- The payroll tax ‘holiday’ is a trojan horse. It’s getting an email from a Nigerian who says you inherited money after a plane crash, and then sending them your credit card info. This is a scam and, given the fact that over 60% of America opposes this provision of the ‘compromise,’ the American people know it, too.
- Health insurance and health care are two different things. If you have insurance but it costs so much, and has such high deductibles, that you can’t afford to use it… that’s not health care. When 1 in 5 people in this state (and counting) are in that scenario, we don’t have good health care. We have terrible health care.
- We win by fighting, not allowing the Republicans to set the agenda. We passed the extensions to unemployment benefits nearly a half-dozen times, and no Republican wants to be the guy who’s painted as the person who kicks someone out of their house on Christmas. We could have gone on offense and not only won this issue on its own merits — convincingly — but we could have used it to set the standard going into the next legislative session. Now we’ve set the precedent that the GOP can use even things they’re afraid to fight as hostages because they know we’re afraid of our own freaking shadows.
- Wikileaks has unleashed a torrent of important information. The work Assange has helped foster is absolutely revolutionary and perhaps the single most important thing to happen to our democracy in the modern times. It could literally save it. If you oppose what he’s doing, you’re on the wrong side of history.
- The tax cut “deal” could bankrupt America. It could destroy Social Security. It could set this country so far back that we’ll look at the Gilded Age and think, “how come they had it so good?” This is a freaking disaster.
I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m taking it out on a damn lot of people… and I think my poor head my explode. I don’t know what to do. I just think we’ve come so far beyond the point of talking. We need to get angry. The people who support the wrong side of these issues need to be stopped, not bargained with.
Please share widely!
But I disagree that we need to get angry. Some do, perhaps, but I assert that we need to laugh more.
<
p>Only the professionals are supposed to worry about politics every day, and even they are supposed to get a day off now and then.
<
p>…
<
p>
I am actually getting blocks of tickets for the 1/2/11 show – 10 blocks only cost $11.00 and RYAN – I need a good laugh.
<
p>I spend more hours than I care to tell you with the labeled discards of this elitist, stratified society that still claims in public, falsely, to be a class free society and a Democracy.
<
p>People told: “Get a larger apartment and we will give you your children back.”
<
p>People told: “You are 18 and won’t do what you were told. You are on the street, and on your own.”
<
p>People told: “We are sending your job to Mubai. Good luck, good by, and when the unemmployment runs out, you are on your own.”
<
p>And I could go on – but why make poor Ryan’s head explode? Wanna join my block of seats, you all know how to reach me.
<
p>Want to set up your own – since we ALL need a chance to laugh at the folks who are screwing us all: Link for the Jimmy Tingle shows
<
p>
<
p>The selfish me could use this cash to pay for food and bills, but the Christian inside of me knows this will essentially bankrupt Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will doing little to save the economy since most people will use the extra cash and save it or pay bills as I definitely will if it does happen.
<
p>
<
p>I would agree with this in principle, and this is definitely how the debate ought to be set. It is about helping the American people save money, and use that money to invest in themselves and eventually in the economy. Framing it that way makes this sound like the leg up it is to so many middle and lower income Americans instead of the hand out the Republicans make it out to be. At the bankruptcy law firm where i work I can safely say about half of my cases are due to medical bankruptcies, and if that is not one of the greatest moral outrages of our time, I don’t know what is. Actually not helping 9/11 first responders is right up there.
<
p>
<
p>There are two insidious forces at work here that I think you forgot to mention, though overall its a great point. What you left out is that the Democratic party lost touch with working people in the 1970s over social issues, and in doing so gradually surrendered economic issues to the right as well. Clinton found a way to maintain the social liberalism of the party on race, abortion, and gay rights while adopting essentially Reaganomics-lite policies on economic issues. In the short term this reaped great dividends as corporate America infused the party with campaign cash, but in doing so we forgot who our real constituents were. We endorsed policies that allowed for more outsouring, that eroded the quality of life for working and laboring Americans, and that ultimately created this economic crisis (never forget Glass-Steagall was gutted by a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate). I think we should have endorsed Reaganesque language about the country, and even some of its nostalgia for a simpler past and an era of more social moderation and cohesion, but we should never have endorsed the economic policies in any form and surrendering the tax debate has been the greatest blunder along with having to sell out. I am not sure if we will ever have the trust of working Americans again, who are convinced we are pawns of corporate and Hollywood elitists while we have long ago forgotten how to talk to them and their concerns.
<
p>Living in a swing state of sorts (IL) with competitive Senate, gubernatorial, and congressional races, I was exposed to a lot of ads. Governor Quinn won, IMO, because he used Brady’s economic conservatism against him and pointed out all the great programs that helped working people that he would cut, and he ran on an old-school, New Deal, progressive labor/working families agenda. Alexi ran as a social liberal and economic moderate and got clobbered. He’d have had the lakefront liberals anyway and ended up losing the lunch pail dems he needed. Bean and Foster ran on being pro-choice and got creamed. They should have run on jobs and the radical economic policies of their opponents instead of their radical social policies. SO thats where we need to go, back to the economy, back to a middle class agenda.
<
p>
.
<
p>Here is where I strongly disagree with you. I see little tangible benefit coming out of this that we didn’t either already know or that will somehow make government more transparent or accountable. If anything by alienating moderate Muslims, Russians, and Chinese it set back the late Richard Holbrooke’s vision of a peaceful exit from Afghanistan and a peaceful end to Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. Now those governments will retrench in their public positions and be less willing to bend. Moreover it makes State look impotent and weak and will give another excuses to the DoD to set geopolitics since it can keep better secrets. Diplomacy must be done in both the open and the back channels. This will lead to far more back channels at DoD and its destroyed the credibility of the open ones. Anyone who wants a progressive, internationalist foreign policy, should be weeping over these leaks.
<
p>
<
p>We are entering a second Gilded Age where a plutocracy has access to all the opportunity and the working class is forced into greater subsistence either on government or, works so hard it can’t ever rise. Both are bad for the country. The only substantial difference is that we at least had balanced budgets back then, I see no fiscal conservatism here, just an alliance to continue the tax cutting and spending increases that have ballooned our deficit and it was cut right out of the California playbook. If this is the consequence of divided government I do not want to see where we are in four or five years, we might look back and say this is when the Californication of America began. Its not only bad fiscal policy but it sets a bad precedent that any progressive program has to be politically funded (oxymornic except inside the beltway) and justified through tax cuts. When the bubble does burst it will be the social programs that are hit the hardest, which is why this sucks as a long term solution to our problems.
…why social liberalism alienates the working class. It seems like its the ideal coalition to protect the rights of workers, minorities, women against any tendencies to hold back by the historically advantaged.
You haven’t met my relatives then. Being rich is not a fault, its an aspiration every American has. We are all conditioned to become part of that individualist, striving, condition to consume and produce and produce more to consume more. Its what led us out West, into space, and what still drives our economy. The positives are we are more dynamic, quit to adapt, and share aspirations. The downside is that the communitarian spirit that non-American societies have is lost. Also by placing the burden of holding individual values and morality on the individual, it forces individuals to have essentially competing moral systems and for more conflict and tension to occur. We lack the strong, traditional, communitarian organic solidarity that Durkheim mentions, the organic state Burke is so fond of. Gays are trying to flee a subculture and integrate themselves within traditional society-within communities, within families, and it is viewed as threatening because our religious experiences are so individualized now. The American strain of Christian thought for instance emphasizes a personalized, individual relationship, not a universalist one. Gay rights go hand in hand with labor in Europe and to a lesser extent in Latin America. But in our society the tension is there because they are existing in separate clusters of individuals and not community.
<
p>There is also a sense of a loss of control and a loss of freedom associated with political correctness and being told you have to accept someone you don’t want to. Thats a lot of it there, and to some extent part of the blame rests upon gay rights activists for trying to attain social and cultural acceptance alongside civil rights, and partly our fault for tangling church and state together along with culture in our marriage laws. But if you are not forced to relate to your gay, Mexican, black, or female worker your colleague becomes a ‘they’ and ‘the other’ and it pits groups that ought to be united against one another. And the truth is in many respects the white working class has had to bare the brunt of the bad economic changes we have experienced. It is their jobs being outsourced to foreigners, in some cases their jobs lost to cheaper labor from south of the border, and in some cases their small business contracts lost to a minority owned business, their promotion rejected. And instead of blaming corporate America who engineered this loss for profit, they blame the guy who ‘took’ it from them. To me its easy to see its not the Indians fault he got the new job, its the CEOs fault for being greedy and milking every last ounce of profit from the teet. So long as the Democratic party remains controlled by the purse strings of Gucci Marxists in Hollywood and venture capitalists on Wall Street, it will be difficult to connect to the working man since we appear to be forcing a subcultures value on society at large while also taking money and supporting policies from the evil bosses who screwed them over.
<
p>Lastly the Democratic party and many of its members, including members on this site, are terribly intolerant to religion and religious expression. And telling people they can’t worship openly and freely and that positive expressions of one religion are suddenly ‘offensive’ to all others also rubs them the wrong way. Had universal health care been sold as Christian medicine it’d have been a much easier sell.
