Political Ideas

Stage 1: Media debate between Republicans in power and what the people and the Democrats want.

Stage 2: The people give the Democrats complete control.

Stage 3: Media debate between the hideous proposals of the Democrats and the powerless Republicans.

Stage 4: A debate between the proposals of those in power and what we the people demand begins to percolate up through the internet and grassroots organizing.

Stage 5: We take control or lose it completely.

By David Swanson

I've followed the struggles of progressives within the California Democratic Party from the opposite coast and admired their achievements but wondered about their limitations. They're the first to pass resolutions opposing wars, but for the most part their members in Congress vote to fund the wars just the same. I'd rather have a party that "supported" wars but didn't fund them, if that option were available. I'd rather have a brand new party, if that were possible. But, given the dominance of the Democratic Party, passing progressive resolutions and working to someday elect progressive representatives looks like an admirable project, and -- at least from afar -- one imagines that it must be having an impact in Sacramento if not yet in Washington.

By David Swanson

I'm not a big fan of post-partisan America, a notion that seems to amount to running the government through two political parties but taking care that one of them not perform in any significant way better than the other one. But I am a fan of the idea, which nobody ever seems to consider, of actually disempowering parties.

Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico has put an honest description of the antidemocratic filibuster rule on his website.

According to Jon Walker at FireDogLake Udall plans to call a point of order at the start of the next Congress to eliminate the filibuster rule.

This is the real solution that we need (although not all experts agree it has to wait for the start of a session), not asking the Vice President pretty please to declare the rule unconstitutional as Thomas Geoghegan suggests or supporting a filibusterable bill or pushing for a vote of -- even worse -- 67 senators (see the FireDogLake link above).

By David Swanson

Answer: They get around the pesky will of the majority of the American people.

Here's a lovely post from the DailyKos praising the president of the AFL-CIO for encouraging the president of the United States to appoint officials during a recess in order to get around the Senate.

Excerpt from an Email promoting an upcoming conference:

Imagine stripping this out of the context of partisan thinking. Imagine supporting Reagan to be a brilliant intellectual. Imagine supporting the military to teach nonviolence. Shall we try supporting Wall Street to solve the housing crisis? We could support thieves to protect our stuff while we're out supporting hurricanes to provide gentle breezes.

Will anyone at this conference perhaps ask whether opposing everything we oppose might make more sense than supporting it? Or would that be too unsupportive?

Nothing Lawrence Lessig says here is false exactly. But if Congress is the problem and the problem is the money, how can there never -- in anybody's predictable articles on this topic -- be any mention of the fact that the president takes more money than any congress member, and power to do most things has been handed over by Congress to the president? How can these two points be avoided?

The filibuster rule just isn't very popular among those who know what it is. Pew found that 26% of Americans knew how many votes were needed to get around a filibuster. Zogby reports that 32% want to get rid of that anti-democratic blockage.

And these two polls were probably looking at samples of the same population, given Zogby's findings confirming vast ignorance: Only 34% knew Republicans use the filibuster more. Only 28% knew the House represented public opinion better than the Senate.

Obama’s State of the Union speech called for jobs, health care reform, and fighting the influence of corporations on our government processes, but after the past year, many progressives are skeptical that he’ll actually fight. He did include a sharp critique in his speech of the decision of the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a decision that Steve Cobble called an “intellectually dishonest power grab.”

Cobble, a fellow at the Insitute for Policy Studies, joins us to talk about the state of our union and what people can do to fight the corporate power. Also in studio are Mike Lux, founder of Progressive Strategies and author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, and Lisa Dodson, professor at Boston College and author of The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy.

We also speak to Congresswoman Donna Edwards, who has introduced a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to regulate corporate speech during elections.

Meanwhile, Iceland’s economy suffered one of the worst hits in our most recent global financial crisis, and the country is still struggling. In Dreamland, filmmakers Þorfinnur Guðnason and Andri Snær Magnason ask the question: “What do you own when you have sold everything?”

Over in England, the Chilcot Inquiry is doing the kind of in-depth look at the runup to the Iraq war that we can only dream about here in the U.S. To explain what’s going on there–and discuss why we don’t have a similar inquiry–we ask Reginald Keys, who lost his son in the Iraq war and who challenged Tony Blair for Parliament in 2005.  David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, and Esther Armah of WBAI’s Off the Page and Wake Up Call, also join us to discuss the inquiry, the war, and the role of public protest.

Howard Zinn died on January 27th at age 87. He didn’t believe in staying closeted in the academy, though he was a brilliant historian whose book, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, changed the way many people view history.  Zinn was an inspiration to all of us at GRITtv. He spoke to Laura in 2008, and we re-air that interview now and remember his teachings. Zinn would not want us to mourn–he would want us to organize.

