Category: Democracy

By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,

For more than 30 years, one of the arguments I’ve made against nuclear power is the chilling effect on our freedom.

Now, it seems that Japan may have passed a law heading down that slippery slope. Or not—I am not so far convinced that the claims are accurate.

A blogger for the UK Progressive put up a rambling, jumbled article claiming that Japan has passed a law giving sweeping powers to shut down bloggers, people who post videos on Youtube, etc. when they’re critical of the government and/or TEPCO.

I did a bit of Googling and found dozens of other blogs basing their story on that same article, which I consider unreliable. But I did find this in the Tokyo Times, which seems to be a genuine news organization that fact-checks and posts corrections. The Tokyo Times article says the Computer Network Monitoring Law was passed on June 17.

It also says that during March and April, even before the law was passed, government agents sent 41

“letters of request” to internet providers, telecom companies, cable TV stations and others to take measures in order to respond to illegal information, including erasing any information from the Internet that can be seen as harmful to morality and public order.

However, this article links back to coverage in the Examiner which again ties back to the original, untrustworthy blog post. I certainly am not going to pore over all 6000 citations to see whether this story is legitimate. But it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Green Business, Peace and War, Politics, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

While the GOP lines up to see who can be more crazy and out-of-touch and unintelligent than their competitors, the Left is strangely quiet. Haven’t even heard rumblings of candidacy from Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who has set the bar for leftist challenges in the past two presidential elections.

And this is odd, because Obama has failed the Left, despite being elected on a platform—dare I say a mantra—of “change.”

Yes, he can claim a number of significant accomplishments—one blogger found Obama’s legislative accomplishment rate was an astonishing 96 percent—but on most of the issues that really matter, his record does not inspire:

WAR:

We’re still in Iraq, where five US soldiers lost their lives this week. And we’re way deeper in Afghanistan than we were, with about 100,000 troops on the ground. And we’ve deployed in Pakistan and Libya. The only real move toward peace was Obama’s recent speech on the Israel-Palestine conflict

HEALTHCARE:

All that energy into the pathetic and complicated Obamacare compromise! Not only was single-payer not “on the table,” but even the wimpy public option was taken off the table. What was left?  A gift to the insurance industry and not much else. I want a candidate who will propose a one-sentence health reform bill: “All US citizens and legal residents are eligible for Medicare from birth.” If we need to phase it in, start by moving eligibility to age 55, then 40, then 20, then zero over a period of years.

ENERGY/ECONOMY/ENVIRONMENT

I lump these three together because the solution integrates across the disciplines: A massive, Marshall-plan-style initiative to get OFF fossil and nuclear energy sources in ten to twenty years, replacing them with sources that are both clean and renewable (with special attention to deep conservation that reduces the need for energy by 50 percent or more). We’d use government loans to jumpstart the effort, bring the price of conversions down, and front the money for homeowners, tenants, farmers,  and business owners to get systems in place—with the loans repaid out of the energy savings. This would boost the economy, create hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of jobs, get people out of poverty, put them back to work, remove our biggest reason for starting wars—and drastically reduce our carbon footprint, all at once!

The candidate who can articulate this vision, who can claim the unfinished mandate that Obama promised and didn’t deliver, has a pretty good shot at galvanizing the American people—if they can be convinced that these changes are actually possible.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Democracy, People Helping People, Protests and Crackdowns, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with ,

In this Web 2.0 Age of Transparency, being stupid about being criticized is, well, more stupid than it used to be. Word gets around. Fast.

A Seattle organization called Reel Grrls, which teaches teens how to become filmmakers, criticized the revolving-door hiring by Comcast of FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker. (Lots of other people raised a public eyebrow on this one.)

In a truly idiotic move, Comcast then announced it was yanking $18,000 it had planned to fund Real Grrls’ summer camp to teach filmmaking, editing and screenwriting. Then, when the media got hold of the story and the public squawked, Comcast recanted and said the fund withdrawal was unauthorized.

But then Real Grrls said it didn’t want the money if there were going to be issues about corporate censorship. They’re using Web 2.0 channels, including a fundraising blast from media watchdog FreePress.net, to raise the money from outside  the corporate world.

