Cross-posted from www.Progressive-Independence.org

I was perusing a certain kind of ideological web site when I came upon the following article by Nicole Colson.

ONE AFTER another over the last month, the reports of terrible incidents of violence kept coming:

— A Vietnamese immigrant in Binghamton, N.Y., increasingly paranoid about police and upset after losing his job, kills 13 people at a center for immigrants before committing suicide.

— An Alabama man who had struggled to keep a job kills 10 people in a shooting spree before committing suicide.

— A Pittsburgh man, recently unemployed and afraid that the government would ban guns, opens fire on police responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three.

These are just some of the recent eruptions of violence to make the headlines in U.S. newspapers. In the 30-day period between March 10 and April 10, there were at least nine multiple shootings across the U.S., claiming the lives of at least 58 people.

The individual motives and stories differ widely, but there’s a common thread among these incidents–the worsening economic crisis is becoming a factor in pushing some people who are already on the edge over it.

It seems nearly everyone is concerned with the ever-shrinking middle class, but almost no one is willing to discuss the social class those middlings are being tossed into: the POOR.  The platform, speaking for the poor, that John Edwards ran on during last year’s presidential election primaries resulted in his marginalization and eventual banishment from the public discourse as the elite weeded out those candidates who dare point out the disease of poverty.  But just because the messengers were silenced does not mean the larger problem went away; it continues to fester, with disastrous social consequences.

Cross-posted from Progressive Independence.

A while back I linked to a blog entry that reported on the abandonment of Howard Dean’s fifty-state strategy that put Democrats back in real political power after sixteen years in favor of what’s shaping up to be the DLC’s preferred method of losing elections by ignoring everything but the so-called “swing states.”  This horrendously bad decision is bound to cost the party dearly next year, especially as voter dissatisfaction with the current dictator’s failed economic policies and ever-more-fascistic behavior grows.  As early as January, prominent Democrats voiced their concerns over the dismantling of a successful electoral strategy:

(Full story reproduced below the fold.)

Cross-posted from Progressive Independence

No, I’m not dead.  College and upcoming finals have eaten away at my time, but after next week I’ll have a few weeks to get back into the swing of things.  Now to business.  It’s no secret that since winning the recent presidential election, the left has been in an uproar over president-elect Barack Obama’s right-wing administrative-cabinet picks.  Complaints have been all over the blogosphere as well as mainstream news web sites such as Yahoo.

Obama’s creatures are pushing back, essentially telling people to shut up, drink the Kool-Aid, and line up behind the Obamassiah.  From the second link:

Responding to rising discontent on the left to President-elect Barack Obama’s centrist cabinet picks and early policy decisions, deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand has told progressive critics to take a deep breath.

With a long list of tasks ahead of him, Obama needs liberals to stand by him as he deals with a faltering economy, home foreclosures, an auto bailout and two wars, Hildebrand wrote Sunday on Huffington Post. Even so, Hildebrand added, Obama was elected “to be the president of all the people – not just those on the left.”

‘This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making,” Hildebrand wrote. “Some believe the appointments generally aren’t progressive enough. Having worked with former Senator Obama for the last two years, I can tell you, that isn’t the way he thinks and it’s not likely the way he will lead. The problems I mentioned above and the many I didn’t, suggest that our president surround himself with the most qualified people to address these challenges.”

I’m inclined to tell fellow left-wingers to shut up and stop complaining as well, although for very different reasons.  It was obvious to many independent left-wing voters that Democrat Obama would govern no differently if elected than his Republican counterpart, John McCain.  More competently, perhaps, and with smarmier rhetoric, but such differences are in style, not actual policy substance.  Too many liberals, fearful of another four to eight years of GOP domination, cast their ballots for the first politician with a “D” after his name that looked like a winner, either in spite of, or many cases, ignoring, the Democratic nominee’s actual record as a legislator.

Well, guess what ladies and gentlemen: you got the president and Congress you wanted.  You who voted for Obama have no right to complain now that he’s doing the exact opposite of what you deceived yourselves into thinking he’d do.  YOU voted for this.  YOU are responsible for making it happen.

This is not to say that all is lost, or that because people voted for a right-wing Democrat he cannot be pressured into fulfilling the false hopes placed in him.  Everybody makes mistakes, and mistakes can be corrected.  The time for complaints is over.  The time for action, for marching on Washington and demanding genuine change, for not going away until we get it, is now.

Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for providing the information on this action alert.

