Forum Post: It's A Pyramid, Damnit!
Posted 12 years ago on July 11, 2012, 10:03 a.m. EST by LeoYo
(5909)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
They're the same!
No they're not!
They're the same!
No they're not!
It's a pyramid, damnit!
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/561375_10150907239821965_9164096_n.jpg
The issues of the Republicans and Democrats are different at the base but the further you go up, they converge into the same corporate owned public management business.
Republicans are for voter and even thought suppression and against social services.
Democrats support voting (when it supports them), free thought (as long as you freely think their way), and social services.
Both are for selling out to corporate interests for the prestige of being in office.
They're different AND the same. It just depends upon where you focus.
Naturally, everyone is going to focus on the issues that matter to them and that focus is going to determine whether or not the parties are seen to be different or the same.
So, what can We, the People, do?
The duopoly is the only game in town and that's not going to change anytime soon. However, the duopoly itself can be changed by changing the rules of the game. For example, rather than simply voting for corporate owned Democrats or unelectable Greens, create a position that combines the strengths of both. Create Green Democrats i.e. members of the Democratic Party who are committed to the Green Party platform. This removes the dilemma of chosing between unelectable Greens and corporate owned Democrats. Now, a voter would be able to vote for someone who has a chance of winning while remaining true to the important issues. However, more importantly, the GreenDems would also stand out in being FreeDA signers, that is, signers of Free Democracy Affidavits committing them to support of the Free Democracy Amendments http://occupywallst.org/forum/free-democracy-amendment/ . In accordance with amendments 6, 7, 8, and 9, the FreeDA signers would also be signing on to affirmations of not accepting campaign contributions from corporations and non-profits, not accepting gifts from special interests once in office, making all communication with lobbyists open to the press and the public, and not having an account with a private bank. This will make the GreenDems stand out as candidates who can be held accountable to the People in contrast to candidates, Democrat or Republican, who don't sign FreeDA. This, in itself, will create political pressure for all other candidates to sign. Whether or not that pressure would be enough to make the other candidates sign is unknown but the pressure would be there every election in which the People become more and more fed up with unaccountable public officials and begin to consider the ever present accountable alternatives. This would be changing the rules of the game to favor the People while using the popular strength of the duopoly against itself.
Is there anything else that We, the People, could do? Something more direct and immediate?
We, the People, could support the creation of worker-owned cooperatives through crowdfunding. This would require a Cooperative Employment Service that would assess the skills of the unemployed individuals to patronize it and match them with a suggested cooperative business plan. Upon acceptance or rejection of the plan for an alternative plan, the Cooperative Employment Service would facilitate the crowdfunding of the new cooperative business. Of course, each municipality of cooperative communities should have their own branch of a nationwide Cooperative Credit Union to handle both cooperative and personal accounts. With the Cooperative Employment Service, cooperatives, and Cooperative Credit Union established, imagine what would happen nationwide if the unemployed of each city were to be consistantly channeled into either newly or already established worker-owner cooperatives.
No, really, imagine it and tell me what you think.
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/561375_10150907239821965_9164096_n.jpg
Thanks for the link.
The duopoly exists in your mind. If you can conquer it's hold there, the rest will be easy.
should be called a liar-mid. cuz thats all tey are. a bunch of liars.
The politicians will never reject corporate and union financing until the People do. So long as people continue to vote for bought politicians, they are endorsing unaccountability to all but the owners of the politicians. If the voters want a change, they will have to take a stand in rejecting all bought politicians and only voting for the politicians who subject themselves to legally enforced accountability.
The problem is the amount of money it takes to run a campaign. We can not have reps that put us first until we can support the campaigns financially so they don't need to suck up to big money.
Thanks. Your observations are well appreciated.
The Voting Dilemma
Sunday, 15 July 2012 08:10 By Lawrence Davidson, To the Point Analyses | Op-Ed
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10334-the-voting-dilemna
Come November
Soon it will be presidential voting time again in the U.S.. That four year cycle comes to us with the regularity of a returning comet, accompanied by a shroud of campaign fog that makes a guessing game of discerning fact from fiction when it comes to political promises.