I for one am socially and economically progressive (more or less) largely BECAUSE I am also a Christian. Jesus went out of His way to include and associate with those society had outcast and His earliest disciples lived together in way some may be tempted to label communist. I do lament there was not more of a moral imperative side to the universal health care notion because I do think it would have sold. There are athiests on this site and maybe other blogs, but I’ve never heard a Democratic leader trash religion. I agree with Deval Patrick when he says that it is exactly in economic times like this that we need to turn TO each other rather than ON each other. I think we have for the most part figured out how to keep the coalition together here in MA. Also, the blunt truth is I am also a suburbanite and I don’t have all that much interaction with various minority groups. That doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t favor their rights and opportunities. When Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself and the teacher of the law asked him who is his neighbor, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan and pointed out that the neighbor was the one who was kind to the victim. It just so happens that said neighbor was not only not the religious figure who should have helped, but a member of a hated religious-ethnic minority.
If I am pulling a Brooks and painting with too broad of a brush I apologize, but my broader point was simply that suburbanites out in ‘middle America’, including some in my girlfriends suburban Midwestern church, including some of my white ethnic Catholic relatives out in Western MA and the North Shore, there is a profound sense of loss when they have to say ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of “Merry Christmas”. When “Merry Christmas” becomes an offensive saying in the culture, to them something profound is lost. When gays are ‘taking over’ marriage, in their view, something is lost. When they get taxed it goes to ‘them’-the poor masses of brown minorities that they are afraid of. They get pretty good union healthcare already and don’t feel it should go to people that aren’t working and aren’t ‘earning’ it. I am not defending these assumptions, I am saying that liberals and the Democratic Party in general should not just dismiss this as clinging to guns and religion but actively engage people and their beliefs and spin them to support our cause. Health care reform was poorly sold precisely because the moral component was left out, so it just seemed like another bailoutl, another expensive entitlement we can’t reform. Had the moral story of white working people struggling to pay bills due to health care, the moral wrong of medical bankruptcy, had that argument been made substantially I am positive we would have had a public option. Also not having transparency and letting so many groups have a piece of the sausage making gave rise to the idea that remote elites in ivory towers are making important decisions on your behalf, and that fed into the whole death panel nonsense.
<
p>And again I am sure there are many progressive Christians at your church, but in my Cambridge high school, at U Chicago, and around the lefty towns and neighborhoods I’ve lived in, I have seen mass amounts of open derision and contempt towards people of faith, even in my office which is mostly full of workers educated at state schools. So there is a profound prejudice against religion among the educated and urban set, and since that set is the lifeblood in terms of volunteering and donating to progressive causes, the vanguard of gay rights, the vanguard of social justice, the vanguard of the anti-war movement, that is part of the problem. There is similar derision and mocking condescension towards overt displays of patriotism as well. And that is a big problem we need to overcome, Democrats need to stop surrendering God and the flag to the otherside, precisely because I think our ideology is truer to Christian and American values.
I have no doubts some of these people feel ‘attacked’ from time to time, but by and large the persecution is imaginary, often dreamed up by the people who are the real worst offenders (ie Rush Limbaugh complaining about ‘racism’ against white people). We live in a Christian country; the vast sums of people who are persecuted based on religious reasoning are the people who aren’t religious, or who practice different flavors of Christianity, or are people who live lives that Christian fundamentalists aren’t pleased with (ie gay people).
<
p>I don’t know how to bridge the gap when the gap is in someone’s head, but rest assured, it isn’t the people who are really being persecuted against who’s responsibility it is to hold the hands of fundamentalists who view the world in a lens that is in their own heads — only in their dreams are they the ones without the power or losing their grips on it. The days when Christians were sent to the lions are long since over. I reject that notion and when someone acts that way, they need to be called on it… it’s the only way they can learn.
“There is a profound sense of loss when they have to say ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’.”
<
p>They don’t have to say either of those. This sounds as if people don’t like the guilt they personally feel, and are trying to blame others for the guilt they’ve chosen to take on. I myself prefer Happy Holidays in recognition of the fact that about 1/3 of America is not a practicing Christian, but they want to go with Merry Christmas, I’ve no problem with that — I hope my Christmas is as enjoyable as their Solstice.
<
p>That passage is just a microcosm of what struck me about your post — people are unhappy about what they believe, not what is. The problem isn’t what America or the Democratic Party are, but rather what they believe it to be.
<
p>I don’t know if Democrats surrender God, though they don’t abase themselves as eagerly as Republicans do. Reading stuff from Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, their ideas of “embracing God” are tantamount to theocracy-lite. I don’t think Democrats rushing to that is the solution. As for patriotism, Democrats embrace that, too, though again not the point of running a presidential candidate with the slogan “country first”, with a whiff of fascism.
<
p>I don’t think that joining Republicans in a race to the bottom is the way to go, though I am distressed that refusing to do so is leaving so many voters behind.
<
p>The overwhelming majority of people being told they “can’t worship openly and freely” in America today are Muslims, and they are being told that by folks who proclaim themselves to be “Christian”. I’ve seen your “positive expressions of religion” at the Planned Parenthood clinics in Brookline. I saw it when a women’s clinic had the audacity to open on Harvard Street last year. I see your “positive expressions of religion” in the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church harassing family members grieving children, spouses, and parents killed in action. I see them in tragedies like the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. at the hands of religious bigots.
<
p>I see your “positive expressions of religion” in an entire generation of American young people who aren’t taught evolution because textbook publishers fear loss of sales in Texas.
<
p>Your “positive expressions of religion” have no place in a school my children are forced, by law, to attend. They have no place in courtrooms where Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Native Americans, and countless other faiths are subject to judgment and punishment meted out by “Christians” who celebrate a faith that calls for the execution of non-believers (would you like me to cite chapter and verse?).
<
p>You bleat aphorisms from your secure place as a white Christian male — and you simultaneously blind yourself to the experiences of those who suffer the dark side of those “positive expressions of religion” that you so piously promote.
<
p>I am quite certain that your attitudes towards government involvement in religion would be very different if your religion, race, gender, or nationality happened to be different.
You make a very good point regarding Muslims. I remember when some of them tried to hold a rally on Capitol Hill and the Christian Right, the same who scream bloody murder when someone objects to their public expressions, said this was the beginning of the Islamification of America.
<
p>However, I take great exception to your characterization of “positive expressions of religion”. Clinic bombings, hate crimes, Westboro Baptist “Church”, and willful ignorance of science are very much NEGATIVE expressions of religion. You have proven that the blockquote from jconway you cited above applies to you.
<
p>Yes, I need you to cite for chapter and verse where it says Christians should kill non-believers. I’m fairly familiar with the Bible and cannot come up with a citation for that. If it’s there I’m sure there was a specific context written after all by a fallible human being that is not intended to apply universally. Certainly no church, at least of any mainstream credibility, teaches that today. In fact, the crux of the Christian message is love for all people.
For you, the clinic bombings, hate crimes, etc. are negative. For those who perform them, and the millions of Americans who applaud those who perform them, they are positive.
<
p>You wrote:
<
p>You again seem to confuse your particular interpretation of Christianity with those of the rabid right. I call your attention to this pair of passages:
<
p>From 2 Chronicles 15 (emphasis mine):
<
p>From Matthew 5:18:
<
p>It doesn’t sound as though you’ve spent much time in the pews listening to extremist fundamentalist preaching. When judges post the Decalogue in their courtroom (leaving aside for the moment nit-picking questions about WHICH Decalogue and even whether there were actually ten), they cite Hebrew Scriptures, not New Testament.
<
p>Unlike their more liberal and less fundamentalist Christian counterparts, there are literally millions of Americans who embrace every letter of every word of the Hebrew Scriptures as inerrant (some go so far as to claim this of the King James translation).
<
p>Passages like 2 Chronicles have been used to spill oceans of blood of “infidels” throughout western history, including twenty-first century America. I assure that the Hebrew Scriptures are chock-full of such blood-thirsty demands on “believers”.
I know that. You could have added Jericho, Gideon, Saul slaying his 1000s while David slayed his 10,000s, and a whole host of other instances where the Israelites could defeat their enemies because God was on their side. As I figured, though, the Chronicles passage (part of the OLD Testament just for the record) describes a specific instance, and at least from the translation you use I wouldn’t necessarily say that was a good or recommended thing, just a report of what happened. I could write an account of the assasination of Dr. Tiller and even report that the crime was religiously motivated, but that in no way means I condone it; I’m just saying what happened. That being said the authors of those books were theocrats, so that has to be considered.
<
p>As for the Matthew passage, it specifically refers to the Law, which are the first 5 books, the Torah and does not include Chronicles. Even there I don’t believe there is a general commandment that all who do not believe are to be put to death. In fact of the Ten Commandments, arguably the highest law of the Torah, there is the admonition that thou shalt not kill, which I would interpret as the default position unless in a specific context God tells you to kill. If people such as Dr. Tiller’s assassin think that God is telling them to, that should not be laid at the feet of all Christianity. I think Rabbi Hillel had it right when he said, “That which is hateful to you do not do unto your neighbor; that is the whole of the Torah; the rest is commentary.” Even the words attributed to Jesus are not consistent with regard to the law. There’s another similar quote to the one you cited that says, “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fullfil it.” Yet, He also very clearly indicates He is reversing the law when He teaches about divorce (OT allows it; Jesus says no.) and vengeance (OT says an eye for an eye; Jesus says turn the other cheek.)
<
p>As I have pleaded several times with you, I hope you can separate mainstream from fringe in Christianity, even within the Right those who are violent from those who are not. I have a very difficult time believing there are millions who applaud acts of violence. To me Jesus’ own words are the basis for the faith: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your spirit, and all your strength…and love your neighbor as yourself; upon these two commandments are based all the law and the prophets.” Those who commit the acts of violence you describe are not Christians, IMO.
