It is looking more and more like the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal Government are going to cave on the public option. So the solution will be to give dump trucks full of money to insurance companies, with no cost controls.

Okay then; now I see how it is. The leadership of the Democratic Party will only represent the interests of rich people, and not my own. So, fuck the leadership of the Democratic Party. They have forgotten who they are elected to represent and defend: the little guy from the rapacious money powers (as FDR described them.) They have sold us mortals down the river for campaign money from rich insurance companies. Fuck 'em.

Digby said it best (as usual) a few days ago, in the context of a review of Michael Moore's new film:

It's extremely disheartening to see the administration and so many Democrats in congress completely ignore the political and policy ramifications of failing to engage in fundamental financial reform and fiery populist rhetoric at a time like this. This [tea party] movement is happening in a vacuum created by a lack of interest in this topic by liberals who are so enamored of being members of the new "creative class" and the like that they aren't paying attention to the cynicism and anger that's reaching critical mass among average working stiffs out there. It's easy to dismiss it, but very, very foolish. The issues Moore raises in this film will be answered on the right with authoritarianism, militarism, immigrant bashing and violence. It's a recipe for disaster unless the left takes this on in direct, political terms.

Well, it looks like the leadership of the Democratic Party is incapable of "tak[ing] this on in direct, political terms." We're apparently far enough away from the searing memory of the last great economic and social crisis that no one of consequence in Congress or the executive branch has the basic courage to tell the money powers who pull their puppet strings, "Not this time, guys. There are people hurting terribly, and in order for us to help them we're going to require that you sacrifice some money and privilege for the greater good of living in a stable, just society."

I've come to the conclusion that the leadership of the Democratic Party is too corrupt to be redeemed. They are no longer represent "the peoples' Party" but rather a party that represents most faithfully a certain slice of the rich - the "creative class" Digby refers to.

More Digby, from today:

This time there is a rather large group who, in the absence of an affordable public plan, are likely to be angry about health care reform and they will be aided by the large block of teabagging phonies and their industry allies in raising holy hell about it. These are people who are going to be forced to buy pretty expensive insurance policies from private insurers, and for whom the subsidies are just not adequate. They are average middle class people who are going to be told they need to find a way to now set aside nearly 50% of their discretionary income for Blue Cross insurance executives to make multi-million dollar bonuses. And that is from a very small amount of discretionary income.

[...]

I don't suppose that most of the people writing these plans have recently had to live with only a couple hundred dollars a week to spend among three people, but if they did, they would know that cutting that in half is impossible. I don't know how many people this affects, but it's obviously in the millions.

There's a reason why so many people are uninsured and it isn't only because they have pre-existing conditions. It's also because insurance is unaffordable. Unless this reform fixes that problem they haven't fixed it at all. They need to create a public plan that these subsidies can actually make affordable or these folks are all going to have to become criminals and defy the mandate. And if that happens reform fails.

I think you will see a terrible backlash if they don't get a grip on the political realities here. I hope that Hickey is correct and that they are, or this could be a monumental debacle.

I would put it in far harsher terms: without a public option to control costs, this is going to be a disaster of epic proportions, something that will send more working people into the hands of the teabaggers, because we offer them nothing of substance.

Again: I think the Democrats' problem, which the Republicans have ridden to success since Nixon, is they have forgotten who they represent.

In fact, I was visited by a guy with a long white beard and a greek accent recently, who asked me some questions about this:

