Al Gore: U.S. needs an ‘American spring’
Posted on 08.2.11
By Eric W. Dolan
Categories: Activism, Featured
In an interview with Countdown host Keith Olbermann on Tuesday, former vice president and Current TV founder Al Gore said the United States needed an “American spring” like the Arab spring in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
“We need to have an American spring,” he said. “Non-violent change, where people from the grassroots get involved again. Not in the tea party style. There are people who are genuinely upset in the tea party, I understand that, but that movement was funded with seed money from right-win billionaires, the Koch brothers, and promoted on Fox News and turned into a stalking horse for this right-wing agenda that a lot of people have been trying to push on this country for a long time.”
“This country is in trouble,” Gore added. “Our democracy has been withering on the vine. This has been going on for some time.”
Monday on Countdown, Gore called the U.S. system of government “broken” and “in real trouble.”
Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, at link above.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders suggests its time for Obama to face primary challenge Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/25/vermont-sen-bernie-sanders-suggests-its-time-for-obama-to-face-primary-challenge/#ixzz1Tvwm2YHt
After a nearly trillion-dollar federal stimulus, historic health care reform legislation and two confirmed liberal Supreme Court justices, one might think the American left would have to be somewhat satisfied with President Barack Obama, at least as a presidential nominee.
But Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is not. In an interview with liberal talker Thom Hartmann on Friday, Sanders spoke out very aggressively about the possibility of Obama facing a challenge from his left for the Democratic nomination.
“Well, at this point I have not,” Sanders said. “But I am now giving thought to doing it. You know, I think you know the names out there as well as I do. And I think the American people have got to be engaged. It’s not just me or anybody else here in Washington. There are a lot of smart honest progressive people who I think can be good presidents.” (Bernie Sanders says it’s time to bring the troops home)
Sanders said such a challenge was necessary since in his estimation, the president had begun to take his position as the party leader for granted.
“And I think one of the reasons President Obama has moved as far to the right as he has is he thinks he can go all the way and no one will stand up to him,” Sanders continued. “So, Tim I don’t want to tell you more than that but this is an issue I am – we are beginning to talk about a little bit.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/25/vermont-sen-bernie-sanders-suggests-its-time-for-obama-to-face-primary-challenge/#ixzz1TvwhXZoM
But Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is not. In an interview with liberal talker Thom Hartmann on Friday, Sanders spoke out very aggressively about the possibility of Obama facing a challenge from his left for the Democratic nomination.
“Well, at this point I have not,” Sanders said. “But I am now giving thought to doing it. You know, I think you know the names out there as well as I do. And I think the American people have got to be engaged. It’s not just me or anybody else here in Washington. There are a lot of smart honest progressive people who I think can be good presidents.” (Bernie Sanders says it’s time to bring the troops home)
Sanders said such a challenge was necessary since in his estimation, the president had begun to take his position as the party leader for granted.
“And I think one of the reasons President Obama has moved as far to the right as he has is he thinks he can go all the way and no one will stand up to him,” Sanders continued. “So, Tim I don’t want to tell you more than that but this is an issue I am – we are beginning to talk about a little bit.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/25/vermont-sen-bernie-sanders-suggests-its-time-for-obama-to-face-primary-challenge/#ixzz1TvwhXZoM
The Strategy to win for the progressives... a playbook!
Maybe we could do the same with the Dems:
http://theprecinctproject.wordpress.com /
Concord Project videos:
http://youtu.be/KMBa713YCUI What is a precinct and how it works
http://youtu.be/Nczt5cN8hd4 The importance of precinct committee members
http://youtu.be/yMkTdMXwhbE How you become a precinct committee member
http://youtu.be/MendmDZ-iu0 The time committment for a precinct committee person
This next guy is a little wacko but pretty good on this subject:
http://www.wagthedog2010.com /
His page describes a "Total Victory Plan 2012" like this:
"precinct strategy + committees of safety + oath keepers = victory"
I think I know what that means but the link is dead. Anyway, we may as well use what the TPers have figured out, why re-invent the wheel, right?
I see no reason why we couldn't get Progressives into the Dem party the same way, and shift that whole structure Left. If enough of us Dems did it, it would work the same way. It took some digging but I scrounged up the info for my state.