I suggest that the spread between the “fringe” and the “mainstream” is about the same for Christianity as it is for Islam. While I understand that in your view, “Those who commit the acts of violence you describe are not Christians”, the sad truth is that your view is not nearly universal. There are large regions of this nation where you and your attitudes are described as “dangerous”, “un-Christian”, and far worse.
<
p>Let’s not forget the original context of this portion of the thread — a claim, directed at folks like me, that we are “terribly intolerant to religion and religious expression.”
<
p>I remind that you and I are extraordinarily tolerant in comparison to enormous numbers of right-wing Americans today.
and likewise you will probably agree with me that the 9/11 perpetrators not only hijacked four planes that day, but a great religion in the process. They are no more Muslims than the people previously described are Christians. Let’s agree (I hope) that those who peaceably practice their faith, whichever it may be, and are motivated thereby to work for justice in the world, are to be commended.
Though I far prefer when they practice that faith privately, rather than publicly, and let their actions speak for their beliefs.
I would just note that to me the actions of which you speak ARE the highest expression of practicing one’s faith. As for prayer and rituals, Jesus does say that when thou prayest go into the closet and pray to your Father who is in secret.
<
p>That preference IS intolerance.
<
p>Let me rephrase that in analogous terms you may understand
<
p>”I like gays, though I far prefer it when they practice their lifestyle privately, rather than publicly, and let their actions speak for their character”.
<
p>You see where I am coming from? I agree with you that Islamophobia and Homophobia are bigotry, bigotry in many cases associated with Christian Americans. As a Christian American that makes it far more painful to hear such bigotry, especially since my faith was at one time persecuted for the same reasons by similar people (fundamentalist Protestants). There was not a single Catholic conservative that came out against the mosque, and several that came out in favor of it precisely because of that shared history of mistrust by Protestant America. I think it is wrong to say Muslims are all extremist and should keep their opinions to themselves, I also think it is wrong to say that of Christians, which you have done repeatedly on this threat, and even conceding Christophers point that not all Christians are this bad, you still say you wish religious people of all stripes would just shut up already and leave you alone. But we have the right to come to your door, sing carols, or pass out bibles. And you have every right to slam that door in our face. That is the beauty of America. But to have us arrested or accosted for openly celebrating our faith, is exactly against the principles of the first amendment, which allows people of ALL faiths and no faith to express themselves equally. All are equally valid expressions in the eye of the law. The government should let a true marketplace of ideas in religion flow, Chrisitans in government should not try and silence atheists and Muslims, and secular liberals should stop trying to silence Christians. At the end of the day we all have the same rights to speak our minds, the right to disagree, and the responsibility to do so civilly.
The Koran, when taken literally, allows for far worse atrocities to be committed against Jews, against women, and against gays. The mainstream of Islam, on a global scale, is far more intolerant of progressive policies than Christianity is. There is a broad mainline Christian movement that is pro-gay rights, pro-social justice, and anti-war. No church that I know of has endorsed clinic bombings, over 98% of Americans when polled, condemn the Westboro group. To say that Westboro speaks for all of Christianity is the same kind of moronic thought as saying that Al Qaeda speaks for all of Islam.
<
p>I have never been anti-Muslim, if anything I am more pro-Muslim than some on this site, yourself included, who support banning headscarves. I was in favor of building that mosque at ground zero, precisely because I am a white Catholic male, and knew of a time when this very state prevented my own religion from building its churches and schools and tried actively to suppress and defund it. I had ancestors that were not hired on account of their faith and their ethnicity, I had a President, almost not elected in my parents lifetime, because he shared my Catholic faith. So you can take your scantimonious act to the cleaners. The right is certainly against religious liberty since it wants burqua’s, mosques’ and non-Judeo-Christian religions banned or at least forced outside of mainstream culture. But folks like you want to force Christians like me from wishing Merry Christmas to people, I cannot wear a cross to school or otherwise express my own religious viewpoints and opinions in a public school. It was okay for my Iranian student teacher to have a copy of the Koran at his desk and to take kids after school to teach them about Islam in my high school, but God forbid a Catholic, Protestant, or even Jewish teacher do the same. The Muslims can have a student group and get Eid off, all fine goals that I support, but a bible study group was prevented from getting school funding and prevented from meeting before school inside of the school. So to me that is a gross double standard, where secular progressives like yourselves, rally to protect a religion far more fundamentalist and conservative than Christianity, because it is eastern, made up of racial and ethnic minorities, and jointly opposed by the Christian fundamentalists you despise. But there is no way an atheist is oppressed in this society, since they fit right in since we have crafted a society where religion is relegated to the home, to church, and to the private sphere.
<
p>I am not saying an official religion should be forced down peoples throats. I think a perfect example is the Lincoln tunnel controversy. The atheists had every right to put up their billboard, so did Donahughe’s moronic Catholic Defense League (believe me even I am ashamed of those clowns). And thats what America is about, an open public square where ideas, even religious ones, can be debated and freely propogated and brought about. It was many of the same secular progressives who support the mosque that oppossed the Mormon temple in Belmont. That is just as hypocritical as the Thomas More society refusing to stand up for the religious freedom of Muslims. The ACLU was right to assert the mosques right to freedom of expression and religion, I only wish they would do the same for Christians. Arresting football players who voluntarily engage in a pre-game prayer to me is asinine and just as arbitrary as stopping a mosque, or if the New York Transit Authority silenced the atheists. I support freedom of religion for everyone, you support freedom from religion for yourself. Thats the difference. You have no tolerance or respect for people of faith. And I am sorry Christopher, by BrooklineTom is representative of many people in our party. And they are part of the reason we keep losing the votes of the heartland and working people.
religious expression.”
<
p>Maybe ‘terribly intolerant’ to those people who practice a particular faith that are trying to suppress their rights… but that’s a vastly different thing.
<
p>My point is that Democrats are not intolerant of religions… that’s a Rush-Limbaugh-fed talking point meant to stir up the religious right. The reality of the situation is a great deal of the left is a ‘religious left’ that no one ever talks about, and often their views of what it means to be religious is completely ignored by society at large. It’s as if they don’t count.
Look above to BrooklineTom, my point is made for me.
<
p>Again I will make no apologies for bigots, even if they share my faith. There is no way around it, they are intolerant and they are wrong. Now the fact that I happen to think a fetus deserves consideration as much as the woman, and the fact that others like me think this, does not make me a bigot, nor does it make our thought and speech any less protected under the Constitution. But I am always quick to condemn homophobia whenever I hear it from a Christian for a wide variety of reasons. An evangelical pastor once said, heterosexuals have done more than enough to destroy and defile the sanctity of marriage for us to be in a place to judge and mistreat homosexuals. When it comes to the state we are all governed by the same set of standards, the Constitution, and I see no Constitutional basis for denying gays the same rights and responsibilities bundled together under marriage that heterosexuals enjoy. And so long as churches are still free to exercise their rights and beliefs without government interference, than I see no threat posed by expanding gay rights in the civil sphere. And as a Catholic I can say with authority we have so many bigger problems, within our Church, and within society in general, that deserve our attention and time. Gay marriage is nowhere near a priority on that list. I am also quite certain that judging people and mistreating them is not cool with the man upstairs, the same man who said though shalt not judge lest ye be judged, that love your neighbor as yourself, and let you take the log out of your eye before you remove the speck from mine, etc. My brothers evangelical Church, the evangelical movement in general, and the Catholic church, are pushing forward on ensuring gays are not mistreated and removing bigots from the ranks. There will be some warts, and internally the marriage question will always be an issue, but I think if anything, Christians my age are far more open to gays and gay rights than their parents. If anything I would say that Christians, gay Christians, and non-Christian gays, have far more in common and should be fighting on the same team for a more fair, just, and equitable society for all people. And the sooner people on all sides recognize that the better.
<
p>What worries me is that so many within the progressive movement and Democratic Party look their noses down on religious people, or assume we are all rabidly and extremely pro-life and anti-gay, or are all free marketers (thats the most laughable) that the common cause we should share-in favor of universal healthcare, against unjust war, against the death penalty, against hatred and bigotry, are lost since we focus on the symbolic and the asinine. Religious people are going to be openly expressive of their faith and enthusiastic about it, lets use that expression and enthusiasm and direct it towards our goals. If you are an atheist, don’t judge me for having beliefs different from yours, don’t assume I am somehow less educated and less enlightened because I think differently, and I will in kind not assume you are immoral or not passionate about social justice. I think that is a deal that should be made, neutrality on religious issues, and focusing on the common ground.
<
p>
Despite his enthusiastic descriptions, he didn’t say anything anti-Christian. What he said is pro… other people. You know, the minority that some — but not all — Christians in this country persecute against.
<
p>
<
p>Not anti-christian, pro-Muslim.
<
p>
<
p>Not anti-Christain, pro-civil rights.
<
p>
<
p>Not anti-Christian, pro-education and pro-Constitution.
<
p>I don’t think I need to go on.
<
p>The point is that there is a lot of intolerance in this country, and primarily that intolerance is made by Christians against other people. While, surely, not all Christians deserve the blame for that intolerance, the movement conservative groups certainly do. Those that aren’t hardlining enough to be active in picketing Planned Parenthood locations (or worse) are not doing enough to beat back those who are — despite the fact that they have the power to do so. When Catholic Bishops in the US are deciding Presidential-Nominee John Kerry can’t receive communion because he’s pro-choice, it’s hard to deny the fact that even some mainstream Christian organizations deserve legitimate criticism for the way they use their religion as a stick against other people in this country in a way that is a form of persecution against the very same people they (laughably) claim are ‘intolerant’ against Christians.
