What matters to you? (Part 1)
Hey guys,
Like most of you, I'm pretty much a newb here. And while I'm really enjoying the vibe -- or maybe because I'm really enjoying the vibe -- I got wondering which issues enjoy the broadest support across this community. Because there are a lot of issues that matter. And because this seems like a community where ideas can be debated freely and honestly.
So ... what do we stand for? Does there happen to be a consensus here on the most pressing issues facing the country? To be clear, there doesn't need to be a consensus. We are all motivated by different things for different reasons. But I think it would be interesting to see if there are particular issues which resonate with this community, or if we're more of a group bound together by general progressive tendencies.
I'm proposing a poll, although I'm not sure we have the ability to run an internal poll here. If we can't, I'll set something up offsite, and provide a link.
For now, I'll open the floor for nominations of issues that matter the most to you. I've started out by jotting down a list of issues; it's far from all-encompassing, so please provide your suggestions for additions. At some point, we'll end nominations and proceed to a poll. At that point, you'll be asked to rank your top three issues.
Here's a list for starters: (By means of introduction, I'll tell you the top three are those I find most important, but not necessarily in that order. The rest are also presented in no particular order.)
TOP ISSUES?
Income/wealth inequality
Climate change
Campaign finance reform
Financial industry reform
Public works/infrastructure
Affordable housing
Law enforcement reform
Single-payer health care
Social Security expansion
Gun control
Free post-secondary education/student loan reform
Abortion rights
Voter’s rights
Immigration reform
Added by suggestion
Criminal justice reform
Foreign affairs reform
Elementary and secondary education reform
Tell me what's missing!
Comments
You can use poll-maker.com to add a poll here.
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That's it. Pretty easy and straightforward.
Thank you, Ken!
I'll take advantage of that.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
Ditto--thanks, Ken! Love polls, so will put so use. ;-D EOM
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Big Ty for this, Ken! I wuv polls :=)
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
This is excellent information! Thank you
for sharing that. This would be great to add to the site FAQs.
A poll is a great feature to add to an essay, for gathering information and for catching reader interest. People love being asked and giving their opinions.
We have the same top 3!
Well, on some days. Climate change is my number 2 and campaign finance reform is my number 2 because it's blocking number 1. Income inequality and ending military backed regime change generally fight it out for number 3 and criminal justice reform is number 5.
Great list though! I would say that military matters and criminal justice reform are what's missing (although law enforcement could cover the second one). The great thing is that I think most everyone here would agree on basically all these things.
" ... most everyone here would agree ..."
For the most part, I think we'd agree all those issues are important. But I'm hoping to discover if some issues are more important to this group than others.
Oh, and please see my reply further downthread regarding criminal justice reform. (Forgot to hit "reply" on that one. D'oh!)
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
Cool, 'wolf.
I think criminal justice reform is likely a separate issue from what I was thinking of in regards to law enforcement reform. What I had in mind is efforts to hold cops accountable for gunning down unarmed people and other forms of less lethal violence and discrimination. The de-militarization of the police force.
When you say "criminal justice reform," are you thinking of sentence reduction, ending the "war on drugs" bullshit, etc.? If so, that should be listed as a separate issue. I'll add it to the list.
For "military matters," are we talking about reduction in military spending, scaling back the surveillance state, etc.? Can you define this one for me a little better?
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
I was definitely thinking of
ending the war on drugs and sentence reduction, as well as trying to get rid of as many private prisons as we can and placing a greater focus on rehabilitation.
Military matters for me is stopping our policy of military-backed regime change (except in truly humanitarian cases), although transitioning our military economy (more focus on supporting our soldiers and veterans and less with spending our obscene weapons that are misdesigned) is certainly important. I would say that our military procurement allocation is tied to regime change since regime change makes up such a large aspect of what our military does, but it might fit better in a "Fair Budget" category. The military can cover so many category that I think it could be broken up in several different matters, but I like the idea of pushing for a "Progressive/People's/Fair" Budget myself since budget creation is such a major part of what our Congress does.
