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The Ridiculous Third Party Rallying Cry
Bloomberg and Friedman pretend partisan fighting is ruining our country. The real problem is too much consensus
Given that we're a little more than a year away from another election circus, it's no surprise that the now-traditional festivities of the modern electoral grotesquerie have begun in earnest. It always unfolds this way: Toward the middle of an odd-numbered year, you start feeling that rumble of the distant train creaking into town. Soon after, the familiar bustle returns: the professional polling prognosticators doing their best fortune teller impressions; the carnies in the political operative class busily setting up their tent-pole campaign headquarters; the drooling campaign reporters hollering at the boisterous pack of freakshow-caliber candidates; and the wing-tipped emcees in the White House beckoning passersby with bold-but-patently-absurd promises of great things yet to come (all for the price of a campaign contribution, of course).
Thomas Friedman, John Avlon and Michael Bloomberg. (AP/Facebook )
Here we have the modern political bazaar, and it wouldn't be complete without the most reliably ridiculous troupe of all: the Third-Party Fetishists. Out of all the other sideshows, they are the ones most aggressively ramping up their 2012 act at the moment.
You're familiar with this merry band of elites because you've seen them bound out of their clown car so many times before. A few years ago they called their show "No Labels." This year, they'll probably come up with a new catch phrase. Regardless of names, though, their brand of fabulist performance art remains the same: Every off-year summer, they leave their comfortable office suites and storm out onto high society stages like the Aspen Ideas Festival, C-Span symposia, Sunday chat shows and elite newspaper op-ed pages to insist that our nation's real problem is our lack of a third party willing to break the alleged two-party "gridlock."
As both Dartmouth professor Brendan Nyhan and the Columbia Journalism Review show, this act is so unerringly consistent that it has become clich#&233;. And yet despite its maddening monotony, it remains a popular cottage industry. Indeed, from the pornstachioed Thomas Friedman to the Gordon Gekko-haired Jon Avlon to the monocle-and-top-hat-worthy Michael Bloomberg, the Third Party Fetishists provide a glorious career for its most slavishly devoted and dishonest cast members -- and, hey, as grifter jobs go, it's a damn good living.
Don't be fooled, though -- like so many eye-popping acts on the midway, their confidence game is another cheap swindle that aims to obscure two inconvenient truths: 1) There is barely any real "gridlock" and almost no lack of consensus in American politics, and 2) There is no lack of a third party in America -- there are viable, powerful third parties operating in this country, just not ones that represent the wildly unpopular brand of elitist corporatism that the Third Party Fetishists dream of.
On the first point, my Salon colleague Glenn Greenwald has expertly documented the current supremacy of transpartisan consensus. Setting aside the Third Party Fetishists' platitudes about "polarization," Glenn uses the only empirical evidence there is in politics -- congressional votes -- to show how on everything from war, to civil liberties, to budget cuts, to financial deregulation, to high-income tax cuts, to Supreme Court nominations, to assaults on public education, to executive power grabs, a transpartisan consensus all but dominates the federal government -- and to a historically unprecedented degree.
You don't need look far to see that consensus in action -- just check out the current debt ceiling brouhaha. Paraded around by carnival barkers as supposed proof of unprecedented division and rancor, the moment's manufactured crisis in Washington actually exemplifies all the hallmarks of transpartisan consensus, as the Democratic president and the Republican congressional leadership essentially agree that Social Security and Medicare should be slashed, corporate taxes should be cut, taxes on the wealthy shouldn't be significantly raised and defense spending should face only minimal reductions. The only real "debate" is about the specific numbers -- not about whether such an extreme set of priorities is the proper way to balance a budget.
Apparently, though, this level of unprecedented consensus still isn't enough for the Third Party Fetishists -- they pine for total unhindered lockstep control. So they seize on the presidential election circus to pretend America is afflicted by a lack of any powerful third parties.