<
p>Saying these things is not ‘being mean’ or ‘persecuting’ Christians in this country or any other. It’s just the truth. People who are devoted to something have a hard time seeing the truth when it comes to the things they’re devoted to following. They have an even harder time hearing it — and when they hear it, they tend to imagine they that, themselves, are the ones being persecuted. It’s not true.
<
p>Despite the level of discomfort these people may experience when hearing the truth, it must happen nonetheless — because not only is it honest, but it will help those religions in the long run. If they stop persecuting others, and let people live their own lives in peace, not only will people stop being angry with those people of faith… but the world will be a better place.
<
p>Just as surely as Muslims in other countries have to get their ducks in order with their fundamentalists, and Jews do with their’s in Israel if there’s to be peace, Christians must in the United States, if we’re to have real equality, as well. Instead of imagining themselves as being persecuted against because a few people have the gumption to point out the truth… they need to stop using their religion as a blunt tool against other people. This isn’t me being anti-Christian, or a “democrat being mean to Christians,” this is the cold hard truth.
<
p>… And I still haven’t met any Democrat who is anti-religious or Christian, only anti-people-who-use-their-religions-as-blunt-tools-against-the-rest-of-society.
…when it’s coupled with overt class bias and generic racial condescension.
<
p>This is reflected in the profoundly anti-Left opinions of the majority of Americans, who rightfully feel abandoned and exploited.
<
p>There is a certain “Live and Let Live” tolerance in most working-class communities that goes out the window when their residents’ civic values are trashed.
<
p>Most of what passes for social issue liberal – and progressive – politics is in the best interest of the self-entitled white upper-middle class, which limits its appeal to “workers, minorities, and (working-class and/or married) women”.
<
p>As a result, there are a lot of populist liberal anti-progressives out there, easily exploited by the Republican Party because their only targeted sources of political communication specifically (albeit falsely) addressing real concerns come from the Right.
Almost every major politician in the Democratic Party is both pro-worker and socially progressive. I also wouldn’t put to much stock in the poll you linked. Liberal has become a dirty word, but so often I see polls that show on specific issues people tend to lean liberal. However, I suspect many of those identify as moderates in the poll.
Actually the national Democratic Party structure is profoundly class bigoted, and has been for decades. Labor-Liberals like E.J.Dionne and Social Democrats like William Greider have been documenting this since the Nineteen Eighties. Simply put, grassroots Democratic Party structures were abandoned in favor of consultant-and-activist-driven media strategies. Periodically there is an attempt to reach out to grasroots constituencies; to date, that outreach ends post-election.
<
p>Republicans simply fill the vacuum by being there for one-on-one outreach, aided by the fact that progressives are intrinsically incompetent at message.
<
p>Complicating this was the opportunistic middle-class takeover of organized labor, starting in the Seventies, where class bigotry at the top alienated rank-and-file.
<
p>On specific issues, people do tend to lean populist-liberal, which was my point: it’s progressives they can’t stand. However, people now associate the “liberal” label with the progressive political culture, to the accrued benefit of pseudo-populist Republicans at the polls.
<
p>Can anybody say Scott Brown?
<
p>Or “triangulation”, in particular that version perfected by Bill Clinton, and cited approvingly by Obama throughout his public life ?
By that I mean what do we need to do tactically and strategically to reach out. What I don’t mean is changing our positions on the social issues; that’s a non-starter for me. I don’t think there’s anything mutually exclusive between, for example, supporting gay rights and reproductive rights on the one hand, and supporting the right to organize and make a livable wage on the other. I don’t understand what we have said or done to make labor think we’re not on their side, especially since the unions are overwhelmingly with us. I’m also confused a bit by your comment about not working the grassroots. While I agree both our Governor and our President could have done more to keep them engaged post election, though my life of working in politics all I’ve heard from campaigns is how important grassroots is, that TV ads don’t win elections, pounding the pavement does.
<
p>And I don’t think there is anything mutually exclusive between morally opposing abortion and supporting the right to organize and make a living wage. Unfortunately the progressive have driven great pro-labor Democrats like Bart Stupak and Gov. Pat Casey, due to their positions on the life question. Casey’s son almost was a non-starter for the Senate nomination, and he nearly lost to a pro-choice Republican who switched parties to run against him, a pro-choice Republican I might add who was to Casey’s right on economics and the Iraq War. Thats what pisses me off. Abortion wouldn’t be the end all defining issue of the party if the party stopped making it the end all defining issue of the party. I am saying lets become a big tent on the issue, thats all Catholic and Christian working class people across middle America want. There is a sense that gay rights and reproductive rights are all the party stands for, and the economic component has been lost, precisely because so much of that component was surrendered by the DLCers to appease their Wall Street backers. Remember when Dean said we needed to reach out to pick up drivers with Confederate flags on their cars and how much shit he got for that. Sharpton and even Edwards basically said ‘we dont want those people in our party’. Or the Obama comment on guns and religion. It shows profound condescension towards people of great faith and patriotism. Do we have to endorse a neo-confederate agenda or abandon our commitment to civil rights? No and that was not what Dean was saying, he was saying that we couldn’t be a party of the people if we told half the people they weren’t good enough for us. If we just let the Republicans take God and the flag away from us.
<
p> A Democrat should be able to credibly run on “Faith, Family, and Freedom” as a slogan. Instead the far left of the party will run for the hills and fear this candidate because they associate those three words with reactionary policies they oppose, instead of aspirational goals OUR policies can achieve. Our party will do a lot more to protect the family since under us it will actually have food, health insurance, and bread winners. Our party will do a lot more to defend faith, since under us ALL faiths and no faith shall be respected, and faith in this country will be restored. Of course we will defend freedom, for all Americans including gay ones, as well as the freedom from fear that your house will be foreclosed, your kids college tuition will bury you, and the fear you have when you get sick. Those words are neutral, they can be used to defend either a right wing or a left wing agenda. I want a President and Democrats across the country strongly running on that agenda, those three words, in a progressive direction. I am just worried that half of our party will shit itself if that was our slogan. Precisely because thats how much we allowed the right to redfine those terms.
…telling the truth about some people’s guns and religion, but you’re the one making abortion out to be more of an issue than it has been. Those here who got upset about the Stupak amendment would probably argue we don’t talk enough about abortion rights. I think we’ve actually been kind of quiet lately as has the other side. I was struck in 2004 and 2008 how little was said about it at either party’s national convention. It seems we’ve just all accepted that Dems are the pro-choice (which is bigger tent by definition) and the GOP are the pro-life party, but now there are other things to talk about. Just as an example, I’m pretty sure Harry Reid, a top Dem due to his Senate leadership position is pro-life.
<
p>This is imaginary. This is completely in. your. head. It’s delusional.
<
p>There has not been a single, solitary Democratic President who hasn’t been religious. They all have been. Carter was a very religious man, Clinton was religious and Obama went to Church every freaking Sunday (which is far more than most ‘religious’ people do).
<
p>Yet, because of the type of church he went to, which was altogether different than a lot of other christian churches out there… lots of (white) Christians were furious and tried to call him a terrorist or something. Your delusions are not only made up in your head, but again, the antithesis is true.
<
p>The problem with this country and religion on the left isn’t that the left isn’t religious enough, or isn’t that the left doesn’t appreciate religion, it’s that the right views what the left considers Christianity as being somehow different. Hence, the right decided to make up and spread the big lie that, far from being a very devoted Christian, Obama was a scary Muslim from Kenya, or something.
<
p>Your level of cognitive dissonance is astounding.
<
p>PS. Barty Stupak wasn’t driven out because of his faith, he was driven out because he was a toad — and Casey, far from being ‘almost a non starter,’ was widely viewed as the favorite in his race for a very long time. The only examples of ‘intolerance’ and ‘persecution’ I’ve witnessed on the thread have been the ones you’ve made up.
If a single parent makes 38,000 a year, having a kid, who doesn’t go to college, will cost them roughly 17% of their annual income (after the child tax credit). Having a kid hinders your ability to continue an education, it makes you less desirable to many employers. It has far ranging economic impacts, so to dismiss it as you do, doesn’t make sense.
<
p>Furthermore, do you think we really lose elections because of abortion? Democratic women and young people strongly support abortion rights – you think alienating them is a good idea? Your view of union members is way off too. I’ve phone banked and visited literally thousands of union households – I’ve never heard anyone not vote for a candidate because they were pro choice – same is true for Catholics, by the way. I’m sure there out there, but the future of the labor movement isn’t Nixon’s secret majority, that’s the past.
but it’s middle-aged people, not younger people, who are the most likely to be pro-choice. The numbers are actually pretty scary on this, from a progressive POV.
<
p>Young adults in my generation or younger don’t understand what it was like to grow up when coat hangers were a realistic option, and women who felt they couldn’t bring their pregnancies to term were at serious risk of injury and/or death. I only know because my parents ensured that I knew.
<
p>It’s an issue the left needs to take a very strong look at, because our silence on this issue is allowing the right to control it.
<
p>http://www.gallup.com/poll/126…
agreed on the concern you point to in your link though.
If I thought it would stay static where it is now… not the end of the world, but the trends are moving in the wrong direction and it’s because democrats and liberals aren’t speaking to younger people about this issue — at least in terms that will resonate.
I did not and do not advocate any reversals on gay or reproductive rights, and I agree with you that supporting these issues is not mutually exclusive with labor-liberalism.
