Required Reading: "The Spill, The Scandal and the President"

To The Point (0.00 / 0)

You are absolutely correct in the assessment that the "Republican Party and the Culture of Corruption" is the basis for much of what is wrong today. If voters simply "throw the bums out" in November, they will return control to a party that has been captured by even more reactionary forces than before.

The left needs to find its narrative and learn how to apply the sort of pressure that the far right is so adept in. This year's primary season saw that beginning to happen.

The terrible difficulty today - to me at least - is the almost impossibility of getting the progressive message out through the corporate news media, that and the fact that the average American is clueless about the political process.

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by: Elaine in Roanoke @ Thu Jun 10, 2010 at 18:50:27 PM UTC

I thing the Rolling Stone (0.00 / 0)

article makes the crucial point: Terrible GOP stewardship has caused most of the problems we are facing. They have had control most of the past sixty years, and the story is always the same: tax cut and spend; deregulation; foxes guarding the henhouse; privatize US infrastructure; exploit human beings; and (since 1980) put Ronald Reagan's name on everything.

What the Gulf shows is that Cheney-ism not only doesn't work, but is devastating. If only Liz, the daughter, would stifle herself. Thankfully, the father has slinked off into the shadows (at least for now).

There's nothing in the middle of the road except yellow stripes and dead armadillos (Jim Hightower). PS I'm on Twitter here.

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by: KathyinBlacksburg @ Thu Jun 10, 2010 at 20:12:11 PM UTC

Kathy: (0.00 / 0)

Speaking of Cheneyism, I had the honor of serving as an APSA Congressional Fellow with Dick Cheney in 1968-1969; unfortunately, he was as big a liar and political hack then as he is now.

In 1977, I was sent over to a federal agency to clean up what he and Don Rumsfeld had deliberately destroyed under Nixon. The mess was almost as bad as MMS. Fortunately, that agency did not have any regulatory authority.

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by: TomPaine @ Sat Jun 12, 2010 at 00:05:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The progressive narrative (0.00 / 0)

is not just that Republican Culture of Corruption created nearly every mess and disaster of today, true as that may be.

It has to include a positive, more advanced economic-political philosophy to replace the failed free market philosophy which has had its grip on both political parties for three generations. THAT is the change I was looking for from Obama, and that is what has been missing from the get-go of his administration. If any ass has to be kicked it has to be his, because he failed to follow through on his rhetoric.

Until the Democrats find the guts to attack and dismantle the secular religion of free market capitalism, absolutely no real reform will take place, capitalism unreformed will continue its sickening decay into corporate feudalism, and the Democrats will be punished at the ballot box by a feckless, uneducated, querolous gang of voters.  

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by: Teddy Goodson @ Thu Jun 10, 2010 at 22:14:00 PM UTC

During my thirty years in the civil service, one thing that I noted was the fact (0.00 / 0)

that incoming Republican Administrations (Nixon and Reagan), unlike the Democrats, always could count on a Republican burrowed into a high level career civil service position and a Republican political hatchet-man assigned (at least in the three social service agencies in which I served) to identify Democratic or liberal leaning career persons and find ways to eliminate or relocate them from positions of authority via reorganizations, reductions-in-force or undesireable geographical or functional area reassignments. This was particularly true for high level career employees under the Senior Executive Service provisions of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1977. In two different agencies where I was Director of Human Resources, the same Republican hatchet-man showed up in both 1969 and 1981.  

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by: TomPaine @ Fri Jun 11, 2010 at 02:38:21 AM UTC

Precisely, (0.00 / 0)

TomPaine. Obama was handed a bureaucracy riddled with anti-government Republicans who burrowed down into the supposedly non-political, professional civil servant level, and have busily been undermining everything Obama has tried to do. The Republicans have successfully bypassed the civil service laws and managed to politicize the bureaucracy in an invidious, ultimately malicious way. Unfortunately, Obama had (and still has) no plan for weeding out these treacherous little punks from the machinery.

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by: Teddy Goodson @ Fri Jun 11, 2010 at 14:48:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

"Unfortunately, Obama had (and still has) no plan for weeding out these treacherous little punks from the machinery." (0.00 / 0)

Obama needs to send a political hachet-man or -woman into every federal agency to clean out the corrupt and incompetent deadwood or this problem will escalate even further. Even at my advanced age, I would happily take on this task; I have cleaned house before and could do it again. MMS, Coal Mine Health & Safety, and DOJ are three good places to start!

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by: TomPaine @ Fri Jun 11, 2010 at 20:49:25 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

THE CORE PROBLEM IS GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY (0.00 / 0)

take the time to check out how MMS needs to change-

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

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by: Shenandoah Democrat @ Fri Jun 11, 2010 at 02:57:56 AM UTC

I agree with all the comments here. I would go a bit further (0.00 / 0)

and say that Obama has and uses the bully pulpit very well.  I don't understand why he hasn't used it more effectively around cleaning up the staffing messes that were left in-house by the Bush Administration.  If he can speak about other messes, why not this one?  Further, when he selected Salazar I doubted that the Interior Department was going to get cleaned up.  After all the reports that came out about the time Bush left office that he had loaded EPA and Interior  with his kind and that MMS was loaded with unethical types, where were Salazar and Obama?  Now we know even more about West Virginia mines, gas lines and oil wells that haven't been adequately regulated and monitored.  How many more people have to die and wildlife and natural areas destroyed to get the bully pulpit fired up and ready to go?

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by: walkabout @ Sat Jun 12, 2010 at 02:39:11 AM UTC