what we need is a good, concise, easily understandable . . .

populist program . . . a 7-Point Plan, if you will (7 being the number because 10 seems too big , and 5 not big enough) . . . the goal of which would be to return the United States and its governance to the people . . . the seven points I'd like to see included are:

1. Ending the war in Iraq.
2. Restoring the right of privacy.
3. Restoring citizen authority over corporations.
4. Universal healthcare.
5. Preserving Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
6. Protecting the environment (and creating new industries).
7. Transitioning from the oil economy.

with a couple of lines of explanation added to each item, that's a program that most sane people could support . . . be they Democrats, Republican, Libertarians, or Independents . . . no, it's not comprehensive . . . but it's simple, direct, and hits the issues that people are most concerned about . . . and it's short enough that it can be pounded until everyone knows, understands, and supports it . . . those who WON'T support it, btw, are politicians of both parties (with a few exceptions) and the radical, fundamentalist right wing . . .

after developing a good 7-Point Plan, we should then DEMAND that any candidate for office seeking the peoples' votes MUST endorse it, fully and without qualification . . . those who don't will simply not be re-elected . . .

... you can forget about the rest. And, unfortunately, without finding a majority of electable candidates willing to undertake that principal task, the corruption will endure. *sigh*

"You can't do everything, because there is too much. But you can do something, and the difference between doing something and doing nothing IS everything." Father Berrigan

Just because it's daunting doesn't let us off the hook. Sorry brah, it is not going to be easy, it may be impossible, but it is required of us. Absolutely.

... I said there's something more important. Think about it. You can't have any of the things you know we need without that. That requires a sea-change in the people running for office and the party machine structure.

To illustrate that, Howard Dean is challenging that structure and calling the `pugs exactly what they are, and the DLC wing of the party is running away from him. Why?

Because they think they can't get elected without corporate money and the votes of the rightist independent middle behind them. That's the primary reason.

First things first.

Thanks but you do not have to educate me on its importance.

First things first?

Elect campaign finance reform minded people, then move the other issues? No, go get finance reform done now, we don't have two election cycles to spare. Campaign finance reform is a nonpartisan issue that is a natural bridge builder. Only the hacks in both parties are against it, the honest people who are already working for thier constuents are looking forward to it. Any messge here that we have to give up because of excuse A,B,C or 50,000 is not helpful.
Any message that we have to wait till the stars line up just so is also not helpful. But please tell me all about the work in your state for campaign finance reform, I am always interested to hear how others are doing it. Although we failed this last session (For the SEVENTH TIME) we got closer than we ever have before and do expect to win next time. :)

Here is our website: http://www.cleanelectionshawaii.org/

It will be relaunched as Voter Owned Elections as we found that calling it Clean Elections set up some negative stuff we then had to argue through rather than starting off clear. (No, Senator, we are not implying that you are running dirty elections...)

Aloha and good luck, I'll look forward to learning about your work there. We can do it!

... Hawaii. But, the real problems today are at the national level. Anyone watching knows that to be true. If you do manage to arrange public financing in Hawaii, that doesn't change the national political scene but by a small amount.

In my state, there is no impetus toward public financing of elections--strictly DLC machine politics at work right now. That's the reason why we have yet another `pug in the House as of 2002.

You assert that you can accomplish the goal in less than two election cycles--because that's all the time there is available. I would simply ask this: the problem has been very prominent since 1946. It's been acute since 1980. Every change in law by Congress--by the people who have to make the changes--has just been more jockeying for position without actually solving the problem, so has the situation gotten demonstrably better, or is it getting steadily worse? 2004 was the first campaign under McCain-Feingold, and it set records for campaign war chests. That's not an improvement.

What I am saying is that we need a fundamentally different kind of people in office, not different means for the same kind of people to accomplish the same ends spun in a more palatable way.

Cheers.

35 states.
Let's see if I can understand your point, and I really don't mean to be argumentative either, but arguments for inaction and helpless hopelessness just frost my ass.

OK. We can't do anything until we get better people in office, and there is no way we can get campaign finance reform passed that will affect national races, so we should just...what? Wait for...what?