I forgot to add... there is a Facebook page for Progressive who are beginning to do this:
Flash-Mob the county party executive committees
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=211258725592719
http://theprecinctproject.wordpress.com /
Concord Project videos:
http://youtu.be/KMBa713YCUI What is a precinct and how it works
http://youtu.be/Nczt5cN8hd4 The importance of precinct committee members
http://youtu.be/yMkTdMXwhbE How you become a precinct committee member
http://youtu.be/MendmDZ-iu0 The time committment for a precinct committee person
This next guy is a little wacko but pretty good on this subject:
http://www.wagthedog2010.com /
His page describes a "Total Victory Plan 2012" like this:
"precinct strategy + committees of safety + oath keepers = victory"
I think I know what that means but the link is dead. Anyway, we may as well use what the TPers have figured out, why re-invent the wheel, right?
I see no reason why we couldn't get Progressives into the Dem party the same way, and shift that whole structure Left. If enough of us Dems did it, it would work the same way. It took some digging but I scrounged up the info for my state.
I forgot to add... there is a Facebook page for Progressive who are beginning to do this:
Flash-Mob the county party executive committees
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=211258725592719
Kucinich: Why I Voted Against S. 365, the Budget Control Act of 2011
S. 365, the Budget Control Act of 2011, is a landmark in American history, but for the wrong reasons. It is a fake solution to a phony crisis. It provides for a radical transformation of the structure of government. It is an attack on the principle of government of the people. All this in the name of fiscal accountability.
The choice we have today, default or dismantling of the social compact through draconian spending cuts, is a false choice. The President could have simply told Congressional leaders back in December of last year that the debt ceiling was not negotiable, and invoked the 14th Amendment as a backstop.
The “debt crisis” was spurred on by credit rating agencies of dubious integrity threatening a downgrade of the nation’s credit unless the government cut spending. Most of the cuts are guaranteed to hurt those who live at society’s margins, while S. 365 protects the investor class whose interests are served by the rating agencies.
Unelected credit ratings agencies like Standard and Poor’s, the self-declared arbiter of U.S. government creditworthiness must themselves be subjected to a new level of scrutiny absent in the run-up to the Wall Street crisis. The credit raters helped to create that crisis too by procuring business through selling rating marks. The very idea that the sovereign United States must genuflect to dishonest rating agencies is antiquated and counterproductive to America’s economic recovery.
This bill fails on its own terms, which are allegedly about fiscal accountability. The debt has three main drivers:
The first is the recession. If we want to reduce the debt, we have to stimulate the economy, which is hobbled by a jobless recovery. America has 14 million people out of work. We have over three trillion dollars of infrastructure which must be replaced or rebuilt. We should be investing in America, rebuilding America, stimulating the American economy, priming the pump of our economy instead of capping our economic water well. Our GDP is lagging. This bill cuts nearly three trillion dollars in government spending, which is one of our main tools for fighting the recession. So much for the recovery. So much for putting America back to work.
The second reason for the size of the debt is the Bush tax cuts. This bill fails to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which added a trillion dollars to the deficit. Not only are the wealthy not paying a fair share of the taxes but their privileged position is locked in, to the detriment to the rest of the society. This single action makes clear that this bill is a vehicle for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.
That working Americans are being offered a tax holiday is one of the cruel ironies of this bill in that the tax holiday adds more to the deficit on one hand, while requiring cuts to pay for it on the other. Those very cuts will undermine the social and economic position of those whom the tax holiday is alleged to help.
The third reason for the size of the debt is the wars. This bill fails to realize savings from ending the wars. Instead it continues the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at current funding levels for at least another 10 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “The caps would not apply to spending for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and for similar activities (sometimes referred to as overseas contingency operations). . . " If this bill required a slow drawdown of troops as the Reid bill did, it would save at least $1.2 trillion.
It is inexplicable that we are creating more space for war and less space for jobs, housing, education, caring for our elderly, home heating assistance and a wide range of activities of any government which truly cares for its people.
