Reality Check: There is no Liberal equivalent to the Tea Party!

Anyone who tells you there is a progressive equivalent to the Tea Party is either outright lying to you or is a well-intentioned idiot. There is none. There isn't a single group in Washington that literally was advocating to destroy the US economy by defaulting, in part because of their obstinate belief that it wouldn't happen. That's what happens when you deny reality, and when you are so uninterested in things like facts that you are willing to deny what is both blaringly obvious and potentially disastrous.

Bill Maher did a 'new rule' about this on his show which illustrated very clearly why there ISN'T a group like that. If there WAS there would be a vocal and obstinate portion of the Democratic party that would be staunchly attaching amendments to every piece of legislation that would repeal DOMA. There would be staunch supporters of public funding for reproductive services like those provided by Planned Parenthood, including abortions. There would be a refusal to give in on things like repealing tax cuts for the super rich and corporations, slashing funding on programs truly necessary or poor and working poor Americans, and the policy moves that have been disastrous to education. They would have refused to budge on a real publicly funded universal health care program, and we would have a sparkling new infrastructure that included all the green technology available.

None of that has happened.

The fact is that the Democratic party has become a watered down version of the moderate Republicans of past decades. They've become Bob Dole. They've failed in the messaging war to both uplift and educate the American public in a way that encourages middle and working class people to be engaged in the political process AS WELL AS make voting decisions that truly represent progress on issues that affect them. There is nothing like that. Even people who would have just been considered moderates in past decades are now being branded as ultra-liberal. If THAT were true, Denice Kucinech would be a hell of a lot more influential in his party than he is.

The reality is that the current incarnation of political system has reverted back to the pre-FDR era where corporations dictate the outcomes of elections and then their interests control politicians in Washington on both sides of the aisle. Until we begin restricting the flow of unlimited funds from corporate interests, we won't have a government interested in truly effective reforms. We won't have a Democratic party that even recognizes policies that benefit the middle and working classes or that promote a growing economy.

Budgets, Jobs, and the Economic Narrative

We are in an economic crisis in this country, but the mortgage woes that are still plaguing millions of Americans are only a symptom of a broader issue. These are at play because of a conflict between corporations and workers. As corporate regulation, and of course the companion tax burden on the wealthy, have loosened over the past few decades, we have seen the decline in American production and of course labor jobs. Over the past few decades the narrative, however altruistic it may have been, that we could pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and that with hard work the average worker could get ahead has been nothing but that, a narrative, a sitcom like Good Times.

Although we it is just now starting to become apparent because it is now shifting burdens of taxes and public responsibility for the state of the overall job market and mortgage investment market onto upper middle class people, this is just a consequence of the disappearance of labor. It's not just a problem of 'buying American', either. It is also not just a problem of American products costing more because the production costs are higher due to salaries and benefits. That may be in part true, but that is as much an excuse as it is to blame the job loss on the 'Great Recession'.

Ultimately this is a game of redistribution of wealth, the same concept that Michelle Bachmann and the unfortunately un- and mis-educated people who believe her nonsense use to stir up fear among white middle class people nearing retirement. Wealth redistribution has been happening for decades. It has just been in the opposite direction of what Bachmann uses to spread fear. How can I justify this claim? Because the middle class isn't disappearing, it has disappeared. Meanwhile four hundred people own more wealth than more than half the rest of the population combined. CEO's of corporations who used to make around seventy times the average employee salary now make somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand times that. They are getting bonuses in the hundreds of millions, their investment friends managing hedge funds and making billion dollar salaries, meanwhile most Americans, including myself, are struggling. That's how I can say that wealth redistribution is already here and has been going strong for decades.