With 42,600 Google search results for “reel grrls” comcast as of Monday when I’m actually writing this, Comcast’s PR is clearly taking a hit.One it could have avoided completely by not doing something stupid.

Want to help? Here’s the link to donate.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, media-general, National Conference on Media Reform, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Shel Horowitz, GreenAndProfitable.com

Are bloggers really journalists or are they simply ranting without regard for such concepts as “journalistic objectivity”?

Are traditional journalists still able to tap into the pulse of their community beat, or have they been pushed aside by bloggers who are part of the stories they report?

In an age when radio and print journalists go into the field with cameras and post stories online before they ever see a newspaper or a radio studio, does the instant news cycle of events reported on Twitter and other social media pressure traditional journalists to cut out the analysis, sifting, and curating role they’ve often played in the past?

Is the deprofessionalization of news a good thing because it furthers the democratic impulse, or a bad thing because newsroom budgets are being slashed and if we lose professional journalism, we lose one of the most important balances against runaway government and corporate power?

As AOL prepares to swallow Huffington Post, these questions were much discussed at the National Conference on Media Reform, held in Boston in April, 2011. And since I’ve been both a journalist and a blogger, I’m paying attention.

Traditional journalism platforms can convey legitimacy to bloggers who partner with them, and at the same time make the stodgy and distant institution of a mainstream newspaper much more accessible and contemporary.

The Seattle Times, for example, partners with 39 bloggers. Without promoting or even announcing the partnership at all, the paper surveyed its readers about these partnerships, and found that:

  • 84% valued the partnership
  • 78% valued the Times for the connection
  • 52% improved opinion of seattletimes.com

Perhaps most remarkable of all, out of more than 900 responses, 324 wrote long open-ended replies; being heard about these relationships mattered enough to them that they took significant time to sound off.

According to David Cohn of Spot.Us, a site that allows journalists to solicit funding for specific investigative reporting projects, tapping the community can provide resources that couldn’t exist without crowdsourcing. For example, the Guardian, a well-regarded British newspaper with a strong investigative history, divided up the analysis of a large and complex document to 1000 different volunteers, each taking on a single page.

This has obvious efficiencies in analyzing a document that’s too big for normal channels; most journalistic organizations can’t devote a single reporter to something so resource-intensive.

But what could get lost with this wonderful collaborative process is the big picture. I think of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein slogging through the evidence that eventually forced Richard Nixon from the presidency of the United States, fitting together the pieces of a complex puzzle. Who can put these pieces together in the crowdsourced model?

And what happens to the world of journalism when the journalists performing primary research see their funding wither away, and thus no longer provide the raw material that bloggers often depend on for their reportage?

One answer may be provided by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, https://necir-bu.org. Under the auspices of Boston University and fueled largely by free student labor, the center claims to be the only New England news organization with an ongoing commitment to investigative reporting outside of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team. The institute promises its paid subscribers at least one new investigative news story every month, and also raises revenue with a certificate program in investigative journalism, aimed largely at training bloggers.

But not every journalism resource has the luxury of an unpaid labor force. When newsrooms cut back on both salaries and investigative resources in favor of cheaper infotainment like reality TV, how will we get our news?

 

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, National Conference on Media Reform, People Helping People, Politics, poverty Tagged with , , , , , ,

By Shel Horowitz, GreenAndProfitable.com

Michael Copps: There’s no larger question in the US right now than how do we get the media back?

We started out in 2002, 03, opposing Michael Powell’s plan to loosen media ownership rules. I said the people have a real interest in this, and thanks to FreePress and other groups, three million people contacted the FCC. We’ve conducted some good holding actions, but it’s time to win the battle.

The real question is, shouldn’t consumers be deciding where they want to go and what they want to do online, and that’s what Net Neutrality is about.

We’ve lost a lot of public interest territory over the years, and you don’t get that back an inch at a time.

