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Post by Admin on Apr 13, 2024 21:54:53 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 13, 2024 21:55:55 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 13, 2024 21:57:38 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2024 0:11:31 GMT
Progressives Unveil 10-Point Agenda to 'Prevent Fascist Takeover' in 2024 "With our support and voice, progressives may persuade and enable President Biden to achieve more progressive policy objectives during his second term and prevent a fascist takeover." www.commondreams.org/news/progressive-coalition-platformA coalition of national progressive advocacy groups on Monday released a list of 10 policy objectives that it believes President Joe Biden should embrace to consolidate support for his high-stakes electoral rematch against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. The platform—released by Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), and the State Democratic Party Progressive Network—frontloads the threat that Trump and the fascist movement at his back pose to basic freedoms and democracy itself. "The 2024 presidential election presents a challenge for progressives to preserve and amplify our voice while fighting the most dangerous threat to U.S. democracy in our nation's history," reads the platform's introduction. "Our best strategy to advance both goals is to become state and national Biden delegates at the state and national Democratic Party conventions and to elect Joe Biden for a second term. Throughout this process, we must advocate for a progressive policy agenda that builds and expands upon progressive elements of President Biden’s original Build Back Better (BBB) plan." "With our support and voice," the document adds, "progressives may persuade and enable President Biden to achieve more progressive policy objectives during his second term and prevent a fascist takeover." The first plank of the agenda urges Biden and the Democratic Party to "develop and repetitively use more aggressive messaging against and educate the public about the dangers of fascism including exposing and condemning Project 2025, the fascist blueprint for a second Trump administration." It also calls for more concrete policy changes such as filibuster reform, term limits for Supreme Court justices, and the passage of robust voting rights legislation in the face of large-scale Republican attacks on the franchise. Other planks of the agenda include working to end the privatization of public goods such as housing and healthcare, using "all means available" to raise the long-stagnant federal minimum wage and slash poverty, raising taxes on billionaires and corporations, overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, canceling student debt and establishing tuition-free public college, expanding Medicare benefits, declaring a climate emergency, and conditioning U.S. aid to Israel. The groups said Monday that they plan to submit the policy agenda to the Democratic Party Platform Committee ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August. "We intend this to be a unifying effort, urge the second Biden administration to fulfill the ten policy objectives outlined in these proposals, and invite the Democratic presidential campaign to engage in dialogue with us to achieve unity and progressive electoral support around them," the progressive coalition said Monday.
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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2024 12:28:26 GMT
Wes Streeting and Ideology averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2024/04/wes-streeting-and-ideology.htmlWhenever Wes Streeting is in the news, it's usually because he's dumping on the NHS. Having said on several occasions that he wants more private sector involvement in the health service, he's reiterated this most unwavering of convictions in a piece for The Sun. His ire, as always, is firmly aimed at the left as he attacks us with a vehemence that never manifests versus the Tories. He wrote that "Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster – while working families like mine are left waiting for longer.” What these people care about is not a better service or improved outcomes. Using private provision to get the NHS backlog down is common sense and is in the interests of "working people". Salt-of-the-earth types, like Sun readers, should not pay for the left's "ideology". There's no point treating Streeting like a good faith actor. You can show him all the data in the world about how private health care undermines the NHS, drains resources, ponces off the skills paid for by the public purse, and is no better in quality or outcome beyond jumping the queue. You can also tell him until you're blue in the face that there is no spare capacity in private health, or that the idea waiting lists can be run down in double quick time is completely mistaken. He does not care. Streeting's job is to create more marketised opportunities for capital underwritten, as always, by state money. No argument is going to force him from this goal. He is not mistaken, he is determined. What interests here is Streeting's use of 'ideology'. We regularly see it used in politics to refer to the more "exotic" elements of the Conservative Party. I.e. The Tories persist in cutting social security or peddling racist drivel because of their ideology. For reasons that are never explored, they are blind to the realities that intrude upon their dogmas. It therefore shows them to be irrational and therefore unfit for office. Or, if you like, fundamentally honest but completely clueless. It is, of course, nonsense. Persisting in the view that the Tories are driven by the wrong ideas gets them off the hook. It suggests that politics is a marketplace of ideas, and not what it really is: a battleground for interests. Streeting's deployment of ideology has a different target, but is contrived to have the same effect. I.e. The opponents of his eminently sensible desire to let private health gorge itself at the NHS trough are zealots driven by inflexible principles and dogma. It denies the actual grounds of the left's criticisms of Streeting, one rooted in anticipation of the real world consequences of the policy he wants to ram through. He's taking the "what works" moral high ground, masking the interests he's very keen to serve at the expense of our class interests in a free, comprehensive, and non-commodified health service unbeholden to profit making and profit taking. Here, pretending his critics are opposed to him because of funny ideas denies the material stakes we have in the health service, as well as the rewards he and his backers can look forward to should they get their way. It's the game of depoliticising politics so the imperatives of capital are unquestioned and, presumably, the coming government shielded from political blowback. Because such efforts did John Major, Gordon Brown, and now Rishi Sunak so many favours.
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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2024 20:52:14 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 15, 2024 10:48:30 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 15, 2024 18:13:29 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 15, 2024 18:16:12 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 15, 2024 19:32:28 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 16, 2024 18:49:52 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 16, 2024 18:52:28 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 16, 2024 18:54:34 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 16, 2024 21:57:19 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 16, 2024 21:59:01 GMT
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