We need more "inconvenient truths:" here's a couple:

[yurbud]

FOREIGN POLICY: American foreign policy for the last few decades has had little to do with our security or even our economic well-being, nor does it promote the welfare or democracy of countries on the receiving end. Instead, neoliberalism, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, World Bank, and the IMF serve a handful of very wealthy people and corporations.

Americans ignorance of this is how 9/11 can happen and a president can get away with saying it was because they "hate our freedom."

Ignorance of this also kept alarm bells from going off when Bush applied the same program to America that has been used on Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere with the same disastrous results: run up gigantic government debts that can't possibly be paid, and collect by forcing the country to drastically cut social services and privatize everything including essential services like WATER, and sell off their natural resources for a song, allowing all the profits to be expropriated.


CLASS: Class exists. Class warfare exists. If Rush Limbaugh screams about his opponents committing class warfare, it's because the class he serves is winning and don't want anyone to notice. America has always prided itself on access to upward mobility and rags to riches stories, but right now that path is narrower and steeper. We need to open it up.


CULTURAL ISSUES: Both Democrats and Republicans prefer to talk about gay marriage, abortion, flag desecration, prayer in school, and all those other symbolic cultural issues because while people are getting in a lather about something that probably doesn't affect them, the pols can quietly line their pockets and the pockets of their cronies. Whether abortion is legal or not or your gay neighbors are married is not going to help you put food on the table, pay for you to go to the doctor, or put your kid through college. All of those things cost money and some are hard to solve. By contrast, prayer, abortion, etc. costs nothing (at least to the politicians). When a pol hears you talking about that stuff, he breathes a sigh of relief--for all he cares, you could be talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.


DEFENSE: Only a small portion of our "defense" budget is actually for defense. China is an instructive example. They spend about a seventh what we do on defense and yet they are in no danger of being invaded or likely even attacked. Why? They would be hell to occupy. Similarly, if we are having trouble occupying a medium-small country like Iraq, imagine some other country trying to occupy us. Apart from having to cross one of two oceans, every yahoo and his brother have a gun and lots of places to hide and shoot at the for'ners. We would be a pain in the ass.

Most of our defense budget is for OFFENSE, either protecting economic interests overseas or acquiring more. No one in the Persian Gulf region would come over here to attack us if we weren't propping up dictators, and now trying to install the semblance of democracy (so long as it lets our companies pump the oil, at a pace and price of the companies choosing) at the barrel of a gun.

Every war has at least one side who is a thief, sometimes both. He goes to another country to steal their land and resources. Hitler said this plainly in the Hossbach Memorandum before the war. Rarely is an invasion about anything else--maybe never. I don't suppose Hawaii was a threat to us when we annexed them unless they were going to paddle over here and throw pineapples at California.

When someone of either party tells you we need a Cold War size military, they have one of three things in mind:

• looking tougher than the other guy
  
  
• getting donations from defense contractors
  
  
• using the military
  

Defense could probably be done with a fourth of our defense budget.



MORALITY IN GOVERNMENT: There is none except what we force them to have. None. Most politicians would not only kill an Iraqi to fill their friends pockets, they would kill you. Here they don't do it with bombs but by blocking safety regulations like inspecting for Mad Cow Disease or having safety testing for supplements. I worked for an attorney service and served papers on the company that made herbal ecstasy. Seven kids died at one party from taking it. Orrin Hatch takes money from the supplement industry and bars any testing or safety warnings. Members of both party either serve or cringe before the health insurance industry, which denies millions of us health care by pricing us out of the market or worse, not approving of coverage we paid for and putting us on hold until we die. Politicians know those health care stories. Lots of their constituents have called and said their wife or husband or kid died because they were denied care or couldn't afford it in the first place, and the politician thinks, "Hmmm...save lives or get a campaign donation. Those insurance companies would really chew my ass if I went after them. Probably back my opponent...Marcy! Send these people an autographed photo! That ought to make them happy."

