Steve Kaufman Tapped To Head Federal Guitar Program For Unemployed Men

Prolific guitarist, educator to bridge gap between acoustic music, US federal bureaucracy

Sociological research indicates that unemployed and underemployed men who play guitar are significantly more satisfied with a life of poverty than their guitar-less counterparts.

WASHINGTON, DC — In the face of a never-ending employment crisis, a weak economic recovery and intractable Republican opposition to almost all legislation of any kind, the Obama Administration is developing bold new initiatives aimed at improving quality of life for the nations jobless masses.

One current proposal that specifically targets young adults coincides with the revelation that one in two recent US college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed.

According to White House sources, the president will soon unveil the United States Acoustic Guitar Initiative (USAGI), a program offering tax credits for acoustic guitars and federally sponsored guitar training for unemployed young men.

“Putting people back to work is still our ultimate goal, but even in the best-case scenario we’re looking at many more years of record unemployment,” said a source within the Department of Labor (DOL).

Indeed, experts are describing the program as a creative and politically realistic stopgap measure aimed at easing the nation’s unemployment problem without actually creating jobs.

“To a good guitarist, food, shelter, clothing, and personal health are not just secondary, they are almost irrelevant,” said Jordan Tice, an expert.

“These young men happily survive on nothing but their own dreams of grandeur,” he added.

Conclusively, sociological research indicates that unemployed and underemployed men who play guitar are significantly more satisfied with a life of poverty than their guitar-less counterparts.

“Sweet. I think some of my old roommates were mentioned in that study, ” said Peter Hamre, a young man who recently found work on a fishing boat off the Aleutian Islands in the frigid North Pacific.

Sources close to the White House now indicate that prolific guitarist and educator Steve Kaufman will likely be tapped as the first head of USAGI.

“Given his body of work, he is the clear frontrunner at this point,” said a confidential DOL source.

Kaufman’s catalog of instructional materials, videos and CDs is astonishingly vast, numbering close to a hundred. And his annual Kaufman Kamps are internationally-known and respected as the industry standard for a regimented, results-oriented approach to music.

Yet some critics are already speaking out against USAGI, alleging that it fails to address the primary structural economic problems facing our country.

“Giving everybody and their brother an acoustic guitar? That’s really the plan, people? Is this a joke?” said Kate Carlsberg, who really was not sure if USAGI was a joke.

“Programs like USAGI only feed the delusion that everything is OK,” said R. Rosenberg, a Harvard Law graduate and expert on Karl Marx.

“You know, the great author John Steinbeck once said, ‘Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires,’” Rosenberg continued.

“And if we want to keep socialism out of these great United States, this mindset is more important than ever before,” replied Tice.