What does this mean for budgets? Well, since forty percent of this country, both in the lowest economic classes and among the wealthiest elites, don't pay any taxes or get all their taxes back in refunds, that means that the middle class is bearing the brunt of the majority of the tax burden. This happens precisely because of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations that the Republicans have put in place. It is also obvious to those who can follow the logic as Republican politicians profess the same nonsense that the corporate lobbyists and CEO's are crying about, that higher taxes will kill jobs. Well tax cuts create deficits. Particularly when there are some programs, namely Medicare and Social Security, that Americans refuse to budge on and which comprise the majority of any spending our government does, and there isn't enough revenue coming in. It is also readily apparent to anyone paying attention to actually legitimate news stations who point out the consistently rising profits of major corporations. Those corporations aren't creating the kind of jobs that really pay, that's a generalization but it is generally true, and certainly not in a way that reflects a real investment when compared to those record profits.

Those manufacturing jobs are not coming back, and not because we don't buy products or because we are paid to much, but because companies that make things are too interested in profits. And, given the disastrous effect of the Recession on pension and investment plans that make up the majority of the investments of the middle class in those companies, the primary beneficiaries of their increased profits are the same wealthy who then complain that higher taxes would kill jobs. The same wealthy who also get tax breaks with the excuse that somehow they stimulate the economy by investing in companies that aren't bringing their production jobs back to the US. They instead squirrel it away in foreign banks and buy property in other countries so that they aren't taxed on income that would otherwise be circulating in and boosting the US economy.

When you have a labor force composed largely of people with lower levels of education who don't have the skills to work in mid-level management than you need jobs for them. If they don't have jobs and that is who the mortgage companies and investment banks are selling their products to, that means that they are unable to fulfill, ultimately, the financial obligation of those mortgages. That is especially true when they are walking a thin line already when they are employed. That line disappears and they fall into the abyss of debt when they lose their job.

And not only did the manufacturing jobs disappear ten years ago with the advent of NAFTA, though I would argue it started long before then as companies exported labor to China and Taiwan and other places in Asia, but in the last ten years we've seen the phenomena of the so called white-collar jobs, the call centers and customer service support jobs relied upon by a lot of middle class people, disappear as they've been exported to India and Pakistan. The US has become so semi-consciously aware of it that it has become a joke that we call customer support lines and reach people with hyper-American names but with foreign accents. Companies have even been using the fact that they have created call centers here in the US as a subtle advertising ploy to take advantage of the anxiety we have over those jobs being 'outsourced'. And what a terrible name for corporate America to use in place of calling it what it is, cutting spending on employees by contracting out good jobs to companies they pay far less in order to boost profit margins somewhat artificially.

So while it might be fair to blame the Recession and blame the investment banking industry for the woes of our economy and the job market, the jobs were disappearing a long time before then. Their greed in trying to get greater and greater profits by cutting costs exacerbated the problem, and then their even greater greed in taking advantage of a population increasingly desperate to live out the fantasy of the 'American Dream' which we have been brainwashed to buying into with bad mortgages.

This isn't all because of Republicans. Democrats were in power for two years before the crash and had greater influence in Congress even two years before that. NAFTA was also a product of the Clinton administration, and almost none of it has been dealt with under the Obama administration. And Barney Frank was intimately involved in the loosening of restrictions on mortgage investment that was partially responsible for all the faulty mortgages. It's hard for me to criticize him, though, because as a gay American and a progressive I do believe that he is a strong voice to represent both those constituencies. I'd like to think that instead it was bad decision making on his part and more political gaming than ideology.

What is abundantly clear is that Democrats have lost their way as a national party. The Wisconsin union fight has proven that. While the national Republican party backed Scott Walker within a few weeks of the fight, only a handful of national Democrats, and most of those Wisconsin Democrats, became vocal about the issue. The national party has yet to really make a strong campaign about the union busting going on in a dozen states throughout the Great Lakes region and the Midwest, and that is a problem. The labor movement is the traditional heart of the Democratic party. Progressive policies on civil rights and energy aside, labor issues are the ones that draw the most people into the fold because the majority of people in this country see jobs and labor issues like the minimum wage and employee benefits as core American values. The Republicans were able to capitalize on the anxiety people had because of the incredible losses in the job market during this past election, but those are issues central to Democrats. The fact that the Republicans were able to take that message from the Democrats during this last cycle is a clear indication that the party has gone too far away from that base.

