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

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.