The Big Government, socialist, wannabe progressives are absolutely furious.
They expected Barack Obama to usher in all the final hopes to ensure that the United States would turn into a socialist republic, in which a couple of well-connected experts would take over and then slowly give everything to everyone, ensuring that everyone is fully and forever equal.
Not only did none of this ever happen, but the most radical of progressives complained, calling Obama the most Republican president ever elected by the Democratic Party.
What a wash. What a brazen disappointment.
The failure of Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff to capture the
vacant House seat left in a suburban Atlanta district by the Trump nomination
of Republican Rep. Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services shows
the disastrous state of the Democratic Party.
I could not agree more. Reality is not progressive, as Lindorff would have hoped.
Life is very much fallen and fallible. Conservative principles stop trying to ignore or change the laws of nature and the facts of life. Conservatives recognize these limitations and make the most of overcoming them through effort and investment.
So beholden is that party to
corporate interests that it cannot put up or support any candidate who is
willing to challenge its neo-liberal paradigm. The 30-year-old Ossoff tried to
win by appealing to the so called "moderate middle" of voters,
offering vague promises of economic growth and challenges to President Trump's
policies -- for example his attack on the Obama administration's so-called
Affordable Care Act.
The only what that a candidate reaching out to middle-income voters in suburban Atlanta was to appeal to those middle-income realities. The Progressives are all a bunch of wealthy elitists or welfare queens.
Nothing more. Most of them have been taught to see themselves as victims and demand that someone pay for the injustice which they have so unjustly suffered.
It was a stupid campaign approach, especially for a
special election, when voter turnouts are typically very low and voter
enthusiasm is the key. No matter: despite polls showing overwhelming American
support for a Canadian-style single-payer "Medicare for All" health
care system, Ossoff did not call for such a change. Nor did he mention at all
the need to slash US military spending -- the single biggest reason, because it
lays claim to some 54% of all federal tax dollars each year, why the US is
approaching Third World status by most measures such as life-expectancy, infant
mortality, infrastructure, education, etc.
All of this a bunch of garbage.
There is no way that the military expenditures consume 54% of the budget.
No way. It;s the entitlement spending that is eating our country into bankruptcy.
The question now for
progressives is: What is to be done?
Clearly to be a viable and
genuine opposition party to the ruling Republicans, the Democratic Party would
have to be thoroughly deconstructed and rebuilt. The millionaire-packed
Democratic National Committee leadership -- the lobbyists, the elected
officials and the well-heeled donors -- would have to be tossed out entirely,
and replaced by genuine progressives, labor activists, environmentalists,
representatives of various minority groups and (gasp!) socialists.
You heard it from the progressive right in this post.
They want to create a "socialist paradise" in the United States.
He should see how that's working out in Venezuela and Cuba.
This is essentially what Jeremy
Corbyn and his supporters in the British Labour Party have done, but I have
hard time, particularly after watching the overt and underhanded subversion of
the Bernie Sanders primary campaign last year, and the inability of progressive
Democrats to challenge and replace an the ossified and thoroughly discredited
party leadership, imagining that this can happen here in the US with the
Democratic Party, which internally is clearly anything but democratic.
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I do agree that the Democratic Party is the every antithesis to democracy. They are undermining their own party rules and cheating the grassroots out of fair representation. They have no interest in listening to the will of the individual members, probably because they realize that the progressive fantasies are completely unworkable in this place called "The Real World."
Funny but true. Progressivism is just radical backward insanity.
Please, adults who call themselves progressives--it's time to grow up.
Of course, this fight is not going to stop
* A Medicare for All health
care system modeled on what they have in Canada
* An end to US militarism
abroad and at home, the closing of most if not all foreign bases, an end to all
US wars and arms sales to conflict zones, and a reduction in the US military
budget by 50%. As well, a call for the US to return to negotiations with all
nuclear nations to eliminate these weapons of mass destruction.
