'The deterioration is steady, and it's spreading like a cancer'

[Kire]

Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy
By MATT BAI, NY Times Magazine
July 25, 2004

Andy Rappaport made his millions as a venture capitalist,searching out
what he calls ''ideas that change the world.'' About six years ago,
for instance, when most everyone else in the high-tech industry
thought wireless communication was going to depend on new, exotic
semiconductors, Rappaport threw $2.5 million into a start-up called
Atheros Communications, whose founders were focusing instead on
building low-cost radios using common chip technology. It was a smart
move. When the company went public last February, the initial
investment by Rappaport and his partners was worth more than $60
million.

Rappaport is also, increasingly, an avid investor in liberal causes,
and in this context he might be called a political venture
capitalist. Rappaport and his wife, Deborah, whose philanthropic
activities in recent years include several million dollars in
donations to art museums and after-school music programs, have
committed at least $5 million this year -- so far -- to support a
bevy of fledgling liberal groups, like Music for America and
Punkvoter.com, aimed at mobilizing younger voters.

I met Rappaport, who is 46, in early June in his firm's offices on
Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley's answer to Wall Street. As we talked
in a plush conference room flanked by a sunlit terrace on one side
and a pool table on the other, events in the world outside seemed to
be tilting strongly in the Democrats' favor. Public support for
President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq was dropping
precipitously. The price of oil had shot up to $42 a barrel. Only
hours earlier, voters in South Dakota sent a Democratic woman,
Stephanie Herseth, to the U.S. House in a special election -- a race
widely viewed as a potential harbinger for November.

But if all of this made John Kerry a good bet to become the next
president, it did nothing, in Rappaport's view, to solve the
Democrats' underlying problems. When I asked if he was skeptical
about the direction of the party, he smiled, then said dryly, ''If
you've been able to discern a direction on which to be skeptical or
optimistic, then you're doing pretty well.''

More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/magazine/25DEMOCRATS.html?th

[izzie]

1. True where is the party? Where are the unions?

I do not want this party to turn into a Republican party for the rich and odd cults or people re-writing the Bible.

[HEFFA]

3. Too late.

It's already happened to some extent. This is the reason that people emigrated to the Greens in 2000, and some will do the same in '04. Personally, I think it made sense in 2000, but going that route is foolish this time around.

Unfortunately, I still don't think that the message that a vote for Nader was supposed to send in 2000 has been received and understood by the leadership of the DNC. They're still acting like freeps in liberal clothing.

[Hekate]

2. Encouraging, and long, and where can I get a job with these folks?

Ever since I researched the Dominionists/Christian Reconstructionists and PNAC and the Neocons I've been wondering how we progressives could get our own billionaire -- and here they are, God bless'em.

The wingnuts' financial backers have promoted home schooling and have provided a line of textbooks that drives home their points: Our Founding Fathers, the ones who wrote and implemented the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and so on, were devout Christians -- and I guess that goes double for the ones who "swore eternal hostility" to anything that would enslave the minds of men, including religion. God's grand design (their God, that is) for America is for everyone to be Christian and have two belly-buttons; God led the settlers and pioneers across the Atlantic and the Great Plains; God must have wanted the Native Americans to die out by various means, because they did. Manifest Destiny lives on.

I believe in public schools for many reasons, among them the fact that attending public school gives the students a common civic language. Wouldn't it be grand if restoration of quality public education became one of the cornerstones of the policies that will be developed and promoted in Soros/Lewis/Rappaport think tanks? Social programs and policies could be re-thought in leadership programs for rising progressives. These leadership and think tank programs work--that's why the Repubs now own all branches of government.

Hekate