[lbo-talk] Kerry/DLC vs. Social Security (the imperialism of the liberal)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Mar 6 16:03:48 PST 2004



>[lbo-talk] the imperialism of the liberal
>John Lacny jlacny at earthlink.net, Sat Mar 6 10:23:58 PST 2004
>
>Joseph Wanzala writes::
>
>>This business of the 'not a dime's worth of difference crowd not
>>caring about the working class' is simply untrue and pretends that
>>a different ideological ethos runs foreign contra domestic policy.
>
>It has little to do with "ethos" and a lot to do with the real-life
>political forces in the United States, and the differing
>constituencies that will support a liberal candidate against Bush.
>The differences are substantial and the evidence is overwhelming,
>and all of this is obvious to anyone who investigates the issues.
>It's not unfair to say that people like John Pilger -- let alone the
>paleo-fascist-symps at "antwar.com" -- don't care about the working
>class in the US; when was the last time you saw someone like Pilger
>writing about US domestic political economy in anything but the most
>general terms? Clearly, he just doesn't care. I don't necessarily
>blame people from outside the US for feeling this way, but people
>who want to actually build a movement inside the "belly of the
>beast" have different responsibilities. Among those on this list and
>elsewhere who refuse to recognize the importance of defeating Bush,
>I have not seen a single one produce an argument to counter the
>(incontrovertible) evidence that replacing Bush would be an
>improvement worth fighting for.

Democrats are better at big "structural reforms" like the "Welfare Reform" than Republicans, since the latter have a much less ability to manufacture consent among unions, liberal NGOs, and the like -- and the next targets will be Social Security and Medicare:

***** DLC | Key Document | August 1, 2000 The Hyde Park Declaration: A Statement of Principles and a Policy Agenda for the 21st Century . . .

# Make structural reforms in Social Security and Medicare that slow their future cost growth, modernize benefits (including a prescription drug benefit for Medicare), and give beneficiaries more choice and control over their retirement and health security.

# Create Retirement Savings Accounts to enable low-income Americans to save for their own retirement. . . .

John F. Kerry, United States Senator, Massachusetts

(<http://www.ndol.org/print.cfm?contentid=1926>) ***** -- Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list