The party, I think, is picking up on that, and is starting to wake up to the incredible political force of the labor movement. We saw some of that when the unions in Nevada stumped like mad for Harry Reid during the last election. It was because of them that he had the money, and even more importantly the 'ground game' with people canvasing and making phone calls, that he was able to pull off a win in an incredibly tough election. And this is not about 'conservative' Democrats versus 'liberal' Democrats. Labor issues are liberal issues. Even more than that the labor movement and the way they see labor rights as basically civil rights is the way to make people understand the value of civil rights in general. Conservatives have controlled the overall narrative about unions for decades and have convinced people that somehow they are better off without unions. While unions aren't blameless in this narrative, they have done things publicly that ended up pushing people against them, the questions around job creation and even more importantly salaries and benefits should be things that we are all talking about.

Unions are vital to some industries, teachers especially rely on their unions to help fight for fair wages and benefits in one of the toughest industries in the country. However, people have started seeing them as the province only of manufacturing industries and teachers rather than as representative of working people everywhere. Wisconsin, as I've described before, is a great catalyst, however. Since most of Americans, including Republicans, favor the rights of collective bargaining, and really genuinely understand the consequences of employers having all the leverage in salary and benefits discussions, it is no surprise then that there is so much push back. As I've also said before, the question shouldn't be why public employees make so much, but why the wages and benefits of the average American worker are so meager by comparison. I understand that when salaries and benefits of public employees are combined that they seem to have such a better deal than most people. But why is that? Why do people believe blowhards like the commentators on FOX News when they try and demonize public workers for it? Why aren't people instead demanding that their own compensation be better? I mean, it is obvious from the salaries and benefits of executives and the wealthy elite that there is plenty of money to go around.

But many politicians, especially in the Republican party, aren't interested in that discussion, aren't interested in people framing the debate in that way instead. They prefer to make deep cuts into the state education budgets, like in Florida, and giving away all of it in property tax cuts and corporate tax cuts. I believe their argument is that the corporate tax breaks draw in corporations and create more jobs. But what kind of jobs are they creating? And where are they? Although it is heartening that jobs are being created by the dozens and even hundreds around the country, when there are more than twenty million people in the labor force who are either unemployed or underemployed, that isn't a positive sign. It is also not a positive sign that the jobs being created aren't jobs that pay well enough to help people emerge from the debt they've incurred in the last three years or to resume anything like the lifestyles they'd had before. They're not jobs that help people get out of foreclosure. To keep their homes.

No, the economic narrative shouldn't be about union benefits or even about the tax burden on the middle class. The narrative should be about jobs and job creation. It should be about real solutions that will put millions of people back to work, not just create a few hundred jobs here or there by giving enormous tax breaks to the wealthy and to corporations while making enormous cuts in the programs that most Americans desperately need and rely on. That isn't a Democratic idea or a Republican idea, that is an American idea, and if the Democrats are the only ones who are genuinely interested in addressing it, than they need to move away from the debates about health care as related to the poor that they've been losing for three years and instead return to framing it in the context of working people, workers rights, and the core values that kept them in power for generations.

The Progressive Left....And Right

The Democratic Party doesn't hold a monopoly on 'liberal' or 'progressive' ideals. The fact is that there are Dems who are in fact just as not-progressive as most Republicans. This is illustrated by the fact that there are plenty of men and women in Congress who either have direct ties to corporate and industrial interests like the oil companies and investment banks and hedge funds. It is also as problematic as the far right taking ownership of words like 'liberty', 'freedom', and 'patriot'.

At its heart 'progressive' thinking isn't the property of one party or the other, or any independent party masquerading as a legitimately independent group. We see this often when staunch and loyal Republicans who are not running for office speak out in support of civil rights, most noticeably now in the debate about LGBT rights. My favorite example of late is Meghan McCain. Here is the daughter of a Senator and former presidential candidate, an educated young woman who has experienced the best and worst parts of being on the campaign trail and participating in the most competitive national election in the election cycle. She often writes about how the GOP, by embracing candidates who aren't just Christian but extreme far-right Christians, and by using rhetoric of exclusion are setting themselves up for becoming obsolete and irrelevant.

