I am a Democrat. That means I'm closer to being an independent voter than most folks who style themselves an "independent." I love the history of this party and it's ties to Jefferson and Madison. I even love the darkside of our party and our ties to Andrew Jackson. 1828 was his year. I love Andrew Jackson as a populist. He too fought a rigged financial system. He also engaged in some of the darkest behavior of our history with the Indian Removals he instigated. Our country has always had to push from the bottom to have any democratic features in this Republic, and the natural tendency of our purported leaders is oligarchy. We call our party "democratic" because that is what we are about. And in our system that means choice in the primaries. The Daily Kos is running an article accusing you of rigging the election towards Hillary Clinton.
I don't believe that allegation. I think maybe you just need some help organizing a strong primary challenge in order to vet our candidates. If it were true that you were trying to rig the primary, then it would be incredibly stupid. The Reason Bernie Sanders is in this race is that there has been a sea change in the consciousness of the Democratic Rank and File and a lot of us, even those of us who love Hillary and Obama, know that this country needs more than to simply run a slightly better alternative to the fascism of the Cons. We don't need to be deprogrammed from the Con Artists in the GOP, but many of us are outraged at the continuing behavior of Wall Street, the Revolving door among our officers, Citizens United, Spying and the unwillingness of law enforcement to prosecute our biggest criminals on Wall Street while they go after School Teachers for downloading music from public websites. Now I understand that a lot of Democratic funding comes from Wall Street. But it is in the interest of Wall Street to obey the law, and it is in our survival interest to start reigning them in and getting them to pay for their privileges, or they will succeed in bankrupting our country. They already have ruined the lives of a lot of us. And we are angry and demand change. This is not a season for Triangulating or glad-handing. We want real change.
A 50 state strategy is a start. We need a 3,144 Counties and 19,509 Cities,towns and villages strategy. And right now we need to be sponsoring robust primaries in all our states so that the people can thoroughly vet our candidates. If there is anyway I can help I'd love to. It's a gargantuan task. But that is where real democracy is. It's when the people rule, when we step up.
What you can't do is a sloppy primary.
2016 and Fighting Wall Street
I looked at your website. No mention of Wall Street and our issues with them. Also You should be talking about our Infrastructure and how we need to rebuild it. Also, when I click on "2016" I want to see our candidates first. Not a really poor quality set of graphics on the evils of the GOP. I'm looking at the DNC because I want to know who among our leadership is standing for the people, for reforming Wall Street, preventing another financial meltdown, rebuilding our infrastructure, etc.... I think most people entering the site are looking for information on what we are going to do in 2016, not the dark side of our unhappy opponents. Maybe a Tab that says "Democrats in 2016" and "What we Face" might work better. It needs a list serve, and to be more closely integrated with the State Websites. And we need to facilitate democracy in our party.
Project Ivy
Project Ivy is a page right now. I'd really like to see it as a portal to 3,144 Counties and 19,509 Cities and more closely integrated with the State Democratic party orgs. You've got a webpage to the various Democratic State Organizations. That needs to be integrated. Each of them should have a website, two way communications, a database, and the ability to query candidates. If you could get hold of the team that runs Obama's website it would help.
Each of them should have people on hand to get out the word. We need to make our party more democratic. I know we really want to win in 2016. But process matters as much as outcome. We can do it Ms Schultz. I know most of us love Hillary, but we should be listening to Bernie. His plank expresses a common theme. If I can help I will.
I guess we Dems are going to have to fight to get our plank out there. For now I'm taking Bernie's plank as a starting point. Please consider adopting it as the Dem Plank. We'll be following your efforts and whether you (and Hillary) do.
Nobody was surprised by what is happening to the Greeks. It's happened in one way or another to country or state after state, around the world. Since the end of official colonialism, the central powers may be less likely to send in troops everywhere, but the use of central banking, exchange rates, and trade power has been used over and over again to shift the debts of corrupt officials and corrupt bankers to the general publics of the countries they are looting. The Germans, the Japanese, the Chinese and even the Russians have, mostly, traded their military Uniforms for Uniform Suits. It's not outright war anymore. It's "just business" -- with the model as the Godfather.
