Cross posted at "Praxis for Progressives."
Read it below the fold.
You'll notice that I don't mention the war in Iraq. Bush will cravenly and, according to Rep. Jean Schmidt, "cowardly" reduce or completely remove our forces in Iraq before the election this year. So his incompetence, hypocrisy and lying will still be an issue, but not the continuation of the war but hey, I wanted to be positive one day out of the year.
2006 Democratic Party Resolutions
1. This year I will actually be a Democratic Party that represents the demos. In crusty times, the Greek word demos didn't mean "the people" it meant the many poor.
From this one resolution, it follows that a Democratic Party will be a party that:
- Calls for and creates conditions for full employment (in America, not China or India). If the private sector can't create the jobs, the public sector will.
- Calls for and creates a system of universal health care for every American. Why don't we recognized that the rich will always take care of themselves, or they will buy someone else to take care of them. The government "of the people, by the people and for the people" needs to insure that all the rest of us can help take care of one another.
- Calls for and creates a sustainable social security system. The rich will always take care of themselves or buy someone else to take care of them. Social Secutiry is for the rest of us. That said however, Social Security taxes should be colected on all income from the first to the last penny. Those who benefit the most from the American Way should pay the most to support it.
- Calls for and creates a well-regulated infrastructure in order to maintain a diverse political and social community; namely, utilities of phone and electricity, and transportation. In other words, it's time to recover from making the market a fetish, and worshipping it as the cure all for everything. The market only performs a limited task for a limited purpose.
It's time for the Democratic Party to remember that it was and should become once again the Party of the New Deal. If the Robber Barons want to scream socialism, let them and gently remind them that if this was real socialism, the "demos' would take all their stuff. This isn't socialism, it's the only way for capitalism to survive. The Democratic Party is the party of small business, of working people, of the middle class; it's time for the party to remember that Wall Street is not Main Street, that money is not speech, and that politicians who lie down with the moneyed interest are whores. Whores may be good for some things, but do we really want the diseases they bring along with their good times.