NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, December 13th, 2012

LIVE: Van Jones at the Washington State Budget and Policy Center Conference

NPI live­blogs Jones speaks at the Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Cen­ter lunch, lay­ing out a vision nationally: 

12:35 PM: “If your news sta­tion is named after a sneaky and preda­to­ry animals…you might ques­tion whether your news is fair and balanced.” 

12:37 PM: “If we just stand our ground, we can final­ly bring the Rea­gan val­ues to an end.”

12:37 PM: “Ask peo­ple if they want to cut Medicare. 75% of peo­ple say no.”

12:40 PM: “That is a sea shift, that the reign of ter­ror of the Grover Norquists of the world has come to an end.” On the fact that we are polit­i­cal­ly accept­ing the need for new revenue.

  • 12:42 PM: “The coun­try might be rich­er, but I pic­ture I’m going to be poor­er.” On why peo­ple thought Rom­ney might be bet­ter for the econ­o­my but vot­ed for Obama.

    12:45 PM “You could get a sit­u­a­tion where you get the major­i­ty of votes in the state leg­is­la­ture, but still not get to gov­ern.” Ref­er­enc­ing the Mon­day pow­er grab here in our state.

    12:47 PM: “The peo­ple who have done well in Amer­i­ca should do well by America…and if that’s a rad­i­cal idea, then it is a rad­i­cal idea your par­ents and grand­par­ents held by for much of the last century.”

    12:51 PM: “You guys have some of the dumb­est tax loop­holes in the coun­try when you have the smartest peo­ple.” On our state tax code.

    12:54 PM: “Tax waste, Tax pol­lu­tion. Tax the stuff you don’t want in Amer­i­ca. And for god sakes, don’t put the car in reverse.” Van Jones on coal.

    12:57 PM: “We are the guilty par­ty, we pow­er our human civ­i­liza­tion, our West­ern civ­i­liza­tion on death right now…What is coal? Coal is a sub­stance that has been dead for 100 mil­lion years.”

    1:02 PM: Van Jones speaks on respect­ing and pro­tect­ing our old ener­gy work­ers as we tran­si­tion to new ener­gy sources, and the amount of jobs that would be cre­at­ed by invest­ing in clean energy.

    1:04 PM: Don’t go in reverse Wash­ing­ton state. Keep on push­ing for a pro­gres­sive future.”

    We then tran­si­tion from a speech into a Q&A with the audi­ence and Van Jones. Top­ics ranged from con­ser­v­a­tives try­ing to take out Sec­tion 5 of the Vot­ing Rights Act, to our pro­gres­sives give up on good ideas very quick­ly while con­ser­v­a­tives stick to bad ideas and per­se­vere in mak­ing bad policy.

    1:10 PM: “You don’t need health insur­ance, you need health care.” On how most insur­ance is for uncer­tain­ty, but you’re guar­an­teed to see a doc­tor, “even if it is to sign a death certificate.”

    1:15 PM: A ques­tion is asked about high­er edu­ca­tion and Inslee’s promise not to raise rev­enue. Van Jones’ response was to “kick him in the butt” and the need to “use car­rots and sticks with our friends”. He then talked about how there has been sense of com­pla­cen­cy when issue allies are in pow­er, and how if McCain was pres­i­dent we would all be in jail for being” con­sci­en­tious objec­tors” because of drone strikes. 

    After anoth­er ques­tion, in which Van Jones’ talked about our nation’s chang­ing demo­graph­ics, and how wealthy white lib­er­als vote out of their self inter­ests as much as poor work­ing class men, but we call the con­ser­v­a­tive low-income per­son ‘stu­pid’, the lunch keynote wrapped up and we had anoth­er inspi­ra­tional speech by one of the best pro­gres­sive minds in the nation.

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