of non-violent citizens to march quietly on Washington, D.C. to demand an end to this moneyed, corporate kleptocracy.

Move On is bold in its capitulation to the movers and shakers of the new right wing Democratic Party. During the fake "show down" over the budget, they supported Obama, who was the one who put the New Deal Programs on the chopping block in the first place.

This organization, has completely lost its way, and I'll have no part of it. This last political push, ostensibly to make Obama do the right thing just one more time, would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.

Those who will criticize my post, with the meme of, "well what are you doing about it", are being dismissive of the obvious, that it no longer matters who does what about anything, unless you are in the new shiny oligarchy, or in the elite class that it serves.

I agree with the general consensus that the spectacle of progressive liberal-lites 'umbly supplicating Obama to take "bold measures" is pathetic at best.Beyond that, it's incredible that the wonky "inside politics" administrators and strategists in these activist organizations fail to understand, or refuse to accept, that the duopoly doesn't do "bold measures" anymore.

At least not where social legislation to broadly benefit ordinary unprivileged citizens is concerned. In the emergent 21st Century Amerikan Hollow State, "bold", freely and fully-funded measures are reserved for the military, the state security apparatus, and high-end business, i.e. bankster and corporate, bailouts.

Where social service programs are concerned, the persistence of the pejorative term "entitlement" says it all. Why, they're as passé and de trop as social justice!

Despite the discontent and fitful rumblings from the disadvantaged and disaffected classes, there is simply neither political will nor inclination to "grasp the nettle", "bite the bullet", or otherwise take direct, substantial, and potentially costly, troublesome, or politically controversial (risky) action to truly remedy pernicious socioeconomic wrongs and inequities.

Instead, the elite professional political class of Elected Misrepresentatives, supported by lobbyists and experts in NGOs, think tanks, and academia, restrict their efforts to virtual pseudo-solutions manufactured from smoke, mirrors, and intellectual hubris.

Just think of familiar examples of upscale backasswardsness in action, e.g. "designing by committee" and "Rube Goldberg" contraptions, and you'll get the drift.

Essentially, very intelligent and fully co-opted and professionally dehumanized technocrats, "gamers" who understand the complex intramural processes of institutional government and finance come up with "virtual" solutions that are spun like nutrition-free cotton candy around the core of the problem they're purporting to solve, or at least ameliorate.

Ephemera like “tax cuts and incentives for corporations" are as good as it gets. This approach is a "good enough for government work" version of contemporary financial markets.

That is, Wall Street has created a Second Life of financial instruments and processes, an infinite recession of mirrors in which irreal abstraction upon abstraction turns into fabulous fortunes for its creators.

To grossly paraphrase a half-remembered Nomi Prins observation, the financiers and banksters created a baroque Ponzi pyramid in which investor money is sucked into a multi-dimensional maze of computerized abstraction, probability, and speculation, and emerges again as "real" money or property in the form of CEO mansions, yachts, jewelry, etc.

Government now attempts a tawdrier, ramshackle version of this alchemy to address the Amerikan Imperium's domestic crises and emergencies. One need only look to post-Katrina New Orleans or post-BP subsea oil geyser in the Gulf for an appreciation of the Hollow State technique.

Neither Democrat or Republican, executive or legislative, is about to propose funding government agencies-- either launching new ones, or rehabilitating existing or defunct ones-- or initiate sweeping legislative mandates and programs to create real jobs or otherwise broadly improve the plight of Amerikan workers being economically squeezed to extinction.

Instead, at best there will be some kind of snake-oil flim-flam brimming with empty buzzwords like "incentive(s)", "consortium", "public-private partnership", and so on. These will involve Monopoly money gimmicks, e.g the aforementioned diddling and tweaking of the tax code, modest grants, vouchers, maybe even swipe cards-- bullshit stew or gruel, perhaps greenwashed bullshit stew or gruel, served with plenty of nutritionally-correct gravy.

Again: they just don't do "bold measures" for the sake of the general welfare any more. There's just no money after Empire is funded and the financial overclass gets its cut. Dontcha see?

"MoveOn and around 70 other liberal groups sent a letter (pdf) Tuesday to the president, pleading with him ..."

