The hostile takeover of the Democratic Party offers deep insight into Washington corruption. Thanks, David.

Among other aspects of the takeover is the transformation of science from savior ("Better Living Through Chemistry", "The Peaceful Atom") to focus-group floozy. The waters have been so muddied people don't trust establishment science.

So in spite of essentially unanimous acknowledgement of human-driven climate change in peer-reviewed journals people have been fooled into thinking there is doubt about the facts. (There is doubt about the details of future developments.)

I'll read the book, too. I don't expect to be surprised by the facts, but I'm interested in the proposals. Money has become a self-sustaining life form. It always tries to collect into large amounts so it is more powerful. It is no longer a means to an end. Even non-profit organizations look to increase their budgets to maximize their power. (My employer emphatically included.) 

When I returned from a couple of decades living in Europe, one of the things I noticed was the general need to justify any action in terms of its profitability. As an example, books had been written to show arts educators and non-profits that it was worth bring this or that exhibition or performance to town because its profitability ("art will put Middleville on the map! draw tourism!") could be demonstrated through strange formulas.

Or, say, getting an education because over a lifetime it would earn you $400,000 more than those who didn't go to, say, Antioch. I still laugh when I type this, but fear most Americans don't find it funny or sad, just kind of normal!

But what's very serious for many Americans has been the credit card trap. The shocking behaviors of banks is something we've gotten used to. What wrong with us!

And today there's a report in Salon about the latest dirty judge getting appointed to the 6th Circuit. His long record of conflict-of-interest judgments is just, well, commonplace.

It will take at least another generation before American society is rid of the values which have enabled the hostile takeover.

I suspect the latter; the outrage is building. Add up uneasiness over outsourcing, globalization in general, the universal dependence on the international oil market, observed weather weirdness, fear of future terrorism, and the obscene profits and wealth inequality.
A populist resurgence could happen.

People's anger is still being (sucessfully) misdirected. The current issues of immigration, the National Anthem and other distractions show that people are not aware of the root causes of the problems they see.

I gave one example, over tax resentment in this essay:

Tax Resentment

The high gas price issue is another good case. Not even the politicians want to acknowledge that there are no realistic, short-term, solutions to the problem. And only leftwing bloggers are willing to say that the public is largely responsible for our present situation. 30 years of stupid oil policies, no meaningful improvements in mileage standards, the spread of communities to the exurbs and even the rise in global transport of commodities and finished goods have all contributed to the current squeeze. Blaming the oil companies makes for good political theater, but doesn't address the real issues.

As Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

Corvid

Mr. Sirota loses me with his reference to "the fat white ass of power." Why does he insist on injecting race--and, for that matter, vulgarity--into an otherwise pretty compelling argument?

The vast, vast majority of whites have no access to these levers of power. This remark, as well as the one about about bombing "dark-skinned people" leads right down the well-trod, multi-culti dead-end road. (A lot of white-skinned people have been bombed, too, if you want to be that thuggish about it. Come on.)

Elsewhere on TPMCafe there has been an earnest discussion of trying to revive an appeal to the "common good." But it's bitchy little remarks like Mr. Sirota's that cut the heart right out of that notion, implying there is something deeply wrong with whiteness.

He starts off nicely, with a powerful case to make, but then it's as if he just can't resist injecting this vile little race assassination into the mix. To Mr. Sirota, I'd ask one of two things: Either apologize for these remarks or own them. Either say you were mistaken, or come clean and state that you see this whole subject through a racial lens.

I am interested that you mention the Matrix in this regard--I have long thought that the metaphor at the core of the movie was meant by th W. brothers to spur us to thought about what was happening to our society (although I have long chafed at the silly notion of people as batteries, since we produce far less energy than we consume, but never mind).

The extent of the problem that you have taken up is revealed in the willingness of those with sterling democratic credentials like Mike McCurry to push for an end to Net Neutrality, for Carol Browner and her husband to lobby for the Dubai ports deal, for
folks like Mikulski a few years back to lobby hard against raising fuel standards for SUVs. I am willing to view the current opportunism on gasoline as allowable, given the needs to take back congress by any means possible this year, even though as a long term sustainable strategy, it is, well, ridiculous.

Thank you for calling this out. I expect sleazy, craven, and thoughtless money grubbing by republicans. I want to force the dems to higher ground.

PS: On the movie front, I also think that George Lucas in the II and III films was doing his best to indicate the threat to the system, if doing so in a generally more subtle fashion than the brothers W.

