Treatment, Not Jail, For Paris Hilton!!

Paris Hilton's is appealing to get out of jail but she probably won't.

But maybe she shouldn't go to 45 days in jail. This might not be best, actually. Because the rightwing way of jailing people doesn't always work. After 45 days, she'll be back on the streets, and she might drive without a license again.

Just as the Progressives gave us parole and probation they also taught us a thing or two about rehabilitation. They brought this into our democracy.

I have thought for a long time that some people should get treatment, not jail. Drug addicts, especially marijuana addicts, should probably have treatment programs if they get caught, especially. Under the current law, a lot of these people are not even rehabilitated! They are caught and then let go after paying some fine or something. Real compassion would mean having them learn how to become better citizens, happy people so they don't need drugs.

And as with Paris Hilton, it's basically the same principle involved. Hilton will be in jail but will soon enough be out without having learned anything. So we need to replace a 45 day jail policy with maybe a 90 day treatment policy. I imagine several components for a real progressive policy on this:

• It should be a 90 day term at a treatment location.
• The patient should be allowed to have visitors at certain hours each day.
• There should be teachers – fully funded, not underpaid – to give lessons on the problems with driving without a license or drugs or littering or whatever the offense. This should be about eight hours a day, maybe, but with breaks for exercise.
• Patients should get to talk with each other at designated times.
• Food should be provided that is nutritious and balanced. Vegan should probably be an option. (No cruel and unusual punishment!)
• There should be instructional videos and a test
• Mental screening for all patients, just to see if they truly have mental problems (we need to nip this in the bud right off! We might find another Cho or McVeigh before he kills dozens or hundreds of people. Then we can treat them before they kill!!)
• Everything should be integrated so no one's Civil Rights are in jeopardy
• After discharge from the hospital, the patient should check in once a week for a year or two, just so the government knows he's reformed

This would be a humane way to go about it. And it would help us actually address the problem of why people disobey the democractic rules of America. It would bring us back to the progressive vision of the progressive men and women who first tried to reform our system to make the sick people who commit crimes reform themselves instead of just be punished or pay off their victims, that way they can pay off their debt to society too and become upstanding citizens. We can find problems before they start.

Our progressive forefathers and mothers knew you had to go right for the inner workings of the person to bring him in line with social needs, which is why they tried (and tragically failed) to get rid of alcohol addiction. They were ahead of their time, but they should have used more treatment there. They were progressive though because they knew alcohol was probably more bad than even marijuana and so needed to be a addressed. Today's rightwingers have it backwards! They jail you for marijuana but let you drink as much liquor as you want! (Probably because corporate rightwingers have stock in liquor and bars!)

In Paris' case, a good bit of treatment might make her understand the importance of road safety. Also maybe she can be taught not to abuse her body, too, which is a bad example for all the girls. Eventually, maybe we can have treatment to find out why women objectify themselves which is bad for all kids to learn from.

Treatment, not just jail: It's the progressive way to actually change people's behavior for the common good.

Would Teddy Be Welcome in Today's GOP?

It was quite something I must say to see the Republican debate. None of them in any way of course, compared with Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln or the Republican heroes of an earlier time in America.

John McCain did have the guts to attack special interests and oppose the religious fanatics on stem cell research. Rudy Giuliani boldly defended a woman's right to choose.
But there was no global warming talk. No talk about sending troops to where they're really needed, in Darfur. And the real conservative guy from Texas sounded like he didn't want government to protect us at all, not from terrorists, not from corporate greed. He said something about Wall Street being well off because of some tax and because of inflation. HELLO! Earth to rightwingers! Of course Wall Street benefits from inflation. The corporations raise prices, we all have to pay those higher prices, so there we see it: of course they love inflation. But why would they want taxes? It makes no sense. Big business in America wants nothing more than a Republican to shrink government even more than Bush has, cut taxes, and let them enslave the rest of us in the fascism of free enterprise.

It's sad that Teddy Roosevelt would be so out of place in this party. Maybe McCain and Giuliani have some of his progressive qualities, but obviously the Republicans will end up picking the most rightwing of the bunch. At least this means Hillary or Obama might finally come in and clean up. That is, if the Democrats finally come around to have the decency and courage to nominate someone who isn't just a corporate asset and shill for the status quo.

