PEORIA -- Here's the best piece on today's Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, by Robert Kuttner, a top notch writer and thinker, from the Huffington Post.
There are many comments, but here's the best one, reproduced here so you don't have to hunt for it:
Robert, here's how you get to a fairer society...
1. Enact Fair Elections Now Act
2. FCC mandate that all political advertisin
g is a public service and therefore free
3. Permanently ban anyone who has served in federal office from becoming a lobbyist
4. Enact The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010 – Eliminate $1 trillion in tax giveaways. Change the top tax bracket to 70% to help pay down deficit
5. Break up the big banks and strengthen the Volker Rule
6. End ALL wars and lower the bloated defense budget
7. Reduce health care costs by adding the public option. Allow Medicare to purchase drugs. Allow drug re-importation.
8. National Infrastructure Bank – Run by engineers, not politicians. Find $2 trillion over 10 years to create jobs now and increase productivity later. Put millions back to work. Fund with a millionaire's tax
9. Federal government make massive investments in R & D to create quality jobs long term in areas like biotechnology, alternative energy, IT, materials, science, alternative-fuel automobiles, and clean technology. Fund with a bank tax
10. Government pass a law requiring the seating of public and worker representatives on corporate boards to help stem the tide of jobs being shipped overseas.
11. Raise educational standards through a national core curriculum. Advocate the firing of the bottom 10% of teachers nationwide and replace them with good teachers. Make higher education free to families that can't afford it to encourage upward mobility in society.
3. Permanently ban anyone who has served in federal office from becoming a lobbyist
4. Enact The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010 – Eliminate $1 trillion in tax giveaways. Change the top tax bracket to 70% to help pay down deficit
5. Break up the big banks and strengthen the Volker Rule
6. End ALL wars and lower the bloated defense budget
7. Reduce health care costs by adding the public option. Allow Medicare to purchase drugs. Allow drug re-importation.
8. National Infrastructure Bank – Run by engineers, not politicians. Find $2 trillion over 10 years to create jobs now and increase productivity later. Put millions back to work. Fund with a millionaire's tax
9. Federal government make massive investments in R & D to create quality jobs long term in areas like biotechnology, alternative energy, IT, materials, science, alternative-fuel automobiles, and clean technology. Fund with a bank tax
10. Government pass a law requiring the seating of public and worker representatives on corporate boards to help stem the tide of jobs being shipped overseas.
11. Raise educational standards through a national core curriculum. Advocate the firing of the bottom 10% of teachers nationwide and replace them with good teachers. Make higher education free to families that can't afford it to encourage upward mobility in society.
My take: Who will do these things? Where is the leadership?
Progressives thought Obama would lead the way but we now know that he was recruited and vetted by Chicago's wealthy, who wanted the perks and riches that flow from power. They are social liberals but Wall Street conservatives, and Obama has acted accordingly.
So we get gays in the military, a good thing, but no real jobs programs and more free trade to ship even more jobs overseas. And of course continuous war spending, good for war profits.
Even if Obama is reelected, and that's not a sure thing, he won't defy his makers. His future and that of his family, is already assured, so why make waves?
Without big money behind leadership, change is impossible in today's complex media world.
The tea party has big money behind it, or it would have fizzled. When is the last time you saw national media coverage of a peace march? But the tea party rallies, funded by big money, were headlined day and night, attracting the gullible who don't understand politics but are loaded with resentment.
There's no money like that on the left, even if an individual with the requisite media talent can be found as leader.
Change from the bottom up? Comfortable progressives I know talk a good game but spend their money on foreign travel and other luxuries rather than bankroll candidates. Others just don't have any spare money.
Unions have been royally screwed by Obama and other Dems, who are turning against their issues to please Wall Street. Why should they waste their money and energy?
So -- by all means let us praise MLK in a sanitized way, of course. An MLK banquet today in Peoria cost $40 a plate to hear a celebrity speaker.
The traditional march, always a cold slog, followed by a people's event with local speakers disappeared this year. Oops, there was a march that had no advance publicity whatsoever. The local NPR station said 100 people marched.
Though hope we can believe in is not totally gone, it's on life support.
-- Elaine Hopkins
I got video proof there was a March & a Commemorative Service & Leadership Awards following. It will air on CAPtions January 30th at 5 pm, Wednesday, Feb. 2nd at 7 pm, & later that night at Midnight on Comcast Cable 22.
Posted by: Dennis in Peoria | January 18, 2011 at 12:35 PM
Ha ha --- no $ on the left --- someone forgetting about Soros? Just needed to read Obama's book to see the handwriting on the wall about the Chicago connections --- deep veins. As for item number 8 ---- National Infrastructure Bank – Run by engineers, not politicians. Maybe a bank run by quartermasters rather than engineers --- QMs usually understand and operate within the whole picture and engineers sometimes can be rather myopic and only see their corner of the world.
Posted by: Karrie E. Alms | January 20, 2011 at 10:08 PM