Me: But Soc, ol' buddy, you're talking about The Repub's deluded base, here. You know, the people agitating for tax cuts for their boss's boss's boss? What possible use could they be to the Democrats?
Socrates: I can see I'm outmatched here, and must bow to your superior wisdom in this matter. I just have one or two questions, and I was hoping you could enlighten my ignorance.
Me: Sure, Soc. Shoot.
Socrates: Who are these people you call the 'base' of the Republican Party?
Me: Oh, you know...working stiffs...people in our society who are more or less powerless. People with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society, and feel some vicarious empowerment when they hear Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity "speaking up for them".
Socrates: He speaks for them, does he?
Me: Well, of course. You know, against the dirty, heathen Liberals who want to turn all their wives into hairy-legged, baby-killing lesbians, or something?
Socrates (aghast): The Liberals want to do that?
Me: Are you serious?? No, of course not!
Socrates: Well, that's a relief. I just wonder then: why are they not voting for Democrats? They used to, in huge numbers, as I recall...
Me: I already told you - The Republicans have the wool pulled over their eyes.
Socrates: But I still don't understand: why did they stop voting for Democrats? I remember quite a long period when people like that voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, every single election, starting in 1932.
Me: Well, you know, that was a different time, then...
Socrates: Really? And how was it different?
Me: Well, to begin with, there was the Great Depression, which threw everyone out of work. The Republican response was: let charity take care of the indigent, and let The Market right itself. The Democrats had specific, concrete plans to help the people who were hurting...and so the Republicans just got killed in the '32 elections...
Socrates: Ah, so the Republicans learned their lesson, and sing a different tune, now? Me: Well, of course they...you know, come to think of it, no. They are pretty much saying and doing the same things now as they did then.
Socrates: Then I'm still confused - why are all those poor farmers and minimum-wage earners and economically hurting people now voting for Republicans?
Me: I already told you - the Republicans are appealing to their fears and prejudices! Socrates: Hmmm...if those folks voted Democratic, do you think the Democrats might do better in elections?
Me: I'm sure we would, but we don't want those people.
Socrates: Because...?
Me: Do I have to tell you again?? The Republicans have them all tied up in fear and prejudice.
Socrates: I see. Let me ask you: Have you ever experienced feelings of fear, and even prejudice, within yourself?
Me (thinking): Oh, sure. It's probably a universal human experience to some extent. Socrates: Did you enjoy it?
Me: What, feeling those things? No, I guess not - not deeply, anyway. Who wants to be afraid? Anyway, what's your point?
Socrates: Do you think the people who now are caught up in the Republicans' fear mongering and pandering to prejudices are enjoying the experience - I mean, really, deeply enjoying it??
Me: Um, probably not...
Socrates: Then why do they allow the Republicans to keep doing it?
Me: You lost me.
Socrates: As we've established already, not only are they powerless, but their prejudices and fears are only adding to their misery. Isn't that true?
Me: I've never thought of it that way, but yes, I guess you're right. What the heck is wrong with them?
Socrates: Do you remember the impassioned speech given at the 2008 Democratic National Convention - the one everyone remembers - where the speaker eloquently called for huge amounts of assistance for struggling family farmers, a living wage for all American workers, card-check legislation to help workers get some power in the workplace, and shooting barbs at the Republican rich, "lolling obscenely in their Opera Boxes"?
Me: Um...(thinking)...No, actually I don't.
Socrates: Neither do I. Do you want to help people who are trapped in economic stagnation, and are being exploited with fear and prejudice?
Me: Well, yeah, that's a large part of the reason I'm a Democrat.
Socrates: Well, how can you help them?
Me: Like I said, they are pretty much beyond help...
Socrates (now genuinely shocked): You don't really believe that, do you?
Me: Well, what can we do for those people?
Socrates: "Those people"? Didn't you describe them yourself as, "Working stiffs...people in our society who are more or less powerless. People with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society?" Me: Yes, that's right: the Republican Base.
Socrates: We also went over how the Democrats gained a large and enduring majority in the past by coming up with specific, concrete plans to help people who were hurting, did we not?
Me (dawning realization): Uh, yes, I guess so. But what about the social issues - abortion, gay rights and so on?
Socrates: Think about this for a moment. How much does the status of gay marriage or the legal status of abortion increase their misery on a daily basis, in the course of living out their day-to-day existence?
Me: Actually, on a day-to-day basis...? Probably not much. Not much at all, really. Socrates: And how much does the fact that they are, in your words, "people in our society who are more or less powerless...with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society" make their lives harder, on a daily basis?
Me: I imagine it's a constant, grinding bummer...
Socrates: So, if you offered a whole list of ways to help them with those concrete, constantly-lived, ever-present miseries - in fact, if you organized your agenda around those issues, and hit the talking points constantly - do you imagine they might just consider giving your party a strong and enduring governing majority?

