Group items tagged

The reason why Democrats so often ignore and betray progressives is that we haven't given them incentives not to. Money, votes, and publicity are what count, and so far progressives have not leveraged these incentives effectively. Also, Democrats really need some leaders who are functional in the worlds of bluffing, bargaining, gambling, and fighting.

Without a hardline group of progressives willing to join with Republicans and defeat Democratic legislation unless that legislation meets certain progressive criteria, every legislative fight will follow this process of backroom deals with corporate interests resulting in an inexorable right-wing slide. ...The Progressive Block needs to publicly draw clearn lines in the sand before draft legislation is introducted. This allows both netroots and grassroots activists to organize around that line in the sand. Otherwise, given the backroom nature of these dealings, there is no way for the progressive activist base to play any meaningful role in the legislative process, and all negotiation power is ceded to corporate lobbyists.

Michael Moore addresses press on Barack Obama and Blue Dog Democrats' approach to health care reform at Public Citizen headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009.

Critics of capitalism often argue that any form of capitalism would eventually devolve into corporatism, due to the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. A permutation of this term is corporate globalism. John Ralston Saul argues that most Western societies are best described as corporatist states, run by a small elite of professional and interest groups, that exclude political participation from the citizenry. Corporatism has been supported from various proponents, including: absolutists, conservatives, fascists, progressives, reactionaries, socialists and theologians. In the United States, economic corporatism involving capital-labour cooperation was influential in the New Deal economic program of the United States in the 1930s as well as in Fordism and Keynesianism.[36] In the post-World War II reconstruction period in Europe, corporatism was favoured by Christian democrats, national conservatives, and social democrats in opposition to liberal capitalism.[37] This type of corporatism faded but revived again in the 1960s and 1970s as "neo-corporatism" in response to the new economic threat of stagflation.[38] Neo-corporatism favoured economic tripartism which involved strong and centralized labour unions, employers' unions, and governments that cooperated as "social partners" to negotiate and manage a national economy.[39]

*I've been very critical of HCR (1+ / 0-)Obama, and the whole process and what appears that the end result will be.  What would be enough for the democrats opposed to the bill to support it? Personally speaking, I recognize that it's never going to be perfect.  But the sticking point is forcing people to buy a product from a private company without any effective cost control measures.  That's it, anything else I can work with. So for me, I would need either the mandate taken out, strict cost regulation added, or a non-profit pulic option added. What about the rest of you? by Skellen on Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 11:59:13 AM PST[ Reply to This | Recommend ] REPLY by .@avivao: Mandate to buy private insurance? (0 / 0)Exactly. A mandate to buy from private insurers (who're already raising rates in advance of the bill's passage--a way of gaming medical loss ratios, etc.) must be counterbalanced by a substantive public plan (Medicare for All or Medicare for More would be the most expeditious way to go, I suspect). Also, the mandate will surely cause suffering "down the road" unless regulation of insurers is actually enforceable. Still, we must pass this #HCR bill, I think. I'm extremely worried about (1) passing it with a unilateral mandate; (2) not passing it because of a unilateral mandate. How did we get trapped like this? What went wrong? Sure; a lot has gone right. I don't deny it. I'm glad. But we're backed into a corner now on passing this health bill. If we don't pass it, the news is very, very bad. If we do pass it, the news is probably very,very bad (for a different constellation of reasons). I say: #PassTheDamnBill. But I'm very disturbed by the potential consequences of doing so. There are many benefits to this bill; I pray that the liabilities don't outweigh them. We'll see. by avivagabriel on Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 11:56:59 AM PST[ Parent | Reply to This ]

"Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of American democracy, is not just threatened. It is in meltdown."

Both Republicans and Democrats have been explaining that "There Is No Alternative," we need public policies promoting austerity because government is "out of money." The question seems to be not "do we need austerity?" but "will we be austere sooner or austere later?" Meanwhile, the bipartisan consensus is that the government is definitely out of money. But these assertions are at odds with the common knowledge that the U.S. government literally creates its own money. Unlike the euro, the dollar is a sovereign, fiat currency, unconstrained by exchange rates or treaties. And since Nixon closed the gold window, government can issue dollars without waiting for gold or silver mines to provide any backing for them. So we can't possibly be "out of money," any more than the Bureau of Weights and Measures can be "out of inches."

Lies and deceit cause the death of democratic politics, critical thought and civic agency. Contempt for 'truth' is evident in the wild West of FOX News. It's evident in Bush's 'Clear Skies Initiative,' enabling greater industrial air pollution. Language is neutered. Meanings are indeterminate. As Orwell said, "war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength."

Stark raving mad, this website trembles in fear at evil communists like Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, who wants to balance excesses of asset-owning, elite investors with needs of wage-earning peasants!

Liberal democracy ,and even republican self-governance, have always depended on beliefs and civic virtues which the liberal state itself is constitutionally unable to nourish or enforce -- and which big-corporate employment and consumer marketing, quite as much big-government social engineering, does a lot to undermine.

Entire Issue. Article titles: UN & Civil Society; Civil Society & Media Freedom; Religion in it's Place; Women, Civil Society, & NGOs in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan; Lazarus Rising: Civil Society & Sierra Leone's Rise from the Grave; Framing Democracy: Civil Society & Civic Movements in Eastern Europe; American Creed: Philanthropy & Rise of Civil Society (1700-1865), etc.

Healthcare Industry Gets Great Value from its Contributions to Blue Dogs (Centrist Democratic Senators)

Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis. The magic is when an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern. Information visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data. We all deal with data that we'd like to understand better. It may be as straightforward as a sales spreadsheet or fantasy football stats chart, or as vague as a cluttered email inbox. But a remarkable amount of it has social meaning beyond ourselves. When we share it and discuss it, we understand it in new ways.