A policy of no limits for war and hard limits on domestic spending, coupled with hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich, disproportionately affects the poor and middle class. Wall Street has swelled with bailouts, multiple editions of largesse through quantitative easing, skyrocketing executive pay and bonuses, and freedom to gamble the public’s money through hedge funds. Main Street has suffered a massive loss of retirement savings, housing security, access to affordable health care, real wages and benefits, full employment and massive loss of small businesses. The wealth of America is being accelerated to the top and this bill pushes that acceleration.
This bill is a direct assault on representative government. The House of Representatives and the Senate consist of 435 and 100 Members, respectively. With the creation of a super-committee, the Congress has been reduced to a czardom where 7 of 12 members are given the power to determine the course of the American economy, with hordes of K Street lobbyists already poised to swoop in to protect their narrow interests against $1 trillion dollars in deficit reduction measures.
The Congressional committee and subcommittee process, with its membership composed of individuals with expertise in specific areas, is designed to encourage thorough consideration of measures which affect the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. This process is now abandoned. Abandoned with it is the intent of the founding Fathers when they established the House of Representatives specifically to avoid such a dangerous concentration of power. The super-committee is poised to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while limiting accountability.
We could have avoided this hostage-taking if the President chose to apply his expertise in Constitutional law to invoke the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to raise the debt ceiling. Instead, we are taking America from the New Deal of 1932 to the Raw Deal of 2011. We should be focusing on strengthening Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and creating jobs. The Democratic Party is running away from its traditional role of protecting the poor, the elderly, and the working class. To whom do these groups now turn?
Dennis Kucinich
The choice we have today, default or dismantling of the social compact through draconian spending cuts, is a false choice. The President could have simply told Congressional leaders back in December of last year that the debt ceiling was not negotiable, and invoked the 14th Amendment as a backstop.
The “debt crisis” was spurred on by credit rating agencies of dubious integrity threatening a downgrade of the nation’s credit unless the government cut spending. Most of the cuts are guaranteed to hurt those who live at society’s margins, while S. 365 protects the investor class whose interests are served by the rating agencies.
Unelected credit ratings agencies like Standard and Poor’s, the self-declared arbiter of U.S. government creditworthiness must themselves be subjected to a new level of scrutiny absent in the run-up to the Wall Street crisis. The credit raters helped to create that crisis too by procuring business through selling rating marks. The very idea that the sovereign United States must genuflect to dishonest rating agencies is antiquated and counterproductive to America’s economic recovery.
This bill fails on its own terms, which are allegedly about fiscal accountability. The debt has three main drivers:
The first is the recession. If we want to reduce the debt, we have to stimulate the economy, which is hobbled by a jobless recovery. America has 14 million people out of work. We have over three trillion dollars of infrastructure which must be replaced or rebuilt. We should be investing in America, rebuilding America, stimulating the American economy, priming the pump of our economy instead of capping our economic water well. Our GDP is lagging. This bill cuts nearly three trillion dollars in government spending, which is one of our main tools for fighting the recession. So much for the recovery. So much for putting America back to work.
The second reason for the size of the debt is the Bush tax cuts. This bill fails to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which added a trillion dollars to the deficit. Not only are the wealthy not paying a fair share of the taxes but their privileged position is locked in, to the detriment to the rest of the society. This single action makes clear that this bill is a vehicle for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.
That working Americans are being offered a tax holiday is one of the cruel ironies of this bill in that the tax holiday adds more to the deficit on one hand, while requiring cuts to pay for it on the other. Those very cuts will undermine the social and economic position of those whom the tax holiday is alleged to help.
The third reason for the size of the debt is the wars. This bill fails to realize savings from ending the wars. Instead it continues the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at current funding levels for at least another 10 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “The caps would not apply to spending for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and for similar activities (sometimes referred to as overseas contingency operations). . . " If this bill required a slow drawdown of troops as the Reid bill did, it would save at least $1.2 trillion.
It is inexplicable that we are creating more space for war and less space for jobs, housing, education, caring for our elderly, home heating assistance and a wide range of activities of any government which truly cares for its people.
A policy of no limits for war and hard limits on domestic spending, coupled with hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich, disproportionately affects the poor and middle class. Wall Street has swelled with bailouts, multiple editions of largesse through quantitative easing, skyrocketing executive pay and bonuses, and freedom to gamble the public’s money through hedge funds. Main Street has suffered a massive loss of retirement savings, housing security, access to affordable health care, real wages and benefits, full employment and massive loss of small businesses. The wealth of America is being accelerated to the top and this bill pushes that acceleration.
