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.