<
p>The problem is that labor (and black and Latino) voters tend to be taken for granted, their issues abandoned, even when collective concerns could be addressed in a win-win fashion.
<
p>I think re: labor, that Democrats confuse labor endorsements (which they have) with electoral support from their rank and file (which is not always the case, and wasn’t in the Special Senate election, when the bulk of labor voters supported Brown).
<
p>The Massachusetts-specific problem results from the Commonwealth’s abandonment of upward social mobility for its working-class populations, one example of which is our minimal support for State-funded higher education.
<
p>We cannot expect consistent grassroots support when progressive approaches degenerate into hipster elitism a la Richard Florida, in the face of Depression levels of blue-collar unemployment. This elitism is, alas, both the public face of the Party and the policy premise of both State and City of Boston government.
<
p>Insofar as grassroots politics in the Commonwealth is concerned, I can only speak to Boston, where above the block level it exists only in West Roxbury, and there only because the local civic culture encourages it, not because of any support from the Democratic Party.
<
p>Long story short: Massachusetts grassroots politics is back in the garage, in storage for the 2012 cycle.
The big difference, if the party tacked to the middle on abortion, I think we would win over a significant chunk of working class voters and rank and file union members, who are more socially conservative. If we stopped fearing or denigrating using religious and patriotic imagery and language to justify our policies, we would be in much better shape. Truman never shied away from using Christianity to defend universal health care, the new deal, or civil rights. Neither did LBJ or Jimmy Carter. Thats how recently we were still credible with working class whites. But since Carter, we have surrendered the cultural associations of working class people to the right. The party has stopped going to Church, stopped going to union halls, and stopped going to wal marts and dunkin donuts for votes precisely because the rank and file member doesn’t go to any of those places. Thats how this is a self fulfilling prophecy.
<
p>Here was a 1970 Evening Post observation my electoral politics professor read aloud about the electorate:
<
p>”Democrats go to stone churches on Sunday, Republicans to wooden ones. Republicans go to college football games, Democrats go to baseball games. Republicans join country clubs, Democrats join lodges. Republicans golf, Democrats bowl. Republicans send their kids to college, Democrats send them to the military or the priesthood. Democrats drink beer, Republicans drink wine. Democrats smoke cigarettes, Republicans smoke cigars or pipes. Democrats have spaghetti lunches at church, Republicans have three martini lunches at work”
<
p>My class reacted to this sharply, because so many of these distinctions have either been reversed or just aren’t true anymore. Basically these all boiled down to class differences. And thats the main difference between the parties. Small business owners were republicans, working stiffs were Democrats. Middle or upper class GOP, working class you’re a Dem. These days you could almost reverse those observations while modifying it slightly for anachronisms (nobody smokes, nobody bowls, nobody has three martini or spaghetti luncheons anymore, and everyone watches every sport on cable these days). I’d also modify the church observation, which showed a WASP/Catholic divide then, whereas today it’d read “Republicans go to church on Sunday/Democrats go to Whole Foods”. Were these exactly true then and would the reverse be true today? No, I always try to go to Mass AND whole foods on my day off, ideally getting both out of the way before I watch football AND baseball on TV. But the broader point is true, we have stopped appealing to these voters. I think the labor/working class vote should become just as sacrosanct as the gay/feminist vote to the party. There may not be money with these votes like there are with those votes, but there are more votes to be won here. I think we can move to the middle on abortion without losing anyone, precisely because there is no alternative. We can afford to take the feminists for granted, we should stop taking working people for granted.
I think the Democratic party is already firmly “in the middle” on abortion. The Stupak Amendment deal proved that by showing that a sizeable chunk of the Dem caucus could be bought off by giving in to their idiotic demands on funding (idiotic because there was already a law in place preventing use of federal funds, but also because it’s idiotic to refuse to fund one of the most common medical procedures for low-income women). The Dem party is very big tent on abortion, far more than I’d like it to be. I wish we could be like Canada in which abortion is basically treated just as a health care procedure, which it is.
<
p>If the platform of the party was to move further right on abortion by not being at least nominally Pro-Choice, it would lose a lot of people, myself included. And as an alternative, I would vote Green party. If that means “wasting” my vote, then so be it. I would never support an Anti-Choice candidate for President (or other office), regardless of his or her party. I know many others in this Commonwealth of similar mind. Many of them are the feminists who you would take for granted.
<
p>I think we can win over workers, and we can do it by appealing to economic interests and not by sacrificing social interests.
If people won’t get past the social message. I am not arguing the party should not be pro-choice, I am saying it should not ostracize pro-life politicians who are progressive. I am saying it should not back pro-choice Republican turncoats who are still economically conservative over pro-life Democrats that are economically progressive. I am saying the first thing we should talk about should be jobs, the second should be health care, the third should be education. Abortion should be the last thing we talk about, because it is divisive and because it alienates the very people whose policies we help and whose votes we need. Right now the GOP says front and center boldly PRO LIFE and ours says PRO CHOICE which to a pro-lifer reads as PRO ABORTION. So, lets either modify that sign, or at least relegate it to the back of the office. It shouldn’t be the first thing people see. And if feminists and social liberals truly cared about working people and the Democratic Party they would be more than willing to make the semantic changes that emphasize economics first and reducing and preventing abortion, that will make a HUGE symbolic impact for socially conservative working families without significantly altering the substance of our stance on abortion. I want their feet in the door, and economics, not social issues, should be our litmus test and it should be our rallying cry and front and center issue.
The Party does not ostracize anti-Choice politicians, such as Harry Reid and Stupak’s crew. I think you are just wrong about that. The party is already doing what you suggest by not actively pushing a Pro-Choice agenda as a core part of the platform – the party website does not list Choice as one of the core principles. A large part of the reason that people think the Dem party banner says “Pro-Choice” is because the other party is so virulently anti-Choice, even to the point of most leading Republicans actively supporting domestic anti-Choice terrorists like Randall Terry. You won’t see the majority of the Dem party calling Terry a terrorist, even though that is what he unequivocally is.
<
p>The Dems as a party are not doing much to be the Pro-Choice party – they are for the most part just not being the Anti-Choice party. When do you see Dem leaders pushing a pro-Choice message in national debates? I never see President Obama doing it (I just see him willing to accept anti-Choice policies to get other things done).
<
p>
<
p>I think you are completely wrong about this. “Feminists and social liberals” are the most likely to truly care about working families. (As far as caring about the Party, that is basically a worthless activity if the Party does not support the principles you believe in.) No one fights harder for health care access, a safety net, progressive taxation, labor rights, and every other progressive economic issue. It’s the blue dogs and DLC-types that are less likely to support working families on these things and also the ones less likely to be pro-Choice and pro-Gay rights.
<
p>Many progressives view choice as an economic, health care, civil rights, and social justice issue, not merely a social cause. How should Dems downplay these beliefs? If you want Dems to not go into union halls and lead with abortion and gay marriage, I don’t think you have to worry. No Dem is doing that.
<
p>I think there is a similar thing happening with other issues. While the Democratic Party is basically the pro-gay rights party compared to the Repubs, the Party is not aggressively pro-gay rights in the slightest. It’s very accepting of politicians who do not support gay marriage, including President Obama, despite there being absolutely no rational argument against same-sex marriage.
<
p>The Dems can do a much better marketing job almost across the board, but I don’t think they need to tone down things on social issues when they really aren’t pushing them aggressively. It’s the Repubs pushing the Anti-Choice, Anti-Gay, Anti-Immigrant, and Anti-Reason agenda that has done more to label the Dems than anything the Dems are doing on those issues.
has been ostracized because they were anti-choice. Not. A Single. One.
<
p>Not Senator Casey, not Barty Stupak, no one. Barty Stupak chose to go on his own accord, and the flack he received was not because he was anti-choice, but because he almost killed health care reform despite the fact that the bill never would have allowed the government to fund abortions. He fought a delusional fight… common theme here.
<
p>You can absolutely be anti-choice and be a well-respected member of Congress or in the Senate. Even some pretty damn liberal members of Congress, in very liberal districts, have been anti-choice — Dennis Kucinich was for a very long time, even. People are going to win or lose their respect in Congress based on their actions, not their position on abortion (just look at Kucinich… did he gain any additional respect by becoming pro-choice?).
<
p>None of this is to say that certain Democratic politicians haven’t been targeted in primaries or general elections due to their anti-choice stances — but that’s different than this intolerance or persecution you keep leveling against the party. That’s just democracy. If the people of their district are upset about a particular stance, it’s absolutely their rights to act on it. The important part is that if they get into office, they’re still respected… and they absolutely, without a doubt are, every day they’re up there. They hold leadership positions from top to bottom and always have in the history of this party.
<
p>You can’t continue to level this criticism against the party when it doesn’t exist. The left has always and will always be religious — maybe even almost as religious as the right. The only major difference is we don’t wear it on our sleeves as much, we’re less evangelical about it. I even consider myself somewhat of a religious person, even if my ‘faith’ is more a spiritual one than something distinctly Christian at this point in my life. I really think you need to take this whole thought process a step back and really consider if what you view as intolerance or persecution is really just the discomfort of occasionally hearing the truth being lobbed at the religious right, because I still haven’t seen one real example of religious intolerance on the left that is accepted by the party. Not one.