Now, it's certainly true that there are no viable third parties that represent the Fetishists' mix of hard-core economic conservatism and vague social libertarianism. There are no viable third parties like that because, outside of green rooms in Washington, D.C. and cocktail parties in Manhattan, there is no mass constituency for that kind of agenda. However, it's a fallacy to claim that there aren't powerful independent third parties breaking apart the political duopoly in America. There most certainly are.
Recall, for instance, recent news out of Connecticut -- a state of Big Money politics that's also home to many major multinational corporations. Thanks to intense third-party organizing and pressure by the Connecticut Working Families Party, this same corporate-dominated locale legislated the nation's first statewide law forcing companies to provide paid sick days to employees.
In New York, the home of the financial industry behemoth, the Working Families Party is now regularly billed as one of the state's single most powerful political forces. Over the years, it has played a critical role in everything from halting unbridled gas exploration to raising the minimum wage to reducing consumers' utility bills to taking on the real estate industry's most rapacious practices.
In Oregon, where the Working Families Party has only recently started organizing, the fledgling third party led a campaign to end the state's dependence on Wall Street with a proposal to create a state-owned non-profit bank. Though the bill ultimately failed, the party managed to power it through a series of legislative committees -- and the proposal will likely be back in the next session.
And, not to be forgotten, is Vermont -- the state that recently made national headlines as the first in America to successfully go up against the for-profit health insurance industry and begin legislating a single-payer system. That's the same state that is home to the Progressive Party, which regularly elects its candidates to municipal and state legislative office.
In the national political circus, though, clowns like Tom Friedman and his ilk hope their cacophonous sideshow of carping and whining and dissembling about third parties can distract us from the real success and potential of third parties in America. They don't want us to know about these third parties because these parties advocate for an anti-corporatist agenda with mass popular support. That offends and threatens the bosses in the Big Top -- and if the Third Party Fetishists are loyal to anything, they are loyal to their establishment ringmasters.
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64 Comments so far
Show AllI don't know what the hell he is talking about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03friedman.html
Whatever -- I ignore Friedman the same as I do Palin or Bachman or Bolton or the rest of idiots and war mongers and fascists. Not doing so is like going to a bad Chinese buffet and trying to eat everything you see. Friedman is a dysinformationalist and war monger -- and a professional clown.
The issues are the wars, including the class war, the corruption, the lies, the breakdown of the rule of law, not the ravings coming out of the mass media and D.C. loony bin -- which need to be ignored as distractions, propaganda, and psychological warfare.
The problem with third parties is there is no coalition among the sane ones, the Greens, the Socialists, and others which pay attention to the reality and what is happening to people -- and that's not fetishism nor ridiculous. Just tragic, in that the people have lost control of their country and have not been able to organize to take it back. I don't see Sirota's noisy article as being helpful in dealing with this, or even particularly cogent. What's the point? Don't feed the trolls (including Friedman). Ranting about some other ranting lunatic doesnt help, and Sirota's history in supporting the mainstream fascist Powers That Be, and the Machine, never helped either.
Please note that I neither agree with nor approve of your unwarranted trashing of Sirota. However, to reply to your comment, disregarding the last sentence (which really needs disregarding):
The problem with third parties is that the two major parties own the electoral systems in just about every state, and are able to deny access to the ballot to anyone or anything threatening their hegemony.
And also note that I am not disagreeing with your first comment. Sirota has done better.
bluepilgrim wrote:
"The problem with third parties is there is no coalition among the sane ones, the Greens, the Socialists, and others which pay attention to the reality and what is happening to people -- and that's not fetishism nor ridiculous."
Michael F wrote:
"The problem with third parties is that the two major parties own the electoral systems in just about every state, and are able to deny access to the ballot to anyone or anything threatening their hegemony."
The tensions that exists within the U.S. between freedom and security is also a reason why third parties have such a difficult time finding a toehold in the political milieu of the U.S. Third political parties in the U.S. typically crater after an election or cower in the shadows of the two behemoths that have come to define the left-right political system of the U.S. Note how politicians who are elected as independents typically caucus with either the Democrats of Republicans. For all practical purposes, they do not act as independents.
