{"id":318759,"date":"2017-07-24T23:01:42","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T22:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=318759"},"modified":"2017-07-24T23:01:42","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T22:01:42","slug":"democratic-party-better-deal-puts-lipstick-pig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/democratic-party-better-deal-puts-lipstick-pig\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Party ‘Better Deal’ Puts Lipstick on Its Pig"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

I write this as a Democrat who rejects the Party as it has become \u2014 controlled by and representing the Party\u2019s billionaire donors, against the American public.<\/span><\/p>\n

That Party \u2014 the Clintonite Democratic Party, which deregulated Wall Street and allowed no regulation at all of financial derivatives, and ended FDR\u2019s Glass-Steagall Act, and invaded Serbia, and increased the size of NATO (which should have ended<\/i> when the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance did, in 1991) \u2014 served superbly well the interests of America\u2019s billionaires, but not of the American people, whose wages flatlined as Wall Street\u2019s bonuses soared, and as that Democratic-Republican orgy of deregulation paved the way for the reckless lending that produced the 2008 crash, from which we\u2019re still recovering. (America\u2019s billionaires, however, did just fine from it all \u2014 and is that any wonder?)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The era of endless war didn\u2019t really begin only with George W. Bush; the Clintons too were and are part of it and support every measure to ratchet-up military spending and turn America into the weapons-exporter to all of the world in order (not just to fatten the bottom lines of firms such as Lockheed Martin but) to \u201cregime-change\u201d every head-of-state that our billionaires or their \u2018allies\u2019 want removed from power and replaced by their chosen stooges.<\/span><\/p>\n

What, then, do the Democrats in Congress propose in order to address the Party\u2019s rot? Their proposed \u2018Better Deal\u2019 is summarized by Jeff Stein, at Vox, under the headline \u201cDemocrats\u2019 Better Deal, Explained\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and consists of promises that the Democratic Party has consistently made and always (behind the scenes) helped the Republicans to block, because Democratic Party mega-donors don\u2019t want it any more than Republican Party ones do. For examples:<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember the promises by Barack Obama, and by his 2008 Presidential-primary opponents, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, their promises that they\u2019d institute for health insurance a \u201cpublic option,\u201d which Obama promised would compete against the profit-making insurers and “will keep them honest and it will help keep their prices down<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u201d<\/span>, but which he stopped pushing for at the very moment when he won the White House \u2014 and so he chose the conservative Senator Max Baucus (a strong opponent<\/i> of any public option) to write the Obamacare legislation, and turned down (the strong public-option-supporter) Senator Ted Kennedy\u2019s bid to do that? How can anyone trust the Democratic Party\u2019s Establishment, after that?<\/i> Did they then abandon him on the matter, and push him to be real? Not at all! Obama was and is a sell-out at least as bad as the Clintons were and are.<\/span><\/a> And, on Wall Street reform, Obama lied through his teeth, constantly, the Liar-in-Chief throughout his Presidency<\/span><\/a>; but, many of my fellow-Democrats say, he was \u2018pushed to it by the Republicans\u2019. Not really so: see this<\/b><\/span><\/a> \u2014 it came from him<\/i>, and the Republicans never criticized him for it, because on those actions, he was secretly working behind-the-scenes for their agenda<\/i><\/span><\/a>. (Almost all of the Republicans\u2019 criticisms of Obama were lies \u2014 his true<\/i> evils they were silent on, because these were policies that had been drawn up in Republican back-rooms during prior years but had failed to pass under Republican Presidents.) And the few honest and knowledgeable bloggers who still remain Democrats are deeply distrustful<\/span><\/a> that any credence whatsoever should be given to the Party\u2019s statements about the policies that it allegedly intends \u2014 such as the Party Establishment\u2019s \u2018Better Deal\u2019 this time.<\/span><\/p>\n

So: What are the Democratic Party Establishment promising now? Who really cares, other than suckers? Most of the incumbents are so bad they should be primaried, at this stage; and few Democratic voters should trust the incumbent any more than they trust any challenger to that person. This is how bad things have become, in the Democratic Party, today. There needs to be an almost-total root-and-branch replacement of the DNC, to start with. Then, we can begin to talk \u2014 meet together, as Democrats, without the rot that stinks the place up. The lobbyists control both Parties; and both Party-Establishments \u2014 both parts of The Establishment, all<\/i> of America\u2019s billionaires (and all of their numerous agents) \u2014 need to be kicked-out of our Parties, and replaced. Which group first \u2014 which of the two groups of billionaires (including the billionaires\u2019 agents)? The ones that are symbolized by \u201cKoch,\u201d or the ones that are symbolized by \u201cSoros\u201d? Does it really make any difference? Maybe one type (the Koch group) is more blatant about their fascism, and the other type (the Soros group) is more deceptive about it, but they\u2019re really far more similar to each other than they want the public to know, or (at all) to understand.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a pre-revolutionary situation. Frank discussions \u2014 which have been prohibited till now \u2014 must start. Everything should be open for debate, without the ideological censors. There is more to fear about continuing on the present course, than about refusing to and demanding instead its repudiation and replacement. The first question will be: replacing them with what, and by whom? Democracy needs a rebirth in America, or else it will go down completely<\/span><\/a>. We already have the highest percentage of our citizens in prisons of any other of the world\u2019s 223 countries<\/span><\/a> except for tiny Seychelles (the total population of which is under 100,000, low enough for the Somali pirates whom the UN imprisons there<\/span><\/a> to produce an even higher<\/i> imprisonment-rate than the United States has). So, what have we got left to lose, except our chains (or private prisons)? Anyway, we\u2019ve not got the world\u2019s worst healthcare: we\u2019re #37 on quality<\/span><\/a>. However, we do have by far the world\u2019s per-capita costliest<\/i><\/span><\/a> healthcare (and also the costliest as a percentage of a nation\u2019s GDP). How much worse than this should things be allowed to go? Maybe go to spending even more, for even worse? When and where will it stop? What would stop it? And how many more coups and invasions will our rulers perpetrate, and countries destroy, before we finally say: no more<\/i> of their rule? The time has come.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse I write this as a Democrat who rejects the Party as it has become \u2014 controlled by and representing the Party\u2019s billionaire donors, against the American public. That Party \u2014 the Clintonite Democratic Party, which deregulated Wall Street and allowed no regulation at all of financial derivatives, and ended FDR\u2019s Glass-Steagall Act, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":318762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[974,932,4629,931,963],"class_list":{"0":"post-318759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-democracy","9":"tag-democrat","10":"tag-democratic","11":"tag-progressivism","12":"tag-republican"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}