Republican-in-Spirit Joe LIEberman has supported Republican dictators and right-wing policies for some years now.  In 2006, after losing a primary election to challenger Ned Lamont, LIEberman told Connnecticut voters that their will was irrelevant; he would run for re-election as an independent.  Lamont made a series of missteps afterward, losing out to his extreme right-wing opponent in the general election.  Since then, LIEberman has sided with Republicans on virtually every policy issue and used his caucus status with Senate Democrats to force them to adopt his position on legislation favorable to his Republican masters.

Now that there is an undeniable Democratic majority in the Senate, that political party no longer needs to coddle him by letting him keep the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.  According to Greenwald, president-elect Barack Obama is taking the official position of staying the hell out of Senate affairs.  This creates the opening we on the left require to pressure the Senate to dump LIEberman.

If you’d like to discuss this and other topics with me, feel free to tune in tomorrow at noon EST at Blog Talk Radio:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/p…

The call-in number is (347) 884-9121.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Now that we’ve had a couple days to rest up from the long presidential campaign, it’s time to get busy again.  President-elect Obama is not going to govern from the left, or even that mythological “middle” everyone seems content to obsess over – he’ll govern from the hard right, only subtly, as Bill Clinton did.  Those who thought to use him as a springboard to enacting progressive policy failed to understand that Obama is a user, not someone who lets himself be used.  Let’s begin the work of making that fanciful notion so many of us held a reality.

I’ve done my criticism, and I’ll continue to criticize, because I take Theodore’s admonition regarding presidents to heart.  But this entry is about offering up ideas and starting points; future ones shall be along this line of argument.  We absolutely must organize, unite, and apply pressure before the tiny window of opportunity between now and January closes.  We cannot afford a repeat of the Clinton years.

A good first step is in redirecting oil policy away from the industry and more toward independence – alternative, renewable sources of energy, naturally, but in other areas as well.  The September-October issue of Science Illustrated contained a piece on bioplastics, that is, plastics made with chemicals derived from plant-based chemicals instead of petroleum.  I wasn’t able to find a direct link to the magazine article, unfortunately, but I did locate links pertaining to the subject.

http://findarticles.com/p/arti…

http://www.justchromatography….

From the first link:

Scientists are one step closer to replacing crude oil as the main source for plastic, fuels and scores of other industrial and household chemicals with inexpensive, non-polluting renewable plant matter (Science, vol. 316. no. 5831, pp. 1597-1600, June 15, 2007). “What we have done that no one else has been able to do is convert glucose directly in high yields to a primary building block for fuel and polyesters,” says Z. Conrad Zhang, senior author who led the research and a scientist with the PNNL-based Institute for Interfacial Catalysis (UC; iic.pnl.gov). That building block is hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a chemical derived from carbohydrates such as glucose and fructose and that is viewed as a promising surrogate for petroleumbased chemicals.

Glucose, in plant starch and cellulose, is nature’s most abundant sugar. “But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF from glucose has been very challenging,” says Zhang. “In addition to low yield, until now, we always generated many different byproducts,” including levulinic acid, making product purification expensive and uncompetitive with petroleum-based chemicals.

Zhang, lead author and former post doc Haibo Zhao, and colleagues John Holladay and Heather Brown, all from PNNL, were able to coax HMF yields upward of 70% from glucose and nearly 90% from fructose, while leaving only traces of acid impurities. To achieve this, they experimented with a novel nonacidic catalytic system containing metal chloride catalysts in an ionic liquid capable of dissolving cellulose. The ionic liquid, enabled the metal chlorides to convert the sugars to HMF.

What this means is that scientists are making glucose-derived plastics a viable alternative to the petroleum-based variety we commonly use.  As the first step toward moving away from reliance on fossil fuels, funding and regulations could be implemented so as to grow the bioplastics industry.  Glucose can be gotten from straw and saw dust – waste products generated by the agricultural and wood industries – for example, meaning freeing up more farmland for food production.

Combined with passing laws raising fuel efficiency standards, improving public transportation, and creating advertising campaigns to promote carpooling and energy efficiency, pushing bioplastics may be used to start us on the road to energy independence.  With fossil fuels dwindling, and wars to obtain control over sources increasing in frequency and intensity, this is a matter of genuine pragmatism and economic sensibility.  It’s also something to press our elected officials over.  President Obama will not be so stupid as to oppose his own political party if it passes progressive legislation.

On Tuesday voters will go to the polls to participate in what shall undoubtedly be yet another sham election in which the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is determined (but not necessarily by the voters).  Either Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama is going to be dictator, but regardless of who it is come January, we’re still screwed.

This entry assumes Barack Obama shall become dictator Tuesday, but it can just as easily be applied to McCain should he cheat his way into office.

We had our chance to get Obama to listen, but far too many Democrats decided it was better to shut up and get in line behind him rather than force him to adopt left-wing policy positions.  What’s worse, we frittered away our chance to hold Congressional candidates to the proverbial fire.  I think the only way we can shape things is to work toward 2010 by making sure progressive independents and Democrats are elected.

