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Stiffening the Backbones of Democrats
You know what we need to juice up the performance of our weak economy? Viagra.
Yes, America needs a new Viagra, specifically targeted to stiffen backbones - in particular, the limp backbones of Barack Obama's team, as well as the flaccid spines of Democratic congressional leaders. Where's the drug industry when we really need it?
The Obama-ites seem incapable of firm stands. They excite us by boldly addressing our economic woes, then they seduce us by proposing stout actions. But when it comes time to follow through - it's droopsville.
Take America's job crisis. Obama and the Democrats eloquently
empathize with the plight of struggling families who are falling out of
the middle class. They point out that after Wall Street banksters
crashed our economy and created the Great
The White House and Congress correctly note that our economy must not merely stop losing jobs, it must create more than 400,000 new positions a month for the next three years just to get us out of this hole. Nothing is more important, they tell us, blowing kisses of compassion and promising satisfaction.
"Our three most important priorities in this Congress," says Rep. Bob Ethridge, a North Carolina Democrat, are "jobs, jobs, jobs." Obama himself has titillated the hopes of working families by proposing a $266 billion national emergency program to put America to work.
Strong stuff - let's get it on!
Sure enough, after a lengthy romancing of their Republican colleagues (who are devout believers in an abstinence-only job-creation policy), the Democrats finally made their move last week. With the support of five GOP senators, the "jobs, jobs, jobs" bill passed in both houses of Congress.
But ....
What a letdown. To win those five Republican senators, Democratic leaders shriveled their job investment program from a robust $266 billion to a frustratingly puny $15 billion. Even such phony Casanovas as Sen. Chuck Schumer had to confess that the "package is not a panacea; it's not going to solve everything."
Everything? Chuck, admit your impotence. At most, this bill might stimulate the creation of 250,000 new jobs - a bit short of the 11 million that America needs just to get back to where were in 2007, much less the need to create an economic path to lead us into a bold future of new, sustainable, middle-class job creation.
In fact, the Democrats' response is even weaker than it appears. Rather than directly creating jobs that pay workers, the $15 billion is going into tax breaks for businesses. The convoluted hope is that the money will "encourage" the recipients to hire a few people who're suffering from long-term joblessness. This trickle-down approach is even more pathetic than trying to fight a house fire with a squirt gun, for it doesn't even put the squirt gun in the hands of the people caught in the fire
What the Democrats have done is to pass a do-nothing Republican bill, a reality that was blurted out by Sen. Orrin Hatch, one of the five GOPsters to vote for it: "This is a conservative approach to help put our economy back on track through tax relief, not government spending."
What a fraud. And an insult. Remember when Wall
We expect pious Republicans to consider millions of struggling American workers to be less worthy than a few greedheaded bankers, but not the Party of Roosevelt. Yet one Democratic leader said of this feeble bill, "Better something than nothing."
Maybe they're fooling themselves - but not us, and certainly not the jobless. This bill is nothing. And if Democrats don't stiffen their spines, they'll be nothing, too.
- Posted in
94 Comments so far
Show AllJim...like the lowly lumbricus terrestris, dimocrats appear to have no spines to stiffen.
Democrats have lots of spine when they are gunning for their corporate masters...no spine on issues that might benefit you and I.
Jim:
You've earned Molly's page on the back page of The Progressive.
Jim, I think that the Democrats have already taken in Viagra and they have their spines against us. No Jim. What they need is not Viagra but cannabis as the best brain surgery. Just ask Thomas Jefferson in heaven. No, even better, just ask Ralph Nader.
This isn't about vertebrae.
Like paid professional actors the Dems are simply following the script given to them by their Directors...Wall Street.
The country is being starved and shrunk, intentionally, so we can be flushed down Grover Norquists' filthy bathtub.
We're being structurally adjusted and IMF'ed, if you will.
Soon, cities everywhere, swimming in red ink, will have to auction off the remaining commons to the kindly owners of hedge funds far and wide.
The whole country will be privatized: Schools, streets, bridges, water, electric, (oxygen?).
Taxes will be lowered by the new Republican majority so that multinationals no longer have to worry about paying dues in any year that ends in an odd OR even number.
Incrementally they're moving us along knowing that by the time we wake up and organize the game will already be over.
Lip service to the causes of Bush's useful idiots (the so-called "Christian Right") was sufficient for the Bush/Cheney criminal gang's continuance in power, and apparently Obombster and Rahm of Israel have convinced themselves that their useful idiots will be as easily managed. I would bet against it.