'The most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced'

Terrorism? War? Obviously it's not these. Bush might say so, but my president, the one who deserves to be in the White House because more Americans actually voted for him, says the truth and stands up against the corporate media, with all its anti-Gore and anti-Earth bias:

A 10-year University of California study found that essentially zero percent of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles disagreed that global warming exists, whereas, another study found that 53 percent of mainstream newspaper articles disagreed the global warming premise.

He noted that recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fourth unanimous report calling on world leaders to take action on global warming.

"I believe that is one of the principal reasons why political leaders around the world have not yet taken action," Gore said. "There are many reasons, but one of the principal reasons in my view is more than half of the mainstream media have rejected the scientific consensus implicitly — and I say 'rejected,' perhaps it's the wrong word. They have failed to report that it is the consensus and instead have chosen … balance as bias.

"I don't think that any of the editors or reporters responsible for one of these stories saying, 'It may be real, it may not be real,' is unethical. But I think they made the wrong choice, and I think the consequences are severe.

"I think if it is important to look at the pressures that made it more likely than not that mainstream journalists in the United States would convey a wholly inaccurate conclusion about the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced."

There you have it, clear as day. Not a single real scientist doubts the Inconvenient Truth of global warming caused by human greed. But the big media are always lying by putting "balance" ahead of human need. And so we get the bias view that global warming may or not be real.

This is a travesty of journalistic justice. Who benefits from a burning up earth and no response from Bush's America to the disaster? Well, big media loves to sell papers. I just wish they realized when the earth burns, they'll have plenty of papers to sell, but no one left to sell them to. But they don't care, they'll just be counting their money.

This really is the biggest issue facing us all, for what is social justice, equality, peace and eco sustainability if the whole earth melts? Nothing, that's what.

Another Setback for Pro-Choicers

When the Supreme Court ruled against a woman's right to choose recently, overturning the right of every woman to an abortion and to choice, we knew it wouldn't be long before all our civil rights were threatened.

Did anyone think though, that the prolife rightwing would take away our freedom of speech?

We find out here that "Sen. Claire McCaskill was uninvited from speaking at her daughter’s Catholic high school commencement because her positions on abortion and embryonic stem cell research are at odds with those of the church."

Hey! What about our free speech rights? What about the separation of church and state?

We shouldn't let religion into the schools. This is the problem with vouchers and Catholic schools.

They should let Claire McCaskill speak! Just because she believes a woman's right to choose, doesn't mean she should ne censored!

This really is outrageous. I suppose the Catholics just don't understand this is a country with a First Amendment. I guess they never heard of "Roe vs. Wade", which gives all women a constitutional right to choose. By trying to cut funding for stem cell research, and for abortion, they have long showed they want to kill the separation of church and state, on top of ignoring Roe vs. Wade. But this is the last straw.

What a shame in our so-called democracy. When even a Senator is censored by the prolife religious fanatics.

You Go, Woman!

Sometimes the female feminists really impress me with what they say about how ingrained we are in sexism as a society. At the wonderful Pandagon blog, Amanda Marcotte writes:

In the world of anti-feminist literature that denies that sexism exists, few tropes are more irritating then the people who try to disprove sexism causes the pay gap between men and women by referring instead to “other” causes for the pay gap that are caused by….sexism. Now I’m not talking about honest disagreement about which flavor of sexism is most responsible and how to attack that, but the people who are trying to wave their hands and pretend that it’s not a problem that women make so much less than men on average. (Even though the ramifications are more far-reaching than that basic injustice, ranging from the fact that women have less bargaining power, less retirement money and less ability to walk out of abusive marriages, even though they are far more likely to be abused.) The latest article that attempts to distract from the sexism underlying the pay gap by pointing to the sexism that causes it is by Steve Chapman, writing for Reason. Lest you think I’m kidding that he’s going to deny outright that sexism causes the sexism that causes the pay gap, here’s his thesis:

And the effort got new fuel from a report by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation, which says women are paid less starting with their first jobs out of college, and that the deficit only grows with time. Pay discrimination, says AAUW, is still “a serious problem for women in the work force.”