A hefty minority have opted out of this process. Thus, if history runs consistent, when the designated day in November arrives, between 38 and 40% of America's eligible voters will automatically (without even thinking about it) stay away from the polls. Voting appears not to be part of their local culture: they obviously do not think the results touch them in a personal way. They feel their vote is meaningless, and they see the candidates as irredeemable liars not to be taken seriously. The behavior of this minority is not in doubt.
However, there is yet another group of eligible voters whose actions in November are in doubt. These are people who are regular voters, but are now so put off by their usual party candidate that they find it difficult to support him. They may either not vote at all or cast a vote for a minor third party. Back in 2000 and again in 2005, when George W. Bush, Jr. stood for election, a good number of moderate Republicans suffered a voting dilemma of this sort. Seeing the Republican Party of Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller (whatever we on the left might think of these folks) taken over by a proven neo-con screwball like Bush, Jr. must have made many of them hesitate to vote in their usual fashion. Maybe that is what made the elections so close that only a series of fraudulent maneuvers got George W. elected.
This year an unknown number of progressive Democrats might feel they are facing a similar dilemma. The level of disappointment with Barack Obama among progressives is palpable. He has carried on his predecessor's attack on civil liberties, bailed out the banks instead of jailing the bankers, failed to fight for a public option to healthcare, kowtowed to the Zionists, and used drones to kill (mostly) civilians. That is just a partial list of complaints. One can counterbalance this with a list of good things that Obama has done (withdrew from Iraq, endorsed gay marriage, restored stem cell research, etc.), or argue that at least some of the bad things were a consequence of Republican roadblocks. Still, for those on the progressive end of the Democratic spectrum, Obama is a profound disappointment.
What To Do?
So what do you do? Seek out the Green Party and vote for its candidate, Jill Stein, or boycott the polls altogether? Are such responses to the voting dilemma good ideas?
Well, let's take a look at recent history. Robert Parry of Consortiumnews.com explored this question by looking at the presidential election of 1968. In that year, amidst a worsening war in Viet Nam, Democratic president Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for reelection. There was strong progressive support for the party's anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, but his candidacy failed on the Democratic convention floor and the party nominated Johnson's Vice President, Hubert Humphrey–a man who was closely identified with the war effort. His Republican rival would be Richard Nixon, a duplicitous and dishonest fellow who was also paranoid and egocentric to a fault. Prior to the election Nixon had secretly encouraged the South Vietnamese not to join in Johnson's efforts to open peace negotiations with North Vietnam. After the election he would expand the war into Laos and Cambodia. Ultimately, Nixon self-destructed with the Watergate scandal.
Parry interviewed Sam Brown, a prominent progressive of that time who served as Eugene McCarthy's Youth Coordinator. When Humphrey became the Democratic candidate and refused to disown an increasingly disastrous war, Brown and those like him faced their voting dilemma. Humphrey's supporters sought to bring these progressives back into the fold by arguing, "Humphrey is a good guy, trust us." That went over like a lead balloon and the Democrats lost an unknown number of antiwar voters. Perhaps Nixon would have won anyway, but the situation certainly hurt Humphrey's chances for election. Today, Sam Brown "is not proud" of the fact that in 1968 he "cast his ballot for a minor third-party candidate as a throwaway vote." He sees his action as a de facto assist to Nixon's campaign
Some Guidance
Brown has his own personal history to look back at and that helps shape his present perspective. Not everyone has this experiential background, nor do many bother to research the past for guidance in a moment of present and personal political crisis. Given this situation it maybe a better approach to consider a few questions that might help resolve the voting dilemma.
A. For instance, when George W. Bush, Jr. was elected, the nation got a president motivated by a mixture of aggressive ideologies. He was/is a Christian fundamentalist, a "free market" deregulator, a neo-con warmonger, and a government minimalist. These orientations often superceded pragmatic politics and led Bush, Jr. to resist compromise. You could put a million people on the mall in Washington, D.C. to shout their disagreement with his policies and he would just dismiss them as a "focus group." Were his Democratic political opponents similar? Or were they more pragmatic politicians open to influence and pressure from various constituencies, including progressives? How do Romney and Obama compare in this regard?