About 15 years ago, I lived on the northern border of Oakland, in the Rockridge district. There was a place there called the Buttercup Cafe, which had food that was both pretty good and reasonably priced. I had very little money then, so I usually stopped in for a cup of soup (all I could usually afford) after work.

I was something of a regular there, and got to know the waitresses pretty well. There was one waitress named Ruth, and on rainy winter evenings when it was slow we'd talk for hours about where we'd grown up and what we thought of the world.

She'd grown up hard and close to the bone, in a hard-scrabble little iron range town somewhere in Minnesota. Her dad was a Jim Beam aficionado, and I got the sense that there was some darkness there. She never talked about it, and I respected her too much to pry, but it was there in her eyes sometimes when she talked about back home.

She was talking one night about Northern California, and some of the differences from back home that she'd noticed since she moved.

Read more »

I get tired of all the theatrical (and deeply disingenuous) hand-wringing on the right about "How is Obama going to pay for all of his program? Gee, we'd like to help all those people, but the money just isn't there!"

Here's the thing; If Bush had not destroyed the structural surpluses that were originally projected for the last 8 years, the government would not be paying almost a half trillion dollars a year in interest on the (vastly expanded) national debt. I'm enough of a cynic to believe that was actually deliberate: utterly destroy the country's fiscal standing, so that the next time a Democrat is elected, there is a smooth transition to theatrical hand-wringing and bleats that "Gee, we're too broke to be able to afford to help all those people..."

But the thing is, as a matter of math it is actually fairly simple to pay for everything Obama wants and more, AND pay down the debt, if you make the income tax resemble what if was in the Eisenhower administration: the top marginal rate hovered between 91 and 94 percent, and there were more brackets.

Another thing I've heard proposed is a 13% asset tax on all assets over 10 million dollars. This would apparently (I haven't studied the proposal in detail)  pay off the entire national debt, more or less instantly. That would then free up tons of money to make our fellow citizens', and our own, lives better through investments in things like job training, better schools, social workers and so on, to finally tackle in a comprehensive way the economic and social decay in our inner cities; upgrading and modernizing our inter-city train system to standards that obtain in the rest of the developed world (a project whose need will become more apparent in the coming world of ever-costlier oil); government-subsidized day care to ease the path of single mothers out of poverty; new incentives and even direct investment in green energy sources and a smart grid.

I think if you ask most Americans if they want those things, they'll say "yes." If you propose a much more progressive tax system to pay for it, they'll be fine with that, too.

The problem isn't "too much spending." That's the Republican argument; the problem is not enough revenue, because the relatively well off are not paying their fair share.

[Update] To be clear, my argument here is that there used to be an idea in this country that one of the legitimate purposes of our government is to help balance society through income redistribution, by means of the tax system and domestic spending. It's time liberals made explicit arguments for that basic premise. Not establishing that premise makes everything else we want to do harder.

Michael Jackson's passing fills me with sadness - he always seemed a tragic figure to me. His talent was colossal, almost overwhelming to consider.

A couple months ago, I was surfing the web and came across the video below, and watching it, and knowing what I knew about his [lack of a] childhood, the cruelty of his father, the distortions that early superstardom imposed on his personality, and so on  -- I found the video almost impossibly moving.

Maybe it is just that I know the story of his life, but as I watched him sing this song, I got a glimpse at a frightened, lonely, bewildered child, aching in vain for the kind of friend he was rhapsodizing about in this song. I didn't know him personally of course, but I got the sense that he lived (and died, now) carrying an immense burden of harrowing pain and isolation.

This country can be cruel indeed to its idols.

I hope he has found some peace.

The Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSqo17o2a1w

Here's the thing, rich people: you've been running the country for your benefit, not ours - to the point where the entire fucking system is now coming unglued. You have warred and underpaid and cripple-em-with-debt-ed your way into a big damned crisis, and all I have to say to you is:

HAVE YOU NO FUCKING SHAME??