In reality, that’s not clear at all. What we know from an array of evidence, including this report, is that most if not all of the discrepancy can be traced to factors other than sexism.

Emphasis mine, because I’m not sure that the factors he lists are “other than sexism” at all.

I couldn't have said it better if I said it myself. Any claim that there is no pay gap is contradicted by this chart I found online which shows it only getting worse:
It's time for us new progressives to have some new ideas about how to address the gender wage gap. There seem to be two basic policy options:

• Pay Men Less
• Pay Women More

Some men, it should go without saying, are actually paid too little too. I'm thinking of the schoolteachers in public schools where there's not as much of a sex pay gap because of the democratic pressure in the government that doesn't exist in the marketplace. (The free market, after all, is a jungle where instead of invisible helping hands what we really have is glass ceilings -- invisible, yes, but not in a helping-hand way.)

Also, a lot of people get paid not enough, which is why minimum wage is so important to raise their wages. So maybe lowering wages for men is a bad idea, though a tax on rich men espeically might help to pay public women employees more (and men too, if they deserve it!)

So I think the better policy option is to pay women more, not pay men less. Maybe what we need is the government to handle more of the economy, like it does with public schools, that way it can treat men and women equally the way they were meant to be treated.

Another option is to make a law to make corporations not pay men and women differently. That way, we could once again save capitalism from itself, like the first Progressive Era did and also like FDR's New Deal.

These are serious questions and need require serious thinking. The first step though is to admit there's a sexist problem, but the corporate media probably won't let this story come out because they are also run by men (and I bet they're run by men who get paid more than women would for doing just as good (or bad) of a job, depending on your perspective.)

Time for Another New Deal

I've said it once and I'll say it over and over and we all should until the rightwing backs down. Laissez faire = poisoned food.

We find out that the "get government off our backs" Bush administration has screwed us once again, this time by allowing chickens that American children eat regularly to feed on contaminated chicken feed. CNN reports:

People have eaten millions of chickens that were given feed tainted with recalled pet food, federal officials said Tuesday, though they said the threat to human health is minimal.

Minimal? Minimal??? Tell that to the people who die in third world countries because they don't even have a USDA to protect them!!

Now for a little history lesson for a change. During the 1930s, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was doing all he can to bring America out of the poverty that the laissez faire Republicans had been responsible for, there was a Supreme Court case very relevant to our present discussion. The federal government wanted to protect people from eating sick chickens back then, too, but the conservatives said that the Interstate Commerice Clause only applied to trade between states!! This narrow, strict constructionist social Darwinian attitude was that Americans shouldn't need protection from eating sick chicken meat because they could just trust big businesses to feed them clean meat. The Supreme Court, in the worst decision since the one that said African Americans had no rights, also went along with this, and let the company keep selling sick chicken meats! Roosevelt responded by trying to get more progressives on the Supreme Court. As he understood, the Constitution was a living, breathing document with its own heart and soul, which would, like all of us, have to adapt and progress with the times.

There are still naive rightwingers who say we can trust corporate America not to poison their customers. Yeah, right. We see what this means -- sick chickens and pretty soon sick kids and dead fish like with DDT and E Coli, too. The Bird Flu only makes this case all the more pressing and urgent. We need a real USDA, with a fully funded budget for a change! (Let's not forget, though, that these public servants brought this to the attention of the people, not the corporate media, so they deserve our thanks and more support!)

Support the troops on the front lines of the meat inspection war!

From the looks of where our food industry is going, getting worse and worse, it sounds like we need another New Deal, to finally put the sick chickens to rest, as it were.

The Progressive War in Afghanistan

As some of my progressive friends have known all too well, I have been completely against the ulilateral Bush policy in Iraq since the beginning. So much senseless killing, and without United Nations approval to boot. That's what really drives me up the wall!

The Progressives gave us such great tools for bringing peace and democracy throughout the world: The UN, NATO, and international diplomacy. When Clinton (despite the rightwing) stopped genocide all throughout Yugoslavia he knew how to get it done: with NATO helping along, with other countries sharing the burdens!

