We strive to be, if anything, a participatory space around here, and I've had a question come to my inbox that is very much deserving of our attention.
To make a long story short, our questioner wants to know why, on the one hand, despite the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, also known as the "stimulus"), unemployment in the construction industry continues to increase, and, on the other hand, why there is such a giant disparity, on a state-by-state basis, in the cost of saving a job?
They're great questions, and, having done a bit of research, I think I have some cogent answers.
SEATTLE (FNS)--Longtime activist Geov Parrish unexpectedly revealed to the crowd gathered to celebrate his 50th birthday Friday evening his impending plans to end his decades-long career as a public issues advocate in exchange for new opportunities in the field of corporate communications management and image development.
The announcement appeared to be even more shocking to the glitterati gathered for Parrish's 50th birthday extravaganza at Seattle's tony Rainier Club than the fact that the event was sponsored by longtime Parrish nemesis Frank Blethen, publisher of the "Seattle Times" and a frequent target of Parrish's acerbic criticism regarding the state of corporatocracy and its negative impact upon the state of the Nation.
A new commercial venture and three new business relationships were unveiled: a corporate communications consultancy, tentatively to be named "I Am The State!", is to be opened in the next few weeks, after suitable office space is located, with the United States Chamber of Commerce and The Seattle Times Company as the first two business associates; additionally, Parrish will be joining the Board of Directors of the Strangelove Foundation, an organization devoted to maintaining the purity and essence of our precious bodily fluids.
There has been a great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the past day or so as those who follow the healthcare debate react to the Stupak/Some Creepy Republican Guy Amendment.
The Amendment, which is apparently intended to respond to conservative Democrats' concerns that too many women were voting for the Party in recent elections, was attached to the House's version of healthcare reform legislation that was voted out of the House this weekend.
The goal is to limit women's access to reproductive medicine services, particularly abortions; this based on the concept that citizens of good conscience shouldn't have their tax dollars used to fund activities they find morally repugnant.
At first blush, I was on the mild end of the wailing and gnashing spectrum myself...but having taken a day to mull the thing over, I'm starting to think that maybe we should take a look at the thinking behind this...and I'm also starting to think that, properly applied, Stupak's logic deserves a more important place in our own vision of how a progressive government might work.
It's Political Judo Day today, Gentle Reader, and by the time we're done here it's entirely possible that you'll see Stupak's logic in a whole new light.
My voice is getting hoarse from yelling at the television today when the Republicans debating the Health Care BHill make statements which are patently untrue. The primary statement is one Boehner and his biddies keep making, that the majority of Americans have come out against this bill.
Now where is it that this has been shown, John? The various polls for weeks have shown the majority of Americans for this reform. Especially, they have shown a strong favor of the Public Option, something you keep saying all Americans are against.
Over the past few days we have been talking about Washington State's Referendum 71, which was voted on this week. If passed, the Referendum will codify in law certain protections for same-sex couples.
In the first story of our three-part series we discussed Washington's unusual vote-by-mail system; in the second we examined the pre-election polling.
Today we talk about what happened Election Night at the R-71 event and where the vote count stands today...and where it might end up when we're all done.
We have lots of geeky electoral analysis ahead-and as a special bonus, we have video of the event, including an exclusive interview with Charlene Strong, the woman who became one of the icons of the pro-71 campaign.
It's a lot to cover, so we better get right to it.
It is now Election Day around the US, and one ballot question that is attracting national attention is Washington State's Referendum 71.
Voting "yes" on the Referendum would codify in law various protections for same-sex domestic partners, and it is similar to a measure that the citizens of Maine are also voting on today.
We have polling data that is fairly fresh, so let's take this last chance to look at where we might be, and what you should be looking for over the next few days as you attempt to judge how this one is going.
It was a long hot August for those who would like to see health care reform, as rabid "Town Hall" protesters proffered visions of public options that would lead to death panels and socialism and government tax collectors with special alien mind control powers that would use sex education and child indoctrination and black helicopters as the means for gay people to impose their dangerous agenda on the innocent, God-fearing citizens of someplace in Mississippi that I'm not likely to ever visit.
Part of the reason that opposition was so rabid was because health care interests were spending millions upon millions of dollars doing...well, doing whatever the opposite of giving a distemper shot to the angry mob might be, anyway.
So wouldn't it be great if all the CEOs of all those health care interests were to gather at one time and place so you could, shall we say, gently express your own thoughts regarding the issues of reform and public options?
By an amazing coincidence, that's exactly what's going to happen Thursday in Washington, DC, as the Patient Centered Primary Care Cooperative (PCPCC) holds its Annual Summit.
Follow along, and I'll tell you everything you need to know.
The health care debate and last weekend's activities in the capitol produced some high profile disagreements on the left. Part of it is the tug of war to set the party agenda, but part of it is also in the Democrats' DNA.
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
After seeing Capitalism: A Love Story today, I thought I'd give my own review in response to the one by metamars.