"The fact is, most of that nonsensical political discourse is designed to hide the two fundamental truths that nobody wants to talk about, but everyone knows: that our "democracy" is really a legalized bribery, and that every outcome in this system of legalized bribery is one that exclusively serves the interests of Big Money.

As my book details, this reality is obscured by one of the most intricate systems of propaganda human history has ever seen..."

That's straight Chomsky stuff: ("Manufacturing Consent," "Understanding Power," "Profits Over People," etc.)

Can't wait to read the book!

Good luck with the trolls on the other side of the aisle...

This is going to be a boring discussion this week. Can't find anything here to object to...

Dissent Protects Democracy

I have some video I recorded at the first book event for Sirota, held in Austin a week ago, on CanOFun.  Here's Sirota and other panel members, Robert Bryce, Molly Ivins, Lloyd Doggett and Craig McDonald (McDonald, besides Sirota, particularly worth listening to for his account of money in politics)

Monday, May 01, 2006
14:03:32

My theory is that everyone and everything is in place for the change. There are people who work within these systems. They are scared because they have knowledge of what is taking place. They also have knowledge of what needs to be done. Like wheat and the chaff it covers the world.
So David you are either wheat or chaff. If it came down to you making a profit on your book or taking a loss "what will you do”?
It is easy to stir things up. And as I was told, "it is just like a pile of xxxx the more you stir it the more it stinks" the people who stir it (the ones you speak of in your book that control things) make money off the smell of it. People that will love your book make their money working in it.
History is filled with people who sacrifice; my writing is proof of that sacrifice. For in other time or other places I would be stopped (kind of like zero comments to the things I write but in my case I write to the wheat not the chaff so that does not stop me).
So what I am asking you is do you want to be wheat or do you want to be chaff? Because, right now chaff live a lot better than wheat.

Everything I write is free and has it’s own purpose.

Eisenhower observed in his closing address that the intersection of corporate interests (and financial clout) and the military resulted in the military/industrial complex - a threat to our most basic freedoms, wherein special interests dictate our every policy.

If one reviews the history of our financial system, from the creation of a private central bank owned by powerful European and Wall Street interests, to the number of elite beltway insiders who are ex-Wall Street, one sees a reality where money buys power, and controls policy. The notion that there is a real two-party system is an arcane conceit propagated by those who wish that the theater of conflict and apparent choice keeps everyone occupied - the last thing that these folks want is a bunch of people taking the red pill.

This isn't just about fat red-faced white guys running the world. That is oversimplified, IMO. It is not racial. It is a continuation of human history's legacy of ruling royal families, where most power and money was concentrated in a small group...and their bankers. As royalty and divine right fell out of fashion, the money centers accommodated the new royalty - the governments that overthrew the old paradigm structures. But the one thing that didn't change is that money buys power, and power directs policy.

The latest awareness of the blatant abuse that is the US' international corporate colonialism is merely a reflection of an increasingly blatant sense of impunity. We overthrow governments whose oil we covet - nothing new there, just ask the Indians whose land we needed. We lend the newly liberated folks money to rebuild their demolished land, and that money flows back into the coffers of the special interests whose fortunes are built by extracting oil, and rebuilding infrastructure. It is a confidence game, but not a new one.

And it is not white folks alone - the power centers will gladly shift to accommodate Asian and Arab and Caucasian alike - but the game never changes. Keep the population consumed with daily bread, while their resources are taxed to the breaking point.

It is as old as human history.

My interest is specific to Wall Street as it is a microcosm of the system. Nation-state sized money circulates and is redistributed by the same banks who own the federal reserve banks. My blog, www.thesanitycheck.com is one of the more followed sources for information on the rampant corruption that permeates this engine of our economy, and which represents everything bad about captured journalists, co-opted regulators, larcenous politicians, and uber-power concentrated in the hands of a privileged few - where hedge fund managers make over a billion a year betting against Main Street America, and where fraud and graft are time-honored mechanisms for redistributing the wealth of a middle class lulled into complacency by assurances of oversight.

And that is the tame, upbeat version. The optomist's spin, if you will.

I'll look forward to reading your book. It sounds like you are focused on the idea that "our" government is beholden to "our" special interests, whereas I take the perspective that special interests drive the actions of every strata of most all governments. Ours is merely the most powerful government, for now, thus the most visible in its abuse of power.

I'm not sure what is sadder - this hysterical and overwrought post from Mr. Sirota or the amens from TPMCafe users.

