Gentry liberals: More concerned with global warming and gay rights than with lunch-pail joes

LAT op-ed: The gentry liberals
They're more concerned with global warming and gay rights than with lunch-pail joes.
By Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel
December 2, 2007

After decades on the political sidelines, liberalism is making a comeback. Polls show plunging support for Republicans and their brand of conservatism among young, independent voters and Latinos. But what kind of liberalism is emerging as the dominant voice in the Democratic Party? Well, it isn't your father's liberalism, the ideology that defended the interests and values of the middle and working classes. The old liberalism had its flaws, but it also inspired increased social and economic mobility, strong protections for unions, the funding of a national highway system and a network of public parks, and the development of viable public schools. It also invented Social Security and favored a strong foreign policy.

Today's ascendant liberalism has a much different agenda. Call it "gentry liberalism." It's not driven by the lunch-pail concerns of those workers struggling to make it in an increasingly high-tech, information-based, outsourcing U.S. economy -- though it does pay lip service to them. Rather, gentry liberalism reflects the interests and values of the affluent winners in the era of globalization and the beneficiaries of the "financialization" of the economy. Its strongholds are the tony neighborhoods and luxurious suburbs in and around New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and West Los Angeles.

Just as the number of industrial workers and traditional middle-class households has declined, the ranks of the affluent class have grown....Although many of the newly affluent are -- as is traditional -- politically conservative, a rising number of them are turning left....The political upshot is that Democrats now control the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts, according to Michael Franc of the conservative Heritage Foundation....Perhaps the best indicator of the growing political power of gentry liberals, however, is their ability to generate campaign contributions. Chiefly drawing on Wall Street, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, this year's Democratic presidential candidates have raised 70% more money than their GOP counterparts, according to the Wall Street Journal....

***

Gentry liberalism has established a strong presence on the Internet, where such websites as MoveOn.org and the Huffington Post are lavishly funded by well-heeled liberals. These and other sites generally focus on foreign policy, gay rights, abortion and other social issues, as well as the environment....(G)entry liberalism's increasingly "green tint" distances it the furthest from the values and interests of the middle and working classes. Leading gentry liberals, whether on Wall Street, in Hollywood or in Silicon Valley, are among the greatest scolds on global warming....The gentry liberal crusade to tighten U.S. environmental regulations to slow global warming could end up hurting middle- and working-class interests....

The ascent of gentry liberalism remains largely unchallenged, in part because of the abject failure of the Republicans to address middle-class aspirations in a serious way and in part because of the absence of a strong pro-middle-class voice among Democratic presidential contenders, with the exception of former Sen. John Edwards....

(Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and the author of "The City: A Global History." Fred Siegel, a professor at the Cooper Union for Science & Art, is the author of "The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life.")

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-kotkin2dec02,0,3987747.story

civil rights and the environment are both important. We're elitists. We're out of touch with real people. Apparently we're not real people. x(

:wtf:

that is preventing kitchen table economics issues from taking the center plank in the party platform.

You know them, they're the wonks who have kept working class issues off the table since 1969, the year they stopped appealing to the party base in favor of trying to counteract Nixon's "southern strategy."

How's that working for us? You'd think 38 years of being pretty much out of power, with conservatives in both parties holding power, would tell us that tactic just plain doesn't work. It lost us all 3 branches of government and is threatening to lose us our constitutional republic, altogether.

That faction deserves indictment. Sure, global warming has to be addressed. However, it can be addressed within the context of appealing to the party base, that of providing good paying jobs at home instead of offshore, developing and building a renewable energy infrastructure.

Fail to appeal to the party base again, and they risk having another election that's close enough to steal. How would President Huckabee work for you?

Suggesting that gay rights is an "elitist" concern not of relevance to "lunch-pail joes." But that's Fred Siegel for ya.

nt

the old divide and conquoer tatic. SORRY WE'RE TO SMART FOR THAT!
GO DEMOCRATS -ALL THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT IN 08!
WE'RE GONNA TAKE THE COUNTRY BACK FOR THE PEOPLE!

global warming could end up hurting middle- and working-class interests...."

So let's speed up the warming process then. Downside: Eventual death of the bioshpere. Upside: We won't have to read articles like this anymore.

