Forget the campaign already -- it's time to build our platform: our NEW DEAL

nashville_brook

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Thu Feb-14-08 01:28 PM
Original message

Forget the campaign already -- it's time to build our platform: our NEW DEAL

"Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt upon accepting the 1932 Democratic nomination for president.

Facing economic collapse and global war, we stand at the edge of history. It's time we look past the nomination of the Democratic candidate (we know it's going to be one or the other) and focus on the platform to be created at the convention -- that document which serves as a manifesto for our party's direction in addressing the challenges faced by our country and citizens.

When I say "we stand on the edge of history," I'm not blowing rhetorical smoke. The disaster inherited from George W. Bush and his Neocon coterie threatens the extinction of the America as we know it.

In the last few years we have seen the privatization of the whole of public welfare. There's not one nook or cranny of the public good that hasn't been pimped out for profit. The SEC was too beholden to monied interests to put a stop to the global mortgage fraud known as the "subprime" crisis. The FDA is funded by the corporations it's supposed to protect us from -- and so we die from unsafe meat and snake oil medicines. Hell, the military doesn't even have the infrastructure to carry out a mission without private companies divvying up profit.

Either the insanity stops now, or there won't be anything left to fight for. We must rebuild our country. We must provide jobs, education and healthcare. We must abandon the fairy tale of "globalism" and restore our manufacturing base. We need RELIEF, RECOVERY and REFORM -- the original "three R's" which were the foundation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

This fact bears repeating: we face economic collapse and global war. We need immediate and drastic solutions. There's no room for error, and so we must use ideas that have already been proven to heal our nation. We can't piss away this moment, our platform must be unwavering in it's intent to return power to the people, and restore order to our economy.

We need immediate relief for people losing their homes, losing their jobs and losing their access to healthcare.

We need real economic recovery that will restore America's stature as a world power.

We will achieve this through real reform that recognizes only people have inalienable rights. Corporations are not people, they are human constructs that must be disciplined.

There is no choice presented to American business between intelligently planned and uncontrolled industrial operations and a return to the gold-plated anarchy that masqueraded as "rugged individualism."...Unless industry is sufficiently socialized by its private owners and managers so that great essential industries are operated under public obligation appropriate to the public interest in them, the advance of political control over private industry is inevitable.-- Donald Richberg, head of the National Recovery Adminstration.

"Gold-plated anarchy."

When CEOs make 400, 800, and a thousand times the salary of their average worker -- what have we, but gold plated anarchy? When banks aren't required to actually have money that they lend, what have we, but gold-plated anarchy? When average people can't see a doctor because there's an insurance company stands in their way demanding profit, what have we, but gold-plated anarchy? Stacked courts, bought politicians, needless war -- gold-plated anarchy.

History called us to fight this battle before, and it's calling us again.

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Read more about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration