Can we influence government policy?

While it is very difficult to influence policy without controlling government, it is possible. And we should strive to influence government policy as we challenge Wall Street for real political and economic power. Through active and united mass movements we can influence all kinds of government policies from peace to creating jobs through universal social programs like public health care and public child care programs. If we stop holding up the tails of these Dumb Donkeys and begin breaking ourselves free from Wall Street's two-party trap by running real people's candidates--- citizen activists--- for public office as we build powerful movements for real change we can begin to shape and influence public policy. The Greek workers' movement is showing us how to do this. Of course we can look back on our own struggles which brought the socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to power which was making plans for a national political movement when it was hit with vicious, fierce and pernicious governmental repression which left democracy in the country crippled for many decades--- almost a century. Are we up for this challenge and the struggle?

Murder in Sointula, British Columbia?

Note: Blogger.com, under pressure from the RCMP and Vic Toews, insisted I remove the photograph of me and Mark Homer who died under very mysterious circumstances. That the Canadian government is going to such extreme lengths to escape having to explain the circumstances surrounding Mark Homer's death leads me to believe Mark Homer was murdered. 

There was a picture here of me at the home of artist Mark Homer in Sointula, British Columbia (1998). Because Blogger.com has threatened to close down my blog I removed the photograph.

I was fighting deportation from Canada at the time and Mark Homer was one of many Canadians who raised his voice in opposition to our deportation. I will be posting the letters he and many others wrote demanding a halt to our deportation.

Sointula originated as a cooperative community begun by the "Red" Finns who were escaping the persecution by the old Finnish feudal lords for their political beliefs in Finland.

Mark Homer was a fisherman; he died under mysterious circumstances. Mark Homer's dad was one of the founders of the left-led Fisherman's Union.

Muddle-headed middle class "Liberalism" or Marxism?

Robert Reich, like Paul Krugman and the rest of these over-paid pundits posing as liberals, continues to evade two major issues:

1. The cost of these wars.

2. Racism and the failure to enforce Affirmative Action.

I find it interesting how Robert Reich doesn't apply the same analysis to Obama as he does towards Romney as Reich is building towards supporting Obama because the Republicans are so bad when in fact Obama and Romney both have the exact same Wall Street agenda couched in different terminology but result in the same thing: wars abroad financed through austerity measures here at home.

No president has ever attacked the living standards as viciously and perniciously as Barack Obama has done yet Reich has the unmitigated gall and audacity--- not to mention total and complete dishonesty--- to pretend Obama is somehow better than Romney:

http://robertreich.org/post/17162027435

Shame on the left for not providing the American people with a clear and understandable working class Marxist analysis instead of all of this muddle-headed middle class apology for Barack Obama we are now getting from the well-heeled pundits like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman who build their fantasies supporting Obama around some kernels of truth that end up so distorted all we get is confusion.

Mitt Romney says he is not concerned about the poor while Obama pretends that he is concerned about the poor but really isn't concerned about the poor to the degree he takes the needed steps towards eliminating poverty--- which can be done with the massive redistribution of wealth to fund real living wage jobs and universal social programs like a National Public Health Care System (12-million new jobs if we just begin with primary health care) and a National Public Child Care System (at least three-million new jobs) combined with bringing back C.E.T.A., WPA and CCC we can put everyone in this country back to work if we end these dirty wars and cash in the peace dividends while taxing the hell out of the rich to pay for the rest of the bill.

Robert Reich writes and speaks from an upper-middle class perspective and then he has the nerve to talk about "us" when he has nothing in common with working people who he keeps inserting into his "middle class."

I like reading Robert Reich's "analysis" because he does provide some important facts as kernels of truth; but, one needs to carefully read between the lines and sort fact from fiction.

Working people need to establish their own Marxist think-tanks and action centers in the communities where they live and where they work because this kind of muddled nonsense will never get us beyond Wall Street's control.

Pick up a cheap used copy on-line of "Dynamics of Social Change: A Reader in Marxist Social Science, from the Writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin" by David Goldway, Harry Martel, Howard Selsam. Here are some selections from this book:

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6859916

The "Dream Act" is another Obama nightmare

I am opposed to the Dream Act because I consider it more like the Nightmare Act since it pushes our youth into the military to fight these dirty imperialist wars in order to get the benefits of this so-called Dream Act.

I am sure many FireDogLake participants remember the C.E.T.A. Program (Concentrated Employment and Training Act) President Richard M. Nixon started just as the Vietnam War ended.

C.E.T.A. was kind of like a combination of Roosevelt's WPA and CCC. 

C.E.T.A. was a great program--- although, like WPA and CCC, it didn't pay much; unlike the training program being put forward by our "good liberal" Governor Dayton here in Minnesota, it did pay wages and it didn't require people own a car to get trained (actually, many people had their bus fares paid)  --- but a lot of people (from youth to elderly people) sure appreciated it and C.E.T.A. trainee/workers provided a myriad of useful services. And it didn't require any association with the military to qualify.

Plus many C.E.T.A. trainees/workers went on to find full-time good paying jobs for which they were trained---  often community service type jobs that continued helping people--- jobs in the public and private sector.

There was a downside to C.E.T.A. that Nixon used to the hilt; Nixon being a life-long enemy of organized labor used C.E.T.A. to compete with unionized public employees in a way that helped depress the wages of public employees but George McGovern had actually advocated the concept of the program.

I think it is pathetic we can't get out of Obama programs at least as good as what we got out of that rotten piece of crap Richard Nixon.

As far as how much those who would attain jobs through training derived from the Dream Act; should they come home in some way other than wrapped in a body-bag, I am guessing the taxes they pay would pale in comparison to the cost of the wars for Wall Street they will be fighting.

I don't think our youth should have to serve as canon fodder and carry out the most heinous crimes against humanity in the process in order to receive training for jobs.

Is there a reason why liberals, progressives and the left aren't demanding from Obama and the Democrats legislation on jobs in line with WPA, CCC and C.E.T.A.

There are at least two candidates that I know of supporting jobs programs like George McGovern did--- JOBS INSTEAD OF MILITARIZATION AND WARS. Jill Stein < http://www.jillstein.org/ > and Rocky Anderson < http://www.voterocky.org/ >.

As I recall, it was the president Barack Obama admired so much, Ronald Reagan, who axed the C.E.T.A. program. 

The same phony liberals, progressives and leftists who dishonestly and deceitfully sold Obama as something that he is not, are now trying to sell us Obama's nightmare as The Dream Act.

Bring back the WPA, CCC and CETA.

Pay for these job creation programs by ending these wars and the occupations and by taxing the hell out of the rich.

Let America Be America Again

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!