Many liberals I know won't even glance at the 60 year old janitor that cleans up their art house theater at night who has a back back and arthritis, but they'll raise holy hell if a gay student is ostracized by their peers. And rightly so on the last part, it's just that I do think a lot of us have forgotten about basic working class issues. After years of working customer service for minimum wage in a liberal area, I can tell you there are many liberals that are absolutely clueless about the plight of the working man and woman.

The left needs to do a better job of reaching out to the workers. For too long the right has promised them that they are the party of the everyman, and many workers have bought the bullshit, much to their own detriment. The problem is that with our Dems in Washington in the pockets of big business, we aren't really able to promise them much at this time.

arthritis"? (not sure what "back back" is). Have you read GD and LBN? Universal health care is a HUGE issue on DU. So are workers rights. One of the first things the new Democratic congress did was put forth a bill to raise the minimum wage. John Edwards has put workers at the top of his agenda. Yes, I'm personally most concerned with global warming because if we are wiped out as a species, we won't really be all that worried about much of anything else. My home was hit by three hurricanes in 2004, and I did disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina survivors-I KNOW how terribly climate change can impact the poor. It can destroy entire cities and leave families in complete despair. Yes, there are Dems on the Hill who are as much in the pockets of corporate America as all republicans are. But look around. True LIBERALS are not.

One of the things I really admire about DU is the fact that many on here haven't forgotten about working issues. But I grew up in Santa Rosa, CA, a very liberal town. I went to Humboldt State University, one of the most liberal universities in the country. I can't even count the times I had discussions about war, global warming, gay rights, gun control, ect. But I am hard pressed to remember a conversation I had with anybody during all those years about working people's issues. And if I did, it usually stemmed around something like raising the minimum wage by 50 cents. As if that's going to make everything all right for someone who can't afford their bills.

You're right, true liberals are not in the pocket of big corporations. But we need to stop talking about the minimum wage and start talking about a livable wage. We need to reach out to the retail worker that has no benefits and shit pay that so many of us just pass on by while we do our shopping. Yes, I know not all liberals have abandoned those people. But I do think they have taken a backseat to other liberal issues. There's a lot of votes in that segment of the population. But if we make promises to them, we have to be able to deliver. And that's why the corporate Dems are such a problem. The low wage workers see them and don't think that they will do anything to help them. And, unfortunately, they're right.

:patriot:

Going to Humboldt really sharpened my political acuity, but maybe not in the direction all the filthy hippies would have hoped. :P

Here on DU I've seen far more interest in "lunch-pail joes" (itself a demeaning term) than with global warming and gay rights. The Iraq war still tops most lists, but worker's rights and the economy seem to hold a close second place. I personally am most concerned about global warming because it's an issue that has a profound effect on every other issue, as our very existence is at stake. Studies have shown time and time again that tightening US environmental regulations and developing clean, renewable fuels can only HELP the middle and lower classes; less illness (ashema, cancer, lung disease etc) more jobs in developing technologies and ultimately lower energy costs for consumers-and well as energy independence, which would get us out of the Middle East which would ultimately save the taxpayer Trillions and many, many lives..but it wouldn't enrich the fossil fuel barons. And THAT'S at the heart of it all.

I think the crux of the matter is that too many look at these issues in terms of eventually, without addressing the here and now.

You are absolutely correct about global warning and the promise of alternative energy.

But maybe having a somewhat better system 15 years from now doesn't help the person who is struggling to pay rising gas prices and heating costs today.

Instead of buckling under to (or supporting) the "free market" neoliberal beliefs that the "markets" will correct themselves, we need to take a more pro-active stance through regulation, anti-trust actions and other means to loosen the grip that the Oiligarchy has on us NOW.

Being "green" in safe symbolic ways does absolutely nothing to address the systemic problems, other than allow some of us to feel better.

Shit, there was an energy crisis in the 1970's. If "liberals" had taken the bull by the horns in the 80's and 90's, instead of kissing the butts of the Masters of Markets, we'd already be a lot further along on the road to affordable clean energy.

Over the last 30 years, there has been a growing dichotomy between traditional lunch-bucket liberalism and the cartoon version of liberalism that currently exists.

More ominously, too many "liberals" have jettisoned the core issues of Wealth and Power while enabling the phony culture wars incited by the GOp and the Right.

That is not to say that Democrats and liberals/progressive should abandon socially liberal positions such as gay rights.