My gut is that aspects of surveillance should probably be in a separate category since more about the rights of Americans than foreign affairs (although given that at this point, every major country is spying on one another, it's certainly a part of foreign affairs as well). I just don't have any idea what that category should be!
nothing in that list will change if...
...we don't address voting rights. it an issue that rears its ugly head every election and then it falls to the wayside when all the counting is done. meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly difficult through laws and election day shenanigans for people to exercise that right.
it seems ridiculous for 50 different states to have 50 different ways to register and vote. there should be one consistent process from state to state. federalize it if necessary. speaking of federalizing, election day should be a federal holiday to allow people the entire day to vote. this is all the more important as more Republican held states severely curtail or eliminate early voting. if not a holiday, then go to vote-by-mail. more people need to be able to participate in the process to change any of the other bulleted items of concern.
I think it should be a federal holiday
with mandatory voting.
That way people wouldn't use the holiday as just a chance to get away. Not that that's wrong, especially for people who get no or little vacation, but voting would need to be mandatory so the day is used to vote.
I wonder
about mandatory voting, as well. Haven't studied it enough to form an opinion, though.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
Looking at the election out here...
Austria's having their own presidential election this weekend, and I've been asking about how their process works. From what I understand, it's pretty straightforward and it seems to work well for the country. They have their elections on Sundays, and a few weeks before the election, every voting-aged person (16 is the voting age here, not 18) receives a reminder postcard that they bring to the polling place to ensure that they're registered and can vote for the candidate of their choice. While I'd really advocate for these things in the US as well, after looking at what happened in NY last week, I'd be hesitant to see what could be done to disenfranchise people (don't send postcards to addresses, etc.)...
maybe automatic registration...
...when a U.S. citizen turns 18 year old. there possibly remains a second step of selecting a party preference but maybe that should ultimately be eliminated. a registered voter can vote for whomever they want. that would eliminate the confounding matter of no party preference voters not being able to vote in closed primaries.
My Number One Issue
Every item listed above as topics would be possible now if corporatism lost its dominance over government. THAT has to be the first thing that gets changed no matter what else we stand for. Citizens United must be overturned, political donations must not remain the private domain of a few very rich men, and voting rights must be expanded and facilitated. Then everything on the list is possible and likely to pass.
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.
Yes, Campaign Finance / Election Fairness Reform
Everything is important. But if we don't fix the system it is impossible to fix anything else.
Next hugest issue for me is Climate Change! If we don't respond quickly the whole world will topple. For one tiny thing, Homeowner's insurance...gone.
I view the problems
we have in those areas as stemming directly from income and wealth inequality. Remove greed from the equation with a truly progressive tax structure, and suddenly there's little incentive (or ability) for big money to be deployed to thwart democracy.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
There is a graphic that has a list of issues
that polled Americans support by 70% or more. It goes all the way down to issues with the lowest support, but it does a good job of identifying the top issues for all Americans. I can't find it, but it is what is most important to Americans. It includes free college and single payer. While I appreciate you trying to recreate/whittle it down, I don't think you can. This country is so fucked up for so long, there isn't only three things.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
While I agree
that there's a vast list of issues which need to be dealt with, my goal here is to find out if there are certain issues this community feels more strongly about. At the moment, I'm just creating a laundry list. It will be interesting (to me, anyway) to see if there's any consensus on which issues are the most important to folks here.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
Your last sentence.....
"This country is so fucked up for so long, there isn't only three things."
Amen. At C99%, we all know the problems facing us. We are truly engaged and knowledgeable. But when our many and serious problems are put in a laundry list, as they are in this essay...good God. It's daunting. Almost discouraging. It's too much. Maybe it cannot be done. It's not unlike a bad dream where you get up from your seat on an jet airliner. You walk up to the cockpit. You look inside and the pilot and copilot are both babbling morons.