When political scientists have closely examined Europe, where third, fourth, and even fifth parties receive substantial support at the polls, they find that these parties are often indistinguishable from the parties on either side of them. Political scientists find that they can easily classify these alternative parties as largely emphasizing either conventional liberal or conservative values.
I'm not following your argument about security (the tensions...between freedom and...).
What's the connection (or disconnect) between multi-parties and security?
Michael F,
When I speak of the tension between freedom and security, I am referring to the tension between individual liberty and social cohesiveness that exists within democratic societies such as the U.S. I was using that as an example for why third parties have difficulty in democratic societies.
My argument is as follows.
The balance between individual liberty and social cohesiveness is never resolved to anyone's satisfaction. We therefore have political views on these issues that swing between the polar views of left and right. The actual policies that address these issues usually lie mostly between these extremes of left and right. If you were to use a football field as an analogy, the politics are played mostly between the two forty-yard lines of the political playing field.
This play of the politics between the two forty-yard lines is why third parties have a difficult time gaining traction within the U.S.
As I pointed out in my earlier post, when political scientists examine the European experience with third, fourth, and fifth parities, these parties are in fact barely distinguishable from the parties on either side of them. Political scientists are easily able to classify these parties as largely emphasizing either liberal or conservative values. That is why you find that in multiparty systems to achieve good governance, coalitions are developed between the third, fourth, and fifth parties and the two largest parties. You again get policies that are played out between the two forty-yard lines of the political playing field just as you do in the U.S with our major two party system.
I cited the example of the independents that we have in the U.S. congress to support my position. These independents whether they be libertarian, centrists, or socialist, (Ron Paul, Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders come to mind) do not have any real influence in promoting the true political ideals that they hold to. They wind up caucusing with either the Democrats or the Republicans and are thus indistinguishable from them. You wind up with the same policies with or without them which reflects that play between the two forty-yard lines that I referred to.
"I don't know what the hell he is talking about."
_______________
You funny, bluepilgrim. I admit that I sort of skimmed this article and realized that to better understand it, I'd have to check out what pushed Sirota's buttons in the first place. Or not. So I decided to check out the comments first instead.
I had the exact same reaction of, "What the hell is he ON about?"
I had almost enough time and energy to read one article before trotting off to the food store; following 15 links, effectively readin 16 articles, was way more than I could handle.
I've gone through the comments -- over 30 -- and I really still don't get the point he is trying to make. That there is a lot of noise and games about 3rd parties (as with everything else)? OK -- so where's the beef (like the old lady in the commercal used to ask)? This article seems like obscurantism to me. Almost word salad.
Yes, we know that the machine gets in the way of alternative paries and candidates -- that's not new. The commentors who talk about the issues are on point, I think. That's the sort of thing coalitions can be built around, and support for a candidate even if in a somewhat allied party. Union rank and file needs to get on board with this -- maybe form a new union to oppose the establishment union bosses they are stuck with. Many people have understood for a long time now that either major party (wings of the same thing) will 'lead' only to further disaster.
But no one alternative is strong enough to oppose the Machine on it's own. That's why a coalition must be formed. Get your Greens and socialists, and left libertarians, and so forth -- even some of the nuttier parties to an extent, and reach a consensus on some goals that are about benefitting the people, bust the machine, and then worry about sorting out the diversity when there are some people in office in a position to wield some power FOR the people (you know -- normal, healthy politics instead of duoploy and psyops).
First aid for snake bites: step one, remove the snakes.
Alright, I want a shot at deciphering Sirota's blah-blah here....
.
So basically he's saying that Bloomberg, Friedman Unit, and Frankie Avalon (or some guy) have started a 3rd party that takes a bold stand for the interests of the monied elites. The corporate media, amazingly, gives these renegades time to say their piece. They proceed to talk bad about the dems and the pubs ... the blues and the reds ... and they probably just want everyone to come together and be a purple. Bluh blah bluh blah blah blah. And Donny Deutsch is rubbing one out right now too.