A. For instance, presidents such as Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush Jr. were quite willing to lie through their teeth in order to involve the country in foreign wars of dubious legitimacy. Lyndon Johnson made his misleading Tonkin Gulf speech to Congress which led to the Resolution that expanded the U.S. presence in South Vietnam. Reagan was constantly at war, directly or indirectly, in Central America, the Carribean and the Middle East and most Americans did not even know it until 241 U.S. marines died in Beirut and the Iran-Contra Affair broke in the press. Bush Jr. and his advisers, of course, manufactured the "intelligence" which "justified" the invasion of Iraq.
B. Barack Obama ended American occupation of Iraq only to shift resources to Afghanistan. He has set a deadline for withdrawal from the Afghan morass even as he escalates the use of drone warfare. While pushing damaging sanctions against Iran, he has so far resisted pressure to attack that country or openly support Israeli ambitions to do so.
C. Romney has pledged to follow the lead of Israel when it comes to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and there is no doubt that Israeli leaders dream of fighting Iran with American support. Also, there is the fact that Romney's foreign policy advisers are some of the same neo-conservatives who served George W.
So, given a choice between Romney and Obama, which one is more likely to attack Iran? Remember, the question addresses probabilities. Either candidate, if elected, may or may not do so, but which one appears more likely to go to war?
A. Again, there is no guarantee either way, but is one of the candidates apparently more inclined to support such issues? Here, statements on record favor Obama when it comes to women's concerns, to the poor, to the healthcare crisis, to gay rights, and the like.
B. Which one will protect civil liberties? Probably neither will.
Defining the Act of Voting
The list of questions given above is far from complete. For instance, an important consideration is whether such a list should include the perceived personal consequences of giving or withholding support? Do I commit some sort of moral breech if I vote for someone I have come to disrespect? Well, it depends on how you see the very act of casting a vote. Is it an act that refers to you as an individual, or to you as a member of a community?
If it is the former, it is your self-image that is at stake. You have to take a stand and live with yourself thereafter. If it is the latter, it is your concern for the fate of the community that is primary. That orientation may lead you away from thinking in terms of moral positions. Instead, it may lead you to accept the need for compromise. Either way you act, you run the real risk of dissatisfaction. Like Sam Brown, you might live to regret a decision that felt right at the time. Or, you might vote for the candidate you believe will do the least harm to your community, and have to live with a nagging sense of cognitive dissonance.
Conclusion
This analysis has not been written to tell anyone what to do. Instead, it is an effort to clarify a real life issue that simply does not have an easy answer. As of yet, I am not sure what I will do. However, it has crossed my mind that, if I do decide to vote for President Obama, I will enter the polling station with a clothespin on my nose.
Post Script: Richard John Stapleton, in a short piece entitled "Voting: Duty, Privilege or Right?" discusses growing support for a "Voters' Rights Amendment (USVRA) to the Constitution that [among other things] deprives corporations of constitutional rights and denies the equation of campaign donations and free speech." More details are available at www.usvra.us.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
March of the Unemployed Kicks Off Two Projects in Oakland
Friday, 13 July 2012 00:00 By JA Myerson, Truthout | Report
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10293-march-of-the-unemployed-kicks-off-two-projects-in-oakland
The only shade available to Evie on a hot July afternoon in Frank Ogawa Plaza, the erstwhile home base of Occupy Oakland, is, appropriately, a sprawling oak. She waits there with four other members of the Bay Area's 4.3 million-deep homeless population, all men, and her dog. The Veteran's Administration, she tells me, cut her off from disability assistance after she did a bid in New Jersey for crimes involving a certain plant she was using for help with her disability. She might have specified the disability in her lengthy story, but I missed it beneath the rapid-fire rush she rattled off before scampering away to welcome another friend to the group.
In Oakland, 13.7 percent are unemployed, as of last count (May 2012), and several dozen of those roughly 54,000 people met up Wednesday at Ogawa Plaza (renamed by Occupy Oakland for Oscar Grant, who was shot to death in 2009 by the transit cop at whose feet he lay under arrest), to launch the Union of Unemployed Workers.