I started reading the Article "5 Billionaires Who are Making Life Miserable for Ordinary Americans," by Dave Johnson from Alternet, and I thought I'd see the usual suspects. But from the looks of it there are a lot more than 5 billionaires trying to turn the USA into an Oligarchy. His article points to 5 people who are not the Walton's or the Koch Brothers. The article demonstrates that we have hundreds of Billionaires whose idea of our Republic is an oligarchic Republic. It looks like Billionaire Tom Perkins is speaking for his fellow Billionaires!:
“The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,” Perkins said. “But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”
And it seems like these Billionaires are working to make this a reality. The list of Miscreants in the Salon Article are:
Billionaires:
1) Pete Peterson
2) John D. Arnold
3) Charles Munger Jr.
4) Tom Perkins
5) Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and others
There are a lot more than 5 persons. It seems like venal and perverse billionaires have become legion. Hundreds? They seem to be in every State of the Union, and their gatherings with the Koch Brothers or the other factions are chauffeured events; usually secret. It's no wonder our Democracy is in trouble. They seem to have taken the Powell memo as a declaration of war on the USA. Essentially they are running their own revolution. The Salon Article gives detail on only 5 of them, but it has links to more information. So when we talk of the Koch's takeover, we are really talking about a group of sometimes aligned oligarchs pushing different issues for self aggrandizement using politics to buy power and influence.
Here are some highlights for those who might not click on the link:
1) Pete Peterson’s deficit/debt scare campaign and his ongoing effort to gut Social Security and other entitlements.
Pete Peterson is the pointman on the effort to privateer and eliminate social security:
"Leading every list of billionaires pushing an issue is billionaire Pete Peterson and his forever war on government doing things to make our lives better, especially Social Security. Peterson leads the list because of reports of his pledge to spend $1 billion on his pet issue."
And that is one billion this year. Think of it! The Koch's have pledged to spend a billion electing candidates across the country who reflect the beliefs of this group. But you can better believe that Pete Peterson's ads will coordinate with those of the Kochs and the others. They all share hostility to the idea of democracy. They really are disciples of Tom Perkins. The article continues:
"Have you ever heard anywhere that the budget deficit and national debt are a problem? You can’t pick up a newspaper or magazine, turn on the radio or TV, or listen to any politician from the so-called “center” to the far right without hearing that, and the reason is Pete Peterson and his money."
The Salon Article includes a video of Pete Peterson in video:
But what Pete Peterson is running a hoax. Social Security's only threat is from Pete Peterson.
Some of the front groups in the Pete Peterson list is;
"Peterson and his money are a big part of the backing for the
"Concord Coalition,
"Fix the Debt,
"The Can Kicks Back,"
the Comeback America Initiative,
the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget,
the Moment of Truth Project,
the Committee for Economic Development,
America Speaks plus contributions to many other groups."
And the article notes:
"As Michael Hiltzik worded it in Unmasking the most influential billionaire in U.S. politics at the LA Times, “The shame of Washington… comes from the fact that almost every organization promoting the grand fiscal bargain in which those programs will be on the table has accepted, somewhere and somehow, money from Pete Peterson.”
At least Pete Peterson doesn't hide his numerous front groups like Koch brothers and their "kochtopolis". His looks more like a pyramid:
Our Real Problem is in the Trade Deficit and War Mongering
Meanwhile our real debt problem is in our trade deficit and war-mongering. As the Salon Article also notes:
"Meanwhile the country’s real deficit problem is our trade deficit, especially with China. The trade deficit is the measure of jobs and factories moving out of the country. Fixing this deficit just happens to create jobs, lift wages and repair our economy."
"If you are hearing about how terrible the budget deficit is and how it is so important that we all make sacrifices in order to bring that deficit down, it’s Pete Peterson ‘s money talking. Too bad there is no billionaire pushing us to fix the trade deficit."
Too bad they are all exploiting it using Wall Street Arbitrage tricks and offshoring.