Gasp! They sent a letter? Watch out!

And what are they going to do when their letter is ignored or marginalized? Send another letter? Obama has already sealed the deal preventing the government from initiating any jobs programs: the debt ceiling deal. This letter writing is a waste of time.

“Don’t hate the media: Become the media!”
- Jello Biafra

Forget about Judas Oreobomberhoover and the Dimcrap Party. Here are some better ideas:

READ ALL ABOUT IT! -- Low Power FM (LPFM) radio station license applications for non-profit organizations in medium and large-sized cities to commence summer of 2012. This is the first time that’s been done by the FCC in thirty (30) years. Get’em while they’re hot!

This the idea I've been pushing on CD for five years now. This opportunity won't come again. Non-profit progressive groups (including labor interest groups) need to get those licenses while they're hot.

Enough of these stations blanketing a medium-sized or large city with contiguous broadcast ranges could potentially mimic the audience market penetration of large commercial FM stations—ONLY WITHOUT CORPORATE CENSORSHIP.

These stations could become part of a nationwide, populist progressive information cooperative network that airs local programming most of the time but cooperates to concentrate on regional and national issues of importance, averting or responding to crises, and covering independent progressive candidates during election cycles.

The other good idea to get around the Establishment right now is Americanselect.org. Check it out. Via this online idea, anyone can become a citizen delegate and nominate whomever they want and, so the site operators say, get on the ballot in all 50 States. This would circumvent the Dem/GOP/Federal Election Commission lock on the nomination process.

If we had both these ideas, low power FM and citizen delegate nominations in all 50 States—independent of corporate media and the Dem/GOP/FEC nomination Machine, respectively, then we could use the LPFM stations to educate the masses about OUR CANDIDATES and get OUR IDEAS out without having to go through corporate "mainstream" media filters.

CARPE DIEM! Start talking these ideas up in your family, church, community resilience circle, or other progressive group and research what it takes to get these stations up and running. This is a once in a generation-and-a-half opportunity and if we don’t seize it, sooner or later the right-wing will.

So, get off your fat carbo-potato monkey butt and sweat your old agitator mind and body for a change! You progressive retirees who still have your health: There’s no excuse not to. Let me tell you, I’ve worked in radio before and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It will be even more fun to use radio to help build local community resilience and resistance and stick it to all those creeps who’ve been screwing us locally and nationally since Reagan. And we can use our own media voices that can’t be silenced by corporate media to help locally and nationally organize our own politics to go around theirs!!

"V" for peace and victory over our true oppressors!

Dean Baker wrote an article on counterpunch decrying the weak "liberals" every one here on CD complains about and touting his new book, End of Loser Liberalism. I haven't read it yet, but I respect Baker and it is FREE on line, see the link below.

http://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/End-of-Loser-Liberalism.pdf

And it is short, which most will appreciate.

Here is how these requests from these "liberal" groups will be interpreted by the coterie of corporate corruption.

Dear Mr. President,

We will continue to support whatever you deem palatable. We prefer that you try to not be so obvious in your disdain for people who don't have much money.
We will refrain from pointing out the egregious global economic corruption by using words like "the American Dream" to keep people within the correct mindset for your further debasing of the planet.
We will continue to support you even though we need to believe that we are opposed to your phony bi-partisanship.

Please and Thank you,

We who are pragmatically lacking integrity

p.s. That "payroll tax holiday" is a terrific way to rob Peter to pay Peter.

Obummer screwed the pooch three years ago when he did nothing he said he would in the first hundred days...or the next hundred days...or the next...and if he's all that's available from the dems, then they deserve a different name...Dumbascrap.
Let it rip...we are going down hill at an exponential rate, even upside down...too bad. We had such a good thing goin'. But once the rich saw blood there was no stopping their every attempt to own the world. They sure screwed up with their corruption, lies, backstabbing, and extortion. And now they own the government. Scheesh.

