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My goal is to post liberal talking points to combat those from the right.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

I believe that an organization outside the Democratic Party may be needed to save the Party

That is take the party back from the corporatists.

The grass roots of the party do not control the party. Granted the grass roots elected Pres Obama, but he thanked us by dumping Dean in favor of Emanuel. In my opinion the DLC, DCCC, DSCC, and DNC all reek of corporatism.

The Party leaders chose Lieberman over the people’s choice Lamont and now they are backing Specter in lieu of any true Democratic challenger. This demonstrates to me that whoever is running the Democratic Party isn’t interested in grass roots choices, only maintaining the good ole boy corporatist status quo.

Thom Hartman says that we need to get into our local Democratic Party organizations and take over. I am working on that but it looks like a decade project. We haven’t the time. We need to unseat the Dino’s, but I don’t believe we can via the Party organization. Maybe an external organization like Moveon or PDA can raise the money to counter the huge sums offered by the corporations.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

The General Motors Scam

General Motors is claiming to have lost hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a fraud. The money they claim to have “lost”:

a. Was invested in profitable foreign auto plants.

b. Was given to executives as part of ridiculous compensations packages.

c. Was lost on gambles in the stock market.

d. Was accounting maneuvers aimed at showing a loss where none existed.

All the while that GM was supposedly losing billions, they continued to pay their execs huge salaries. Hmm. Could it be because the execs were successfully executing the fraud? After all what is the down side for GM losing billions (on paper)? They will get to raid their employees retirement fund and literally steal the employees money. They will get to disregard existing labor contracts. And they will get the American taxpayers to GIVE them hundreds of billions of dollars. And we threw Bernie Madoff in jail.

See more at: http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/20/what-killed-the-auto-industry

This was also posted at DU by Hannah Bell: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5747611

Friday, May 29, 2009

Health Insurance Simplified

As a compassionate people we pull together in times of need to help out our neighbors that might be less fortunate.

So if someone has an unexpected illness the rest of us pitch-in to help. One way is to wait until the problem occurs and then take up a collection. A more efficient method is to take up collections and have a fund set aside before the problems occur. We will call this fund insurance. There isn’t a lot of overhead required for this type of fund, the “government” handles it fine for about 3%. And, of course, the over-all goal of such a fund is to help people in need.

Now along comes Joe the businessman and says he can run the fund for us. This, for some strange reason, appeals to some that I call the gullibles. Joe of course has a lot of friends in the government because he gives generously to them. And they help him with laws and regulations that are friendly to him. Joe also has lots of money for propaganda and tells the public that his method is free enterprise and not government soocialismmmm. The gullibles buy this crap hook-line-and-sinker. But what the gullibles don’t see is that Joe’s goal is to make a profit and not help people. In fact, there is no limit on the amount of profit Joe would love to make from managing this fund. So instead of the 3% operating expense of the government, Joe’s operating costs come in around 35%. This means less coverage and higher premiums for the members. And don’t think Joe will be satisfied with a mere 35%.

Let the gullibles have their free-enterprise insurance if they want it, but let me have government run insurance.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Is the Big Tent Democratic Party big enough for Colin Powell?

The moderate republiCons are watching their party disintegrate before their vary eyes as Rush, O’Reilly, Hannity and of course Cheney drive stakes thru the heart of the party. The wacko’s that run the party are even trying to kill the moderates like Gen Colin Powell and Sen Specter.

With the rank and file moderate republiCons abandoning the party what are the moderate leaders going to do? Maybe Sen Specter is showing the way. He is now a Democrat but has sworn to keep voting as a republiCon. He fits right in with the DLC and Red Dog Democrats that often support republiCon issues. They already pretty much control the Senate.

I think that if more big name moderate republiCons defect it would strengthen the DLC/corporate part of the party at the expense of the left. And most importantly the moderate republiCons switch would bring the big corporate money with them. The big corporations are ready to dump the wacko’s of the republiCon party and make friends with the moderate Democrats and ex-republiCons in the country.