Post Trump Letters to My Democratic Senators

As much as know-nothings and racists, corrupt Democrats who don't listen to or fight for their constituents cost their party the presidency.

Here's one of my letters to my three Democratic senators (one is being replaced at the end of this term by another). I live in a Republican House district, so I have no rep to contact there.

Feel free to copy and send it to your own senators, reps, and state and national party officials.


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Sen. Dianne Feinstein

United States Senate

331 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

November 13, 2016

Sen. Feinstein,

As a Democratic voter old enough to remember the George W. Bush years, I urge you to fight against Republicans and fight for progressive values rather than repeat the shameful enabling that Democrats in both chambers did for nearly all of the Bush presidency.

I am under no illusions that Democrats made some faulty tactical political decisions to pursue a greater good. 

The reality is too many elected Democrats take their marching orders from Wall Street banks and other corporations even when what they want conflicts with the best interests and wishes of the overwhelming majority of your constituents.  This has been especially true on issues like Wall Street deregulation and  bailouts, instead of regulation and vigorous prosecution, enabling the privatization of public education and prisons, and not publicly challenging the business and geopolitical goals of our foreign policy and means of implementing them.

A profound example of this was Obamacare that was written largely by insurance companies with seemingly no provision to control their arbitrary price increases instead of something like Medicare for All or at least a public option that would have served as a threat to private insurers that if they didn't act ethically, their customers could leave them for that.

Democrats in Congress have also supported rather than opposed our profoundly dishonest and criminal policies in Middle East.  Our allies in the Gulf, and indirectly (barely) our own government are supporting groups like ISIS to undermine secular regimes like the one in Syria, and the past one in Libya.

Likewise, the recently declassified Saudi pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 make it clear that Saudi Arabia funded and supported the 9/11 hijackers, which our government did nothing about.  This makes it clear that terrorism is not a problem our government is fighting but a tool and excuse it is using to pursue other goals.  No one in the leadership of Democrats in Congress has ever clearly articulated what those goals are and consistently fought this agenda that I know of.

Worse, once the Cold War ended and Russia became at least as capitalist as us, rather than find a way to cooperate with them, we have violated our word, expanded NATO to their borders, and fomented coups in places like the Ukraine to install regimes hostile to Russian security and economic interests like the transit of oil and gas from Russia to European markets.  A lot of people like myself balked at voting for Hillary Clinton since she had enthusiastically implemented this policy as Secretary of State and during her campaign, announced even more confrontational policies that could have lead to war with nuclear armed Russia.  While we might "win" such a war, millions would lose their lives and trillions dollars would be wasted to benefit very, very few.

While you have been progressive on many domestic issues, your family’s profiting from war contracts makes your support of any policy in that area suspect to say the least.  

Senator Feinstein, I urge you to help make the Democratic Party represent working people instead of just being the corporate party that doesn't pander to bigots.

Urge your colleagues to fight for leaders of the Democratic minority in Congress who will fight for progressive values.  Wall Street tools like Chuck Schumer should not even be considered an option.

Democratic voters will no longer tolerate politicians who give us lip service during election season, their back after, and their loyalty to Wall Street.

Sincerely,

 Professor Smartass

Do Businessmen Make Good Presidents? Public Radio sidesteps Bush/Cheney answer

When I heard the host of Public Radio International's The World ask whether businessmen make good presidents and continue with,

But does business experience give a head of state a leg up? And why does a nation turn to a CEO for leadership?

CONTEXT 

I assumed they were going to go for the obvious recent example in American history: George W. Bush and his Halliburton CEO VP, Dick Cheney.

Instead, the story went on to talk about Vicente Fox, a president of Thailand, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, and even non-president, Donald Trump.

As odd as the absence of Bush and Cheney was the absence of a very obvious question: do businessmen in office use their skills for the public good, or do they simply use the office to help their business and cronies who will reciprocate later? I'm sure their are lots of the first kind, but far more often, businessmen see public office as a way to pursue business by other means, just as their campaign donations are far from altruistic, and a pretty strong relationship exists between an industry's donations and getting a favorable outcome on legislation that effects them.

Another odd twist on this story was how they described Romney's business experience, as doing ''business turnaround as a management consultant.''

Isn't that a bit like calling a cannibal as doing health turnaround as a weight loss consultant?

NPR and Public Radio International do the public a disservice when they practice historical revision like this, and making conservative epic catastrophe that which shall not be mentioned.

