Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - A dialogue with Those Who Wouldn't Vote Republican: Five Untouchable Symptoms

host · 01-03-2008, 02:15 PM

Disclaimer:
<h3>Please....no posts promoting Ron Paul's candidacy. He does "get it", on this issue. He is not currently a viable contender for the republican party nomination, and, for the folks I'm trying to engage with here, many of his other policy positions are too objectionable for progressive leaning folks to ever accept, as a trade off for supporting Ron Paul.</h3>

I'll pick just two of these five issues: (I've highlighted them in bold)

Quote:

http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2924

.....The issues we are dealing with today - health care, jobs, even a war in Iraq - <h3>are literally the same issues we dealt with in 1992. How can that possibly be considered progress?</h3> A real progressive candidate would take an apolitical problem and turn it into a mainstream political subject. None of our candidates have done that. Here are five easily mainstreamable problems ripe for the picking. There are more of these, I'm just picking at five that touch on the national security state, secrecy, economic injustice, and attacks on our civil liberties.

Subject: End the War on Drugs
Factoid: There are 1 million people put in jail for doing what Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George Bush have done.

Marijuana is America's largest cash crop, and it is responsible for around 225,000 arrests a year. Overall, the war on drugs incarcerates around 1 million people a year. Direct spending on the war on drugs this year is $50 billion dollars, about $600 a second. Around half of high school seniors have consumed marijuana (pdf). Simply put, why do some people go to jail for marijuana and cocaine, and others run for President?

Subject: End corporate media ownership:
Factoid: General Electric, a major defense contractor and conglomerate, owns NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC.

Our media is owned and controlled by a few major companies. One of them, GE, has major defense contracts, and strong incentives for war. It also has huge interests in the financial industry. Why is this company controlling our news content again, while we are in two wars? And why did the FCC just relax ownership requirements in local areas, again?

Subject: <h3>End American empire</h3>
Factoid: As of 1998, America had troops stationed in 144 countries around the world.

There are any number of ways to talk about this issue, from disparities of foreign aid to complaints about the IMF to the war in Iraq to the CIA and blowback. The bottom line is that America has troops everywhere in the world, it's expensive, the way it is done now is a bad idea, and we need to bring them home and return to being a republic. That or we need to figure out how to be a responsible international power again and get rid of the Blackwater-style military we are building and the gunrunning vigilante CIA-style Cold War and post-Cold War nonsense.

Subject: <h3>End the war economy:</h3>
Factoid: Money for Iraq keeps passing in 'emergency' legislation to avoid being subject to budget rules.

For some reason, Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans argue that they are fiscally responsible while ignoring their votes to spend 700-800B a year on war. Libertarian charlatans like energy expert Amory Lovins think that the corporate sector and the military sector are legitimate parts of the state, but that other spending is wasteful. The whole notion of the military not being a part of the overall government is crazy, and reflective of a huge, corrupt, and Soviet-style misallocation of capital through secret budgets and fear.

Subject: End the cradle-to-prison superhighway
Factoid: 2 million people are in prison in America, by far the highest total of any other country in the world.

Think slavery has ended? Think torture is 'new'? Think again. With two million people in prison, and tens of thousands of sexual assaults every year, prison is a huge industry and a horrendous abridgment of the idea that is America.

Touching on any of these massive injustices in our economic infrastructure is something no candidate has systematically done. Only John Edwards has remotely addressed the concept of the war on terror, in a somewhat half-hearted way, and he has made 'poverty' a somewhat commonly repeated theme, though not in any meaningful sense. Clinton and Obama are disgracefully absent on these topics. Ironically, Bill Richardson, aside from his great work on residual forces, has also said that the 'war on drugs is not working', which reflects perhaps a more executive oriented and confident worldview. Chris Dodd has also advocated for marijuana decriminalization, which is a less aggressive but still laudable sentiment, especially in light of his work on core constitutional issues.

So anyway, while the insider wonk community is happy that their issues seem to be taken care of, and Democratic base voters like the different candidates we have, I find that actual progressive reframing of our political system is appearing only at the margins of our secondary candidates like Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, and among crazy white supremacist types like Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. Each of the five hinges I've discussed starts with the verb 'end', and that was not planned when I started this post. I think it means that we must end a chapter in American history, and begin a new one.

Restoring healthy communities, healthy citizens, a healthy global order, healthy local media, and a healthy sustainable economy are the key drivers of where need to go as a country. The cancerous symptoms are all around us, and leading Democratic Presidential candidates are too corrupt and morally crippled to even begin talking about them. But we'll get there.

