Well we’re obviously not going to get any results out of that one. DNC called me the other day wanting money (I’m registered independant, by the way) and I turned them down. I’m going to be very careful about which way my money goes.

Posted by: beq | Feb 14 2006 18:45 utc | 4

The Democratic leadership still wants to believe that it’s all politics as usual, and that all the Democrats have to do to regain power is to suggest a few policies and make a few pronouncements about fighting terrorism. They’re not focusing on any of the real issues, like global warming or peak oil or the incredible growth of income inequality in the United States. A Democratic administration would still be better than a Republican, but as long as the Democrats insist on being Republican Lite, people will ask themselves, why not just buy the real thing?
Time to raise the black flag.

Posted by: Aigin | Feb 14 2006 18:54 utc | 6

So it’s torches and pitchforks?
that would be only allowed in freespeech zones…
otherwise, also against the law.
However, Solidarity: A Meme Whose Time Has Come?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 14 2006 18:58 utc | 8

Is he being blackmailed with stuff uncovered in wire taping?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Feb 14 2006 20:10 utc | 10

Are we finally ready to concede that the Democratic Party does not represent an alternative to the political business-as-usual? There was a mini-fight here over Hackett once before when Billmon posted an article about his Ohio bid (check the archives… I don’t feel up to re-hashing it myself) over the “anything is better than a Republican” issue.
Nobody is more disgusted with the neocon agenda than I am… but, at the same time, nobody is more disgusted with the various and sundry knights on white horses we keep imagining are going to come riding in to save us all. I’ve politely ranted about all of this before, but we just keep chasing our tails in little circles and as soon as one of the the straws we are desperately clutching gets ripped away from us, we grab on to one of the ones we previously held. It’s the Left’s version of the neocon Iraqi invasion mentality: WMD… no? Um, vile dictator, then. No…? Okay, how about UN resolution 1441…? Doesn’t work? Okay, then… how about gassed his people? No? Okay then how about weapons of mass destruction? No? What about repressive regime? Except when the Left does it is more like: Fitzgerald will get ’em. No…? Okay, then we’ll vote ’em out of office. No, Diebold controls the election results? Okay, then, Howard Dean will get ’em. No…? Okay, then… we’ll take away their majority during the 2006 election. No? Oh, well then… how about the Downing Street Minutes? No? Then we’ll vote ’em out. No? And on and on and on and on and on… all the while more people are dying and more civil liberties get flushed down the toilet.
Let’s get a few things cleared up so that we can stop acting shocked all the time.
1. We can not vote them out of office. As an Ohioan, I am sick of being told that it is our fault that Bush was “re-elected” in 2004. Bush the Younger has never won a Presidential election and it is no more Ohio’s fault that this happened than it is a Californian’s fault that the White House sponsored a recall putsch to insert their own man there.
2. There are no valiant heroes who are going to come out of the blue to rescue us from the fascists. As exciting as it would be to believe that someone, anyone, actually has the pleb’s interests at heart and the means to do something about it, this is a fairy tale. Career politicians are, by definition, only concerned with their own interests and the interests of their own kind (which excludes their constituency). There are no special prosecuters who will successfully impeach or even tarnish anyone for very long because, firstly, that was what domestic surveillance was designed to prevent and, secondly, all abuses can be made legal post facto.
3. The Democrats are no less friendly to corporate interests than the Republicans. Do you still really believe the world is made up of only good people and Republicans? I could fill this section with link after link of Democrat speeches and voting records… but why should I bother? If you have not conjured by now that the “opposition party” is filled to overflowing with those who are only invested in facilitating the interests of the privileged, then I officially give up on you. And even if there were a Democrat who was interested in shifting the status quo to make it easier on the plebs (I never gave up on the idea that Dennis Kucinich genuinely wanted to make a difference), see point number 2 above.
4. As long as the system is functioning, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it except to blow off steam ranting. And even that is dangerous to you, considering the surveillance. The “pitchforks and torches” idea that beq suggested (jokingly, I presume) would only work if done en masse, when the risk of individual reprisal is mitigated. Even something as simple as a boycott isn’t going to work unless everyone’s on board… and it’s been my experience that we can’t get a simple majority to agree on the colour of shite. So if you’re feeling revolutionary, you might want to have a pack of gum in your pocket for that plane ride to Gitmo.
There is, however, one small, ironic hope for change that is not extralegal (remarkable, really, since the Department of Homeland Security has made jaywalking an act of “terrorism”). That hope is that all of our fears about the global economy will actually come to pass. Unfortunately, the only way that I can see that things will get better is if they get a whole lot worse, first… and “fortunately” for us, it doesn’t look like we will have to wait all that long for it. A massive devaluation of the dollar and a few more Katrinas should be enough.
I don’t credit our leadership with any abundance of brains or some superhuman skill set; they just have a lot more money than anyone else and, therefore, have more resources to bribe and coerce than your average thug. But you can’t eat money (especially since most of it doesn’t physically exist, anyway), and if they lose that… well, do you know what happens when you put a hothouse orchid outside during the winter?
I know this sounds bestial… that the poor have to suffer even more before they get it through their thick skulls that they are unwilling participants in a class war, but since they are already uninsured and in many cases starving (if not being killed outright as “collateral damage” both at home and abroad), I guess I’m having trouble getting fussed about it. Anyone who lives in a shanty and can’t make ends meet and still has a “W ’04” bumper sticker on their car (which might help get you a good parking space as it is evidence that you are, at least, mentally handicapped) obviously hasn’t suffered enough. And at least the poor are moderately inurred to those conditions; I don’t think Cheney has missed a meal in his life to date.
So with all of that in mind, and just so that this rant hasn’t been entirely off-topic, I would say that Hackett’s decision to drop out of politics has convinced me as nothing else could have that he might very well have been qualified for the job after all.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 14 2006 21:25 utc | 12