While I respect Mr. Sirota's passion his analysis is long on rhetoric and mean-spiritedness and short on reasoned and rational debate. Frankly, the biggest problem in Washington is individuals like Mr. Sirota who are so single-minded in their perspective that they refuse to even consider the arguments of the other side - and instead of debating them fairly just engage in ad hominem and mean-spirited attacks. I fail to see any difference between the type of post here and the right-wing blather emanating from the Ann Coulters and Sean Hannity's of the world.

It would be impossible to undercut all the silly assertions in his piece, but a few truly jump out:

"Free" trade, we are told, is about creating American jobs, lifting American wages, and bringing prosperity to workers in developing countries. We are told this by both parties even as the hard, undebatable evidence shows exactly the opposite."

There are plenty of strong arguments against free trade policies, but to say that the evidence is undebatable -- how does one argue with something like that? The arguments of those who support free trade are not simply "politicians," but in fact a great many economists - and not all of whom are necessarily beholden to corporate interests. While Sirota may not agree with arguments in support of free trade to blithely dismiss them and define them as nothing more than political rhetoric is not only intellectually dishonest but extraordinarily arrogant.

Arrogance is the word that best defines much of sirota's message. This quote is another favorite: "Two fundamental truths that nobody wants to talk about, but everyone knows: that our "democracy" is really a legalized bribery, and that every outcome in this system of legalized bribery is one that exclusively serves the interests of Big Money."

Really? The arrogance here is breathtaking - Wise, All-Knowing Sirota has come down from his mountaintop perch to tell us all what we should know but are too stupid to recognize on our own. Of course, if we view government as a tool to help all Americans, and not just the amorphous and conveniently undefined "Big Money" we're just deluding ourselves or worse an agent of aforementioned Big Money. I'm sure the many people who read TPM Cafe, and unlike Sirota have actually worked in Washington to make govt more responsive to working class Americans, might disagree with his blanket and unsupported assessment.

Finally, there is this coup de grace: "Those who have deluded themselves into thinking that nothing is really wrong - you can leave right now because this debate and this book won't interest you. But for the rest of you (aka. the vast majority of Americans)"

Wow, how inclusive! Hard to imagine why most Americans seem to think liberals are elitists.

But it's also nice to see that Sirota doesn't limit his hysteria to policies - he feels the need to personally attack and utterly mischaracterize the well-reasoned positions of individuals such as Tom Friedman, Joe Klien and most egregiously Peter Beinart.

It's great that TPM Cafe gives access to a wide variety of points of view. One would hope, however, that these debates could be more than childish, mean-spirited diatribes.

that was the great power of the first Matrix film, that at the end Neo walked off basically into "our" world. the following films dissipated this by going down a Star Wars type route (the thing that bemused me most in the second film was that after lived in a world of absolute authority over an individual's reality, the first thing the survivors did was set up a hierarchy, presided over by old white men)

one interesting idea in the matrix is that consensus is actually part of the problem, which david touches on in this post. it is not just a task of finding what we agree upon, but also of exploding those "accepted truths" that limit the terms of debate. of course, at the very very heart of this, and david's argument, is that there is just one party, Big Business, cut in half, red half, blue half.

it alarms me to see how much faith people have in what a Democrat victory will deliver, i think it will deliver very little, other than making life harder for the Administration.

i will buy david's book, ive been reading his blog for a year or more now, and he's committed and he pushes ideas that attack the problem, the System (or the Combine, to use the term in the novel "One flew over the cuckoo's nest").

with regard to the battery in the Matrix, for its reversal of man's position with regard to technology, and for the notion of man as something that is harvested (like human organs are harvested in china's jails), it's a good image. it also feeds right back into the central fact that figuratively, that is the position we are already in.

as bill hicks used to say, "Go back to Sleep America, here, here's American Gladiators, here's a 150 channels full of crap, go back to sleep, America."

poor Bill, much missed

Apparently David Sirota is vying for the title of "Bill O'Relly of the Left." Whether he realizes it or not, Sirota is cut from the same populist cloth, one that the Right has ridden to power on over the past 35 years or so. His impassioned cry that the ordinary, virtuous people are being trampled by "Big Money" has been a staple of demagoguery over the past century, and far too often masks much more than it reveals. He has even targeted political commentators who disagree with his fiery rhetoric as "elitist." (Stephen Colbert could have a field day with this. Sirota doesn't talk to elites, he talks to the "heroes." Who are the "heroes"? The people who buy his book.) I imagine that his passion is helpful on some level and will be successful at creating a dialogue this week that will arrive at more nuanced and realistic assessments of where we stand in terms of policy proposals for the future. But this brand of populism tries to simplify reality in ways that are usually more harmful than helpful.

Democrats vs Republicans is like the Red Sox vs Yankees. They're both part of the same hypocricy that play ball between the same lines on the same field.

Gosh, I sure do love hearing from progressive democrats. You're all just so much smarter than everyone else because you took the red pill, or was that the blue pill? I can never remember. Anyway, once you KNOW what's going on, this is what you see:

The fact is, most of that nonsensical political discourse is designed to hide the two fundamental truths that nobody wants to talk about, but everyone knows: that our "democracy" is really a legalized bribery, and that every outcome in this system of legalized bribery is one that exclusively serves the interests of Big Money.

And if you don't agree with this you're either "kissing the fat white ass of power" or you've "deluded yourself into thinking there's nothing wrong" and you can damn well leave the conversation because we don't want your kind around here.

Please. How many of you "Rah-Rah-Go-Team" cheerleaders out there have shopped at WalMart? How many of you have been bitching about high gas prices? How many of you have credit cards? How many of you own a TV and pay for cable or dish? How many of you shop at Home Depot? How many of you own more than one car? How many of you have cell phones? How many of you believe that you deserve every damn bit of what you've got for the lowest price possible?

Mr. Barnum opined that there is a sucker born every minute, an astute observation on his part. Because the show doesn't go on unless there's an audience willing to pay for it. Does "Big Money" (undoubtedly a small, secretive group of caucasian gentlemen with large posteriors) do what it can to breed, educate, coerce, replicate, manipulate and in all ways possible foster "sucker-hood"? Sure they do. Are the "suckers" really so stupid that they don't know that's what's going on and they need to read a book about it? I don't think so. I think most people in this country know exactly what's going on and they choose to look the other way because they still get something out of the deal. Perhaps it's a "line of credit" to spend not on things they need to survive, but things they want to "enhance" their lives. Maybe it's gas that's $3 a gallon cheaper than what they pay in Europe. Maybe they sold out for "unlimited" cell phone minutes. Who knows? Who cares? You want to change the power structure in this country? Then start by taking an honest look at what fuels all power - which is humanity's endless and unquestioned desire. No desire, no power.

You can focus on the people who take advantage of other people's never-ending desires, or you can focus on people's never-ending desires. Or both. But focussing exclusively on Big Money is lazy and intellectually dishonest and in case any of you Kucinich and Chomsky fans out there haven't noticed, it hasn't worked worth a damn and has arguably made things worse.

I cannot even begin to tell you how frustrating I find books and arguments like this. We live in a world right now where the right wing Republicans are in charge and are drastically worse than all but the most right wing Democrats. As a party, we have trouble getting elected by a public that has been trained to believe any thoughts outside a certain box are evil. For example, we can improve health care by cutting out the insurance middle man with a single payer system. The public will see any such move as "socialism" and, therefore, evil.

We have to stay inside the box to get elected and we need to get elected in order to accomplish things. I don't believe we should accomplish this by Ruy Teixeira's innoculation. (I'm crediting him as the source of where I read the term not blaming him for the idea.) Some persuasion needs to be done.

Unfortunately, you've gone and written another angry lefty book that will convince those who read it that there is no difference between the parties. These people will tell their friends and people will stay home on Election Day or throw away their votes to a third party.

Thank you so much for contributing to the obstacles that prevent progressive candidates from getting a majority.

John
For more go to my online journal.

I think you make a good point Corvid. If our goal is to build a mass movement based on economic populism, then we want to avoid gratuitous ethnic and cultural cultural references.

At the moment, a large number of Republicans and a few Democrats have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. In the case of the Republicans, there was a massive political machine fueled by corruption. The Democrats were a couple of marginal backbenchers who should be prosecuted as well. In fact, Minority Leader Pelosi is working on setting our house to rights.

One party thrives on the corruption and works the system so that lobbyist need to pay for access. The other party is shut out of power as a result. It is highly irresponsible to claim that both are equally culpable. Those few people to my left seem to require every Democrat who has made a mistake in his or her life to carry out a ritual immolation.

I'm tired of some people giving the mainstream media easy excuses for their ritual blurring of every subject. I want Mister Sirota and others to admit to the existence of a lesser evil at minimum. Until they do that, the greater evil of the Republicans will win election after election.

This party needs to be about something other than squabbling amongst ourselves!

John
For more go to my online journal.

"In other words, as they say in the Matrix, "You take the red pill...and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.""

