December 5, 2015

K & R, and yes Sanders is the antidote to this

Also, we need to use his campaign as a model for future candidates. Even if he loses to Hillary (which I don't concede), she is a formidable candidate with advantages few other candidates will ever have again.

We now have a model for a national campaign that can compete without corporate money. It needs to be improved on, we have to work on how to effectively fight back against a corporate controlled media that will back the corporate candidates. I think the Sanders campaign, and his followers, have made a lot of progress in that regard, though it's still a work in progress.

Let's see some other serious candidates run this way, we can stigmatize accepting corporate money (as we should) and counter with a crowd-funded and social media promoted campaign.

November 22, 2015

We have to work to make this part of your OP not true

I love Bernie like no other, but it isn't about him. His candidacy has legitimized an alternative vision to the third way types. Despite the entire party and media establishment being rigged against Bernie, he has millions of die-hard supporters.

Our work, aside from doing what we can to get Bernie elected, is to expand this beyond the Bernie campaign, to carve out a permanent political home.

I have seen very little serious discussion on how we do this. It needs to begin now, not after Bernie's campaign when if he loses enthusiasm will wane.

Any indications of anything serious on doing this? Sanders himself? One of the left-leaning NGO's? It has to be about electing progressive populists without corporate money. It needs a name, a home, an organizational entity that keeps it alive and persists beyond individual campaigns.

edit to add excellent OP, I don't disagree at all, just trying to advance the discussion in this direction

November 22, 2015

Interesting read, thanks for the OP

Maybe it's not about wealth inequality so much as power inequality. In a true democracy, the little guy is empowered, which is I think where the author of this article is seeing the Alinsky/Sanders intersection.

We live in a kabuki democracy, where we get to vote but power operates behind the electoral outcome, largely immune to the will of the electorate.

Looking at Sanders' life work, I think he consistently has tried to address this problem. A noble work, hopefully people wake up and lend a hand. I

t's going to take a lot of people deciding that supporting one political party's establishment candidate over the other's isn't going to get it done, and that establishment politics is entirely unable and unwilling to address the major issues we must deal with. The power behind the politicians won't deal with the issues on their own, either, they are mostly in it for a buck.

Leaders are invaluable in these efforts, and Sanders is a gift. Hopefully more will emerge, and soon.

From the article the OP is about,

November 22, 2015

Yes, this

Establishment Democrats typically, after the primary, campaign for the general election and then govern as far to the right as possible without crossing over fully into the established Republican spectrum. It's how they capture the centrists and independents, those who aren't too disgusted to stay home on election day anyway. The left has nowhere else to go, and the third way Democrats delight in telling us so.

By having the Republican clown-car so insanely off the right rail, it allows the establishment Dems to run (and govern) so far to their right that they can drive through the policies wanted by their donors. And they know only a small percentage of Democrats are willing to fight back against policies being driven by their own elected politicians.

They've been runing this play on us for over 30 years now, it's about time we got organized against it. The only way to beat it is to establish somewhere else we can go, so they will have to respect our issues. Otherwise, lip service for the left, room service for the donors.

November 20, 2015

You mis-characterize his statement

"he wants us to stop shouting at each other"

What this refers to is the exact opposite of how you are using it against Bernie. He wants us to stop using gun policy as a wedge issue (which is what you yourself are doing) so we can actually enact reforms to work on the problems you address, rather than just doubling down on the two parties' entrenched positions, which each side uses for political posturing, and that gets nothing done. That's what Bernie's statement means.

I hate guns personally, but I don't think they're the primary problem, they're the weapon of choice for desperate disempowered people.

I support any sensible gun regulation. Suing gun manufacturers for the wrongful use of their products doesn't seem too reasonable to me (I know your OP didn't mention this, but it is often used against Bernie that he doesn't support this).

I'd support a waiting period, ending the gunshow loophole, a gun registration database, etc.

I'm a little concerned about mental health criteria. Most gun violence happens when violently inclined people act out in rage or in crime. I don't think there's a high correlation to any reliably diagnosed psychological disorders.

The real problem that needs addressing is that people in this society, many of them, are in huge trouble in their lives, and there is no positive societal mechanism to proactively work with such people. Most gun violence could be prevented by such programs. For example, why not have funded support programs for anyone who has income insecurity, whether they qualify for unemployment or disability or not (most people fall through the cracks and are receiving neither benefit).

Or a funded support program for people going through life crisis, whether they lost a child, are having difficulty in a relationship or dealing with ending a relationship, there should be many categories that would be eligible for support. This support should include a mechanism to actually plug people into positive social environments (sports or crafts activities, or work apprenticeship opportunities, why not have social organizations for the recently single, or for people dealing with dependencies). Everything is crisis and punitive focused, rather than a caring system that identifies at-risk people before a crisis and actually tries to address their needs.

Try that, and watch gun violence go down, I guarantee you it would work. These are the kind of things a country like Norway is probably better at doing than our own country.

November 20, 2015

Some people focus on fighting Republicans, others fight their owners

The real battle is to fight the corrupt industrialists and militarist who OWN the Republican politicians, and those that OWN Democratic politicians.

Owned Democrats and owned Republicans are two sides of the same coin. They're not the same, and when the coin is flipped I will call donkey not elephant, but our party has no alternative agenda to the policies of something like the Nixon-era Republican Party, except at election time, when they are all about the policies we want that they will deliver if we just elect them.

