Past words of "wisdom" by Third Way prez, Jon Cowan. Too much influence on Democrats.

[madfloridian]

We have been already posting here about the recent attack on Elizabeth Warren by the Third Way leaders.

She fought back against them. There has not been enough of that through the years. Good for her. There has not been enough outrage toward this group.

The group's president, Jon Cowan, has said and written some fairly awful stuff for years now. For him to be head of a Democratic think tank with so much influence over the party is a shock to me.

One of the worst things he said was in a speech to the Democracy Alliance in 2007. This was near the bottom of an article at Alternet, and it really stuck with me.

Third Way Is the Wrong Way

Blowing up public housing is not a progressive value

Recently, Third Way's President, Jon Cowan, made a presentation to the Democracy Alliance, a center-left organization that is attempting to build progressive political infrastructure. Cowan spent his speech shouting at the audience and half his time explaining that when he worked at the Housing and Urban Development Department under Andrew Cuomo, he worked to "blow up public housing" and replace it with two and three-story public housing. He characterized his work as "modernizing" progressive ideas.

What Cowan failed to explain, however, is that much of the public housing blown up was sitting on valuable urban land and was replaced, not by low-income housing, but by developments of mid and high-priced condominiums, while the poor were moved farther from cities, and that some of the blown up housing had been recently built and was in good condition. More significantly, Cowan failed to acknowledge that the number of replacement units did not match the number of housing units blown up and thousands of low-income tenants were left homeless by this "modernization." The next day, Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of Center for Community Change, an organization that works on behalf of low-income people, called this demolition of public housing, with the insufficient housing replacement, "immoral."

Blowing up public housing and leaving thousands homeless may be Third Way's idea of "modernization," it may even appeal to some Democratic real estate developers, but there is nothing progressive about it.

In 1993 Cowan co-wrote an op ed in the Chicago Tribune. It was called An Appeal To Grandma And Grandpa

He was asking that they not be so greedy about their Social Security.

Dear Grandma and Grandpa:

We write to ask for your help. We're in a financial mess, and unless everyone in our family gets together to fix the problem, we're heading for "economic and fiscal catastrophe." That's not a phrase we picked up on MTV-it's from a recent U.S. government report on the budget deficit.

This year alone America's budget deficit will be nearly $300 billion, which means we're spending $300 billion more than we take in. That's $300 billion on top of the $4.2 trillion debt we've already built up, enough to pay basketball star Michael Jordan's salary for almost a million and a half years.

And then the tone changes...they are pacifying seniors saying it is not all their fault. How nice of them. Don't miss the words about the collapsing school system. What a pathetic grab for generational sympathy. Unfortunately it worked all too well.

We are not ungrateful. We respect and value the sacrifices you've made for our country and have no desire to take money away from those in need. But our generation is in trouble. We were educated in a collapsing school system. Our incomes and skill levels are lower than any previous generation-by the year 2000 over one-third of younger Americans will be living in poverty. And we will be the first Americans to inherit a lower standard of living than our parents.

We're not asking that your generation solve all our problems. And there certainly are many other programs that also must be cut to get the deficit under control. But Social Security must be considered, just like everything else in the budget.

That is not true about the school system. And Cowan and his buddies continue to attack Social Security to this day.

Cowan is on the advisory board of a new group called The Can Kicks Back, which I guess is to further the agenda of cutting back Social Security to save the younger generation.

Look at the others on that board.

Hon. Evan Bayh – Former Democratic Senator and Governor from Indiana

Erskine Bowles – Former Co-Chair, National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; Former Chief of Staff, President Bill Clinton

Jonathan Cowan – President, Third Way; Former Co-Founder, Lead or Leave

Hon. Mickey Edwards – Vice President of the Aspen Institute; Former Republican Member of Congress from Oklahoma

Ryan Randall - Investment Officer with the Fairfax County Retirement Systems, former Sector Analyst and Director of Public Policy with Passport Capital

Hon. Alan Simpson – Former Co-Chair, National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; Former Republican Senator from Wyoming

Hon. David M. Walker – CEO, Comeback America Initiative; Former Comptroller General of the United States

One more thing. Cowan openly called for the privatization of Social Security in a 1995 op ed.

Boomers' Burden on Generation X : Current payout levels can't be sustained; let the retirement savings system go private for all but the needy.

The time has come to reinvent Social Security based on a "cut and privatize" approach that will be fair to all age groups. This reinvention should be based on three principles:

* Start immediately to lower boomers' expectations of the returns they will get and encourage them to increase private savings. My generation and my kids' will have to pay upward of 30% of our income in payroll taxes to finance the boomers' retirement at today's benefit levels. That's unreasonable and unworkable. Instead, we'll have to dramatically slash benefits to stay solvent, and we should let folks know now what to expect when the ax falls.

* Separate out the welfare portion of Social Security and pay out poverty benefits to today's--and tomorrow's--needy seniors from general government revenues. In some cases, benefits will have to increase as we keep our commitment to protect America's elderly from poverty; at the same time, benefits will have to be cut to seniors who are well-off. Yes, we'll be breaking our commitment to folks who have paid in for decades, but that was not a contract my generation signed, and it's not one that America can afford to fulfill.

* Lower the Social Security payroll tax to 10% and give workers the option of putting their money into private pension programs that offer far higher returns and sounder prospects than today's Social Security system.

Way too much influence on Democrats. for way too many years.

[djean111]

1. "but that was not a contract my generation signed"

Oh, fuck you! I didn't vote for any goddamned "third way" bullshit, either.
Or at least I was not led to believe I was.
Never again.

[madfloridian]

2. That really angered me.

Cowan's words grate on my nerves.