I hear the whaling and gnashing of teeth here over the swift boat lite of Hacket, yet, I will vote Dem in the next election. While they have to suck up to corporations for campaign cash, there is a big difference in Dems and Repubs. The main deference is the amount of money that flows back to the states. The pipeline has been cut under Bushie. The thing that needs to happen is Dems need to elected, then vote a different Dems in the primary in the same district and then vote him in. Do that for about three election cycles and they will get it.
Road money, medicare and medicaid money, Community Development Block Grants, Pell Grant, Stafford Loans, you name it, it has been cut. This means money isn’t flowing to the states.
In it’s place is massive borrowing out of the economy and steering the money to favored interest. If the money isn’t borrowed out of the economy, it has to find a return in the private economy instead of safety of government bonds. Thus, creating more business investment which we are lacking right now.
I work in local goverment and there has been sea change since Bushie took over. I will take Clinton’s budget anytime.
The only real answer to this whole thing is public financing of campaigns.

Posted by: jdp | Feb 14 2006 21:51 utc | 14

@Monolycus
Spot on. Best post ever.
Of course, very few ‘get it’ — and as long as there is still an appearance of normalcy — they will continue to believe that the Democratic Mullahs are better than the Republican Mullahs.
The system, though, could continue to operate until we are all long dead.

Posted by: DM | Feb 14 2006 22:55 utc | 16

@Mistah Doctor Charlie
I’m not happy about it, but I don’t see any alternatives. Your humane ideas are only viable if we assume “we still have fair elections”. I can not assume that. I am not begrudging anyone their right to vote in any way they see fit since the electoral process has become exactly the same as pushing a button that is not hooked up to anything while you wait to cross a busy intersection; it does nothing but make you feel better.
We have no voice any longer, we have no representation (if we ever did), and if you follow the links that Uncle $cam provides you can conclude that we have no recourse to the law anymore. The only things left for us to do is to watch the wheels fall off or get ourselves arrested (and I don’t see how the latter helps anything). I’m taking some measure of cold comfort in believing that after the wheels have fallen off, we will have the opportunity to reconstruct things more sensibly… but until that happens we are deceiving ourselves to believe we are anything more than along for the ride.
I know that people have said this throughout human history, but we live in a dangerous age and there is a great deal more on the way we will need to wade through. The times in which we could have effectively prevented the mess we presently enjoy have passed. Now we each need to realistically assess the situation and endure what is to come as best we may. I don’t think I am being histrionic or defeatist, but it is my assessment(just as Paul Hackett appears to have concluded) that our hands are tied for the present time. We have a lot of work ahead of us (individually and collectively); I would rather we did not expend our energies in fruitless pursuits.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 14 2006 23:05 utc | 18