Why would an intelligent person like Jim even imagine that the democratic party would pass progressive laws? I honestly have a difficult time understanding this. The last time the democrats did anything progressive was in 1965 and I see no indication that they are even considering doing something like that ever again. Look at their health care bill which stinks to high heaven and has ended up being about getting a win for their team even if it means passing a bill that is garbage.
You're on to something: Hightower is sort of caught in 1965. Not the worst of times for Democrats, except of course for their imperialist wars. But except for the imperialist warmongering, the Democratic Party of LBJ is dead. Hightower just has too much emotionally invested in the Party to realize that.
Here we go again. I really like Jim Hightower, subscribe to his neweletter, but it's clear by now that MOST of the Democrats are not spineless... they are fully supporting and condoning america's drive toward unsustainable empire and collapse. Because they are on the corporate gravy train, they are, consciously or not, supporting the interests of large corporations who have no allegiance to the American people, or any people for that matter. This is not the "party of Roosevelt" any more. People like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson and Max Baucus would have been bounced out of the Democratic Party and sent skidding to the sidewalk in those days.
hamster sez: "People like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson and Max Baucus would have been bounced out of the Democratic Party and sent skidding to the sidewalk in those days."
***
People like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson and Max Baucus would have been Republicans in those days.
Not so sure even the republikkkans would have had the dems of today. Sheesh, Eisenhower was a liberal comapred to Obama et al.
Excellent comment!!!
"And if Democrats don't stiffen their spines, they'll be nothing, too. "
-------
The Democrats are something. They are something to "somebody" and they are performing their function flawlessly.
The "somebodys" are corporations, now with rights exceeding those of mere humans.
Win or lose, the democrats and republicans facilitate the stealing of everything from the people and mainlining straight into the maw of the corporate monolith. The only real effect of different leaders, regardless of party, is which corporations get fed more--
Please, Jim, come off it.
The Democrats have dry-fucked us since 2000, if not before.
Aren't you getting a little sore?
OT - On Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night (guest hosted by Lawrence O'Donnell) Daily Kos smirking wonderboy centrist clown sellout Markos Moulitsas launched a vicious attack on Congressman Dennis Kucinich for his principled stand against the Health Insurance Enrichment Act.
Kos said Kucinich was practicing a..."very Ralph Nader-esque approach" to politics.
He then followed up by saying: "The fact is this is a good first step and he is elected not to run for president, which he seems to do every four years,...[Kucinich] is not elected to grandstand and to give us this ideal utopian society. He is elected to represent the people of his district and he is not representing the uninsured constituents in his district by pretending to take the high ground here."
Kos then promised that Dennis would face a Democratic primary challenger.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/markos-moulitsas-to-kucin_n_492675.html
According to PaulaT at Firedoglake:
"When the Senate bill first came out, Kos was one of those saying that it was a giveaway to the insurance companies and not reform. Today, he is not only saying that it is an important first step, but that if Kucinich votes against it, he is a reprehensible killer of uninsured people. WTF?"
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/34334
The fawning of supposedly "progressive" sites and personnel to this neo-con President is sickening. It is traitorous to the common cause. It is inexcusable to support such a vile turkey of a health deform bill. Where are these folks' own backbones?
Gary
“The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.”
-- William J. H. Boetcker
gdgoodman
HEAR, HEAR!!!!
Kos said last night that he holds Dennis personally responsible for the 40,000 people who die each year due to lack of health insurance.
Video can be watched here:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/50660#comments
It's embarrassing how Kos will turn 180 degrees on an issue just to jump on whatever bandwagon promises the most insider power in the Democratic Party.
You've been watching!
And what a horrific thing to say considering that this bill will in no way will prevent those deaths. And being given access to health care is not the same as affording health insurance. There are very few, if any, cost controls, nothing to prevent hiking premiums and no incentive whatsoever for the insurance companies to become all touchy-feely and care about those people. All you have to do is listen to the insurance companies' excuses for why they are currently jacking up rates through the roof - the "healthy" people are dropping their insurance coverage because they can't afford it which leaves the "unhealthy" people who use their insurance more... so less profits. So are these 40,000 people all healthy and that's why they will die without insurance? And they can all afford it so they are just waiting for access?
