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Unsubscribe Table of Contents * Featured
Articles Calendars of Events Communication with Our Members Leadership Toward Putting Public Interest First Opportunities Petitions Commentaries from Our Members Ross Gooding: Have You Read Obama’s HC Plan? Liberals and Democrats Links to the Beef F-22 Fighters, How our House Members Voted State and Local Links
to the Beef Prevailing Loyalties, Politicians and Reformers** BIAW’s Conservative Ideology** HB 2261, a Legislative Power Grab** Our Cautious Supreme Court Judges Featured Advocacy Group: Progressive Democrats KC Exec Candidates Should Cooperate after Primary* Bellevue’s Neighborhood Link Program* Nation and World Links to the Beef How Much Is a Trillion Dollars? How High Should Stock Market Indexes Go? Iran Protesters Use New Tactics Our Liberal Spirit Closeness to and Criticism of What We Care About* Democratic Party Recommendations for Local Races For more. Our Political
Priorities ·
Fair Clean
Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes and
Competent Spending ·
Investment for
Productivity ·
Quality
Health, Education, Jobs, Income ·
Environmental
Protection and Energy Independence ·
Security and
Equal Rights ·
Justice and
Peace Everywhere ·
International
Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives oppose all of these Let’s
End Our National Nightmare
Let’s
Restore Our American Dream More on Conservative opposition to our American Dream Washington State’s 5 Major Needs · Federal Funding for Health and Education · Substituting
a Progressive Income Tax · Replacing
Conservative Legislators Quote of the Week Familiarity
Breeds Contempt. Aesop’s Fable Conversely – No
Man Can Be A Prophet in His Own Land. Luke 4-24
Calendar of Events
Sunday,
August 9 at 7:30 PM doors open, 10 PM show at Neighbors (1509 Broadway,
Seattle) - Human Rights Campaign Out On
the Town.
Monday, August 10 at 6 PM to Wednesday, August 12 at 12:30 PM at Pigott
Hall, Seattle University (901 12th Avenue, Seattle) – National Vacations Matter Summit, sponsored
by right2vacation. More than fifty national speakers exploring the
health, productivity, family, environmental and spiritual benefits of vacation
time, why Americans have less vacation time than people in any other industrial
country and what we can do about it. $50.
Students and low income $25. To Register. $120-180 for room
for both nights, meals, and parking. For
more information. I strongly recommend attendance at this event. Dave Thomas
Communication
with Our Members
Leadership toward Putting
Public Interests First
Washington should have a New Politics which is primarily oriented to
enabling every Washington person to have access to quality services within a
quality social and political environment. Understanding what we must do to bring this
about, I have
decided to provide intellectual and educational leadership for altering our
Washington politics to put public interests first.
·
Our basic priority must always be to comprehensively understand and be true to our vision
and its implications.
·
We need to address basic viruses instead of symptoms.
We must target major underlying obstacles. The key logs in the log jam. Once they are weakened or removed, we can more
easily enable many specific reforms.
·
We need to focus our efforts on experimental projects that will succeed, will
inform us, and will provide beacons to spread understanding of what we are
about and why.
·
Our many Liberal advocacy organizations, such as our Democratic Party, labor unions, educational
associations, environmental organizations, civil rights and poverty advocacy
groups and many others, need to
cooperate to create and implement solutions.
Our task will not be easy. But I will suggest an initial thrust (to
expose and test our major opponent) that may have surprising results. We may be surprised at the vulnerabilities of
our opponent. And the resources and
strengths that we can bring to bear. It is time to quit playing only defense. Doesn’t work in football or politics.
I hope you will read my analysis,
contribute to it and join together to act upon it. I hope that we not only win, but also learn
and enjoy our adventure together. Yes, we can. I believe we will. Dave Thomas
Opportunities
Useful
Websites: contacts, maps, community organizing tools, and more.
Access
to jillions of political cartoons.
Download
Sightline Institute’s climate policy primer ‘Cap and Trade 101’. About
Sightline.