This bill is a direct assault on representative government. The House of Representatives and the Senate consist of 435 and 100 Members, respectively. With the creation of a super-committee, the Congress has been reduced to a czardom where 7 of 12 members are given the power to determine the course of the American economy, with hordes of K Street lobbyists already poised to swoop in to protect their narrow interests against $1 trillion dollars in deficit reduction measures.
The Congressional committee and subcommittee process, with its membership composed of individuals with expertise in specific areas, is designed to encourage thorough consideration of measures which affect the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. This process is now abandoned. Abandoned with it is the intent of the founding Fathers when they established the House of Representatives specifically to avoid such a dangerous concentration of power. The super-committee is poised to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while limiting accountability.
We could have avoided this hostage-taking if the President chose to apply his expertise in Constitutional law to invoke the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to raise the debt ceiling. Instead, we are taking America from the New Deal of 1932 to the Raw Deal of 2011. We should be focusing on strengthening Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and creating jobs. The Democratic Party is running away from its traditional role of protecting the poor, the elderly, and the working class. To whom do these groups now turn?
Dennis Kucinich
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Paul Krugman on The Consciousness of a Liberal: The Cult That Is Destroying America
"Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.
And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.
No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.
Think about what’s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.
The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.
What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.
You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.
And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The “both sides are at fault” people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.
It’s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price."
And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.
No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.
Think about what’s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.
The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.
What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.
You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.
And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The “both sides are at fault” people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.
It’s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price."
AN INTRODUCTION Ruth Weiss, Chicago, March 2002
Ruth Weiss's family fled Nazi Germany
for Austria in 1933, but was forced out of the country within five years. In "Single Out," weiss describes her family's 1939 escape from Austria -- on the last train permitted to cross the border -- in words that evoke the terror of their flight, but that also reflect her lifelong interest in the music of words:
one woman slips in the mud . . .
shotssinging above our heads
not really meant to hit us (the swiss sharpshooters) --
the warning realenough --
go back we can't take any more.
we couldn't either.
the three of us penniless in the innsbruck trainstation --
obvious unaryan.
The "shotssinging" of "swiss sharpshooters" evokes a terrifying rhythm laid down by bullets, and broken only by the "one woman," like weiss an "obvious unaryan," who "slips in the mud." The grammar is deliberately erratic, and matches the "realenough" disorientation of the family's flight. weiss and her family arrived in Holland, where they embarked by ship to the United States; most of her family remaining in Europe died in the concentration camps. In 1946, after seven years in New York and Chicago, weiss's family returned to Germany, and she attended school in Switzerland. She eventually moved back to Chicago in 1948. According to Beat biographer Brenda Knight, weiss "gave her first reading to jazz" in Chicago in 1949, and she spent the next year hitchhiking around the country -- from Chicago to New York, to New Orleans, to Chicago again. She eventually made it to San Francisco, living briefly in 1952 at 1010 Montgomery Street, which would be Allen Ginsberg's home three years later, in the summer of 1955, when he composed the first draft of "Howl."
These nomadic experiences help shape a sensitivity in weiss's work to border crossings of all kinds. weiss's poetry blurs boundaries between text and jazz, autobiography and history, page-poetry and performance-poetry.
Much more at link: http://voices.e-poets.net/weissr/intro.shtml
for Austria in 1933, but was forced out of the country within five years. In "Single Out," weiss describes her family's 1939 escape from Austria -- on the last train permitted to cross the border -- in words that evoke the terror of their flight, but that also reflect her lifelong interest in the music of words:
one woman slips in the mud . . .
shotssinging above our heads
not really meant to hit us (the swiss sharpshooters) --
the warning realenough --
go back we can't take any more.
we couldn't either.
the three of us penniless in the innsbruck trainstation --
obvious unaryan.