How do we ensure that everyone has access to broadband? It’s the future of democracy. The facts are gone; the investigative journalism is gone. Thousands of journalists no longer walk the beat. How many facts are buried so deep that the few journalists left can’t find them? Let’s have the data. I have watched the evisceration of the public interest all of these years. I think it’s the most important issue facing the country. The resolution of all of those other issues rides on how they are depicted by the media—and if the facts are told to the American people so they can make a decision. You can’t get that from the starvation diet, the journalism lite that we get from the traditional newsrooms now.

We should bring back a licensing regimen where the public interest is actually included. Where the public interest controls. Where the localism, the news of our various communities, is actually covered. Where minorities are not caricatured but their real issues are covered. Where we can say, “if you’re not serving your community, we’ll take that license back and give it to someone who will.”

Citizen action can still work. Very few people hold outrageous amounts of power, and control what goes on in this country. But citizen action can still make a difference. Look at women’s rights, labor, minority rights, they all had uphill fight, but they all persevered. It never happens easily. We should rededicate and recommit ourselves, and we can make some real down payments on media democracy in the months ahead. And then we can get real progress in getting media that is of and by and for the people.

 

Mignon Clyburn (former South Carolina State Commissioner and activist)

You reaffirm to me how important it is to fight for parity when I put my head on the chopping block. Remember what people were doing 10 years ago while waiting for flights? Reading a book or staring at the ceiling? Now they’re playing a game with a friend in New Zealand, tweeting, texting, IMing. Count the number of wireless activities next time. I hear about the fast approaching mobile TV and mobile broadband. Wireless availability and ease of use is no longer a fun novelty. It’s an essential part of everyday routines. An overwhelming majority would say they couldn’t live without their cell phones. This is especially true in lower income communities. It may be far more economical to communicate in short text messages than taking up too many voice minutes. Wireless is becoming the choice for students, under 30, families with small discretionary incomes. They are relying on them to find bus arrival times and weather forecasts, and to mange  smoother ways of living. But this ease that many of us take for granted is at risk, for others.

1 in 4 households rely solely on wireless. They’re cutting costs and cutting the cord. Data apps on wireless are far more common in Afro-American and Latino communities, and they take advantage of a much wider array of the data than their white counterparts.

And we must be mindful of the effects of this on the ecosystem. If the costs become prohibitive, we have failed.

Small businesses pay significantly more per user (than big) for wireless.

I am an unlikely candidate for this job.  A non-lawyer from a small, poor, “interesting” state. But I am a person who saw the disconnects, the inequities from the day she was born that minimize the potential in her communities. I know that these technologies, the potential for unlocking the spirit and the hope and desires and the excellence in all of us—we have that potential as commissioners, and you have the potential to not let us get away with anything less than our best.

Response to government shutdown:
Copps: we’re wasting all this time on the high noon shootout when there are all these bigger issues.

Clyburn: A lessons we learned in our household that we can disagree without being disagreeable. We don’t see that in our public spaces and places, and because of that, we’re unable and unwilling to compromise.

Oversight of broadband

Clyburn: We are to ensure a robust telecommunications industry. People expect that when they sign up for a service, that they can access information. We established high-level rules to do just that. They’re not onerous rules. I am comfortable with that direction. At the end of the day, we talk about this consolidation. The majority of Americans have two or fewer Internet providers, and that does not stimulate competition. I’m a substitute for competition.

Copps: Internet users should be very worried, because the Net Neutrality we passed is a partial measure. It does not include wireless telecom and there’s the potential for companies to do mischief. Long-term, we should be more worried. Every new telecom technology starts out as the dawn of an era of openness and freedom, but control gets tighter and tighter. That’s the danger to the future of the Internet, probably the most liberating technology since the printing press, and it’s going down the same road as the rest. We’re talking about keeping this technology free, and not letting a few telecoms put up a toll booth. Of course we have authority to do this. The telecoms convinced previous FCCs to call it information services (not regulatable).

State regulators vs. municipal

Clyburn: There are significant donut holes in this nation. 95% has high-speed access, but that means 14-24 MILLION have no broadband access available. The companies say the economic case can’t be made. So cities and towns should have the flexibility to wire those communities.