FIRE Def. Sec. Panetta for threat to military retirement

It appears that when the current administration talks about cutting defense, they don't mean cutting endless wars, or corrupt contracts with connected corporations--they want to privatize (which means give to Wall Street) the troops pensions. At least that's what Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta said recently at National Defense University citing a plan by an advisory board of corporate suits.
 
It would be no surprise if the Republicans proposed this, given their constant schemes to undermine and privatize Social Security, but if Obama and Democrats in Congress embrace and push for this, there would be no surer sign that care more about obeying Wall Street than winning elections.

The ''reform'' would change military retirement from a guaranteed amount based on rank and available immediately when they retire after 20 or 30 years of service to a 401K type plan than wouldn't be available until they are 60. One military group did the math and it would end up costing an E-7 $1.6 MILLION over the course of their retirement, an 85% cut.

This is a classic corporate move on a couple of levels: reducing and/or stealing employees pensions, and by saying currently serving troops would be spared the change is a standard union-busting move--divide and conquer future vs. current employees.

That Obama's Secretary of Defense even mentioned this other than to tear it to shreds destroys one of the things many progressive Democrats took pride in during the Bush years: Republicans give lip service to supporting the troops, but Democrats supported them in ways that mattered most to the troops, with VA funding, strengthening the GI Bill and the like.

That might have been why troops donated to Obama six to one over McCain in 2008 (besides the mistaken impression that he was anti-war).

This shoots that advantage in the face.

Pragmatically,this is not just an insult to the troops, but it will make it even easier for mercenary companies to lure highly trained troops out of the military with their big paydays. That training cost taxpayer money, and the longer they stay in the military, the better return we get on our investment in them. When they join mercenary companies, we end up paying even more for the services of someone we paid to train in the first place.

This is not just my opinion, but when a similar ''reform'' was attempted in the 80's, the Pentagon had to plead to get it reversed because so many people were leaving the military.

If Democrats in Congress and the White House want to cut military spending, fine. Let them do it by ending the wars, and taking our troops off oil reserve hostile takeover and pipeline (and poppy field) protection duty (or at least making the oil company assholes actually pay for the service).

Panetta should publicly apologize for publicly even entertaining this idea. If he does not, the right wing talking point about Democrats not supporting the troops will sadly be true. If he won't apologize and condemn the idea, he should be fired.

Tell Obama, your senators, and you congressman exactly that.

''Super Congress'' amounts to affirmative action quota for dying GOP

Now is the moment. No more games. No more gimmicks. The Constitution must be amended to keep the government in check. We’ve tried persuasion. We’ve tried negotiations. We’re tried elections. Nothing has worked.

Mitch McConnell

Oh you foolish withered jellyfish of a man! No need to amend the constitution. Obama has just ensured your power no matter how quickly and much your party shrivels.

The super congress will be divided 50/50 between Dems and Republicans, apparently regardless of the composition of congress, and regardless of the fact that the GOP is going the way of the horse and buggy.

Check the demographics of the last few elections and the general demographics of the country as a whole. Angry racist whites are a dying minority but the vast majority of GOP voters. Other major ethnic groups largely vote democratic, as even younger whites do. The only thing slowing this trend is the persistence of some elected Democrats in supporting republican policies, muddying the water about who is who.

If Democrats did NOTHING differently, Republicans will eventually shrivel to the size and influence of the Lyndon LaRouche party.

Instead, Obama came up with a deal that give them 50% say in budget and tax issues no matter what, and if corporate Democrats end up in the other slots, they will have greater than 50% influence.

Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot: if the Democratic Party's only constituency were a dying minority, would the GOP do everything possible to give Democrats a veto power over Congress?

More importantly, doesn't this perverse form of an affirmative action quota for racist waterboys for the rich spit in the face of democracy itself since elections won't change it's composition?

I've said it before but this is now exhibit A: If Democrats in Congress were vampire hunters who stumbled across their quarry weak and about to burst into flames in the midday sun, instead of putting a stake in the bloodsucker, they would drag it into the shade and open a vein to feed it. If it was their own blood, it wouldn't be so bad, but it is invariably ours.

Japan's nuclear meltdown shows threat of gov't of, by, and for the rich

As if we hadn't seen enough of it in recent years with unnecessary wars that drained our treasury and killed our patriotic youth, massive oil spills that contaminate major supplies of seafood, trade deals that exported our jobs, demands for deregulation of the financial industry, then bailouts when they destroy what they just had deregulated, taking our homes with mortgage scams, put tax avoidance of the rich as the absolute top priority ahead of schools, heat for the poor and old, health care, and honoring the contracts of public employees.