.
So those guys are the 3rd party fetishists... spankin' it with the Deutschman
.
(?) ... That's all I've got.
"bluepilgrim"
This article by Sirota seems reckless and needlessly confusing.
He could have easily differentiated between the various "third parties," but instead he launched into a diatribe wherein someone could think that Sirota has little use for third parties.
Sirota has been a well known supporter of democrats in previous elections, which means, to me, that this confusing article cannot be seen as being beyond suspicion.
Perhaps it is just bad writing, but this article could easily be used by either the democrats or the republicans as proof that they are not as wacko as those crazy third party people.
Why Sirota, who seemed to have had about enough of the corporatists, would write this way (which could do harm to a truly progressive third party movement) is beyond my comprehension.
Who the hell wants to focus on idiots like Friedman and Bloomberg ?
Neither, I suspect, does he. Funny,BP, that as I read this article I thought the same exact thing and then found the very first post to reflect that very thought.
The condensed version.... “The NATIONALLY known leaders of current 3rd political parties are frauds, mere parts of the same machine like the other two. However, there are some REGIONAL political groups that actually care about us….” He then ends the circus themed sarcasm and cites several regional parties he thinks are helping. The end. I hated this article the first time I read it, but now it's not that bad. Maybe the problem was me, but I still think it's twice as long as it needed to be.
Aw c'mon!
NO mention of the Greens?
They may have imploded in 2004. And they don't have any State Office holders as of now. But they do still have 135 office holders in 24 States and D.C. and over 300,000 registered voters (and not all States do registration that way).
2012 would be an excellent time for long-time Blue voters to go Green for State Legislature or even the Congress.
-matti.
P.S. Sorry, but the term "Working Families" always makes me think of some sort of Dickensian workhouse nightmare or the immigrants in The Jungle. I know it is just an attempt at saying "working class" without saying "class", but still. I can see the poor little waifs a'workin the spinners, now. ;)
Until Blue Team (Democrat) voters start voting Green they will continue to see the Blue Team use the Red Team (Repugs) for cover to move the Blue Team ever rightward and accumulating ever larger corporate financed campaign war chests.
Pretty much. ;(
I'd also say that until the Greens AUTOMATICALLY -unconsciously, inevitably, reliably- get a mention in any article -especially by a "progressive"- on the subject of "third parties", the Greens will have trouble getting those Blue Votes (really presumed Blue votes past upon past vote history or apparent socio-political identity).
"NO mention of the Greens?"
Isn't it amazing, Matti? This calculated (how could it be anything else?) refusal to mention the Greens - whether in support as a political party or not - is so clear and pervasive in articles by mainstream "progressives", it elicits the notion that either the writers don't *really* espouse the Green values and/or they are afraid that if voters really voted their convictions the charade in which they are a part would, heaven forbid, begin to disintegrate.
I think he just wanted to promote the Working Families Party in a way that justified an article. So not necessarily on purpose.
But until a mention o' the Greens is just automatic when "third parties" comes up, journalists will have to be called out on the omission no matter why it occurred.
"he just wanted to promote the Working Families Party..." That may be the case (and I appreciate the points made by other commenters on this particular strand in the thread), but my main point was that regardless of what a writer thinks of the Green Party, there is an apparently conscious omission of its mention in article after article, even when the subject is about third parties. You would think that the party would be mentioned whenever modern third parties and current possibilities were being discussed.
There is a problem here, IMO. Of course, I agree with you that omissions should be called out.
Sirota mentions the much smaller Working Families Party several times.
For context, the Greens should have been mentioned.
I'm a Nader fan too.
My point is that we shouldn't be dividing up the "independent" parties and candidates so much. We should form a Coalition from them instead.
If I was in a group (say scouts) who wanted to raise funds and went door to door selling candy, I might make out OK; if I tried to sell hummis I likely wouldn't because most people probably don't know what it is.