I will simply respectively disagree. And I would say it is because you guys do not have to encounter pro-life working class people as much as I have. I have doorknocked in Henry Hyde’s old district, in Iowa, in Indiana, and in Ohio, and it is shocking how many pro-labor, pro health care reform, anti-war, working class Catholics and even some working class Protestants vote Republican based on this one issue. I think you are all living in a blue state bubble where even the most conservative Republicans have to be pro-choice to win around here (Brown and Romney for example). This is the state where Planned Parenthood was founded, and in spite of the efforts of Catholic Democrats like Tip O’Neill, Curley, and Kennedy, we still had one of the most liberal abortion laws prior to Roe v Wade. I am just saying the culture around here is different, not better or worse, but different. When Aurora, IL, my gf’s hometown, has a Democratic mayor and overwhelmingly voted for Obama, has a major ongoing legal crisis over whether a Planned Parenthood can be in the town, I think you can see that elsewhere in the country this is still THE issue. Most average people don’t care about gay rights anymore, they overwhelmingly support DADT and civil unions and are coming around on marriage. But abortion50, is still 60/40 “Pro choice with significant restrictions”, 40% solidly pro-life, and maybe only 30% solidly pro-choice.
<
p>Again we do not have to abandon this issue, while I disagree with it, I respect the fact that the majority of the party supports this legislation. But the truth of the matter is Pat Casey couldn’t speak, his son almost didn’t get nominated, and Stupak, who actually sensibly said the executive order was good enough and this didn’t fund abortion, was primaries. Jim Oberstar lost in the ge because he wasted his money in a primary against a long shot pro-choice candidate. Kucinich flip flopped because he knew he couldn’t be President with that record, and his district has punished him re-electing him with narrower and narrower margins, and he nearly lost to a Tea Partier this election.
<
p>My broader point is this is THE DEFINING issue of the party, and many want to make it that way. I would also strongly disagree that feminists care about social justice for the poor as part of principle, I am sure many of them do, but many more of them are single issue voters who would back a Reaganite if they favored partial birth abortion over a Democrat who opposed it (which they have done on several occasions, Al D’Amato is a particularly good example, as is Betsy McCloskey up in NY state, the lady who helped kill Clinton’s health care reform, Kay Bailey in Texas, Judy Biggert and Mark Kirk out here in IL vs pro choice progressives I might add). They are not loyal to the party, they are not loyal to workers, they are an interest group loyal to their issue above all other issues. And we have lost working class Catholics for a generation due to this issue. They went from a solid block to up for grabs. That is a tragedy, especially when they built and sustained the party, while a lot of rich Republicans just showed up and switched sides, keeping their regressive economic views while embracing social ‘progressives’.
one of the most religious presidents in the history of this country was elected President, but because of the church he went to, the Christian right labelled him a Muslim from Kenya.
<
p>I’ve also been a part of many campaigns, and I’ve never seen a candidate afraid to shake hands at Dunks or Walmart, or assume their voters don’t go to either of them.
<
p>Your views of the Democratic Party being out of touch are actually out of touch with reality.
<
p>And as someone who’s collected signatures at both Whole Foods and Market Basket, I’ll tell you it’s a helluva lot harder to collect them at Whole Foods. The myth of “Democrats go to Whole Foods” is just that: pure mythology. Turn off Rush Limbaugh and get out there in the real world. Let’s remember what kind of background our “elite” President grew up in (poor) versus our last President (exorbitantly wealthy).
My whole point is that this was a myth, I am not a Limbuagh listener, I am saying many people who should vote for us are, and instead of dismissing this myth and hoping people know the truth, we should be actively dispelling it and crafting a more worker friendly agenda and putting that front and center and stop simply being the party of the urban educated professional. These generalizations are obviously false, but they have gained credence in the heartland, partly because they contain an element of truth, and partly because we have done nothing as a movement or a party to dispell it.
<
p>Two other points:
<
p>
<
p>As someone who has personally heard a Rev. Wright sermon I can tell you it was one of the most anti-semitic, anti-white, revisionist historical things I have ever listened to. He spent a lot more time bashing Israel than describing what happened to it in the Bible, the word ‘Jesus’ was barely uttered and the scripture of the day barely touched upon. Am I saying Obama is not a Christian? Of course not, but his church is about as far away from mainstream, mainline Protestant thought. No Christian with good conscience should share a pulpit with a misogynist bigot like Farahkhan.
<
p>
<
p>The plaintiff presents exhibit A: Martha Coakley. Exhibit B: John Kerry. The plaintiff rests your honor.
You wrote “mainstream, mainline Protestant thought”. The reality is more like “white Protestant churches”. It doesn’t sound like you have much experience with black gospel religious experiences, preaching, and culture, either historically or currently.
<
p>Do you similarly reject Christians who share a pulpit with the likes of Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, or Jerry Falwell? Mr. Farrakhan is not the only “misogynist bigot” to claim a pulpit. It appears that your visceral reaction to Mr. Farrakhan has as much to do with his chosen targets as any alleged misogyny or bigotry.
<
p>Oh, and speaking of misogyny, how do you characterize Ephesians 5:22 (“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”) or 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”)?
<
p>If misogyny is a charge you wish to pursue, your investigation needs to go far beyond the utterances of Mr. Farrakhan.
…I’ve also heard preaching from Jeremiah Wright and his theology is both wide and deep. Yes, he says things that make people squirm sometimes, but the whole point of prophecy is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. He is also both a compassionate man and one who VOLUNTEERED for military service. He takes his cues from his Biblical namesake who didn’t exactly offer ancient Israel warm fuzzy thoughts about their life either.
but there’s also Exhibit C: Deval Patrick, Exhibit D: Tim Murray and a whole host of Democrats who’ve been elected because of their grassroots prowess.
<
p>I do think this is largely a public perception problem, much of it manufactured by the right. They tried to do that with Deval Patrick, too, and while they had some early wins… he eventually carried the day on that IMO.
<
p>Martha Coakley, unfortunately, had a big mouth and thought she was invincible… but I don’t think she’s actually afraid of shaking hands or going to events (she did plenty of that when she ran her reelction for AG). Meanwhile, Brown ran a very structured and high-caliber campaign — and was able to convince people that owning a truck = man of the people, even if that truck was purchased to cart his daughter’s show horses around. Rest assured, though, whoever gets nominated in 2012 to challenge Brown is not going to act like Coakley did… John Walsh wouldn’t let them 😛
<
p>As for the agenda… our problem as a party is that we don’t have a unified one. We have never been — at least in my lifetime, which I believe overlaps most of the same time periods of yours — good at sticking to a unified message. The ‘tent’ of the Democratic Party is a wide one. Progressives have done a great deal to try to unify the message into a worker-friendly one, but even if that’s 50-60% of the party’s elected leaders in Congress — and more than that if we look at the structure of the party’s base — it only takes a few Blue Dogs to muck it up. By and large, the prototypical progressive stump speech is more about economic justice than it is social justice — especially in these last few years, when the message has literally been, “jobs, jobs, jobs.” I think your complaints largely comes from a national perspective, where it’s easier for the right to distort the left’s message to a national audience, but if you look at individual races, I don’t think you’re going to get very many races where people are talking about anything but jobs right now — and that probably won’t change for at least a decade to come, given the state of the economy.
As Will Rogers would say, we don’t belong to an organized political party we are Democrats.
<
p>That said I think their is strength in diversity, and again many of the positions DoubleMan and others have on abortion offend me, but the greatest fault of the Republican party is its dogmatism on issue after issue. I would also be cast of that party on my stance on abortion, since I still believe Roe v Wade is settled law, as horribly argued as it was, that should not be overturned in one fell swoop that mitigates women to the backalley. Only a safe, compassionate, government response can ensure that the procedure is regulated to ensure it is both safe and rare. On that last point I think we differ on the means of making it rare. I think you need both reductions and restrictions to pursue a more sane policy. But I would get ‘mixed’ scorecards from both abortion lobbies, both of which have prevented any sensible compromise or true engagement on this issue with their shared legacy of fear mongering. There would be no home for me in the Republican party due to my ‘moderate’ stance on abortion, similarly there would certainly be no home due to my support for health care reform, a living wage, a compassionate immigration policy, and a near pacifist foreign policy. Not to mention my support for drug reform, opposition to the death penalty, opposition to three strikes laws and other unconstitutional sentencing structures, and support for moderate gun control. Yet my support for a balanced budget, social security reform, and moderation instead of extremism in either direction on abortion, seems to be alienating me from the Democrats as well. Particularly because they are centrists where they need to be leftists, libertarians where they need to be paternalistic, and Wilsonian interventionist where they need to be anti-imperialist. A party that was progressive domestically but bourbon democratic on fiscal and foreign policy would be ideal.
<
p>it’s a problem with the entire democratic ‘tent.’ Unlike the Republican Party, which has traditionally been a unified coalition that’s worked together (and even these Tea Partiers have been able to be ‘directed’ the right way thus far), the Democratic Party has traditionally been made up of a disparate group of many different members making up the coalition that are as likely to fight against each other as they are with each other. The progressive movement has done a lot to unify these groups, but it’s a work in progress.
<
p>My point, though, is that — while, yes, labor, black people, Latinos have all been ‘taken for granted,’ it’s not just them. You could add women, gays, health care advocates, environmentalists, etc. etc. etc. to the fold. Basically, we’ve allowed our party to become so fractured that each and every group within the tent is able to be ignored by the party elites in DC, and the corporatists have been able to keep enough control over it that — combined with the GOP — that Blue Dog/Corporatist and GOP coalition has controlled government for at least the past two decades.