And I do very much wish to hear what you are doing to help. There is a lot of work to do, even if your state is one of the 15, of 50, that had no publicly financed campaign movement this year.

But, expecting the same kind of candidates that we've predominantly had for the last thirty years to solve the problem at the national level is wishing for Santa.

You can have campaigns in every state, but campaigns aren't results. They're a nice start. But, they don't solve the pressing problems at the national level. Arizona, for example, now has public financing. Did that public financing get rid of fundamentally corrupt Senators like McCain and Kyl? Not at all.

Maine has public financing. Who are Maine's two Senators? Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, weak moderate Republicans who wouldn't know the right thing to do if it bit `em on the ass.

We need a better class of people running for office. That happens over time, or it happens in a hurry if there's a calamity. That's what I'm saying. I'm not denigrating your efforts at campaign finance reform. I'm saying you're expecting entirely the wrong people to make it happen at the national level, where it's most desperately needed. Good to make it happen at the state level, if it can be done. But, the crowd in Congress today aren't making public financing a priority--and that's because it's not in their interest to do so. You can't change their minds, so you have to change them.

Cheers.

You were asked what we should do. What is your answer?

... and work for the ordinary people's interests--that's the action item.

Cheers.

... no large contributions from individuals accruing to a single candidate. Large being over $50-100.

Yes, under current conditions, that's a disadvantage when the `pugs are sucking up every dollar they can, from every source they can.

Shoe leather's pretty cheap, though.

Look, if we keep electing people, though they may initially have the best of intentions but are corrupted by the system as it is, every outside effort to change the system is wasted work.

We need to change the people who will be inside the system.

Right now, the system--at the national level and at the level of every state--is geared to serving the interests of the wealthy and of corporations. Allowing those interests to influence politicians with their money is fundamentally wrong. One can't change that system now, but one can exclusively support candidates who promise not to be a part of that system. Working for them, consistently, eventually changes that system--from within.

Given current circumstances, no, I don't think this is entirely realistic, politicians being what they are. That's why I think it will take a serious upset in people's lives to make them understand the gravity of their situation--and the degree to which smarmy pols aided in their misery. I'm simply looking at history as objectively as I can.

It was Einstein who said that doing the same thing, over and over and over again and expecting different results was a sign of insanity. Dems continue to elect people with too strong ties to the oligarchy and expect them to act in the people's interest. It hasn't worked.

Cheers.

I get it, we'll back people who can't possibly win, because they won't accept money in a system that runs on money. But we won't work for change in our own states because that won't make much difference. But that's ok, we can sit around passively and HOPE for a better quality of candidate.
I think you are f'ing nuts and I'm glad you aren't on my side. At first I questioned your sincerity, thought maybe you were one of many here working for the other side, selling despair and hopelessness. Now I just think you are nuts.
Good luck winning that way. Again, glad you aren't on my team. Selah.

Like I said, find candidates willing to spend a few bucks on shoe leather and who won't take big money and see what they do.

I may be nuts, but I read history. If you believe that you can change the system without changing the people who make the law which will change the system, that's admirable, but, I think it's short-sighted and Pollyanna-ish.

I'm hesitant to say it, but I think you're going to be badly disappointed if you expect your efforts to dramatically change the political balance in this country in the next few years--in 2006 or 2008 or 2010-2012. As I say, I don't mean to denigrate your efforts, but your expectations are very likely wholly unrealistic. Big money dominates politics at the national level today. Here's some examples. For all national races in 2004, the total money spent by candidates to get elected (for 470 offices) was about $1.5 billion. Do you know how much money was spent by lobbyists to influence national legislation in 2004? $3 billion. How much of that money was spent to further the public's interest? Virtually none of it.

Politicians who take corporate money in any form are ultimately corrupted by it. That's not me being nuts--that's an assessment of human nature over centuries by better minds than mine.

You're glad I'm not on your team. That's okay. It doesn't change history, or human nature, though.

Cheers.

No thanks.

... not mine.