Two big criticisms are made against the otherwise excellent film, only one of which stands up under scrutiny. Yes, Obama is left virtually unscathed by Moore's damning critique of Congressional acquiescence to Wall Street's fear-mongering. As we all witnessed during last year's debacle, Obama was one of the chief proponents of the Wall Street bailout in the U.S. Senate, pushing for the no-strings-attached version that ultimately passed. That Obama is as responsible as any other player in the nation's economic meltdown and the massive swindle that accompanied it cannot be ignored or denied, and Moore's acknowledgment that Wall Street contributed heavily to Obama seems like a punch undeservedly pulled.
The second big critique is that while the film's message rouses outrage, little or nothing is given in the way of what can actually be done about all of it. Having now seen the film myself, I can see all kinds of ways in which We the People can fight back - not the least of which is using the power of the vote. But there's more, much more, that can be done, and Moore illustrates them with great relish.
Factory workers denied their final paychecks when the company shut down its site took barricaded themselves inside and refused to leave until they got the money owed to them.
People whose home was foreclosed upon found aid in the form of an organization formed to keep families in their houses by way of squatting. Police were called out, only to leave without enforcing the order to vacate after it became clear that no one was leaving.
I saw a bread-making factory, a co-op, meaning that each employee owns a piece of that factory and helps run it through a democratic process. The CEO has no more or less say in how the company is run than anyone else, and surprisingly (or so Moore depicts) everyone makes at least a somewhat decent wage.
Last, and by no means least, is the power of the ballot. Moore calls for a democratic revolution in Capitalism: A Love Story, the kind expressed at the ballot box. Yes, We the people do have the power of the vote, and therefore wield far more power collectively than the top one percent of Americans. Why else do you think there is such massive effort expended to disenfranchise us at the polling station? Why else do you think we are encouraged to self-segregate ourselves along racial, religious, and class lines? Why else do you think we are discouraged from even mentioning forming and using third political parties as a means of reshaping the two major ones? It's because the powerful know that if We the People were to truly rise up at election time and vote in genuine representatives to replace the corporate whores, their days of power would be over. Sure, they have the military and gobs of money, but if they were to drop the pretense of democracy by going all-out in their war against us, the rich would lose their only real weapon: our compliance.
Resistance through noncompliance worked for India. It can work for us - if we have the will to use it.
So we are now finding out the answers to some of our questions about which members of Congress actually represent We, the People...and which ones represent, Them, the Corporate Masters.
We have seen a Democratic Senator propose a policy that would put people in jail for not buying health insurance and a Democratic President who has taken numerous public beatings from those on the left side of the fence for his inability to ram something through a group of people...and yes, folks, the entendre was intentional.
But most of all, we've been asking ourselves: "why would Democratic Members of Congress who will eventually want us to vote for them vote against something that nearly all voting Democrats are inclined to vote for?"
Today's conversation attempts to answer that question by looking at exactly how money and influence flow through a key politician, Montana's Senator Max Baucus-and in doing so, we examine some ugly political realities that have to be resolved before we can hope to convince certain Members of Congress to vote for what their constituents actually want when it really counts.
There is key information missing in General Stanley McChrystal's recipe to reform U.S. detentions in Afghanistan. The plan, part of the General's 66-page assessment published by the Washington Post, outlines a strategy to turn over "all detention operations in Afghanistan ... to the Afghan government once they have developed the requisite sustainable capacity to run those systems properly." This is the correct objective for the United States, but some of the ingredients for achieving it need to be filled in.
I saw this excellent entry over at Docudharma and just HAD to share. Specifically, I want to hightlight a couple of paragraphs, because they relate very much to how the left has been thoroughly brainwashed by the right into adopting a permanently defensive, always-ask-for-crumbs mindset.
If you can change the way people THINK about an issue you can...and Rove did...change the way people talk about it and act on it. And it worked.
...
Somewhere in the back of our mind a nagging little voice cries out to us..."What will the Republicans think."
"How will the Republicans react?"
And the meaning of that voice is...."How can we PRE-compromise to the Republicans?"
In the Dem politicians mind, that translates into mental, almost unthought about, nearly unconscious phrases like... We have to GIVE THIS to the Republicans or they will be mad."
In bloggers minds that translates into mental, almost unthought about, nearly unconscious phrases like.... "We can't have Single Payer or a strong Public Option."
"We can't call for an end in Afghanistan."
"We have to compromise on Coal."
"We have to use the (demonizing) phrase illegal alien."
And of course the worst one, the grand daddy of them all, used by both the Polilticians and the Bloggers.....
"We don't have the votes."
When Mr. Bowers urges people here to throw everything we have into pushing a "public option" that really won't do the job of reforming health care and certainly won't lead to anything like single-payer, or when Mr. Rosenberg harps on the evils of the sellout Democratic Party yet always steps up to beat down any notion of actually leaving the Republican-wannabes to their political party of choice, what are they doing if not writing from the very frame of mind right-wingers want them to?
It's worth pondering. Anyway, read the full entry. It's quite eye-opening, for those willing to have their eyes opened.