jdp makes some good points, but in total I think I would have to side with Monolycus and Debs.
I realize that states were better off under Clinton, indeed much better off, but you simply can’t go back in time, the Washington Consensus under Bush has progressed too far. Does anyone think that if Hilary were elected President she would take us back to the good old days when Bill was ending welfare and cutting this and that to balance the budget? And those were the good old days? We were lucky to have a one time tech boom and a major housing boom back then. Both bubbles are deflating now, there is nothing to support progressive measures but taxing the rich, and Hilary and Congress won’t do it. Norquist has won to the extent that Government is coming up for air for the third time in the bathtub. Do you realize that Chavez’s reforms, which are generating the same saber-rattling from the Dems, are far, far, far more modest than Roosevelt under the New Deal, when maximum tax rates were in the 90%’s and corporations paid well over double the share they pay now. So where is the willpower among the elite? Not until they are scared for their lives, like during the New Deal, will things change.
Yes, History repeats itself, but mankind has never faced a situation where we are approaching, if not already superceding, our limits to growth, as now. This gives an added incentive to the feckless elite to steal everything that’s not nailed down, and (as Groucho famously said) take up the “tacks” on much of what is. I disagree with those who think money won’t matter when the crash hits. Since those with debt will likely lose everything, I think that money will be the only thing that matters when it comes to distributing goods when there are not enough to go around.
Let me repeat: Until billionares are literally scared for their lives, the pendulum will not swing back.
In a way, I see Rubinomics as the ideal setup for Bush. A mania for balancing, without redistributing anything to those in need, practically foreordained the acceptance of tax cuts. The measly $100 was the only thing the struggling working class was gonna get. Gore never ran on increasing social services.
So, until Dems are willing to stand up and completely challenge elite wisdom, I don’t see much hope either.
Though they did stand up for Social Security, for the time being.
Also, I don’t see lack of business investment as being the issue. The cash is sloshing around, but there is no incentive to invest in anything but another Hummer factory; there isn’t even a rush to up our production of bullet-proof vests, or even bullets, for that matter.
O.T.: When I think back to those halcyon mid-nineties I get the feeling that more than fiscal policy was pre-planned. I remember getting endless calls from headhunters looking for programmers with security clearance to work on all the datamining and security state programs that are so frightening now. Yes, they were all built under Clinton. What does that tell you about elite consensus?

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 14 2006 23:24 utc | 20

By the way, got my AIPAC donor survey (how the hell did they get MY name?) this week. That should be REAL FUN to fill out. I just hope they don’t come after me with UZIs.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 14 2006 23:50 utc | 22

The Dem leadership blew it, and it’s a shame.
From the standpoint of trying to regain both Houses of Congress, a big picture view would say make as many seats competitive as you can – rather than engage in a fratricidal primary that only helps Republicans. So it makes sense to try to get Hackett to reconsider his Senate bid in favor of another House run.
HOWEVER – the clumsy, heavy handed way the leadership went about this was bound to blow up in their faces.
Hackett may be a little volatile, but he’s still a proven vote getter and should have been treated with a lot more respect. Yet the establishment leadership acted like a bunch of party bosses in a smoke-filled back room – dealing out primary slots like playing cards and screwing over anyone with the nerve to complain about the deal.
With a little finesse and better regard for the sensibilities of the people involved, we might have been able to have TWO competitive Congressional races in Ohio. Now we only have one, and have lost a promising talent in the bargain – all because our political ‘leaders’ have so little political acumen.
But let’s be clear, this wasn’t about Hackett, this was about the guys in control keeping control – no matter what the cost. It’s old school City machine politics on a national scale, and it’s killing our party.
OT: I think we all know who is a shoo in for Upper Class Twit of the Year.