Conduct your own home energy audit.
See all of President Obama’s
weekly (Saturday) addresses.
Petitions
Tell
your senators to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Against GLBT people.
Tell
Secretary of Homeland Security to quit harassing immigrants and create
immigration reform.
Tell
President Obama and your senators to strengthen the climate bill.
Commentaries
From Our Members
Ross Gooding: Have You Read Obama’s Health Care
Plan?
I notice your website/organization seems to support
the administration’s proposed health plan—have you read over the entire plan
and all of its detail? Ross V. Gooding
Thanks
for contacting me. I know President Obama’s general criteria and some other
features. I haven’t read the specific plan. My comprehensive
listing of challenges and objectives was presented in last week’s
newsletter. I support health care reform with a robust public option which will
evolve into a single-payer system, as more people switch from private health
care insurance.
Our
major challenge is to get the basics right.
But not let our disagreements over less important details become
obstacles to passage. Like Social
Security and other major legislated programs, the health plan will be modified
every few years as new realities and opportunities appear. Let’s
commit to progress, not perfection.
Liberals
and Democrats
Government Watch
Also go to Whitehouse.gov.
Amazingly, President Obama hasn’t had any of his proposals
blocked. Many have already succeeded. And luckily, trends in Iran and Bill Clinton’s
trip to North Korea are in the right direction.
The toughest challenge may be the Israeli settlements in Palestine.
Health Care
We’ve spent 60 years trying to get universal health
care. Conservatives say that we’re going
too fast.
Now they are claiming that encouraging people to
prepare for their death is euthanasia. Good grief!
This after claiming that our government will ration
health care, when it’s primarily private health care
insurers who are rationing health care
to those who often lead it least.
Commercial media pundits thrive on drama. If they arrived at a golden castle, they
would quickly examine the walls for dents and look in the corners for
mildew. Highly complex health care reform has
proceeded at unparalleled speed during the past few months. Completely different from our 1994 health
care reform attempt.
Yet the pundits emphasize every disagreement and every
hesitation. Will she or won’t she? Will health care reform fail, due to this or
that little reason? Phooey. It’s like watching the suspense of a low
grade horror movie. Let’s get real. What’s happening is glorious sausage-making
at its best. Jillions of heroes
reconciling jillions of issues. Yes, we
can. Indeed, we are.
After 30 years of Conservative ascent to power and
misbehavior, lots of Liberals have become afraid of their shadows. I have decided that I’d rather be a Happy
Warrior than a Nervous Nellie. It was a
long time coming; but, we outlived the rascals.
Some Liberals have become consumed with resentments and anger. I’d rather be a Happy Warrior.
Health care reform
bills are being refined and proceeding toward
passage. See the distribution of
Republicans, Blue Dogs and other Democrats on House committees. The last of three house
committees have approved a health care reform bill, enabling a full house vote soon after returning from
recess. But Progressives disapprove
of Blue Dog decision. For more. For more.
Six Finance Committee Senators who are delaying health
care reform represent only 13
million (4% of our American people. Senator Max Baucus
can’t stop health care reform. It will
proceed without him. For more. For more. For more. Max Baucus
says if Republicans can’t agree to a health reform bill by mid-September, he will proceed without
them. Should we have Term
Limits for Senate Committee Chairs like Max Baucus?
60-70 percent of people support health
care reform. People are uneasy about various health care bills that they don’t
understand. Nancy Pelosi attacks
private health insurers. Health care reform opponents tell lies,
lies and more lies. For more.
Anti-health reform interests are organizing
tea party type protests at congressional town meetings. Tea Party Mobs disrupt
Congress member’s town meetings to stop health care dialogue. I wish I knew
whether the disruptions with turn public opinion against health care reform or
against its disrupting opponents.
Contract
Administration
I viewed a congressional hearing on contract
administration, which indicated that unlike the corrupt Bush administration,
Defense, NASA, EPA and other departments are carefully creating and enforcing
standards for contracted services. President
Obama has launched a badly needed initiative to reform the federal
procurement process
Federal
Reserve
Federal Reserve Chair
Ben Bernanke missed the boat. He
shouldn’t be reappointed in January.