<
p>Instead of taking your preferred method — continuing to attack each other because your preferred branch of the coalition isn’t getting its fair shake — we need to stop blaming ourselves and work together. The “progressive movement” is the coalescence of people who recognize all these disparate groups of people that make up the Democratic Party are actually fighting for the same things… they’re not “elitist hipsters” like you seem to think… they’re the people who are trying to get us to work together. When good members of these coalitions aren’t acting like freaking idiots, and start working together, we’ve actually been able to achieve some real success.
<
p>
<
p>Open your eyes, dude. No one’s done ‘working together in common cause’ better than Massachusetts progressives. The whole country got slaughtered, and we had ourselves one, big, giant kumbaya moment in 2010, here in Massachusetts, bucking the entirety of the rest of the country. Our progressive groups — coalitions one and all — are some of the best state organizations in the country, when you look at groups like Mass Alliance which have married unions, pro-choice groups, pro-civil rights groups and socio-economic justice groups better than anyone else. You need to take your hypothesis back to the drawing board with statements so provably false as the one I just quoted.
Again my sniping isn’t to argue that the party or its members are intrinsically anti-religious, just that the Brookline Toms make it impossible to even interject religion into the dialogue, in a way I think will persuade most Americans who are religious to join our cause. And that creates a lot of the myths and the self-reinforcing narratives. We got creamed by candidates that out-flag and out-God us, and assume its the flag and God that are part of the problem. And like I said, a Democrat should run on the slogan “Faith, Family, Freedom” and take those slogans back for progressive causes.
<
p>Again I am not even anti-Roe v Wade, but we have to stop being the party of abortion on demand, embrace banning third and second trimester abortions, embrace notification laws, and embrace a comprehensive progressive package that reduces abortion. The conservatives have the inquisitions position on abortion, we have Ayn Rands. To me that is a HUGE problem that needs to be addressed. The party wins when it is compassionate and stands up for the little guy, and we need to start being more compassionate and stand up for the littlest guys of all. Doesn’t mean we stop standing up for women, for science, for rational public policies. Allowing religious equality in the public sphere to me is the best alternative to the Turkish or French style state secularism the Brookline Toms want, or the Christian state the Religious right seems to desire. Both are antithetical to American principles of religious liberty.
<
p>And again, nowhere have I argued we should moderate ourselves on gay rights or immigrant rights, those are THE civil rights issues of this century, and my biggest disappointment in JFK and FDR is that they were, in spite of being Northerners, wishy washy mushy moderates on civil rights, while it took two Southerners found of racist jokes to actually get important shit done (Truman and LBJ). Obama of all Presidents should understand the importance of gay rights and immigrants rights, and he has started to drop the ball. People that are opposed to those issues will not vote for him anyway, so really he just loses his base, and loses the independents that want to see a leader make decisive and courageous stances. So Rye I accept your peace offering, it sounds like you have tried to ardently say that you respect and want a progressive religious voice, one that is authentic and appeals to the working class. I will embrace you as a kindred spirit and work hard to fight the good fight.
I hope we don’t do any of the things you suggest.
<
p>Abortion should be safe, accessible, affordable, and should only depend on the wishes of the woman in consultation with a doctor. The late-term abortion debate is a debate filled with more misinformation and a rejection of evidence than almost any other. Instead of having progressives moderate their views on choice, we should try to reach out and educate people about the evidence on the issue. Limited access to abortion services is bad policy, as proven by numerous studies – with no serious studies showing the opposite. If abortion were illegal (which it basically is in many states), some people would feel good, but it would have disastrous social consequences. We shouldn’t base policy around making some people feel good.
<
p>I think you are wrong about the Dems being the party of “abortion on demand” because we have so many party members and leaders against that view, and it’s a view that party leaders rarely push for on the national stage. We are not the party of “no abortion under any circumstances,” so by being not that party, we are by default the party of everything else.
<
p>What do you mean by “embrace a comprehensive progressive package that reduces abortion”? If you mean actual comprehensive sex education, making birth control essentially free and over-the-counter, free condoms in schools, accessible pre- and post-natal care, more equality of opportunity across the board, and about a thousand other things that may make abortions less likely, then I am all for it. Unfortunately, I don’t see how that would be in any way compatible with the views of anti-choice voters (and yes, I use anti-choice because that is what it is, “pro-life” is utter bs).
<
p>And frankly, religion is a problem. Today a poll came out showing that 40% of Americans are Creationists. If that is even close to an accurate reflection of American thought, maybe religious tolerance is a problem. Never questioning someone’s belief in myths and magic can lead to many problems – like a furtherance of ignorance. We should not allow the horrible inconsistencies and irrationalities inherent in every religion dictate social policy, but we do, and we’re worse off for it.
A six for your first three paragraphs regarding position on abortion. A five for the next paragraph since I agree on some aspects and disagree on others. A four for the last paragraph for suggesting religious tolerance is a bad thing.
My dad knew Coakley lost the election when he was sitting at his favorite deli in Woburn and saw a bunch of carpenters and blue collar looking guys talk about how they were voting for him. Brown has since voted against unemployment insurance, against unemployment benefits, against stimulus that would have brought jobs to Massachusetts, and against labor. Did we hear about that? No. It was Brown is secretly anti-choice, Brown is anti-gay, Brown is pro-torture. Issues that appeal to the Nation reading crowd hanging outside of the Au ba Pan in Harvard Square but have absolutely no relevance to joe six pack. The point is progressive are too self righteous about the social issues and are trying to assert those viewpoints upon others, when most people don’t care about the social issues and just want peace and prosperity.
<
p>Part of this disconnect is because so many progressives have now been raised outside of the economic left, do not recognize the importance of organized labor, and scoff at the bourgeois aspirations and values the working class has. As soon as the left stops judging Wal-Mart shoppers, stops judging people that watch Joel Olsteen and drive pick ups and SUVS, stops judging stay at home moms, and starts actively seeking their votes, the better. Because at the end of the day that class of voters benefits just as much as you and me, if not more, from progressive policies. Also the funding apparatus of the party has been hijacked by socially liberal venture capitalists who actively want to socially engineer society to their liking (looking at you Ted Turner and Soros) without having to sacrifice what made them wealthy. Thats why banking deregulation was a fait accompli by a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress. One of the essential lynchpins of the New Deal gutted by the party of Roosevelt and no one made a peep. Because the religious right is a bigger boogeyman than the banks and corporate America to the base, and that is a sad state of affairs. The Catholic church and to a lesser extent the Protestant Mainline, were essential components to the New Deal and the civil rights movement, the two greatest liberal triumphs of the last century. Jews, Catholics, labor, and blacks were all in it together, alongside liberal WASPs and class traitors like FDR. Than Vietnam and abortion tore that coalition apart and we have been trying to piece it together ever since.
and rather stupid. Your criticizing us for things that aren’t true, at all.
<
p>On my father’s side, my grand mother was an immigrant, my grandfather a GE factory worker who never got his diploma and survived through the depression, working his ass off to provide for his family. My father’s worked as a teacher/coach/AD from 7 in the morning to 10 at night almost every day for the past 30 years.
<
p>On my mother’s side, my grand mother was the daughter of immigrants and a DPW worker, my grandfather was a plumber. His father was a plumber. One of his sons was a plumber. Every uncle I have, other than the plumber, worked at the GE at some point in their life. My grandmother ended up raising all 7 (7!) of her children all alone after her husband left her, and they were exceptionally poor.
<
p>When my parents were divorced, I lived with my mother, who was a nurse. A single parent nurse. And know what she said to me? “Always vote for the Democrat, they’re the ones who fight for the people.” She was right. She’d say the same thing today.
<
p>This is what a real Democratic family looks like. It’s how it looked like 30-40 years ago, and it’s how it looks like today. While it’s true the right has created this newfound mythology of “elitism” on the left, it’s largely a figment of their imagination — it’s largely propaganda created by the Rush Limbaughs of the world. The reality is that the Republican Party hasn’t changed much over the years, and neither has the Democratic Party. The Republicans are still the party of the wealthy elite, and Democrats are still the party of the people. Corporations have blurred those lines a little bit — but they’ve blurred them through the very agents which you’ve defended on this freaking blog, like Barty Freaking Stupak.
<
p>It’s the DINOs, Blue Dogs and GOP which blocks almost every move to help the working and middle classes the mother fucking progressive caucus tries to pass. When that happens, it’s not about whether we should call the bundles of cells in a pregnant lady’s womb a fetus or an unborn baby — it’s about corporate $$$$$$$$$$$$$. Wake up. You are so barking up the wrong tree, and it infuriates me.
See my above post regarding peace offering. And my grandparents were of this same generation, in spite of being an Irish Catholic my grandpa was always for Stevenson in every election, even over JFK in the 60 nominating fight. He always felt Stevenson would’ve made a tremendously powerful and progressive president. And while he died when I was quite young, I remember his yellow dog democratic ways by saying they are always the party of the people. In many ways this is obviously still true, especially when compared to the right. But we have embraced a corporate friendly agenda that is hostile to the people, and we have embraced a culturally leftist agenda that has alienated some of those people. Is that agenda wrong? Besides abortion, there is little of that agenda I disagree with. But its an agenda that needs to be redefined and rearticulated to appeal to working class Dems.
<
p>My family members that vote Republicans, contrary to your assumptions, are not rich. They are construction workers, union members, contractors, people with high school educations that work in the trades. And they voted for Brown and McCain because they fear immigration, because they fear gays, and because they want to say Merry Christmas and God Bless America without being bothered by the PC police, and wish Obama said those things more. Are they right? Of course I am not arguing that, I am arguing that we can make life better for them, and we can use the language of patriotism, faith, and family values to win them back. As LBJ did. As JFK did. And our candidates should be less afraid to go there. And one of the reasons Obama won over so many people is that he wasn’t afraid to go there.