Copps: We have a spectrum shortage, we need more for wireless. But that should not translate into taking it from broadcast. We have a democracy crisis in large pat due to the state of our media. Let’s look at how broadcasters are using the people’s spectrum. There’s room for both wireless and broadcast.

What would it take for ATT/TMobile merger to be in the public interest?

Copps: A hell of a lot more than I’ve seen before. We have to say, what about competition? What they’re looking for is deregulated monopoly and I hope that’s not the course of American history.

Clyburn: I look at broadband access as a human rights issue. This is the last opportunity—the TV airwaves are unaffordable and almost unreachable. Those traditional platforms are too expensive. If we let this go, what do we have left? It is the pathway forward.

Copps: I think you can justify access to broadband as a civil right very easily. You’re not going to be a young person who can’t get a job because you can’t apply online. You can’t monitor your kids’ learning, your health. We’re 15th or 20th in the world, and that means all these kids are growing up without that opportunity. You think we’ve got outsourcing now…

License renewals:

We used to have 14 guidelines. I don’t think we need to have that many, but you need an honest-to-god licensing system. I’d have the renewals every three years, and you make a judgment about whether the station is serving the public. And if not, you put them on probation for a year or two, and if not, plenty of other people would like to have access to bandwidth.

Diversity:

Copps: Diversity is one of our mandates, but station ownership doesn’t reflect that diversity. We’ve had a committee that has proposed 70-75 measures we could take. I’ve proposed that we take one of them up each month.

Free Expression:

Clyburn: We have to make space for viewpoints we disagree with. But if we diversify, people have more venues to get their voices across. They get drowned out and we cannot be satisfied with that. We have to push this agency and our lawmakers to be creative thinkers. And the advertisers will follow, and the voices we have problems with become less popular. Speak with your clickers and those voices will be gone.

Copps: I’d like to see the FCC require full disclosure on political advertisements. You hear, “brought to you by Citizens for Spacious Skies and Amber Waves of Grain,” and you don’t know it’s a chemical company.

The FCC is one of many agencies with a revolving door. We should say, for x number of years [former regulators can’t work as industry lobbyists]. It’s the crushing influence of money in Washington.

Clyburn: Reaffirmations that public-private partnerships are the way to go. I am not satisfied about our diversity initiatives. I don’t hear enough southern accents. [race, gender]. The revolving door works both ways. I’m the beneficiary of the expertise of my staffer on mergers, from the outside.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, General Commentary, language Tagged with , , , , ,

The other night, I went to Candidate Night for the upcoming town election. And what struck me most of all was how uncomfortable with public speaking most of the candidates and the debate moderator seemed to be. This was not a huge stadium filled with thousands of people; it was a high school cafeteria with maybe 150 or 200 town residents, and most of the candidates personally knew a good chunk of the audience.

And yet…nine out of nine speakers hid behind the podium…I think everyone except the moderator read their remarks…and all but one candidate seemed quite ill at ease. Their speeches mostly emphasized the wrong things, and the debate left little impression of what most of these people actually stood for. One candidate for Town Meeting Moderator–which mostly involves chairing a meeting twice a year that brings out as many as 1100 local voters–actually said he’d never addressed such a large group and wasn’t used to public speaking. If he’s so nervous with 150 people, how is he going to handle a large Town Meeting?

Communication, both oral and written, needs to be effective. A speaker or writer needs to get across point of view, plan of action, intent, and both emotional  and rational appeals. Most of this group flunked the test.

