Poverty Is Not an Accident

Poverty Is Not an Accident
Nelson Mandela

Monday, March 28, 2011

How the machine that's killing us works

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A Study Guide for Those Wishing to Know More



I think y'all better get yer sh!t together over there at Dem headquarters, Danny.

This is a very well planned, precision machine, rolling through the country, state-by-state. It's been in the planning stages for a long time. It's brilliantly financed.

It has a rabid astroturf Tea Parody that doesn't have to obey campaign finance laws, it's theocratic, it hates women, people of color, people with disabilities, the homeless, the poor, Queers and anybody not fundamentalist xian (not Christian; there's no Christ in them).

It is determined to cut off ALL independent media outlets, including public and community broadcasting, it wants to close ALL colleges and universities funded by tax dollars. It is anti-science, anti-union anti-environmentalist. MOST of the new crop of Tea Parody reps. DO NOT BELIEVE IN SCIENCE!

It is cruel; it is full of hate; it is superstitious. It bullies. It insults and it ridicules.

And ALL of it is designed to turn the USA into a giant walmart/private prison/private security war machine, using OUR tax $ as corporate welfare, taking away citizens' right to control even local communities, once private corporations operate all public sector jobs.

And the Democrats aren't ready. And the Greens are sitting on their asses. And we're going to lose the last vestiges of democracy in the wealthiest nation on Earth.

And what will they do, once all of us are "service" workers, in jail, at war or perfoming non-unionized Mc Jobs? How will they fund their machine then?

They're already eyeballing India and China, the rising middle class there. THEY can fund the corporate welfare, once the USA is reduced to a serfdom, a banana republic and an undeveloped nation.

So, what are the Dems going to do about this? Brian Colon is going to banquets and plays at Popejoy!
 

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I want to add a word of caution here at the end. In posting this study guide, I do not want to suggest that I think it is illegitimate in a democracy for citizens who share political convictions to gather for the purpose of sharing ideas or creating strategies to pursue their shared goals. The right to assemble, form alliances, share resources, and pursue common ends is crucial to any vision of democracy I know. (That’s one reason I’m appalled at Governor Walker’s ALEC-supported efforts to shut down public employee unions in Wisconsin, even though I have never belonged to one of those unions, probably never will, and have sometimes been quite critical of their tactics and strategies.)  I’m not suggesting that ALEC, its members, or its allies are illegitimate, corrupt, or illegal. If money were changing hands to buy votes, that would be a different thing, but I don’t believe that’s mainly what’s going on here. Americans who belong to ALEC do so because they genuinely believe in the causes it promotes, not because they’re buying or selling votes.
This is yet another example, in other words, of the impressive and highly skillful ways that conservatives have built very carefully thought-out institutions to advocate for their interests over the past half century. Although there may be analogous structures at the other end of the political spectrum, they’re frequently not nearly so well coordinated or so disciplined in the ways they pursue their goals. (The nearest analog to ALEC that I’m aware of on the left is the Progressive States Network, whose website can be perused at
http://www.progressivestates.org/

but PSN was only founded in 2005, does not mainly focus on writing model legislation, and is not as well organized or as disciplined as ALEC.) To be fair, conservatives would probably argue that the liberal networks they oppose were so well woven into the fabric of government agencies, labor unions, universities, churches, and non-profit organizations that these liberal networks organize themselves and operate quite differently than conservative networks do–and conservatives would be able to able to muster valid evidence to support such an argument, however we might finally evaluate the persuasiveness of that evidence.

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