Reply #16: Because that's a framework that helps Repubicans get elected. [View All]

[AP]

One of the projects that Republicans embarked on in 1973 was to balkanize all the left single-interest groups so they fought amongst themselves.

They used to all work within a progressive framework where women, racial minorities, environmentalists, gay rights groups were all about the same thing: flowing the political, cultural and economic power down to the people who create it.

But after '73, they got labor fighting with the environmentalists, blacks fighting women, blacks fighting gays, etc. How'd they do that? By getting them to think things like, that putting a pristine environment ahead of economic development that would create jobs and keep costs of everything down for working people is a helpful goal to aspire to for progressives.

It isn't a helpful to think that way. There will always be tradeoffs, and the bottom line should be making sure that the compromises work best for the majority of people, and not for the bottom lines of the corporate profit ledgers.

All those things you say above about polution are good and true. But you must understand how they don't work just to explain ANWAR. According to that logic, we shouldn't drill anywhere. Venezuela is developing oil fields left and right (and using the money they make to build hospitals and schools for the poor). I presume it's not the abstract notion of drilling for oil to which you object, right? See, you make compromises, and the real issue is how those compromises work to deliver wealth and power to the people, and not to a few corporations at the top.

I'd be happy to write more about this if you don't see where I'm going with this, but I hope that you do understand what I'm saying.

Do you?