The "shotssinging" of "swiss sharpshooters" evokes a terrifying rhythm laid down by bullets, and broken only by the "one woman," like weiss an "obvious unaryan," who "slips in the mud." The grammar is deliberately erratic, and matches the "realenough" disorientation of the family's flight. weiss and her family arrived in Holland, where they embarked by ship to the United States; most of her family remaining in Europe died in the concentration camps. In 1946, after seven years in New York and Chicago, weiss's family returned to Germany, and she attended school in Switzerland. She eventually moved back to Chicago in 1948. According to Beat biographer Brenda Knight, weiss "gave her first reading to jazz" in Chicago in 1949, and she spent the next year hitchhiking around the country -- from Chicago to New York, to New Orleans, to Chicago again. She eventually made it to San Francisco, living briefly in 1952 at 1010 Montgomery Street, which would be Allen Ginsberg's home three years later, in the summer of 1955, when he composed the first draft of "Howl."
These nomadic experiences help shape a sensitivity in weiss's work to border crossings of all kinds. weiss's poetry blurs boundaries between text and jazz, autobiography and history, page-poetry and performance-poetry.
Much more at link: http://voices.e-poets.net/weissr/intro.shtml
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Kucinich Plan for Economic Reform and Recovery
OpEdNews: Richard Clark
Dennis Kucinich says Congress must direct the Treasury Department to issue US Notes (like Abe Lincoln's Greenbacks, but which would also be issued in electronic deposit form) to pay off the National debt. He says the US must also gradually increase the reserve ratio that private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby gradually ending bankster ability to create money out of thin air and then loan this funny money out at interest. Prize-winning documentary film maker Bill Still agrees and has produced several very persuasive films, web sites, books and articles that explain and support this idea of nationalizing the Fed, ending fractional reserve banking, and distributing a new, non-debt-based currency.
Congressman Kucinich's proposal is laid out here ( http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-... )in its entirety.
In this bill, HR 6550 IH, Kucinich proposes a means by which we can:
-create a full employment economy;
-provide for public investment in capital infrastructure;
-provide for a reduction in the cost of public investment;
-retire public debt;
-stabilize the Social Security retirement system;
-restore the authority of Congress to create and regulate money, modernize and provide stability
for the monetary system of the United States, retire public debt, and achieve the goals just
listed
This is a plan that prize-winning documentary film maker and author of No More National Debt believes has the potential of actually achieving all the goals just listed. However, it is a very long bill, and is written in legalese. What follows here, then, is my simplified and clarified version of attorney Pat Carmack's plan for monetary reform, which lays out all the essential principals in Congressman Kucinich's plan, and briefly provides the key arguments that Kucinich makes in his bill. (Carmack's version of the idea was written at the special request of Bill Still, for presentation in one of his prize-winning documentary films, The Secret of Oz.)
Link: http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Kucinich-Plan-for-...
Dennis Kucinich says Congress must direct the Treasury Department to issue US Notes (like Abe Lincoln's Greenbacks, but which would also be issued in electronic deposit form) to pay off the National debt. He says the US must also gradually increase the reserve ratio that private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby gradually ending bankster ability to create money out of thin air and then loan this funny money out at interest. Prize-winning documentary film maker Bill Still agrees and has produced several very persuasive films, web sites, books and articles that explain and support this idea of nationalizing the Fed, ending fractional reserve banking, and distributing a new, non-debt-based currency.
Congressman Kucinich's proposal is laid out here ( http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-... )in its entirety.
In this bill, HR 6550 IH, Kucinich proposes a means by which we can:
-create a full employment economy;
-provide for public investment in capital infrastructure;
-provide for a reduction in the cost of public investment;
-retire public debt;
-stabilize the Social Security retirement system;
-restore the authority of Congress to create and regulate money, modernize and provide stability
for the monetary system of the United States, retire public debt, and achieve the goals just
listed
This is a plan that prize-winning documentary film maker and author of No More National Debt believes has the potential of actually achieving all the goals just listed. However, it is a very long bill, and is written in legalese. What follows here, then, is my simplified and clarified version of attorney Pat Carmack's plan for monetary reform, which lays out all the essential principals in Congressman Kucinich's plan, and briefly provides the key arguments that Kucinich makes in his bill. (Carmack's version of the idea was written at the special request of Bill Still, for presentation in one of his prize-winning documentary films, The Secret of Oz.)
Link: http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Kucinich-Plan-for-...
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