"Leaders" like Hillary. What is it with them? They have the info we have and much, much more. Are they oblivious? Do they think that the inertia from our (former) greatness will carry us through? Or, (my best guess) they know it's over and they're playing out the string?
"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey
Daunting, but not
discouraging. Not all the time, anyway.
Major change seems to happen slowly, until suddenly it happens all at once. My hope is that if enough people keep battling, the wall eventually falls.
My hope with this essay is to see where our myriad concerns overlap the most.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
This one right here?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Pollin...
In my mind that's where you can see the proof of Gilens & Page.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Thank you!
I'll wade through that and see what should be added to the list. There are some very specific actions there that will likely fall under some of the more broad categories I provided. At this point, I'm thinking more along the line of strategy instead of tactics.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
I like that green New Deal option
That would be a perfect answer for my number 2 concern, climate change, number one being getting money out of politics. Number 3 is reforming our criminal laws (war on drugs, a more fair conviction process, ending the death penalty).
Beware the bullshit factories.
Foreign affairs reform
Whatever Hillary would do, we should be doing the opposite. We need to downsize our military drastically and focus on international criminals - from terrorists, to banksters to Israeli apartheid etc etc.
Added to list.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
Agreed on Hillary and F.P.
I knew a gambler they called Black Cat Ted. True story. Fellow touts would look to see which way he bet and then bet the other way. Like Hillary, it was usually a "lock" that he would make the wrong choice.
"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey
Elementary/secondary education reform
needs to be on our list in my opinion, to help raise a new generation of effective citizens. We need to back off standardized testing for profit; reinstitute civics, humanities and arts; give young people a chance to learn a hands-on craft as a routine part of their education; use IT wisely but never exclusively; limit charter schools to a few with specialized purposes; quit subsidizing religious schools entirely; lay off beating up on teachers; and stop the school-to-prison pipeline by substituting reasonable discipline for irrational zero-tolerance rules. Kids in 3rd grade today will be eligible to vote in only 10 years!
Euterpe2
Well said. Added to list.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
Foreign Affairs
Not that I do not whole-heartedly support the other issues or under-rate their importance, but for me domestic issues pale by comparison, even wealth inequality, which would be my domestic number one issue. To illustrate: even a poor child in the US is privileged when compared to a poor child in Haiti, where Hillary intervened and colluded to preserve slave wages. Not to mention the killing, maiming, assassinations, regime changes, etc that the US has done or facilitated in so many parts of the world, all of which would continue or escalate if foreign policy is not drastically reformed.
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
Some of these issues are ends in themselves & some are means
to get to those ends. Maybe it would make sense to break them down that way.
Also, priority can be either the importance of an issue, in itself, or the order in which we think it needs to be addressed.
Everything mentioned above needs to be addressed, I think. Climate change seems most "important," in itself, to me, since it involves basic survival for all life, and we could survive (miserably) without improvement in most of the others. But that doesn't mean that climate change wouldn't be most effectively addressed by focusing on other things first. Like restoring democracy?
#1 Ethics!
We need to restore "Ethics" in government...
Without "Ethics" it is impossible for anything else to be accomplished...
The government cannot serve the will of the people when the vote of a public official, politician, or governmental support on an issue is for sale to the highest bidder...
We can easily accomplish this by decriminalizing drug offenses, and releasing all non-violent drug offenders from jail, to make room for the politicians that don't understand that "These Times They Are A Changing."
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa0fOE-x84k]
Once we have "Ethical Government" the other changes will be possible...
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."