Now with the meltdown in Japan, what most people see as a no-rush, second or third tier issue, the rich's demand that we stick with dirty energy sources like oil, coal, and nuclear power, which they have figured out how to monopolize and manipulate the price of, instead of allowing us to switch to limitless sources of clean energy is going to cost us thousands, maybe millions of lives. Not slowly from a cancer here, or a mine collapse there, but all at once.

Japan's earthquake has led to an accidental Hiroshima that could affect the whole world, and it was entirely avoidable. But our politicians, both here, in Japan, and around the world, have been bought by a financial elite that would rather risk millions of lives than pass up a chance to increase their profit margins.

That cloud of radiation that might drift over to us through the jetstream could just as easily be coming from nuclear plants built on or near faults here in California.

We can no longer afford a political system that allows such a malignant financial elite to call the shots.

We must put our people ahead of their profits.

It's a matter of survival.

Poll: should Wikileaks just release their ''thermonuclear file''?

 Rather than waiting for some judicial or other harm to come Assange and others in the organization, wouldn't the best protection be releasing the thermonuclear file, so everyone's anger is focused on the corruption in their governments and even those tasked with persecuting Wikileaks might realize they would better serve the common good by staying their hand?

If Wikileaks dropped some of their biggest bombs, it could reset our democracy and force Washington to acknowledge what and who is really driving many of our policies instead of insulting our intelligence with childish drivel about chasing terrorists with the most powerful military in the world, which if true would be like swatting at flies with a bazooka.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had real information, so we could make real choices about whether to support wars?

If we could see the internal discussions of the Wall Street bailout from both the Wall Street side and the government side?

That would be democracy. What we have now is an increasing hollow puppet show. Everyone sees that they are puppets, that the script is crappy, and we suspect whose hands are up their asses, but we don't have the definitive evidence to prove it.

Wikileaks could do that, save their own asses, give our democracy back to us, and maybe even give it to some people who never had it before. That's worth more than any game of chess they are playing now.

Why doesn't Wikileaks just release their ''thermonuclear file''?
	Wikileaks should release their thermonuclear file while they can
	Wikileaks should wait only because the information has more impact when it trickles out
	Wikileaks should wait because the damage would be great than the benefit
	other
pollcode.com free polls

Why Wikileaks gives me hope

Over the last decade, it has become obvious to anyone paying attention that the very wealthy few were calling the shots and Washington does exactly what they are told, even when destroyed our middle class and our real national security to pursue goals that benefited that very few financially. Even the base of the right wing saw this clearly with the Wall Street bailout. Wall Street threatened to destroy our economy if we didn't bail them out (as if they hadn't already ) and our elected representatives voted to give them the money in spite of overwhelming public opposition.

A couple of things allowed them to do all this: 1) lame propaganda reasons fed to the public that just enough believed to vote for and give a democratic seal of approval to those action, 2) middle and upper middle class people in government and the corporate media who repeat and reinforce the propaganda and enact and enforce the real policy, and most importantly, 3) those functionaries either looking the other way or keeping their mouths shut about what is really going on.

Over the past few decades, we have seen tiny cracks in that wall of silence as individuals realized that by quietly serving the financial elite, they may be enriching their own family, but they were betraying other families like theirs, their country, and the human race. Daniel Ellsberg, the Church Committee, the Iran Contra hearings, journalists like Gary Webb, insiders who spoke out about the fabrication of intelligence before the Iraq War even started, Ambassador Joe Wilson, each seemed like a rock thrown in a pond that made ripples for a moment before the flat calm returned as if nothing ever happened.

Wikileaks could be different. The sheer volume of material makes you wonder if there aren't a LOT of people contributing material, and the recent State Department document dump shows that it can do real damage both to the propaganda facade and hopefully even the real policy.

Even if Wikileaks itself is shut down, and everyone who ever funneled documents to them is thrown in prison, whistleblowing has reached a critical mass and the genie cannot be put back in the bottle. It is also likely that those who have access to even more damaging information will be emboldened the more other people put out there.

This must scare the shit out the rich more than Nat Turner scared white plantation owners in the 19th century, and it should.

If Washington fails to do their job of making Wall Street, bankers, and the old money, spoiled trust fund babies subject to the rule of law instead of allowing them to make the law, some regulator told to look the other way, a soldier or diplomat asked to carry corporate water when it violates human rights or democracy, or a reporter who actually uses their skills to afflict the comfortable will air their dirty laundry in front of the whole world.

