Before I'm out the door and off to work, a few odds and ends:
Bailout Talks Advance, but Doubts Voiced in Congress - NYT article that reflects much of the points I made yesterday. The Democratic revisions of the Paulson pig slop are being characterized as "rancorous" - those bad, partisan Dems. Some Democrats, like Harry Waxman, are disgusted by the whole thing. Republicans are divided, and a big chunk opposes the bill. They are singling out the bankruptcy provision as unacceptable.
Campaign mailers - I got another Obama fund raising letter today. Not. One. Use. Of. Democrat. There is a full color glossy insert "A Tale of Two Conventions" with photos from the convetions and not one thing identifies them as Democrat or Republican. The letter from David Plouffe (gag) mentions Republicans five times, but never breathes the word "Democrat". The letter from Obama doesn't even do that much, vaguely talking about "opponents".
Come one, Democrats, you might as well be shot for a sheep as a lamb. Stand up for something worthwhile and stand up for yourselves.
Anglachel
3 comments:
I don't even bother to read the campaign solicitations from the Democrats anymore; I just fold up the contents and mail them back in the stamped envelope for recycling.
I wonder how many people (who haven't already been driven away by the torrent of slut-shaming that's been aimed at Senator Clinton and Governor Palin) have been turned off my the lecturing tone of the that campaign literature?
I set the letter "from Nancy Pelosi" on the side. Perhaps this weekend I'll slip in a note thanking the party for sending me campaign material because it give me such satisfaction to throw it in the trash, where they threw my Michigan vote.
I was going to add regrets that I didn't save the one with the Obama/Biden photo, because it would have made a good dartboard. But the campaign would probably send the Secret Service to my house, claiming that I was plotting to assassinate Obama with darts.
This is the most ridiculous and disgusting campaign I've ever witnessed in my 50+ years of life.
Over the last 30-40 years, as a result of automation, globalization, union suppression and the political support, by both parties, of the interests of the financial sector over that of manufacturing and Main Street, and the elevation of the consumer interests of the meritocratic class over even the most basic survival interests of everyone else, we have transitioned from a consumer economy fueled by solid job growth and rising wages (based in productivity gains) to a consumer economy propped up by easier and easier credit and more and more unsustainable levels of personal debt. An economy in which productivity growth no longer leads to rising wages, income disparity is at record levels, and the average per capita wage, and, increasingly, even the average “household income,” no longer, without huge amounts of debt and reliance on ever more questionable credit instruments and practices, supports middle class expectations of homeownership, affordable access to healthcare and education, and secure retirement. It is an economy in which the middle class is dwindling, working class wages have been declining for decades, and even the wages of the educated middle class have stagnated (and, most recently, started to decline). And, of course, as such, an economy in which the poor find entry into the working and middle class increasingly impossible.
In other words, as recent events indicate, it is an economy that, although its initial success was created by and based in mass consumption, since the mid-70s, has been relentlessly working toward its own demise. One that has thrown away its once mighty broad-based, middle and working class consumer market in order to cater to the interests of ever more rich, but more ever more limited (despite being more global), elite markets.
Would we have reached this state of affairs if even ONE party had been consistently and strongly supporting the best interests of the broadest number of Americans, the middle and working class, over the last 4 decades? I don’t think so.
Would we have reached this state of affairs if the meritocratic elite -- most especially, of course, those with influential voices in the media -- along with the corporate elite they mostly serve, had felt their OWN INTERESTS threatened by an economy that was working against the economic interests of Americans (and future economic stability) overall? I don't think so.
I'm tired of Democrats and "the left" asking for votes and money based on how evil Republicans are, and then using whatever power they obtain to support, compromise with and only, on the rarest of occasions, very weakly defend against, that evil.
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