Tag / socialism

by jameslloyddavis

Nancy Pelosi vs Franklin Delano Roosevelt… will the real Democratic Party please stand up !!

In a 60 Minute interview that aired on Sunday last, CNBC reports that Nancy Pelosi said, “I do reject socialism.  If people have that view, that’s their view.  That is not the view of the Democratic Party.”  All due respect to Nancy Pelosi, de facto leader of the party in minority that ascended once again to control at least the House, sailing into control on the winds that filled their sails… winds of change that emanated from progressive Democrats and other activists within her party determined to reverse the trends of economic inequality, corporate control of politics, and right wing hegemony, including candidates who were willing to openly identify themselves as democratic socialists… but, perhaps she’s not listening, or even knows the electorate as well as she believes.

It’s obvious, however, that the Democratic Party, the same Party that gave America its longest running, wildly popular President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is no longer the party of the New Deal, nor the kind of party that could so embrace the common good of all its members, giving Americans a legislative agenda that offered us Social Security, the WPA, the FDIC, the National Labor Relations Board, the Glass–Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Tennessee Valley Authority and countless other bold social programs designed to lift our nation up from the economic collapse in 1929 that was caused by the unparalleled greed of irresponsible bankers, financiers, and monopolistic industrialists.  These programs were vilified by conservatives in their day as a dangerously anti-American socialist agenda which, even in the current conservative climate, are today accepted as inevitable, necessary, beneficial programs that are every bit as American as Mom, the flag, and butter crusted, cinnamon infused, and sugar topped, sweet apple pie.

Nonetheless, and for years now, particularly during the past four decades… since conservatives in both parties canonized Ronald Reagan and began to sing his profane little tune of corporate welfare and the mythology of trickle down economics, Democrats have moved increasingly to the right with their economic policies, suffering a major tectonic shift, claiming territory once held entirely by Republicans, during the Clinton administration.

To be sure, these neo-liberal Democrats retained those “radical” ideas that were inviolable in the minds of most Democrats, like equal “opportunity”, abortion rights, women’s rights, and other fashionable causes célèbres that identified them with a liberal brand, but only in so far as they did not compete with a conservative economic agenda that favored the heavy corporate donors who were so enamored of Clintonian Democracy.  These neo-liberal disciples of the apostle Billary now control the DNC and operate the strings of the corporate media like puppet masters in a Punch and Judy drama in which they assume the role of “Not Trump” as opposed to, say, the Party of Economic and Social Reform. So… where does that leave the progressives in the Party?

What does that bode for the future, when the leadership of the Democratic Party has no desire to aid or entertain the “green dream” of so many of its younger membership, now clearly the more active, not really interested in neo-liberal politicians who pat them on the head and tell them to get in line and accept the same sort of incrementalism and corporatist theories that have made paupers of the majority of working Americans.  Big labor pays Nancy’s freight while corporations spend millions in an effort to make unions illegal.  And our college-educated minority?  They are, too many of them, in debt and in servitude to their student loans for life… like most Americans who try to get ahead… saddled with crippling debt and no clear path to the elusive, if not mythic, American Dream.  Our aged are in danger of being priced out of medical care, in spite of Medicare… and they will be for the unforeseeable, and for some, very short future… for as long as pharmaceutical companies act like mafiosi with medications that should be as inexpensive as clean water, which is less expensive and much less clean than it was forty years ago… and in some areas?  Toxic.  Does any of this sound familiar?

But why talk about distressed populations?  They were abandoned long ago for lack of political clout, worthy now of little more than lip service.  Nancy Pelosi says in effect, if not with the words, “Let them eat cake.”  Does she imagine herself so correct that she no longer listens?  It’s time for the Party of FDR to go back to its roots.  Let’s hope that it’s not too late.  If the Democratic Party of today seems impotent now in relation to Trump?  Where will they stand next year when they demand more loyalty of the electorate than they’ve ever given us in return.

by jameslloyddavis

What is this Green New Deal exactly? And why are Republicans….

…..and neo-liberal Democrats so dead set against it they are ready to dismiss it quite out of hand?

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) were joined by Democratic lawmakers from both the House and Senate on February 7, 2019, to introduce Green New Deal legislation. (Photo- Stefani Reynolds)

Chances are you’ve heard people both praise and vilify House Resolution 109, otherwise known as the Green New Deal, but it’s just as likely that you haven’t really been given a sense of what it is and what it contains.  A bold, expansive document, it is a comprehensive listing of priorities for the Congress and Senate to consider as it tackles issues that many Americans perceive as necessary for the survival of our basic institutions and the future well-being of all Americans… with the emphasis on the word “ALL…”   The document specifically outlines a series of problems that affect every American and provides solutions that benefit our collective interests, addressing not only the devastating and observable effects of man-made global warming, but advancing the perspective that the radical changes we must use to correct them should incorporate methods that benefit every American, such that no single group or segment of our population is forced to bear a disproportionate share of the necessary cost.  Indeed, if all the proposals are implemented, the plan could very well rebuild our infrastructure, strengthen our nation, and provide a more egalitarian economy simultaneously.