Unless you're an anarchist or a Transhumanist, you DON'T know "how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

That's okay - we Transhumans are going to show you in the next few decades.

Have a nice day.

By the way, I'm REALLY tired of people blaming economic ills on "the free market".

There hasn't been a "free market" anywhere on this planet to my knowledge in human history - certainly not in any country which also simultaneously has had a government that was functioning at all.

As long as you have a government in this country which regulates ANYTHING to do with economics, you do NOT have anything even remotely resembling a "free market."

If you want to use the term as a code-name for "corporate-sponsored state economic intervention", then be my guest - but make it clear, please.

With this level of ignorance of basic economic terminology, anything else such a person says has to be regarded as suspect.

Thanks Tom. I think people have known for some time that their cars are costing more and more to operate and that shopping at WalMart is putting small businesses out of business. I don't think that has stopped them from buying SUV's and shopping at the Big Box stores to get better "deals". In the therapy business, we call that denial.  

Denial is different than lack of knowledge or simple stupidity and requires a different approach.  For example, I'm sure you could talk about how not participating in our consumer culture for the most part is your way of "sticking it to the man", but of course that line has been so co-opted at this point that it's even in a commercial (for a cell phone company, natch).  Point being, nobody would listen to you, preferring to believe that you are probably some hippie-throwback-luddite-crank. 

However, my guess is you could talk about how your quality of life is better because you don't use all the gadgets and get caught up in keeping up with the Joneses.  Maybe you have a richer, more satisyfying relationship with your spouse, or kids, or pet hamster.  Maybe you feel more relaxed in general.  Maybe your cholestrol is lower and you're blood pressure's good because you're not chowing down on steak every day.  That is something people will listen to, and it's precisely what the book discussed in this forum appears to not do.

Despite "conventional wisdom", the stick does not motivate people better than the carrot.  We just like to imagine it does because it's so much easier to smack someone with a stick than plant, water, grow, harvest, clean, and serve the carrot.  

This all reminds me of the California Democratic Convention this weekend, where the Lyndon Larouche gang was out in force.  Their whole reason for being there was to try to convince all of us that the Democratic Party is all bad, all a creature of big business, and something FDR would never recognize.  They, as usual, were abrasive, confrontational, discourteous and just about everything else guaranteed to turn off the people they were supposedly communicating with.  That is one bunch of sick puppies.

Please, let's don't join them. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Imagine for a moment that the electorate you so despise is not stupid, but wounded and self-destructive. Would that change how you might approach them?

I didn't address this portion of your post.  I don't "despise" any portion of the electorate per se.  I do have contempt for people incapable of independant thought.  I have no respect for others that expect people to put aside their principles and beliefs and expect them to adhere to a political party's dogmas...especially a party I do not belong to.  I know I am probably not well thought of here because I refuse to subjugate my principles for the good of the democratic party.  

A political narrative based on a "Matrix" metaphor, this should be interesting.

"The fact is, most of that nonsensical political discourse is designed to hide the two fundamental truths that nobody wants to talk about, but everyone knows: that our "democracy" is really a legalized bribery, and that every outcome in this system of legalized bribery is one that exclusively serves the interests of Big Money."

Wow, it really is a conspiracy! Thank god we have bold truth tellers like yourself who shoot from the gut & give it to us straight. Have you considered writing a book for kids?

Quick Question: Have the chattering classes that discuss Washington politics ever speculated whether or not any move by a politician or political group was financially motivated?

"Free" trade, we are told, is about creating American jobs, lifting American wages, and bringing prosperity to workers in developing countries. We are told this by both parties even as the hard, undebatable evidence shows exactly the opposite"

Undebatable? In that case it's a mystery as to why we are even still discussing this!

Quick Question: When you were recieving your Ph.D in Economics, did you have a specific concentration in developmental economics or were you just generally centered on International Trade?

"they are highly protectionist measures that guard corporate interests and prop up repressive often undemocratic foreign governments - all while destroying jobs, wages and environmental protections both at home and abroad."

So they are similiarly too portectionist and yet, not protectionist enough! That's incredible! I'm so incensed at the economic plight of Malaysians that I too think we should refuse to allow American companies to hire them!

""Centrism," we are essentially told, means supporting the elimination of most regulations on business, the handing over of huge amounts of taxpayer cash to already-wealthy industries, the slashing of basic social services in the name of financing more massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and an intense embrace of economic darwinism that advocates for the removal of government from its role as protector of the middle class."

