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In Europe, people have been rioting over stuff like potentially increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62. Here, we do NOTHING when the retirement age is proposed to moved to 69/70 from 65!
Our democratic ”progressive” leaders have often stood by silently, watching normal American policy get trashed as “socialism” without boldly telling the US public the truth. Why? At this point I feel like I have a post-Obama hangover (and this is why I joined FDL) and I think we really just have a one party system pretending to be a 2 party system.
Tell me about your utopia.
In my utopia, Obama would have publicly raged against the bullshit-based cuts to social security. He would have been the main messenger of the truth that SS will be fine for decades with no changes at all.
I want a progressive leader/candidate willing to sacrifice a first term to informing the people of the truth if it comes down to that. Just tell the truth. Get mad and be ineffective if necessary. An informed electorate is worth it in the long run.
In my dream, an actual progressive third party EATS the Democratic party alive. All that populist energy Obama soaked up gets aimed in an actual populist agenda. I just hope the bastard didn’t ruin it for us for a generation.
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The Democratic Party no longer competes in many states. It placed 3rd – not second – in Alaska, Maine, Florida, and Rhode Island in the 2010 elections. And much of what remains of it consists of far-Right ideologues like Obama and Bogus Baucus and Oil Puppet Landreau. Those Democrats not on the far Right haven’t spoken up, so they’ve made themselves irrelevant: Everyone can see that a President who claims he is allowed to order people killed needs to be Impeached.
Think about democratizing power. Identify the institutions of power and decentralize them. Honor the principle of “one person, one vote.” When the wealthiest can vote with their money, the principle no longer exists.
Massive disparities of wealth cannot be tolerated in a democratic society. Narrow the disparity. It should be the primary responsibility of government to take whatever action is necessary to reduce and then restrain the gap between the rich and the poor. Economic wealth must be “democratized” to achieve “political equality.” We need not see the wealthy as an enemy nor need we try to eliminate the disparity completely. The current massive gap between rich and poor, no matter how you try to regulate its abuses, precludes democracy.
Change corporate charters to give workers a greater say than the power capital wields. Non-employee stockholders have no allegiance to anything or anyone but themselves. Investment capital has been used to blackmail workers, even including management, to pursue profits at the expense of workers, communities, the commons and the country itself. Workers, who depend on their employment to survive, are far more vulnerable than investors. The balance of power within corporations must be democratized. Value people; not dollars.
Ensure that the mass media provide for an informed electorate. Media concentration in the hands of a wealthy few corrupts the flow of information making democracy impossible. Pass laws to democratize the ownership of news and information outlets. Also, recognize that most commercial advertising is political speech and that those who pay for this “free” speech should be required to contribute an equal amount of funds to provide opposing non-profit organizations with an opportunity to respond. For example, if you’re selling cars, an anti-car, pro-mass transit group should have a chance to respond and you should have to fund the cost.
Take the privileges of wealth out of our courts. Should great wealth provide you with a chance to buy the best and most expensive defense? How can anyone possibly call the current system a system of justice? When the legal system becomes a commodity, it is no longer a legal system that renders equal justice to rich and poor alike. And that is no system of justice at all.
Protect the commons. Don’t allow corporations to poison our environment. While monetizing the costs of environmental harm might well discourage the conduct, the conduct should not be tolerated in the first place. Market-based incentives sell “right to pollute” coupons to industry. They should have no right to pollute.
Protect science. When research is tainted under the control of the corporate umbrella, truth dies. Ensure that science remains an independent force to guide our policy choices.
Empire does not serve the people; it serves vested interests. Live peacefully on the planet and only provide for a military sufficient to defend the country. Militarism detracts from the many programs and policies needed to build a strong nation with a good life for all its citizens. Among these are a system of national health care, a well-funded public education system and a state-of-the-art infrastructure.