Rather, IMO, such issues have been allowed to become more polarizing precisely BECAUSE of the lack of an economic underpinning from the Democratic Party and the "gentry left."

In other words, the is a significant share of the population that could accept -- and even support -- issues like gay rights and abortion rights on the basis that they are part of a social "live and let live" libertarianism that is ingrained in America.

There is also a share of the population that is socially conservative -- and perhaps even bigoted -- but who would be willing to support a liberal-progressive economic agenda by Democrats if they believed that we are on their side in terms of the bread-and-butter issues and were fighting against the Economic Elite for the interests of the majority.

But because the Democratic Party and many on the left have abandoned those issues of widespread concern regarding concentrations of wealth and power, all that is left in the political debate are the more divisive social issues.

I do disagree with the authors about environmentalism -- the current resurgance of polarization on that is a relatively new trend. For most of the 90's, and even in much of the 80's, there was a general consensus in favor of environmentalism. BushCo reopened those old wounds, and re-ignited a phony conflict over them.

IMO, the country continues to move towards green positions. We just have to fight for them in conjunction with the fight for economic justice -- and attack the phony divisions that the Corporate Conservatives have set up on those issues.

If some of this is true (and much of it isn't) it's not a bad thing at all to have wealthier urbanites align with rural and suburban working class voters to create an alliance the Republicans cannot beat.

Yes such alignments are desirable and necessary.

However, the deeper point is on what basis should such alliances be formed?

The "greed is good" bottom-line mentality of Wall St. neo-liberalism/conservatism is inherently opposed to the interests of the middle and working classes.

The only way to break the stranglehold the elites have acquired is a committment to fundamental reforms that may be uncomfortable to some socially-liberal economic elitist who depends on perpetuating the Hedge Fund mentality for his/her own wealth.

They do not have to be mutually exclusive. However, it does require a two-way recognition of this, and more than meaningless lip-service.

and lunch pail Joes ... because the lunch pail Joes will suffer most greatly the consequences and costs of a degraded environment. It is not an either/or situation. Indeed, the requirement to re-tool our economy so that it can operate in an environmentally sane fashion presents a set of enormous opportunities for working class Americans and wise investors. Failure to seize those opportunities will inflict a ever expanding circle of consequence upon the middle and lower classes.

Many people don't get that yet.

will feel the effects first, just as in any environmental disaster, they have the least amount of resources to adapt with, Katrina is just one relatively small example of what is to come, if we don't get right with mother nature. I'm not saying the rich and powerful will escape, should all the negative environmental tipping points come in to play, they will just last longer, but eventually die off as well.

It seems to me the real "gentry" in this, are the two authors of this column, trying to divide humanity in to sub groups.

and if anything, it comes down to being a "public health" issue. Air pollution effects everyone, as does water quality, etc.

I am sure Joe Lunchpail would understand that; he doesn't want his kids to suffer from asthma.

The authors are full of **it.

he probably also thinks Hillary is liberal. :eyes:

Most of us care as much about "The Average Joe", those who are poor, people with disabilities, etc. as we do about gay rights, the environment, and abortion rights. Why? Because many of us are The Average Joe, poor, living with a disability, know someone who is, or at the very least care about people who are/do by our very nature.

The notion that we are one-issue-voters, Cause-heads, or elitists is offensive and terribly disingenuous.

Reading that reminded me of a documentary I watched a few years ago set in a gentrifying neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. There was a battle going on between the mostly African-American in-place population living in run down housing and the new arrivals who were mostly gay men and renovating the great old houses there. I've lived in nothing but pre-gentrification areas that became post-gentrification areas, so I'm very sensitive to what comes of the process, both the good and the bad. I may not get the documentary's exact details straight, it's been a while. But what I remember is a great deal of hostility between the groups, the blacks and the gays, over the usual higher rents, displacement, charges of racism, etc. Then something happened where one of the houses still occupied by an aging original owner was faced with a crisis, a major repair that would have to be done requiring expensive labor and tools that the owner simply couldn't pay for, or face losing the property to the city. In my recollection, two gay men in the process of renovating their own house, went over to the neighbor who had been very hostile, and with their tools and building skills took care of it, saving the home for the homeowner. I was watching it with a gay male friend. We turned to each other and said at the same time, "That's what it takes." One human being more fortunate reaching out to another less fortunate and all the rest of it be damned. And we wondered why doesn't that happen more often, why other of the newcomers hadn't thought of pitching in as the two men had, because it might solve a lot of community problems and hostility between social groups. Again, don't hold me to the details, because I may have it slightly wrong, but in essence, this is the story I was reminded of.

