Tag: Progressives

Chris Hedges has written a book called The Death of the Liberal Class that says a lot just by its title. He is saying, essentially, that the liberal class which is the class of intellectuals, professionals and so on that are the cornerstone of any economy or ruling coalition, is finished and reform is impossible. Liberals in our context are people who have been able to “solve” the contradictions of capitalism by putting pressure on the oligarchs to provide reforms that can keep the system functioning. Liberals are and always have been anti-communist and anti-socialist, in this country at least, because they believe that capitalism can evolve into a friendly and progressive system through things like humane treatment of workers, social-safety nets, and universal health insurance (the last gasp of liberalism was the failure of HCR).

But let’s be clear here: liberals exist at the pleasure of the ruling elites. The minute liberal ideas threaten the system in any way liberals are crushed–and this goes for any society not just ours. Hedges is saying that this class in this country is finished as a class because it can no longer deliver reforms to the system. This is what I’ve been saying for some time. There was no need to put liberals in prison or assassinate them. Liberals have purged themselves by accepting cushy jobs in the system and learning to keep quiet all the while engaged in the illusion that they were “doing” something by voting for Democratic Party politicians who are designed and branded by Madison Avenue to keep the liberal class from facing reality or looking in the mirror.

Cross posted at Writing in the Raw.

As long as we don’t take it too seriously ranting may be all we have left as a productive political activity. Sure, organizing and all that is a good thing–but on what basis? On the left, where most of us here live, there is no solid intellectual framework for us to rest. In America Marxism never took hold though it provides us with an excellent frame of analysis of our current system but it isn’t the only one. I prefer our native pragmatism which can step outside of systems and allow the “data” to guide us to see patterns. Marxism is useful to orient us but I don’t think it offers, as a general intellectual framework, a system that works for the current environment. Still, I consider Marxists the most valuable contributors to the project of the left. Certainly the time for liberalism is over because reform, in all foreseeable political arrangements is now impossible.

On this the day of the full-moon I urge that we howl at the Moon and rant. Ranting is a way to find out what we really think un-censored from the super-ego which in this country is fraying anyway and won’t last too much longer. We need to touch the truth and to touch it we need to find an authentic place in each of us. We need a new dispensation and that will only be made clear by a process of de-programming ourselves from the current discourse.

Let me be provocative here. I think the time to say “it isn’t fair” is over. It’s time to stop with careful analysis of the political situation when we lack a strong framework. The criticism from the American left always comes down to some moral complaint–that the rulers are, in some way, immoral. Really? I think that’s a pointless and bootless complaint. The problem is in the system that has emerged, not in the people that run it. The system has been constructed to meet a need on the part of the oligarchs to bring stability to their power-positions (not only them personally but their families as well) on the one hand–and on the other hand the need of the vast majority of the American people to take away their responsibilities as citizens because to try and understand the world around them without a solid framework of certainties is simply too painful–thus they want to be assured that they are indeed brave and virtuous when really they are, increasingly (by historical standards) quite the opposite because their focus in life is to have their job and their cable-TV where they can live in fantasies. Most people want to live in fantasies because reality is, to most of us (myself included), almost incomprehensible. This is enforced by a system of laws, cultural practices, structures like “security” (which reflect a profound collective cowardice) which gradually are eliminating any semblance of freedom as envisaged by the Founders. In short, to put it bluntly, we have to face the fact that the majority of the American people (in my view) consciously or unconsciously want to be in chains–it is the only conclusion that I can reached based on the data in front of me.

The only answer I have is to rant.  

Dr. Jill Stein is running an insurgent Green campaign for Governor of Massachusetts against 3 business-as-usual political insiders. Her platform reads like a progressive Christmas list. Now she has the chance to break this race open and show that clean, green, people-powered politics can succeed. If Jill Stein’s campaign can raise $125,000 in amounts of $250 or less by Friday 9/24 at 5 PM, it will qualify for 1-1 public matching funds.

The thermometer on Jill Stein’s website is rising rapidly. At 10:40 EST on Friday it shows $110,918, meaning Stein needs just over $14,000 to make it over the top. Supporters of her campaign have created a “Clean Money Tidal Wave for Jill Stein” facebook event, which is doing brisk business with 10,000 people invited so far.

Here’s why this is so important: progressives often talk about supporting independent progressive candidates, if a viable one comes along. Jill Stein is that viable independent progressive. She hasn’t taken a dime of corporate or lobbyist money. She was a leading activist for the MA Clean Elections public campaign financing law that the state’s Democratic establishment threw out after the people voted for it 2-1.

Jill Stein is the only candidate talking about replacing Romneycare with a vastly more efficient single-payer health care system. She is the only candidate calling for local green job creation, instead of the big corporate tax breaks and casino schemes that her opponents all agree on. On issue after issue, Jill Stein is unwaveringly progressive while her opponents pledge allegiance to the failed corporatist policies of the status quo.

If Jill Stein qualifies for matching funds, she’ll have a guaranteed place in the debates and a real war chest to spread her message of a secure, healthy green future. It will show that clean money campaigns can work – and that independent progressives are ready to support candidates who support them.