Posted by: Night Owl | Feb 15 2006 3:03 utc | 24

gylangirl’s response is the best yet I’ve seen from any US voter. The dems aren’t going to fix anything. Most discerning people came to believe that many election cycles ago but there has been a long period of denial.
This is normal. It’s part of the grieving process after having lost a formerly stalwart ally. But US voters must move past denial and anger into acceptance, and then get on with the job that circumstances have demanded be done.
What happened in the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Why does everyone sit around waiting for someone else to sort the problem out?
You mob, US voters, are going to have to sort it out.
If you think it’s too hard, turn your mind for a moment to countries all over the planet who in the last 100 years or so have successfully fought back and defeated the power hungry. There’s a big gang of these brave nations sitting South of the US.
Just for a moment compare the likely consequences of resistance in the US with the seemingly certain consequences of resistance in Venezuala. Lookit who won out there in the face of much more trenchant and dangerous opposition.
I hate to state the bleeding obvious but unless you decide that your freedom is worth the risk of genuine sacrifice, you’re gonna be stuck in oppression. If salvation does come it won’t come for you, because it will come from the other parts of this planet that still understand sometimes it becomes necessary to fight (and I don’t just mean physically overpower), those who seek to oppress.
If it is left up to others the scene will have become so bad, that anti-amerikanism in it’s most base form will be rampant. And that means the freedom fighters wont be spending much time sorting the bad eggs from the ‘innocent’.
That would be so wasteful and unneccessary, because the situation where a community has run out of easily accesible resources, so that a dog eat dog ethos reigns has occured many times before.
In fact that situation is about the only time where revolutionary change becomes inevitable.
Revolutionary change doesn’t always mean violent change but it still requires committment.
Stop talking about and it do it! Take a look around your immediate community and you will find people with the same doubts.
Yes maybe they haven’t accepted the need for change yet but that is the job of those that have, they must help those that haven’t, to come to acceptance.
Once people see that you’re not pushing for a different jackass, that what you want to achieve couldn’t in anyway be described as partisan, they will listen much more closely. They will be much more prepared to look at alternatives that don’t involve ‘swapping a known asshole for an unknown asshole’ and don’t require violent revolutionary change.
I could go on here for screeds, but once a few essential tactics are accepted the strategy will have to be developed by those much closer to it all than I am.
An essential virtue of the ‘new’ political movement should be that it is virtually impossible for careerists to self nominate. Candidates should be picked from the organisation’s membership by drawing them from a ballot of members who meet the necessary basic criteria. For example as I understand it convicted felons cannot run for federal legislative positions.
The only issue that successful congressmen and senators would vote on would be electoral reform. As soon as the group takes a position on anything else, the suits will use that to shove em into a cleft stick.
This should be looked at positively eg
“For a change let’s vote for something to make our country better; not just something we think will be better for ourselves”.
Now you all can nitpick all you like around the edges but remember nothing is impossible, adequate safeguards to protect against abuse can be developed. Even if a smartarse does get past, people will understand that as being a hangover of politics the old way and support the movement getting rid of him/her.
To those who still talk about voting Demopublican as the lesser of two evils, I say remember the old saw:
Insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting a different outcome.”

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 15 2006 4:09 utc | 26

Well people, I’m reading many views, and the underlying theme is why reward the Dems when they are just DINOs. My answer is budget priorities. The federal budget is a line item budget just like any municiple budget or state budget. Its easy to move money from a favored line item for one group to another line item favoring another. The fact is, the dems are still somewhat beholden to the labor unions, teachers, public employees unions and others on the working person scale.
Our governor came up with the most progressive state of the state I’ve ever heard. She’s playing to the base. There will competing proposals on the statewide ballot this year. One will be about takings to supposedly cure the Supreme Court decision last year allowing a municipality to take property for a private developer. This is the repub proposal for their base. Granholm and a grass roots campaign are pushing a minimum wage increase and it already has 65% approval. She’s fighting fire with fire. She’s got my vote and I love every fight she has with the rethug house and senate. She tried it their way for four years, now she’s going back to the FDR type proposals and it’s a winner.
The Dems aren’t what they should be, but new leadership must start at the grass roots. When even the old dogs like Harry Reid and Biden see good change on the state level and see what citizens want on the local level for priorities, they soon catch on.
The bottom line is after all my ranting is I’ll take a Dem any day over one of those shit face rethugs.

Posted by: jdp | Feb 15 2006 4:50 utc | 28

Debs,
Where I live, Pacific NW, my Democratic representation is flush from the local, state, and including both congressional and senate. I’m frankly pleased with this representation, especially dist.7 rep Jim McDermott — and have no doubt that most of them would, givin more teather from the Feds, would move much further left.For example, we already have very reasonable state (albeit low income) run health coverage ( which I’m a happy subscriber). The solidarity that has been achieved has not come easily and while we often entertain 3d party canadates (especially the greens) the overall effect of going that way is seen to undermine and possibly fracture what has been gained.
From my perspective and on the local level, I’m inclined to be sympathetic to jdp’s position — where I also assume he is busting his ass to achieve similar goals — of trying to pressure the party through delivering concrete results on the local level. Of course, the DLC and DNC are infiltrarted by elite interests that are at odds with whatever momentum that has been achieved locally. Which in a nutshell, is why 3d party interests only emerge (with any real vitality) on the federal level — as a mostly symbolic hedge against federal policy currently being espoused. And because they are mostly seen as a symbolic or protest vote their net effect is seen as such, and evaporates soon after the election. So 3d party canadates are always between a rock and a hard place, seeing that on the grass roots level, they inavertantly play against what should be ironed out on the primary level within the democratic party, and on the federal level as a simple protest vote.

