AlterNet: Watch out Tea Party, Progressive Anger Is Alive and Kicking

[marmar]

NEWS & POLITICS
AlterNet / By Les Leopold

Watch out Tea Party, Progressive Anger Is Alive and Kicking
There's rising populist anger against the bailed-out billionaires -- they're only going to get more angry as the same folks who crashed the system are now making record bonuses.

January 29, 2010


There's been a good deal of heated debate about the failure of progressives to respond to the economic crisis. Some argue that we're suffering from "abuse syndrome" which has sapped our emotional capacity to take on our oppressors. Others claim that progressives are a bit long in the tooth, and now are too comfortable and privilegedto mount a fight. We've also been warned the old progressive infrastructures -- unions, churches and community groups -- are not up to the challenge. (See: Are Progressives Depressed or Too Privileged to Produce Social Change? Or Are We Just Failing to Organize Effectively?)

To add to our general angst we've watched the Tea Party fill the breach to become, almost overnight, the most popular political formation in the country. While we were having our woe-is-me debates, the Tea Party destroyed health care reform by winning the Senate seat in Massachusetts.

But now Oregon has given us an important new data point. They just did what everyone said was impossible. They handily won a statewide referendum that raised state taxes on corporations, and on families earning more than $250,000 a year.

Even as I type these words I have trouble believing it actually happened. At least subliminally, I had bought the notion that most Americans hate government, hate taxes and hate the idea of redistribution of income. Hell, they don't even want an estate tax -- the Death Tax -- on the super rich! For the most part that has been true over the past decade, even in Oregon where school budgets have been voted down repeatedly. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/news/145474/watch_out_tea_party%2C_progressive_anger_is_alive_and_kicking

[4dsc]

1. I'm pissed, I'm a proud liberal and I vote

Its time to get it on.

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[starroute]

3. Look to the 18-30 year olds for something to happen

My son is in that age group -- sometimes called the "Millenials," though I don't think they ever use that term themselves -- and there are a lot of signs of something brewing:

* The extent to which Obama pulled them into the political process in 2008.

* A desire to mark themselves as different from the slightly older Gen Xers, largely by demonstrating that they're more engaged and determined to make a difference.

* Their being in many ways the first post-culture wars generation, with issues of race and gender being taken as largely settled (at least in theory if not yet in practice) and no longer a point of division between left and right.

* Their being the generation hardest hit by the economic crisis, with many of them either unemployed or stuck in jobs that have little to do with the expensive college educations that have left them saddled with debt and seeing the prospect of any meaningful career path slipping away.

They want to make an impact, they're angry enough and disenfranchised enough to get serious about it, and the solutions they support are overwhelmingly progressive ones. I think we're going to be hearing a lot more from them in the very near future.

[FirstLight]

4. The link is broken? or is it just me?

from what I read here, it sure seems like the tide may be changing. It's funny how the wave of progressive thought and activism seemed to ebb off after the election. Or maybe it just went back to being a quiet local effort.

I honestly believe that the Federal Govt has the job of running the greater direction we are going...but that the REAL change is community based and local it its core. Democracy was not meant to work on such a huge scale as it is today, it began as a way of governing the small co-ops and land projects that started this country.
But that's just my opinion ;)

I'm looking into getting more involved just in my neighborhood and in my local community, farmers markets, group events, etc... just to assist in fostering those connections. Maybe I will get my neighborhood project of a community syle garden off the ground this year once the snow melts...
The immediate relationships and group efforts to effect changes, whether it be rebuilding the Boys & Girls club or painting graffiti on a saturday or planting gardens in an old dilapidated lot... these are really the key ingredients for our collective recovery. I tell ya, it's all about getting back to basics, because we are going to have to shift some of our habits as peak oil and other climate issues come to be the norm.

[nashville_brook]

5. the Oregon win is stunning.

[donheld]

6. My health care cost is going up 300%, Yea I'm pissed

Yes I said 300%

[tango-tee]

7. Don't blame you for being royally pissed.

OMG. If that happened to me, it would kill my budget, tight as it is already.

Glad to be living in Germany for the time being, pay 13.5% of my gross income for health insurance, if I change jobs my policy goes with me, same if I should become unemployed, or when I retire.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MisterP]

9. this is very good to hear--though we shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that the progs

are only against teabaggers and "obstructionists": the conservadems might actually be a bigger threat to democracy, since they make sure that all floor votes are "bad bill vs. bad bill with a few bones," and hide behind their party label to protect themselves