Got any to add?

[flamin lib]

1. Bookmarked for further referance. I've been working on liberal

"policy papers" (see my Journal) and there is a wealth of thought provoking commentary here. Good stuff . . .

[yurbud]

2. thanks--I'll check it out.

[yurbud]

3. Check out CONCEPTUAL GUERILLA for good foundational work LINK

http://conceptualguerilla.com/

[yurbud]

4. My "Dick Cheney Anti-Corruption Bill"

One of the things Nancy Pelosi included in her proposal to curb corruption was doubling the amount of time congressmembers and their staff would be banned from serving as lobbyists.

I propose we go further.

We need a Dick Cheney Bill to not only slow the revolving door but weld it shut.

The president, vice president, cabinet, senators, and generals at the pentagon should be banned for LIFE from serving as corporate or financial institution lobbyist, corporate officers, or board members.

Since Congressmen theoretically could serve shorter terms and turn over more often, their lobbying and job ban should be equal to the amount of time they serve in Congress since the more seniority they have, the more power they have and likelihood of being targeted for recruitment after they serve.

If they violate this ban, at the very least they should be strip of their public pension.

Sometimes the right decision for an elected official will look like it favors corporate America, but the only way we can be sure that the decision is based on the interests of average Americans not just securing a donation or future job is to weld that door shut.

Obviously, this would only work in conjunction with campaign finance reform like public financing of elections, but others have done a bette job of describing that.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=210807

[yurbud]

5. MEME for Dems: you cannot serve two masters, corporations and people

The silence and complicity of the democrats in the face of the assault on our democracy from the right is not primarily motivated by fear but because too many serve or want to serve the interests of corporations and financial institutions. While the interests of corporations and the people often overlap, they don't always. In those cases, we need the government to side with us since corporations have the money and power to deal with being on the losing end, and the average American does not.

We have one party wholly owned by corporate interests, the GOP. They have an advantage over the Democrats too, in that their rank and file have been taught to be worried about issues that don't even touch the outer edges of their core economic agenda. Abortion, flag desecration, gay marriage, prayer in schools, have no effect on deregulation, privatization, and ever lower taxes on the rich and corporations. The great thing for the GOP is those symbolic issues also add nothing to the budget when they win.

The Democrats do not have a comparable advantage. While some of us only care about civil rights and separation of church and state issues, too many care about economic issues: if we have a job that pays enough to raise a family, if we can afford to go to the doctor, if our kids have a good school to go to. All of those things to one degree or another conflict with what corporate America wants. So our Democrat elected officials seem to believe what we do, then shock us by betraying us on the economic front fairly consistently.


Democrats say that they have to be "business friendly" to win elections, but this is a lie. Many, possibly most, on even the farthest right detest NAFTA/CAFTA and other trade agreements that make it easier to send our jobs overseas as much as those on the left do. But both parties ignore this popular sentiment. If the democrats embraced what people want on this whole-heartedly, loudly, and unapologetically, they would make the GOP look like precisely the corporate lapdog they are.

Likewise, giving every advantage to small businesses over corporations, and explaining how the GOP does the opposite would show the Democrats to be the true populist capitalists.

Instead, many Democrats mouth empty platitudes not to avoid offending voters, but to avoid offending those corporations that might donate to them or give them a job as a corporate lobbyist in the future.

This would be a logical next step in following through on the "Culture of Corruption" meme. If those in the Democratic Party power structure fail to take this step, they should be replaced.

It may not be done in 2006 or 2008, but eventually, we need to clear out those with divided loyalties. One good way to do it is to propose a LIFETIME ban on working as a corporate lobbyist for members of Congress, and a ban on senators, presidents, and generals at the pentagon from working on corporate boards or as corporate officers. That way we would know when someone is proposing an action that benefits a particular business, we would know they have their constituents interests at heart, not their stockholders. The bill that would propose this ban should be named in honor of our revolving door vice president:

the Dick Cheney Bill.