Purge!

Well, the Senate wasted no time in getting their bullshit bill passed.  Now it goes back to the House for a final vote on the reconciliation, then to Trump for his signature.  If Trump signs it, which he is likely to do, there's only one thing left to do. 

We MUST stop arguing personality politics, put up a slate of real progressives, vote them into office next year.  It has to be real progressives, because corporate Democrats won't do it.  They're too beholden to Wall Street and big money interests to do what's right for the country and We the People.

Proofs of that are too numerous to go into, but I'll give a few examples:

Corporate Democratic leaders have come out against re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada at lower prices.
 
They've come out against universal health care, knowing that the ACA is both insufficient to the needs of the people, and that it's a giveaway to the insurance industry, having been largely written by that industry's lobbyists.

They've come out against breaking up the "too big to fail" big banks and "too big to jail" bankers and stockbrokers who caused the Great Recession of 2008.

Corporate Democrats have refused to stand with the fight for 15 to increase the minimum wage to a living wage.

President Obama, as a candidate, promised to protect whistle blowers.  But while in office, he prosecuted more of them than ANY OTHER President before him. 

After Candidate Obama promised to bring our soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan, but after doing so to a great extent, he sent them back to fight again in those places and seven more countries.  And some of those soldiers are PROTECTING the Afghan poppy fields while heroin usage here in America is on the increase once again.

Twice, he tried to open the Arctic preserves to drilling for oil, after promising not to do so.  He did nothing to fix our crumbling infrastructure, and made a single half-hearted attempt to bring jobs back from overseas.

And Tom Perez, after beginning a unity reform tour with Bernie Sanders, proceded to purge the Democratic National Committee leadership of real progressives.

So what are corporate Democrats going to do for We the People?  Not a damn thing, based on their records.

Why does this happen?  Why do they betray us, their constituents? 

There's a saying: Follow the money.  Every one of them has recieved big donations from corporate America. 

Cory booker got a big one from Big Pharma before he voted against importing Canadian drugs, the same drugs from the same pharma companies that make them and that cost a lot more than they do in Canada.  Every one of those corporate Democrats gets donations from the corporations that benefit from their betrayal of the people of this nation.  Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Oil, and so on. 
Don't believe me; but don't believe them either. Break out of your confirmation bias.  Look it up for yourself, and learn the truth. 

What it comes down to is this: If you keep trying to silence progressives, you're digging the grave of your party, and of this country as a semi-functioning Democratic Republic.

It's time... No, it's well past time, to purge the Democratic Party, all of our political institutions, of corporatists who are robbing the nation blind and destroying our country.  It's OUR country, dammit, NOT the corporations!

Don Rice Jr.
© December 21, 2017

Wake up, Democrats!

Here's something for everyone to consider.  In the 2017 election cycle, almost all of which were local and state-level races, where candidates running on the Democratic Party ticket won even over high-power long-time Republican office holders, the ones who won were mostly newcomers. Even more interesting and informative in light of the divisiveness of establishment politics is that those who won by the largest margins are progressives who were backed by progressive organizations. 

Justice Democrats, Democratic Socialists of America, Our Revolution, to name a few.

Some of those candidates had very little support, if any at all, from the Democratic Party; in at least one case, the Democratic Socialist who ran on Virginia, was told that he couldn't possibly win.  Who told him that?  The Democratic Party of Virginia, which also declined to support him in any way, in spite of the fact that he ran on the Democratic Party line.  But he won anyway, by a wide margin, unseating a long-term Republican up for re-election in a Republican stronghold.

How did these men and women win in spite of the lack of support from establishment Democrats and their admittedly powerful organizations?  They went out and tslked to people about the issues the people are most concerned with.  Unemployment and underemployment.  Education.  Health care.  Local issues like road repair and potholes.  Police brutality.

Corporate (centrist and center-right), establishment Democrats smeared Bernie Sanders, and are still trying to smear him and his supporters.  They smeared and continue to smear anyone who aligns with Sanders, in spite of the fact that he has been the most popular active politician in the country for many months.  And the way they smeared Bernie was by using right-wing Republican talking points. What does that say about corporate Democrats?

At the same time, there are a lot of Republicans in the rank and file who also supported Sanders, and would have voted for him given the chance.  But the Democratic establishment (corporate) machine, through the machinations of Debbie Wassermann-Shultz and the campaign of Hillary Clinton, made sure that wasn't possible. 

So most of those Republicans pulled the lever for Donald Trump, while the Democratic Party began bleeding membership to the Independent column.  While some relative few Independents voted for Trump, large majorities, those who didn't hold their noses while voting for Clinton, instead voted for either Jill Stein or Gary Johnson.  Afterward, while most rank and file Democrats clamored for progressive policies and change, the then new chair of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, purged progressives from leadership positions. 
 
The writing is on the wall for those who are willing and able to read it.  Like it or not, the country is moving to the left.  The People want progress, not "more of the same" status quo that's really moving us further and further to the right with each new election.  The new voices, the progressive voices, are being herd more widely than ever before. 

It's time for the Democratic Party to wake up and smell the coffee.  It's time for them, who call themselves the Party of the People, to start actually working *for* the People instead of for the corporations that have taken over through their large donations, buying the support of the polititians who are supposed to be representing We the People.

The train is leaving the station, Democrats.  It's time to get on board or get left behind.  Or, in the rather crude terminology of my now-deceased elders, shit or get off the pot.

Don Rice Jr.
© December 2017