Moe Lane has a modest proposal:

Let’s combine a new CCC program with a student loan forgiveness deal: twice minimum wage, but every dime above minimum gets deducted automatically and goes to pay off your student loan principal.

Unfortunately it doesn’t go far enough, and therefore fails in its didactic purpose.

The Moonbat Conservation Corps shouldn’t actually get wages, as such. They should get a tent, a bedroll, and three squares a day, and at regular intervals (perhaps weekly) they should get $20 to squander on personal gratification. The rest of their (nominal) wage should go to repay the loan.

What they should not get is heating, air conditioning, electric power to charge their iWhatevers and game consoles, or the use of powered machinery, all of which (gasp! the horror!) emit CARBON DIOXIDE, THE RUINATION OF THE PLANET. Building a campfire should result in instant dismissal, with a Stripping of Insignia ceremony borrowed from “Danny Deever”. Their meals, of course, should conform to the nutritional advice du jour of the food-health nannies. Perhaps we could get Mr. Giuliani to act as Chief Nutritionist.

Their employment need not depend on the existence of potholes. Many of them could be used on the farms of the Midwest — a gang using short-handled hoes should be easily able to meet the EPA dust restrictions — and many more could be employed on treadmills, running electric generators to substitute for them nasty ol’ coal-fired power plants. A minority could be given rags and squeegees, which they could use to wipe the efficiency-robbing grime and/or snow deposits from solar panels, and an even smaller group might be technically inclined enough to be given climber’s straps and put to work repairing broken windmills, of which we already have an elegant sufficiency and will get more.

The only real problem would be finding overseers, but that would probably solve itself. Historical evidence suggests that the necessary lash-wielders can be drawn from the population of workers, with no extra costs involved. I suggest Al Gore as overall manager of the program, with Michael Moore as advisor on matters of justice and fair play. The rest of the posts can be easily filled by the normal process of bureaucratic hiring, although for verisimilitude we should probably require Southern accents for most of the managers. This can work!