* A fair, non-racist
immigration policy that is generous in accepting political refugees, that
doesn't threaten with deportation those young people brought illegally into the
US not by their own choice, that, while securing borders to prevent illegal
crossings, is humane and follows constitutional norms in dealing with those who
sneak into the country seeking work, and that, finally, recognizes and works to
end the role that US economic and foreign policy plays in creating economic
problems in neighboring countries that compel people to try and enter the US
seeking work.
The point is that the progressives want AMNESTY.
My answer is NO! And many Democrats are in agreement. No sanctuary state or city policies. Everyone has to abide by the laws of this country and come in legally.
* A crash program to reduce US
carbon emissions, and to help other countries do so, particularly those
developing countries that have limited resources and that are being most
impacted already by global warming.
Such a crash program will crash the economy. Just say no.
* A program to shift funding
for education away from its current reliance on local property taxes to federal
funding on a per-student basis in order to equalize access to good public
schools -- an approach taken by most European countries -- and a program of
free college education to all who qualify for admission at public institutions
of higher education.
Expand the education bureaucracy? I thought that these progressives wanted to get rid of the corporate interests and stop allowing the rich to pull all the strings.
* A jobs program modeled on the
New Deal's Works Progress Administration, to create jobs for the jobless in
needed areas like infrastructure repair, parks maintenance, environmental
clean-up, school safety monitoring and the like.
Been there. Done that. These socialists are living in the past. Don't they have any new, fresh ideas for how to make this country strong and thriving?
* A living federal minimum
wage.
What is "living"? $15 an hour? Why not $1,000 an hour?!
Everyone--just look at Seattle, Washington, and you will see how all this talk about raising the wage has actually raised the costs of living and unemployment.
This minimum wage crap doesn't work. It's time to allow market forces to determine the wage and price levels.
* A break-up of the too-big-to-fail banks, re-passage of the
Glass-Steagal Act separating banks and investment banks, and a reinvigoration
of anti-trust law to prevent the creation of monopolies or oligopolies, and
undo those that already exist.
The most effective way to break up big banks revolves around not bailing them out. No more moral hazard.
* Elimination of the cap on
income subject to the Social Security (FICA) payroll tax, and addition of a
0.25% transaction tax on all stock and bond trades except in tax-advantaged
retirement plans, a much higher capital gains tax and a restoration of the
inheritance tax to apply to all inherited wealth above $100,000. All these new
revenues would be used to raise Social Security benefits sufficiently to ensure
for the first time a decent income for all Americans in retirement.
Another soak-the-rich scheme. How has that worked out in Illinois or California?
Answer? It doesn't work. Illinois will have no cash on hand at all in one month. California is facing a nearly $1 trillion pension liability. Municipalities in otherwise wealth enclaves are paying one fourth of their budget toward pension costs.
The reckoning is coming, and it will not be pretty.
I believe that a such national
movement, which must be grass-roots, democratic and locally based, if it
organized frequent mass actions both in Washington and in the states and
municipalities, swarming of Congressional offices both in the capital and in
home districts, and pressing candidates during election years, would compel at
least the Democratic Party, and perhaps even many Republican office-holders, to
act, even if they hold antithetical political views.
The key is to avoid being
co-opted by the Democratic Party, and to remain an independent movement.
DAVE LINDORFF is a
member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, five-time
Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site. His work, and that
of colleagues JOHN GRANT, JESS GUH, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LINN
WASHINGTON, JR. and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
There is one element to this story that I like.
He wants to destroy the Democratic Party, which has been co-opted then overtaken by the Communists.
And there is one thing that working people hate more than anything else--allowing someone to take what they have worked for to give to someone else. Those who have survived the welfare cycle have no interest in going back to it, either.
"The Democracy" is doomed, and I am glad to see that the grassroots activists whom the Democratic Party depends on are running away from them, then want to overrun them in droves!