~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,
My Concerns By Order of Importance
1) Overpopulation
The goal being to de-stress the limited resource pool
2) Rampant Theological Excess
The goal being to bring decision-making influence out of the Dark Ages
3) Ending Fossil Fuel Dependence
The goal being to completely convert to renewable, sustainable power sources
4) Ending Imperial Interventionism
The goal being to reduce or eliminate our participation in local conflicts -- conflicts which themselves would diminish in both size and necessity due to 1), 2), and 3)
4a) Reduce the MIC
The goal being to both reduce the death=profits element, and to redirect industrial capabilities toward equitable-life=profits
5) Eliminate the 1%/99% Chasm
The goal being the equitable distribution of influence and responsibility
5a) Worldwide Elimination of Tax Havens
SEE: 5)
Locally
A) Overturn Citizens United & McKutcheon
Neither decision has any place in a Democracy. Money is not speech
B ) Reinstate Glass-Steagall
The goal being to separate Banking from Speculation
C) Reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine" in the media
The goal being ending the monopolistic control of information dissemination
D) Reinstate the Anti-Trust/Monopoly Rules
The goal being to reduce the influence of concentrations wealth and power
E) Mandate Civics Education (Beginning in Elementary School and continuing through 1>12)
The goal being an informed electorate. Drivers can't operate on the roads without training, why should the unprepared be expected to participate without proper training?
F) Reform the Electoral Process Nationwide
SEE: The present election cycle
[edited to remove silly smiley at B]
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Yes, overpopulation...
But that one is so big I don't even put it on my list.
Until there's some sense of responsibility from the leaders of the big religions to stop blocking birth control use, I don't see what can be done to even mitigate it. I'd settle for simply stopping unplanned pregnancies. I really can't see how you'd instill in people some sense of the bigger picture and get them to stop something that is such a strong biological urge. And what do you do? I'd love to see a one-child rule for a generation, but good luck with that...
Not to mention, even if you could somehow enact it globally - whose child? Does only each woman get limited to one child? If so, I see the potential for a lot of bad repercussions from that decision. If not - what do you do - DNA testing? And then what? What if a man has a child with three women?
That one is never going to happen. I expect the Earth is going to end up doing it for us...
But I agree its a huge issue.
I believe there will be a pandemic
either a zoonotic or a lab release that will accomplish killing of a large number of humans. It will be very painful, but global human density will be reduced. Take an epidemiology course, think about the slow response time for HIV, Ebola, SARS, now Zika for the Americas.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
I have actually
(taken an epidemiology course) Only at the undergrad level - so basic. But yeah, its scary and seems a shame to have something like that happen instead of us controlling ourselves as a species.
But the more crowded things get, the more likely it is that something like that will happen. Look at how quickly the Bubonic plague spread through the cities and towns of Europe. It would be so much quicker today.
One of the many reasons I hate airplane travel. They are giant vectors of disease or will be when something finally breaks out.
Media
All of these issues pass through the lens of media to get to the public. And it's not just MSM, but social media as well. Facebook does all kinds of unknown experiments with its users. Twitter can drop feeds they don't like. Websites like the dailylost can dictate discussion.
And I second education and prison reform/justice as they continue to push for privatization.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Wikipedia too is easily gamed by organized groups with resources
The dream (those currently monopolizing the power would say “threat”) of free and open mass exchange of ideas and information on the internet was easily “neutralized” by the internet’s original builders, namely, the Deep State’s military establishment.
Military planners probably had the “shill and ridicule” neutralization strategy all worked out well before the government ever opened the internet for civilian use.
What the poorly compensated minions of Power
have done to the entry on Ted Kaczynski
over the past 18 months is a travesty.
And that's just one example. The
evisceration of the entry for Catherine the
Great is another.
Observing what has been changed, how,
and when tells its own story.
Only connect. - E.M. Forster
WATER RIGHTS!
Part of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right to your water is the right to life.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Precious bodily fluids.
Yeah. But that means no more fracking, another good thing.
My Number One Issue...
Is Climate Change.
But since we can't make progress on that without prying loose the Corporate control over everything, Campaign Finance is tied with it. Although its not as important in the big picture, its place as a blocker of action makes it equally important right now.
Closely behind those two is income inequality.
