This past weekend, Jamie Dimon, on his whirlwind tour to try to explain away a $2 billion loss, said on "Meet The Press": "I would call myself a 'barely Democrat."
I could not agree more.
Dimon is barely a Democrat--if you believe in a Wellstone vision of the Democratic Party, not the Clinton-Rubin-Hoyer-[insert your own name] Democratic Party in which political souls are sold for cheap to the corporate pieces of garbage like Dimon who trash the country and, then, run out whining that oh they are misunderstood and attacked, those poor devils.
I do thank Dimon, and the rest of the bottom of the pond, for one thing: everytime they open their mouths to spew their nonsense about the "free market", I go back to read a speech by Paul Wellstone. For example:
We must win for health care. My mother Minnie Wellstone is 89 years old, a cafeteria worker, she never made much money. Now she has Alzheimers' disease and is in a nursing home in Northfield. All her resources will have to be depleted until she is eligible for any financial assistance. There is no dignity to such a system. We can do better than that. With your endorsement I'll beat Rudy Boschwitz and lead the fight in the U.S. Senate for universal health care coverage. It is an idea whose time has come. We must provide humane, dignified and affordable health care for all the people in our country.
We must win for our children. One-quarter of our children our poor; one-half of children of color are poor. Every day 100,000 children are homeless. A society that abandons its children with inadequate health care, child-care, education and nutrition is a society that has failed in its mission. We can do better than that. When I am in the United States Senate I will be a strong voice for children, not my children, not your children, but for all the children. We need a New Deal for the children in America.
We must win for the working people. This decade of the 80's - a decade of plants closed, strikes defeated, higher taxes for working people, unions busted, wages depressed, health care and pension benefits cut, broken dreams, broken lives, broken families. It has to stop. When elected to the Senate I'll lead the fight for legislation banning companies from hiring permanent replacements during a strike. It is time to put the government back on the side of the people, not on the side of union busting corporations.
We must win to save the environment. We cannot continue to poison our air, land and water. We must make peace with the planet Earth...
I am pro-choice. I am an advocate for children. I stand with working people. I am passionate about fighting for family farmers and rural people. I want my own children to have a future as family farmers and stewards of the land. I believe in businesses that make productive investments business communities and our economy. I support civil rights and human rights in our country and abroad. I am opposed to discrimination against any group of people. I've struggled with and been inspired by people with disabilities.
Let me be clear. This is not an anti-business view. The opposite: every person who is pro-labor should be for businesses because businesses create jobs.
What we are against is greed, stupidity, and arrogance--which are the impulses that tend to crowd out decision-making on behalf of a rationale, fair economy.
So, if it's all the same to you, please, go all the way: take your party affiliation somewhere else. You'll do the party, and the country, a big favor.