So in a way I think there is something to that article. If you don't look, you don't see.

While I disagree with the tone of the article, there has been a "falling away" of sorts with real on the ground contact in real lives.
TV as a medium dislocates us from what is real, replacing with a manufactured proxy for reality.
So easy then to divide and conquer.

It is the very essence of the matrix.
The steak tastes so real.


If we can ever connect and build up this country and view the world with a "WE are all in this together" attitude...

Gay rights are HUMAN rights.
Environmental issues are HUMAN issues.
Who is hurt the most by bad air, water? The poor get the brunt of it, of course.
Who else, after all, gets the plants built upwind of their neighborhoods?

Health care? What elite nonsense!
Now GOP, they are serious! Build fences, invade countries, talk about caliphates taking over our country!
Grownups!

The article treats the readers as if they are idiots.
This is all too common, alas.

The Republicans run the place and they're doing nothing. Global climate change is something real, and it is affecting EVERYONE. Yet, we get this snooty article about gentry liberals, as if global climate change was some elitist issue to sound cool talking about at a party. No, it is real. Already, 14,000 landscapers lost their jobs in Atlanta due to the needed outdoor watering ban. Gee, looks like global climate change affects lower income people and small business owners first, surprise, surprise.

Who else gets the plants built upwind of their neighborhoods?

Okay, but who else is not gonna have a job when the plant moves to China to avoid environmental costs?

Gay rights are human rights?

Yet, still probably not a top concern to a homeless or unemployed straight person. Do they really have skin in that game?

I could get all defensive about that. I acknowledge the interconnectedness of all of these issues.
I mentioned outsourcing in another post here, and environment and world labor standards for human rights are intertwined.
That IS all a part of the bigger picture. NOT just American people. All people.
Not just straight, but all. Not just rich, but all.

And yes gay people are human, deserving of rights.
Hence human rights issues, of equality under the law.
Do you think otherwise?

Why care only for the straight homeless or unemployed?
I support ALL working class regardless of these differences you cite.
They are equally human and they have equal "skin in the game" of life and dignity.

I am really not sure why you feel the need to attack me and try to make it an either/or issue, but I hope you reconsider.

There are alot of white collar management types here who think they are working class.

I did not say that I only cared about unemployed people who are straight. However, if 90% of the population is straight, then so are 90% of the unemployed, approximately, and the same with the poor. Poor people who are straight are probably far more concerned with their own poverty than they are about GLBT issues.

You put the social issues ahead of working class issues. I said that probably reveals your own perspective. That's not much of an attack. I did not, after all, say anything about how your momma wears army boots.

Either/or. Blame it on my training in economics. Everything is limited and has an opportunity cost. Concentrate on identity politics and you are taking attention and energy away from working class issues. Then again, perhaps income divides us as much as anything else.

I am working class in the sense that my parents had to quit school early to take care of family in the depression - picked cotton, welded ships and so on, and built up a middle class existence from that. My dad's father was harassed by the KKKlan for selling firewood to blacks in the 20s. My dad taught me by example to be anti-racist and anti-classist, and was a Eugene McCarthy/FDR style populist liberal. His pension of 40+ years of work was robbed by fatcat drug dealing GOP horsebreedeing motherfucker that bought the company he helped start, and that ripped the rug under his safety net and my college fund. I am cursed to be an artist type in a family that had a hard time understanding my interests in art and anthropology, and the possibilityy of making a living at such things, so I could not in good conscience take their reduced savings in any way, intending to pay my own way through, but life intervened in that - and I have done the following jobs, among others:
Cleaned horse stalls, welded water tanks, swept floors, taught arts and crafts to Army personnel, worked in a print shop, handyman, carried hot tar up 2 story buildings, had some major blue collar injuries, designed flyers and business cards and animated on the computer after those injuries. Self taught, mostly. Now I am underemployed and struggling, designing web pages and the like. Technically working class means being a wage rather than salaried, I bill by the hour or project- but made more as a roofer than the deflated web services here. Part of this is by choice, part by health issues...so, blue collar, NO collar, white collar -I have done all of these.