Once Washington realizes that nobody is listening when they say these leaks are treason and a danger to our national security, they will be forced to do one of two things:

1. their jobs. Start legislating in the public interest not the interest of the wealthiest few, and bring the few to justice when they harm the rest of us and the rest of the world
   
   or
   
   
2. Give up the pretense of democracy and execute the Pinochet Option.

The problem with the latter is it would depend on the same people to execute it who are now leaking like sieves, and in the long run, Americans will have no stomach for persecuting their relatives and neighbors.

The Libertarian wing of the Republican Party likes to entertain the Ayn Rand fantasy of the elite John Galts of the world withdrawing the contribution of their works and talents from the rest of us and the world falling apart, but they have it exactly backwards. First, that financial elite has no talent other than a lack of conscience and a mistaken belief that they are better than those born to the middle and working class, and second, without the willing cooperation of hundreds, even thousands of the working and middle class, they could not manipulate world events, access their fortunes, eat, and in many cases, they could not even wipe their asses since they have always had someone to do it for them.

Wikileaks isn't a crack in the dam of silence of all those people who carry water for the rich, it is the dam breaking, and the wall of water is fast approaching the mansions of those who have treated the rest of us like sheep for the slaughter for too long.

BP spill could move Southern whites left, but will Dems be there?

I was a conservative & evangelical in 1989, seemingly the unshakable base of the GOP, but I went to work as a commercial fisherman in Alaska that summer and ended up cleaning oil off rocks and picking up dead animals instead.

More disturbing to me than the actual spill though, was the relationship between the Coast Guard and Exxon, the corporation that caused the damage.

A helicopter landed on a beach we were cleaning, and a Coast Guard captain and a greasy, frat boy Exxon exec got out. I expected the captain to be leading this guy around by the scruff of his neck and rubbing his nose in the oil patties. Instead, the Exxon exec was barking out orders and the Coast Guard captain was all "Yes, sir! No, sir! Right away, Sir!"

I grew up with a great respect for the military, was in a cadet program all through high school, served briefly in the military myself, and was shocked to see a high ranking officer grovel before a corporate criminal.

It was clear that Exxon was above the law, we needed politicians who would change that, and Republicans refused to do so, so I became a New Deal Democrat on the spot.

I suspect the same will happen to many Southern whites as they try to get help by appealing to their Republican elected officials and get nothing. They will migrate to politicians and the party more likely to restore and protect the waters that give them their livelihood.

Sadly, over twenty years later I saw the same scene re-enacted with a BP exec in the Gulf of Mexico even though we have a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House of Representatives. So even as Southern whites may be driven left, they will find no major party there to receive them, just more bowing and scraping to corporate money and power.

An unequivocally progressive Democratic Party could capitalize on this moment and re-establish a New Deal-like consensus that would last decades.

Instead, under the leadership of Rahm Emanuel, and unfortunately even President Obama, they are striving to replace the GOP as corporate water boy, and looking to line their pockets with corporate donations now and when they leave elected office, with fat salaries as corporate lobbyists, CEO's, and board members.

The newly lefter bubbas will find they have nowhere to go.

Why does Obama seek consensus with GOP & every financial scammer but not teachers?

Recently, Arne Duncan warned against letting teachers' unions interfere with his drive to privatize K-12 education with for profit charter schools, as if teachers were part or even all of the problem, saying states shouldn't weakening their overhaul plans simply to win buy-ins from unions. "Watered-down proposals with lots of consensus won't win," he said, implying that democracy as well as teachers are the problem.

Even if teachers WERE the problem, on every other issue, Obama has bent over backwards to find consensus with those who CREATED problems even if it meant alienating his progressive base.

He spent far more time in the healthcare debate trying to woo Republicans with market based solutions and delivered tens of millions of new customers to the health insurance companies who created the problem in exchange for some good but modest reforms that help consumers. Progessives, particularly single payer and public option advocates, only got token input even though both would be more cost effective and cover more people than the Rube Goldberg contraption that keeps private insurance in control, and making profits from money that could be going to actual medical care.

Likewise, when it comes to Wall Street, he put the architects of the deregulation, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, and lax regulators like Geithner, in charge of our economic policy, whose collapse they largely caused.

And on energy, in spite of good action on going green, he gave a massive gift to oil companies by opening up new areas to offshore drilling. In case you haven't noticed, they repaid that kindness with an oil spill rivaling the Exxon Valdez, and they didn't exactly thank us for prying open Iraq for them with lower prices at the pump.

Even if public school teachers were the problem, if he followed the model he used with these other bad actors, he would give them everything they want--smaller class size, more autonomy in the classroom, tutors, social workers, and after school programs to make up for weak families, and a diverse curriculum to keep kids hooked in who aren't necessarily fascinated by practicing for standardized tests--and only then make a token effort at the charter school ''reform.''

