Tea Party America and How to Fight It (tags)
The recent debate in Washington, D.C. over raising the debt ceiling has underscored just how totally the radical Right in general and the "Tea Party" in particular have taken over America's political debate and the economic and social consciousness of a majority of Americans. The remnant of a Left that still survives in America can only fight back if it first realizes, like a rehab patient, that we've "hit bottom" and then musters the kind of internal and external discipline it will take to mount an effective counter-attack. Instead of critiquing ourselves in public, we need to settle our differences behind closed doors, present an image of rock-solid unity to the outside world and get rid once and for all of the insanity of "consensus decision-making."
The U.S. Economy on FIRE (tags)
The current U.S. economic crisis didn't start a few years ago when banks and financial institutions started selling "subprime" real estate loans to high-risk borrowers and then repackaging them as "mortgage-backed securities." It began in the early 1970's as a result of a long-term plan by America's major corporations and business leaders to drive down workers' wages and extract more surplus value — and the workers' response, which was to take on more debt. Any real solution that benefits working people cannot be instituted until the power of the corporate rich over the political system is broken.
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser-Evilism (tags)
There is no question that the Bush administration's policies are "cruel and savage", but John Kerry (along with the majority of Democrats in the Senate) supported most of them, including the war on Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, the war on Iraq, and the "No Child Left Behind" education act. As Marjorie Williams pointed out in the Washington Post recently, "Kerry voted for so many of Bush's major initiatives that in order to disown them now he can only argue that they were wrongly or dishonestly 'implemented.' This amounts to a confession that his opponent made a chump of him for the past three years. In fact, one might argue that Kerry is a poster boy for all the ways in which congressional Democrats have allowed themselves to be rolled by the Bush administration."
Camejo on Green approach to 2004 election (tags)
[The following statement was initiated by Peter Miguel Camejo. He is a life-long fighter for social justice who was the Green candidate for Governor in California in the 2002 general elections and in the 2003 recall election.]
Peter Camejo: The Avocado Declaration (tags)
A statement on third parties in the US political system.