Robert Scheer, The Huffington Post, January 23, 2008
It was smart of the top Democrats to cut presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich out of that South Carolina debate, where they lamely attempted to deal with the dire consequences of the banking meltdown without confronting the banks. They made all the proper concerned noises about millions of folks losing their retirement savings and homes, but none was willing to say what Kucinich would have said: Bankers are crooks who will steal from the public unless the government holds them accountable.
How do I know Kucinich would have said that? Because I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times back when he was mayor of Cleveland and the banks foreclosed on his city after he refused to sell the public power plant. Others can talk a populist line, but Kucinich lived it. He was forced out of office that time, but voters realized 10 years later that Kucinich had been right. Thanks to the public power alternative that Kucinich refused to sacrifice, Cleveland had cheap power, and he was elected to the Ohio Legislature and then to Congress as his reward.
I bring this up now not to push a Kucinich presidential candidacy, which seems quite forlorn given the power of big money and big media to set the stage for permissible political debate, but rather to hold out a yardstick for measuring the “progressivism” of the top three Democrats. Sure, they all would be preferable to their likely Republican alternatives, although Sen. John McCain has been far better than all three Democrats on both campaign-finance reform and taking on the defense contractors who have been bleeding us dry since 9/11. I got a little worried when Sen. Hillary Clinton said she could do the best job in confronting McCain on national security; she is shameless in throwing money at war profiteers, while McCain has held the line on some of the more egregiously wasteful military expenditures.
With a military budget that has more than doubled since 9/11, soaking up trillions of dollars in obligations for future generations, it is stupid to argue about whether the Democrats or Republicans would spend more on needed domestic programs, because the money for those programs will not be available. Kucinich was the one candidate on the Democratic side willing to do what Rep. Ron Paul has in the Republican debates–challenge the phony patriotism of ripping off the taxpayers for war-fighting expenditures in Iraq and elsewhere, leaving us less secure.
Read More Here
Robert Scheer: Who Will Take On the Banks?
Robert Scheer, The Huffington Post, January 23, 2008
It was smart of the top Democrats to cut presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich out of that South Carolina debate, where they lamely attempted to deal with the dire consequences of the banking meltdown without confronting the banks. They made all the proper concerned noises about millions of folks losing their retirement savings and homes, but none was willing to say what Kucinich would have said: Bankers are crooks who will steal from the public unless the government holds them accountable.
How do I know Kucinich would have said that? Because I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times back when he was mayor of Cleveland and the banks foreclosed on his city after he refused to sell the public power plant. Others can talk a populist line, but Kucinich lived it. He was forced out of office that time, but voters realized 10 years later that Kucinich had been right. Thanks to the public power alternative that Kucinich refused to sacrifice, Cleveland had cheap power, and he was elected to the Ohio Legislature and then to Congress as his reward.
I bring this up now not to push a Kucinich presidential candidacy, which seems quite forlorn given the power of big money and big media to set the stage for permissible political debate, but rather to hold out a yardstick for measuring the “progressivism” of the top three Democrats. Sure, they all would be preferable to their likely Republican alternatives, although Sen. John McCain has been far better than all three Democrats on both campaign-finance reform and taking on the defense contractors who have been bleeding us dry since 9/11. I got a little worried when Sen. Hillary Clinton said she could do the best job in confronting McCain on national security; she is shameless in throwing money at war profiteers, while McCain has held the line on some of the more egregiously wasteful military expenditures.
With a military budget that has more than doubled since 9/11, soaking up trillions of dollars in obligations for future generations, it is stupid to argue about whether the Democrats or Republicans would spend more on needed domestic programs, because the money for those programs will not be available. Kucinich was the one candidate on the Democratic side willing to do what Rep. Ron Paul has in the Republican debates–challenge the phony patriotism of ripping off the taxpayers for war-fighting expenditures in Iraq and elsewhere, leaving us less secure.
Read More Here