Hell, he would give schools a $700 billion bailout while scolding them for the error of their ways. (no one seems to take about how thirty years of Republican budget and tax priorities have resulted in schools being required to do more and more with less and less).

Instead, he is taking the very opposite approach from those other issues. Teachers are not only vilified but ignored (unlike health insurance companies, Wall Street execs, and oil companies). Non-teachers who run for-profit charter schools and administrators willing to execute the whims of this profits over pupils approach without question are in the driver's seat and no teachers can contribute let alone question what they do. They must agree, get out of the way, or be fired. And even if they agree, they might be fired wholesale anyway in an effort to break unions and bring in more inexperienced, and therefore docile, teachers.

If Obama sincerely believes teachers are bad actors, why the difference from how he treats corporate bad actors, who he puts in the driver's seat of reform? It couldn't be because no teacher's union has enough money to match in campaign contributions what the corporate interests driving for-profit reform have? How many congressman and senators leave office for cushy, high-paying jobs as teachers' union lobbyists, executives, or board members? What kind of insider stock tips could they get from teachers? ''Short chalk and buy whiteboard markers''?

Obama's ideas for K-12 education reform are identical to the Bush administration's, and in that case we did not hesitate to call it what it was: corruption. When Democrats sell out our kids like so many subprime mortgages, we should not hesitate to call that corruption too.

It seems more and more like Obama made a Faustian bargain with the financial elite: let me make some moderate reforms in a few areas, and I'll let you continue to act like a chainsaw waving serial killer in all the others. The last president who seemed to make a deal like that, Lyndon Johnson, who got the Great Society and Civil Rights in exchange for the Vietnam War, was not treated kindly by history, and Obama won't be either if he continues down this path instead of purging the cancers like Duncan from his administration and making the more radical change that is necessary to keep us from slipping into a Third World kleptocracy.

BBC's Greg Palast on Arne Duncan

Washington Post on Duncan's problematic record

More on Duncan's disturbing record

Are Democrats pulling a Jedi mind trick on Health Care Reform?

Are Democrats about to dramatically improve and pass what so far has looked like a deeply flawed and corrupt bill by adding a strong public option or Medicare buy in?

Think about it: only an idiot would really think the Republicans would support real health care reform that took money out of the pockets of insurance companies, and if the debate started with single payer, a public option, or opening medicare to all, enough Blue Dogs and DLCers would have joined the GOP to sustain a filibuster and kill the bill. Likewise, the media would not have been kind to such a bill and would have parroted the GOP talking points about the evils of socialism.

So what do you do? Get over the initial hurdles with a bill that is nearly identical to one signed into law by a Republican governor. Republicans will protest it anyway, but swing voters might notice their hypocrisy, which would limit the effectiveness of GOP protests.

Once the bill got past the procedural hurdles to the point that it could be done with reconciliation, it still does no good to telegraph the punch, but it does help to get the public to visibly ''twist their arms'' with ever growing demands for a public option.

Then if they substitute a strong public option, Medicare buy in, or hell, even single payer at the last second, the protests of the right and their parrots in the media won't matter. The public will get it, and thank the Democrats for it at the polls in November.

It would have a side benefit as far as all the money insurance companies threw at Democrats to sway their vote. The Democrats would get to keep that money, and what could the insurance companies say? That they expected a quid pro quo? A second benefit would be that Democrats could honestly say their vote on this could not be bought in spite of all the money that was showered on them and it could reset the relationship between pols and lobbyists.

This scenario would require a lot of coordination and discipline, which the Democrats as a party rarely demonstrated apart from voting for the worst excrement of the Bush administration, and maybe the current talk of a public option is just shining us on until they pass a corporate give away--but maybe, just maybe, these aren't the droids you're looking for.

Move along.

Move along.


UPDATE: I was wrong. March 29, 2010

Democrats use Osama-Saddam bait & switch on health care

I have often complained that the Democrats have failed to learn the right lessons from the GOP's superior mastery of propaganda and PR. In the health care reform debate, they have misapplied the GOP methods again, using bait and switch, with hope and platitudes about health care replacing the GOP fear of terrorist bogeymen.

The GOP used an Osama-Saddam bait and switch. They got everybody mad at Osama, associate him with Saddam, then dropped Osama out of the equation.

With health care reform, Democrats got everybody excited about a public option, associate it with mandated private insurance, then drop the public option, which will be kept in a freezer in a cave with Osama until needed again.