Jeez, enough about me -- rather than debate my current status, please consider that my class consciousness runs deep. I have never been a very wealth hungry person, and have living lightly on this earth as an ideal (perhaps idealized) goal.
Is working poor close enough? A blue collar philosopher?
There are a lot of us out here, often putting up drywall and such.

In the hierarchy of needs, it is true that if you are poor, food or heat will likely be a higher priority than some abstract right. But, police harassment or having the crap beaten out of you for appearing gay is still a simple survival human rights issue. food/shelter/safety. Not identity politics. real basic stuff. While personally "straight" I lost several of my best gay friends to AIDS and I saw how unfairly they were treated in many ways. Threats of violence, job discrimination, etc. are real and often working class issues.

My apologies if I mischaracterized your statements - and also if my positions were not made clear.
I do not put social issues AHEAD of working class issues at all.
My position is that they are so intertwined that to argue one to the exclusion of others is a limited approach that gets us fighting over a limited supply. An implied false choice. Bush Sr. was good at this, using environment vs jobs to demagogue the issue. As wiser people would say, we can have both, and a new green economy can make many jobs where the factories have left us.
As an economist, you probably have insight into some of the possibilities of a new green tech jumpstarted with a little Keynesian funding?
Just because I live with an income below the poverty line does not mean that I am unable to see both bread and butter as well as abstract issues. Indeed, as low on the econochain as I am, they are often the very real world examples of abstract issues come to life. This is something that remains in the abstract if one never runs across it in real life. Object lessons, one could say.

While companies leaving for better pastures is a big issue, so too is growing up withlead contamination, leading to lifelong problems. That can really mess up social mobility.

One of the things that modern lib/progs should consider is a social snobbery, stereotyping of those in a different social, educational or income class.
And assumptions that they are X or Y and therefore could not understand anything outside of their immediate experience. We probably share common ground on that. My feeling was that the original op-ed was exploiting that old charade to set up a worn out narrative. They do that a lot you know, keep the rabble fighting amongst ourselves.
We need to loosen up and have fun together and work together on so many things, and resentment helps not a whit, unless it's Bastille stormin time.;)

Hey, if you said my mother wore army boots I would just laugh.Quite a picture!
Assuming I am management class, or otherwise ignorant to the plight of working poor, with my history....well that makes me laugh too. So no worries.

Much more interesting to me is your thoughts on how to bridge this gap (real and perceived) between working class and environment and labor rights, etc. Improving the human condition in a way that we can live a sustainable life. I am quite willing to listen to your ideas on that.

Are you also a working class person? If so, how has your training in economics influenced your experience while viewing from lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder?

It should, if we have broader issues that more people agree on, perhaps ending the war and health care would be such issues, although a sort of danger is that those got co-opted by Clinton, and I am not sure she is sincere about either (although to be fair, healthcare was an issue for the Clintons as far back as the 1992 campaign, except that their plan was shot down and they kinda gave up on it.)

That's a rough work history you have. Myself I sorta fell or jumped into the lower class from an upper middle class upbringing.

Environment should be a uniting issue as well, since nobody really likes pollution or litter, but the masses do seem to have a weakness for big vehicles that get bad gas mileage.

Many of the street kids you see in urban area are queer teens that were thrown out of their homes or who ran away from abusive, homophobic environments and had nowhere else to go.

I took GED classes at Harvey Milk School with a lot of these kids and their stories would break your heart, assuming you've still got one.

The two issues are not unrelated.

What a fucking ridiculous editorial.

All gay people are rich. :eyes:

:wow:

and not necessarily those of the LA Times. (Or even of the OP here at DU -- myself.)

:)

I think it's setting up a false dichotomy here. Pitting these so-called "gentry liberals" against those with lower incomes and less -fancy addresses -- as if our concerns are really that divergent.

I don't think they are, but I can certainly see who might want them to be seen that way. And I'm not talking about Democrats of any stripe.

I think the idea that the "lunch-pail" crowd cares only about their own wages and the "liberals" don't give a damn aobut that is silly. The whole thing is intentionally divisive, and I don't see it working that way in real life.

People really seem to fall for it, like a shiny object.

Really, the "out of touch" liberal is a poisonous meme, and sets up a contrast with the "down to earth" conservative.
Bullshit. It also presumes that class status or lack of degree makes one somehow less valuable on one or more levels.
Or that caring for each other is some lofty elite thing if it comes from liberalism, or humanistic values vs conservative, family church values.