After 9/11, we new progressives saw great chances to create more social awareness and a better social democracy at home. But we also knew there was a rightwing in Afghanistan even more rightwing than Bush (if you don't believe me, check out this article by Sam Harris, a progressive (he's against religious intolerance) who has written a lot about how nonprogressive some Muslims in other countries actually are). Since we saw that there was a lot of progress to be made there, we saw that the war abroad could do much to promote women's rights, minority rights, and other humanitarian causes. This was one reason the Russians tried to do their own reforms in Afghanistan, but unfortunately the rightwing in America couldn't stand to see the Russians challenge the supremacy of unbridled capitalism that the United States has come to represent.

The unilitaral Bush policy has almost squandered this opportunity to bring progressive values to Afghanistan and Iraq. They don't even do body counts in Iraq, showing their amazing incompetence at anything.

But in Afghanistan, NATO reported that they counted zero casualties in their Monday assault. They are paying attention! (Surprise surprise. In progressive Europe, there's more concern for people's lives and good government than you'll find in the corporate Bush family.)

It looks now like NATO actually killed 30 civilians, which is unfortunatey but this underscores a good point. At least NATO cared!

Isn't it obvious it's time to start withdrawing troops from Iraq and putting them where the real war is in Afghanistan? Or, more to the point -- maybe it's time we put NATO in charge of the Iraq War?

The rightwing will hate it, because they hate engaging with the rest of the world, but it would go far in repairing our relations with the rest of the world. And at least NATO does body counts and is trying hard to do a good job, not just give all the money to oil companies and Haliburton, the way Bush is.

War is hell, but it is a good policy tool, but not in the hands of the "Get the Government Off My Back" people. We need a new progressive internationalism, and no more of the brute force and jingoism of the Bush people. Teddy Roosevelt would not approve of such jingoism, so neither should we.

Attention, Democrats--This Is How You Do It!

The Big Oil power that be in the Republicans have almost taken over the Democrats as well, but in Venezuela, it looks like there's some real progressives still! We learn from CNN.com:

President Hugo Chavez's government took over Venezuela's last remaining privately run oil fields Tuesday, intensifying a decisive struggle with Big Oil over one of the world's most lucrative deposits.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez declared that the oil fields had reverted to state control just after midnight. Television footage showed workers in hard hats raising the flags of Venezuela and the national oil company at a refinery and four drilling fields in the oil-rich Orinoco River basin. Chavez planned a more elaborate celebration Tuesday afternoon with red-clad oil workers, soldiers and a fly over by Russian-made fighter jets.

The companies ceding control include BP Plc (Charts), ConocoPhillips (Charts, Fortune 500), Exxon Mobil (Charts, Fortune 500)., Chevron (Charts, Fortune 500), France's Total SA (Charts) and Norway's Statoil ASA (Charts).

I guess there are governments out there that care about their people, after all, not just shoveling heaps of profit to rich oil executives and other corporate masters. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez uses power for the people and stands up to the Big Oil interests. It's time to give back to the community, here too, and maybe if we had a Chavez style candidate in the Democrats there'd be more hope for it. Hillary and Obama are great but they are still a little weak in the face of big oil.

This is a victory for the people of Venezuela! No more greed over need over there. Good for them! But shouldn't we support free enterprise? Sure, great idea. Just look how well that works out now with Bush and all the tax money and American lives going to a war for oil that doesn't even give us cheaper oil.

Children's Tooth Decay Crisis

First we find out that a free market in junk food and no effective progressive medical system has given us a horrible epidemic of childhood obesity, and now this.

This is what happens when a country puts profit ahead of sensible health care policy.

Tooth decay in young children's baby teeth is on the rise, a worrying trend that signals the preschool crowd is eating too much sugar, according to the largest government study of the nation's dental health in more than 25 years.

The study also noted a drop in the proportion of non-elderly adults who have visited a dentist in the past year -- a possible indicator of declining dental insurance.

Gee, I wonder what could be the cause of this declining insurance. Could it be... putting greed ahead of need? No, surely not, that would mean the rightwing would have to be wrong about something.