Labor
Obama Administration whitehouse.gov
website still fails to include labor among 29 issues. Someone should be fired. Why hasn’t labor
expressed its outrage?
Diplomacy
Bill Clinton’s visit to
North Korea yielded important
results, freeing the captured Americans and showing respect that North Korean
officials want. This could be a step
toward future negotiations. This is
important than was freeing the ship captain from Somali pirates. It shows again the competence of President
Obama to supplement Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with more specialized
temporary and longer term envoys.
Military
U.S. troop withdrawals
from Iraq may speed up.
How about eliminating
many empire-oriented foreign military bases for large savings.
Other Actions
Sonia Sotomayer joins a Conservative Court
Great Clunker Program success catches White House and Congress by
surprise. They do something right and
then want to mess with it to save money.
House approves measure
to improve food safety.
Blue Dogs Are Liberals
See the distribution of
Republicans, Blue Dogs and other Democrats on House committees.
National public television’s evening news recently
referred to Blue Dogs as Conservative Democrats, as opposed to most other
Democrats who are Liberal. I
disagree. I believe that Blue Dogs are
also Liberal. They also want our Liberal
Priorities.
The media pundits continually refer to Blue Dogs as
Southern and Border State Democrats who must appeal to Conservative constituencies. But as I reported before, Blue Dogs are widely distributed throughout
our states. What most distinguishes them is their fiscal
caution. Their major request is Pay-Go,
which avoids deficits and increased debt.
Blue Dogs are also accused serving private interests,
in return for financial support. But congress
members of all stripes do this and not obviously less. On the cap and trade climate control bill and
the health reform bill, Blue dogs have been particularly protective of their
businesses and people back home. They
have insisted on fair instead of simply effective solutions. For example, they might argue that West
Virginia (which much less-carbon based energy production than Washington) would
be penalized much more, unless the penalties are phased in. The question is whether the climate emergency
so important that we can proceed unfairly.
Similarly on health care. Wrenching changes in financial rewards are
coming. Should some health providers, small
businesses and areas be excused or given more time? I credit the Blue Dogs for their emphasis
upon cost saving and their concern for fairness. They won’t stop health care reform. I think Blue Dogs are contributing to its
betterment. Dave Thomas
F-22 Fighters, How our House Members Voted
After unsuccessfully browsing to learn how our
Washington Democratic congressmen voted concerning extension of production of
the F-22 fighter plans, I phoned their offices.
None of their staff knew without researching it. I spent about 3 hours to learn that Brian Baird,
Norm Dicks, Rick Larsen, Adam Smith and Jim McDermott all voted against
extension. I never could find out what Jay
Inslee did. Dave Reichert also voted
against it. So only our two Senators favored
extension of this totally wasteful program.
For more. For more.
Unfortunately, the house approved more presidential
helicopters and other wasteful programs that President Obama and Defense
Secretary Gates opposed. And there’s
still huge amount of waste that no one has yet challenged. For more. Having saved
$1.75 billion by refusing to buy more F-22 fighters, congress added $9 billion in pork spending for items the Defense Department doesn’t want.
Here’s the Beef
President Obama allows
mountain top coal mining to continue.
Anti-abortionists
are splitting between those who support and oppose contraception.
Soon,
the only Republicans left will be lunatics.
The others are leaving.
Arlen
Specter faces opposition in Democratic primary.
State
and Local
Prevailing Loyalties, Politicians and
Reformers
I met
There are both similarities
and differences between our situation today and that of 120 years ago. While much can be learned from studying the
Populist Movement, we must adapt many of their strategies and tactics to our
very different potential allies and technologies for reaching them.
Prevailing Loyalties
Prevailing loyalties in the
1880s stemmed from the Civil War. The
Grand Army of the Republic (Republican) in the northern states and the
Democrats in the southern states. To attract
members, Populists had to lure people from these party loyalties. A really tough job, but one with which they
had mixed success. Similarly today,
loyalties are to Republicans and Democrats stemming from long struggles dating
from the 1930’s New Deal.
