One good thing about the shutdown

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Friday October 04, 2013 · 5:40 AM PDT

2013/10/04 · 05:40

So happy the democrats have found their spine. Despite all of the hardship for the federal workers, the good thing is the media giving us story after story of how the federal government provides services to each and every one of us on a daily basis. Hopefully this will help further dispel the ridiculous concept of "drowning the government in a bathtub."

Myth of the rising tide

Nelben

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Tuesday July 31, 2012 · 5:55 AM PDT

2012/07/31 · 05:55

Thinking about the US economic system as fluctuating along the gradient between pure capitalism, which can be thought of as 100% opportunity for personal wealth and 0% economic security, and pure communism that can be represented conceptually by 0% personal economic opportunity but 100% economic security. Socialist-styled systems occur in the middle depending on how that country decides to trade off personal economic opportunity with economic security for the whole population. America, perhaps like many countries, is like a pendulum, and we are certainly moving towards the end of pure capitalism. We will probably never get there, we never have, but how many people’s livelihoods will be destroyed in the process?

Capitalism destroying jobs, you ask? But the capitalists are job creators, you say. It may not be the same for people living in isolated communities or socio-economically homogenous suburbs, but in post industrial urban America it is easy to see the destruction in the wake of capitalism sailing through. The only interest capitalists have in urban areas is developing high end lofts and office space for wealthy urbanites or suburbanites. There is some trickle down as small shops open to provide services (which tend to be low wage anyway), but for the vast majority of its citizens 1) development capital is not available to them and 2) they never see the benefit of the development that does occur. What you end up with are isolated islands of wealth and affluence floating in a sea of poverty. You simply cannot reinvigorate our cities by focusing on the 1%.

They say rising tides lift all boats. Floods lift boats too… and throws them onto shore, sinks them, or flips them over. I would gladly trade the opportunity to gamble on being the last one standing after the flood for a little security in knowing that my boat won’t be sunk in the flood, or if it does, that I will be able to get some help. Because unlike Forrest Gump and Bubba after the hurricane, swooping in to profit from the wreckage of their competition, this flood favors the rich, the ones with boats so large they can’t even see the flood around them.

The Progressive Argument for Voting Republican in 2012

Nelben

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Wednesday August 17, 2011 · 7:09 AM PDT

2011/08/17 · 07:09

When I hear Republican presidential candidates deride the failed policies of the Obama administration at the same time that Obama recently proposed cuts to social security and medicare as part of his grand bargain on the debt limit deal, it makes me sick. I’m not mad that Obama’s policies are not working, I’m mad that Obama policies are the Republican agenda and they're not working!

Obama’s second term will consist of further compromise to the ever crazier Republicans who keep getting what they want and are dictating the policies. Those policies will continue to fail and in 2016 the Republicans will be swept into office by a disgruntled populace that has been convinced by mainstream media and Fox that it was the Democrats fault all along.

I say why wait. If we’re going to get the Republican agenda either way, let’s elect a Republican now so they can own these failing policies. Let them drive the country into the ground to a point that the populous backlash is focused on them. Then maybe we can get the types of true reform we were hoping for with Obama.

Look, Obama was our last best hope to turn things around and he has failed. Bush’s economy is now Obama’s economy; Bush’s wars are now Obama’s wars. Obama had the opportunity to enact some radical changes with regards to our economy, the war on terror, social justice, the drug war, the list goes on. In almost every case he, along with the rest of the Democrats, has continued to move to the right chasing the Republicans.

This sounds like a pessimistic way to look at things; unfortunately I see it as inevitable. I feel like we as progressives have been supporting Democrats for far too long because “they’re not as bad as Republicans.” But it gets back to the definition of insanity; things just aren’t any different.

Now there may be some people, maybe a lot of you, who think I’m trolling; that I’m a right-wing plant. I would respond to you to ask yourself honestly, even if Democrats took back Congress in 2012 along with an Obama victory, what would that change? Would Obama end the wars? Would he roll back domestic spying? Would he reform the tax system by increasing taxes on the rich, inheritances, and capital gains? Bolster the economy with an enormous jobs stimulus? Close Guantanamo? Strengthen Social Security and Medicare? Respond to climate change? Scale back the military and our hundreds of bases overseas? You tell me.

I’m sorry to say it has to get worse before it gets better.

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