I used to read Daily Kos and get involved in some of the debates, but I removed the bookmark and haven't been back since the insurance shit hit the fan. The apologies for the Democrats selling everyone out and we are still supposed to just elect "better" Democrats rather than offer criticisms or call for third parties. The health insurance debate was the worst bit of back-pedalling I have ever seen - where once there was a cry and demand for single payer it devolved into public option which devolved into a hope for Medicare for all which has now devolved into these apologies for this piece of shit bill that does nothing for those in need and just gives more to the bandits. Most of the real people suffering through all of this have left that site because offering real thinking or suggesting better ways is met with derision and an attitude to the effect "love it or leave it". I left!
Gary: Great quote!
On another thread, I pointed out that some progressives, when they talk about unemployment, use the official government stats, and don't use the REAL stats -- 17.5-21%, depending on the site. The last I knew, www.shadowstats.com evinced unemployment rates to be closer to 21%. Last week, Matt Rothschild used the official stats, but then, nowhere in the article, did he even mention that numbers of unemployed are actually much higher -- like David Simon (The Wire) stated, "the stats are juked!" In fact, yesterday, even Amy Goodman used the government official stats during her headlines, but failed to mention the REAL unemployment figures.
Yesterday, Bob Herbert talked about the unemployment figures, and I believe he referred to the REAL stats, but did not actually name them, so to speak. All we have to do is to look at Detroit, Cleveland, Flint, and countless other U.S. cities to know that things are much worse than what the officials are telling us. This, to me, becomes a much larger issue in the denial. If our so-called leaders can't tell the truth -- if they continuously attempt to snow us -- we will never have solutions. Their denial is not only a denial of the truth, but it is also a denial of having to find REAL solutions to unemployment, among countless other issues.
As much as I like Jim Hightower, I think he misses the point! First, the Dims are doing their thing -- supporting the corporate interests that support their campaigns. When it comes to corporations, they stand strong, and they do their bidding! And, isn't Viagra a male drug? Why do some men fall prey to "pumped-up" ideas when they form an analogy? I suppose Mr. Hightower was trying to lock into something that everyone could recognize and understand, but my spine is already stiff, and I can tell you right now -- Viagra does NOT agree with my system!
"This, to me, becomes a much larger issue in the denial."
Absolutely! As AA says, you have to admit you have a problem before you can solve it.
About a year ago Thom Hartmann gave a lengthy discourse on how and in what years the parameters for the "official" unemployment stats have been incrementally shifted-- for example not counting marginally, part-time, or temporarily employed workers, those who have "given up", etc. In almost every case those changes cover up outsourcing, the downgrading of existing jobs... and politicians' asses.
Paul Craig Roberts has also analyzed the unemployment statistics, and his documentation is similar to what you state in your post, from Thom Harmann. Paul Craig Roberts also includes the issue of H1b and other visa programs and how that issue seriously effects our employment opportunities here in the U.S.
Thanks, so much, hamster, for your response!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I haven't paid much attention to Kos since about 2007, but from what has been written in reaction to this article it sounds like he has really sold out out of desperation, fear and a lack of imagination. That's too bad. He'll mislead a lot of people into the futile hope that they can somehow effectively pressure or reform the DLC Traitorcrats.
The Huffingtompost censored my posting because I wrote it was Obama to blame not Kucinich.
These fake progressive web sites are showing their true colors if there was ever doubt.
There should have never been any doubt.
Viagra won't help these democrats. They are all talk and no substance. Speeches aren't leadersip. Bad policy isn't leadership. Obfuscation and out right lies aren't leadership.
Dishonesty and corruption seems to define this bunch of democrats that are in control.
Jim, you of all people should know better.
Love you, Hightower, but the Democrats have plenty of backbone. It's just that they're standing up to people like you.
Time to take a hint, don't you think?
Jim knows the score, just as I suspect that Michael Moore knows the score. They both have platforms, Moore a bigger one, which means they might actually be heard by the Dems. So they choose to use their platforms to play mind games with the Dems. By contrast, those of us commenting here do not have a platform and have nothing to lose so we are completely free to speak our minds.
Spot on, kivals, as we say here in Ioway, you plucked that chicken xacly right.
Sure, Hightower knows the score. So does Michael Moore, they're in positions where they have way more info than any of us.
And sure, they all sell out to differing degrees, we all do, else, in this culture we'd be dead meat, so to speak if we didn't. Only one who I've come across who hasn't sold out that I can see is Chris Hedges. He's in a whole different league. A transcendental league, I always cherish what he has to say.
I do think a time will come when those on the genuine left who have a platform will be forced to take a stand with the people. Hightower and MM are genuine left. They know who the Dims are. When they see the people begin to shift away, they will follow. Then there will be a stampede to the exit.