[Vincardog]

3. RE "My generation and my kids' will have to pay upward of 30% of our income in payroll taxes to

My generation a to finance the boomers' retirement at today's benefit levels. "


BULLSHIT. I as have all other BOOMERs have been the first generation to pay for
our parents as well as our own retirements. SS was designed for the working people to pay for their parent's retirements.

Because we boomers were supposed to be such a large segments we didn't want to burden our children with the cost. That is why we overpaid our contributions to SS. That is there the
$2 TRILLION surplus came from. It is our money.

Now the monied elite want to steal it and continue raping us.
I say Fuck them and their Bullshit.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. K&R Shining the light on these parasites. n/t

[madfloridian]

5. ....

Yes, indeed.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

6. This site is certainly educating me.

I had no idea there was an actual org called Third Way. I just thought that was a figure of speech.
That stuff is nuts. I was so happy when Warren came out and said SS needed to be expanded. James Galbraith, son of John Kenneth, has been saying this for years, but his was the only voice I ever heard. Warren saying this in the way she did and in the context was a true breath of fresh air.

[madfloridian]

8. Yes, it does exist.

Here's the link to their website.

http://www.thirdway.org/

The DLC came before them by a few years. They constantly slammed the left as fringe. They closed down and deleted all the stuff they had written through the years. I still have excerpts and post them when I can.

They wanted a centrist party only with all that entails in their mind.



Agree, this is a very instructional place. Yes, Warren is a breath of fresh air.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

7. K&R

The more exposure the better.

[madfloridian]

16. I agree.

They keep changing their name, but they are still the same.

[Rex]

9. Third Way = Charlatans working for a 1% paymaster.

Disgusting people, they call themselves 'vital' and yet are completely worthless to society at large. Might as well be Teabaggers. Both work for the same master.

[madfloridian]

10. Good point about their masters.

Both work for corporate masters.

[Doctor_J]

11. What a disgusting piece of shit. Now you know why our party lets the Repukes

destroy the country. They're in it together

[madfloridian]

15. I'm hoping fewer than before in on it.

But any Dems going along with it...too much for me. They are waking up to the consequences of going along with extremists..I would like to think so at least.

[Doctor_J]

18. Pssh. How many D's in the congress and the white house have come out against SS cuts?

exactly. The only thing that keeps the party from extinction is being merely corporatist, and not malignant like the Repukes.

[madfloridian]

19. Good point there.

I could count on one hand the ones who have had courage to say no cuts to Soc. Sec.

[madfloridian]

12. Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, 1998, Third Way

During the lead-up to the Iraq invasion the DLC leaders called those who supported the invasion the "Blair Democrats".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/iraq/stories/blair1998.htm

" Blair and Clinton have met twice this year -- once in this country and last month in England -- to discuss the so-called third way strategy that is neither the traditional right or left approach to governing. Clinton also explored the subject at a May meeting with Romano Prodi, the Italian prime minister, and on June 7 at a Camp David meeting with Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

While playing down any immediate organizational plans, some of those involved in the discussions suggest that the long-range aim would be to set up a middle-ground counterpart to the Socialist International on the left or the International Democrat Union on the right.

Any formal efforts to set up such an organization or forum would begin after the German elections in September. If Gerhard Schroeder, the Social Democratic candidate, wins, the German leadership would help Clinton and Blair counter some quiet opposition in the French and Portuguese left.

In place of direct state intervention, Clinton and Blair have been promoting a version of liberal-left politics that calls for competitive, free-market strategies while using government to prevent the market from devastating those least prepared to live without the protections of the welfare state."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political/Third_Way.html

"It is in this context that Blair and Clinton proclaimed themselves pioneers of a new Third Way that pursues a middle course between the nasty conservative right and unpragmatic old left, and they have been joined in this pursuit by Schroder and other social democrats. It is notable that Clinton is a charter member of this new set, as he is also a charter member of the Democratic Leadership Council, which is an openly right-wing faction of the not very social democratic Democratic Party. Blair and other European social democrats have frequently expressed admiration for the U.S. model, with its low wages, job insecurity, contingent labor, and relatively low unemployment levels. The convergence of thought and policy among Blair, Schroder, and Clinton indicates how far to the right European social democracy has traveled.
The most remarkable feature of Third Way leaders' thought is its virtual identity with neoliberal doctrine and with what market operatives believe in and strive for in policy-making. Blair and Clinton can't speak too highly of the efficacy of the market and the importance of bringing as much as possible within its orbit. Blair's speeches, his government's position papers, and his joint statement with Schroder in June 1999 are a litany of cliches dear to the hearts of the business community and right wing: no more "tax and spend," and although budgets have "reached the limits of acceptability" (Blair) we must lower taxes, but only to reward "hard work and enterprise" and to make business "globally competitive." Global competitiveness also calls for the containment of wages and pensions via "labor flexibility" and "hard decisions" to get welfare costs down and to make people more "responsible."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/458626.stm

"So what is this Third Way embraced by Blair and Clinton and now by a number of European leaders, most notably Gerhart Schröder in Germany? One observer described it as the Loch Ness Monster of British politics - everyone's heard of it , there are occasional sightings but no-one is sure the beast really exists. Or as another remarked the third way is ethereally defined. One supporter writing to The Independent claimed it was a form of benevolent pragmatism - a philosophy that asked of each policy - is it good, does it work? For this reason he argued it was hated by the old left and the new right - the new right because they never did anything that was good and the old left because they never did anything that worked . "

[TheKentuckian]

13. Thanks Mad

[madfloridian]

14. I think the oped against Warren hurt them.

I hope so. So glad to see her speak out like that.

[TheKentuckian]

20. Yanks them out of the shadows a bit.

[solarhydrocan]

17. + a lot Excellent Excellent post. TY

Third way?