[lbo-talk] rant on

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Nov 11 11:38:25 PST 2004


Michale Dawson:
>
> You keep saying this, Woj, but give us an example. It's wildly inaccurate
> in the case of Oregon, despite our "blue" status and tradition of
occasional
> curveballs (bottle bill, Oregon Health Plan, legal suicide). Our state
> legislature is more, not less, dominated by lobbyists and money than D.C.
> is. Corporate advertisers purchase all the ballot-measure outcomes they
> want, with only about a 10-percent failure rate.
>
> In what state could the left take over? It's not this one. No freaking
> way.

Libertarian have been talking about it for a while. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30714FA3A550C748EDDA90994DB4 04482

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-rlc/1067677/posts

They have a rather modest goal - one state only, but selected strategically i.e. where they ahev the greatest chance of success.

Similar strategy could be applied for the progressive cause. It does not have to involve all blue states or even entire states. I do not know much about Oregon politics, but if it will not work there, as you say, that means concentrating energies elsewhere.

I think that blue states that contribute more money in federal tax dollars than receive federal spending http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxingspending.html, such as CT, DE, MA, NJ, NY, or MN would have a natural incentive to exist the union. OR is in this category as well, so the argument may have some currency there.

Another idea is to rally with conservatives to abolish federal tax altogether and replace it with the system in which only states would be permitted to levy taxes and then fund the federal entity.. A lot of conservatives would cherish that idea. Without the ability to tax, the federal entity will be no more powerful than, say, the UN.

The point I am trying to make is that a good Marxist strategy is to go with the current and jump on the running locomotive rather than standing in its way as the New Deal dinosaurs want.

Wojtek



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