Recapping a Rough Week for Progressives
Oy, a few more like this and we’re really in trouble:
Death toll in Haiti climbed above 200,000, millions more injured and/or homeless.
Supreme Court removed restrictions on corporate campaign contributions, and this could have severe consequences for our democracy (I particularly like Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s commentary on this).
Not that they were using it anyway, but the Democrats not only lost their supermajority without passing very much important legislation, but they managed to lose it in my own state of Massachusetts. Since the Republicans have made very plain their policy of dragging almost every initiative into the swamp-of-no-return, this could cripple the already fading hopes that we’d make some progress, or at least back away from the tyrannical policies of the GWB-coup administration.
The renegade coup government in Honduras ran out the clock to the end of its predecessor Manuel Zelaya’s legitimate term, and Zelaya is leaving for exile as a private citizen. This makes at least three right-wing national coups that have succeeded in the Western Hemisphere in the first decade of the 21st century: Honduras, Haiti, and the non-military, non-violent election theft by GWB in the US.
Despite the popularity of outgoing President Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s newly elected president is a right-winger with some possible ties to the brutal Pinochet coup government of the 1970s
At least there are bright spots in my own life, including the release this week of my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson).