Liberalism Is In

From reading the headline, I was going to say, it's about time! I might have even added that now maybe the Liberal party can come back. I'm not sure if they're gone everywhere. But, they haven't been on the New York ballot in quite a few years.

But, the cynicism and realism of people is apparently not causing a desire to try to change things. I personally always vote. But, I often feel the need to wash my hands afterward.

I also like to hope that all of the organizations who make it easy to email one's elected officials are having some effect at getting people involved in the process and telling their representatives what they think. I don't know how much it does, but I do consistently get replies, and usually very good ones, from Hilliary, Chuck Schumer, and Jerry Nadler.

No real surprise that more Americans are believing that "the rich get richer & the poor get poorer." Likely, it is because average Americans are seeing the effects of disparity in their own lives, perhaps for the very first time.

Energy costs have doubled, even tripled, in some areas of the country in the last 6 years, yet, as ever, wages, salaries & benefits have remained fairly static.

Even families who may be considered upper-middle class tend to live on a budget. If you double or triple an expenditure in a family's monthly budget, cuts will have to made somewhere. You don't have to be poor before higher energy costs begin to hurt.

That "sad" stuff you refer to is just more evidence of public realism about the US political system and the place of the people in it.

But calling those responses evidence "the public is losing confidence in itself" is a coverup.

The public is rightly losing confidence in the US government and the political apparatus created by the US Constitution that so clearly empowers the government to do the will of the oligarchy and the Military Idustrial Complex while denying the people any constitutionally sanctioned and effective way to stop them.

And don't say the public can vote. We keep trying that, and it keeps not working, and the Constitution is written, anyway, to blunt voter impact as much as possible, and absolutely prevent it being timely.

Look at those 6 year Senate terms, and fact that only a third of the Senate faces the electorate at any one time so that it would actually take 6 years for voters to pronounce on them all!

Besides, the oligarchs pre-select the candidates. None of the ones we get to choose among is really our man.

And now consider that there is no way the people can have direct input in any effort to change the Constitution if Article V, which spells out the only lawful ways to change it, is adhered to.

And not only can we, the people, not write one word into the fundamental law of the land, we cannot even force others to make changes that we want, or even consider them.

The preamble begins, "We, the people." But that was a lie the moment it was written.

Phooey.

(And I vote every time! But not for a duopolitan.)

Oh that the contents of this article were not just true but put into action. Unfortunately,America is in the stranglerhold of the Neocns and their cohorts in Big Religion, including my own, catholicism.
AScalia, an extremist catholic but all to representative of catholic thinking said in his speech of May @000 wherein he advocated the end of the rule of law in the US and the end of democracy in the US.
Add to that, Rove said the Republican Party (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito are all catholic republicans) will destroy the Deomcratic Party. Does anyone doubt that they wll do their damnest to do just that. Should that occur America will become "A Totalitarian Republican Jihadist Theocracy". to quote myself.
Both Popes are totally committed to this agenda. Pope John Paul II got Reagan elected and aligned the catholic church with the Republican Party. The current Pope is staying the course.
And yes the catholic church has done this very same thing previously. It was aligned with Hitler and the Nazi Party before, during and after WWII. Having done this once by the catholic church, my church, could be by an extreme stretch of the imagination and humongous amount of rationalisation be considered a grevious error. But given that this alignment of church and state now occurring all over again it is obvious to me that it is a deliberate act, and so much more convincing is that it is being done by both the previous pope and also by the current pope.
The catholic church is a male dominated authoritarian and very secretive organisation. Like all secret organisations must be regarded with great suspicion. I regard it with great suspicion and fear greatly for america, my country. Somehow I don't think Jesus would approve of what the popes or the church is doing.

The author, April Rabkin, kind of glibly states, "It follows that more of us believe the government should take care of people who can't take care of themselves."

This is the type of flipant remark that only poors fuel on the right-wing radio raging fire. A wise government is set up so that it takes care of everybody when they are in need, such as universal healthcare for all, including the rich. An agenda that is fair to everybody is much easier to sell peacefully. Pitting the poor against the rich in a society, as Marxism seeks to do, only leads to violence and Joseph Stalin in the bigger picture.

Pitting the working-class and poor against Congress and King George the Little, who happen to be rich--now that's a good idea.

Hmm. I see much lamenting of the fact that the government doesn't do what you want it to do to help the poor, and that you seem unable to change this fact because a majority of the voting population doesn't want their taxes raised. What you are missing here is that if you joined the side of those who want to cut taxes through shrinking the government (yes, including the military) you would all have more money in your pockets to donate to exactly those charitable causes you feel to be most worthwhile.

Rather than filtering the charity process through the government, which is coercive, frequently ineffective, and subject to political whim and lobbying pressures, you would instead direct your own money towards alleviating suffering in whichever way you feel is most effective. This maximizes liberty, maximizes utility, and minimizes corruption. You get to see how your charity dollars are spent, and decide for yourself if you are satisfied with the results; once you give government the effective monopoly on charity, you lose control over it (a fact which many here have recognized).

The reality is that when we allow the government to remove the potential for us to fail we also give up the right to succeed. They are two ends of the same stick. To give up one is to hand over the other.