"In the 1930s, there were unemployed councils," David Welsh, a retired letter carrier and organizer of the Union project, tells me. "When people got kicked out of their apartments, the unemployed councils would move their possessions back in. They also organized wide-scale demonstrations that scared the government into implementing the New Deal." At this rally, the group's "shot across the capitalist bow," as Welsh calls it, are the demands "Jobs or Income Now," "Extend unemployment benefits" and "Bail out the unemployed." But in the long term, what Welsh is after is a new New Deal, complete with jobs creation projects like Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA).
Another organizer, Gary Hall, addresses the crowd. "The corporatocracy doesn't have a plan. It's not their intention to create full employment. They're happy with the way it's going right now. Why do we let them do that?" Hall's aim is not another New Deal, but something beyond it: class abolition. "Let the working class create a system to meet our needs."
A young woman named Lauren Smith hands me a flier advertising a similar initiative, the Oakland Assembly of the Unemployed, the younger, more anarchistic answer to the Union of Unemployed Workers. "In our future," the flier reads," we aim to create mass mobilizations of the unemployed; taking over utilities to provide free services; garden cooperatives; free housing, food, clothing, transportation, childcare and education; newspapers by and for the people; free community health care; and neighborhood assemblies." "Survival through mutual aid," Mike King calls it. King, like Smith, was active at Occupy Oakland. "Being unemployed, underemployed, or poor doesn't just mean not having a stable job," he tells the crowd. "It means stress, anger, despair and dreams deferred."
Both groups, the Union and the Assembly, each with its distinct, if parallel, approach to the struggle against mass unemployment, march together to the Career Development Center, or, in the common parlance, "unemployment office" (housed, improbably, in the Old Oakland Bank Building, the logo of which still adorns the door). A security guard shuts everyone out. A woman named Karen, who was laid off in 2009, her meager benefits cut off after two years, observes via megaphone, "I am despised and criminalized by my government and the media for not having a job and for being poor." She implores the crowd, "What kind of government is it that leaves people to fend for themselves?"
Someone shouts, "A capitalist one."
"What are we supposed to do," Karen asks, "if we're denied money and the means to make it?"
Someone else shouts, "Take it back."
The march gives up on the unemployment office and heads to the federal building, where security guards lock the doors, pissing off employees returning from their lunch break to find that they have to go around the building to the other entrance in order to get back to their jobs. I ask a court security officer at the adjacent court building why the doors are locked. "Protest," he tells me. They lock the doors whenever there's a protest? "It would seem so."
So, everyone heads to the state building, where security guards lock the doors and tell all the employees to go around to the entrance on the other side of the building. Terri Kay, a former quality inspector who has been unemployed since October, addresses the crowd, explaining that the perennial budgetary disaster that is the State of California borrows from its tax-revenue-funded Disability Fund to pay interest on federal loans taken out to pay out unemployment claims. "I think the interest is now up to $300 million," she tells me, as the group heads to its final destination, Obama's Oakland campaign headquarters. "The whole thing is a scam."
Being Young and Homeless in the US Could Get Even Worse
Saturday, 14 July 2012 09:40 By Judith Scherr, Inter Press Service News | Report and Video
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10323-being-young-and-homeless-in-the-us-could-get-even-worse
Berkeley, California - Amber, 24, who’s been living on the streets half her life, was sitting on a sunny sidewalk in downtown Berkeley last week, cuddling her three-month-old puppy and talking to a friend. But if voters approve a measure the city council placed on the November ballot, sitting on the sidewalk – after a warning – could cost her 75 dollars.
“That law will give us tickets we can’t pay, then we’ll have warrants and end up in jail,” said Amber, who “spranges” – asks for spare change – to feed herself and her unborn child.
Although the council chambers was packed with those opposing the law, the city council, at the end of a dramatic meeting that went past midnight on Jul. 11, approved putting the sit ban to a vote. The proposed ordinance is similar to statutes in Seattle, Washington, Anchorage, Alaska and Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Palo Alto, California. It would ban sitting on the sidewalk in commercial areas between seven a.m. and 10 p.m.