He already signed on and fought for cuts that make anything that will really work as far as jobs impossible. Sorry, but the problem isn't that rich people and business doesn't have money, they have tons of it and working people don't. The problem is that demand isn't there and the government is set to cut back spending. Productive investment is done years in advance and business doesn't see enough people with jobs and money to buy what they want to produce. They also see a better opportunity in other countries with lower labor and environmental costs, like China, that are looking to increase domestic consumption. This is obviously all about 2012, and since it is "bipartisan" it will for the most part mean list of tax incentives, probably a push for the horrible free trade deals Obama wants to sign (which will create more jobs in other countries than here and make our trade balance worse, just like all but one similar deal we've signed in the past), amongst other horrors. Personally, I am more disgusted with the so called "left" in the US. They aren't any better or more rational than the Tea Party goons. They are useful idiots to Wall Street and Obama has lead them there. I don't like being cynical but until mass movements get their act together and challenge ALL those in government, until the left rallies around coherent alternatives to neo-liberalism and capitalism and until they have an idea other than voting more Democrats into office, nothing will change or get better. Obama's job speech is a whole lot of nothing and most everyone knows it. What is the point, after the box he has put himself in? The election. Four more years of this sellout or something even worse. Yay. No one is fooled or is expecting much. No one has any faith that the president gives a damn what the left wants because he doesn't. He also doesn't care what the general public wants, working people, since they are aligned with the left on a number of bread and butter, economic issues.

The President needs to zap the status quo and start the job engine now. The GOP has absolutely no plan positive but the same old garbage. This is the Presidents and the real Democrats chance to get the economy shocked into action.

Bold is an understatement and go jobs NOW.

As many of the CD commenters have already noted, this article is rife with problems. Here are a few:

The article intermingles the use of "liberals" and "progressives" as though they are one in the same. False. This is not surprising as the article comes from "The Hill", a Washington DC congressional newsletter, who has no interest in writing stories from the perspective of true progressive organizations. The article does more damage than good as it blurs the meaning of progressives to the readers.

Article: "MoveOn and around 70 other liberal groups sent a letter (pdf) Tuesday...". Response: I read the letter and many of these organizations are simply Democratic Party organizations, which doesn't necessarily qualify them as even "liberal" organizations.

After reading the brief letter, the whole letter appears to have been written by Van Jones' "Rebuild the Dream" organization, who is working with Move-on.org. The letter appears to be an effort by Van Jones to gain media attention for his cause by making it look like this letter action is coming from many fronts when in fact the effort appears to be led by Van Jones. I've stated numerous times before and stated why, that the Rebuild the Dream organization is a 2012 election marketing tool of the Democratic Party.

Article: "Liberals have backed some ideas that have been discussed by the White House, like an extension of a payroll tax holiday that the White House says will give families an extra $1,000 to spend this year." Response: What liberal in his/her right mind would be supporting the demise of Social Security?

In the interest of disclosure, i read the title, the first two paragraphs, and couldn't even be bothered. From my point of view, this is basically reactionary silliness and i won't even give it my time or energy.

Why are we still pretending that this stuff is real and meaningful? I think that alone is part of the problem. Like debating who is worse, Rick Perry or Sarah Palin. I see it on that level of absurdity.

The speech on "Jobs and the Economy" needs to be on "Jobs and Jobs". Every time the "economy" is brought up, it's about the economies of large campaign contributors.

The speech about jobs will be postponed because the GOP must have their debate. Does the progressive community really think that this man will do anything other then throw the middle class, working class and impoverished under the bus? I rather have a real republican in office then a pretend republican.

_______________________________________
"Progressive activists are urging President Obama to go big and go daring when he releases his new jobs proposals next week."
________________________________________
You've got to be joking me, right? When are so-called "progressives" going to wake up and instead of holding onto absurd hopes that Obama is going to be anything more than a shill for elite's, and get your ass out from your computers to organize together, followed by hitting the streets? After it's too late and everything becomes chaotic?
_________________________________________
This constant "will Obama do this", "will Obama do that" is getting really nauseating. It's clearly become a psychological disorder in our culture. Anyone in the bottom 70% that has ANY hope in Obama has not a clue about their own self-interests, and/or are simply delusional.

Send a letter to the corporate chimera,

for all the good that it will do!

Be sincere and self-convincing,

while eating the ashes as you drool.

Don't be distracted from your illusion,

cling to the mirror full of food.

Progs tell obama; "take the nixon flight outta town". Now there's a true story.

Let's see what Biden's got.