Louis Brandeis a century ago.
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
—Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis |
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship at CommonDreams write
Turn Left on Main Street
Congressman John K. Delaney, what the hell are you talking about?
In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, headlined, “The last thing America needs? A left-wing version of the Tea Party,” the Democratic congressman from Maryland scolds progressives and expresses his worry “about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party.”
He writes, “Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.”
Rep. Delaney even implies that a freewheeling, open discussion of “these subjects” could lead to the election of a Republican president.
Good grief, John. A trade agreement that favors multinational corporations over working people? Cutting “entitlement programs” such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, worker’s compensation? Letting Wall Street off the hook for crashing the economy and costing millions of Americans their jobs and homes? These are Republican policies, bought and paid for by plutocrats. If Democrats simply mimic them, there would be no need to bother with voting for a Republican president; we could cancel the election and put the billions saved in campaign contributions straight into the Clinton Foundation.
The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” (Can anyone using the term even define what “left wing” means anymore?) The progressive agenda is America’s story—from ending slavery to ending segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security, the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income inequality. Strip those from our history and you might as well contract America out to the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and Karl Rove, Inc.
At their core, the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society programs were aimed at assuring every child of a decent education, every worker a decent wage, and every senior a decent retirement; if that’s extreme, so are the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution.
But such is the level of what passes for discourse inside the Beltway these days. The cushioned political and media elites who eat, drink, and make merry with each other at the annual White House Correspondents & Celebrity Ball are so cozy up there in the stratosphere that they dismiss as the lunatic fringe any voice from below that challenges the status quo.
And by the way, John, the “loudest voices in the room” aren’t populists or progressives; they belong to the auctioneers selling our government to the highest bidders. [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Racists Crying Racism:
Even before President Obama named Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, we knew that the rightwing noise machine would come after whoever was nominated. But what we didn't know was how much of an advantage they would have with the nomination of Sotomayor, because with their planned line of attack against her, they finally had an issue that they were intimately familiar with; racism. And who better than Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo to speak with authority about that?
But with their emergence as vocal critics of Sotomayor, almost lost among their shouts of racism, quotas and affirmative action, was their own Marcus Epstein. Almost. Who is he?
Epstein is the protege of Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo, serving as the executive director for both of their virulent anti-immigration groups. He's a "frequent contributor of racist essays to the white nationalist hate website VDARE.com," named for Virginia Dare, "the first white baby born in the English colonies." Subtle, eh? And here's Epstein's take on the proper degree of diversity in our country:
Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture. |
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today's Kagro in the Morning show: Arresting protesters (and other random folks) during the 2004 Republican convention ends up costing NYC $18 million in settlements. Charles Blow takes to task apologists for "broken windows" policing. Man with an AR-15 & a 100 round drum in the airport raises eyebrows, even in Georgia. And he
still thinks he's being oppressed. The Duggars go on TV to plead for privacy & look dumb. Poaching as a terror funding mechanism. Finally, a couple interesting angles on the FIFA story: the reporter who started it all, how corrupt were these jokers, and in what ways might it really matter?
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