The big difference is people bought the Osaddama lie for long enough to get the war started. By contrast, no one seems to be fooled by substituting slavery to private insurance companies for the kind of public insurance system every other industrialized country has that is less costly and more effective than ours (except at lining the pockets of the already wealthy).

But the Democrats don't seem to care that they haven't fooled anyone and are going ahead with legislation written by and for the criminals who have killed and bankrupted so many Americans with their epic greed.

Good luck in that fall election, Democrats.

You'll need it.

Time to call bullshit on the Bipartisan War on Public Education

Both Barack Obama and his secretary of education have praised a Rhode Island district for firing all their teachers to supposedly help the school's performance.

But in what other endeavor in life is wholesale firing of the frontline troops considered the solution to the problem?

When Abraham Lincoln had a general who wouldn't pursue the enemy, did he tell him to discharge all his troops and assemble a new army?

When American car companies lost market share to Japan for decades, could they have turned that around by firing all the workers?

When we lost the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Alexander the Great lost Afghanistan, was it because each empire needed to fire their troops and recruit fresh ones to win?

In the first two cases, the problem was clearly incompetence at the top: a general who refused to do his job, and executives who didn't think their primary job was building the best cars on the market but instead, maximizing profits by cutting corners on quality.

In the case of Vietnam and Afghanistan where multiple generals and empires failed equally, it was clearly not a failure of the generals but of the enterprise itself: occupying people who didn't want to be occupied.

The problem with public education is at the top. Politicians, tax cut advocates, and privatizers who have no interest in seeing schools succeed are setting the agenda.

First taxes were cut or kept from growing with the need to fund our schools, then that was used as an excuse to cut the enrichment programs like art and music that might have kept some marginal students engaged and class sizes increased just as more and more students were coming to school with chaotic home lives that don't prepare them for the discipline of school.

Then we allowed politicians to micromanage curriculum down to what lesson teachers will do on which day and exactly which words and exercises they will use, robbing teachers of the ability create lessons that will engage their students. Most teachers create their own materials and lessons anyway, but at the risk of their job if they have a particularly authoritarian and bureaucratic principal.

Then we let testing companies sell our politicians on endless testing instead of once or twice a year, which enriches the test companies but helps our kids no more than a doctor would who took your temperature every ten minutes but did nothing with the information except tell you how quickly you're dying.

Finally, private education companies and real estate moguls pay politicians to privatize public education under the euphemism ''charter schools,'' which skim off the students with engaged parents and oddly don't have to follow all the same rules as regular public schools, accelerating the death spiral of public education. And we all know from the Blackwater, Halliburton, and KBR examples that there are NEVER costs overruns or failure, or such close connections to certain elected officials who get campaign donations and lobbyist or CEO jobs when they leave office, which gives them incentives to overlook any failings.

And to the extent that those charter schools do work, the rewards will go to the stockholders and executives, not the teachers who are usually not unionized.

and that union business is the only other time I can think of mass firings being used, like when Ronald Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers rather than negotiating with them even though it put the flying public at risk as military air traffic controllers tried to step in handle much busier and more complex civilian traffic.

Is there any chance that's what this is about? Giving unionized workers who have some measure of control of their work environment and some foothold in a middle class income a beat down, to send a message to other unionized public workers?

Would you take a job that required a college degree but people with no training in your field could dictate exactly how you do your job, measure your success, and fire you because the teachers in other classrooms might not be doing as good a job as you? Don't we usually require college degrees for jobs that require some creativity and initiative rather than just reciting a script like a tour guide?

This is rot and corruption at the top, strip mining our kids futures for profit.

Here in LA, in addition to turning some schools over to charter companies, some have been given to teachers to run with less top down and more cooperative management, with teachers even making decisions about hiring and firing on equal terms with other stakeholders like parents instead of being treated like day laborers.

I will be curious to see how that turns out, though I suspect it's a token bone thrown to teachers, that will eventually be taken away regardless of the outcome.

Rob from the mercenaries and give to the troops

I teach writing at community college, and had a conservative student who was a Marine who had served in Iraq, and he seemed to hate Blackwater and the rest of the mercenaries as much as any lefty does.

Their presence is seriously demoralizing to our troops.

It occurred to me that even conservatives would support eliminating mercenaries from a ''support the troops'' angle.

Simply pledge to take the money from the mercenaries and give it to the troops.

And if we canceled the mercenary contracts and used every penny that had gone to them to raise the pay of our troops, especially those most at risk of being poached by mercenary companies, we would still end up saving money.

How?