Paging Dr. Hillary! We can use some serious reformer efforts here. Some call it "socialized medicine" (as if there's something wrong with anything "socialist!") but I call single-payer health care what it is: common sense.

Perhaps the epidemic of childhood tooth decay will make Americans begin to wonder. If we care about having healthy and attractive teeth, perhaps it's time we take a cue from our more progressive cousins, the British.

Global Warming on Mars?

Some wacko global warming denialist sent me this ho-hum article in National Geographic about how global warming is also happening on Mars. He thinks this means there's no global warming here, because humans aren't on Mars, so how'd we cause it there?What he failed to tell me is that as the article points out (you actually have to read down past a few sentences):

By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.

Abdussamatov's work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists.(Bold added)

Uh huh. Try to pull a fast one on me, just so you can keep driving your gas guzzling SUV and hurt American honor and troops in a war for oil in Iraq instead of where the real threats are.

Well, I'm not buying it. As Naomi Oreskes, a director of science studies at the University of California put it: "There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason." (Bold added)

So maybe Mars is warming for a different reason... Or maybe we really all have polluted the earth that much. Is it so hard to believe our driving around all the time to the malls and to our big corporate workplaces might have had an effect beyond just our atmosphere?Besides, there's not reason it is hard to believe that just because some of the Earth's temperature is caused by non-human reasons doesn't means there's not human ones as well.

Despite the rightwing and corporate America, I continue to stand shoulder and shoulder with the scientific consensus, thank you very much.

More Lies About Hillary and Obama

The rightwing just can't stand the idea of the establishment bending a little to a breath of fresh air in politics, like a Hillary or Obama. So they lie. Rich Galen, the Republican strategist, is no exception, unfortunately. Media Matters sets things straight:

In an April 27 New York Post article on the previous day's Democratic presidential candidates debate, Republican strategist Rich Galen, who served as communications director for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), falsely suggested that, in contrast with Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM), Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) did not mention using military force when asked "how [each would] change the U.S. military stance overseas" in the event of an Al Qaeda attack in the United States.

Galen wrote:

The clear winner between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was Bill Richardson.

He won me over by giving by far the strongest answer on confronting terrorism - he would use military force.

Bravo!

In fact, in response to the question -- "[I]f, God forbid a thousand times, while we were gathered here tonight, we learned that two American cities had been hit simultaneously by terrorists, and we further learned, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it had been the work of Al Qaeda, how would you change the U.S. military stance overseas as a result?" -- Clinton, Obama, and Richardson all expressed support for the use of military force.

Just because Progressives are antiwar doesn't mean we won't fight terrorists if we have to!!!! Hillary and Obama would do what's necessary to protect America and secure democracy. It's a LIE to say they wouldn't. What they wouldn't do, though, is hinder our good relationship with other allies and alienate the entire international community. We also wouldn't "contract out" the war and occupation to the free market, making it waste lots of money, or send our soldiers to Iraq without the body armor and tools they need to be safe. We would have won by now and could then work on fixing up America and spreading peace to other nations too not just the ones with oil.

Call me cynical. I say I just have my eyes opened.

China Needs A Progressive Era

This is interesting. Apparently, China actually is more laissez faire in some environmental and health regulations than the United States. Who would have thought it?

As we all could predict, this has caused tremendous problems.

101 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt set us on the way to cleaner consumer goods and environmental sanity.

Sounds like China needs its own Progressive Era.

Maybe some bold leader can lead China on its own path to collective social change. It's a gigantic country, but I think it's possible for it to have its own uniter; its own Teddy Roosevelt.

Toward a New Progressivism, Part 3: Reclaiming Teddy's Legacy

As with the case of Abe Lincoln, the rightwing loves to claim Teddy Roosevelt as one of their own.

Teddy Roosevelt was no laissez faire corporate shill, though. He saw himself as the "steward of the people" and left behind a bold, progressive legacy: the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act (before 1906, it was perfectly legal to poison your customer with tainted meat and snake oil. Just read The Jungle and that's all you need to know), he negotiated with laborers, he gave us the "Square Deal" including the Hepurn Act, which began getting big businesses under control in an attempt to make them serve the people. He foreshadowed today's concerned enviornmentalist movement by starting the forest service. Every time you go to the Grand Canyon and feel thankful it hasn't been filled up with diapers and fast food wrappers, to say nothing of car parts, you have one person to thank: Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt also started America's interest around the world as a humanitarian force, not an isolationist nation that fed off the wealth of poor peoples without giving a helping hand. He helped free the Filipinos from colonialism, too.