That is part of the nature of our current political climate, though. Everyone has drawn their battle lines and claimed their labels and titles. And no it isn't fair for us to play the 'us' and 'them' game. But the truth is that there are people who are progressive thinkers, people who see that the only way forward is by leaving behind older technologies, older economic ideas, older political policies and adapt to the technologies and shifting geopolitical issues of our modern world. Progressive thinkers aren't necessarily behind green energy solutions because they are environmental activists, they're behind green energy because they recognize irrefutable proof that global climate change is already affecting our lives and will grow a bigger threat in the future. They support green energy because they recognize that as most industrialized countries either have already or will become prime markets for environmentally responsible technologies. They support it because they already see the nations who regularly rank higher than the US in quality of life and see the advanced public transportation, the clean energy solutions, the responsible consumerism and no lessening of the strength of the economy because of it.

Progressive thinkers recognize that some issues are apolitical and shouldn't have to impede our debate about economic and foreign policies. They have read the Bill of Rights and Constitution, were raised with the understanding that 'all men are created equal' and 'inalienable rights' should actually apply to all people, and with a spirit of empowerment. Perhaps it is just liberal idealism, but progressives, no matter their religious or cultural beliefs, recognize that every person deserves the same rights afforded to their peers. They recognize that just because a topic makes them personally uncomfortable does not give them the right to infringe on the rights of another. These principles then don't conflict with their personal religious beliefs nor their fiscal policies.

Younger generations seem to have more progressive thinkers, although we know from the cultural shifts of the 1960's and 70's that progressiveness was tied to youth then too, but also see that those progressive thinkers don't always remain progressive thinkers. This is an important part of the discussion, too. Should politicians not be thinking toward the future? Should they be acting as the parent who think they are right and want to impose the correct decisions and values onto younger generations on into the future? Or should they recognize that ideas and values evolve and that they should be making policy that is either adaptable as well or that reflects the direction our culture is going? Perhaps if more politicians were progressive thinkers they would have already have made some progress in recognizing and fighting cyber-bullying among young people, or cyber-terrorism on the national security front.

In a time of economic struggle like we have today it is difficult to recognize the commonalities between culturally progressive people. We are too busy drawing our battle lines in a two-party system and primarily because of the stark economic policy differences. It is just a shame, though, that regressive thinkers, all those people who clearly have forgotten the disastrous consequences of Reganomics and the recession of the 1980's, or even worse, those people who somehow romanticize pre-WWII America, have become the most visible and vociferous members of the GOP.

In a time when more and more young people have friends or loved ones who are gay people, when they've had more interaction with people of other cultures and races, the GOP isn't just in danger of becoming obsolete. If the Tea Party is any indication, the GOP of the pre-1990's with its social moderates has already become obsolete. They've abdicated their political authority first to the Christian Coalition during the 90's in an attempt further solidify political power, and now as the Christian conservatives have taken control of the Tea Party and the separatist/militia movement/libertarian/angry white people brand of politics, the true Republicans no longer hold the reigns of their own party.

Should GLBT people abandon Dems?

It seems like Obama, despite the continual promises of support for GLBT rights, especially the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it seems like the administration and the Democrats in general aren't able to live up to campaign promises and take decisive leadership roles on GLBT issues. In fact, between the Dems who supported McCain's filibuster and the lack of leadership by Obama administration, perhaps it's time that the HRC and major GLBT supporters of the Democratic party should be changing the focus of our fund-raising efforts to put more effort into supporting GLSEN, Lambda Legal, and organizations that support members of the military. I think it might be time for us to give up on the idea of these politicians to support us and for us to make more of an effort for us to take care of our own.

This isn't to say we should totally abandon Democratic and Independent candidates, and any others who pledge to support GLBT rights, that would be a mistake, but we should make our disappointment and displeasure heard by withdrawing financial support. If our political are more interested in keeping their jobs than in actually leading, maybe it's right for them to be voted out now while we have a Democratic president to veto Republican legislation and find candidates for the 2012 elections that are going to take strong stands.