A lot of the other issues - Criminal Justice Reform, Gun Control, Healthcare, would likely be addressed once we got all money out of politics. We also need election reform and independent districting boards, but I feel like all those things could happen if we de-corrupted politics.
My number one is Housing/Land Reform
Corporate slime shouldn't be allowed to own land.
We need housing for all. Government housing on Public land for those who need it, and rent controls for those who rent.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
In order of impotence
Free popcorn for left handed folks
Cutting the F-35
Cutting the latest floating Maginot Line, i.e., our latest, greatest white whale, the nuclear powered air craft carrier
Cutting common core
Place limits on kids homework and testing by skules. Kids learn more by socializing and playing than doing homework or learning to take tests
Making permanent NASA funding after increasing it by 35%.
Increasing funding for libraries
Increasing funding for roads and bridges and airport maintenance and construction
High speed rail throughout the Midwest as a test platform for the rest of the country
Free scotch for naturally left handed people
Taking apart the Homeland Scrutiny Octopus.
Major funding for elder care and child care
The construction of a very special high security prison cellar (cell?) for Sheriff Arpaio
A national holiday for naturally left handed people
On edit, mandatory solar or wind power for all new construction.
Going way out on a limb guessing "You're left-handed?"
The limb would be one on the left, naturally.
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naturally.
You know we're only 7% of the species?
When, oh, when will we get our day in the sun? We may well be the last oppressed minority, oppressed since time immemorial, by left-handists. We demand our Lefts, gatdemmit!
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Well, it makes us much more adaptable.
The Leftys will inherit the world!
I had to learn to mouse right-handed, use scissors right-handed and I'm sure a bunch of other things. It makes us more flexible.
One day we will no longer be oppressed.
I thought there were more of us lefties.
In my family we are two out of three.
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
Anyone eating popcorn and drinking scotch
will be required to be left-handed. It's the law. :0
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
Will that be enforced every day of the week
Maybe on Tuesdays right-handed people could get a scotch and some popcorn.
Beware the bullshit factories.
You'd better better define "free scotch"
Or you're likely to get cheap scotch.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
good point.
These issues are
all related and inseparable to me. Their interconnected. Like a hydra if you chop off one head it will simply grow another to replace it.
One of the reasons I like Bernie's message is that it acknowledges the crux of the problem. All of the listed issues are important but until we pry the squid off none will be resolved. Globalized absolute power in the hands of transnational entities is hard to even address let alone fight against.
How do we to restore democracy and more importantly the universal inalienable self evident truths that humanity has developed throughout history? Whatever the answer is it will have to be global and yet implemented locally. Human and civil rights, the rule of law, the common good needs to be restored. I don't mean to sound too pessimistic but I don't think this can be done under the current globalized power of money and guns. Picking one issue and trying to fix it using the very system that has carefully designed it won't work.
This time around taking it back from these global Visigoths will have to be a horizontal not a centralized movement. Violent revolution is not the answer as they are armed and dangerously psychotic. OWS and other democratic community movements seem to be where we must start.
This ain't no fooling around..
That's why
I tend to rank income/wealth inequality at the top of my list. Take away the ability to hoard billions, and the ultra-rich will be less inclined to throw millions around trying to buy governments.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
I agree 99%
But then when you think of how to deal with income/ wealth inequality you run into a political partisan immovable brick wall. Even locally in my solid blue cities so called 'progressive' government it's proving impossible to change their agenda and policy implement from growth, privatization, and profit for global investors. ROI. It's a closed system wherein money flows through the Democratic machine on every level and people have way to address their grievances by representative democracy. Sigh.
Right now my choices for mayor are an ex Republican who is actually better then the other candidate a corrupt 'progressive' Dem. whose in the bag for developers and global investors. I worked hard to get this D weasel elected in 2006 to the state house. He's as corrupt as the rat bastard Dem. governor we voted for who had to resign. I guess I'll go for the ex Republican. Even the city supervisors and counsel members are corrupt crooks.
