Randy Shaw: The voters 2012 have heard it all before. Only Occupy offers something new, which is why its agenda of inequality and democracy for the 99% could become the key election issues next year.
Looking Beyond Election Day
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Robert Reich: Political elites are worried about thunder on the right and the left, but they show scant understanding of what these growing anti-establishment forces signify. Meanwhile, the nation drifts.
Friday Feedback: “Occupy” Occupies Burlingame
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Friday Feedback: The Democratic Party, like the Republican Party receives THE MAJORITY of its funding from corporate sources. Democrats have supported the insane wars and the THREE NEW NAFTAs.
“Occupy” Occupies California’s Democratic Party
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Dick Price: If a meeting this past weekend between representatives from a half dozen Occupy encampments in California and perhaps 200 members of the California Progressive Caucus is any guide, the Occupy Movement has already tapped into older generations of progressive activists who are eager to support, leverage, and amplify the Occupyers’ ground-breaking work.
Back to the Future: Why Republicans Hate the 1960s
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Steve Hochstadt: Republicans avoid talking about their leadership and power in Washington for the past 30 years, because they are fighting to undo the changes in our political system that came earlier, during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
From Teachers to Truck Drivers, We’re All the Working Class
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Berry Craig: Historically, labor-haters like Gingrich have tried to divide workers by skill, race, gender, religion, ethnicity and nationality. Today, the wedge issues include abortion, school prayer, guns and gay marriage.
“Bipartisan” Plotters Targeting Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid
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Carl Bloice: Several Democrats said during the day that the presentation had the support of a majority of the six Democrats on the panel, leaving the impression that at least one, and possibly two, of the party’s lawmakers had not signed on — possibly Becerra and Clyburn.
Survey Saturday: Occupy Your Mama
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Survey Saturday: With upwards of ten thousand Occupy protesters flooding through downtown Oakland yesterday to close shipping facilities there and organizers here in Los Angeles planning a full teach-in weekend with the likes of Robert Reich and Robert Scheer, the Occupy Movement has the world’s attention.
Occupy Movement, Labor on Collision Course with Obama
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Randy Shaw: If President Obama and fellow Democrats agree to a deficit reduction deal that cuts Medicare, Social Security, and other programs serving the 99%, expect an electoral calamity for Democrats in 2012.
Let Us Now Occupy Reality
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Robert Illes: “Occupy” is in the third stage of Gandhi’s meme about how non-violent resistance, and civil disobedience works. We have seen the movement ignored. Then we saw it ridiculed. Now we’re seeing it being fought. The next step: “… then you win.”
Occupy Wall Street: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”
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Joseph Palermo: Out in the real world people are showing a spirit that hasn’t been around since the 1930s; a genuine feeling of solidarity like we’re all in it together and to hell with the elites that stand in our way. The illegitimacy of a rigged economic system is beginning to sink in.
Time to Get Moving
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It would seem to me in recent weeks that President Obama’s week-kneed moderation is starting to give way to a bit of moxie. This has been welcome news indeed. This guy needs to engage in some serious political ass whupping.
The Occupy Together Movement Is Great!
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Bill Fletcher: The ‘Occupy’ risings have taken the country by storm and while there are all sorts of reasons that one can be skeptical or have any number of criticisms, the bottom line is that the Occupy Together risings have demonstrated that resistance is not futile; resistance is essential.
Will Occupy Wall Street Be Co-opted?
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Peter Dreier: Too many lefties view “co-optation” as failure. I disagree. The success of every radical movement in American history has occurred when it is co-opted by the forces of reform.
The Wall Street Occupiers and the Democratic Party
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Robert Reich: Will the Wall Street Occupiers morph into a movement that has as much impact on the Democratic Party as the Tea Party has had on the GOP? Maybe. But there are reasons for doubting it.
Reason for [Not] Being a Republican
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Ted Vaill: The party of Lincoln has become the party of the Old Confederacy. There is no way Abraham Lincoln would be a Republican today – he would be a Democrat.
Will Obama’s Job Speech End Political Gamesmanship?
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Anthony Samad: I’ll be curious to find out how many people were hired from the CBC job fairs around the country. Or was it another “smoke and mirrors” engagement to make politicians look good?
A President Standing In Quicksand
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Joseph Palermo: Obama and the Democrats are in trouble politically not because they did too much to help hurting Americans, but because they did too little.
Big-Drama Obama
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Brent Budowsky: The Truman metaphor is right for Obama, but it must presage a sustained battle for jobs, and not another brief theatrical scene in an incoherent drama with an inconclusive ending.
Race and Anti-Obama ‘Hysteria’
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Berry Craig: The hysteria about Obama, although some of it may be related to philosophical objections to central authority, is largely rooted in race.
Obama’s Jobs Plan: Will He Offer Policy Miniatures or Give ‘em Hell?
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Robert Reich: The winner of the 2012 presidential election will be the person who comes off as the toughest fighter for average Americans. Earth to Obama: Remember Harry (Give ‘em Hell) Truman.
Hispanics Aspire to Better Education
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Pilar Marrero: When it comes to seeking solutions for problems related to education and the low high school graduation rate, Latino voters are not so attached to ideological solutions (read: liberal or conservative) and freely choose from both options, sometimes in contradictory ways.
Prettying the Porker’s Puss, Republican Style
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Berry Craig: This union-card carrying Hubert Humphrey Democrat from Kentucky — where Steve Beshear, our second-term-seeking, union-endorsed Democratic governor is up two dozen points over his Scott Walker-wannabe Republican challenger in a recent bellwether poll — hopes Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s “way forward” will include a recall election that will unemploy him, too.
Not All Black Democrats Subscribe to ‘But He’s the First Black President’
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Jasmyne A. Cannick: Me — I long fell out of love with the President. I don’t talk about it much because doing so can be a detriment to your well-being in certain company.
Where’s Howard Dean?
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Randy Shaw: At a time when President Obama is openly ignoring this “Democratic wing” while currying favor with “independents,” Dean is publicly silent over the president’s rightward shift.
Congratulations Republicans!
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Steve Hochstadt: In 2011, the Republican strategy has been crowned with total success. They have managed to make the US government into a laughing stock, a global symbol of incompetence. Public confidence in government is at an all-time low.
Democrats Must Push Back
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Norman Solomon: Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in the vital lessons of the New Deal. Many millions of good jobs must be created — and that will require well-funded federal jobs programs on a large scale.
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Labor Must Choose Between Occupy and the Democrats
Shamus Cooke: The labor movement has a foot in both worlds; one in step with the Occupy Movement and the other with the Democrats, who are working to crush Occupy outright.