The Roosevelt Corollary was also important in establishing the United States as an internationally interested nation.

How far we've come, where we now have a Republican doing all he can do shrink down the public sector, and with a "Bush Doctrine" that puts unilitaral muscle-flexing above the thoughtful internationalism of Teddy Roosevelt!

Let us reclaim Teddy's legacy. We could use more another "Progressive Party" like the one he started in 1912, the Bull Moose Party, when he saw that William Howard Taft had sold the country and Progressives out for the purposes of giving big businesses favors through "laissez faire."

Now that both parties have becoem like President Taft, it's time for a new Bull Moose Party!

"The Most Dangerous Crisis We Have Ever Faced in our Civilization"

To think that if this man were president, like he should be, despite the rightwing which stole the election in 2000, we might have a sustainable system by now. I always thought Al Gore was too conservative, and also too concerned with "civil liberties" (negative rights) instead of civil rights (protecting the people through democratic empowerment) but he has been my champion, and the Earth's champion, on this issue, perhaps the most important issue ever to confront humans:

Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, was the 15th lecturer in the Sacerdote Great Names Series at Hamilton College on Thursday, April 26, in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House. Mr. Gore’s lecture on the threat of global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was accompanied by the multi-media presentation on which his best-selling book and Academy Award-winning film of the same name are based. Gore asked those in attendance to take on global warming, calling it “the most dangerous crisis we have ever faced in our civilization.”

Yes, that's actually a former presidential candidate saying such bold words. I am impressed that a somewhat establishment figure would come out and speak the truth, despite how bad it must be for his career and his playing the games of politics. I am also impressed the establishment is letting him get away with it! Could it be that the powers that be see that if they don't stop ruining the Earth, they will have to pay one day? It happened in the first Progressive Era, when businessmen finally realized some of the democratic reforms were for the whole good of society, not just the poor and needy. Maybe we're seeing a shift.


I won't hold my breath, though. As great of a rogue hero that Al Gore can be, in 2008 the contest will likely be between a Republican and a Republican-lite, unless the Democrats appoint Hillary or Obama, but I don't see that as all too likely, despite the rightwing fear of it. I think the corporations that pull the strings of the Democrats would rather die than let them speak the truth about how their practices will kill us all, including them, and all too soon.

Toward a New Progressivism, Part 2

We progressives will need a slogan to rally around, something more clever when compared to the dead mantras of the old guard. Here are some options:

Money Isn't Everything!

Spread the Wealth, Spread the Health!

It's the Sustainable Economy, Stupid!

What Will the Conservatives Have Left to Conserve, Once the Earth Burns Away?

I am not a good enough writer to make the one slogan that will win our struggle for social justice, sustainable ecology, sustainable economics, well funded schools, and a sane climate policy.

However, I do know, despite the rightwing, that we need something better than "Stop the War" or "Bring the Troops Home" or "Impeach Bush."

We need a positive message. Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn't just bring Americans freedom from fear and fear itself. He had to articulate that goal in words:FREEEDOM FROM FEAR!

When you think about it, maybe Franklin Delano Roosevelt already had the perfect slogan for us, after all these years, after all.

Tired Answers

Why do the rude capitalists always think they can pull one over on us?

There's a libertarian blog, "lowercase liberty," out there, run by a guy who calls himself "BK Marcus" (I'm guessing after some capitalist economist or other libertarian hero.) that I found while searching around the World Wide Net for resources on anarchism, which has many progressive values, including eco-sustainability and concerns about the poor and the climate. But somehow I ended up at this capitalist blog when any anarchist will tell you that it is a leftist, democratic, progressive movement, not a rightwing agenda only concerned with letting CEOs have as much money as possible.