Whether they will ever lead the people out? The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind. The answer is blowin in the wind.
Good points. I thought about mentioning Chris Hedges, as he has taken a different path, but I wanted to keep it short. Thanks for your comment.
Spot on, Corvo. Hightower should remember that the Dems can show plenty of backbone, plenty of fight and excellent command of parliamentary procedure and the law...when they're fighting Ralph Nader!
or Dennis Kucinich. Or Cindy Sheehan. Or the United States Constitution . . .
The Dems are doing what they are supposed to do according to their own corporate agenda. No mistakes here.
Our entire Congress is ONE BIG FRAUD!!!
They sit on their thrones in their ivory tower pocketing huge salaries (compared to the average citizen) making meaningless legislation which helps no one and addresses none of the glaring needs of the American Public!!!
How many of us would be stupid enough to give a handout of one-cent to a needy person on the street and then walk away feeling we had done something meaningful for that person?!?!?!?
We're seeing nothing but POLITICAL THEATER in our Congress which is both sickening and degrading!
NO ONE AT ALL in congress really cares about the average citizen. And the Director of this farce, Mr. Obama, should look for another line of work!
Yes, forget that the Democrats are being payed very well for doing what they are doing.
"It's because they need Viagra" Ha! Ha!
And the Obamabots say that Green supporters aren't serious?
-"We expect pious Republicans to consider millions of struggling American workers to be less worthy than a few greedheaded bankers, but not the Party of Roosevelt. Yet one Democratic leader said of this feeble bill, "Better something than nothing." "
Yes, scrape Roosevelt from the bottom of the barrel, revive those feelings for the Democratic party of yesteryear. How long ago was that? I bet it was from before the Democrats started working full time for the corporations.
Here's the new Democratic mantra---"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". This is what they say to justify the anemic jobs bill and the welfare program for greedy health insurance companies. We need a new Spartacus to fight for our present day slaves against the Empire that enslaves them.
Much more like "don't let the bad be the enemy of the loathsome" . . .
"And if Democrats don't stiffen their spines, they'll be nothing, too."
Response: Oh god, not another article begging Obama and Democrats to change their ways.
Ditto.
If it were possible to find any remaining vertebrae (using a microscope?) among these guys, their remnants of spinal tissue should be broken, not stiffened. The one-party system with two right wings must be destroyed.
Ditto ditto,
I hear the spineless roast in a rotisserie easily enough.
We don't need to stiffen their spines, we need to stiffen ours. If you break our democracy into three interested parties: the representatives themselves (who want reelection), the lobbyists (who want favors), and the public (who thought they owned a democracy), the weakest of the three, by far, is the third: the public is an almost unnecessary factor in the decisionmaking that goes on in DC.
We can greatly enhance our relative stature by passing campaign finance reform laws, like the one proposed in fixcongressfirst.org, requiring 'our' representatives to finance their elections with public funds.
They can still be lobbied by various interests, but those interests would no longer have the juicy carrot they currently dangle in front of 'our' representatives: campaign donations.
I can think of no faster way to get 'our' representatives to listen to 'we the people' once more. This stiffens our spine to where we can kick some stature into DC again.
No corporation anywhere wants full employment, or a decent wage. And, surprise, surprise, they are getting what they want. Kick the corporations out of our democracy. fixcongressfirst.org
And who is it that's going to "pass" campaign finance reform laws? Except by some remote possibility of a people's referendum that would force the laws changed (yeah, right) it will still be the same representatives that we send to represent us voting to take away the very thing they depend on - campaign donations. Not trying to be difficult, but as has been said here before, it is near impossible to reform the system using the same broken system.
"who is it that's going to "pass" campaign finance reform laws?"
The Act is already supported by 135 members of the House, and has BiPartisan support in both House and Senate. The Act is fairly easy to read and interpret: "congressional candidates who raise a threshold number of small-dollar donations would qualify for a chunk of funding—several hundred thousand dollars for House, millions for many Senate races. If they accept this funding, they can’t raise big-dollar donations. But they can raise contributions up to $100, which would be matched four to one by a central fund. Reduced fees for TV airtime is also an element of this bill, creating an incentive for politicians to opt into this system and run people-powered campaigns."