Primary runs are only half the equation.  If they succeed (as they did in states such as Maryland), great, but we also need to have independent candidates ready to challenge recalcitrant Democrats in general elections.  If politicians don’t fear losing the elected seats they hold, they won’t have any incentive to represent their constituents.  I can’t think of a better way to put the fear of electoral loss in right-wing Democrats than the prospect of losing their seats of power to strong independent candidates or, if those persons fail to win, the Republican candidates.

If you haven’t already started locally, and I presume people have done this across the country, I strongly suggest spending the next two years building up to state-level offices.  Pick a local political party that has a record of getting results (e.g Progressives in Vermont and Washington, Greens in California, and so forth), and get disenfranchised progressives to join and organize.  Hold meetings to figure out which members are best suited to run for public office and then pool money to get them on the ballots in your communities.  Candidates should be screened for potential scandals, have records to match their rhetoric, and be able not only to communicate effectively, but seize and maintain control of the discussion.

Do that and you may be able to shape things in time for the 2010 midterm elections.  The time to start is not then, but now, in 2008.  Time’s wasting, so let’s get busy!

Also available in teal.

Every time I state my intention to vote, or that I have voted, for a write-in candidate for president I am blasted with vitriol about how I’ve wasted my vote, or that I’ve helped the Republicans win.  To that I say, “bullshit.”  Why do I say this?  I say it because it’s true.

We are told that our options are limited to a choice between “bad” and “worse.”  “Good” is denounced as “perfect,” the “enemy” of the “good,” but this overlooks the fact that no one expects or asks for “perfect.”  We want good politicians who will represent our interests in public office – that’s it.  We don’t expect miracles, or even success 100% of the time, but we do expect and demand that those we elect to power try their best.

It is a sick joke to be told that our votes for third party, independent, or write-in candidates are a waste, and it’s nothing short of fear-mongering to threaten a Republican victory if we don’t throw our principles out the window.  We’re lectured about how there is “too much at stake” in the current election cycle to vote our principles now, that we can vote our principles next time.  The best we can do, or so we’re told, is to vote for Democrats and hope they’re not as bad as the Republicans.

Again, this overlooks certain facts, chief among them being that there’s always going to be “too much at stake.”  That mythical “next” election cycle during which we shall be free to vote our beliefs and principles isn’t going to come as long as we continue to throw our votes away on politicians who represent the establishment and maintain the current regime.  What good does it do us on the left to compromise our principles if the result is always the same: bad politicians who support the status quo?

The strategy of electing “more and better” Democrats doesn’t work because we keep voting for the same corrupt politicians who say one thing but do another, namely, alienating progressives and disenfranchising voters.  As the last two years have shown us, we cannot hope to reform the Democratic Party from within because it has been thoroughly compromised by the lure of money and power.  The number of actual progressive Democrats shrinks every cycle, as the base wakes up to this fact and leaves the party.  It doesn’t help that the duopoly has the assistance of the corporate-owned media, which actively suppresses dissenting voices during campaign coverage.  This is illustrated by the marginalization and elimination of Democrats Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, and John Edwards in last year’s debates.

This inevitably leads to weak corporate candidates such as Al Gore, John Kerry, and now Barack Obama for president.  Each of these politicians ran right-leaning campaigns against their hard right Republican counterparts, thus ensuring that voters would see little or no fundamental difference between them.  This, combined with weak campaigns that allowed the opposition to define the candidates, allowed the GOPhers to get just enough of the vote to steal the elections.  That the votes were so close in the first place speaks volumes about how low the Democrats have sunk in terms of putting up viable candidates; Gore and Kerry should have soundly defeated the shrub, by double digits, in their respective campaigns.  Instead, they ran so far to the political right that they turned off their party’s base.

Finally, there is the imperious attitude among partisan Democrats that none of this matters – it is up to the voters to shut up and go along, rather than the politicians listening to their employers and running effective, progressive campaigns.  That this turns off the base and drives it to look elsewhere for representation should have been a harsh wakeup call to Democrats to re-evaluate their core beliefs, failed strategies and tactics, and unearned sense of entitlement to non-Republican votes, but this hasn’t happened.

So we end up back where we began, on the losing end of elections that should have been in the bag.  If progressives are to break the cycle and have a chance of competing with the corporate duopoly, we must recognize that failed strategies must be abandoned.

Allison Kilkenny and Jamie Kilstein interview author Naomi Wolf tomorrow at 2:00 PM EDT for their online radio show, Drunken Politics.  This is the YouTube recording of an earlier interview.