The last time there was anything even remotely resembling a progressive agenda in DC (which is where it matters that there be one or not) was 1965.
The LBJ civil rights and anti-poverty initiatives--which was of what those died-aborning progressive agendas consisted--have been arrested and are being slowly but surely reversed.
Roe-v-Wade is steadily being rolled back, one state at a time, not on ballots, but in legislatures and state houses...Schools have been invisibly but irreversibly re-segregated by the growing divide between economic classes.
The Church committee in '75 was the last serious effort to rein in US excesses in intelligence gathering and domestic surveillance; and it was recently blamed for the laxities which apparently resulted in the success of the IX/XI attacks.
The Raygunauts saw to it that media concentration would proceed pretty much unfettered by oversight or unchecked by law or custom; and that there would be no undue (uncomfortable, costly) restrictions on what banks and other financial institutions could do to collect more money...
The Dems elected this year have neither the numbers nor the inclination to pursue any agenda that is not in lock-step with what CorpoRat Murka insists upon...
Hence there will be no more tax credits for alternative fuels/energy sources, or small-scale energy-efficient technologies--but there will be a major, sustained push to build more nukes, and to develop off-shore oil puddles (Pete Domenici just called for the end of the off-shore drilling moratorium, and (also NM senator) bingaman will likely follow suit--after a bout of public and lugubrious hand-wringing...
The Dems have not the numbers, either, to make an issue of national, universal, single-payer health care; at least not over the objections of the Insurance and Health Provider industries which are hugely, enormously, unimagoneably profitable, and growing more so with every passing day, as more and more of the populace descends in to the morass of preventable diseases, cleanseable pollutants, and the accompanying toxicities necessitated, and exacerbated, by our 'life-style.'
To look for political solutions, in a nation divided 51/49 along so many crucial and definitively determinant fault lines is risible...
I'd be happy if the New Dems would just cripple the Busheviks, but they've pledged to bi-partisanship, wo they won't do that either...
Those are some of the reasons why I am politically a pessimist.
The Meaning of "Woke"
10 months ago
4 comments:
Reality is very disappointing. I can see why BushCo. is so hostile to it.
also, the denial from rank & file isn't going to help to pressure pols away from clinging to their corporatist servant posture. really, i don't understand where all this denial comes from. things can't change if people are unwilling to acknowledge the problem.
and if you're going to be smart alecky :) and say look how you defended murtha, i rather defend a corporatist who is committed about getting us out of iraq, rather than one only posturing and makes empty speeches about getting out.
we still have people who think clinton walks on water.
"A nation divided 51/49"
And how long has it been that close? Since electronic voting? Well, since electroninin voting it's been razor thing margins for presidential races--and somehow I don't think it is actually that among the voters.
The Diebold, et al, machines must be brought under control. (And saying paper trails is impossible or "difficult" because of paper jams does not compute. If the damn machines are not accurate, dump'em. Immediately. Do paper ballot until new, better, accurate, auditable machines are tested and ready.)
Grrrrrr.
jawbone
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