Some four dozen public speakers addressed the council, many arguing that the economic downturn is to blame for Berkeley’s vacant storefronts, and that punishing the homeless won’t bring back business.
John DeClercq, Berkeley Chamber of Commerce CEO, the sole speaker favouring the measure, said the law would make the city’s business districts “more welcoming”.
Once the public speakers queue wound down, the meeting took an unexpected turn when several activists stood up and led the public in the civil rights protest song, “We Shall Not Be Moved.”
The three councilmembers opposing the sit ban joined the sing-along, as the five other councilmembers present left the room. When they returned, in the midst of chaos, the majority voted to place the measure on the ballot.
The dissident councilmembers contend the vote was taken without council debate and therefore illegal. “They can’t stand a people’s democracy,” said Councilmember Max Anderson.
Hundreds of cities around the United States have laws advocates say unfairly target the homeless, including bans on sitting, lying, begging and placing objects on the sidewalk. Other laws, such as prohibitions to loitering, drinking alcohol in public, smoking and jaywalking, are applied to this population selectively, homeless advocates say.
Two years ago, San Francisco banned sitting on all city sidewalks. But the law hasn’t stopped the practice. IPS visited San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury commercial district and counted nine individuals seated on sidewalks.
Michael Anthony Billingsly, 21, was sitting on Haight Street with a friend, singing for spare change. People came by and dropped dollar bills into his paper cup; some tourists waved from a passing bright red two-decker bus.
Billingsly was hoping police wouldn’t cite him – again – for sitting on the sidewalk. “The cops should give me a guitar strap and I’ll stand up,” he joked.
“It’s so sad,” he said. “The reason we can’t sit here is because they want to kick out all the homeless people. It’s a tourist thing. There’s all these people walking by, and they love us sitting down. The cops just want us out.”
A recent study of the San Francisco law by the nonpartisan City Hall Fellows concludes the law “has fallen short of its intended purpose. The same people are being repeatedly cited, a majority of Haight Street merchants do not believe the ordinance is effective, and most offenders are not being connected to services.”
Paul Boden, of the San Francisco-based Western Regional Advocacy Project, likened “quality of life” laws that target the homeless to racist “Jim Crow”, “unsightly beggar”, and sundown town laws intended to exclude poor and non-white people.
“All these laws also used use low-level infraction or misdemeanor offences so that the police had the authority to get you out of town,” Boden said.
Business interests appear to drive passage of such laws.
“Persons who sit or lie down…deter residents and visitors from patronizing local shops, restaurants and businesses,” the San Francisco ordinance says. “Business areas and neighborhoods become dangerous to pedestrian safety and economic vitality when individuals block the public sidewalks. This behavior causes a cycle of decline as residents and tourists go elsewhere to walk, meet, shop and dine….”
The Berkeley ballot language says public space in business districts has become “increasingly inhospitable … because groups of individuals, often with dogs, have taken over sidewalk areas in those districts, obstructing pedestrian access and intimidating pedestrians and potential business patrons…. The only practicable solution to mitigating the conditions described above that impair the city’s economic health is to limit sitting on sidewalks in certain areas at certain times.”
DeClercq of the Chamber of Commerce told IPS that the programme would be primarily implemented by “ambassadors”, people hired by the city’s Business Improvement Districts to clean sidewalks and monitor street behaviour. The ambassadors will make people understand that sitting on the sidewalk is “no longer appropriate in the city and they’ll change their behaviour,” DeClercq said, adding, “The ambassadors can really help people sort out what they need, where the services are.”
Homeless advocates, however, predict that compliance will be handled through police, courts and jails.
Sally Hindman, director of Youth Spirit Artworks, a daytime programme that engages homeless and “couch-surfing” youth with art, says the Berkeley ballot measure targets homeless youth.
She scoffs at the notion that there are adequate services for people age 16-25. The city’s sole youth shelter sleeps 25 of the estimated 225 young people on Berkeley streets every night and is open just half the year.
The city has no daytime centre for youth and lacks lockers to store belongings. There are some supportive housing opportunities, but no “wet” housing for young people who use drugs and alcohol, Hindman said, underscoring that it is insufficient for an ambassador to simply tell homeless youth where to find a programme.