Every former special forces, pilot, or other badass who leaves the military early to join a mercenary outfit cost a lot to train, and training their replacement will cost a lot. We would prevent that loss by retaining them in the regular military. (We would also cut off the gift of that taxpayer funded training to those companies).

Save money, support the troops, look like the good guys on the international stage...that would be tough for even the corrupt politicians who set up the contracts and get the kickbacks to argue against.

Response to Democratic party chair quitting

Chair Rochelle Sivan sent to the Framingham, Massachusettes Democratic Town Committee resigning because she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to none, and her letter was published in the Boston Globe.

My short response is ''Thank you."

The reasons why she quit will be familiar to progressive Democrats: continuing the Bush wars, the bailout that favored the Wall Street sociopaths instead of their victims, the erosion of our civil rights, and the final straw is the health care reform bill that also rewards the criminal insurance companies by delivering us as their coerced customers.

She anticipated the response of the apologists for the Democratic Party and gave her response to each:

• Elect more Democrats and progressives - there are 82 members in the Congress Progressive Caucus and only 52 conservative "blue dogs" but which side constantly prevails? The problem isn't in the numbers.

• The bill will be improved later - Like Nafta? Or the Patriot Act? Will that happen when we have control over the Congress and Presidency? Oh wait...

• The other side is worse - Yes, the Democrats are better than the party of rabid conservatives the GOP has become, but not enough to matter, not enough to make the changes this country so desperately needs.

• There is no other choice - I agree there is no viable third party but almost all of the important achievements the Left has won for the people of this country have come from people working outside of the political system - see the Abolitionists, the Labor activists, the Suffragettes and the Civil Rights movements. Apparently, the existing political system is too invested in the status quo to change without enormous outside pressure.

FULL TEXT

I posted the following response on the Boston Globe article:

In a two dominant party system like ours, the two parties don't exist forever. When one party no longer serves a sufficient constituency, it can disappear in a flash like the Whigs did. In the case of the Whigs, they failed to deal forcefully with slavery and left the wound to fester into gangrene.

We are at a very unusual place where that is about to happen to both parties. While the right wing constituency doesn't seem to realize the problem, the left does all too well--our economy and political system is rigged to benefit a very, very few even when it harms or even kills (in the case of our wars and health care system) the vast majority of working and middle class Americans.

The Bush administration pulled the mask off this system, making even the slightly milder corruption of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress intolerable to those of us who really believe our government should try to form a more perfect union and support the general welfare.

The problem is not individual politicians or even one party, but a system that makes profound corruption and amorality the norm. While there have been some campaign finance and ethics reform, the fact that politicians can leave office and go to work as lobbyists, CEOs, and board members for companies that have business before Congress and still be respected by their colleagues and even run for office again instead of being thrown in prison makes us look like a Third World kleptocracy.

To POLITICO: on "Anxious Democrats"

POLITICO posted a story discussing Democrats in Congress supposedly dithering over whether to tack to the left or center in the upcoming 2010 election. I posted this in the comments:

Unlike the Republicans who must choose between their base of racists, religious extremists, and economic royalists and independents who find them morally repulsive, the Democrats could easily appeal to both their progressive base and independents by implementing progressive policies that broad majorities of Americans would support:

• Reregulate Wall Street & prosecute and imprison those at the top who knowingly committed fraud.
  

• Break up any business big enough to buy or intimidate our democracy.
  

• Enact a Wall Street transaction tax steep enough to kill speculation, and force investors to place long term bets on companies they actually hope will succeed (instead of creating one pump & dump bubble after another).
  

• Base our trade policy on what is good for American families, not speculators on Wall Street.
  

• Pass health care reform that does more to help middle and working class families than it does to protect and enrich insurance companies.
  

• Enact a separation of corporation and state when it comes to foreign policy, so we don't overthrow governments or invade countries just because some oil company, banana plantation, or sweatshop owner got their panties in a knot because the leader of a country drove a hard bargain for their natural resources or raised the minimum wage. This change alone would make it harder for terrorist groups to recruit.
  

• End privatization of government functions that are invariably the result of corruption that in turn then uses our tax dollars to fund further corruption.
  

• Invest more in alternative energy than we do in invading and occupying oil producing and pipeline countries. Besides giving us an endless supply of nearly free energy, it would break the power of oil companies to dictate our foreign policy and impoverish countries like Saudi Arabia that use their oil wealth fund terrorist groups.
  

• Listen to teachers for advice about how to fix schools instead of scammers who hope to make money on privatizing them.
  

• Legalize marijuana and deal with other illegal drugs by reducing demand and through treatment--exactly the way the wealthy and politicians deal with their kids when get caught with the stuff.
  