Public Pensions
2) Billionaire John D. Arnold’s attack on public-employee pensions.
If the Kochs are point people for stealing elections and the Tea Party/GOP takeover of State after state, and Pete Peterson is the point man on cutting Public Pensions, John D. Arnold runs point on the Far Right's attacks on the pension system. They've already systematically looted private, University and public pensions across the country but it seems Arnold sees his mission as to end the rest. David Sirota has done work on this one. "David Sirota showed how the Pew Charitable Trusts was working in partnership with (and funded by) Arnold." The findings in Sirota’s report included this:
"Finding: Conservative activists are manufacturing the perception of a public pension crisis in order to both slash modest retiree benefits and preserve expensive corporate subsidies and tax breaks."
The primary source for the money and movement on this is Arnold.
So if you were expecting a pension from your police or fire job. If that gets done away with you can thank John D. Arnold. Remember that name, friends, especially if you are in law enforcement.
They are attacking every single source of information and influence in the country. Even Sesame Street!
“These corporate/conservative organizations are very good at manipulating the media and public opinion — it is their purpose. Their “experts” are well paid and always available to talk to reporters, appear on TV and radio shows and write articles and opinion pieces for newspapers, blogs and for their network of similar organizations. Their “reports’ and “studies” reach the conclusions that fit the strategy, and are crafted to sound just right. And there are so many of them! The result is development of “conventional wisdom” about what is going on in our society. This is why that conventional wisdom more and more reflects the corporate/conservative line.” [Also: discover-the-network-out-to...]
3) Charles Munger Jr. (near-billionaire and son of a billionaire) wants to control California
I hadn't heard of Munger (He's mostly California's problem). I think that Dave profiled him because he's typical of those billionaires who are based in their home cities and have a perverse loyalty to the GOP and country club of those places. There are a lot of local politically active billionaires whose focus is more local politics, like Munger.
4) Perkins -- see above
What Matters about Perkins is that his statement might have sounded like a Joke, but when you take these billionaires in tandem it's not funny anymore. Indeed they could be cutting their own throats in the long run. David quotes Igor Volsky from Think Progress:
“The nation’s growing gap between the rich and poor has become a full-blown crisis, with the top 1 percent of families experienced a 278 percent increase in their real after-tax income from 1979 to 2007, while families in the middle 60 percent saw an increase of less than 40 percent. A large body of research suggests that high inequality leads to lower levels of representative democracy and a higher probability of revolution, as poorer citizens become convinced that the government is only serving and representing the interests of the rich." [http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-one-billionaires-idea-give-rich-people-more-votes-already-works]
Another recent study showed that our elected officials pretty much ignore public opinion. What they do pay attention to are campaign donations. And the poor can't donate anything so the strategy of the rich is to eliminate the middle class that the features of Democracy depend on. Perkins is "already getting what he wants." And we arent':
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” https://represent.us/action/theproblem-4/"
And the reason is that politicians do as their campaign donors do. And the country does as the media tells them to do. And the media is influenced (if not outright slaves to) these billionaires and those citizens who pay them. For a few hundred bucks a local crook can buy a politician. For a few billion our billionaires have decided to buy out the country.
5) And then there are the Supposedly Liberal Silicon Valley boys
Then there are Silicon Valley billionaires Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and others pushing low wages for people who work for them.
This one frosts me because I worked "figuratively" in the extended silicon valley and the Government heavily subsidized it's creation. Then the moguls who took advantage of Wall Street money to monopolize key pieces of software and connectivity started working on us. Pensions? We never had them. We had 401K's and IRAs, and initial promises of employer matching that were never kept. And now these folks have the stones to go to Congress and say they have to hire abroad rather than tap into the pool of unemployed software engineers and skill in this country. It's a transparent effort to enslave all of us. And taken together, it's pretty clear we are fighting oligarchy.
And this article didn't even include the Koch Brothers, Adelson or the legions of other folks in Florida and Nevada, Chicago and New York -- and scattered throughout the country, who are pursuing similar agendas.