There have been no greater champions of labor in this country than progressives. Indeed, in a great many ways, the two movements are one in the same.
<
p>It is not the liberal label that has been tainted by progressives; the class of people who ‘triangulate’ have given the word liberal such a bad name that they’ve come grasping for our’s.
That’s another big part of it. Suburban communities tend to be homogeneous and it doesn’t force people to interact with people that are different from them or people they don’t want to interact with. Also they use far less government services so they tend to disassociate their taxes from the benefits they receive from them. And white flight and suburbanization broke up the old style ethnic ward systems that did represent a true cross-ethnic/cross-racial working class political system in the first half of this century.
Having previously worked for a government contractor, I too must strongly disagree with Mr. Assange and this posse, and frankly, believe they should be locked up ’til the 12th of never.
<
p>Sorry, but anyone who supports Wikileaks cannot possibly understand what the word ‘security’ means. America suffered enough from the diplomatic strong-arming of the last administration, but for God’s sake, can’t we at least have a little time to repair those fractured relationships without some know-it-all rube playing fast and loose with sensitive information?
<
p>Assange is making assumptions about how the exposure of these documents affects the public, but what he is NOT considering is the overall safety of our men and women who serve the military, government intelligence, and, potentially jeopardizing NATO.
<
p>There is no excuse for this, and now a ton of taxpayer dollars will be redirected to revamping security procedures, which already take an inordinate amount of time and effort.
He is only the messanger, thus saith SCOTUS in NYT v. US. Plus my understanding is that he is working with mainstream outlets and IS being at least somewhat judicious in his dissemination. My biggest question is if this stuff were so sensitive, how did Manning get a hold of them.
If I have knowledge that an individual/entity has, without authorization, communicated/translated information that the U.S. Government has catagorized as sensitive enough to require a security clearance, and I myself pass it along, then how can I also NOT be guilty of breach? The RIGHT thing to do would be to contact the FBI or CIA immediately.
<
p>And yes, fast and loose…at least that’s what I interpret from media reports, even if it does take some time…
<
p>
…you may see your job as one of pushing back against the government and EXACTLY the ultimate defense of the people against a too-secretive government.
Where is that line drawn, and by whom? In this situation, I don’t see journalists, more like people who just want to be folk-heroes…
<
p>Ranking officials chosen by those we elect decide what the public ‘needs to know’. If we don’t like or trust the method, then advocating change is fine, but it does not have to be bastardized in the process.
<
p>BTW, I was beyond furious about the Plame incident – her being outed was (and remains) unforgivable.
Federal Withholding – Classified Information (2004)
As someone who still has an active security clearance I can’t go into too many details, but hypothetically speaking, the hypothetical data all flows from the same hypothetical secret servers, and hypothetically, if a mere intern like me was given access to that info, a private certainly could get his hands on it, and hypothetically, catalog all the transcripts of dispatches and communiques coming in and release it on the web, using a contraband USB and speed stick. That is all hypothetically speaking of course.
<
p>He signed the same contract I did, and will face decades of jail time for taking sensitive information from the State Department and he deserves every year he gets. The big difference between Pentagon Papers and this is that those papers exposed a fradulent and amoral foreign policy and undermined it, this has undermined a credible and successful foreign policy.
What about the videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan? I think those are essentially the same as the Pentagon Papers information.
<
p>Or were those ok to be leaked, but the cables aren’t?
…has an active security clearance? Intern and security clearance don’t go together in my mind.
Technically I was a temporary foreign affairs officer, and I was given a seven month background check and signed several legally binding documents swearing me to secrecy. But yep, I had access to secret (though not Top Secret) information and a GS-14 security classification which will expire in 2011.
has a Secret clearance, unless things have changed. Radio operators, for instance. It’s because they may have to use secret codes.
The wars we’re currently waging in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen?
At the rate the documents are being released, if all of them are ever released, it could take years.
Those on the outside looking in have no idea how much our policy is already driven by a secretive cabal of military contractors working in cahoots with shadowy Pentagon burecrats. Wikileaks just further surrendered foreign policy from the State Department to the RAND Corporation. Brooks was right, and usually I disagree with him, that diplomacy has to be conducted in BOTH open and secretive channels to be affective. Now we have lost the secretive channels and no one wants to come out in the open. I agree with what Biden said this morning, now he can’t meet with leaders since they are worried about the leaks, now he can’t get things done, good progressive things, because everyone in the global diplomatic community is now scared shitless. I talked to the Pakistani consul in Chicago, at a fundraiser for victims of the floods, and he said the two worst things to happen to our relations was the mosque bashing/Koran burning this summer and Wikileaks. The former because it basically validates the narrative that the American foreign policy is anti-Muslim as opposed to anti-terrorist (who are terrorizing Pakistan and Muslims as well). The latter because now Pakistani diplomats are fearful of their lives, since they are worried about the sensitive information regarding the ISI and Wajiristan that was released, and know the ISI will likely come after them. That just killed any moderate Muslim we can work with, literally in some cases, and in other cases by forcing them to abandon their moderation to save their skins or careers.
for engaging in illegal wars and committing illegal acts.
<
p>Maybe if we didn’t try to be the world’s imperial leader anymore, we wouldn’t have these problems.
<
p>The extent to which western countries are working together to stop Assange (in ways that all go beyond legal) suggests, to me, they’re all still working together just fine… despite whatever fears you may have.
There is a growing consensus on the left that cutting the payroll tax is a blow to the health of Social Scurity that might prove fatal.
<
p>I know this is sincere, but I’ve gotta disagree with the premise.
<
p>When Milton Freedman and Ronald Reagan convinced Congress to jack up FICA in the 1980s, it was all under the guise of saving Social Security.
<
p>Instead the money from this regressive tax on working people was appropriated for war and tax cuts for the rich. It was part of the transfer of wealth from working people to the top 2%.
<
p>Deficits don’t matter to these guys, any more than surpluses (in the SS trust fund) ever deterred them from depicting SS as anything but a bankrupt Ponzi scheme.
<
p>So I suggest the temporary repeal of part of the Reagan-era tax hike on working people is maybe the best thing in the whole package.
<
p>A real progressive response would be to shore up the SS trust fund with a tax on all income, or on the income brackets that benefited from robbing the SSTF for the past 25 years.
I am all for reducing the payroll tax which hits workers the most and rich folks the least, but I am fairly certain it goes directly to Social Security and Medicare. Thats the whole point of ‘paying into the system’ is it not? If you have proof that these funds are being diverted I am all ears, since I would love a payroll tax holiday but fear it might be a death blow to these programs.
Except in name. Over the last several decades, the payroll tax ran surpluses because there were a lot more baby boomers, who were working, than the elder generation of retirees.
<
p>There was an effort to restructure the finances of the system in the 80s. There was a slight increase in the retirement age, and the payroll tax was increased so that there would be something upon which to draw when those baby boomers retire.
<
p>So the “trust fund” was created to hold all of this accumulated surplus, and with all of the money the “trust fund” bought US government debt. Which means that any payroll tax collections that exceeded the benefit statements went into the general budget, reducing the amount of regular income taxes that would have been required to fund the government at that time. Indeed, the government has never counted this as borrowing: funds “borrowed” from the SS “trust fund” have never been counted as contributing the the deficit (or debt, I think).
<
p>Now, as baby boomers retire, there will be no surplus for awhile. Query whether the shortfall of benefits over payroll tax collections should be collected from an increased payroll tax, or from the general budget– as the rest of the government pays off all of those bonds held in the “trust fund”.
A certain prize-winning economist has written extensively about this, calling it “bait and switch” (and sometimes, elsewhere, “3-card monte”):
<
p>
<
p>The whole thing is, alas, paywalled, but very worth reading the whole thing if you or your library has access to the New York Times archive. It is “Maestro of Chutzpah,” by Paul Krugman, in the New York Times 3/2/2004 p. A24.
Krugman would probably say that such a compromise–regressive tax to shore up Social Security–could be justified if only it really did shore up the system, instead of being pirated for tax cuts for the rich.
<
p>And I do not know what he thinks about the 1-year cut to FICA, specifically. I’d guess he probably does not think it redeems the whole deal, however.
I think Krugman has written about the payroll tax holiday being a boneheaded political move because its stimulative effects will end when Obama needs them most (the first 10 months of 2012). And that the political equation will make a permanent extension much more likely.
<
p>I like Reich’s idea about the payroll tax – have a holiday for stimulus but when the holiday ends change the payroll tax so that it does not have an arbitrary and low income ceiling of $106,800, and also permanently exempt the first $20K to make it more progressive. Of course, a deal that would give us short-term stimulus and more solid long-term, progressive revenue generation was too reasonable to be considered in the recent tax cut discussion.
He’s toast anyway
When the lower rate expires, push to make it permanent funded by extending FICA to all earned income.
when the deal amounts to raising taxes on the 51 million poorest working Americans. They will get less from this deal than Obama’s tax cut for working families that was passed as (I believe) a part of the stimulus. If this was about saving people money through progressive means, it’s not doing it.
and I share many of your criticisms. Just not the one about the FICA cut.
<
p>The failure to renew the “make work pay” tax credit is abominable, but not the same thing as cutting FICA.
<
p>At the risk of engaging in
common senseclass warfare: By all means let’s tax the rich and give a tax credit to the poor.