Ultimately, the goal is to build a democratic architecture where all or almost all citizens believe they have a voice, an equal voice, in the affairs of state. It is to build a country where workers are secure in their jobs and where employers value their labor as a human resource and not just as another cog in the corporate machinery. It is to build a stable economy where all have a chance to partake without exploitation. It is to build a nation that lives in harmony with nature rather than trying to squeeze the last dollar of profit from it. It is to build a nation where the citizens value the ideals of the country and know that all are working toward those ideals rather than toward their own selfish objectives. Start with the values and the vision and the principles and then be unyielding in bringing them to life and vigilant in ensuring they remain the law of the land.
athena1: only the site’s owner/editorial team can determine what is and isn’t an “official” page here for anything. There have been a number of other community members who’ve been writing about third party content here at MyFDL; it would be unfair to them to claim this post is official in any way and their posts are not.
In my utopia, I am the king of the entire world, the final authority on everything. However, since I don’t really want to run the world, I appoint wise and learned ministers to do my bidding (and to figure out what my bidding should be, in the first place). Every Friday, we meet for and hour and 15 minutes, for a quick meeting on how it’s going. Since it’s always going fine, I have Friday afternoon to Thursday evening to do my own thing.
Beside my weekly face-to-face, I hire Helen Thomas to sit in the front row of the mandatory, weekly, “what the heck am I doing, and why am I doing it” press conferences that every minister must hold. The ministers may be learned and wise, but we can’t afford to let them get away with anything, especially since I’m usually busy doing my own thing.
Also, I put Helen in charge of hiring a bunch of like-minded journalists, to fill out half the other chairs. The other half of the press conference chairs are held by citizens, who are chosen at random, and must not pop chewing gum during the press conferences. (Or doze off, which is punishable by getting squirted in the face with water from a kingdom-owned water pistol.)
Many of my first decrees will upset people, but to restore happiness and harmony in the world-wide kingdom, I also decree a friendly block-against-block water balloon fight. The best water balloon chuckers are invited to Washington, D.C., where they compete to pelt the king (me) with water balloons, just for the fun of it. Top prize for the most accurate water balloon chucker: $250,000 and a photo op with the king! Woo, hoo!
I’d also consider over-hauling the monetary system. I need to run this by my economics minister, but I’m thinking along these lines: hugs for dollars, 1 for 10. So, if I have a car I want to sell for $5,000, under the new economic rules, I’d instead charge 500 hugs. This will make for lots of bonding and community, though we may have to introduce some sort of note for the hugs. So, you can buy a car by giving 100 hugs “down”, and hand over notes for 400 hugs, redeemable at a later date. One needs to be practical, after all! 500 hugs all at once would take a long time!
My ideal third party brings together Greens, Socialists, Working Families, Lefty Independents, and disaffected Democrats. It welcomes all who understand that we are in a battle against fascism, and kicks to the curb those who make excuses of any kind for the special interests who so effectively pull the strings in order to co-opt the democratic process in this once-promising country.
It also recognizes that a “country” comprised of 50 independently governed entities is no country at all, and begins with that truth in its efforts to reform the political discourse; a discourse too often subverted by Governors for their own narrow aims, almost as frequently as it is subverted by the captains of industry for theirs.
oops…posted reply to wrong comment…
In terms of strategy, what do you think is superior to forming a new party compared to a mass exodus to the Greens?
Their platform is also virtually identical to what ours would be, isn’t it?
Also, have you seen this?
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/79004/you-said-you-wanted-revolution-midterm-elections-obama
It’s a powerful strategy (smart of Koch et al to immitate it on the right) and in terms of strategy, I think we should use it.
What makes anyone think that a third party, no matter how progressive, won’t wind up the same as the dems and reps as long as it is tied to the current electoral/parliamentary system? Government has been hollowed out to the point that the federal budget is no more than a trough for the pigs. Big money has always exercised an undue influence in elections, but in the modern age, now capped by Citizens United, the corporate coup, in case anyone cares, is legal. In 2008 we elected the most progressive politician in a generation and look what it got us. All the progressive energy in the world can never elect an executive and legislature that can stand up to the big corporations in a system increasingly designed to shut out our voices and interests. Yes, a third party, but that party will have to operate from outside a system which is becoming increasingly alien. How to do that and be effective? Good question, but it’s time to start experimenting to find out.
Well, the Greens make all of their candidates take a pledge promising to NEVER accept ANY corporate donations, and they are serious about making sure their candidates honor it.