"BK Marcus's" blog has a hilarious post about the newest effort to sell us citizens inequality in the guise of "freedom" and take away our democracy with nothing to offer us n return. Some of his capitalist "sock puppets" will have none of it, but I posted a scathing attack on these people that I thought would be worth sharing to my readers.

The problem with Bob Murphy and all who agree with him in this extreme apologism for corporate America is the lack of undertanding how powerful big business is and how a "free market" of survival of the fittest is a dream. We are not all atomistic individuals. If you worship money, you lose sight of love and the need to be a good person.
What about the Great Depression? Laissez faire sure didn't stop the Stock Market Crash. What about that dirty little capitalist secret: Slavery. You never hear libertarians address that paradox.
In a free market, the homeless would have no homes. Without minimum wage, we'd all be working for a penny an hour while the CEOS pocketed the rest. We'd be priced out of the market for food and medicine, as the rich people bought everything up at prices only they could afford.
You guys talk about free trade, but for many poor people, free trade means the IMF foreclosing on their lives. It means being owned by U.S. multinational corporate power. How can you support this and call it "free"?
America used to have a free market. There was slavery and dirty meat and snake oil being sold as medicine. Then we had the New Deal and the War on Poverty (which Reagan ended), just a little common-sense government to round out the rough edges of capitalism.
The real irony is, for how much you libertarians want to protect the interests of the rich capitalist class, I bet they prefer having some economic stability provided by the democratic government, too.

Distracted by the War

For the last four years, the progressive left has been overwhelmingly distracted, by the Iraq war.

There are some good lessons to be learned from Iraq, like the inability of the Bush administration to devote adequete resources to get the job done. The mess over there could only be due to incompetence, not enough personnel and equipment, and government-phobia, despite what the rightwing says, about how hard it is to turn the country into a democratic country.

But there are other issues, important ones, for American progressives to consider. We have the largest gap between rich and poor that anyone in the world has ever seen. We have easy access to guns and not enough mental health screening programs in the schools. We have inadequete funding in the schools. Distracted by the slow progress in Iraq, the issue of climate change has just gone by unnoticed much by many progressives. We still don't have a health care system that puts people above profit!!!

Yes, we need to do better in Iraq, and a better president will surely do better there. But there are more pressing issues.

The rightwing has distracted progressives with this war and even made some doubt that the government could promote democracy abroad. It almost makes me miss the greatest "Republican" of our time, Bill Clinton, because although he snuck in free trade and welfare reform, at least he was good enough when he fought against human rights abuses in other nations to bring some sembance of democratic justice to the world and made America look good in the eyes of those around the world looking to America for an example of progress and social justice.

However, what about promoting some democracy here? The sad tragedy of this war is that the rightwing will pump hundreds of billions of dollars of government money into another country, with limited success, and still be afraid to "nation build" OUR OWN NATION!

Bring home the troops one day, when it's safe and Iraq has the democracy we promised them. However, also, we need the government's attention to our roads, our schools, our crime problems, and our infrastructure, despite the laissez faire rightwing. We new progressives know that Americans will cheer on the troops if they come to our towns across America with a plan and strategy to rebuild America, just as they have their plan to rebuild Iraq, they should try to rebuild America while they're at it.

Toward a New Progressivism, Part 1

The reelection of George W. Bush, the worst president since Herbert Hoover, and the most corrupt since Warren G. Harding, has only made it clear that we need a new progressive movement for America. We must put aside our small differences and the excessive principle and obscure analysis that have come to dominate the left in America.

Americans want a progressivism like that of Teddy Roosevelt or Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both these statesmen were heroes who put aside dogmatism and were willing to use government to help Americans, despite the pervasive and old American ideology against government activism. This ideology is our major obstacle to a better world, as we see it has completely overtaken the Bush administration and entire rightwing. The fact that those two great presidents were a Republican and a Democrat, when today we wouldn't be able to find a good progressive even in the Democrats, shows we have fallen more than a bit from when America started as a nation with a Constitution that is, when the words are seen in the most beautiful light, quite progressive for its time.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to find many willing to mount the new progressivism. There are neoconservatives everywhere, as can be seen in the Republicans and religious right, but there are not many neoprogressives. This blog will seek to change that, one post — and one heart, at a time.