Reformers
As illustrated by the
Populists, reformers orient toward creating a new political consciousness. They reframe political objectives. They seek to replace prevailing
loyalties. They do this through
organizing experimental demonstration projects, learning about their opponents,
refining their ideology (including basic priorities) and spreading the
word. In doing these, Populists were
extremely successful. They built a large
base, especially in
Potential Allies
The Populist Movement grew
from the oppression of farmers by the eastern banking establishment which
denied them capital, except at ruinous cost.
Their proposals included crucially the creating of Greenback paper currency,
controlled by the government, instead of gold or silver controlled by the
banking establishment.
To implement Greenback
capital, Populists had to elect candidates.
To become nationally strong, Populists needed to reach out to potential
allies: black southern farmers, Midwestern and Western interests, newly
developing labor unions, northern urban political machine served Catholics and
later Eugene Debs’ socialists. They made
overtures toward all these groups.
But this was not
possible. Racism divided blacks and
whites. Labor unions had not developed a
populist ideology. They remained weak
until the New Deal. Midwestern interests
were not primarily oriented to farm poverty or securing control of capital. Western interests promoted Silver instead of
Greenbacks. Socialists were not
receptive to grass roots movements.
Where fusion and other strategies were tried, Populists were pressured
to forsake their own priorities, resulting in weakening their movement.
Politicians
Reformers focus upon creating
a new consciousness through successful demonstration projects, grass roots
organizing and spreading their ideology.
These were the keys to Populist success in rapidly creating their
movement. Politicians focus upon winning elections now. Most politicians (especially successful ones)
are unwilling to espouse a new consciousness for the long run. Most would rather win elections by appearing
as moderates. The same is true today. Our Washington Democratic Party actively
counsels and assists their candidates and elected officials to appear less
Liberal than they are.
When using Fusion strategies
to support Democratic politicians, Populists found that the politicians gave Populist
objectives only enough lip service to gain their support. Upon winning, these Fusion-supported
politicians ignored Populist objectives.
For Populists, fusion was both necessary to win politically and suicidal
to maintaining their basic integrity.
William Jennings Bryan and
the Silver Democrats dominated the challenge to the established Gold
Republicans. Using oodles of business
establishment campaign contribution, Mark Hanna created campaigns which beat
the Democrats. Democrats lost
elections. Having no place to go
politically, unable to advance toward Greenback extension of capital, Populists
faded as a political movement.
Lessons for Reformers Today
We face most of the same
challenges that the Populists faced:
·
What projects or
programs can we create which we can demonstrate to others? Through developing these projects, how can we
clarify and elaborate our basic values, our opponents, our priorities and
proposals?
·
How can we spread
the word? (Today’s technology allows and
requires us to replace traveling lecturers with internet communication.)
·
How can we work
with allies (environmentalists, health care advocates, educators, labor, and a
variety of civil rights, ethnic, poverty, housing and other advocacy groups)
who often have specific priorities with which we must meld ours.
I have developing thoughts,
but no confident answers to these questions. I will explore them in future
commentaries. I strongly invite your assistance. Your imaginative tentative thoughts. Our primary project now may be to create ways
to work together.
As with the Populists, I
believe our basic strength must be our
ideology. Our understanding or our
values, our situation, our opponents, and or priorities. I believe that our basic value is to grant
each of
We must next address our
social and political vehicle for driving change. What projects do we want to begin? Maybe shooting some legal and other shots
across the bow of our opponents, to learn how our various groups can work
together. We will need to figure a way
for financing our activities. More on
this next week. Please send me your
ideas.
Corazon
Aquino, who became President of the Philippines as the result of the 1986
people’s power revolt, has died.
Four years later, I made seven community development trips to the
Philippines for a total of 12 months there.