FIRST you build a base, THEN you get support as a political party -- and that has to be done day in day out year round.
It's also done first on the local levels -- you want Green in office? Start with city councils, then district, then state, pooling resources to specific areas and then, when elected, showing people what you got so they have a reason to vote for the party. You build a political party the old fashioned way -- you earn it.
So now elections are getting closer and everyone is starting to talk about parties popping up, but where have they been the last 2 1/2 years? Who needs another party that suddenly appears at election time and is otherwise unavailable? At least the Tea Party has that much right; they have been visible, even if ugly.
You have enumerated the strategy the Green Party is following. They have, in each election cycle, gained more office holders at the local level, gained access to more ballots as well. I think that third parties are not only useful but are desperately needed.
I choose to work for the Greens as they are an international presence and because they publicly foreswear corporate campaign dollars. Here, in Cali's Central Valley, a bastion of Republican Party support, we few do indeed go door to door, use voter registration as a means to speak to the public regarding third parties as well. It is slow going for the usual reasons, Duopoly control of the ballot process, ownership of the media that makes the Greens almost a secret.
But , as the economy worsens, as jobs and homes are lost, discontent will spread. The two party system is its own worst enemy I believe thus making third party growth an inevitability.
I can imagine this guy building a house and spending two years deciding where to put the doors. He seems to forget Ross Perot, who successfully challenged the duopoly until they attacked his family and he bowed out in disgust.
If an alternative party want to be successful, forget the rhetoric and open up some soup kitchens and some emergency housing for when families get tossed out on the street, and some free medical clinics. Rebuild some needed social structures and networks. Build a shadow government to take the place of what the government should be doing but isn't since it's been taken over by the fascists.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Ok -- we where did THAT go? Especially justice and the general Welfare? That's what government and politics is supposed to built around -- not some election every four years and a lot of blabber.
sweet post. this is the way forward; by going back. the old red parties heavily emphasized mutual aid as a means to both organize and execute their political and social missions. they were so much more coherent than the soup passing for the left these days. all understandable, but still...
the recipe is simple:show the people most in need of organization and a political voice that you can and willmake a material difference in the quality of their lives. that's the bargain, and it works.
Yes, bluepilgrim and drone.
deleted. duplicate post
That's exactly what Hamas, Hezbollah, and Sadr's party are all doing, and, except for the latter, they were deemed terrorist organizations by the US Empire.
good point. it was also true of the Viet Cong, the Bolsheviks, several of the Latin insurgencies, etc. Oldest formula in the book. Compete with state power for filling human needs. Much easier to do when that state abdicates such responsibility.
Oh, and I'm sure that "T" designation would be plopped on any group successful at doing the same things.
Why stop at the libertarian agenda? Why not also . . .
Impose strict environmental standards, including European-level CAFE standards
Massive financing of alternative energies and their development
Massive investment in crumbling infrastructure and public works
Institute universal health coverage
Ensure the solvency of Social Security for all time by removing the payroll tax cap and rescinding the payroll tax reduction
Eliminate the lower tax rate for capital gains
;-)
And you're a libertarian sociopath. (Cue Judy Tenuta: "Not TOO redundant!")
As for Kucinich, between supporting Obamacare and Ron Paul, it's clear he's either desperate or gone entirely off the rails.
More ridiculous libertarian blather.
I'll take some from column Maciek and all from column Corvo.
Maciek, OK, dismantle HS, CIA and FED, but every country needs a counter-espionage department and a central bank, give them what name you will. And not "Get a chance to prosecute war crimes". "Prosecute war crimes!".
My contributions: public campaign financing, parliamentary proportional representation system, work toward direct democracy.
I am confused when it comes to the Working Families Party in New York. Every time I go to vote the Working Families Party always are the same candidates as the Dems. I mean, in the past I have voted that moniker in the voting booth, but it's the same people that are running in the Dem Party. That's why I voted straight Green this past November. Maybe I'm wrong about this, I don't know. I just don't remember Working Families developing and running their own candidates, simply endorsing candidates from the one corporatist-party arm.