When my parents were students in the 1940s, effective speaking and writing were part of the school curriculum. I think they should be still. And I think a few other things should be part of the curriculum:

  • Critical thinking skills
  • Media literacy: the ability to evaluate news and advertisements for their content, their biases, and their spoken or unspoken agenda (my grandfather used to read all seven New York daily papers in order to extrapolate the truth; my son once had a media literacy class that involved looking at the same stories through the eyes of Fox on the right, Democracy Now on the left, and a mainstream newspaper; why don’t more schools require this?)
  • Learning at least one foreign language to the point where you can have at least a simple conversation
  • A health education program that includes Alexander Technique, yoga, and vision therapy, as well as the usual calisthenics and sports
  • Basic literacy in arts and culture

I think our democracy would be better for it.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who lost his bid for re-election, has organized a webpage to collect public comments for incoming co-chairs Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota on the direction for the Progressive Caucus for the next two years. Since I could make a career out of giving advice to the government, of course I had to step in. Here’s what I wrote:

The Democrats lost the house because of over-conciliation. People voted for change in 08, and in spite of his brilliant marketing during the campaign, Obama has been a very poor marketer of his accomplishments, and very poor at negotiating—so that what did pass failed to constitute “change.”

So…how to move forward?

1. Fight for the sweeping change that Obama has promised but not delivered–not just on the House floor, but by organizing in your home districts. Rapid and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq (I am not impressed with a “withdrawal” that leaves 50,000 troops plus mercenaries in place)…a jobs program focused on deep energy retrofits of existing buildings, especially low-income housing and any government property…a much tighter leash for Wall Street. And dare I say it–throw away this year’s health care in favor of a single sentence: The eligibility age for Medicare shall be from birth.

2. Look for places where the agendas of progressives merge with the radical right (for instance, privacy issues, free speech issues) and build common cause, but with a wary eye and a willingness to pull away quickly if things go sour.

3. Demand of the deficit hawks that they start with the military, which is absurdly huge compared to even other superpowers.

4. If you compromise, get meaningful concessions. If you don’t get the concessions, don’t compromise.

5. For goodness sake, learn to frame the discourse to generate sympathy and support. Read George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant.” Don’t let the right-wing crazies back you into a wall with crazy sound-bite framing (“death panels,” for instance). Learn to frame the issues in terms that relate to the self-interest of most Americans, the health and future of the planet, and our place among the nations. This is what Obama was so good at during the campaign, and has failed so miserably since his inauguration.

Shel Horowitz, marketing consultant, primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, and author of the monthly syndicated column, “Green And Profitable.”

Grayson will definitely missed, and the next two years promise to be frustrating for progressives. Still, let’s not give up hope and keep organizing. Obama could still regain public support—IF he works as hard to pass a progressive agenda as he did to get elected.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , ,

Heretic that I am, I’m going to take an unpopular position: that the Democrats lost not because they were too bold, but because they weren’t bold enough. As all the “pundits” tell the Democrats (as they always do) to move ever-more-rightward, I’ll say, yet again, that moving rightward and wimp-ward is why they keep losing!

The strength of the Tea Party vote is more than a repudiation of Obama. It’s also a repudiation of the “mainstream” GOP (which was already so far to the right that people like Nelson Rockefeller or Lowell Weicker would have found it very uncomfortable).

The massive switch of independent voters, in particular, was, in short, a continuation of the 2008 Obama call for “change”: a loud cry that people didn’t feel they actually received the change they had voted for in 2008.

And this can be pinned squarely on the Democrats’ failure to make bold policy, and to be willing to tell the story of their success boldly. On health care, on climate change, on the economy…the Democrats whittled themselves down to half-measures. Where was the single-payer health care program that almost every other country in the world has adopted in some form (and why didn’t they position that as the boon to the business community that it is)? Where was the Marshall Plan-scale effort to get us off fossil and nuclear and into job-creating, carbon-slashing clean renewable energy? Where were the measures to hold Wall Street and the GW Bush administration accountable for the mess they made? And where were the visionary leaders who should have populated Obama’s Cabinet?

Despite a huge mandate for change, and a majority in both House and Senate, the Democrats refused to even listen to calls for massive structural reform, and then forgot all the marketing lessons they learned in the campaign and let the other side not just control but completely dominate the discourse—leaving the impression that they are a weak and ineffectual party of favors to special interests who can’t fix the economy or anything else. And failing on three crucial aspects of marketing: to remind people firstly of who got us into this mess, second, of the steps they did take to pull us out, and third, of the policy initiatives where change was actually achieved in the last two years.