I’ll be writing about the Green New Deal in several posts over the coming weeks, but for now, I would like to give you a link to the House Resolution, so you can read it yourself.  Click on the link below for a .pdf file:

HR109 – The Green New Deal

The Resolution is presented in the usual legal format.  I’ve produced a file that presents the same text in a more readable outline form and will post it here soon.

Watch this space !! 

If you do?  You could become an expert on the Green New Deal… able to leap tall misperceptions with a single declarative sentence… able to deflect the speeding bullet-points of right-wing detractors… and you could become the envy of all your progressive friends, while standing for truth, justice, and the American way.

If I could be given a super power, that’s what I’d ask for.

by jameslloyddavis

On Socialism in America…

I wrote this about two years ago and posted it on Facebook, but I think it’s time to dust it off and toss it out there once again along with a couple of others, posts that I will resurrect over the next couple of weeks because there should be a conversation about this contentious subject before the shouting match buries it yet again…

This is long, but bear with me, please. It’s a big subject and cannot be treated with sound bites or slogans, but speaks to the very core of our problems. This is something to which I’ve given a lot of thought, more so lately than ever before…. There is once more a debate, but the subject is often too vague and the voices on each side of it are, even among the unified participants within each side, confused and often angry. This is not a new debate in this country… right vs left, conservative vs liberal, but the debate too often rages around the effects rather than the cause of our differences. Enter Bernie Sanders and the surprisingly popular, if not populist appeal of his socialist ideas…
Perhaps the debate is not about some vague idea of “Conservatism” vs “Liberalism” after all, but speaks instead to something more basic… the economic system under which we live. Perhaps the present, seemingly insoluble crisis is about the failure of an economic system that is, no matter how elegantly you describe it or bend it to heel in academic terms, based upon the base and unsympathetic nature of its driving force, greed… or avarice, if you prefer. 
Perhaps, once again, as it has in the past when there is a vast, even incomprehensible inequity between the rich and the poor, the debate comes down to capitalism vs socialism.
“But hasn’t that been tried and didn’t it fail?”
“It’s been tried, Virginia, but never properly achieved. Yes, there are many nations in the world who live under systems of social democracy, but the Soviet experiment that you’re thinking of was not socialism at all, but state controlled capitalism. Social democracies, however, such as we see in the Scandinavian countries are thriving and they are only weak imitations of socialism.”
“But isn’t socialism undemocratic,, even stifling, a kind of dictatorship?”
“Absolutely not. In fact, socialism is an expansion of democracy to the point that every aspect of our lives, including in the workplace where most of us spend most of our waking moments is democratically controlled.”
“Sounds too good to be true. And if it’s so great, why aren’t more people talking about it”
“Simple answer? Socialism is inimical to capitalists and capitalists own almost everything. After World War Two, our government suppressed socialism, even to the point that espousing the idea was criminalized. People lost their jobs, in universities especially, to the point that, even now, the subject is virtually taboo on campuses in America.. Even the word, socialism, was stigmatized… a product of the Cold War.”
Socialism is possible and probable within the lifetime of any generation that loses the fear of cultural, racial, religious, and gender diversity.  With our current generation, we are very nearly there. When people truly believe in both equality and justice, when equality is inclusive of all people, when the one criteria to fit the definition of “human” is only and merely their humanity alone, we can have a fair and equitable social and political system, one that is as purely democratic as humanly possible under a socialist system.
Is it possible today?
You tell me…
Do you make justice and equality possible?
Or is there some group that you despise?
Can you answer that honestly?
Probably not.We who call ourselves progressive often cannot converse, much less abide in the same room as those who identify themselves as conservative. Can you look me in the eye and say that you feel equal to someone wearing a red ball cap that bears the statement “Make America Great Again”? Or do you feel that such people are flawed, sensing that your own beliefs and ideals are somehow superior? If you want to live in a world where justice and equality are the backbone of civilization, do you mean to make it possible by including or eliminating those with whom you disagree? And just how do you plan to eliminate them from your just and equitable world?  Do you see the hypocrisy? Do you sense the self-deceit, the conflict and the inevitable injustice within the perspective of “Us” and “Them”?
Justice and equality will thrive when we begin to put aside our prejudices.
Impossible?
“Nothing is impossible, Virginia.”
“How can you possibly make it happen? Where do you even begin?”
“It starts with you.”