Make a little bit of history today. http://www.jillstein.org/

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Medicare.

If Republicans got their Way … you couldn’t Retire until 70.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d privatize Social Security.

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Corporate income tax.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d eliminate taxes on Capital gains.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d cut in half the taxes of the richest 1 percent.

If Republicans got their Way … the Bush Tax Cut for the Rich would never end.

Factlets from The Republican’s Roadmap for America’s Future:

The Ryan Budget’s Radical Priorities

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

By Paul N. Van de Water — July 7, 2010

If Republicans got their Way … Christine O’Donnell would be their new Class Treasurer!

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Medicare.

If Republicans got their Way … you couldn’t Retire until 70.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d privatize Social Security.

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Corporate income tax.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d eliminate taxes on Capital gains.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d cut in half the taxes of the richest 1 percent.

If Republicans got their Way … the Bush Tax Cut for the Rich would never end.

Factlets from The Republican’s Roadmap for America’s Future:

The Ryan Budget’s Radical Priorities

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

By Paul N. Van de Water — July 7, 2010

by John Cory

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs ranted that “the professional left” needed to be drug tested for their complaints and attacks on the Obama administration after all the good things Obama has done.

I agree.

We “professional leftists” do indeed need drug testing because apparently the colorful liquid inducing hallucinogenic of “hope and change” has worn off and the ugly mediocrity of modern Democratic leadership stares us in the face with the not-so-friendly smugness of a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

Maybe some good old-fashioned Window Pane or Micro Dot, or better yet, some natural organic ‘Shrooms could do the trick. After all, we are all mushrooms now as the old joke goes, kept in the dark and fed a pile of bullshit.

During the dark days of the Bush Administration, the collective mood on the Left could not have been more pessimistic and discouraged.  Believing ourselves to be utterly ignored and summarily discounted, our anger was palpable and copious.  I wonder why we on the Left didn’t form a series of spontaneous demonstrations, venting our frustration at a government we saw as illegitimate and destructive.  While it is true that protests were plentiful then, no self-proclaimed movement sprung up, one then dutifully covered exhaustively by the media.  That we did not resort to Teabagging tactics was itself a very good thing, but I think also that many of us placed complete faith in the mechanization of the system itself.  When things began to turn around at long last in 2006 and then, two years later when a compelling candidate articulated our desire for change, we believed that working tirelessly to secure his election was wholly sufficient.

Yeah, it’s my second post today… so sue me. Ha! Oh, yeah. This ain’t the Great Orange Satan, is it? That’s good, because I just got an email informing me that Greg Sargent says It’s War: SEIU Starting Third Party In North Carolina.

In a shot across the bow of Dems, the labor powerhouse SEIU is starting a new third party in North Carolina that hopes to field its own slate of candidates, part of an effort to make the Democratic Party more reliable on issues important to labor…

An outgrowth of SEIU’s vow to hold Democrats in the U.S. House accountable for voting against health insurance reform and labor positions in general, the new party has a bare bones website up now, as it begins collecting the 85,000 signatures it will need to gain a place on the November ballot. Unless all of those signatures are gathered in the next week, North Carolina First won’t be on anybody’s primary ballots.

SEIU is working with the State Employees Association of North Carolina on this effort, and has more than a hundred people on the ground now getting signatures. While there are a number of good potential candidates who might be persuaded to run NCF against turncoats such as Heath Shuler, Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell, there are many more who would stand for state and county office on this ticket.

While it’s being played as a protest action against the Powers That Be, I believe this country is in desperate need of a real new political party to represent the half of American citizens who now have no representation since the Democrats took over Republican territory (and Republicans jumped like lemmings over the wacko cliff), I cannot think of anybody better to field one than labor.

So. It can’t be the “North Carolina First” party for very long, but it it takes off, we here in North Carolina will be happy to tell our great-grandchildren that it started here. I will be checking further into this story and hope to have some in-depth, on-the-scene info very soon through some contacts in Raleigh. Updates sure to come!

Booman and Bowers like what they see.

On “progressive” health care reform from the horse’s mouth:

I think that’s unfortunate because when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean a lot of commentators have said, you know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican Governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.

On progressive war-making in the “good war:”

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.

On progressive economics (Neil Barofsky):

…even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car.

On progressive civil liberties (via the civil liberties extremist, Glenn Greenwald):

Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.

These are mere data points, but utterly representative data points.  I could go on all day.  The point is that Obama has put health care revenue streams above health care, continues the meaningless bloody slog in oily regions of the world, has completely failed to reform the vastly corrupt financial system at taxpayer expense, and walked all over human rights and civil liberty concerns to protect the culpable ruling elites.

To excuse any of this as “pragmatic” indicates a belief that good policy is NOT good politics, and the latter reigns supreme.  Such a belief system is not reality-based in the long-term.

Ha ha.  That’s a joke.  Zombies can clap, but by definition, do not have conscious awareness.

Now that [Health Care is] done, Barack Obama will go down in history as one of America’s finest presidents. It’s always possible of course that, like LBJ, he’ll get involved in some unrelated fiasco that mars his reputation.

– Yglesias giving some tongue action

Suffering succotash: The Punchline.