In the last 30 years, your wages have increased to the point where you are making hundreds of times what your average employee is making. I'm sorry, but you don't work 300 times as hard as I do, you don't experience 300 times the stress I do (Want stress? Try getting by on what I'm making some time - it'll be not just "fire the nanny" but "kids, we'll be eating spam for the rest of the month.")


When was the last time you were out of money? And not, stuck in Paris in the summer after college and waiting for mommy and daddy to wire more money, but more like the following situation:

Money in checking account: $8.23
Money in Savings account: $36.18
Other assets: $0
Days til payday: 8
Proportion of that paycheck that will go to rent: 90%
Proportion of the post-rent remainder of your check needed to buy food until your mid-month paycheck: 108%
Reaction: "Oh, fuck."

That's spelled S-U-F-F-E-R-I-N-G, and millions and millions and millions of people are experiencing it, not just now, but for fucking YEARS because of what you rich have done, and because of what you have failed to do.

To the politicians who are too afraid to stand up to this corrupt, wicked bunch:

HAVE YOU NO COURAGE??

What is so damned hard to figure out about our situation?

Pass the damned EFCA. As a bonus, repeal the parts of Taft Hartley that enable union-busting "right-to-work" laws in the South. We need to organize the working poor into unions who will fight to raise their poverty wages.

We need to re-industrialize the economy so that we're taking raw materials and using them to create things of real value and can thus afford to pay good wages, as opposed to an economy based on hallucinatory "returns" on financial instruments based on abstractions of other financial instruments.

We need living wage laws, and a real, functioning, works-for-all social service system. Government-provided, free daycare for anyone who needs it. Single-payer healthcare. Mixed-use development that is aimed at creating communities with a mix of incomes, rather than a population divided into either "exclusive" communities or slums. Geographically dividing the upper middle class and above from the poor is a good way to destroy the social fabric of a country.

We need a tax system that rewards work, but in which wealthy people pay a higher and higher price for each incremental increase of income, and that pays support to poorer folks in larger amounts as you go down the wage ladder.

We need to support small farmers with crop subsidies and cash supplements to their incomes, while providing incentives to use their land wisely, especially incentives to grow their crops as near to pure-organic as is practicable.

We need more taxes, especially on the rich. Way more taxes. Why is the media treating the huge deficits in California and the federal government as great, gee-what-can-we-do big mysteries?? You either need to:

1. Cut services (which will cause already suffering people's lives to become constant, desperate emergencies, which in turn will result in lots of social unrest and eventually, if it gets bad enough, armed revolution) OR

2. Raise taxes substantially on people who can afford to pay more, which will result in lots of huffing and puffing from the business right, and if it gets bad enough, ridiculous, badly written polemical novels featuring characters named "John Galt".

All of this would seem to be obvious to me, but that's only because I'm barely getting by.

Too many people call themselves lefties because the drive Priuses, are pro-choice and treat the nanny like a member of the family. Methinks they need a reminder of what real, actual leftism looks like.

In 1982, 6 years after moving from Richmond, California to Benicia, California, I was walking in my new town one evening in late winter. I used to walk all over town during the evenings after I graduated from high school as a form of sorting out my thoughts and finding some balance.

I was about a mile from home when the sky opened up, and it began raining in great, gushing torrents, and as I happened to be nearby, I ducked into the parish church my family attended. This was when Benicia was a lot smaller, folks didn't lock their doors, and the church was never locked.

It was about 8 O'clock, and the sun had long set. Coming from outside, the quiet of the empty Church was quite a contrast. It was built some time in the 1850s, and like most old Catholic churches, it was built of solid masonry and huge timbers - the walls were probably 3 feet think, and it was rich with odors - old wood, candle wax, incense, chrism oil, maybe a bit of perfume or cologne from some Sunday parishioner.

The church was empty, and very silent - broken only by an occasional creak from the rafters as a gust spent itself against the building, or the soft sound of the old wooden pews swelling slightly with moisture in the saturated air.