Harry Braun for President!
http://www.dailyiowan.com/2011/07/28/Opinions/24343.html
Direct democracy
great article
just the first paragraph made it sing
" the professional polling prognosticators doing their best fortune teller impressions; the carnies in the political operative class busily setting up their tent-pole campaign headquarters; the drooling campaign reporters hollering at the boisterous pack of freakshow-caliber candidates; and the wing-tipped emcees in the White House beckoning passersby with bold-but-patently-absurd promises of great things yet to come"
nice work dave
This is one of the most poorly written articles on this subject I've ever read. Get more sleep and a cup of coffee before you write, Sirota.
"...Now, it's certainly true that there are no viable third parties that represent the Fetishists' mix of hard-core economic conservatism and vague social libertarianism. There are no viable third parties like that because, outside of green rooms in Washington, D.C. and cocktail parties in Manhattan, there is no mass constituency for that kind of agenda."
I have to disagree with Sirota somewhat there. Since my son will be applying to colleges in a couple of years, I have been reading the websites providing information for college applicants, and they are full of comments from current students at elite schools. And, from what I have read, the great majority of these kids at elite private colleges and universities would support the agenda above. And they are, or at least they hope and plan to be, the future ruling class that will be shaping the opinions of the masses.
Sirota both condemns and praises third parties. He seems totally conufsed and wants to attack the Oligarchy in some manner and delivers this olio. By reading the article at the first link, it's possible to get some context and thus additional understanding of what Sirota is tryiing to say. IMO, his essay ought to be entitled False Thrid Party Proponents Rise Again As Usual and his thesis ought to directly attack Thomas Friedman and his allies in the same manner as the linked essay does.
Sirota is human Ambien.
I guess we should have left the field to the Christian fundamentalists and corporate ag people when we elected Greens to the school board and agricultural council. (Town council, too, by the way.)
Despite all the media posturing, the Democratic and Republican Parties actually hold in common pro-corporate, pro-capitalist perspectives. They function essentially as a single political entity.
Both major parties receive millions in corporate campaign contributions and both share common pro-corporate, pro-capitalist perspectives evident in their common support of major foreign and domestic policies.
President Obama has taken up the Bush/Republican agenda of expanding wars in the Middle East, promoting the vast profits of the military-industrial complex, which has created in part the huge budget deficits.
President Obama, with Democratic Party support, has exceeded even Bush in his zealous attacks upon Social Security, Public Education, refused to "bail out" the near bankrupt states. After trillions in support of criminal Wall Street, corrupt banks, he had "no money left". Obama's fraudulent "Health Care Reform", to assure maximization of industry profits, is in the courts as being unconstitutional. "Single Payer" Medicare-for-All was kept "off the table" in Democratic Party controlled Senate hearings.
Thus, instead of another weak and impoverished "Third Party", the opportunity exists for the creation of a new, powerful "Second Party" with it's own anti-corporate, pro-labor agenda to support the economic needs of the vast majority of ordinary people, trade union organized and unorganized working people.
The initial "seed money" funding and people resources exists with the AFL-CIO, UAW, CtW, labor unions, Jobs With Justice, Working America, etc. Once organized, millions of working people would gladly pay small monthly dues to support a political party that represents their economic and social interests. This new "solidarity" of working people suggests a name for the new party: The Solidarity Party.
The Solidarity Party, financially capable of refusing corporate money and agendas, would create a pro-labor platform, organize nationwide, secure pro-labor candidates to run in 2012 for federal, state, and local offices.
A major element of organizing the Solidarity Party must be to secure access to national mass media, with one-hour daily programming on corporate owned, PBS, and NPR media. The information and education to counter the massive pro-corporate propaganda must be undertaken to re-educate working people as to their economic interests. The Rush Limbaughs, the conservative right wing talk shows, the sophisticated "market news" programming, etc. must be critically exposed.