As I wrote two years ago,

Don’t apologize for your beliefs. Three out of the four most recent prior Democratic nominees–Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry–all crawled on their bellies with messages that basically said, “umm, I’m not really a liberal, I didn’t mean it, I’m soooo sorry!” And all three lost because doing that took the wind right out of their sails. Bill Clinton, who is not a liberal, didn’t play that game. Not surprisingly, he won. Obama never apologized, ignored the L-word, and didn’t even flinch when in the closing days, McCain revved it up and actually called him a socialist (traditionally, the kiss of death in US politics).

Monday evening, Rachel Maddow released a video highlighting Obama’s accomplishments. It’s a great video. The Democratic Party itself should have made something like it, six months ago, and worked to get it viral. Released by an outside journalist, twelve hours before the polls opened, it had no time to gather momentum.

Here in Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick wasn’t given much chance a year ago. But he ran a positive campaign focused on the slogan, “Optimism and Effort.” He highlighted his accomplishments over and over again, made a case that the work wasn’t done, and inspired audiences with a message of hope, economic recovery, and the rights of ordinary people. In other words, he used the exact strategies I’ve been advocating for decades that the Democrats use. Despite his somewhat centrist record, he was able to position himself as a change agent. I went to one of his rallies and went up to him afterward to thank him for being a sitting governor bold and hopeful enough to go out and make that kind of speech.

He did benefit from a third-party candidate who clearly drew votes from the colorless, bland GOP candidate. But still, he won, and by a larger margin than many pundits had predicted.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Diversity, Peace and War, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Today marks the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington, and of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Right-wing extremists Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will dishonor King’s memory by having a rally on the same site, opposed to all the values King held dear.

I’m okay with that, actually. I’d never go, other than to hold a counterprotest sign—but I believe strongly in the 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. As did King, by the way.

I think Beck and Palin are despicable. I also think they have every right to hold their gathering of the lunatic fringe. And I’m aware that I’ve taken plenty of stands over my career for which others would paint me as “lunatic fringe.” Some of them are now mainstream, such as aiming for zero waste, repurposing rooftop space into food and energy collectors, and getting the heck off fossil and nuclear power sources—but they sure weren’t 30 or 40 years ago. I would not have granted then, and don’t grant now, the right of others to tell me how to think, and I don’t claim that same privilege against others whom I disagree with. The right to try to convince them, certainly—but NEVER to dictate what is or is not acceptable thought.

I remember holding a lone protest in front of the local courthouse when the U.S. bombed Lybia. The first day, I got a lot of middle fingers and angry shouts. By the second day, a few people had joined me. On the third day, with a larger crowd, we were getting mostly thumbs ups and supportive honks. It was hard, on that first day. But I remembered my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote, “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.” Taking an unpopular position didn’t take the burden off me to take a stand.

And some of my positions are still out of the mainstream—so far. One such is that a Muslim group has every right to practice that other First Amendment right, freedom of worship—even two blocks from Ground Zero. As Keith Olbermann pointed out recently, there’s already been an Islamic center coexisting in that neighborhood since before the World Trade Center was even built. But even if there weren’t, this country was founded on the principle that people can peaceably assemble, worship the God of our choice (or no God, if we choose), and say what we want to say even if it makes others unhappy. That’s what made us the shining light of Democracy for the world, the example that so many other nations wanted to follow. Those are American values that I hold dear. And I predict that they will once again return to the mainstream of an America that seems to have forgotten its proud heritage.

It means the right to build an Islamic Center—a gathering place for peaceful worship and community activities—on an abandoned site a few blocks from Ground Zero, and it means that Beck and Palin are appropriately permitted for their disgusting festival of intolerance. The appropriate reaction is boycott or counterprotest, not an attempt to silence those we disagree with.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

The Senate can’t pass a jobs bill or a carbon cap bill, but had no trouble finding $60 billion for war.

All I can say to the Senate is, shame on you people! You’ve got your priorities all wrong.

And I can also say to Progressives that we need to reclaim the discourse in this country. If we don’t create pressure for change, we get the same old same old, even from the administration that was elected on a platform of change. Let’s get out there and make some noise.

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