Now that Andrew Breitbart has shown America what the right wing is made of, it's time for progressives to gather their forces and defeat the right wing, once and for all.
If the right wing project succeeds, the United States will be a country run by a tiny, money-based aristocracy; an aristocracy whose corporations will charge us a fee to use our roads, schools, fire departments, police, military -- almost everything owned today by we the people.
That's already been happening; for instance, during the Bush Administration, many states and counties, looking to cut operating costs, began hiring corporations to run their prisons.
Even the U.S. military got into the act -- hiring companies like Xe LLC -- the former Blackwater USA Corp.. And it doesn't take a genius to realize what a windfall it would have been for America's financial industry to privatize Social Security.
It will only get worse. Unless they're defeated, public universities, unions, agencies like the FDA, the SEC, the Department of Education, and the Federal Reserve System -- they'll all disappear. America, in fact, will look a lot like it did under Karl Rove's favorite President -- William McKinley, elected in 1896.
I say right wing and not Republican, because what used to be the Republican Party was hijacked years ago by an extremist parasite, steered by the John Birch Society, its fronts, and its allies, and used by its billionaire masters to mount a coup against the Constitution and the American people.
That coup's been amazingly successful -- successful enough to convince a lot of otherwise sincere, patriotic Americans that the right's actually on their side.
But it's all been a lie, and it's got to stop. And the way to do that is to discredit the right wing within Republican ranks, by defeating it in as many elections as possible. Then it will have much less to no power, and if the country is lucky, the real Republican Party can re-emerge.
But beating the right will demand more from progressives than just voting. It'll mean donating to your favorite Democrats, working the phones, licking envelopes, and going door to door -- just like Republicans do. We have to fight.
What Breitbart showed us is that nothing -- nothing -- is beneath his masters. If this had been the 1920s, Shirley Sherrod would have just been dragged out of her house and lynched in her front yard; but this being the 21st Century, they tried to lynch her in the media instead, as a way of attacking President Obama.
Luckily, it didn't work this time. But it may next time; and you can expect a next time.
But this isn't about that repulsive incident, or even about the long train of repulsive incidents the right wing's deployed over the years.
The goals of the right wing project are so extreme that they sound as crazy as some of what they throw at President Obama; that he's a racist, socialist alien planning to round up all gun owners, nationalize every business, and, generally, turn the United States into a concentration camp.
Crazy; that is, until you strip away all the phony "issues" the right raises about culture, freedom, religion and the Constitution, and ask the question asked every day in CIA headquarters; qui bono -- who benefits?
The answer: The nation's 400 richest families -- the people who own much of corporate America, control $1.27 trillion in assets, and have everything to gain from a weak government, a vanquished middle class, low personal, capital gains, and corporate taxes and -- especially -- no estate tax, all of which will allow the richer to get much richer, pass their fortunes on to the next generation intact, and keep running things.
This is exactly what Teddy Roosevelt set out to discourage when he created the estate tax 95 years ago -- a new aristocracy. It's even the issue that defeated the Federalists in the election of 1800. But you've got to admit, it's in the interests of those 400 families.
If they succeed, government simply won't be able to afford to do what it needs to do -- protect people from each other and, especially, the weak from the strong. And the really outrageous thing about what this gang has been up to -- in fairness, the people pushing this agenda are only some of those 400 families -- is that they've made no secret of it.
For instance, anti-tax extremist Grover Nordquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, likes to say: "Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal. If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050".
Their tool for doing this? Supply-side economics, of course -- a political agenda disguised as economic theory, recently atomized by Martin Wolf in that well-known left-wing rag, The Financial Times.
Wolf reports that even the right's own economists have told the Republican leadership that supply side's central idea -- that cutting taxes increases revenues -- is nonsense. But no matter: As a political tool -- a means of "starving the beast" and forcing government to shrink -- it has few peers. Cut taxes, minimize business regulation, and "unleash" business, and what you really do is provoke economic crises too big for a weakened government to deal with.
Sound familiar? And it's the second time the right's almost forced the federal government to shrink by provoking a financial crisis.