Hope your candidate won. Hope he or she fixed the difficulties with the economy that have caused you to be unable to pay your bills.

Cheers.

lol

... and I gave it to you.

But, you didn't affirm the implicit questions. Did your candidate win? Did your candidate solve the problem you described (your inability to pay your bills)?

As I've said, I'm not trying to be difficult, or snotty. I'm trying to inject a bit of reality into a process which has become more and more unreal over time.

People on this board, for the most part, think that party loyalty will win the day for them and their ideals, eventually. It won't. Recent history strongly suggests that it won't.

You said that I'd excluded your interests by the income limits I'd suggested, and implied that I'd somehow denigrated your commitment, because you can't pay your bills. That sacrifice of yours should have had results. What were those results?

Cheers.

lol

... and after a couple of tries, I guess that means you won't, because the answers might be a bit, uh, difficult.

I think Molly Ivins has a column today which applies to not only your replies, but to this thread in general. It's about money in politics. Look for it later today, maybe on workingforchange.com.

But, as she says, truth sometimes comes in bad packages. I'm not spending my time here just to be obstreperous or obnoxious. I hope to change people's minds about how they think about politics today, if only because the conventional wisdom of Democrats and the left in general has failed, utterly, to stop the juggernaut that is the far right.

Cheers.

Why do you hate America? lol

But, that's okay. It's your choice.

Cheers.

I am getting really aggravated and I am not enjoying this conversation. I dislike threads where two Democrats start bashing each other. I don't know anything about you, haven't really come across you before, and choose to just say aloha, good night, good luck, please don't give up so easily. I will work on it tirelessly as well.

... acknowledging reality is quite another.

You may not like it, but there's a reality which can't be ignored.

As I've said, if you really want change, you have to change the people elected at the national level.

If you're not enjoying the conversation, it's because you didn't hear what you wanted to hear. I'm not giving up--I believe I'm assessing the situation as it is, and offering my opinion on what needs to be corrected. Better people in government will do what is right. People capable of being compromised by money and the machine politics system will not.

It's hard. It's unpleasant. But, I think it's the truth. We need a whole new class of politicians who won't take money from the oligarchy, even when it's legal. That frees them to tell the truth to ordinary people.

Work hard for what you believe. You'll see some local gains. That's good. But, in the meantime, the `pugs are running roughshod over the country because most Democrats think imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Cheers.

I'm just saying.

REAL election reform should be #1 on the list . . . and either drop one of the others, or expand the list to eight . . .

on edit: this particular list was just an "off-the-top-of-my-head" stab to get the conversation started . . . what I'd really like is for us to come up with a 7-point list that everyone can agree on . . . my seven were just initial suggestions . . . feel free to suggest alternatives . . . but let's try to keep it at seven (for the sake of self-discipline if nothing else) . . .

... but I've been watching politics in this country for fifty years. The single-most damaging consequence of modern-day politics is its dependence on big money, corporate and otherwise, and the Democrats are fully complicit in that (largely because of television).

Republicans could give a shit--they've always been the whores of the "great malefactors of wealth" as FDR called the fat cats. But, Democrats, believing the only way they could win was to emulate the fundraising tactics of the `pugs, corrupted themselves by doing so.

My own belief is that this won't change until there's an economic cataclysm sufficient to shake the general populace from its lethargy. When that happens, if it happens, they'll force change--just as was done in 1932.

In the meantime, there has to be the development of candidates at the local and state level who don't take money with strings attached. Without that, the system remains corrupt--and every item on your list is ignored or watered down so as to be meaningless.

Remember that it was Democrats in the House in 1981 who facilitated Reagan's absurd supply-side tax cuts--dropping the top nominal rate on the wealthy from 70% to 28% and providing huge tax cuts to corporations--effectively eliminating the cornerstone of New Deal economics instituted by Democrats which had worked pretty well for almost five decades.

Thus began huge federal deficits and the transfer of tax burden to the middle class.

Democrats didn't do that because doing so made good sense. There was another reason. Campaign money.

That's why I stress it.

Cheers.

