#TeapotTommy loves him some #Rahmbo

Only in the mind of someone like "My Head is Flat" Thomas Friedman could Rahm Emanuel be a progressive. The man who recruited Blue Dog Democrats Republicans like Heath Shuler? The man who helped persuade Obama to cut back on stimulus size?

A progressive in the age of Big Biz like this?

Doug Oberhelman, the C.E.O. of Caterpillar, which is based in Illinois, was quoted in Crain’s Chicago Business on Sept. 13 as saying: “We cannot find qualified hourly production people, and, for that matter, many technical, engineering service technicians, and even welders, and it is hurting our manufacturing base in the United States. The education system in the United States basically has failed them, and we have to retrain every person we hire.”

With big biz that won't pay more for better education?

Oh, I'm not saying that public-sector bureaucracies can't get better. Ditto, though, for private-sector bureaucracies. And, not just by cutting staff.

Meanwhile, Rahmbo buys into this:

On a good day, such as last week, a firm like Accenture announces it is adding 500 jobs in Chicago. And, on a bad day, Emanuel notes, he finds himself “staring right into the whites of the eyes of the skills shortage.” His city has thousands of job openings going unfilled, he says: “I had two young C.E.O.’s in the health care software business in the other day, sitting at this table. I asked them: ‘What can I do to help you?’ They said, ‘We have 50 job openings today, and we can’t find people.’ ”

Dude, when your neolib big biz friends cut and dump people by the bushel rather than investing in retraining them in the first place, they're part of the problem. And, you're part of the problem.