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 15 2006 10:24 utc | 30

@anna missed I don’t doubt what you say but the fact remains that as long as people wait for a change to be given them and just ‘hope’ that things will change, nothing will change.
I’ve been involved in mainstream ‘left’ politics for a good part of my adult life, in fact I worked for the shitbag who fancies himself as the next Prime Minister of Australia and one thing I learned early on was that the assholes like him don’t just ‘happen’ like Topsy, they are bred by a system of selection that rewards the liars, arslickers and cynical ahead of the committed and honourable people who do most of the grunt work.
I respect my fellow posters at MoA which is why I get so boringly adamant on this subject. The crooks may not be as prevalent at local level or even as competent, but they are there and not only does that local machine throw up the next numbers-man or bag-man or fixer, the ‘look the other way’ complicity provided by the ‘honest’ representatives who relunctantly ignore the activities of the bad-eggs guarantees the survival of corruption.
When Haryy Truman attended Tom Pendergast’s funeral it was sold to the US voters as the act of an honourable man, when in truth the act was that of a moral coward.
If we accept that Truman was personally honest then Truman’s wilful ignorance of the crimes of Pendergast and the rest of the Kansas City machine is even more contemptible.
By attending Pendergast’s funeral Truman not only gave the nod to the crooks that they’re all on the same team in the end, it told other ‘honest’ poloticians on their way up that turning a blind eye was a perfectly fine thing to do.
Politicians still had a choice about whether to be honest or not in Truman’s day, but by seeming to condone dishonest politics, Truman brought the time when that choice would go (ie only the crooks will rise) that much closer.
I’m not going to keep on at this thread ad infinitum because what I think doesn’t matter a damn but what US voters do, does.
As long as those voters believe in “third time’s a charm’ or any of the other silly gambling rationales that have been keeping the Dems in just enough power to be able to stay the same along with no incentive for making a change, those voters are complicit in hastening the day when it won’t matter, it will be too late because the power to make a change will have gone.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 15 2006 11:46 utc | 32

@Anna Missed@524 AM:
Please do not interject any sanity or reality into the discussion: it destroys the atmosphere.
@Debs:
Before you write your definitive three-volume history of the United States, I humbly suggest that that you consult some good secondary souces and as much primary stuff as you can before you write your chapter(s) on machine politics.
T.J. English’s Paddy Whacked is a good start. It explains the popularity of Boss Tweed in New York, Bath House John and the boys in Chicago, and Tom Pendergast in Kansas City.
Fortunately history and politics are not black and white. At that unique time in American history, politics was still personal, it was green in several ways, and gravity was still operative: things trickled DOWN.