Any Democrats who are not owned are who I am fighting for.

The reason is very simple. The large donors and their lobbyists literally (and I mean literally) are writing our legislation, and delivering it to their sponsored politicians. This is why we're in the situation we're in.

Catastrophic climate change, endless wars, financial deregulation, erosion of social safety nets, largest prison population, construction of unprecedented surveillance and control systems, the Democratic Party's inability in the eyes of much of the electorate to distinguish itself as morally superior to the blatantly corrupt Republican Party, American labor having to compete without protection against third-world labor pools, our inability despite immense national wealth to support our citizens' lives to the extent that many other nations do, healthcare is a corporate mandated profiteering racket rather than a publicly funded human right, and I could go on.

I don't know who made this image, but it pretty much says it all:

November 20, 2015

Thanks, we are absolutely living under a Deep State

The political leaders are changed by elections. Power just keeps on doing what it wants, in slightly different contexts depending on who runs Congress or who is in the White House, but power mostly operates behind those forces and doesn't change hands with elections. It's been that way for some time now, and gets more entrenched with each election where we don't address it.

Foreign policy (both military and covert), domestic "security" issues, corporate access to government, the financial industry, thy give up noting without a massive fight from the citizens, and maybe not even then (Occupy was an attempt to address this, and was brutally put down, under a Democratic administration).

Until more people realize this and are willing to call it out, fighting for real change rather than the token changes power concedes, we live at their mercy.

And it isn't even just about us. The entire planet is under the thumb of the forces that run our government behind the scenes, using our tax-dollars to finance the military and paramilitary that imposes its will everywhere. U.S. citizens get blamed for their actions, though nobody asks us citizens if we approve of their actions, that's "off the table" (or under the table).

Sad to see ignorance or just complicity displayed in this thread by some. The truth is ugly, but it is the truth nonetheless. The greatest among us acknowledge it rather than ridiculing it.

November 16, 2015

Disagree

I read Krugman's article, and it didn't ring true to me at all.

First, I think there's a huge difference between Hillary and Bernie, one that is obscured rather than illuminatedby the corporate media debates and election coverage.

Second, it's very easy to forget about the huge percentage of disaffected voters who have lost faith in either party. They call themselves independents, for the most part because the politicians of both parties are perceived (accurately IMHO) as being owned by their large campaign donors, giving us lip service and giving the donors room service.

The point I'm trying to make is that Bernie is someone these people relate to, and for the right reasons.

So he has the capability to drive a huge turnout, with people showing up who have given up on the process. And there are a LOT of such people.

Not only would that help him win, it would help elect a Democratic House and Senate.

I don't know when or even if we could turn them our way (I'd say the Senate would be likely in 2016, maybe 2018 for the House). Hopefully the party would follow Bernie's lead and stand up for our interests, getting the public to come out to the polls to vote the obstructing Republicans out of office so the policies, which polls clearly show they want, can be enacted.

People are starving for authentic representation by someone who is working for them rather than for their large corporate donors, and we shouldn't underestimate the potential of that.

November 16, 2015

Sure, but at that point, what leverage do we have?

We'll just be f'in retards again who have nowhere else to go, and should be grateful to not have a Republican in the White House.

That movie is tired, got tired of it over 20 years ago.

Now we have extreme cliimate change, a ticking clock on our future. No sign from the establishment Democrats that they are up to the challenge, or even all that interested in it, since their donors aren't.

And they certainly won't be pushed into serious action about corporate campaign money, they're addicted to it and it's the only way they know to get elected.

I agree that if she wins we have to be more determined than ever to push back on the triangulation and the corporatism that will follow, but she hasn't won yet, let's not construct a fantasy of holding her accountable, because we know how that goes.

November 15, 2015

Wow, great post!

Thanks, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It's not easy to do it, and we lose some friends along the way, especially in this society, which rewards people who selectively ignore inconvenient truth.

My philosophy is that if we can do it without alienating or insulting people, even in disagreement seeds are planted that may later take root. Maybe your friends will someday see something a little differently because of your efforts.

I haven't read that particular book. I used to spend a lot of time reading such things, not so much anymore, lost in the internet nowadaze (a good Octafish OP can derail my schedule for a long time). There's a lot of great info online.

The book I cut my teeth on was a book called The Secret Team (The CIA and its Allies In Control Of The United States and the World) by L. Fletcher Prouty, others too of course. I don't particularly recommend that book, I don't completely trust the author, but it was my introduction into a lot of what goes on, from which I did my own follow-up reading.

I used to support, in my own small way, Daniel Sheehan's Christic Institute efforts to get to the bottom of CIA (and related assets) activities in central America, a little before Iran-Contra was coming to light. Most of the same players Sheehan was researching (he was officially prosecuting a case where he thought the CIA had blown up a reporter, which was his way to do discovery on the whole lot of them. His case turned out to be false, the CIA had not actually done that particular deed, but his research was invaluable for ferreting out what our nation was up to down there), anyway as I was saying most of those players turned up later in the investigation of Iran-Contra. Sheehan also used the phrase Secret Team, not that it matters what the label is really.

Feel free to let me know if you like the book on Dulles.

I think if people were better informed of our less-publicized history, they would understand that a lot of what is advertised to us as terrorism or evil-doing is actually blow-back from our government's interventions into their lives.