<h3>What are we so afraid of?</h3> We face no enemy nation on our "mainland" territorial borders. Our navy commands the sea ways, and our airpower "owns" the skies.

Quote:

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolit...RestoftheWorld
In Context: U.S. Military Spending Versus Rest of the World

While FY 2008 budget requests for US military spending are known, for most
other countries, the most recent data is from 2005 (at time of writing). Using US spending at that time, we can compare US military spending with the rest of the world:

* The US military spending was almost two-fifths of the total.
* The US military spending was almost 7 times larger than the Chinese budget, the second largest spender.
* The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six “rogue” states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion.
* It was more than the combined spending of the next 14 nations.
* The United States and its close allies accounted for some two thirds to three-quarters of all military spending, depending on who you count as close allies (typically NATO countries, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan and South Korea)
* The six potential “enemies,” Russia, and China together spent $139 billion, 30% of the U.S. military budget.

We have nearly 50 million residents, currently, without health insurance, a coming spike in our aging population, and we're borrowing most of the money that accomplishes this:

Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...d/spending.htm
<center><img src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/R3t3jkRTJlI/AAAAAAAAAbE/mmq4b4NZgS0/s400/military.png">
<img src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/R3t370RTJmI/AAAAAAAAAbM/DYewIsvGMNA/s400/military1.png">
<img src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/R3t4X0RTJnI/AAAAAAAAAbU/l97FvEN8-Sc/s400/military2.png"></center>
Is this not a symptom of our societal dysfunction? What is the matter with many of us? Where are our spiritual leaders?

Did you know that it was "this bad". Are you concerned about our country being in a state of perpetual war, as an unchallenged policy?<br>
<center><img src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/R3t-kkRTJpI/AAAAAAAAAbk/5p5jcPCe7w4/s400/military3.png"></center>

The democratice candidates promise even more of the same:

Hillary Clinton:

Quote:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200711...t-century.html
Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century

Hillary Rodham Clinton
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007

.....To help our forces recover from Iraq and prepare them to confront the full range of twenty-first-century threats, I will work to expand and modernize the military so that fighting wars no longer comes at the expense of deployments for long-term deterrence, military readiness, or responses to urgent needs at home......

John Edwards:

Quote:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200709...the-world.html
Reengaging With the World
A Return to Moral Leadership
John Edwards
From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2007

.......I will double the budget for recruitment and raise the standards for the recruitment pool so that we can reduce our reliance on felony waivers and other exceptions. In addition, I will increase our investment in the maintenance of our equipment for the safety of our troops.......

Barak Obama:

Quote:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200707...eadership.html
Renewing American Leadership
Barack Obama
From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

......To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. . . .

We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. . . . We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines. . . .

I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened.

We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability -- to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities.....

How is Obama's candidacy perceived in the rest of the world?

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1
FRESH FACES
He Could Care Less About Obama's Story
By Reza Aslan
Sunday, December 30, 2007; Page B03

.....That boy is angry at the United States not because its presidents have all been white. He is angry because of Washington's unconditional support for Israel; because the United States has more than 150,000 troops in Iraq; because the United States gives the dictator of his country some $2 billion a year in aid, the vast majority of which goes toward supporting a police state. He is angry at the United States because he thinks it has hegemony over almost every aspect of his world.

Now, more than one commentator has noted that on all of these issues, the next president will have very little room to maneuver. But that is exactly the point.

The next president will have to try to build a successful, economically viable Palestinian state while protecting the safety and sovereignty of Israel. He or she will have to slowly and responsibly withdraw forces from Iraq without allowing the country to implode. He or she will have to bring Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran, to the negotiating table while simultaneously reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions, keeping Syria out of Lebanon, reassuring Washington's Sunni Arab allies that they have not been abandoned, coaxing Russia into becoming part of the solution (rather than part of the problem) in the region, saving an independent and democratic Afghanistan from the resurgent Taliban, preparing for an inevitable succession of leadership in Saudi Arabia, persuading China to play a more constructive role in the Middle East and keeping a nuclear-armed Pakistan from self-destructing in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

That is how the post-Bush "war on terror" must be handled. Not by "re-branding" the mess George W. Bush has made, but by actually fixing it.

In their glowing endorsement of Obama, the editors of the Boston Globe noted that "the first American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must.".....

Isn't the lack of an actual "left" political influence....only a centrist to centrist right presence, the reason that discussion "for change" in the status quo of presently "untouchable" issues, the reason that the three democratic candidates are "centrist", at most?

So, what do we do? How do we stop the election of one of the three leading democratic candidates as our next president, and still avoid the election of someone with policies even more destructive and anti-progressive?