For now I'll work outside the gates. Community level's like community gardens showing up to city meetings to stand up to the progressives who are wrecking the place. Demonstrations and all that jazz.
Yep. Gotta act local. eom
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
my top 3
1. Climate change
2. Income/wealth inequality
3. Campaign finance reform.
All the others are important also. this is why I think Hillary is really a republican. she's not on board with any of your list ( except maybe gun control) other than in the most anemic and paltry way.
Don't believe everything you think.
Yeah, ain't it crazy
that you can compile a list of ideals that a Democratic candidate should embrace, and yet the party's front-runner embraces none of them. And those that disagree are told to sit down and shut up and vote for the chosen one.
That's why I'm no longer a Democrat. They've defined themselves as a party I want nothing to do with.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
Ideology
This to me is most important.
Nothing moves without it. No two humans form any stable relationship without it. And it is the greatest triumph of the corporatist-securtity-state in this era that so many people distrust any mention or discussion of ideology.
Climate change, which has among all the significant ills besetting this planet the best empirical data and the soundest methodology behind its falsifiable claims, cannot be solved without ideology.
Economic choice is a function of and in turn reinforces an ideology. There is no framework of assumptions which does not invade every aspect of human decision making.
Through reducing all of these assumptions to a set of numerical data, we have the antithesis of ideology:
marketing.
I would much rather live in a complex world dominated by discussion of ideology, and the attendant annoyance this brings, than to continue living in a world in which I must endure the mantra of "freedom" and then observe how so many who tout this mantra want the precise opposite of what they are offering, and that those who absorb this pollution give them exactly what they are asking.
On some blog sites to which many here refer, what you see is the effect of this "non-ideology": it is a group of opinions which people hold, and many feel that they can hold them without claiming that these are assumptions.
To put this another way, what is so wrong is not the candidate, it is they.
But they do have an ideology.
Why? The reason is that they believe that they do not hold any ideology, that they are arguing "issues" based on "objective criteria." They are therefore superior because they are "immune" to any assertion that they are maintaining a position based on assumptions which are not rational. They may acknowledge that they hold opinions - and that anyone would assert to hold an opinion about something, rather than a provable fact, or a theory, or even a hypothesis reveals a childlike innocence - nevertheless, these are not a set of assumptions which they share with a group - they are "independent assertions" They made up their own minds.
Yet the fact is, that there are assumptions behind any argument, and that you and I may share assumptions and then - especially in social media - acknowledge our shared position. Then these beliefs are shared in a social structure.
So if we have assumptions, and if we share them, and if ideology is precisely this set of shared, even if tacit, assumptions then
they have an ideology. QED
Therefore, it is our job to dismantle it before their eyes. Get to the assumptions, and one will be dealing with the core aspects of sociology, political theory, economic theory, and the hopeless fallibility of humans in all social constellations.
It is an adventure each person must take.
I apologize to the diarist for creating a scrolling hazard in the middle of her or his comments section and yield back the balance of my time.
Peace and love be with you, reader.
This is a good point
Every society operates under an ideology whether or not they recognize it.
It would be good to quantify what the current neoliberal ideology really stands for and what its ultimate consequences are.
This ties into the 7 generations thinking of native peoples, its not enough to think that development is good because jobs and economy - you must consider what your current actions will bring to future generations, and you also must understand that your root assumption is part of an ideology.
We could just as easily (well, not just as easily or we'd do it) have an ideology that preservation of our world was the highest good, and that development and jobs must always work within that boundary. There could still be smart development, since as long as the population continues to grow exponentially there will continue to be development, but it could be planned development that creates little local townships or cities that are created holistically.
This ties into those great videos Martha posted. Although we as a country say we have freedom and government of the people, we obviously don't actually believe it and live it, or corporations wouldn't trump the will of the people.
We have so many unquestioned ideological beliefs that are harmful: Such as wealth is an indicator of worth as a person or that a wealthy person's ideas are of more value. That growth is always good. That progress is inevitable and necessarily a good thing.