The spontaneous uprising removed Ferdinand Marcus, but didn’t change the
domination of Philippine politics by the wealthy, powerful and corrupt. The Philippines continues as perhaps the
least developing East Asian-Pacific country.
Dave Thomas
BIAW’s Conservative Ideology
The Building Association of
Washington (BIAW) openly expresses its Reagan Conservative ideology,
especially concerning our Washington State government. Anti-taxes.
Anti-government spending (big government). Anti-government regulation. BIAW specifically expresses:
“The Building Industry Association of
Washington exists to unite those in the building industry in Washington State
in their fight against a government that has made this industry among the most
regulated in the nation.”
“Besides
battling big government, BIAW offers a variety of programs and services that
can help put your business on top.”
The
one exception is its support for government spending upon building
construction. It opposes spending for
everything else. It opposes especially
those regulations which would affect construction: environmental restrictions
(such as our growth management act) and worker and consumer rights, including
accountability for quality construction.
BIAW
primarily expresses Conservative views concerning economic issues. The Washington
Policy Center and Evergreen
Freedom Foundation (which it supports) elaborates these. But it also embraces Conservative positions
on social issues, in its embrace of Conservative commercial media pundits and talk radio shows.
BIAW’s
Conservative ideology wouldn’t matter much if it didn’t have the financial
resources to effectively pursue it. But
it has enough resources to greatly support Washington’s Conservative political
infrastructure, to politically affect the election
and voting
of our legislators, to legally challenge regulations, and to protect its revenue. Often successfully, as they note in their Building Insight
newsletters.
This
combination of ideology and financial resources provides the largest single
obstacle to maintaining and improving our State government’s capacity to serve
our people. To protect our government
and people, we must refute BIAW’s
ideology and politically separate it from its member base and financing.
HB 2261, a Legislative Power Grab
Our 1889 Washington State
constitution expressed that the State must:
·
Adequately fund
public education for all children
·
Provide a uniform
system of schools
·
Utilize a uniform
tax system to fund them
Ever
since, our major challenges have been how to detail and meet these three
criteria.
Until 1943, public schools
received state funding which was adequate, fairly raised and fairly
distributed. From 1944 to 1974, State
funding was reduced, supplemented by local levies, which increased from 5% to
32% of funding. When levies failed,
schools received inadequate funding.
Teachers and taxpayers revolted
to restore State funding. Under pressure
from the public and courts, our legislature enacted the Levy Lid Act and Basic
Education Act (BEA), which specified amount of class room instruction and a
student/teacher ratio. A court also
ruled that state revenue problems can not be used as an excuse to reduce
funding below that necessary to adequately fund education. In 1980, Washington
was 11th in the nation in school funding. In 1997, Washington was still above average.
In 2000, 72% of Washington
voters approved Initiative 728 which designated certain state revenues to
achieve such goals as reducing class sizes, increasing teacher pay. But due to non-specificity, our legislature
was able to largely ignore them, especially after facing a severe revenue
shortfall in 2004.
In 2005, ESSB 5441 Washington
Learns recommended adequate funding, but failed to indicate any adequate and
stable source of such funding. In 2007,
a broad-based coalition filed a lawsuit to force the state to comply with the
constitution. A court decision has been
delayed.
School Funding as % of Washington Income
Washington now ranks 43rd
in school funding and 46th in class sizes. School funding has declined significantly as
a percentage of state spending, which has declined as a percentage of our
state’s total disposable income. Including the 2009 budget cuts, we are now
about $2,000 per pupil below the national average. Teacher’s pay has declined compared to
elsewhere.
We rank 50th
concerning the percentage of our 8th graders who graduate from
college, leaving them unprepared
for developing their careers. To recruit
employees, our Hi Tech companies are forced to bringing better trained
applicants from out-of State. Both our
children and economy suffer when we shortchange our public schools.
Our legislature passed HB
2261 in 2009, which presented a vision of equitable education, but eliminated a
student/teacher ratio and other specific criteria. HB 2261 provides that the legislature will
decide how much to fund each year. Thus
the constitution and courts are ignored.