That’s not a bad start.
I’m really starting to think we’re reinventing the wheel with a third party. Is there some problem with the Green party I’m unaware of?
It apparently fails to recognize that the Banking system is the core of all problems. That’s a major disconnect, imo.
Can you explain what you mean a little more in depth?
I thought she meant for an hour or so.
It is pretty clear to everyone this thing is going to be a mass movement with lots of leaders doing this and that.
I think the news of the evening is Willie Nelson calling for a party to legalize pot. That is what I have been asking for for years.
Working on it too. That is where the Tea Party started out.
Or, do we all forget all about the Ron Paulers?
From the linked story,
” Thus, the Obama campaign presented itself as a social movement that was more sentimental than political, pushing gauzy “values,” like “hope” and “change,” while leaving policy concerns to the wonks. Yet the successful movements of the past had more than values; they had specific goals. ”
Sure his whole piece works – if I don’t exist.
We had a movement going, Obama rode the wave. It has goals, or I do. I take credit for stirring it up (the Tea Party was also my idea), although there are plenty who will disagree with me on that.
Some of them quite violently and threateningly. It is a witch hunt.
I comment on AlterNet every day, I have been for eight years. I am ‘Sister Lauren’ over there.
I do this because I have a BIG plan to end the drug war and with the same technic, ALL wars.
When I researched why we have a drug war to answer the question “Why is pot illegal?” I realized all wars were related economically and politically.
Being a clever Girl Scout leader, I put together what I called a ‘religious freedom political action project’ based on constitutional law. You see, if my church was recognized, then the federal laws prohibiting marijuana would collapse like a house of cards.
Now all that is a very interesting argument, but it really didn’t get anyone but a few religious people interested until I started talking about banking. Then it took off. You see Ron Paul thinks we should audit the fed and I agree, that convergence created the Tea Party, or Ron Paulers. They are very libertarian, not green.
As to your question about the Green Party. They are probably OK in two or three states. Here in California they are a joke. You can go to a meeting and there will be more feds there than real Greens.
Their platform will have self defeating stuff in it that is ridiculous, like paying reparations to the decedents of black slaves!
I kid you not, the Green candidate here was running on that. (This district is like 3% black.)
All the political meetings are larded with federal spies like that, you know, the kind who suggest stupid or illegal stuff.
I met another one who was pretending to be codepink. I was disgusted with her. IMO she derailed the whole group. I quit attending.
So to get back to the Greens, they just don’t do anything. I think they are internally corrupted. I designed the Tea Party deliberately in a way to be resistant to that effect, one of the many reasons media people have such a hard time figuring it out.
“I designed the Tea Party deliberately in a way to be resistant to that effect, one of the many reasons media people have such a hard time figuring it out.”
I was with you up until the above. Can you explain what you mean?
I actually meant the “official” thing as a joke. So, yeah…for an hour or so. For “dreaming”.
Thanks for the link, but I didn’t need to see it – I was part of it. I sat up countless nights listening to Plouffe’s “conference calls” (read: speeches to we foot soldiers, by Obama, telling us how were were changing politics forever) only to watch him refuse to do just that once in office. He could have, he should have, and the entire Democratic Party at the national level is complicit in blowing the opportunity.
As regards you question about strategy, I have said all along that joining with the Greens should be a key element of the movement (whatever we choose to call it) we’re building here. But also the Socialists, the Working Families folks, Lefty Independents and disaffected Dems. What I think makes forming a new party that brings ALL these groups together is the fact that these groups are marginalized largely of their own doing. In name alone, “Greens” is easily co-opted as “Treehuggers” and “Socialists” – well, we don’t even need to go there.
But if a Left-driven MOVEMENT can coalesce here and elsewhere in the blogosphere, stating from the outset (as I’ve tried) the intention of acting as an umbrella for the diverse Left – which is what the Democrats at the national level are no longer – there would be no reason for these many groups not to join it.
So by way of analogy, what I’m trying to instigate is the political equivalent of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. That org certainly has a strong political/legislative element, but I believe an org – new party – dedicated to uniting the Left, is our best, and possibly only, hope for re-establishing a broad voice for the Left at the national level.