It's time, once again, to bring you the news that is not yet news.
For those not yet aware, there will be a climate change conference in New York City next week, conducted under the auspices of the United Nations.
The 100 world leaders who will be participating in the conference will be arriving on Monday, and if you're in New York City the same day, you have a chance to participate in a not-to-be-forgotten "welcome event" and pranking opportunity.
Follow along and I'll tell you how to get involved-and if you do, they'll even send you home with a lovely parting gift.
The past decade, which allowed the Bush Administration, American corporations and the great financial giants to turn the country into a dispeptic ulcer, which was mostly Bush and some Obama administered, has left us in a slump. It has taken so much energy to try and turn things around that we wonder if we can summon up more just to keep going.
This entry builds on what Something the Dog Said and rossl wrote in their own entries. Before I get to the meat of my own text, I just want to summarize what each of the previous entries state. Starting any political party, or building an existing one, is going to be a lot of hard work and progressives are going to face an uphill battle regardless of what we do. If we're going to break away from the Democrats, however, it's worth the effort; there are parties such as the Progressives (currently in Vermont and Washington) and the Greens, among others, that have made substantial progress at local and state levels.
That's the short version of what Something's and rossl's entries have to say. I highly recommend reading them both in full. Now, on to my own contribution to this subject. Because I want to provide a real-world context to the topic at hand, I'm going to pick an existing political party (The Progressives), though feel free to substitute your own. I'm going to lay out some first steps that can be taken to get the ball rolling.
One more thing before I begin: know WHY you are forming a new political party, know what your goals are, and have realistic expectations about what you hope to accomplish. Don't hold any illusions. Unless either the Democrats or the Republicans implode, chances are you're not going to replace one of them on the national stage. At most, and if you do things right, you'll force the Democrats to shift back to the left. That's it. If a new political party does rise to prominence, great, but that is only icing on the proverbial cake. All you'll want to do is force one of the major parties to experience an ideological shift to the political left. Expect at least a generation to pass before you get this result. It was twenty years between the 1912 election, when Theodore Roosevelt led the Progressive Party and split the presidential election three ways (thus handing it to Democrat Woodrow Wilson) and that of 1932 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the New Dealers to power. It was another generation before the Republicans built their party back up to the point where they could begin taking back political power in government. Finally, don't let the progressive movement become subservient to your party - make the party subservient to the progressive movement. David Sirota explains why far better than I can, so I'll let his words do it.
So it's the day of the big speech, Mr. President, and we got trouble with a capital "T" right here in Health Care City.
What are you gonna do? Do we follow the traditional Democratic Party legislative process of passing...something...at any cost, assuming the entire time that the Left and the Netroots will "go along with the program", or is there a risk that the calculus doesn't work as well today as it did in 1994 and 1996?
Well, lucky for you, I'm a fake consultant, and I know a few things about your "target market", so before you answer that question...we need to talk.
We are coming down to the home stretch on healthcare, and we have seen the results of the first couple of rounds of crazy that have been sent forth in an effort to stop the process.
In addition to the Town Halls, opponents are flooding the email inboxes of America's "low information" voters with no end of lies. Those emails are getting passed around and around and around, and by now some of them have probably appeared in your inbox.
But it's summer...and who has time to respond to this stuff?
Well, guess what, Gentle Reader: I've already done the hard work for you.
Today's story is an email response that you can send right back to your "inbox friends". It's a reminder of some of the frustrations that we all share in this country and some explanations of what's being proposed...and a few words about socialism, to boot.
So get out there and copy and paste and forward and reply, and let's see if we can't fight the madness, one email at a time.
We've all been hearing the "Town Hall Meeting" stories the past few days, and the images presented have been of gatherings where you might see some current or former official "death panel" for the benefit of the crowd, where the few people who shout the loudest bully the rest into silence, and where threats of physical intimidation are part of the debate.
I attended one of these meetings, and based on what I saw I'm here to tell you that it is possible to hold an event that features none of the images previously described.
Instead, what I say was an event where people asked their questions, the Congressman answered-and from time to time the angry members of the audience got their shout on, too...but not in a way that was able to ever take control of the venue.
There were helpful lessons that can be applied by others who want to have these meetings, and today's conversation examines what can be done to make them work for you, too.
WASHINGTON (FNS) - In a startling development related to the recent disruptions of town hall meetings, FNS is now able to confirm that the Obama Administration, with the assistance of Unilever Group and Queen Beatrix, both of the Netherlands, PepsiCo, Skull And Bones, and the Bilderberg Group, is unleashing a secret plot to dispatch fleets of unmarked aircraft and helicopters to prevent teabag protesters from having access to teabags.
The goal of the plot: to disrupt protesters' plans to save America from the destruction of our health care system.
FNS reporters have been following a trail of information that includes airport noise abatement records, classified documents, and the testimony of insiders, some of whom are now willing to be publicly identified.
We'll begin our story by reporting on three events that occurred the evening of Friday, August 8th.