One reason I am bringing this up is because of two recent cases of young teens, both 13 year old boys who were known to be gay, who because of extreme bullying in school, attempted suicide. One of the two shot himself and is dead, the other is on life support after hanging himself at home. This second victim had left school to be home schooled because of the peer torment and was still being bullied. It is unacceptable that just as these students are coming to an awareness of their sexual orientation at earlier ages that we aren't drastically increasing our efforts to protect them.

It has always been difficult for adult GLBT people to mentor young people. It is all too easy for supportive adults to become targets of accusations of sexual misconduct. This doesn't, however, make it any less important for us to put our efforts into supporting organizations that provide support groups, social opportunities, and safe spaces for our youths. If support from the government is being opposed by people on the conservative Right, or even the anti-gay center, than we should put our money power into supporting our young people.

Whatever steps we take in the future, we cannot allow our community to abdicate responsibility for our most vulnerable, thereby giving conservatives the ability to successfully limit our outreach programs and community support. If Obama and the Democrats can't take firm action on DADT, something the president could end with a single Executive Order, than we need to find leaders who will.

Republicans Created the Rhetoric of Healthcare

Democrats have a major problem in running campaigns this fall. First, there is an incredible amount of energy against them. Second, many of the good things they've done in Congress haven't had physical, concrete results in the minds of most people. Third, and probably most important, the rhetoric around the legislation that they've had successes with has been set against them. It's easy for people in the economic recession we have right now to be swayed against whatever party is in power. Although we had a slowing economy and the threat of a recession during 2007 and early 2008, the Obama campaign was about change and hope from the bleak political situation most people felt we were in. The economic crash then happened in the months after the election of Obama and from then until now we've suffered the most debilitating effects of the mortgage and credit crisis and the loss of jobs.

The first major piece of legislative action that came from the new administration was the Economic Stimulus. Bailouts were a necessity. After the Bush Bailout made $700 billion disappear into the banks, it was difficult for opponents of the Obama administration to reject the stimulus bill out of hand because so many manufacturing industries, principally the auto industry, were in jeopardy. A tremendous amount of negative energy came out of the base of those political opponents. They then spent the political capitol gained from their base on the health care bill.

Now, here's the crux of things: No matter how much the Democrats were in front of television to explain to the American public what the legislation was, the Republicans and the Tea Party were infinitely more successful. From the moment of the Tea Party protests onward the Republican Party has controlled the rhetoric surrounding healthcare. Even the fact that some people call the health care legislation Obamacare, is indicative of the control that Obama's opponents have over the rhetoric.

With a little more than a month to go before the elections, many Democratic candidates are avoiding directly discussing the particulars of the health care bill because Republicans have been so successful at playing on people's fears and misconception about the legislation to turn it into irradiated political nuclear waste.

Despite the rhetoric that Republicans have created over 'Obamacare', in their new policy statement, Republicans are advocating repealing the entire bill and instead implementing many things that have already been put into place by the health care bill. Many things that President Obama is now trying to barrage the press with, such as removing lifetime caps, getting rid of the restrictions against people with pre-existing conditions, and children with pre-existing conditions being allowed to get insurance, all of those things are nearly universally popular.

The public in general, I think, has this perception that there is massive amounts of pieces to the legislation that will kill health care in this country, or that it is some totalitarian-ish take over of their right to control their own care. That's an interesting line of thinking, but it doesn't in any way mitigate the fact that the Republicans won't do any better.

With their outright commitment to privatizing Social Security, Medicare, and the VA hospitals and veteran's health care, it is curious to think that some people believe their interest is in terms of healthcare in general would be on the side of consumer protection and offering affordable options to the uninsured.

Democrats are afraid of the negative associations with their health care bill and that if they run on the merits of that bill that they'd suffer for it. Because they didn't respond to the Tea Party protests by getting their own activists out into the public forum and didn't make a more concerted effort to publicize those merits, it is probably true, they probably can't run on health care.