There were no lights on, but there were candles at the shrines all along the sides of the church; their glow painted the interior a sacred warm gold. A statue of Mother Mary at the front of the church looked with kindness at the pews that every Sunday were filled with sinners, the kind of people that had murdered her Son. The tabernacle held that very same Son, now resurrected and present, and ready to forgive and eager to teach us sinners how to love with real selfless sacrificial Love, Love so overflowing that it would make you die for the sake of your murderers.

I sat in the pew, awed, and let the serenity of that place fill me. There was peace and holy silence and ancient love. I went back to that Church many times that winter. I was 19 years old.

Northern California has a "mediterranean" climate - summer drought, winter rainy season.

During the dry season, the air is very dry, grasses turn golden (hence California's nickname "The Golden State") and native trees adapted to the climate send taproots deep to chase the previous wet season's receding moisture. Away from the ocean, the air begins heating in May, and by July, the temperatures in the Central Valley are over 100 degrees on a regular basis, with occasional heatwaves sending the mercury north of 110 degrees. The only redeeming feature of those days is the humidity is very low; however, a temperature of 115 degrees is hot enough that coming out of Safeway is a bit of a shock - the superheated air actually hurts your skin.

Fall is a time of increasing humidity, as Pacific storms begin their annual assault on the summer high pressure system over the west coast. The first shower usually tantalizes the parched flora some time in mid-October, and the dry season finally releases its hold in early November, and the first soaking rains fall.

And indeed, yesterday the first pouring rains fell on parched earth and doused the last remnants of the summer fires. Yes, the rains have returned, like a friend too long away; today the native Live Oaks are drinking deeply, joyously partaking of the waters of renewal, the grasses are preparing the first green shoots, and the Manzanita and Toyon bushes are releasing aromatic oils and perfuming the air.

The air is humid, the clouds are dark, but the air is filled with promise.

Change is in the air.

Isn't the larger story, the deep background, something like:

1. The median wage hasn't kept up with the median home price, or anything else, for 30 years, because the benefits of economic growth have pretty much (aside from a brief two or three years in the late 90s) all gone to the top;

2. Rather than address the median wage problem by, you know, raising it, the Powers-That-Be instead;

3. Came up with ever-more-exotic ways to saddle the median worker with ever-more-crushing amount of debt until;

4. The Median-wage-earner-who-hasn't-had-a-raise-in-years is finally, in fact, crushed by his ruinous debt?

And now we need to bail out the Powers-That-Be who haven't given their workers a real raise in years, because otherwise they'll ruin the economy? Am I missing something or is that about the size of it??

I'm (obviously) supporting Obama in this cycle, from the beginning of the primaries til now; but thought I'd post this just for fun; I actually composed (and then deleted) a version of this diary a couple years ago. For what it's worth, my post-Obama candidate for 8 years from now...

[Beginning of make believe]

My dream candidate is a state governor who grew up working class and made himself prosperous by his own efforts. He knows his way around a union hall; while he's been both a union member and management, one of the things that made him want to start a business is he didn't have the stomach for the kind of screwing over of workers that is part and parcel of being a middle manager in many large companies.

There's a story circulated about him that he once missed an important vote in the state assembly because it was opening day of deer season, and he was nowhere to be found.

He is passionate about doing what he can to make sure that workers get a fair deal in America. Reliable rumor has it he once threw a Democratic Party official out of his office, with instructions never to return, because that Democrat had dared to make a crack about "damned union chiselers."

He's known for intervening personally to try to save jobs (especially union jobs) when some mill owner makes noise about "off-shoring" production. He once loudly and publicly questioned a  plant-owners patriotism for sending jobs overseas. He drives a pickup truck; not because he's making some kind of "positioning" statement, but because he actually needs one for driving around his working farm. He overturned his state's "right-to-work" laws, and passed card-check legislation, as one of his first acts as governor.

He got elected governor by putting together a coalition of blue-collar workers (who, in reciprocation for his manifest passion for their welfare, would gladly walk through the fires of hell for him); hunters and environmentalists (the hunters love telling the story of that missed vote, the environmentalists respect him for the genuine passion with which he talks about conservation) and family farmers (who trust him implicitly to look out for their interests.)