And that is the bottom line to all progressive positions. Treat your fellow citizens the way you would members of your own family, not overly indulgent, but not as sheep to be fleeced or led to the slaughter either.

If Democrats did things like this, were guided by that principle, or even appeared to be, they would not have to worry about 2010 or any election after that.

Unfortunately, by trying to split the baby between the needs of the working and middle class and the rapacious, insatiable demands of the sociopathic trust fund babies on Wall Street, they look weak and unwilling to stand up for their core principles at best, and at worst, as corrupt as the Republicans only with the lipstick of soothing social justice platitudes instead of the shrill, sharp absolutes of the religious right.

Neither option will get the Democratic base out, nor will it inspire independents to vote for Democrats unless they decide based on a coin toss.

PROGRESSIVE DEMS: PURGE the DLC/Blue Dogs or SURGE out the door?

Surge out the door into a new progressive democratic party that is.

Progressives in the Democratic Party are faced with a serious dilemma. While it is clear that at least the majority of elected Democrats in Congress are progressives, the Blue Dog/DLC wing is more than willing to sabotage any progressive change by siding with the Republicans on all issues that have to do with money: health care insurance reform, war, the nature of any economic stimulus, Wall Street bailouts, trade, privatizing government functions to reward cronies, and after giving away the store to corporate America, claiming that spending on education, health care, social security and the like are breaking our budget (not the corporate welfare of defense spending and now direct cash surrenders to Wall Street).

Compounding this problem is that though progressives seem to be a majority of Democrats, the leadership of the Senate is not, and the leadership of the House, while nominally progressive, seems to follow their lead in many priorities.

The fact that corporate owned politicians are the functional majority even while the Democratic Party (which we wrongly assume means progressive) is the majority on paper partly explains some of the worst and otherwise inexplicable actions of the Democrats like compromising more than half way on any legislation BEFORE THEY EVEN INTRODUCE IT, which inevitably leads to negotiating a halfway okay policy down to nothing. For example, the public option was a compromise to begin with. If Congress was really interested in providing the most cost effective option, they would have started with single payer and negotiated down to a public OPTION.

They must do this because though progressives are the majority of Democrats, the DLC/Blue Dogs do not care about the success of progressive goals or even the Democratic Party--they care about who's writing the checks, now as donations and later as their employers.

In the 90s, the Republicans purged their ranks of those who wouldn't reliably vote for certain core principles. While that led to horrible policy when they were in power, if someone voted for them, they could at least know that certain things were going to happen: taxes for the rich and corporations would be lowered, businesses would be deregulated, wars would be started.

What does anyone expect when the Democrats win? That essentially the same foreign and economic policies will be pursued with a friendlier face, and maybe some modest social programs will be implemented to salve the pain of deindustrialization and outsourcing our jobs, and the maimed veterans of the corporate wars will actually get the care and benefits they were promised?

So one temptation is to try the purge, take over the party structure, favor more progressive candidates in primaries, etc. There are a couple of problems with this: the corporate candidates will always have the money and friendlier media coverage. Another is that the purge in the GOP was from less reliably corporate to MORE reliably corporate, so the money and power was on the side of the purge. That all of the replacements parrot a religious right line as well is simply a matter of sticking to a marketing strategy that worked for a couple of decades (they are probably frantically pitching new images to focus groups, like their Ayn Rand, selfish superman one). Our purge would not be guaranteed success.

A surge out the door of the party to form a new party, possibly combining with some of the smaller progressive parties of the left like the Greens, would have it's own set of problems. One is that some progressives would stay in the Democratic Pary out of inertia. Another is where the corporatist Democrats would go--to the GOP. They would not tolerate being in a powerless micro-minority party. That is not what they are paid to do. Even if a similar schism occurred in the GOP, with the teabagger know-nothings leaving the corporatists, creating a three or even four party system, the gullibility of the teabaggers shows that they will be swayed into alliances with the corporatists most of the time if a policy can be sold with fear, racism, get-rich-quick, anti-intellectual, or violent themes. And of course the corporate Dems, whether in a rump Democratic Party or as Republicans would vote with them as well, leaving us about where we are now.

I think I laid out the negatives of both options, and would definitely like to hear the problems with that analysis.

PROGRESSIVE DEMS: PURGE (the DLC/Blue Dogs) or SURGE (out the door into a PROGRESSIVE PARTY)
	PURGE (the DLC/Blue Dogs)
	SURGE (out the door into a PROGRESSIVE PARTY)
	SUBMERGE and hope the corporatists throw us a bone if we keep quiet
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