School funding was reduced by $1 billion. If federal stimulus funds aren’t available
during coming years, school funding may continue to decline.
It remains to be seen whether Constitution
will continue to be violated. Will our
courts or the legislature win the struggle to set and meet standards? If the legislature wins, our education will continue
to be inadequate or worsen, regardless of the best efforts of our school
administrators and other staff, especially if the federal stimulus-recovery education
funds are a one-shot deal. If the courts
win, the legislature will face the difficult task of raising and allocating the
necessary money. For
more.
Our Cautious Supreme
Court Judges
Our
Supreme Court Judges aren’t as Conservative as wanted by those who
unsuccessfully spent large amounts to replace them. But they aren’t Liberal either. As evidenced by their rejecting same-sex
marriage for the ridiculous reason that marriage is all about having
children. Similarly, they have delayed
their decision concerning fully funding schools to meet specific criteria. And have delayed their decision concerning
the recovery of state disability insurance funds that BIAW has received
illegally for many years.
This
caution works to the advantage of Conservatives. Delays allow them to continue to deny
people’s rights. To reduce our state
government’ revenues and expenditures necessary to serve our people. Liberal reforms would be greatly served by
recruiting less cautious Supreme Court judges.
Dave Thomas
Featured Advocacy Group ---
Progressive Democrats of
Progressive
Democrats of America (PDA) was founded in 2004 to transform the Democratic
Party and our country. We seek to build a party and government controlled by
citizens, not corporate elites -- with policies that serve the broad public
interest, not just private interests. As a grassroots PAC operating inside
the Democratic Party, and outside in movements for peace and justice, PDA
played a key role in the stunning electoral victory of November 2006. Our
inside/outside strategy is guided by the belief that a lasting majority will
require a revitalized Democratic Party built on firm progressive principles.
For over two decades, the party declined as its
leadership listened more to the voices of Wall Street than those of
To
reach these goals, PDA
will:
·
Work inside the Democratic Party to return it to its
roots as the party that represents the workers and the less fortunate
·
Build coalitions outside the Democratic Party on shared issues.
·
Establish chapters in all 435 congressional districts to create an
information and action conduit that allows us to effectively organize in
response to or in support of congressional actions.
·
Work with the Congressional Progressive Caucus to support and bring
forward progressive legislation on the core issues identified by
our PDA chapters
Chapters are being established
in each of Washington’s congressional districts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Four KC Exec Candidates Should Cooperate to
Beat an Unqualified One
An unqualified candidate will likely win the most
primary votes. The three doing 3rd,
4th and 5th should immediately lend their full support to
the one who comes in second: endorsements, fund raising, phone calls to
influential friends, canvassing volunteers and more. The ones who do this will serve King County and our people
and be well respected for their actions.
When
neighbors get to know each other, they can prevent crime, assist disaster
victims, and protect and support children.
Our Bellevue city government has initiated a Neighborhood
Link Program that provides assistance projects which enable neighbors to
better get to know and care for their neighborhood and each other. One of the greatest ideas I’ve seen. Every community should experiment with
this. Dave Thomas
Here’s the Beef
Washington
state Labor says bye bye to Democrats.
Washington’s
low income people are denied justice, due to insufficient funding for legal
aid.
Washington
State Community Action Agencies Awarded 11.7 million in stimulus-recovery Funds
Compared
to a year ago, bankruptcies in Washington have increased 52%.
Using
state stimulus funds, Washington housing agencies will weatherize 7,000 low
income homes.
Greenpeace
pressures Kimberly-Clark to quit using old growth timber to create Kleenix.
Our
government makes it difficult for farmers to hire undocumented workers.
Make your food
interesting by learning its history.
Nation
and World
How Much Is a Trillion Dollars?
Our
We
can perform similar calculations for our 113 million households and 156.3
income tax filers. With the results, we
can compare the cost of letting our economy stay depressed with stimulating
it. How long would it take us to lose
our share of a trillion dollars if our house value declines, our stock values
decline or we lose our job?