He insisted that his son and daughter attend a state college, even though their grades could easily have gotten them into a top-tier private college. Anything that smacks of elitism is something he has little patience for.

There are a few things that really piss him off...

Anyone, especially a self-described "progressive," who has the temerity to say a word against unions and people whose collars are likely to be blue is going to be the object of a withering dressing down, and be called a "damned Judas."

Hypocrites: A pastor who has a mega-church in his state once got a meeting with the governor. No one is quite sure what transpired in that meeting, but his secretary remembers hearing the governor bellow, "No God-Damned Pharisee swindler in a thousand-dollar suit is going to tell ME what to do!!" followed by the Pastor retreating from the governor's office with an ashen face.

Polluters: He'd rather personally swim in nuclear waste than have some company dump a teaspoon of pollution on his state. He appointed a pitbull to go after polluters in his state.

He's more of an egalitarian than a libertarian; he knows instinctively that one of the primary functions of Government is to help balance society by keeping things (relatively, anyway) equal, thus providing stability.

[End of Make Believe]

A guy like this would make deep, deep inroads into the Republican working-class base. He would also be familiar to (and typical of) generations of Democrats from the late 1920s to 1970s.

Sherrod Brown was once asked why so many blue collar people in southeastern Ohio voted for Republicans. His perfect response: "Because Democrats stopped talking to them."

Worth pondering...

We've heard this stuff for years. Cheap Oil will "eventually" run out. Our deficits will "eventually" need to be dealt with. Foreigners will "eventually" get tired of buying our debt. Global warming will "eventually" cause real problems...

The US has been stumbling blindly into an absolutely epic train wreck the last few years. Hear that *thwack* sound just lately? That's the brown matter finally hitting the in-room air-mover. Gasoline is now over 4 dollars a gallon (in some places, well over). "Eventually" is now here. There are a number of urgent, and very expensive, things that are needed right away if the United States is to survive as a first-tier country in the world. A few of the more urgent items on the agenda:

1. We urgently need passenger rail service to be massively expanded. In an ideal world with non-cowardly Democrats in congress, a big Rail bill would pass right now, over Bush's veto - It would be better not to wait until Obama takes office. The ever-upward trend in fuel prices means air travel is about to become both much rarer and far more expensive; air travel as a mass consumer activity is deep, deep trouble. This means that we will need electric high-speed rail between major Metro centers, and pronto, or pretty soon no one except for the very rich going to be able to get around the country in anything resembling an efficient way.

2. Suburbs, especially more-distant suburbs, are probably going to be effectively abandoned on a large scale shortly (30-mile commutes with $10+ per gallon gas? $12 per gallon? If you make six figures, maybe: If you're the vast, vast majority of us that don't make six figures - Um, no. And all those "creatively" financed McMansions currently being repo'ed and sold at a loss will add to and accelerate this process) All those ex-suburban folks are going to need an affordable place to live that's closer to where they work; and they will need massively expanded public transit (street cars and light rail) to take them to work. Many smaller cities will be too broke (in part due to the cratering housing market) to finance even a substantial fraction of this: they are going to need Federal help. Taxes need to go up. Substantially. Especially the top marginal rates.

3. Interstate trucking is currently reeling, and its precarious situation going to get much, much worse. Interstate trucking relies on now-unobtainable cheap diesel fuel to work as it has up until now. It is hard to overstate the extent to which  contemporary commerce depends on trucks to deliver supplies - everything from food delivery to your local supermarket, to the loads of cheap, lead-laced crap imported from China and delivered to Walmart from the ports of entry comes on trucks: we need to find alternatives. Moving food and other goods shorter distances (i.e., using local sources rather than China and South America) is going to become mandatory when trucking collapses.

This diary just scratches the surface, but I'm not despairing. Americans have, in the past, come together to face problems at least as daunting as the ones we're facing now. That said, our survival will depend on the bullshit ceasing, and people facing the situation squarely and realistically.