WE have to fight that and find ways to work with our full spectrum of fellow human beings.
Internationally, nationally, locally, personally.
It will be difficult.

are discussed from time to time, but I would say the big issues are:

1. Foreign policy, including the Iraq & Afghanistan wars, and terrorism
2. Constitution & civil liberties
3. Healthcare
4. How the media sucks (like the above article)
5. How the GOP is wrecking the country
6. Global warming (which will disproportionately affect the poor)

Does that sound about right?

And there HAVE been some great diaries and posts about working Americans not getting by and unions. I just think we need MORE of that, which we will have once internet access becomes more universal. Why don't those idiots write about THAT INEQUALITY instead of stereotyping something they know little about?

I would add the trade balance>worker's rights>living wage>environmental conditions>prison labor to be another ring of exploitation that is often addressed, at least in part, among the interneterati...

It is a time for BOLD changes in direction for a sustainable world.
Sadly, it will take yet even more suffering before we get there, if at all.

All the Dems I know, esp. the ones who have PhDs or who are doctors or lawyers or engineers are all pro-union, pro-immigration rights, pro-national health care. They are concerned about income disparity, economic justice, poverty. If they were not, they would be friggin' Republicans, since they all have plenty of money.

Jeez. How dumb can you get? No one who does not need a hand up becomes a Democrat unless they are concerned about the welfare of other people. It is the Kennedy syndrome.

hate mongers attempt to perpetuate it every day in an effort to smear the entire left! :mad:

stay on the offense and we on defense.

The Repiglickin' media will do everything they can over the next year to convince working-class people not to vote Democratic.

Articles like this one are part of that campaign.

another reason there's something "the matter with Kansas". It's something an Edwards nomination might fix. However, it appears that the gentry prefer Hillary.

Many states have had ballot proposals to ban gay marriage. The vast majority of workers did not rush out to defeat those proposals.
In fact, a fair number of Kerry voters voted in favor of those proposals.

I am not saying that I like that fact, but it remains a fact. That's one side. On the other side, all I have is DU experience, but it does not seem like working class issues are a huge concern to the LGBT community.

That's my perception, which may or may not be accurate, that the division, is, in fact, already there. The point of acknowledging such a division is that it is a problem that may cost us elections, and if we can admit that it exists, we can do something about minimizing it.

or that it's elitist to believe that gay people deserve equal rights. Funny, but how does advocating greater environmental regulations on industry hurt the poor or the middle class? Yeah, greater CAFE standards will be such a burden for the average person, considering they'll get a car in the future with better gas mileage. Who wants that?

This is such a pretentious piece of garbage. It's like those "advice" pieces given by DLC hacks (I'm thinking like Joe Klein) about wanting to appeal to working class people, but not actually doing anything meaningful for them - meanwhile throwing every working person under the bus.

That's right - Move On and Huffington Post never mention anything about universal healthcare and better economic opportunities for the poor and middle class....They were never concerned with the bankruptcy bill, the tax cuts for the rich, or the other policies this administration pushed through to favor the rich.

BTW, I saw that entire debate the other day and I don't remember once hearing a viable universal health care plan or even the discussion of poverty.

There are MANY problems with the way the party is heading, but there is no need to sacrifice some issues to further other ones.

... who openly disdain lunch-pail Joes and never miss an opportunity to fuck them over.

DU is an example of how some way out liberals - I mean WAY out there - have taken our good movement to a place most Americans can't (and refuse to) relate to. That's yet another reason the GOP was able to make liberal a bad word.

A lot of the stuff that's advocated by liberal extremists is not stuff a candidate can run on. Its stuff a candidate has to run from.

Instead of calling ourselves "progressive," how about let's get back to basics.

i want health care -- i want a job RAISE, not a tax cut{i'll NEVER get from tax cuts what raises will give me} -- i want to breathe clean air because i'm healthier when i do -- i want to drink clean water for the same reason -- i want an economy with a real diverse profile{not a ''service economy'' divided into categories of ''service'' oriented industrie} -- i want my tax dollars to stop being used as an ever renewing gold mine by corporations -- i want corporations to stop getting breaks at my expense.

this guy can kiss my gay ass.

jerk.