Posted by: Groucho | Feb 15 2006 15:19 utc | 34

OK, the ball has been batted back and forth over the net, and a few themes and ideas emerge to me:
First, no one is saying that there aren’t any good politicians. There are perhaps ten Representatives, McDermott among them, (Mckinney, Lee, Kucinich come to mind.) worth keeping. As for the Senate, well… There are those activists who felt Wellstone had sold out with his many compromises, and none of the current crop of what Debs calls ‘mainchancers’ comes close to his progressive record. Activists here in Massachusetts are pretty split over Barney (the mouth who could talk anyone to death) Frank.
Second, perhaps in a state like Michigan where the meltdown has already happened, apres la deluge, politicians are getting the message and you can support them. But I am always suspicious of pols like Granholm, who will turn on a dime with their policies when the polls indicate that they need to: a whore without core beliefs may be flexible, but we’re talking politics here, not the Kama Sutra. They can just as easily spin back once in office. I feel much more comfortable supporting true progressive activists.
My state of Massachusetts, supposedly one of the most ‘Democratic’ states in the union, has elected a procession of Republican Governors because the Democratic party doesn’t stand for anything but ‘we can ignore real issues, hit all the hot buttons, and triangulate more than the other party.’ The last election, where Romney was elected, came down to looks. Pathetic. And my Representative, the aptly named Lynch, who took over for the legendary Moakley–who in his later years developed a penchant for naming everything built around here for his late wife–was practically anointed by the downtown business community: no democratic process whatsoever.
Third, and perhaps most important, we are expecting too much from a system that was designed to achieve the opposite.
If we look at the situation from the top, historians like Howard Zinn and Michael Parenti, as well as Chomsky, who is ignored as a historian, have cogently argued that the whole system of representative government, the electoral college, voting restrictions, the entrenched two-party system, was designed purposely to insulate the governing from the demands of the governed–that is to have the form of a democracy, without the function.
Along the historical way we were treated to democratic insults like poll taxes, literacy tests, outright intimidation, party patronage systems, and, when deemed necessary by those in power, lynchings.
When issues like voting rights had been partially redressed by popular protest, the so-called ‘public relations’ industry arose, beginning with Wilson’s detestibly dishonest campaign for US entry into WWI–a campaign which has served as the model for the jingoistic fury drummed up to support every major war since. Liberal Jewish Democrats, like Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman, (in many ways more progenitors of the neo-cons then Strauss) refined these techniques for ‘manufacturing consent’ to a state-of-the-art, where people could now be allowed the illusion of choice in voting or consumer preferences, without the danger of making the ‘wrong choice.’ (Chomsky continually stresses that candidates are treated by the industry in exactly the same manner as toothpaste: market the sheen or the taste, but never the underlying chemical structure of the compound.) It is precisely this western expertise that most differentiated the slick movie-star western approach from the more heavy handed Soviet approach, and indeed it was an advancement for civilization, of sorts, because less overt violence was needed to coerce the populace. (I am always struck by how much more perceptive of the machinations of power former denizens of eastern block soviet sattelites are, then their more brainwashed western cousins.) Everyone who is not familiar with these techniques should at least take an hour out of their lives and listen to the work of Alex Carey:
Corporations and Propaganda “>Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda — The 20th century, Carey says, is marked by three developments: the growth of democracy via expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey’s unique view of US history goes back to WWI and ends with the Reagan era. This digitally remastered version of TUC Radio’s most successful program ever is a classic for students of propaganda. 60 minutes
Present day techniques have now been developed, honed, and implemented to deal with the ever-present threat of a more educated public. Patronage and intimidation are now joined by disqualification (up to 40% of African-American males are disqualified by criminal records in some areas of the country), purges of voting roles, dubious absentee and foreign votes, privatisation of the machinery of elections, and the most dangerous of all, black box voting techniques.
This is all in addition to the much remarked corruption of elections caused by the explosion of private financing. The heinous Buckley v. Valeo legally enshrined the doctrine that money = free speech, thereby effectively disenfranchising the bottom 80-90% of the population who do not give political donations, and empowering the upper 1%, who give the majority of political donations. This, again, is a crucial pillar in the corporate domination of politics. We saw how important this principle is to the elite by the threat posed by the Dean campaign. His positions on issues were rather unremarkable, but his campaign’s reliance on public financing was very threatening, resulting in the later revealed to be digitally enhanced, ‘Dean scream.’
Money has the additional corrosive effect of corrupting the media, who now rely on political ads as a major source of revenue. The media is another problem in many ways, which I will not deal with in this short treatment in the interest of brevity.
So much for examining Democracy from the top down. All of the above problems apply equally to the problems with democracy from the bottom up. Money has increasingly played a role in who is able to run on the lower end of the scale. I will come back to why this is so in a bit, but first I would like touch upon another problem.
Political machines, party patronage, and even the more benign sounding ‘constituent services’ lead to an absolute corruption of any sense of even-handedness in government. Local governments are run much like the mafia, but without as much entertaining violence and murder. Everyone is indebted to the next one up the ladder for their position and the guy at the top hands out favors to maintain his position. All decisions are made in the basest sense of self-interest in order to ‘keep the wheels spinning,’ and rarely, if ever, is the greater common good, or the long term interests of the community considered. Government has become one great flywheel gradually spinning itself, and civilization with it, into a state of total entropy.