It would be great to start exposing these underlying assumptions to the light of day, and actually having discussions about them in the greater society. Its easy for people to get caught up in a fight about a new big box store bringing jobs or destroying small businesses, but people rarely look at the underlying beliefs that lead them to take on or the other side of an issue.
We have so many toxic, hidden ideologies in this society.
Thank you for a good post,
Haikukitty.
That is precisely it: tackling the hidden ideologies.
You make a good point: action can be a means to address ideology, and your reference to the videos which Martha posted is a good reminder of that. Some art addresses ideology, whether the artist is aware of this or not.
If one does not actively do ideology in concert with actions to make changes to physical or social conditions, then one is ipso facto now trapped in some ideology.
It is my conviction that in order for there to be a scale-up of local initiatives, as good as these are, ideology is necessary.
Peace and love be with you, reader.
Yes there is a lot of self-delusion at these blogs you mention
Righteous self-delusion under the guise of rationality.
Beware the bullshit factories.
lol. i'm leaving the party next week after I vote. I'm done.eom
Don't believe everything you think.
I am as well...
42 years as a registered democrat...
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."
~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,
My personal top issues
1. Public transportation -- this probably falls under "infrastructure" but also ties in to climate change in terms of weaning us off of fossil fuels as well as income inequality because many lower-income folks can't afford a car, or can only afford one. There are a lot of people who can't drive, and others who shouldn't be driving, yet they still need to get from Point A to Point Z. Public transportation, or the lack of same, has an impact on where people live and work; too many places are in what I call "transit dead zones" where there's either no transit or service is infrequent and inconvenient.
2. Disability/senior care -- this could fall under health care reform, but we really need to do far better by our citizens when it comes to getting old, especially old and disabled. Before my mother-in-law (who's been in a wheelchair for close to 30 years after failed scoliosis surgery that left her right leg paralyzed -- long story) went into long-term nursing care, we had a heck of a time finding assisted living that was actually willing to take her, and the training was woefully inadequate. I also have a brother-in-law with mental health issues, and while he's doing great now, there were many years where he fell through the cracks till he was as MIL put it, "sick enough to get help".
3. The War on (Some) Drugs -- Treating drug possession/use as a criminal offense rather than a health issue has been a dismal failure. What good does it do to break up a family and stick one member in prison over a joint or a few rocks of crack? If someone has an addiction issue, get them treatment. I don't get why it's bad to smoke a joint on the weekends while it's perfectly fine to go out and get hammered at a sports bar (as long as you've got a designated driver or take a cab home).
Everything else on your list is up there with me, but these are the top 3.
Well said.
I would include public transportation under the "infrastructure" category.
I agree that disability/senior care is soon going to be recognized as an emergency issue. There are millions of boomers retiring who've been unable to save enough to provide for themselves in old age because the deck has been stacked against them for most of their working lives. Personally, I'm at the tail end of the baby boomer generation, and I have three kids entering college in the next four years. By the time the youngest graduates, my wife and I will be in our early 60s. I can't imagine anything resembling a secure retirement. For now, I've been lumping this issue under the category of "Social Security expansion," but maybe it deserves its own category.
The war on drugs was a horrible idea that's ruined more lives than drugs.
"The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles. -- Bob Dylan"
1. climate
1. climate
2. financial industry / corporation law reform
3. criminal justice / incarceration nation
4. infrastructure (no doubt can be addressed via #2 and #3)
Speaking of wants and climate change and fracking:
Cuomo is announcing a cessation of the Constitution Pipeline, one that was to transport fracked gas to near NYC. Another gas pipeline project was canceled by the developer.
I can still be cynical, maybe another round of state officials are getting indicted soon. Cuomo is very responsive to those threats.
I'm leaning back, drinking my first carbonated beverage this month, Kosher CocaCola. I never knew...
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.