The right almost got what they wanted in the late '80s by provoking a massive real estate disaster, which in turn provoked massive losses at America's commercial banks -- not just among the nation's savings and loans institutions.
That crisis created what was called at the time "the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression". To his credit, President George H.W. Bush took steps to avert it; it was one of the reasons he was abandoned by his own party during the 1992 election.
Bill Clinton, with the help of the much-maligned Robert Rubin, straightened out the nation's finances and even achieved what the right was calling the "impossible" task of wiping out the nation's seemingly endless string of deficits. It was a big reason the right went after Clinton with such savagery -- he ruined their project.
But after another 8 years of supply-side economics, here we are again -- in spades. And you've got to hand it to the right wing; they're telling us exactly what they'll do if they get back in power -- return to the Bush agenda.
And maybe even go farther. According to Wolf, voices on the right are beginning to call for us to default on our debt, a step that would make what we've been through these past 3 years look like a day at the beach. Said advocates seem undeterred by the fact that the 14th Amendment says it's unconstitutional.
And it's not like the right's leaving anything to chance. Earlier this July, HuffPo reported that corporate donors are lining up to pour as much as $200 million into buying a Republican win this November -- a number that can only grow as we approach the November election.
Thing is, the only way the right can convince voters they should be returned to power is by creating distractions -- you can expect them -- convince the public, against all the facts, that the recession is Obama's fault -- they're already saying that -- and keep lying.
Luckily for the country, the right not only has no alternatives to offer; they think that's one of their strengths. And the Republican Party has been pushed so far to the right by the Tea Party that it barely seems to be running in this galaxy.
More luck: Voting against unemployment insurance, and any other measure that might get us out of this recession, only makes them appear to be putting party before country -- a charge that, as Henry Kissinger used to say, is not only effective, but has the added virtue of being true.
The truth, in fact, is what will defeat the right. Democrats may think their best line is to remind voters that at least they're not crazy; but it will take more than that; in the end, "we suck less than the other guy" is no winning strategy. The fight has to be taken to the right; progressives have to remind the country of the truth; and the right has can't be allowed to slither away.
And that, Mr. And Mrs. America, is up to you.
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President Obama, as he said on campaign trail, can't do it by himself. He needs all democrats to help him. He has done a lot already and there is more to do. To let repubs gain control of congress or even one of the houses would be a big set back. For these right wing law makers would finish giving away the govt's store to their corporate buddies by privatizing everything not nailed down, 'go back to the constitution' believers will have minorities stripped of their voting rights, human rights, separate facilities, etc; women will become subservient to men; list goes on.
Anyone that expects the president to turn the 'ship of state' around in 18 months have seriously bought into the repubs talking points and lies. We need more democrats in congress, not less. A saying for all of us 'don't let the perfect became the enemy of the good', 'don't throw the baby out with the bath water'. Electing more dems mean we stand to fight another day. If repubs win after what they've done to the economy, jobs, etc., we deserve what they take us back to - Bush years.
Those calling Obama a corporatist democrat - he may be though he's not, but he's our democrat and we can be sure to get some things we want. With the repubs, we can forget it.
It's a corporatist party that corporations give enough leash to in order for us all to pretend we have a competitive democracy, but not enough leash that they'd actually change anything.
Hence the health insurance mandate bill with no public option under tax penalty with all the enforcement power of the IRS -- that made health insurance stocks go UP after it was passed.
The only thing I am interested in right now is creative a progressive alternative to BOTH corporate-controlled party.
The Vermont Progressive Party has won seats in both houses of the Vermont State Legislature and should be a national model.
www.progressiveparty.org
Here in Los Angeles, I am voting to dump Henry Waxman, a 38 year congressman who's taken an ocean of corporate campaign cash over the years, and despite representing one of the most liberal districts in the country refuses to sponsor Alan Grayson's Medicare You Can Buy Into Act, and I will be voting for his Peace & Freedom Party opponent instead.
If the two party corporate duopoly is broken, great. If not, and the Republican wins, he will be replaced in two years with a more progressive congressman who hasn't been in DC for 38 years and who doesn't take corporate cash. I can live with that outcome.
The Democratic Party of FDR and LBJ hasn't existed for decades.
