Robert Reich writes: "Look at the outrage in Madison, Wisconsin. Look at the crowds in DesMoines, Iowa. Look at the demonstrations in Indiana and Ohio and elsewhere around America. Hear what they're saying: Stop attacking unions. Stop making scapegoats out of public employees. Stop protecting the super-rich from paying their fair share of the taxes needed to keep our schools running."
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
The Birth of the People's Party
08 March 11
ook at the outrage in Madison, Wisconsin. Look at the crowds in DesMoines, Iowa. Look at the demonstrations in Indiana and Ohio and elsewhere around America.
Hear what they're saying: Stop attacking unions. Stop making scapegoats out of public employees. Stop protecting the super-rich from paying their fair share of the taxes needed to keep our schools running.
Stop gutting the working middle class.
Are we finally seeing average Americans stand up and demand a fair shake in an economy now grotesquely tilted toward the wealthy and the privileged? Are Americans beginning to awake to the fact that our economy now delivers a larger share of total income to the very top than at any time in living memory? That big corporations are making more money and creating more jobs abroad than in the United States?
That this concentration of income and wealth has so corrupted politics that corporations can extort whatever they want from the government - tax breaks, loan guarantees, subsidies - while the super-rich can take most of their income as capital gains (taxed at 15 percent), and the rest at the lowest top rate in 25 years? And that because of this our kids are crowded into classrooms, our streets and highways and bridges are falling apart, and our healthcare bills are out of control?
The Tea Party grew out of indignation over the Wall Street bailout - an indignation shared by the vast majority of Americans. But the Tea Party ended up directing its ire at government rather than at big business and Wall Street. Was this because billionaires Charles and David Koch and their like funneled money to the Tea Party through front organizations like Dick Armey's Freedom Works, and thereby co-opted it?
Now we may be seeing the birth of a genuine populist movement. Call it the People's Party. Like the Tea Party, the People's Party doesn't have a clear organization or hierarchy or single address. It doesn't have lobbyists in Washington. It's not even yet recognized by the mainstream media.
But the People's Party seems to be growing in numbers and in intensity. And it's starting to push elected officials - first at the state level - to listen and respond.
Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including "The Work of Nations," "Locked in the Cabinet," "Supercapitalism" and his latest book, "AFTERSHOCK: The Next Economy and America's Future." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.
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I love Dennis and his politics. Let's have a serious debate about issues like healthcare, department of peace, military budget, drug laws, energy policy, taxation. Please!!!
Like any good progressive I like Dennis too. But is that realistic ? Would he attract the necessary African-America n vote ? And think about how upset that demographic would be if Obama was unseated in a primary.
Any man or woman who becomes President is bound by the realities of presiding over a monstrosity that is completely controlled by the corporate oligarchs.
Stop blaming Obama ! Progressive change can happen without direct leadership from any president or politician.
If WE LEAD THEY WILL COME.
Our choice right now is to rise up ourselves and send an unmistakable message to the White House that the public is ready to lead even if the president is not.
ProgressivesUnited.org.
Obama was smeared as a "socialist" and was elected with the added handicap skin melanin.
I love the fact that we're having this argument: Who should run as President of the Peoples Party!
Don't forget this very important fact:
Kucinich was a firm no-vote for Obamacare which was a good thing. Then, while Pelosi was twisting arms and breaking kneecaps out back in the woodshed to elicit yes-votes from fencesitters, he was taken for a ride in Air Force One with Obama to speak in Ohio and emerged from the plane as a firm yes-vote.
Good thing he wasn't the last yes-vote to end the bombing of Hiroshima.
P.S. In 2014 and 2015, when you find out how Obamacare really works, you will be appalled at what was done to you in the guise of health care reform. MA residents know firsthand about this.
We need to take control of our Party’s apparatus instead of looking down the road to some mystical configuration that supposedly will save us. We need to do the hard work of taking control of state committees and putting a platform forward for all Democrats to support. That is what political parties do.
And, "grassroots Dems" did Not take "their eyes off the prize"! They were betrayed! The 'progressive promise' that was Obama, was but a campaign illusion. The Democrat leadership serves the same 'puppet masters' that the Republican leadership serves, and they have since the Civil War.
CTPatriot,
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't think you know who "w wheelock" is, where he is from, what he watches on Tee Vee, or if in fact he or she even watches Tee Vee at all.
We are in the majority and in the right on this, and don't need to resort to top 10 lists of logical fallacies (false dichotomy, poisoning the well, & ad hominem for starters).
"One should play fairly when one has the winning cards."
- Oscar Wilde
Both parties are in collusion, a Democratic president put forth NAFTA.