Machines decide who runs, patronage decides who will get the lucrative, easy, public service jobs and ‘constituent services’ indebts all the others to the machine.
‘Constituent Services’ is built on the cynical premise that government is unresponsive and doesn’t work. When we encounter a problem, we need to go to our local representative, who then makes a few calls and ‘fixes’ things for us. We then owe him our vote. What is democratic about an otherwise unaccoutable government? And what is democratic about those hired to draft the laws being given power to ensure enforcement of the laws?
Corruption is endemic in such a system. My neighbors never pay a ticket or worry that their kids will be charged with drunkenness or destruction of public property for their ‘indiscretions,’ because they are really just good local boys. I did a favor for a neighbor, and afterwards while chatting, I griped about a speeding ticket I had recently received, just two miles from my house. He said, “Wait a minute,” went inside, made a phone call, and said, “It’s all taken care of. Just go to court and apologize and it will be dropped.” And it was! This saves those in on the scam at least $500/yr. in car insurance points alone. As far as the local kids being let off the hook, while the blacks next door are charged for the same actions to “teach them a lesson,” that is how punks like our president initially develop their pathological sense of entitlement: on the local level.
We have policemen here who earn an extra 30-40K directing traffic around potholes. We have streetlights that aren’t sequenced in most towns around Boston because the job goes to cousin Paulie, who doesn’t know how to do it. Additionally, the gas stations and body shops would complain. I’m not joking. I took a computer course a few years back and I met this Indian guy who manages the lights for one town around here where things work. He was able to describe every intersection in his town, the traffic rates at different hours of the day, the accident rates, etc. all from memory; and he was able to tell me how it had been and what he had to go through to fix things, and why they are not fixed throughout the region. All off the record, of course.
Of course, all my neighbors have cushy padded government jobs, where they make 60-75K/yr. for doing next to nothing; they all mange to somehow come home by 2 p.m. But when election time rolls around, these same neighbors roll up their sleeves and get to the real work of making sure every yard has the right placard and getting out the vote.
Well, I could tell stories all day long. The real question is why does this situation exist? Let’s come back to the issue of money at the local level. In order to run, a candidate has to know all the rich local businessman and be prepared to work for their development variances and tax abatements, whether they serve the public good or not. So we are back to a system of organized theft.
What could combat this? The first is perception. Instead of even the ‘best’ media, like NPR opening every news broadcast with the president’s opinion or quote, as if that dolt ever had an interesting thought, leading to a ‘cult of personality’, and PBS running endless series’ of hagiography of presidential power, we need to develop a media and a culture that views power critically and educates us about the true implications of the use of that power. Easier said than done.
Then we need to develop a culture of accountability. It is simply unbelieveable that 9-11 AND Katrina could happen and no one is held accountable. The media are certainly to blame for obfuscating issues (Faux headline: Everybody and Kitchen Sink Faulted for Katrina Response. read: Can’t hold anyone accountable) Also, our education system fails in this respect. Same for America’s so-called ‘religions.’ We are held powerless, trapped by the web of the propaganda system, caught up in the thrall of the contradictory tensions between our undefined, unexplored values of ‘liberty’, ‘freedom’, and ‘democracy’, and our heavily inculcated fear and reverence for the public faces of power.
Then, there is the sense we have been given in this society of power being executed from the top down. The only way to counteract that is by forming local grassroots activist organizations to educate their neighbors and exercise popular power from the ground up. Everything about how our society is structured is designed to thwart this. The need to work ourselves silly just to support ourselves; the deluge of meaningless entertainment culture; the execrable state of our education system (hagiography of presidential power, rather than a critical examination of the hinderences to true equaality); the lack of any education in critical thinking, or how our society works; the worship of entrenched power and corporate interests; the privatisation of the commons.
We are propagandized to believe that local action is the provenance of kooks, nuts, extremists, and just generally objectionable pushy people. But it is only by local action, banding together, finding common purpose and direction, that we can counteract the miasma we find ourselves in. Education to overcome apathy and ignorance. Solidarity in numbers to overcome the fewer, but better heeled money interests.
The only way to recreate a true and stable democracy is by the bottom up. By teaching people that casting a vote once every two years is NOT democracy; it accomplishes next to nothing. But forming a group of 10 or 100 or 1000 of your neighbors, united in vision, can begin to accomplish quite a bit. This is what Chavez is doing with his Bolivarian Circles.
For Democracy to work, as more than a pretty leash with which to lead the masses around by their noses, it must be participatory, and not spectacular.
It can’t just be some sort of Hollywood, stage-managed, poll approved, ‘American Dream’ fantasy driven, spectacular, Liberace, spagetti western, Potemkin traveling staged road show, replete with sets like Bush’s ‘ranch’, (why hasn’t anybody done any investigative reporting on just where this cowboy lived before he had his ranch built?), military extravaganzas, plastic pre-screened town meetings, speeches held in front of walls covered with Orwellian propaganda, and indeed, the White House itself. This is the simulacrum Democracy, and like enriched Wonderbread, Maxwell House coffee, Velveeta cheese, or newer excrescenses like Eco-travel, Walmart, Starbucks “neighborhood” coffeehouses, and agribusiness scale organic foods, the sheeple have proven that they will willingly consume any faux fodder put before them.
Grassroots Democracy starts with a few brave shepherds willing to take the time to explain to the herds that they don’t need to follow the herd, and that they really aren’t even sheep at all; that they can wake up, educate themselves, organize, organize, organize (Thanks, Kwame Touré), empower themselves, and, together, change the world.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 15 2006 18:58 utc | 36