By David Swanson

Those are the words used in Article II Section 3 of the US Constitution. The president is also to "recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Why does this not come up in Article I with all the other supreme powers of our Commander in Chief? Well, because only the military has one of those, and Article I is devoted to the most powerful branch of our government, the Congress.

By David Swanson

I spoke in Van Nuys, California, and in Ventura, California, on Saturday as part of a book tour, talking about peace, justice, and activism. The first event had me speaking to loyal members of the Democratic Party. A number of participants in the second event made clear that their top priority is demolishing the Democratic Party.

I didn't agree with either group on the matter of the Democrats, but I agreed with both and they all agreed with each other on what they want from our government. They all wanted representation, an end to corporate control, demilitarization, investment in human needs, upholding of human rights and the rule of law. They just didn't agree about how you get there.

My answer to both groups boils down to this:

1. When it comes to elections, back the best candidate unless the spoiler effect convinces you not to. Don't oppose the best candidate because they do or do not belong to the Democratic Party.

2. Work for reforms that would permit new parties, which are the same reforms that would permit independent candidates not subservient to any party: ballot access, debate access, media access, clean elections, independent media, fusion voting, smaller districts, etc.

3. Focus at least 95 percent of your efforts away from direct involvement with elections and candidates, to work on building movements and pressuring elected officials to represent us in between elections. Treat all elected officials as equals, without any prejudice based on party. Punish and reward all of them, since they all deserve both.

4. Stop focusing more than 5 percent of your efforts directly on elections.

5. Review numbers 3 and 4 above and actually attempt to achieve them.

Here are the two events, with my opening remarks and a little bit of the Q and A. Sadly, these videos didn't include most of the Q and A, and I hope someone else posts it.

VIDEOS
The Dems: Part I, Part II
The Anti-Dems: Part I, Part II

By Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine

“In Virginia, we started making a big community garden and everybody pitched in and worked on it, digging ditches to make sure we’d get water to the garden, and with a little effort we were getting some success,” progressive organizer, activist and author David Swanson told his audience at the First Unitarian-Universalist Church Friday, January 15. “Then this crowd of rain dancers showed up and said we ought to have a rain dance, and they would bring us the water and we wouldn’t have to dig for it. It’s going to be four years of water and we wouldn’t have to dig for it. It was going to be rain we could believe in. So we did the rain dance and then we had a little rain, and everybody said, ‘It worked!’ And they convinced themselves that it worked, until they realized it was just raining the same amount it always did. Did you really think, did you really believe, that a rain dance was going to fix everything? No. Then why is everybody so discouraged because we had this stupid rain dance, and why are we saying we shouldn’t bother to dig ditches anymore because the rain dance didn’t work?”

Gradually it dawned on the over 150 listeners that Swanson meant this story as a parable — they certainly “got it” once he parodied President Obama’s campaign slogan with the words “rain we could believe in” — and though his story was just one illustration of a 16-point program he outlined, sometimes facetiously, for the Left in America, in many ways it summed up his message. Though he was ostensibly there to promote his book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, Swanson’s agenda was bigger than his title. It was an effort to get the Left to rethink its whole national strategy, focus on local issues and campaigns, and tune out all the chatter about presidents and elections. Noting that he was speaking on the 81st anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Swanson said, “Monday is National Volunteer Day for Martin Luther King. When are we going to have a National Non-Violent Resistance Day for Martin Luther King? He said, a year to the day before he was shot, that a nation that puts more money into its military than social uplift is headed for disaster — and today the U.S. government is spending more money on the military than on everything else combined.”

Read the rest.

By David Swanson

Whenever I write about U.S. politics, people ask me "Don't you have any good news?" (Unless the Republicans are in power, in which case people ask me "Who are you going to vote for?") But I do have good news, boatloads of good news, if Americans want to hear it.

If a city or state next to yours were to achieve a dramatic breakthrough for democratic representation, environmental sustainability, healthcare, education, peace, or justice, wouldn't that be good news? Wouldn't you trumpet that news where you live and demand the same of your elected officials?

It's time for the Senate to abolish the filibuster.

The filibuster is undemocratic and contradicts the core principle that legislation should become law by majority vote. The mere threat of a filibuster can bring the business of the Senate and the American people to a halt.

The filibuster allows a minority of 41 Senators to block the will of 59 Senators. Even when 60 Senators support a bill, the 60th Senator can hold the bill hostage to individual demands that can warp important legislation.

We call on every candidate for Senate in 2010, and every Senator who will continue to serve in the 112th Congress, to pledge to vote, on the first legislative day in 2011, to change the Senate's rules to eliminate the filibuster.

(This petition will be delivered to all current 100 Senators and all identifiable non-serving 2010 candidates for the Senate)

Even the New York Times has a good op-ed today calling for ending the filibuster.

Please go and rec this thread on Daily Kos.