Reagan won pretty handily which seemed to show broad public support for the issue he ran on - huge tax cuts, which were supposedly an answer for stagflation. Not only did Reagan win, but, as I remember it, repukes took the Senate and made inroads into the Dem majority in the House. Thus, it seemed to be political suicide to stand in the way, not because of big money, but because of the will of the people. This was also shortly after - proposition 13 (or what was the number, 13 would be ironic, all things considered) passed overwhelmingly in California - a property tax reduction/restriction which haunts them to this day. So tax cuts seemed to be the order of the day, still, I am guessing that more Dems opposed them than Republicans did.

... calculation, not an affirmation of doing what was right. The House at that time could have killed every bad policy of Reagan's--and they had a moral obligation to do so. But, they did not. They gave in--for perceived political reasons, which were, in fact, personal political interests.

In the final analysis, did they do well? No. They helped create, unnecessarily, $2.5 trillion in additional debt. They did so to curry favor with big corporate donors. They furthered the interests of the wealthy by greatly increasing, again unnecessarily, the military budget at a time when such was a complete waste of money.

They sold out. If you look at the House at the time, the Dems had a majority. They could have resisted the insanity. They did not. There's a reason for that, and that reason had nothing to do with the interests of the ordinary people of the country. They didn't do the right thing when they had the chance.

Cheers.

That is what the platform is supposed to be. Are you active in the party in your state?
I really like your idea about getting agreement on what is important to us and pushing THAT rather than allowing the other guys to define the conversation with thier bullshit "issues". Like it is any of my business whether gay people settle down or not, or whether my neighbor is willing and able to carry a child to term. Who said "The agressor defines the context of the battle?" The other guys learned this well and we need to take the conversation, and our country, back.
I'm not nuts about the MUST endorse part, I would work for a democrat who believes in most of what I do than bag on him and have a republican who will trash everything and with whom I agree on nothing.
But otherwise I think you are really onto something. Thanks. Now what forums should we open the dialogue in? Houseparties? On line? In our state parties?
Or???
Aloha!

with restoration of power over corps to citizenry, privacy becomes less a target. Oh and you better add kill the vote machines to your list because if we don't get rid of them we don't even need a platform! LOL

in MHO, is tapping into the American Myth. That is what the right has done so successfully. To make a list is just so much more "liberal, pointy-headed trash." (you DID notice I put that in quotes, didn't you?)

Rather than points, the opposition needs a narrative that's not been heard for a long time (see "The Grapes of Wrath"). I don't know what it is now. However, what the opposition needs is the combination of 'The Terminator,' and John Wayne.

That's what Americans identify with. It's a narrative, it's not a list.

The narrative of Democracy is Dynamic and Emotional. The Left has so much experience. They (we) NEED to present the Motion Picture, not a list.

I hope you understand what I'm saying.

The Right has spent BILLIONS of dollars creating a narrative.

The Left can't compete until it has an equally competitive narrative.

Facts don't count any more. A Senior Bush aide (Rove?) actually said so. Get it?

It's all about presenting the American Myth in a way that most Americans identify with.

cant clean up the GOP mess .. mess they made of neglected infrastructure till we get some fed revenue.

nor end homelessness.

so 1. must be END REAGANOMICS

2. Jobs for All ... WPA
this ends all street crime {a result of hunger} and drops the racism vote.
you see, rednecks fear integration because it means blacks now compete for scarce jobs. If jobs for all guaranteed, no competition, no fear blacks, no vote GOP.
racism is the hidden real strength of GOP. Look at red states and the old Confederacy. RACISM in both cases.

you're a billion% correct!

So, what's the movie script that can present a different model?

Racism is why "facts" don't matter. It's all about scripting.

What's the new script?

...proposing something to run ON other than just being anti-Bush. And, we need to get out of the mindset that the game is fixed. It just might be "fixed" in areas, and a great deal of energy needs to be exerted on changing that, but, that does not mean that we don't also have to spend a great deal of energy on policy.

back here.

This is not to fragment this thread, it is something I've been wanting to do for a while and stand-alones would invite reaction to those specific individuals' proposals.