Alright lets debate whether we should pursue a liberal or moderate agenda

[Hippo_Tron]

Alright here's the deal. There seems to be some kind of debate about whether we should pursue a "liberal" or a "moderate" agenda. Impeachment aside because there are plenty of threads on this, lets debate specific policies and whether they are too moderate or too liberal for the next congress.

I don't want to hear the names Rahm Emmanuel, Howard Dean, or James Carville, Bill Clinton, or Hillary Clinton unless it is in the context of a specific policy that they are proposing.

[lcordero2]

1. neither

I want an agenda that works when the rubber meets the road.

[gully]

2. How bout a human agenda?

We've been without one for a while.

[johnaries]

3. How about one issue at a time? nt

[porphyrian]

4. Why can't we do both?

Certainly we have enough common interest to keep ourselves busy for, say twenty years.

[Selatius]

5. Triangulate. Somewhere the left and the middle agree upon.

For instance, minimum wage or increasing the EITC to help the poor.

An honest debate on universal health care, since polls done since the 1990s have consistently shown most Americans, somewhere in the 60 percent range, support this.

Inserting labor and environmental protections into free trade bills.

Passing a clean elections law.

Raising fuel efficiency standards.

Funding research into alternative fuels

Increase funding into the Pell Grant program for poor college students.

Setting a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

And so on and so forth.

You can be a leftist and govern the country. Just look at how successful FDR was. You just have to pursue policies that most people would support.

[Hippo_Tron]

6. I agree wtih every one of those proposals

And I think that pretty much everyone on DU does too. Hence I don't understand why we are instigating this stupid "liberal" wing vs "moderate" wing debate. It is entirely personality driven (Howard Dean vs Rahm Emmanuel) and has nothing to do with policy.

[longship]

7. I just made a major post on this very topic.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2679016&mesg_id=2679016

[EdwardM]

8. A moderate agenda.

And I consider the following to be moderate.

1.Anyone who works for 40 hours a week should not live in poverty.

2.Everyone should have equal access to health care no matter how much money they make.

3.We will not attack any countries unless we are attacked first.

4.All People of all faiths and races should be allowed to live their lives without discrimination.

5.We have the right under the bill of rights to make phone calls and check out library books without government snooping in our personal business without a warrant.

6.We have the right to not be imprisoned indefinitely without a fair trial.

7.We have the right not to be torture.

8.The justice system should be equally applied to all people regardless of wealth, power, and race.

9.We have the right to protest not just in "free speech zones" and we have the right to ask our Senators tough questions without being tackled to the ground.

10.We have the right to vote and our vote to be counted fairly.

11.A women's body is her body and not the governments.

12. People have equal rights regardless of their sexuality.


Does this sound like an agenda everyone can agree on? Anybody want to add to this moderate agenda?

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Getcha false dichotomy right here!

Yo Hippo_Tron liberals are moderates.

[Hippo_Tron]

10. Agreed, my post was partly rhetorical

[remfan]

11. How about we try governing?

Which, ya know, requires a little thing called "compromise". It's pretty cool, it takes good ideas from different sources, and everyone gives little in order to reach a consensus.

Compromise, it's a little bit moderate, it's a little bit liberal, and you can even stick in a smidgen of conservative if we're feeling particularly magnanimous.

Let's not continue the course set by the GOP - politics of "it's either black or it's white". Our caucus is made up of MANY factions, and they can complement each other. We don't need to see it as an either/or question.

[yella_dawg]

12. Definitely moderate.

But I'm so liberal that Socialists think I'm a left wing loonie. And I get to define moderate.

[Peace Patriot]

13. Well, I think we need to start with some basics, or should I say RETURN

to some basics, to begin undoing the damage that the Bush Junta has done, on all fronts, and to insure that it never happens again--that we never ever again have a president that half the country suspects stole several elections, and that has acted, as his regime has acted, via autocratic edicts, on an agenda that MOST people in the country have not agreed with, from way back. (For instance, 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War way back before the invasion, in Feb. '04. 56% would be a landslide in a presidential election. How did we get this war shoved down our throats with that majority against it?)

We remain in great danger of ANOTHER fascist coup, and this is one of the main reasons that I am disturbed by the Dem Congress's leaders immediate ruling out of impeachment. I won't talk about that here, but it's on my mind because of structural problems with the presidency that made us so vulnerable to a tyrannical executive. And we are by no means out of the woods yet. This man and one of his puppetmasters are still in the White House, still have nukes at their fingertips, and the military is still obliged to obey them. And even if it's the Bush Cartel now in charge, and slightly saner heads have prevailed--for instance, on invading Iran--how weird and totally off-center is that, to have James Baker rescuing a dysfunctional president, and one quickly dispatched criminal (Rumsfeld), and another criminal still in place (Cheney), and God knows who is making critical decisions, or what will happen next? Israel and Iran are saber-rattling today. What if hot war breaks out? We have no guarantee that anyone is in charge who is accountable to US, the American people.

And that's just a beginning of our problems with the "unitary executive."

I think Congress needs to come up with some sort of "Magna Carta" document that re-establishes the "balance of powers."

