The Cobb Left Party

Family First

In the news, a Senator Lindsey Graham died. 71 is not that old, but 35 years in Congress is really not democratic. It turns out that he was one of the good guys on cursory looks. But South Carolina is what it is and it’s not in my responsibility to care. I wasn’t always absent from domestic politics, in fact some of you old hands may remember me as Cobb. In light of this guy and the fiasco of Graham Platner, instead of just shaking my head, I thought I’d offer up one of the last political benchmarks. When faced with the hard question of why I mock the Left, I have to say what I would admire them doing. So I invented my own Left Party.

Dateline May 2018

Recently I got into a debate about what I believe in the context of the disbelief of others that I am anything other than a subtle shill for conservatism. What I ended up doing is mentioning what I think Democrats ought to be doing.

The Cobb Left Party Platform
The Cobb Left Party (CLP) is dedicated to the working family. We believe that America is the best home for children and families of modest means, and our goal is to support them as our core constituency. We are the mom and dad party. We are a labor party. We are an anti-trust party. We are a general interest party.

The Home
We believe that children should have two parents and that the two parent household is the best environment for children. We also think that an elder relative in the same household adds an even greater environment for children. Adoption will be made easier. Elder relatives and adopted children shall each qualify as double dependents for tax exemption purposes.

Special federal training will be made available for social workers and police officers. Families with domestic violence complaints will be given priorities and repeat offenders will be removed at once through an accelerated process. Six month subsidies will be made available for victims of convicted abusers.

Representation
The establishment of the CLP as a viable third party in America is a precedent which we feel should not be underestimated. In all ways the division of power has served America well giving multiple avenues of representation and redress for citizens. The CLP will develop a comprehensive set of parliamentary strategies to disrupt the pattern of bipartisan coercion and gridlock in the Congress as well as in the Statehouse.

The CLP will work diligently to reduce the number of ballot initiatives which we feel are an irresponsible method of governance and a bad source of law. In all cases we prefer bills authored by named representatives and sponsored by party majorities.

The CLP will assure that unfunded mandates will not have the force of law as this leads to selective enforcement at the arbitrary whim of executive branches. The CLP will oppose circumvention of parliamentary powers by the judiciary and executive branches and will use its powers to always consider the impact on working families.

Anti-Trust
The CLP seeks to establish a broader set of business options for working families especially in matters of personal finance. The CLP will establish federal regulations for utility banking, microlending and advanced payments systems. We will re-establish the savings & loan industry and restrict the operation of mortgage brokers from designated family housing, a new category. We will prohibit large multinational banks from operating in the home and consumer lending sector.

Corporations with > 50% of their global revenues taxed outside of the US will face regulatory hurdles in their domestic M&A activity. No such company will be allowed oligopoly status in the US consumer market. This is directed primarily at banking, insurance, and telecommunications.

The CLP supports 5G net neutrality, and opens satellite bandwidth for non-neutral communications.

The CLP supports municipal ownership and leasing of last mile fiber optics to be shared by content providers and ISPs similar to the industry sponsored clearinghouse of cell towers and traffic.

Income Inequality
The CLP will support a means-tested taxation rate for the employment of exempt, non-exempt and 1099 employment. Tax incentives will be applied to companies who train and promote non-skilled labor.

The CLP will support labor membership in the boards of directors of public corporations. No less than 25% of board seats must be held by employee elected representatives in all public corporations employing more than 500 employees, having a market capitalization > $1 Billion, or executive compensation packages exceeding $1 million per year. At least one board seat for compensation must be held by such an employee representative.

Labor
The CLP will support unionization of all retail customer facing jobs, in malls, banks,  supermarkets, restaurants, hospitality and convenience stores chains.

The CLP supports unionization of e-commerce delivery, warehousing & logistics.

Immigrant Labor
The CLP will simplify guest worker permissions and establish highly regulated industrial zones in which international labor standards will be applied to a maximum of 2.5% of the US workforce. These guest workers will be racheted into standard American union scale jobs and excluded from such international industrial work after a period of 3 years. The three year period will grant a fast track pathway to green cards. The CLP will leverage and depend on unions to insure compliance. All US companies wishing to employ such immigrant labor must be closed union shops. Heavy fines and criminal charges for human trafficking will made against non-compliant businesses.

Healthcare
The CLP will establish a consumer outpatient category and provide standardized care for all citizens and families with children up to age 26. Included are the majority of outpatient services including all immunizations and checkups required for enrollment in public schools, basic pediatric care, low cost contraception for voting age adults.  The CLP will support retail dentistry, optometry, mental health counseling and sex clinics.

Education
The CLP stresses vocational certification. We support public trade schools, vocational classes in high school and junior colleges. We are particularly attendant to the reintegration of veterans into the workplace. The CLP encourages schools to provide classes that teach students to actually repair and care for campus facilities.

The CLP supports dischargeable student loans and will work to hold universities responsible for co-signing student debt.

The CLP supports the staffing of sports and fitness coaches for municipal public parks.

Homelessness & Gentrification
The CLP aims to redirect federal funds away from large cities and towards smaller and midsize MSAs as well as rural areas where the cost of living is more appropriate to a lower skilled, lower educated workforce. Affordable housing is easier to build in affordable cities. Our aim is to make these new standards of retail healthcare and unionized labor appropriate to the median income American in a broader set of municipalities.

We don’t want a service economy of poor people becoming baristas to the rich. We want a working economy of people who can repair their own cars and homes, build their own furniture and grow their own vegetables, chickens and eggs.

Federal Works
The CLP supports large and small infrastructure projects at the state and local level, and will sponsor a nationwide database of street, bridge, sidewalk repairs and civil engineering projects. We will create mobile applications to inform the public of open jobs wherever government money is spent.

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Dateline July 2026

What you will not see are minority set-asides, ungated immigration, industry specific cutouts. I’m interested in pursuing this a bit because I have reasons to believe the DSA is not only full of crackpots, but Marxist crackpots that take themselves seriously. Nuff said.