Finally, a good general link, for further reading on peak oil:

http://www.theoildrum.com/

Here's the unvarnished truth: Republicans took advantage of their time in office to massively enrich their friends, and as a bonus, they ran up such a colossal federal debt that repairing the damage will require at least 8 years to repair.

These will be 8 years of (hard to sell) austerity, during which it will be hard to both pay interest on the National Debt, pay down the <em>principal</em> on the National Debt, and also pay for social progress (such as National health care or poverty alleviation programs.)

This was deliberate, premeditated vandalism. Republicans hate it when the government has money, because that enables Democrats to make people's lives better with that money. The country's fiscal situation before Bush took office had the Republicans panicked: had Gore taken office and stuck to his "pay as you go" discipline, the entire national debt would have been paid off by mid-2006.

Had that happened, the government would today be running a surplus. But, Gore didn't take office: Bush did. And the moment he did, he set about the project of (deliberately, I believe) saddling the country with such enormous, crushing debt that no progressive initiative could be fully funded for years, perhaps decades, after he left office.

As Paul Krugman <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/opinion/16krugman.html?ref=opinion">said</a> in today's column:

<blockquote>Looking at the tax proposals of the two presidential candidates, it’s remarkable and disheartening to see how effective President Bush’s fiscal poison pill has been in restricting the terms of debate.
</blockquote>

Interest payments on the national debt last year were $406 Billion. That would fund national health care, poverty alleviation programs, reviving our national passenger rail system (this particularly is an urgent priority)...

But, no: Republican vandals made good and damned sure that no money could be spent for these things - and all so the country club set could add a helipad to their yacht while continuously screwing their workers. Awesome job, Republicans.

Obama's won the long, closely fought primary season. He's been made a better candidate, I think, by having to fight so hard to get to the top.

Hillary did some regrettable things during this season, and I was as angered as anyone by them. I am NOT minimizing them.

Thing is, that's now past. Hillary has bowed out, and endorsed Obama, in terms graceful enough that we can now focus our efforts on McCain, Mr. Third-Bush-Term, Mr. 100-Years-In-Iraq, etc.

No more criticizing ANY Democrat (Lieberman excepted: maybe I should say, any real Democrat) until after the 2008 butt-whuppin' we need (and the country needs) to give the Republicans this November.

We need to come together.

"We must be friends. We must not be enemies," as Abe Lincoln said.

We have a huge task ahead of us: not only winning the presidential election for our guy, but winning enough congressional races that our progressive agenda can make, well, unimpeded "progress," especially during the first half of Obama's first term.

There is a massive amount of damage to clean up from the last 8 years. Iraq is a big damned mess; our country's fiscal situation is dire, and getting worse; the lower and middle classes are being squeezed in unprecedented ways; the climate crisis continues to worsen; peak oil necessitates massive action; etc. etc. etc....

Holding on to bitterness from a hard-fought primary season is, in the present context, emphatically NOT a luxury we can afford.

From a comment on Daily Kos:

I think those of us who want it to stop should just continue to say so and to reason with and/or critique the people who want to keep it alive. Some of them, honestly, are most likely McCain voters trying to stir up shit. Some are thoughtless, regardless it's important, I think, to support Hillary on this site and work for Democrats here, not some Democrats at the expense of others. I was really annoyed with the tone around here as people waited for Hillary to speak. It seemed like everything the Clinton camp has claimed about Obama supporters and it really disappointed me. I'm not, nor have I been, a Clinton supporter during this campaign, but I am a Democrat. I thought she did a fantastic job today. I'm a woman and she brought tears to my eyes. I am grateful to her for withstanding the heat and yes, sexism, that she has faced. It's time to move on, to forgive her the things we didn't like, and welcome her support.

Exactly so. Well put.

Obama is leading by example. Today's statement by Barack Obama concerning Hillary Clinton's campaign and concession:

Obviously, I am thrilled and honored to have Senator Clinton's support. But more than that, I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run. She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams. And she inspired millions with her strength, courage and unyielding commitment to the cause of working Americans. Our party and our country are stronger because of the work she has done throughout her life, and I'm a better candidate for having had the privilege of competing with her in this campaign. No one knows better than Senator Clinton how desperately America and the American people need change, and I know she will continue to be in the forefront of that battle this fall and for years to come.