No, you are wrong. The main issue to get a better, more honest, unpartisan, intelligent government that actually cares about the people and what the people want. As long as it is “us†against “them†you are not improving the situation, in fact I think you are making it worse. By making either “us†or “them†stronger and the only choices you destroy the hopes and dreams of all the 3rd, 4th and 5th parties and ideas.
I thought you had integrity, but no, you are just a mouthpiece for the party of “usâ€.
And that, Mr. And Mrs. America, is up to you."
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Is it really, Mr. Reinbach? Is it up to Progressives to stand against the Beck's of the world, who targets us as Un-American and worse? Is it up to us to defend ourselves against the petty vitriol of Rahm Emanuel, who has our president's ear every day? Is it up to us to find solutions to the 15 million thrown out of work, languishing without jobs because the Republicans and colluding Democrats refuse to stand with these victims of an economy they trashed?
We have our corporatist Democratic leaders saying they are held hostage by the minority corporatist Republicans in the Senate, ... and can't pass a bill, because Joe Lieberman's friend died.
Get back to us when there is a single Progressive Leader in DC in a position of power, as we once hoped there might be!
"Oh, people. look around you. The signs are everywhere.
You've left it for somebody other than you to be the one to care." - Jackson Browne
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* crickets *
Last I checked, we already have fees for some roads (they're called turnpikes), private schools - better than their public counterparts in almost every instance - aren't free either, and the large tuition I'm paying to go to a state university isn't all being paid for by the government.
The entire point is moot, though, since every public utility is paid for by tax dollars and saying that it isn't a fee is just semantics.
Yes, Progressives won in 2008, but they haven't been able to close any of the deals at anywhere near expectations. The right continues to grow more powerful again, to water down or defeat any legistlation that's good for the country, and to threaten take over again, to take us back to the stone age.
They right doesn't have answers? Of course they do. All half of America wants to hear is "lower taxes, less government, uncontrolled guns, no same sex marriage." It's easy.
What we need is prominent political leaders who will take the fight to them, publicly and loudly explain to the country, at a level the ignorant can understand, how the party of the rich and the corporation uses lower and middle class supporters/voters to serve their own selfish interests.
Can anyone do that, particularly in view of fundamentalist religion tied up in the rights' views? I don't know. It doesn't look good. But being above the fray and depending on truth, common sense, decency, and good intentions to get through to them doesn't work.
It's just that way fewer people choose to watch it.
One thing you are right about, the dems strategy is clearly along the lines of "we suck less than the other guys". While I believe this to be true, I still believe that they suck bad enough that I would not support them either. Until the dems start showing at least some integrity, I will vote green, libertarian, or write in my pets, which ever is easiest to do on my ballots.
So it will no different than it is today.
We KNOW the Republican party is filled with crooks and liars. We EXPECT that. But as long as we persist in naively believing that supporting already-proven-crooked incumbent Democrats will somehow Make Things Better, we will never, ever, ever make things better.
You want to REALLY send a message to DC? There's one simple way: never, ever, ever vote for an incumbent, *even if that means voting for a Republican*, unless that incumbent has shown a proven track record of actually, you know, governing the way you want. At which point, vote for the incumbent -- *even if that incumbent is a Republican*.
TLDR version: vote for POLICY, not PARTY.
I know, I know, that's not the official party line, which goes "out problem is the Republicans and the filibuster. Never mind all those corrupt, lying Democrats you already elected... the solution is to RE-ELECT the same corrupt, lying politicians. And, by the way, make checks payable to..."
Years ago, Nixon was canned because of actions that are now common place within the Republican party. The question is not of Mr. Reinbach's writing style but of what has happened to the once honorable Republican party...and what new harm can the current Republican party put upon America.
You mean that isn't already the case?
Anyway, yeah. The Dems do need to work on their messaging. The GOP can't govern worth a darn, but they sure know how to get out the word. Of course, the word is mostly lies, but that's beside the point. It isn't rocket science. You select your message for the day, then everybody from the janitor to the president hammers it repeatedly until it seems like you came up with the idea yourself. It's in the air. Everyone's saying it so it must be true. You'd think the Dems could figure out something that simple.