President Trumka of the AFL-CIO, Bob Price of the UAW, today function as "company union" bosses and "business partners" to corporate capitalism. But simple trade unionism has been in continuous decline for decades, and the unions have been unable to withstand the effects of globalization and the millions of jobs lost. Massive cuts in benefits, pensions, wages have destroyed most gains once secured through trade unionism.
Some 500 union locals voted for "Single Payer" health insurance. The delegates to the Pittsburgh 2009 convention voted unanimously for "Single Payer". The AFL-CIO, surprisingly, did come out in support of Bernie Sanders recent re-introduction of "Single Payer" legislation in the Senate.
There might be some slight hope for U.S. organized labor to call for the creation of a new, desperately needed, political party that represents the economic interest of all working people. But time is running out to get candidates ready for the November 2011 election. The conservative "leadership" of organized labor, refusing to change direction from their comfortable "status quo", needs to be replaced ASAP.
Without an alternative to Obama, unwilling to choose between anti-labor Democrats or Republicans, without anyone to vote for, millions of working
people will stay home in 2012 as they did in 2010. A continuation of
the bi-partisan class war against the American people and their economic needs for jobs, quality public education, universal health care, an end to war,
etc. will have catastrophic effects. Massive unemployment resulting in impoverishment and homelessness, with no health coverage for millions, will inevitably result in anarchy and civil war.
Great post! It blows Sirota's tired liberalism and the naval-gazing posts it inspires, out of the water.
As US of A’s government acquiesces to capital’s neo-liberal ideology it has left workers without work and those working to lose benefit and take other pay cuts, while the government makes money available to capital to buy back shares and use cheap sweatshop workers in China, Southeast Asia or wherever low wages and nature exploitation are favorable to capital.
Democrats and Republicans are working hand in glove together to undo all social democratic laws that protect the working class. The President of the United States cut the wages of federal workers as the Governors of the states sack workers to “balance” their budgets. the US of A, while the people are distracted by the illusions of “democracy”
“Thimblerig, the invisible hand, has tricked working people and economists alike.”
The Lesser of Two Evils
"One must remember that in choosing the lesser of two evils, one still chooses evil."
--Hannah Arendt
Bill Moyers has pointed out that Obama never saw himself as an executive. That means a goal to achieve positive changes and the agenda necessary to lead to their enactment. Rather, according to Moyers, Obama sees himself as a moderator. The only way he can do that is to take from the Democrats (Social Security, Medicare, etc.,) to somehow satisfy the Republicans.
Congress is corrupt...there is no way to seat an honest one...how one gets there is irrelevant...
to believe otherwise implies the law reigns supreme...it doesn't...
violence does...ask Jackie O...
"a transpartisan consensus all but dominates the federal government -- and to a historically unprecedented degree."
And everyone understands why there's consensus in Washing-town. Because all of Washing-towns ideas and ideals have been fully exposed as fraud. Everyone knows Washing-town is losing what it cherishes most - influence/prestige. What the hell else would you expect Washing-town to do in such a scenario except consolidate, or circle the wagons?
Yeah, that about sums it up.
From the title I thought it would be dismissive of third parties. Instead it was painfully obtuse, indecipherable and left me with a headache.
What an inane, arrogant and utterly contemptuous pro- Democratic Party commentary here. Sirota would lump all of us who despise the Democratic Party of being under the label of 'Third Party fetishists' as he calls us. Plus, he makes out as if we are all supposedly led by Right Winger type, Thomas Friedman, and others of similar ilk, of all stupid things to have come up with on his part?//
One wonders if Sirota has a brain in his head if his writing is this out of contact with reality? Unfortunately it is though!
'You're familiar with this merry band of elites because you've seen them bound out of their clown car so many times before.'
Keep up with this pretense of yours that there is supposedly no Left of the DP opposition to the Two Party Corporate System, Mr. Sirota. But you look like a CLOWN when you do that.
What we really need is a second party--to counter the Demorepublicans.