Gads, is that what we are essentially told? Who wrote this Centrist manifesto anyway? Better yet, I want to know whether the entry about "We support the slashing of basic social services in the name of financing more massive tax cuts for the wealthy" is just a paragraph or it's own chapter.

Quick Question: Is the role of Government to "protect the middle class?" I thought the role of government was to set the rules we live by & promote the general welfare? Am I wrong? Are only the middle class entitled to protection by the government?

"In Orwellian fashion, this agenda continues to be labeled as "centrist" or "mainstream" in order to justify policies that aid and abet corporate efforts to bleed ordinary Americans dry. And worse, these labels keep getting used even though polls consistently show that "centrist" or "mainstream" thinking among the American public is strongly opposed to this agenda."

So these Centrists write a manifesto saying they want to cut social services and use the money to pay for tax breaks for rich people, then they say they are against this sort of thing? I wish these Centrists would make up their minds.

"The list, of course, goes on – and the system to justify the hostile takeover of our government gets ever more intricate. Think tanks, funded by massive corporate contributions, pump out the most dishonest propaganda to justify the hostile takeover."

I just can't stand it when Think Tanks recieve money from corporations and then put out white papers like "Hostile Takeover of Government by Corporate Plutocrats: A reconsidered view" It's a good thing progressive think tanks don't recieve any money from corporations...

"But that "left" in the media is largely occupied by out of touch elitists a la Tom Friedman, Joe Klein and Peter Beinart – loafers on the Washington cocktail party circuit who want us to believe that the real problem facing America is that politicians aren't supportive enough of job outsourcing, are actually too populist, or are not sufficiently willing to indiscriminately bomb enough dark-skinned people throughout the world, respectively. From the comfortable confines of their upper crust lifestyles, these folks, of course, never have to experience the real-world consequences of the policies they advocate (which might explain how they can push them so haughtily)."

A fricken Men!, Have you ever considered appearing on Rush Limbaughs show? Maybe Bill O'Reilly? I ask because I listen to these guys and they too understand how effete upper-crust intellectual elites in Washington, who are out of touch with the real world, constantly crap over the hard working real Americans who don't want their fancy-pants urban elite intellectual nonsense shoved down their throats! It's a good thing we have straight talkers who shoot from the gut & understand the unparalleled wisdom of the American public to set them straight.

You know, that's one thing I think Chairman Mao got right. He too understood what a nuisance fancy-pants upper-crust coastal intellectual elites were, and how out of touch they were with the proletariat. A "stinking 9th category" he called them. That's why he organized a program to strip these out-of-touch intellectual egotists out of their cushy, distant homes & relocated them into the heart of China, where they might learn from the brilliant proletariat peasants the unparalleled wisdom of the worker's cause. I think something like that would be good today, of course, the upper crust patrician intellectual elites & their corporate-written corporocratic corporocrat backers would never go for it.

Here we go again, more people telling me I have no choice but the lesser of two evils. If the Democratic party actually stood up and said no more to lobbyists and all their perks we wouldn't have this problem, but they don't, so why should we vote for them? Because they aren't as bad as the Republicans? I want the Democrats to do one simple thing, stop taking the perks, and actually write laws themselves and not take pre-packaged crap that lobbyists put on their desks. There is so much wrong with the marriage between K Street and our political leaders and it would be nice to see the Dems divorce themselves from this horrible relationship, and actually stand up for the regular folks in this country.

If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you'd better be prepared to produce the pig." -- HST

It is simple, we want one party looking out for the interests of business and another party looking out for the interests of regular folks, right now we have two parties looking out for business first. Is it too much to ask for some balance in Washington DC? Sirota may be too harsh but he is right.

If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you'd better be prepared to produce the pig." -- HST

Since you rated my comment a one....are you denying that the power is held by white people in this country? And is that what's so offensive to you?

Is it the word "ass"?

Is it a race bomb to talk about race and power relations?

I don't get it...but I'd prefer you tell me, than just giving me a one rating. 

Dissent Protects Democracy

Thanks for a corteous reply.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears you think that his use of ethic/racial terms would obscure the issues and prevent a real discussion of them (due to them being taken as insults real or imagined).

Well I can certainly understand your point of view in the respect, but I think that at some point that kind of thing DOES need to be addressed because it's built into the structures of American institutions itself in many respects. For now I'll grant that we should try to keep the focus on the major issues as much as possible even if that means leveing out terms like that in the short-run.

Who knows, if we can minimize the effects of money it might do something about the (mostly "white") elites in and of itself.