How High Should Stock Market Indexes Go?
Amidst
alternative investments, stock prices should reflect present earnings,
potential growth (in earnings) and risk.
The Price/Earnings (P/E) ratio indicates whether future earnings are
expected to increase. Growth industries
have larger P/E ratios compared to stable industries compared to declining
industries.
During
bubbles, when irrational exuberance and infectious greed abound, prices and P/E
ratios soar. When the bubble pops, they
decline. Our stock market indexes
increased during the bubble. Then
declined sharply. And now have gained
back a third of their loss. Hopefully,
we will not create another speculative bubble to again reach the peak.
Ideally,
we would experience a steadily growing economy, based on producing goods and
services, instead of upon financial speculation. Hopefully, it will contain more (caring)
services and fewer products that impact our environment through their
production and use. We would be glad to
see the stock market gradually reach its previous peak and beyond in this
way. It would be a steady increase, not
the rapid one that occurred during our bubbles.
Chevron Advertisements Lie
Chevron ads appearing on public television say that responding to
climate change is not a question of ideology.
“We don’t need a Liberal or Conservative solution; we need to use all
forms of energy.”
What a colossal lie. Chevron’s
solution is Conservative. With the other
oil companies, they denied the climate problem and now just want to use more
energy of all kinds, including carbon based energy. Like Senator John McCain, Chevron wants to
drill, drill, drill.
Iran Protesters Use New Tactics
Protesters identify their attackers and paint ‘X’s in front of their
homes. Instead of large rallies, they improvise
lots of small dispersed ones which fade away when attackers arrive. They boycott government goods and
services. The authorities won’t be able
to put the genie back in the bottle.
Here’s the Beef
While
we deal with our bubbles, China just keeps on developing.
U.S. compares poorly
with other countries concerning support for small businesses.
Financial
Inequality harms societies.
Allow judicial mortgage
alteration or bring back bankruptcy.
38
companies participating in our government loan modification program are
modifying only a few. For
more. For
more.
Here come the
robots. Bye bye human baseball.
It
easier for atheists to stay in the closet in our southern bible belt.
Seven reasons why we need to
pass the Internet Freedom
Preservation Act to preserve net neutrality.
Utah
shows that the four-day week has many advantages for budgets and workers.
After
as much as 79 weeks of unemployment, 1.5 million will soon exhaust their
benefits.
Unemployed
people are choosing to become teachers.
People die because
medicines have too much patent protection.
Chemical
manufacturers support updating the Toxic Substances Control Act.
People
throughout the world place a high priority upon addressing climate change.
There
are many reasons to eliminate many of our empire oriented military bases.
To
overcome religious sectarian animosities, Iraqi government pays for mixed
marriages.
Our
Liberal Spirit
Closeness to and Criticism of What We Care About
I
often make snap judgments. They are
usually wrong. Sometimes very
wrong. They change rapidly as I get to
know a group or person better. I come to
understand and admire their strengths and virtues. I also become more critical of them.
I am
a Democrat. But some mornings I wake up
so disgusted that I’m an independent. I
have had a similar experience with every group with which I have been
intimately associated from the Boy Scouts to the Order Ecumenical.
Most
of all, my appreciation and criticism appears when I wake up to look in the
mirror. Over 72 years, I have come to
know me pretty well. I have some great
features, but I have others that aren’t pretty.
My major tension in life is between using my strengths well, while not
letting my defects get in the way. Not
letting them harm myself and others.
Realizing
this tension, I am comfortable with myself, warts and all. I am what I am. There is nothing to be gained from shutting
down because I’m not something else. I
attempt to change or at least temper my defects, but not at the expense of
using my strengths.
Recommended Books – See our list of books for liberals
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, 1986, Democracy and Capitalism: Property,
Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought
I
suspect few people share my fascination with theoretical analyses of our
Liberalism, grounded in the history of our Liberalism. This book is an examination of the evolving
differences between Liberalism, Marxism and Grassroots Democracy
ideologies. In doing so, it describes
many political and economic movements.