excellent post, Malooga. & thanks for the tucradio link!

Posted by: b real | Feb 15 2006 19:50 utc | 38

Thanks beq:
Just to clarify, it’s an Amy Lange poem cited within a Bill Gallagher essay.
@b real and others (esp. Uncle $cam, if you haven’t heard it):
It’s the best piece of radio around. I played it once in between some jazz and drum&bass at 4:00 AM and was besieged with calls.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 15 2006 21:27 utc | 40

@ Malooga – Do you have an audio link to Amy Lange?

Posted by: beq | Feb 15 2006 22:59 utc | 42

@ beq
Sorry, I couldn’t find one. These days I find it harder and harder to find mp3s on the web without becoming ensnarled in an endless array of commercial websites trying to sell you what you don’t want, kind of like the porn webs that encircle the web and ensnare unwitting surfers. For example, this past summer, I tried to find the mp3 for “ça ira”, by Les Porte Mentaux” without realizing that it started with “A” or variously “Ah”, and not speaking french well, misspelling ‘mentaux’ by a letter. All I got was endless sites trying to sell me Roger Waters’ opera “ça ira”.
On a bizarre personal note, while searching for Amy Lange, I encountered a familiar name. It turns out that the brother of my first love is now a famous bluegrass guitarist. So, of course, I searched to see how his older sister is doing, and found her picture, not young and prepubescent as I remembered it but cheeky and grey-haired. And, I found this memory of hers, which I shared:
October 1969: An evening candlelight antiwar March in Flushing, Queens, with my mother and brother, Ira. Flag-waving hecklers calling us commies.
January 20, 1973: Freezing in the snowy cold by the Washington monument, listening to Bella Abzug and others denounce the war, while Nixon is being inaugurated across town.
Same places, different mother, different brother; still it warms the heart thinking of it, all those years ago.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 16 2006 1:04 utc | 44

@jdp
Back to developers, as with the takings ruling last summer by the SC, many communities are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Many are hemmed in, cannot annex into outlying areas, and are fully developed. Yet, cost for employees, fire ambulance, public works, etc, keep going up. Our communities health insurance is up 12% this year. The only way these communities can continue to function without raising taxes through the roof or cutting service (which many communities already have, Michigan has 1300 fewer police officers since 2001) they must “redevelop” blighted areas and lie down with developers. This means claiming eminent domain in poor areas with prime properties(riverfront, lakefront, main high or scenic highways) to redevelop. Thats what we have come to.
This is very interesting. The one decent PBS show, ‘Now’ has been covering this, though without contextualizing it as widely as you do. It seems to me to be a ‘Shink government and declare war on the poor at the same time’ meme of the Norquist/Washington Consensus which has gotten very little press attention. This is also part of Bush’s ‘trickle down’ theory: First we drown the Federal government, then states try heroically to cope; when they can’t, local goverments start to feel the brunt–which is what we have here. And, guess what, the rich benefit even more! Whoppeeee! The benefits for the rich are exponential and beyond even progressive analysis. Well, those ‘blighted’ ‘lucky duckies’ can always bunk with the Katrina victims in a Federal poverty prison somewhere.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 16 2006 1:14 utc | 46

Actually Malooga, the prop 13 movement was started by a vertual nobody named Howard Jarvis in the late 1970s. The Cato and Heritage people were just starting up, but his movement for cutting government was something the conservative could grab on to. The tax cut fever really took off and it’s been the conservative mantra since.
We had a similar movement in Michigan called Headlee. This called for the local millage to be rolled back when property values went up more than the rate of inflation. You have to use a “factor” and determine local taxes.
Yes, the rich do make out better from these movements.

Posted by: jdp | Feb 16 2006 4:14 utc | 48