Most of our legislators will say they support this Act, but will weasel out at the last moment. Like with healthcare, stimulus, reregulation of finance, etc, etc, etc. Hence the source of your post. But there is a critical difference, as I see it:
IF WE MAKE THEM PASS THIS, then future legislators will be much more beholden to US, the voters, than THEM, the wealthy corporations. Future Congresses will hear US say 'single payer', and will march to OUR tune (while the present Congress is marching to the tune of their donors... the health insurance corporations).
There is no end of discontent in the American public right now: Green's ready to march, Tea Partiers ready to riot, liberals ready to pick up guns, and conservatives ready to smoke dope and have consequence-free s*x. But, we're all ready to riot for different things. Why? Democracy, TRUE democracy, already has the mechanisms in place for such 'riots' to find their fruit. Hence, the problem, the REAL problem, must be with democracy itself.
Kick the corporate moneylenders out of Congress. fixcongressfirst.org.
If we can't all stand together, just this once, on this today, we will all die, separately, tomorrow.
Important work, ubrew. Good to keep hammering on it.
A thought that comes to me when I read your posts-- and don't get me wrong, I'm only talking strategy here, not disagreeing about campaign finance reform being absolutely critical-- OK, there are 135 members of the house who support the Act. So far this isn't enough to show up on the radar of lobbyists & the corporations they represent. When enough congresspeople sign up for the bill they will suddenly crank up their smear and spend machine and do whatever is necessary to destroy the movement. They will get their phony think tanks to plant nonstop op/ed pieces claiming it will destroy American Freedom and Prosperity, and it's Socialism, and yada yada. They've done it before with other legislation which doesn't even threaten them as directly. For example, HR676, Medicare for all, had maybe 100 cosponsors at one point. But when the current debate on health care started, nothing at all was heard of that bill-- it wasn't on the table. Wouldn't it be easy for them to kill the Fair Elections Now Act by pulling the money support away from any sponsor? How do proponents of FENA propose to counter that?
A further thought-- perhaps the pervasive influence of money on politics can be just as effectively countered with ANY mass movement that pits the General Public against the interests of Global Capital. Whichever one has the most "juice" and gets the most popular support could be the one to crack the wall down to a multitude of other reforms. It could be the movement for Single Payer health care, which has a lot of popular juice, but perhaps not quite enough; or perhaps to end the wars, or legalize marijuana, or break up & regulate the banking industry, or stop outsourcing of jobs, or reversing global warming. It may only take a really mass movement in ONE of these issues, one strong enough to really force a confrontation between the needs of real humans vs. the needs of corporations, but it would take a lot of people willing to fight to the bitter end, because the Global Capitalists have all the money and time in the world to fight.
Jim Hightower, Dennis Kucinich, John Nichols and countless hopeless ball & chained Democrats are great at giving advice to their own party and giving excuses to their voters than they are to ecouraging real heroism.....DEFECT FROM THE ORGANIZATION THAT IS KNIFFING YOU AND THOSE ON THE "LEFT", "MARGINAL LEFT" ANYTHING LEFT OF RIGHT..IN THE BACK!!
I used to admire Hightower and those at the Nation magazine for going after the neo-conservatives who are destroying our country and properly educating us on what they are doing to our country....but when they supported Obama and did everything they could to lie about Nader and demand of him to drop out of citizen participation and deny that Obama's agenda was not one worth voting for...but he was better than McCain...well, that is when they lost my respect forever.
Now Hightower and the other apologists are more of a harm to the uneducated masses than the draconians who are being up-front and honest about what they are doing to us or going to do to us (cut funds for social programs, cut taxes for the rich, allow warantless wiretaps) but the Dems they don't tell us what they are going to do for us (the people) they just compromise all over the place to pass bills that are still corporate friendly (health "care", Blackwater contract renewals or new contracts, charter school promotions) and claim that they don't have enough votes to over-ride the 1/3 Republicans in Congress. Pathetic!
I am tired of hearing from or reading from "liberals" like Hightower who are dismantling anything from left of center. These people are traitors in my book.
DEFECT FROM THE ORGANIZATION THAT IS KNIFFING YOU AND THOSE ON THE "LEFT", "MARGINAL LEFT" ANYTHING LEFT OF RIGHT..IN THE BACK!!
Right on! (as they used to say)
freethinker68,
Well said.
Chelsea
Stiffening the Backbones of Democrats
You stand a much better chance of flying to the moon under your own power than seeing the Junior Republicans (who still call themselves "Democrats") doing anything for ordinary people beside robbing them blind and killing them wholesale. The only thing the Junior Republicans have a hard-on for is money.
I'm sure they said that about your generation too.