Money doesn't know partisanship.
The fees They charge for this service are not exactly small change, but perhaps the 2nd largest category of official US government spending... getting on towards $700 bn. a year. Want to know why They keep get richer, and we keep getting poorer? The basic facts are appallingly simple; only the obfuscatory propaganda is unduly complicated and unclear.
Don't let them fool you. Private cartel Fractional Reserve Banking is the oldest trick in the book. The day we, as a society, outgrow it, is the day serdom becomes a thing of the past.
"The process by which [private] banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled."
- J.K. Galbraith
It isn't up to a leader to find us - it's up to us to lead, and allow the leader to emerge.
For too long, Americans have been passive recipients in their own lives - in how we take in the news from how we "find" jobs.
It's time to shift to active engagement.
No one can stop an idea whose time has come.
Let's not allow another clique of "leaders", who inevitably misdirect and betray the people they rose up on the backs of, to take power. Keep power with the people.
The opinionators have doubled down in their attacks and we still are seeing little of these protests on the Martin Sheen obsessed networks. We will not have a successful People's Party movement until we have more of a People's Media Network to counter the Murdoch and Koch influences.
Hmmmm....you have a point there. How about slappin' "The American" on it, making it "The American People's Party"? Or maybe "The American Freedom Party" - reclaiming some of the lexicon of patriotism for true patriots is my thought.
but, "the people" do not appear to be mobilizing in ways sufficient to their cause and appropriate for the system of influencing outcomes. One watches in great frustration.
ONWARDS !
And yet we've seen Governor Walker all over the airwaves, spouting his lies, turning the middle class against itself, trying to convince them that teachers and all public 'servants' are rich, have huge pensions, extraordinary benefits, etc. (Does anyone remember 'Cadillac welfare queens,' given to us by their demi-God, Ronald Reagan?)
It's back to this: the media is in control of hearts and minds, and they are NOT doing their job – or, rather, they are doing the job of the corporatocracy we’ve become. We must flood news organizations with e-mails and snail-mail, insisting on FULL coverage of the protests and the true issues.
Regardless of the many disappointments we have suffered, now there is hope.
How? Do whatever you can to inform your circle of friends and family about what's really going on in the world. Send them articles and blog posts that you find to be credible and relevant. Show them what the corporate media refuses to. Open their eyes. Be the media!
Getting a third party registered in hard because every state has its own unique process, some of which are very demanding, but the People's Party was on more ballots in a first time election than other third party in U.S. history.
Right, but in order to identify these "new third party thinkers" and define their "new ideas", we have to find a way to distinguish them from the old "lap dogs." If they lack even an identifying handle, they will be indistinguishab le from the rest of the herd. PR 101.
Tell me I'm wrong.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
http://movetoamend.org/news/new-video-resource-story-citizens-united-v-fec
Why? Because the Congressionals are knee deep in cash from their corporate owners and will continue to use that cash to blow off any attempt to change what their predecessors did before them that made their status above the people.
These so-called 'elitists' are a) taxpayers! b) mostly women (upon whom the GOP seems to be waging an ideological war) in modestly paid professions like teaching , nursing, secretarial work etc.
WHAT FAUX PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON?
WHY do corporations like oil, agribusiness. gas etc. need SUBSIDIES?
WHY don't corporations and the uber-rich 400 pay their FAIR SHARE of TAXES??? and instead unfairly over-burden the working middle class?
WHY are college and school administrators (and CONGRESS et al) all given 100% lifetime healthcare for themselves and their families, while AT BEST retiring teachers and professors get 10 years after which they are on their own?
WHY are the banksters still getting outrageous bonuses (for failing!?) and NOT in jail where they belong for cheating and destroying the economy?
WHY aren't CHENEY, HALLIBURTON, KBR, BECHTEL all in prison for WAR PROFITEERING?????
Wake up!
Several countries have one.
Lobbyist's and political fund raisers need to be outlawed.
Free equal time to any political party for a nominal time period debates on the government licenced airwaves.
People's Party? Yes, it is time...
mark
Although the Tea Party doesn't have a single address it does have clear organization and hierarchy. It is very definitely is widely recognized by the media and needs no lobbyists because elected politicians under it's banner ARE lobbyists.
There needs to be a progressive analog. The GOP has a right wing faction, the Tea Party. The Democrats have a right wing faction the Blue Dogs. Why is there no identifiable national progressive faction especially in the Democratic Party?
Virtually every successful Democracy in the world has a liberal-progres sive party or identifiable and organized faction.
I look more toward corporate control than American exceptionalism to explain this. The issue of organized national Progressive representation needs to be addressed in a big way.
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