A list of re-stated Constitutional principles, and some new ones, as necessary. The President shall commit no felonies. The President shall not make up his own laws. Like that. But especially re-establishing Congress' INDEPENDENCE of the executive branch, and its SOLE powers over the purse strings, over the laws of this land, and over whether or not go to war. And here's a good one: No future Congress can grant the President discretionary power to start a war. There must be a formal declaration of war by the Congress--with all evidence openly presented and openly discussed at length--and I would be for amending the Constitution to make that a two-thirds vote needed for war (Is it now? Maybe that's why presidents have evaded it. Not sure.) Congress possesses the SOLE POWER under the Constitution to declare war. And we've had TWO major, horrible wars now, against COUNTRIES--NOT "terrorist groups"--with no declaration of war! This has got to stop. The fuzzing of this line between the exec. and legisl. on war powers got going with Vietnam. And if we don't stop it now--after this second egregious example of forcing the American people into war--we are going to DESERVE to be in an endless state of war for centuries to come. We've got to find the language that makes discretionary war IMPOSSIBLE. Probably the only way to do that, for certain, is to cut the military budget down to a true defensive posture--say, a 90% cut--no more wars of choice! But we can ask Congress to do it by a "Magna Carta" provision now, in present circumstances, to get the principle down on paper.

I am soo-o-o angry at the wusses, and wafflers, and have-it-both-wayers who voted to give George Bush war powers. It was UNCONSTITUTIONAL, as Robert Byrd said at the time. And it was the beginning of all this. If only the Democrats--and whatever good Republicans there may have been in 2002--had held firm on this. We wouldn't have this disaster.

Excuse me for going off point. Structural measures. Remove the President's power to make appointments between sessions of Congress. It's an archaic provision--for when transportation was by horseback. There is no excuse for it. And it's one of the rules that Bush has abused.

Specifically rescind EVERY SIGNING STATEMENT that Bush has added to a Congressionally passed LAW. Every one. Name them. Override them. And notify the president that Congress will use its powers of impeachment immediately if he dare acts on any of those "signing statements" and disobeys the law.

No executive/FBI invasion of Congress or seizure of Congress members or their belongings. (The Jefferson case--totally outrageous.) No person may impede a member of Congress for ANY reason (it's in the Constitution--the McKinney case, another outrage).

Okay. You get my meaning. The original "Magna Carta" was a declaration of the rights of the nobility vs. the King (who was being a tyrant). Substitute Congress for the nobility, and Bush for the King. A method/strategy of re-asserting Congressional power and independence vis a vis the president must be found. Why not just lay it out? Quote the Constitution. Quote anything else relevant. And RE-ASSERT the "balance of power."

Bush's violations have been so egregious and in-your-face that they need to be stated and UNDONE.

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Secondly, we do NOT have TRANSPARENT elections, THE most fundamental condition of democracy. And EVEN WITH a 30-some Dem majority in the House, and at least control of Senate committees, this Congress does not even come close to reflecting the majority of the American people, SEVENTY PERCENT of whom now oppose the Iraq War and other Bush policies. And I think the reason is that Bushite corporations STILL control election results, with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it. I mean, that absolutely ridiculous. Two corporations with very close ties to the Bush Junta and far right wing causes are "counting" almost all of our votes under a veil of corporate secrecy. And they are doing so in primaries and general elections, meaning that our choice of candidates and the parameters of political debate can and is being severely limited. Combined this with the filthy lucre in our campaigns, and the 5 rightwing billionaire CEOs who control the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and you have an egregiously non-transparent and out-of-whack election system, that is wide open to UNDETECTABLE fraud, and already weighted toward the interests of the rich and powerful, Dem or Repub.

TRANSPARENT elections are a priority #1 item. And I mean NO SECRET CODE in any part of the system. And if we keep the machines--which the corrupt and the stupid have spent billions of our dollars upon--we MUST have 100% audits. Hand count the ballots, and post the results before any electronics are involved. Why is that so difficult? We did it before, for centuries. Other democracies do it now, with no problem. That has to be the bottom line: VISIBLE, hand counting of every ballot, and post the results before anything else is done with or to those votes. Our government now takes the view that we can't be trusted with our own ballots. That arrogant attitude must end. Safeguards, of course, and close watching. But we don't need all this complicated fuss and bother, and gobble-de-gook of technology.

I don't expect Congress to exhibit any common sense on this matter. Too much money and power involved in the billions in e-voting contracts. I expect we'll have to get this done ourselves at the local level. We, the People. I just hope they don't make it worse, and peddle illusions of transparency. They're very capable of mischief on this. They betrayed us once before, and let this dreadful e-voting thing spread like a cancer all over the country. We need to watch them like hawks on this one.

COUNT the damn votes, one by one! That is the principle we want.

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Well, enough. I'm tired and hungry and need to go eat dinner. There are a lot of other things that I think need to be done--but, bottom line, how can you do anything, and pass a bill if the President feels free to un-write it, won't obey it, won't implement it. He cannot DO that. If he signs it, it's THE LAW. And if he vetoes it, then we have to deal with that. And I'd be for temporarily suspending Bush's right to veto laws passed by Congress. And let HIM whine and cry that "Congress can't do that!" Let's get down to fundamentals here. How does Congress protect its power in the face of an out-of-control executive? And how we, the People, protect ours--the power from which ALL of their power supposedly derives?