Hindman often hears people say that young people on the street are out for a lark.
“There are a variety of factors beneath the nice smiley faces; there are enormous experiences of trauma and abuse,” she said.
Twenty percent of youth on the street are GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning), displaced because of persecution in their homes or home towns, she said.
Thirty percent of the street youths experienced first episodes of mental illness, and left home “because their environments are not able to understand that what they were exhibiting were signs of the onset of mental illness,” Hindman said.
Osha Neumann, an attorney who defends disenfranchised youth, said most youth won’t pay citations for sitting. Many have no address to receive court date notices and to get to court without public transportation fare is difficult, he said.
When people don’t show up, they get cited for failure to appear, a warrant is issued and they can be arrested. Once someone has a criminal record, it’s harder to get housing and employment.
“Criminalisation will only drive them away from services, and more deeply alienate them,” Neumann said.
Neumann fears commercial real estate interests will heavily finance the campaign to enact the sit ban. “People sitting on the street don’t have that kind of money,” he said.
Adonis Pollard, 19, became homeless at 15. Today, he’s housed and works as an artist-trainee at Youth Spirit Art.
The proposed Berkeley law “is not going to do any good,” he said. “It’s basically going to finance the prison system. All they’re going to do is get more money per head that comes into the jail cells. There’s still going to be the problem of homelessness. There’s going to be the problem of poverty.”
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The Democratic party would never willingly allow "Green Democrats" onto their ticket. If anything such an individual would have to run as a trojan horse.
candidates are all trojan horses. their horses are filled with corporate interests who end up filling all of the cabinet positions.
Yes indeed, from our perspective that most certainly so.
Okay, let's say you have 6-12 federal rep. candidates running as Green Democrats for a particular district, all of whom have signed FreeDA. Naturally, they can't all win in the primaries but if one of them should get the majority of the votes, what will the Democrats do to prevent that person from being on the ticket?
Ever deal with the Democratic party? For one thing, they'll never let a real "Green Democrat" run in the first place. As a minimum, they'll pull away all your campaign funding. Then they'll badger you until you submit to the party platform. Your chances of winning a second term if you err too far from the party line is just about nil.
One or two might get through the gauntlet, but certainly never a sort of a majority.
The Ds and Rs dynamic is just controlled chaos. It's a WWF mock contest so the public believes someone is fighting for them. If the people knew no one was fighting for them there would be a revolution.
Not that most of the politicians are totally complicit. Before potential candidates are bankrolled, it is ensured they will follow the party line. That's why it works so well. Only a small percentage of leaders are needed for the rest of the flock to follow.
The pyramid is for infighting, divisiveness, and social instability.
Instead of an all-seeing eye, this pyramid has an eye-patch, which symbolizes lack of foresight in most of the legislature that is passed by both parties (or not passed in the case of nearly non-existent banking regulations.)
They do have a blind eye to social justice.
Okay, I've added some other stuff from other posts I've made. Tell me what you think.
Patriotism for borders. I can't support any nation or party or faction against another, because borders divide us against each other, when we need to find ways to unite together. So for the same reasons I would protest a physical war between nations, I protest psychological warfare between parties and factions.
Anything that tries to build bridges and resolve differences, I am all for that. Green Democrats sounds good, it is tearing down borders and bringing two groups together. If we can't succeed in finding common ground on the this side of the political spectrum, how are we ever going to make peace with the other guys who are ideologically opposed and move forward to make a better society.
So, what do you imagine would happen nationwide if the unemployed of each city could be consistantly channeled into either newly or already established worker-owner cooperatives?
Economically, it would obviously help the economy recover to put people back to work earning income. But you probably mean socially. I imagine you would see much more stability in the job market and co-ops would be a great benefit to their local communities, providing good wages to their employees so they don't require government assistance to live.
Well actually, I did mean economically. If it should become possible to consistently channel the work force into cooperatives, what happens to the corporations?
I would hope they would go by-by. I can't imagine why anyone would want to remain at a corporation if presented with the choice of a co-op..
My thoughts exactly.