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What do I mean when I say "I'm a liberal?"

1. I think large corporations have too much power, and our government ought to be a counterbalance to this.

1. I think the wealthy are under-taxed, and that this goes a long way in explaining the widening disparity between the wealthiest few percent and everyone else.

1. I think strong unions are a good idea, as another way of balancing out the inordinate influence of "malefactors of great wealth." I think "right to work" (that is, anti-union) laws ought to be abolished, and strong card-check legislation is needed at the national level. (Side note: I’d love to see legislation that specifically forces Walmart to accept full unionization - just shove it down the Walton family’s throat...)

1. I think US foreign policy has gone way, way too far down the road to imperialism (a highly placed Bush administration official, who is rumored to have been either Cheney or Rumsfeld, went so far as to say "We’re an empire now..."). I think the US as the world’s policeman/babysitter/emperor is arrogant and undemocratic, and will lead eventually to despotism here at home. I favor an international order built on consensus and cooperation.

1. I think a too-cozy relationship between church and state lends itself to horrendous abuse, and thus I favor separation of church and state as outlined in the US Constitution.

1. I believe that diversity, racial and otherwise, makes a nation stronger. It’s worth pointing out that most of what is considered "pop culture" (music and youth fashions) in the world is, or is derived directly from, African-American culture. Problems in our ghettos are complex, and have to do with, among other things, racism and the legacy thereof, poverty and the effects thereof, and with a breakdown of black families and the effects thereof.

1. I think the appalling situation in which 1 percent of the US population is in prison is a grave injustice, and an indication of a massive failure of our society to care for its members.

1. Generally speaking, I’d like my government to use its power to help people through social programs and wealth-redistribution; I’d like to minimize the government’s use of power along coercive lines (militarism, various police powers...the guys-with-rifles things.)

What makes you a liberal?

 

There was a difference between the Cable news nets I've noticed during the constant replaying of the Wright videos. On Fox, they were intended not only as fodder for sensationalism (as they mostly were on MSNBC and CNN), but also to advance the Movement Conservative agenda, which is Fox News’ purpose as a network. Tear down Obama to make him more beatable in November.

Fox (and wider, movement conservatism generally) almost always uses signifiers of the cultural and political conflicts of the 1960s when they are trying to discredit the political left in general, and Democrats in particular.

Thus, the Wright controversy was used to subtly indicate that Obama is some sort of ’60s radical Black Separatist character. This is, of course, absurd; any cursory glance at Obama’s actions and rhetoric shows none of the animating principles or world view of 60’s style leftism. (If anyone doubts this, look up an actual ’60s-era speech by, say, Huey Newton or H. Rap Brown on youtube, and then pull up any speech ever made by Barack Obama. See the resemblance? Neither do I.)

It is, however, useful to outfits like Fox News, and other propaganda arms of movement conservatism, in that it inspires fear in working class whites (of their caricatured enemy: the sissified, latte-sipping, morally snooty coastal upper-class liberal, who want to give their job to a black man and then lecture them, in patronizing tones, about their racism).  

Movement Conservatism (Fox News, talk radio, etc.) uses a kind of cultural populism to motivate ground troops. (One of Hillary's most heinous offenses this primary season has been to play this game herself. grrr...)

The Democrats’ greatest strategic error since 1972 has been to allow Republicans to get away with this, mostly by turning their back on their own traditional brand of populism, which was economic in character.

Harry Truman used to talk openly and unabashedly about how the Democrats were "the party of the common man" while the Republicans were "the rich man’s party." And not just Truman; decrying the economic elites was commonplace among Democrats, once upon a time: Roosevelt talked about the "malefactors of great wealth" and the corrupt titans of Wall Street. As a Democrat, I would love it if the Democrats would start talking like that again. Obama’s background as a community organizer gives me reason to hope that he will be able to revive the economic populism that was a large part of Democratic Party electoral success after 1932.

Here's a snippet of FDR's Rendezvous With Destiny speech, to show you what I mean:

Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.